#this shit is great considering i never wrote a script before and forgot to take most of my notes in class and they should appreciate that

[autistic-katara]

local writer realises for the 1000000th time that being confident in your ability and letting yourself have fun makes writing infinitely easier and enjoyable

[aion-rsa]

Archenemy: Glenn Howerton On Menacing Joe Manganiello

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As eager comic movie fans wait for Marvel to roll out Phase Four, or for Wonder Woman 1984 to hit HBO Max; RJLE Films has a superhero sleeper of its own coming to screens on Dec. 11. Adam Egypt Mortimer’s Archenemy is the story of Max Fist (Joe Manganiello), a one-person crime fighting phenomenon, now powerless and sent to our dimension to live on the streets. Though Max’s homeless life might be bleak and muted, the film is full of colorful and outrageous characters. The larger-than-life menace that looms over Max is “The Manager”. A mustachioed, golden blonde Glenn Howerton (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, A.P. Bio) brings this 21st century crime boss to life. Think of him as Michael Corleone, by way of Urban Outfitters.

Stepping into the shoes of an overbearing, take no prisoners, big bad is a new venture for Howerton. It didn’t deter him one bit though, as we learned in our exclusive talk with the actor about the difference between living with a character for 15 years (Dennis of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) to having to create a lifetime for one you only inhabit for a short shoot. What follows is our discussion with Glenn Howerton about bringing The Manager to life, and what it takes to create quality entertainment. Oh, and be sure to read Howerton’s thoughts on the Four Seasons Total Landscaping fiasco over here. 

DEN OF GEEK: It’s always nice to see you do pretty much anything but it’s great to see you as this fun, out-of-the-box kind of villain. 

GLENN HOWERTON: Thank you, I appreciate it. It’s so fun to play bad guys. I know every actor says that but it really is true, it’s just a chance to follow your worst impulses as a human being. It’s like you’re getting to exercise a part of yourself that you can’t in your normal life because you want to be a good person, hopefully.

Well I also feel like this is the kind of the character that you can also create a very large backstory for.

Yeah, for sure. I think it’s difficult when you get used to working in television because with a character, it would be easy to forget that the reason I know how to play Dennis so well (depending on how well you consider I play the character) is because I’ve gotten to live with this guy for 15 years. I also created the character, I wrote the character so I know that character inside and out. I know that if an improvisation were to break out I would know how to answer as Dennis. That’s how well I know the character, because I know how he would react in any situation. 

With a film, you don’t have that luxury. Knowing what makes him tick, knowing what his buttons are…you want to know all that stuff so when you show up to the set no matter what gets thrown at you, you can react in character. I didn’t want it to feel like something that I’d done before so I spent a lot of time talking to Adam Egypt Mortimer. We spent countless hours talking about the character and thinking about it myself and just going over it, and over it, and over it, and over it. Which is not something I normally do, but it’s also not something I normally need to do, because most of my work has been in television.

This is also the type of film where you need a certain confidence in the filmmaker, or it’s going to end up on an episode of Paul Scheer’s How Did This Get Made? What gave you that faith in Adam, for all this?

I had faith in Adam for multiple reasons. One, I’d seen the movie that he made right before this, Daniel Isn’t Real, and loved it. I just thought it was beautiful. It was really moving, and horrifying, and scary, and real, and worked on multiple levels. Then just sitting down with Adam and talking to him about this, I was like, “This guy has a vision for this.” The way he talked about the movie, the way he talked about shooting it, the way he saw the script, the way he saw the world, the way he described it – this guy has definitely got a vision for this. It might be really strange and it might be really odd, but I like really strange and odd things. I didn’t get the impression that there was any world in which it was going to be bad.

Adam’s still technically an up-and-coming filmmaker. So it must be nice to work with someone who is at the point where he could really take chances. 

I don’t understand where his confidence comes from. Because as you say, he doesn’t have a ton of films under his belt and we didn’t have a lot of time to shoot this movie, or a big budget to shoot this movie. 

As a matter of fact, I’ll give you a perfect example. The very first day that I showed up to set, we were supposed to shoot a scene where we pull up, and we grab Hamster (Skylan Brooks), and throw him in the car. Skylan was super, super sick, and couldn’t show up that day. But we couldn’t afford to lose a day of shooting. So Adam, that morning or late the night before, wrote a whole new scene for me and Amy Seimetz to do. 

If you’ve seen the movie it’s the scene where we’re sitting in the car, and we’re talking for a while and then at the end of that scene I go and bash Hamster on the head, and that was just Skylan’s stunt double. We had to conceive of something, pretty much in the moment. Then when we got the script on the day, Adam was like, “I don’t think this totally works,” and me and Amy sat and rewrote it. We really had to be on our toes. But I wouldn’t have been able to do that had I not known the character as well as I felt like I did.

We’ve seen you do action and something like a shootout before, but I’ve never seen you do it in such a smooth and kind of serious aspect. Do all those previous experiences meld into this or is it a different type of training you need to delve into?

I think it’s a product of a few things. I didn’t start out in comedy. I always did comedy, but I really started out down a much more dramatic path. So my approach to comedy has always been a little bit more like the Alec Baldwin approach. It’s really no less real when it’s funny, than when it’s a drama. It’s a really just a slight click of the dial one way or the other where that makes it funny, or serious. That can be kind of a thin line between the two. I’ve always come from a dramatic point of view like making the needs of the character, very, very real. It’s just that when you’re writing it or when the conceits of the character are so ridiculous, that’s what makes it funny – instead of doing some sort of goofy-ass performance. 

Then to kind of click over into drama – I mean it’s definitely challenging and it was definitely scary. I think the scariest thing for me in doing something this dramatic was the fact that I’m not a menacing person in real life at all. I’m 155 pounds and Joe Manganiello is 200 pounds of pure muscle, six-foot-four, and audiences have to be able to watch the movie and go, “Joe Manganiello’s character has to be scared of that guy.” Or at least within the world of crime…I’m a crime boss I have to be intimidating to other criminals. That was a little scary for me because I haven’t been asked to do anything like that in a long time, but it was fun. 

I gotta say, you definitely had the best running in a different direction while shooting behind you pose I’ve ever seen. It was very smooth.

That was one of those things where Adam asked me to do that and I was like, “Oh my god…” In my head it’s like I went back to being a kid and thought about watching you Die Hard or watching action movies and I was like, “Oh shit, I forgot I’ve always wanted to do that.” I’ve always wanted to do an action scene where I get to shoot a gun and run around doing action-y stuff. It was like playing and being a kid again. It was so, so fun.

During these pandemic times do you find yourself honing different skills like that on your own? Getting yourself ready for when things can return to normal.

I don’t know if other actors do this but I’m a little bit insane. When I read scripts, I often find myself acting them as multiple characters. Even if I’m watching a movie, and I’m by myself; I’ll pause and sort of take on the persona of the character. I’m getting very personal here, this is really nutty behavior for the average person. But as an actor, I really do kind of get off by climbing into the skin of somebody else and just getting to think a different way and behave a different way and I’ve always been obsessed with that ever since I was a kid. Just understanding the psychology behind how someone can behave the way they behave.

I talk about the pandemic as if the world seems to be shut down, but obviously you guys are still getting scripts and you’re still writing. For instance, has it led to any delays in the scripts for season 15 of Sunny?

No, it’s not, because Rob has been working on the second season of Mythic Quest. I’ve just been working on other things, developing other projects that I’m excited about, finishing a script that I’m writing with a writing partner. I’m mostly focusing on reading a lot and writing a lot and kind of studying the craft of screenwriting because I kind of fell into it. 

I certainly didn’t have any training but when I’m writing I want to live up to … I take what I do very seriously. I don’t take it for granted that I’ve been offered the privilege of being able to write scripts, so I want to be good at it. I want to know what I’m doing. I don’t want other screenwriters who actually studied and worked hard to become screenwriters to look at what I do and go, “This guy’s just kind of sailing through it.” I want to be educated.

I mean that’s the way to do it right? Even when you consider something like, for lack of better term; slapstick. Doing it right means having the training behind it.

There’s of course nothing wrong with being naturally talented at something. There are a lot of naturally gifted actors who can just kind of do it. Or for whatever reason they’re just good at it. They didn’t have to go to Juilliard to get good at acting. 

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That was Brando’s thing, right?

Yeah, and there’s nothing wrong with that. What I do have a problem with is if there’s a sort of an inability to acknowledge that it might be easy for you but it’s not just because the craft of acting is easy. I would also argue that you might be an extraordinarily gifted actor naturally without training, but you’re probably only good at one thing. You might be able to be really good at writing comedy but if you haven’t studied the art of screenwriting, you’re probably not going to be able to write a drama. Whatever you lack in terms of your knowledge of structure, you might be able to make up for a lot of that if you’re super super funny and you can write a comedy, but you won’t be able to do that if you’re writing something else. I like to do a wide variety of things. I like to write screenplays, I like to write TV, I like to work in drama and comedy. I like to work in a lot of different genres; so it keeps me on my toes.

The post Archenemy: Glenn Howerton On Menacing Joe Manganiello appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[moviegroovies]

just realized i never wrote that interview with the vampire post i promised y’all, so here we go

first of all! i love it. just want to get that out there. like, 10/10 stars, would watch again, have watched again, almost twice, kind of planned to watch for a sort of fourth time tonight, might not. idk. it’s great!! it’s great both as a movie (i watched the movie first like a blasphemer) and as an adaptation of the book. actually, it’s a GREAT movie adaptation of that book, probably one of the best jobs i’ve ever seen of adapting a book into a screenplay and then getting it on film. as i said, i read the book after i watched the movie, and pretty much everything was adapted directly, even significant amounts of dialogue, to the point that it felt sort of like a novelization, if novelizations were perfect.

this is what i WISH novelizations were, actually. like, using it as an example isn’t fair because it was written before the movie, but as the kind of loser who has read novelizations (i payed. like 40 dollars for a ghostbusters one. and then like 2 bucks for a Different ghostbusters one which i haven’t read yet but don’t have high hopes for), this was what i always want them to be like. same plot, lots of the same dialogue (i HATE novelizations that try to make it their own by changing the dialogue slightly. i was reading that ghostbusters one and i don’t even think i had watched ghostbusters recently but i know the lines well enough that it threw me the fuck off when the author changed them. like if someone came into your house and moved all your furniture slightly to the left? that was what it felt like), but a few things that didn’t happen in the movie, too. deeper characterization, the kind of worldbuilding/character building you can’t really do in a limited time frame on screen. getting into the charater’s thoughts. using nuance. novelizations could totally be this! or at least i wish they were! basically what i’m saying is stay tuned for my unlicensed nuclear accelerator novelization of ghostbusters going up on this blog coming soon. 

anyway, a thing i liked about it as an adaptation of the book was that it was always true to what anne wrote (and i think she did at least part of the script, although i heard the director did heavy edits on it), but there were some lines that weren’t in the book that improved the scenes imo! like the little exchange in the theater of vampires where louis is commenting on the vampires pretending to be humans pretending to be vampires, and claudia responds “how avant garde.” it serves both to clear up what’s going on (since we don’t have the benefit of louis’ narration at this point in the movie) and to humanize them a little. most of the added dialogue did that, and that’s something i really like--especially that line as louis watches new orleans burn and thinks that lestat deserves his revenge. Loved that. and him getting to see the sunrise again through film? oof!!!! honestly i liked the ending of the movie more than i did the book, which makes me feel blasphemous. it seems like louis is just doing... better in the movie. i don’t want to give too many spoilers or anything, but in the book he ends up completely detached, and never gets that gay power moment of telling armand he’s not going to give up his pain and then leaving him, so What’s The Point. on a more positive note, another thing i liked was the “you used to eat rats?” exchange. that was a much needed cute family moment.

oh! and they put some stuff from the vampire lestat into this movie, too, which, again, i liked, or at least, i like now that i know that’s what was happening. lestat being able to read minds and louis not being able to. lestat only wanting to drink the blood of evil doers. a lot of the added stuff helped make lestat more sympathetic, which was a definite necessity. actually, tom cruise acted the hell out of that role, which was surprising. not really that he could act (i’ve seen things i liked him in) but that he could be lestat, a flamboyant vampire prettyboy. wasn’t tom cruise the one who punched someone for implying he was gay? idk. 

actually, i was really surprised how gay this movie was for a movie starring tom cruise and brad fucking pitt. like, tell me before i watched it that those two were the stars and i would have been expecting (i was kind of expecting) the most no-homo rendition of the movie possible. and yeah, they toned it down a little from the book... but not that much. louis’ narration is a lot less overtly homo than lestat’s anyway, and brad pitt really fucking Nailed being louis. 

(which i find hilarious, because while tom cruise apparently got really into the vampire chronicles while they were filming this and had all these opinions in like movie promoting interviews about how lestat was actually a good dude, and loved louis (smthn along those lines i skimmed the shit about this), which really came through in his characterization of lestat, brad read like, one chapter of the book and lost interest. i loved the book, myself, but what a fucking icon.) 

that almost-kiss with armand at the end? also iconic. 

really, the only sexual stuff they actually tuned down was the louis/claudia shit, which i’m all fucking for. like, claudia is a grown woman, but it’s still so awk in the book whenever she’s coming onto louis, especially considering how often he reaffirms that she’s his daughter. even worse when he comments on her sensuality, or when she kisses him.... ick. plus, kirsten WASN’T a grown woman, so that would have been really nasty if they kept it.

oh and christian slater!!! i didn’t know he was in this until i started watching it, and i was very excited to see him. that’s my heathers love talking. i was talking to my dad after i saw it and apparently river phoenix was supposed to play daniel before he died, and my dad thought he would have been a lot better for the role i guess, but personally i think slater really picked up the part. he also didn’t shy away from being a little homoerotic, especially toward the end. he got the part right. plus, heathers. 

and i can’t gush about the actors without talking about kirsten dunst. she was 11 when she was in this (apparently her parents wouldn’t let her actually watch the movie when it came out, which, ha), but she absolutely conquered the part of the 60 year old woman in a child’s body. there were times when i actually forgot that she was just an eleven year old, because she was that good. the scene with the body in her bed isn’t in the book (not quite, although something else happens with claudia and leaving bodies around), and it’s one of the best in the movie imo. you can see lestat doting on her but not understanding her, you can tell why she would resent him, you can see her resentment and before she even snaps at him you can see that she’s an adult woman stuck inside a child (like that villain from batman the animated series--did anyone else think of that?), pissed off that she wants to be treated like the grown person she is but continues to be given dolls. also, there was some peak murder family moments in that scene, with louis standing there lowkey horrified. we never got the exchange with claudia telling louis that she’s going to kill lestat and him telling her Do Not Do This Thing, unfortunately, which was something i liked more from the book, but his concern and confusion in this scene kind of speak to that. you can especially tell that he still hasn’t realized that she’s grown--he’s seeing her the same way lestat is. aww.

so, i read the book and watched the movie in pretty quick succession, and i’m writing this a day after finishing the book and a few hours after my kind-of rewatch and about a week after the last time i saw it all the way through. my memory of both being pretty strong rn, there are only a very few things that i can think of which changed from book to movie outside of things necessary to take it to the screen and keep the movie from being like twelve hours. claudia is necessarily aged up from 5 to 11--it’s just practical, a 5 year old would not nearly have had the range that kirsten did for this. armand is changed from looking like a 17 year old redhead to antonio banderas (is it bad that i’m so uncultured that before this i only knew him as the dad from spy kids?), age 34, in a Really Bad black wig. (in general i’m all for banderas in the role, and he definitely acted it well, but what the FUCK was that costuming. why does his hair look like that. i digress but they did him dirty, especially considering how much Better everyone else looks as a vampire.) the subplot with lestat’s blind father living with him and louis at first is cut, which is kind of a shame imo. i really liked how on edge lestat was when begging louis to kill him (not as bad in context), how it kind of breaks the mask lestat tries to wear and shows that he’s confused and vulnerable and he really just doesn’t know much about being a vampire--that “and why should i know!” outbreak they put in did a good job of being the movie’s counterpart to that scene, however. the ending is changed a bit, altho i’ll leave the spoilers of how exactly up to your imagination. some things should stay sacred, right?

one thing i’m REALLY glad they added was louis freeing the slaves on his plantation.  i think it was a nasty choice on behalf of anne rice to write her sympathetic, thoughtful protagonist as a slave owner in the first place, especially one who by his own admission didn’t see slaves as people for a long time, and it’s unfortunate to me that it had to be adapted in that way (although i don’t think ignoring that aspect entirely would have been a better movie solution), but the slaves were at least made free men before louis moved to new orleans. in the book, louis still burns the house, but he doesn’t free the people enslaved there, and he never reflects on that. fucked up if true, i guess. i blame mostly anne for that whole thing.

ooo, that scene with lestat killing the two prostitutes was good. it’s pretty much adapted word for word from the book, but the book doesn’t have the visual of tom cruise leaping over the coffin to sit on it while she’s in it, and that was one of the sexiest scenes i can remember. so.

just remembered at the last moment that i liked the “i’m going to give you the choice i never had” thing, both because it gives a little hint of lestat background (and makes him more sympathetic/adds to the whole breaking the mask thing that i like) and because they did a Very fucking good callback with it at the end.

there’s probably more about that movie that i have Opinions on, but when i remember them i’ll just have to make another post, ig. i will say tho? that last scene they added is so FUCKING good. cue up sympathy for the devil on my way out, will you?

[darklingichor]

Gilmore Girls Season Two, Episodes 8 & 9

It would be nice to watch one episode of this show where someone I regularly see doesn't set my teeth on edge. I grew up watching weekly TV and it is possible to have conflict between recurring characters where you don't want to put one into a medically induced coma, so they can grow a new personality.

So I can see why I didn't remember much about this episode. Three things that were awesome: Mia, Luke giving Lorelei a pep talk, the development of the painting.

The rest is annoying.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with flights between friends. If everyone was always skipping through meadows it would be stupid. However, as I've said before, I have a problem with conflicts that come about because people don't open their damned mouths. As fast and as often as Lorelei talks, she couldn't say to Sookie “Mia selling this place scares me because this is where Rory and I started out” ? I know that sometimes friends pick fights with each other when they are stressed but in my experience, once you get into your 30s and have friends that have known each other, long enough you can tell that's what happening. There have been numerous times when my best friend or I have started a conversation where one of us is just geared up for a fight. My friend let's me get about ten words in before she says “You're acting weird, tell me what's wrong.” I can be a little more blunt saying something along the lines of “What are you pissed off about?” She has two kids so once I turned the mom tables on her and said: “Use your words”.

Basically a blind cat could see that Lorelei was being an ass and it had nothing to do with Sookie. I have a hard time buying that Sookie wouldn't see it. Why did there need a fight in the first place? Was the script too short? Lorelei could have been freaked out and been a little quiet with Sookie and it would have had the same effect. Luke could have just as easily asked how Lorelei was doing with the business stuff, and they could have had the same heart-to-heart. Lorelei could have come to Sookie and explained why she was being so weird, and they could have had a similar moment. The script must have been two minutes too short.

The town turning on Luke... Yep, officially dislike Jess. Also, not too happy with the rest of the town. I'm a little biased here. I grew up in a small town, while there were no town meetings where everyone got together to decide who to treat badly, there were certain people who were just routinely shit upon. It usually had to do with what last name you had. Two families in particular were sort of singled out as “bad news”. The weird part? Everyone in town (except for a very very small number of people) were in some way related to those two families, hell, those two families were related to each other. It always seemed crazy to me... But then I was one of those few people not related to anyone in town maybe it made sense if you had an inside track?

Anyway, I get where the town is coming from, sort of. Jess is a pain in the ass, but he is doing minor mischief. Star's Hollow should count themselves lucky that they aren't a bigger town because Jess is the type to match his mayhem to the town. In a bigger place, there just might have been a dead animal outside the store instead of a chalk outline.

I did love Rory telling him off. I don't really get why Rory would find the prank funny. I mean, she likes the town, right? And while her and her mom do like seeing Star's Hollow residents be quirky she's never really shown any love of chaos. I mean, yeah, Jess is being the G rated version of Loki, but he's still making a lot of people unhappy. I would think that that alone would annoy Rory.

Also, the vibe I got was that he did the whole prank as a way to get Rory's attention... What's the thought process?

“How do I impress the pretty girl who reads a lot? Talk to her about books? Movies? Just talk to her in general? Nah, too common. I know! Dead body chalk outline and police tape! That's not freakishly odd and totally not an idea I should seek therapy for!”

Then again, I also don't get the thought process of “How do I fix the fact that I made the whole town turn on my uncle? I'll fix the toaster, now we're square!”

Jess is both weird and annoying.

I did like the interaction between Emily and Mia. It is weird because I see both sides. I totally get why Emily would be upset that Mia didn't send her home, but on the other hand I get why Mia didn't. Mia didn't send her home because she couldn't have.

Think about it. A sixteen-year-old turns up with a baby, asking for a job, she has steel and determination in her eyes. If you tell her no, you can tell she's not going to give up. She'll just move on to a place that would hire her and maybe that wouldn't be a place where she and her baby would be safe. If you give her a job and a place to stay and then try to make her go home. You can't be sure that she'll actually go home or stay home, that leaves the pair of them in the same iffy situation. Mia knew that Lorelei and Rory would be safe with her, so she took them in.

Not saying Emily should be happy about it, but as always she is looking at how Lorelei leaving impacted her and Richard, not anyone else. She has never talked to Lorelei, asked what her thinking was, the why of it all. It is just all about Emily. That is annoying. But I do like that she seems to be taking small steps forward.

All in all a fairly forgettable episode.

Episode 8. Don't really know why I forgot this one as I really liked it. I loved the ice cream machine bit. I loved that Lorelei named it and called a bunch of relatives. She should have just donated it to Luke's! Even if he didn't need it he would have taken it. Made it into a planter or something.

I feel sorry for Paris for a number of reasons but this episode highlights one. She's laser focused on college, so much so that she's not getting the most out of her education. The assignment of interpreting Romeo and Juliet in a new way is a great one! It allows for the students to really look at and analyze the play, think about the themes consider which are universal and which were products of the time and culture it was written in. This allows for creative thinking and the development of the ability to think about and use what one is learning. But poor Paris is only worried about the grade and so afraid of taking risks that she will only go with what is standard. I speak from experience here, college will melt your brain until you learn how to think.

The teachers are worried because Rory doesn't socialize? I would think they would also be worried that Paris can't think beyond the rigid boundaries of what is written on a page. This school is supposed to prep the kids for college, right? They aren't doing anything differently than the public schools of the early 2000s (aside from the one rogue teacher, I guess).

I kinda like the fact that Paris ended up being Romeo. If they had used a more modern setting that could have been the plan from the start and the whole Tristian drama could have been avoided. I mean, they could have reinterpreted the whole “forbidden love” thing as a lesbian relationship or with the idea that Romeo might be a DFAB trans guy. It would have highlighted society's issues with non hetero, non binary identities. Hell, if they wanted to go deep they could have figured out a way to address the “LGBTQ+ people don't get happy endings” trope that is obvious in a lot of media.

That would have been interesting as Paris and Rory would have had to work together to make this believable and maybe come out of it with a better idea of each other's perspectives.

Speaking of perspective, it was a throw away joke but I liked that Lane's mom watched and came up with a different take on Romeo and Juliet. In my view, R&J is many things, but a love story it is not! What kind of great love story ends in teen suicide? Sure, I thought of it as a love story when I was younger as do a lot of teenagers. I think this makes a point about the play. Teenagers do dumb things out of emotion (adults do too, but that's a whole other line of thought). This doesn't mean that teens are dumb just that they are feeling things so intensely, probably because it is the first time they have felt these emotions that they do stuff that is not well-thought-out. Add parental pressure to that and you have a powder keg. I think R&J is more about how overly controlling parents can push their kids into dangerous situations. Also, to look at the play in a way that might not have been Shakespeare's intent, it could also be seen as a parable detailing why 14 year olds might not be ready for marriage, arranged or otherwise.

Anyway, the little “love triangle” between Christian, Rory, and Dean in this episode was less interesting. First off, I get that Rory is a pretty girl but why is she like catnip to all the boys? Are there really no other nice girls in Chilton or Star's Hollow? The way all the guys flock to and fight over her, you'd think she was dating a sparkly vampire.

Secondly, am I the only one who sees a lot of similarity between Tristian and Jess? Is that why Tristian had to go? Because he was redundant? It is sort of like Christopher and Max. They both could play the same role so one of them had to be cut. The writers needed to compare notes because I feel like there were a few “Oops, we wrote another doppelganger” discussions.

Thirdly, why is Rory still getting the blame for her and Dean's break up? The whole practice fight between Lorelei and Rory just highlights that Lorelei is sort of mean when it comes to this plot line. Dean told Rory he loved her and then got pissed and broke up with her because she didn't feel comfortable saying it back. How does this make Dean the victim? Just because one person is ready for the L word doesn't mean that the other person is, and that doesn't make the latter person bad. Acting like an ass and breaking up with someone you “love” because you didn't hear what you wanted to hear when you wanted to hear it makes that person a jerk.

This seems sort of like the whole “friend zone” myth. A dude decided he wants to date someone but that person doesn't want to date him therefore it is the other person's fault because the dude wants to date them, so they should date the dude! He's decided that he is the right guy for this person, so it must be true. The other person is just a bitch.

Dean loves Rory and is ready to say it, therefore Rory must love Dean and be ready too. He's reached this point so, goddammit, she needs to be at this point too. After all Dean decides how emotions work.

Dean is a teenager (and did something dumb out of emotion) so I can sort of forgive him for not fully empathizing and acting out of hurt feelings. It is the fact that Lorelei keeps sticking up for the dude who was trying to emotionally manipulate her daughter that gets to me. That was part of the “rage trilogy” from last season that made me annoyed at Lorelei because she was all “See it from his side” which is totally valid except for the fact that his side was to act like a brat who didn't get the ice cream he wanted *right then*.

Uge!

Okay on to somewhat happier things. Lorelei's date. That was cute and funny, how she was all proud of being a casual dater and I even liked a lot of jokes Luke made about how old the guy was. It was also really cute how Sookie tried to explain Luke to her. But Luke was being snarkier than necessary. I mean Lorelei is firmly set on her course of sailing that river in Egypt, so she's not going to ask him out right now. I get him being jealous, but he could, you know *ask her out*. I get why he doesn't, I mean what if she says no? But if what Sookie said is supposed to be true, that he's upset because it seems like Lorelei would date anyone but him, how can he be pissed at her when he's never asked? I guess that's why Luke limits it to taking pot shots and then being grouchy(ier) because he realizes he's sulking? Oddly I don't mind this sort of stuff when it involves Luke and Lorelei but when the same stupid jealousy stuff comes up with Rory and Dean, it bugs me. Maybe because as pouty as Luke gets he doesn't act like he owns Lorelei? Don't know really. Luke is likable, Dean is not. Might be as simple as that.

A forgettable episode followed by a pretty good one. Episode 8 didn't have Jess and despite revolving around Rory's love life Dean was less irritating than Tristian. Nothing has pissed me off horribly yet. So far, so good.

[axiomandidiom-blog]

>the not-so-great attractor

I’ve been bad.

When I got a new shrink who wrote me a script for Vyvanse I was supposed to ask him to refill my other meds.

I did not do that.

I have not taken two of them in a while. Things are... losing their precious, precarious balance. I was unsatisfied with the balance. I guess I want to see if I’m satisfied with the imbalance. I’m also just tired of being a goddamn robot.

But that’s not what I want to talk about really. I want to talk about some gooey stuff. Well, I’ll get to the gooey stuff. I mean sex and other humans, mostly, though the “other humans” bit is a little presumptuous tbph.

One of the previous drugs I was on was an ssri and really destroyed my libido. That was okay, in some ways, and not okay in some other ways. It was okay because I wasn’t particularly focused on that which vexes all men (not the sea, not sums, not the dichotomy of good an evil, not even women, because there are plenty of dudes who don’t swing that way. I mean the essential and eternal war between a man and his own genitals). I am, or have been, somewhat whimsical in my ideas about attraction in other people. I used to say, and this was mostly true, that I could tell I was attracted to someone because when I thought about them later I imagined the scene with Def Leppard playing in the background. Mostly Photograph, but sometimes Rocket or Rock On.

That stopped happening sometime around 2010-2011. So did the other, more conventional markers of attraction, infatuation, whatever you want to call it. I never daydreamed about women, didn’t get crushes, didn’t give people a second glance when walking down the street. And not just that; I forgot what it was like to do and feel those things. I started looking at my peers and trying to figure out what was driving them (I mean, beyond the obvious. see: man’s war with genitals). I saw the outside evidence of people acting out mating rituals and the pursuit of sexual contact (chief subject: my roommate) and could no longer place myself in their shoes in order to try and understand what they were doing or going through.

This was pretty alienating, actually. I imagine it must be something like what an asexual individual experiences; and to some degree I considered myself a de facto asexual for a while. I just didn’t get it.

I’m explaining this like it was simple and that’s the error of narrative and I recognize that. But it wasn’t simple at all. At the time I had no idea of why this change had occurred. I had been on the ssri for like two years by the time I started experiencing this and I ruled it out as an explanation. I have only now come to believe the ssri was to blame because I stopped taking it and some of this stuff is starting to come back, slowly.

But it wasn’t simple because it was wrapped up in a bunch of other stuff. Like: my experience with my ex of so many years ago at this point. I felt like I had touched a hot pan and burned myself, and not only did I not want to touch the pan again and be more careful, or touch the pan again and fuck getting burned because the reward was so much better, or even I realize this is going to burn be but holy fuck I’m so lonely; but I didn’t want to ever touch any pans again, because that shit is stupid, that’s like breaking your leg after jumping off a bridge and getting right back up to jump, I’d rather just microwave my food. The microwave, in this illustration, is a metaphor for masturbation. In case that wasn’t clear. Also I’m still pretty sure being in a relationship is like jumping off a bridge. But more on that later.

I described it this way to two psych professionals, and got two widely different answers. One said “that’s dumb you’re being dumb” and the other said “I don’t think that’s irrational given your circumstances.” So, um, jury on that is still out.

Also I had gained a bunch of weight in the years since. And though I’m no longer a teenager I still have some seriously fucking terrible skin. Like, omg why can’t I just not have acne all the time what am I doing wrong (the answer: I haven’t spoken to a dermatologist in many years). Also, I’m generally pretty uncomfortable with affection and attention. My best explanation for that is that I think I’m horrible and I don’t want to infect other people with my horrible (see >poison).

I’m sort of a miserable specimen, then, in my estimation. And coiled up in that is a deeply held belief that some things are not for me. I will never have some things. That’s just the way of the universe: I will never be a supreme court justice. I will never be asian, middle eastern, or black. That’s okay. There are some other things that I probably won’t ever be, like out-of-my-mind rich or successful, or adventurous, or athletic, or fun at parties. And I’ve made the leap, perhaps appropriate and perhaps not appropriate, to some other stuff that makes people look at me weird when I tell them, like, I don’t think I’ll ever be married. I don’t think I’ll ever have kids, I don’t think I’ll ever be a homeowner, I don’t think I’ll live much longer than 50, if that. And some people want those things and have always wanted them and think I’m strange for not wanting them or believing that they are out of my reach. And I think they’re weird for not understanding (and why should they, I guess) that those aren’t a part of my life, and aren’t my desires or goals.

Or weren’t.

I still don’t think I’ll be a homeowner. I get that it’s an investment and blah blah blah it just doesn’t make sense to me, and I can’t imagine making enough money to actually pay for that.

I’m still pretty sure I’m gonna die before I get particularly old. Unless there’s some kind of super revolution in the kind of healthcare that I require, and I’m not holding my breath about that.

And I’m afraid of kids. I’m afraid of them for two reasons. One of which I will share here, the other of which I’m definitely too afraid to share, ever, with anyone, for any reason, which may or may not be the result of some things that happened to someone who may have been me. plausible deniability

I’m afraid of screwing kids up. And that’s a futile fear, because kids will be screwed up no matter what anyone does. But I’m really, really, constantly angry about the course of my life. I think sometimes there’s an alternate universe where there’s an axiom who’s a doctor of memetics, and who publishes papers about the dissemination and transformation in quanta of thought across networks of people (which I find incredibly interesting), and I know I will never be that person because nobody figured out what was wrong with me while there was still a chance to divert course.

Nobody figured out that I was hiding from everyone all the time. Can’t blame them for that, because I was good at it. But my nerves were too raw. I was so anxious and terrified of my world as a child that I walked around in a fog. It was a fog I put there to separate myself from my own experience. Events in my life taught me that I could hide in the fog, even when I couldn’t hide from what was happening to me in real time, and at least I’d be mentally protected, even if I wasn’t physically protected. And my whole life kind of grew up around the hiding. I have two older siblings and they got into lots of trouble as teenagers. That’s what teenagers are fucking supposed to be doing. But I knew that I could just not do those things I saw my siblings doing, because I saw the consequences of them, and in so doing avoid those consequences. Because I was fucking scared of that shit.

And nobody took me aside and put their hand on my shoulder and said “hey kid, go do bad things. The whole world is set up to try and prevent you from doing things they think are bad, and all of the systems of all the different organizations and hierarchies which you are a part of all want to keep you from doing those things, and that’s the most horrible, selfish thing a group of people can do to an individual, especially if that individual is young and doesn’t have the capacity to reject the group. I think many teenagers go through a time when they’re really shitty to people like their parents because they’re testing the boundaries of their world, and have come to realize that some of what other people have told them to do or not to do “for their own good” wasn’t for the teenager’s own good, it was for the good of the person giving the order.

And I never did that. I was very concerned with maintaining the appearance of being “good” because that meant that people left me alone. And I wanted to be left alone because existing under scrutiny was too horrible. I didn’t want people to see me, and I didn’t want people to know how not-together I was.

I still hide from people. I’m not sure how capable I am of connecting to other humans on an emotional level I am. None of my friendships are like that, even my really close friendships that have lasted for years.

It’s a dangerous thing to say to some kids that the world isn’t going to end if you spend a night in jail, or fail a class, or sneak out in the middle of the night to get stoned, or ask out a close friend and get rejected. But it was what someone should have said to me. Not because I wish I had done those things. But because I want to think I wouldn’t have been so afraid of everything if I had done some of it. I want to believe that I would be better able to make my own decisions now if I had actually experienced the consequences of behavior directly and not vicariously.

Some non-zero amount of bitching about my childhood is a result of a desire to be a different person. And I want to be a different person. That leads me to the other big thing I wish someone had noticed, or found out, or helped with.

And that’s ADHD. I would say I can’t believe I got all the way through school and fucking graduated with undiagnosed ADHD, except that it was so fucking unbelievably awful that I still feel horrible about the whole experience. I still regret it. I still can’t think of myself as having accomplished anything because it feels more like I survived years of torture than it feels like I worked and received recompense for that work. I think about being in school and I just want to cry. I’m so, so angry about it, and to know now that the difference between being able to function academically and being a hopeless, perpetual fuckup hemorrhaging money that didn’t exist was a once-daily pill makes me want to curl up and fucking die.

That’s a feeling that’s exacerbated by what I brought up in my previous post (>writing). I feel like I can’t write the way I used to. And yeah, duh, I’m writing now, and that’s not what I mean. I’m just shitting out thoughts as they come, I’m not composing anything, and I’m able to do that because I’m taking a drug that flips the lightswitch on the “pay attention lmao” part of my brain on for 13 hours at a time. And writing is one of the very few things about my life I feel like makes me worthwhile as a human. And by worthwhile I mean worth keeping around. And if I can’t do it the whole college experience, which I already conceive of a waste, was even more pointless than it was before. And that makes me feel pretty bad.

What was this post about?

Oh, right.

So I don’t like myself. I don’t think I’m a good person, or valuable. And I feel like those are some important factors when it comes to courtship. And I used to be on this drug that killed my libido, so I was okay with ignoring that. But now... I don’t know why this feels like an illicit admission (maybe because it’s so contrary to where my head has been at for so many years)... I kind of want it. The intimacy. Closeness. Sharing. That kind of stuff. Oh, and sex I guess. But I can do without that, and have for some time. I’m holding out for my ten-year anniversary, so I can write a book called “the ten year drought.” idk what that book would be about but it seems like a good title.

Some of this is a reaction to my newly switched-on brain, I think. Where before I’ve just been confronted by alienation when I thought about being close to other people, I dunno, it seems both possible and desirable now. And because none of my close friendships are built on any kind of emotional connection, I don’t have that in my life. And combined with my awakened libido, it seems like, well, why the hell shouldn’t I try and find that sort of connection with a romantic partner? And maybe it’s been so long that I don’t remember what it feels like to burn myself on the stove any more, and it seems like that might be fun, you know, to burn the fuck out of my hand now and again.

SPEAKING OF AWAKENED LIBIDOS, this is when I’m going to talk about the gooey stuff. I told you it was coming (ayy).

You might be forgiven for assuming that when I considered myself de facto asexual, that meant I abstained from self-manipulation. But no. Lord, no. Instead, it just became a chore.

Let my try and explain. Turning off the red neon sex light in my head didn’t stop the other physiological consequences of orgasm or lack thereof. For those readers who are not men, you may not be aware (or may not have put two-and-two together) that semen doesn’t just go nowhere if it doesn’t, uh, get used. There is, I think, some point (look I’m not a scientist) where after a while of infrequent emissions the little foreman down there in the prostate tells the factory workers at the testes to quit making so much product it’s not going anywhere, but fuck me if I know when that is. Because until that point it’s gotta go somewhere. It’s gotta go somewhere. If I were to cease, uh, disposing of it in a regular fashion, on my own schedule and terms, it would find its own damn way of releasing. Usually this happens during a dream of some kind. There are some problems with this:

1.) mess. You must now wash your sheets and bedclothes. Good job.

2.) disruption to sleep for the above reason. Sleep is important to me. More important before the stimulants, I guess, because I wake up 4-5 times a night anyway now.

3.) disturbing dreams. Sometimes they’re fun disturbing. Most of the time they aren’t. What amateur dream theory I understand is from my meager reading of Freud and that guy was full of shit about a lot of stuff, but this makes sense so I still believe it an will repeat it here: your id, aka the triforce of power, just wants release from tension. Which is not to say it doesn’t want tension. I wants the tension, and the release. Which, according to Freud, is why people have dreams about death; the lead up and then the death itself is the ultimate tension and release fantasy your brain can construct. And the penultimate tension/release is sex. Duh. But the id isn’t picky. Id doesn’t believe in rules or norms or values or anything like that. Id just wants its release. And, honestly, if whatever strange brew it cooks up in the dark recesses of your skull upset your conscious, rational mind (your ego, the triforce of courage), well, fine, cause that makes the tension (and thus the release) stronger, and because fuck your ego, id hates that guy.

4.) As actual, physical releases go (i.e. not psychological, as discussed above) this is a pretty garbage one. Look, not every orgasm is going to be good, But this one is fucking soaked in shame and disappointment. And fuck if I know if this is what it’s like for other people, but I get just a little lucid at the end of a wet dream. Like, there’s a QTE segment, where shit slows down, and I can let the sequence play out or I can press ‘a’ to try and prevent it from occurring. Hint: pressing a does not work. But I don’t know that when I’m fucking asleep. So I press ‘a’ like a fucking idiot and ruin my own shame-dream orgasm and end up with sticky sheets anyway. This is not fun. No part of this is fun.

Now, I think I’ve mentioned here before, I have problems with dreams anyway. Every few months (and I always think, well, surely this is the last time, I must now be free of them) I have a dream about my ex. And if I time this wrong, the dream gets weird and sexual. A dream about my ex is guaranteed to fuck up my day at least a little, and a sex dream about my ex is just throwing my whole week away. Thanks id, you little shit.

So, that’s a reason not to do things that way.

There are some others. For one, having an orgasm feels pretty good, at least if you do it right. And at various times in my life I’ve been starved of good feelings. That the orgasm is free and readily available (for the most part) is what leads it to being such an addictive drug. And afterwards, a man (I have somewhat independently verified this with others of my sex) has some beneficial psychological effects; it’s also a way to regulate your hormones, and relieve stress and anxiety. And let me get this in here, when a man does without orgasm, at least in my experience, reality warps to compensate. Like, suddenly, day 3+ of no orgasm, skirts get shorter. They just do. Suddenly women are tying back their hair, and their shirts just don’t cover anything anymore. And everybody is wearing leggings. And suddenly people are smiling at you and blushing and they smell good and their eyelashes are so damn long.

AND I HATE THIS PART. THE TENSION IS UNBEARABLE. It’s unbearable, maybe, because of what I’ve written above--that I have internalized the belief that some things are not for me. And maybe, actually I’m pretty sure, that this is why men chase women. Because, unless they are doing what I do, the whole damn world is fluttering eyelashes and jorts. And they can’t fucking think about anything else. Hence, the war. Because either you do something about it or life is a sex-crazed fever dream.

This is how I feel about desire. It feels like affliction. I know that’s messed up. I know I’m messed up.

And when I was taking that ssri, I wasn’t attracted to people, even when this happened. Skirts didn’t get shorter. Skin wasn’t suddenly everywhere. I just felt awful. It just felt like I was in the hallway in Inception and the van was turning over and over. It was like what eating is like now that I take a stimulant; you know you’re hungry because you’re being mean to everyone and everything everyone says to you feels like a personal slight. And so you go get some food because you need to eat and it just looks like dogshit and it smells like dogshit and you put it in your mouth and you chew and you’re mad about it and you feel like a fucking chimp in a tophat dancing for a vaudeville audience. It sucks. It’s not cool.

But back to what I was saying about regulating one’s orgasms. I know that if you are a woman, the rules and boundaries are different, but men have a limited number of orgasms available to them in a given time period. See the little foreman and the factory workers.

Given this I don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude that frequent (this I will leave to the imagination), managed orgasms are good policy.

Good policy, as anyone familiar with governments will well understand, has a way of becoming bad practice when it intersects with the real world. And in this case, the reality of the situation is porn.

I’ll delve into this some other time but for now let it be said that porn is horrible. And It isn’t necessary, in the strictest sense. But I found it expedient in my former circumstances; i.e. perpetually single and with a poor libido. Masturbating, as I have said above, became a chore. As in, “well now it’s X:XX o’clock and I guess I should get down to business,” even while I was also thinking “I really don’t want to do this, this is gross, I am gross.”

And while in another person that might be enough to stop the whole process, not with me. I dunno why. Sue me. Typing it out makes it seem like it was something I could just choose not to do, and sometimes I did, but most of the time I didn’t.

Now, porn is a bottomless endeavor. I had a professor who I always thought was kind of a shithead talk about porn, for men at least, as being an expression of the fantasy that any woman is available to a man.

This is problematic for a bunch of reasons, but I didn’t invent the primate brain, I just have one, and it doesn’t really do what I want it to most of the time. Or like ever.

So one does not find a quantum of pornography and decide that, yep, that’s that, this is all I need. Again, we’re talking about that fucker id (and I think here there’s even less basis for Freud’s model of personality but fuck it I’m on a roll and also not particularly educated) and he doesn’t care about your rules. He just wants more. And again, id doesn’t want just the mere release, id wants tension before the release. Id wants the lead up as much as the actual orgasm, if not more (as they tend to inform each other; this is true as far as I can tell for both men and women but I’m not an expert). So the male experience of pornography (this I have also somewhat independently verified) is one of seeking and evaluating. This is, as far as I can tell, what tabbed browsing was invented for. One looks, and looks, and looks (it is about 90% visual) for something that has that certain spark to it. There is no describing the spark. Whatever you have found either suits or it doesn’t. I’m sure if Freud were here with me he’d have something to say about what people look for and why but that guy is fucking dead so fuck him. There is a great deal of quite automatic selection that goes on.

Yes, after the fact, one may find and describe patterns to the searching. Without descending too far into the vulgar universe of pornography and its associated vernacular, I’ll try and give some examples. I am attracted to faces that have robust lower lips, dark hair, and perhaps a gap in the teeth. I don’t know why. I just do. It’s just what I like. Those are things I think are fairly specific to me; I know my friends like other things in their faces.

And now that I’ve found some nice video of a dark-haired, gap-toothed, robust-lipped girl folding her laundry and pairing her socks, I’m good right? Wrong. Depending on the strength of the suitability of this video, it might remain useful (i.e. functional i.e. qualified for release) for like three or four uses, and then one day I’ll look at it and the evaluative bit of my id will say “nope lol” and I’ll skip over it. Sometimes, and this too is common, in months or years following, I might remember (by association) this video of the sock-pairing and check it out again, and it might have regained some of its suitability. And this is the mystery of the brain. I can’t explain why something regains its power this way.

But I know pretty well why it loses it, and that’s the goddamn dopamine circuit in the brain. There are a few qualities of the primate brain that I think are truly evil, in the sense that they are the genesis of evil behavior--not callousness, not antisocial action, not violence, evil, evil in the sense of wrong action which the brain does not recognize as wrong action--and they are, in no particular order, rationalization to reduce cognitive dissonance, pattern recognition, and the diminishing returns of the reward circuit. If you look at those and think, “gee axiom those are the reasons humans have been able to do anything at all,” then congrats, you’ve managed to realize what the Buddha meant when he said that existence is suffering, and that it is a man’s own mind, and not his enemy or his foe, which lures him to evil ways. I wonder if it’s worth it sometimes. We should have stayed in the trees, maybe. We sure as shit shouldn’t have invented the internet.

But I digress. What I’m saying here is that the reward circuit and the amorality of the id is what drives the obsessive searching involved in pornography. It’s why the addict, and I guess I’m an addict, spends so much time looking relative to the time spent using. Watching people have sex tricks our monkey brain, and the monkey brain gets tired of the same things day in and day out, particularly when the pleasing release of brain chemicals is so dramatic.

The ease of obtaining the pleasing brain chemicals (once a man gets to my age, he is likely to be quite practiced at obtaining an orgasm in one way or another) and the swiftness with which a quantum of pornography becomes tarnished with regards to suitability lead the consumer of pornography down greater and greater rabbit holes seeking stimulation. And, if the user is paying attention, he will find that this isn’t at all necessary. But, and I can’t speak for anyone else here, I know I’m never paying attention when I masturbate. Thinking ruins the experience. RUINS IT. Thinking leads me to analyze what I’m watching and there’s nothing more boner-killing to me than thinking about the clashing figures I’m watching as people. And yes, that’s horrible. And yes, that means I should stop. Because if I object to what I’m seeing morally, then I should, should apply that to my actions in consuming that media. BUT I DON’T AND I DON’T KNOW ANYONE WHO DOES THAT, EVER, ABOUT ANYTHING, INCLUDING BUT CERTAINLY NOT LIMITED TO THE CONSUMPTION OF PORN.

And that’s why humans are garbage.

When I say that it isn’t at all necessary what I mean is that the entire exercise of pornography is extraneous. Pornography is not required for orgasm. It’s just expedient. It’s just easy. It’s just what men, and me, have learned to do because it feels good, it’s pleasing, and it’s (in the sense outlined above RE: regulation) necessary to living.

And here’s the problem with all of that: there’s no alternative. I mean, okay, there is. There’s a bunch. Like, I could just use my imagination. But that’s like saying “dude you could just think about a story, reading is for idiots,” and to that I say, well, yeah, I could. But if it’s just me, if there’s nobody else, then the story I come up with has no purpose. It has no boundaries. There is no reason to present narrative challenges or to think about word selection because it isn’t a story if it’s in my head, it’s just feelings, it’s just ideas, it’s amorphous and ephemeral. It’s the same as anything else; it’s even the same as an orgasm in the greater sense. Yeah you can do it yourself. But it’s way, way nicer for someone to do it for you.

But the niceness of it is an illusion. It’s a total illusion. Because I can achieve, and have achieved, many an orgasm without the assistance of another person. And, at the moment, at least, it’s not like it’s hard to do that, at all. More on this in a second.

But for me, and for people who for one reason or another have this in common with me, the most simple, occam’s razorish approach--to go find another person to do this stuff with--seems, or is, completely unattainable, because of whatever real or imagined physical or emotional problems we perceive within ourselves.

And because nobody taught me this shit. Nobody. When my parents talked to me about sex, they were like “hey axiom let me tell you about sex” and I was like “I mean, if it’ll make you feel better,” and they were all “when two people love each other blah blah blah,” and I was like “kay whatevs,” and in my mind I was thinking “this love thing is not for you, this sex thing is not for you, this world is not for you” because that’s how I feel about everything good or nice, especially the good or nice things that have the potential to be horrible and damaging.

And there was no class in school where the teacher said “look axiom, here’s the thing about orgasms and hormones and the way it makes your body feel and the way you’re going to want to act,” and there was no teacher who said “this is a safe and healthy way to approach being with another person, and this is a safe and healthy way to approach being with yourself.”

And I sure as shit never experienced a setting where someone said “these things you feel don’t make you a monster,” and even if they had, I wouldn’t believe them, because rape exists, and because abusive relationships exist, and because people fight and get divorced and are shitty to each other. Instead, all I feel is shame. I feel ashamed about sex, I feel ashamed about orgasms, I feel ashamed the other parts of me, and all I want to do is conceal them. This is perhaps more unique to me, specifically; see >writing again, and perhaps for that matter every post on this goddamn shitfest of a tumblr. AND NONE OF THAT STOPS ME FROM WANTING IT.

So I’m driven, I think like many people are, to conceal my behavior about sex and masturbation and orgasms. And because it’s hidden, it gets thrown into a pile with a bunch of other hidden things, and that’s why pornography is so awful, why it’s so predatory and nefarious, because it’s hiding there where you can only find it if you’re hiding, and because nobody is looking, or rather, everyone is pretending not to look, then it becomes evil. There is no regulation of pornography (well, except for laws about ages of consent and whatnot), there is structure in place to teach me how to use it responsibly, and there is no structure in place to teach people how to make it responsibly, either. It’s just a hole where damaged, hurting people get thrown into, and there’s sadists down there waiting to continue to damage and hurt you, and to keep you from leaving. And yeah, there’s money there, and that’s part of the problem, but it wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t so vile and exploitative. It’s possible, and I say this as a truly brainwashed capitalist, to make money and still do the right thing. It is possible. It just isn’t possible to make as much money as you would if you were doing the wrong thing. And nobody makes that choice. It’s not even a choice, really.

This is what’s been eating me up about orgasms, at least while I was taking the ssri. But I stopped. And now, not only is my libido recovering, but, uh, the... how to put this delicately (as if I’ve been delicate so far)... nerve connections in my genitalia, which previously (because of the ssri) took a lot of precise stimulation to coax into orgasm, now do so essentially instantly. I got no idea how long this will last.

None of my previous habits work or make sense. A lot of the above is predicated on there being a build up. Mr. Id likes his tension and release, like I said. The more tension, the stronger the release.

And look, alright, spoilers or whatever, this is going to be graphic. But I used to be able to get hard and keep it that way for a while without achieving orgasm. I’ll try and illustrate: lets say masturbating is like riding a bike down a hill into a lake. After years of frustration on this ssri, wherein I would get on the bike and ride down the hill part way and then have to stop because of a flat tire, then looking wistfully at the lake at the bottom and being angry at myself for not knowing how to perform basic bike maintenance, I not only figured out how to make it all the way down the hill (under rather specific circumstances; like, the bike needs to follow this path, and there needs to be some music, and I’ve got to choose a hill that has enough clover or whatever) I got good at, once I’d neared the lake at the bottom, veering away from the lake and riding up to the top again. True, the lake at the bottom was the eventual goal, but the sensation of the wind as I rode down the hill were also nice, and nice enough themselves that I would get on my bike just to ride downhill sometimes, over and over again, and only splash in the lake when I had something else I needed to do.

This is what the (>smut) post is about, really. There was a lot of hill riding there and not any splashing, and, as mentioned above, this really twisted my perception of reality around. Really, really badly.

And when I say years of frustration above, well, I’ll just tell you what I mean. I first started taking an ssri (not the one I ended up with by they all act pretty similarly) I was dating my ex. And I was like 19, and there was not a lot of splashing going on for me. There was, I hope, for her. And we certainly did a lot of bike riding, in various configurations. But, I dunno. It felt bad not to splash. Like, really bad. For both of us, I think. I felt like I was broken. And she felt like I wasn’t into her. And neither of us knew how to talk about it or to fix it. I’m not going to say that’s what happened to us. I know it isn’t. But it didn’t help. It hurt, a lot.

But now I don’t ride down the hill. I splash, yes, but it happens as soon as I get on the bike. It’s like I’m 14 and I’ve never ridden a bike before (lol 14, axiom? you never rode a bike until you were 14?) and I get on the bike and I push down on a pedal and I fucking crash and burn right there at the top of the hill, and the sprinklers turn on and I’m lying there in a heap getting sprinkled. It sucks. Well, it sucks in the sense that I’m used to enjoying the ride down the hill, sometimes over and over again. And I’m used to splashing into the lake when I’m done.

But there ain’t no hill no more. And there ain’t no lake.

The upside is that I’m done in like 15 minutes, even when I really don’t want to be. And MAYBE THAT’S WHAT’S NORMAL. I don’t mean the, uh, sensitivity, or my sense of balance or whatever I’m supposed to be comparing things with in my over-labored, pointless bike-riding metaphor. I mean maybe it’s normal to want to go for a ride and get a little wet, and then be done with it pretty quick and move on to something else.

I want, I want to be able to do this. I want it not to feel deeply unsatisfying, because even though riding around on the hill over and over again and splashing into the lake is satisfying it’s full of such dreadful moral problems and it’s a waste of my motherfucking time and it isn’t necessary and, honestly, I should just find someone who wants to ride a tandem bike with me, and even if I crash real quick, maybe that someone won’t mind and will keep riding with me for a while until both of us get to the lake at the bottom.

I just don’t think that will happen to me. I just don’t think it’s real or possible for me.

And I don’t know what the fuck to do with all my time that I used to spend riding. I’d say “well axiom you can write now :^)” but all I can seem to write is unfocused, rambling nonsense like this here blog post.

FUCK ME (PLEASE FUCK ME) I HATE THIS (THIS IS WHAT I AM) I DON’T WANT TO BE ALONE (I NEVER WANT TO BE WITH ANYONE AGAIN)

Stop the ride I want to get off.