#this was totally unnecessary. she was the only one described this way on this shitty website

[trainerdredge]

hey why the shit is she described like that in this website when the other leaders aren’t labeled anything like that, labeled anything at all like that, and something that is clearly trying to be gross towards sociopaths? call me unfun or whatever the fuck all you want, but i find that this is messed up, and pretty gross, why the shit did they do this, like THAT?

[the-desolated-quill]

WandaVision: ‘Subverting’ Good Television - Quill’s Scribbles

(Spoilers for the first five episodes)

Hey everyone! Well... it’s been a while, hasn’t it? The last time I wrote a proper review or Scribble, people still thought the COVID crisis would be over within a month. The poor saps. But I thought that as a special way to mark this year’s Valentines Day, we could take a closer look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s shittiest power couple in their new Disney+ show WandaVision.

The first of many MCU spin-off shows that nobody asked for, broadcast exclusively on Disney’s totally unnecessary streaming platform, WandaVision is about everybody’s favourite whitewashed Nazi experiment and her red sexbot boyfriend as they try to fit into a suburban sitcom neighbourhood without arousing suspicion.

Yes, you read that correctly. The MCU has a sitcom now. My life is now complete.

Sarcasm aside, I was legitimately curious about WandaVision because of its unusual setting. And considering one of my most common criticisms of the MCU is its total lack of creativity, anything that’s even a little bit subversive is bound to attract my attention. Of course ‘subversive’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘good.’ I could hand you a canvas smeared with my own shit and call it subversive. That doesn’t necessarily make it good art. And that’s exactly what WandaVision is. A canvas smeared with shit.

So lets split this critical analysis/review/angry bitter rant into two distinct chapters. The first focusing on the plot and setting, and the second focusing on the characters. Okay? Okay.

Chapter 1: Bewitched

Critics seem to be utterly enamoured with the whole sitcom gimmick, and it is a gimmick. As far as I can tell from the episodes I’ve seen, the sitcom setting serves no real purpose whatsoever other than to make the show ‘quirky.’ Which I wouldn’t mind, believe it or not, if the show was actually funny. There’s just one problem. It’s not.

Now in some ways describing why a sitcom doesn’t work is often futile because comedy is largely subjective. What I find funny, you won’t necessarily find funny and vice versa. With WandaVision, however, I won’t have that problem. I can demonstrate to you precisely why WandaVision, objectively, isn’t funny. And it all comes down to one simple thing. The stakes. Or rather the complete and total absence of stakes.

The show makes it very clear from the beginning that none of what we’re seeing is real. The cheesy theme song, the era appropriate special effects (mostly. It’s actually very inconsistent), the joke commercials, and, in the case of the first two episodes, which are in black and white, the appearance of red lights and objects in Scarlet Witch’s general vicinity. (Gee, what a mystery this is).

Basically Wanda has brought Vision back from the dead and created this sitcom world for them to inhabit. I’ll explain the stupidity of this in Chapter 2. The point is none of this is real, and that has a negative effect on the comedy because the very nature of comedy is suffering. Take the plot of the first episode. Wanda and Vision have to prepare a dinner to impress Vision’s boss. If they fail, Vision could lose his job and the couple could be exposed as superheroes. If this were a normal sitcom, it would work. The stakes are clear and it would be satisfying to see the two struggle and overcome the odds. But here, we know it’s not real. If it’s not real, it means there’s no stakes. If there’s no stakes, it means there’s no suffering. If there’s no suffering, there’s no comedy.

It would be one thing if the unfunny sitcom stuff lasted for like the first ten minutes or so before making way for the actual plot, but it doesn’t. Oh no. It doesn’t even last for the first episode. Out of the five episodes I’ve watched, four of them are almost entirely about these unfunny, objectively flawed sitcom homages, each set in a different time period. The fifties, the sixties, and so on. And what’s worse is that nothing that happens in them is plot-relevant. That gets relegated to the last five minutes of an episode. So you’re forced to sit through twenty five minutes of boring slapstick and puns in order to catch even a whiff of actual story. Which begs the question... who is this for exactly? It can’t be entertaining to Marvel fans, who have to slog through all this pointless shit so they can figure out what the fuck is going on. Comedy fans may get a kick out of the sitcom pastiche at first, but after four episodes, surely the joke would wear thin. So why is it in here? Clearly someone in the writer’s room absolutely fell in love with the idea of doing a Marvel sitcom, but nobody put in any time or effort to figure out how it would work in context.

I cannot stress enough how bad the plotting of this series is. As I said, the vast majority of a thirty minute episode is about shitty sitcom plots that aren’t funny and don’t have any impact on the story, only to then tease you with a crumb of actual plot in order to keep you coming back for the next instalment. Admittedly it’s an effective strategy. I was more than ready to quit after Episode 2 until that beekeeper showed up out of the sewer (don’t ask. It’s not important). WandaVision essentially follows the Steven Moffat school of bad writing. String your audience along with the promise that things might get more interesting later on and that all the bullshit that came before will retroactively make sense by the end. Except, as demonstrated with BBC’s Sherlock, that doesn’t work. And even if it did, it wouldn’t justify wasting the audience’s fucking time. And that’s what the majority of WandaVision is. A waste of time.

The only episode that doesn’t follow the sitcom format is the fourth episode. Instead it basically exists to explain all the shit that happened before. The shit that the audience, frankly, are smart enough to figure out for themselves. Wanda created the sitcom world as a way of coping with the loss of Vision, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, we got it. Thanks. It doesn’t advance the plot or anything. It’s just a massive info-dump. But by far the lowest point was when Darcy (by far the most annoying character in the first Thor film and is just as obnoxious here) was sat in front of the TV, watching the sitcom and asking the same questions we were. Not even attempting to look for answers. Just reiterating what the audience is thinking. Like this is an episode of fucking Gogglebox.

In the end it becomes apparent why the series is structured the way that it is. It’s to hoodwink people into subscribing to Disney’s stupid streaming service. If you think about it, there was no reason for WandaVision to be a TV series other than to lure gullible fans in with a piece-meal story buried in a mountain of crap. This isn’t a TV show. It’s what is cynically known in the world of big business executives as ‘content.’ They’re not interested in entertaining the audience. Instead they crave ‘engagement’, which isn’t the same thing. Watching WandaVision is like staring into the void, waiting for something to happen, while Disney charge you for the privilege.

Chapter 2: I Love Lucy

So the plot sucks balls. What about the characters? Surely if Wanda and Vision are likeable at least, it’ll give us something to cling onto.

Well as I was watching the first episode, it suddenly hit me that I couldn’t remember anything that happened to them in previous films. I knew Vision died, but other than that, I couldn’t tell you significant plot details or their personalities or anything. Not a great start.

See, up until now, Vision and Scarlet Witch have been little more than background characters. So already there’s an uphill struggle to get us invested in their relationship, especially considering we haven’t actually seen that relationship develop. In Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Scarlet Witch is killing people because she’s pissed off about Tony Stark killing people (you work that one out) until all of a sudden she stops and joins the good guys because the script said so. Vision meanwhile is introduced as a convenient deus ex machina to beat Ultron and gets no real personality other than he’s a robot. Captain America: Civil War comes the closest to giving Wanda a story and personality of her own as it’s her actions that cause the Sokovia Accords to come into effect, but she never gets any real growth or payoff as the film is heavily focused on Cap and Iron Man’s penis measuring contest. And as for Vision, all he does in the film is accidentally cripple War Machine. No real character or arc there as such. And then we have Avengers: Infinity War, where Wanda and Vision are now sporadically in love and on the run until that pesky Josh Brolin, looking like a CGI cross between Joss Whedon and a grumpy grape, comes along and rips out Vision’s Infinity Stone to power up his golden glove of doom, and the film treats this like a tragic moment, except... it isn’t. Because we haven’t really had the time to properly get to know these characters and see their romance blossom. So instead it just comes off as hollow and forced.

WandaVision has the exact same problem. Apparently Wanda was so distraught about Vision’s death that she broke into a SWORD base, stole his corpse, brought it back from the dead... somehow, and then enslaved an entire town of people to create an idyllic lifestyle for her and her hubby while broadcasting it as a sitcom to the outside world... for some reason. Putting aside the dubious morality of it all, it’s impossible to really sympathise with Wanda or her supposed grief because we’ve barely spent any time with her. Had the Marvel movies taken the time to properly explore the characters and show us their relationship grow and develop, this might have had more emotional resonance. But no, it just happens. In one film they barely speak to each other and in the next they’re a couple. No effort to explore how they feel about each other or any of the problems that may arise trying to date a robot. It just happens and we’re just supposed to care. Well I’m sorry, but I don’t care. You’re going to have to try a little bit harder than that I’m afraid. What’s worse is that, thanks to the whole fake sitcom thing, it’s impossible to really become invested in Wanda and her plight because the show has to constantly keep us at arms length at all times in order to keep up the pretence that this bullshit is somehow mysterious.

Looking through the WandaVision tag, it amuses me how many people say that she’s acting out of character. And yeah, her actions are a bit of a head scratcher. Why would an Eastern European’s ideal life be an American sitcom? Why a sitcom? Why kidnap an entire town? Why keep changing the decade? None of it makes sense, but you’re wrong for thinking that Wanda is behaving out of character for the simple reason that Wanda has never actually had a character. In fact, ironically, Wanda mind controlling an entire town and forcing them to do her bidding is probably the one consistent thing about her as she did this in Age Of Ultron. In interviews, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany described how they used actors like Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick Van Dyke as influences, which is really funny because they’re straight up admitting they don’t have characters and even now they’re still not playing the characters, instead emulating the work of far better actors.

As I was watching the show, it became abundantly clear that not only do Marvel not have the faintest idea what they wanted to do with these characters, but they also straight up don’t give a shit about these characters. Wanda in particular has had a rough time under the tyrannical regime of the House of Mouse. First they cast Elizabeth Olsen, a white woman, to play a Romani character, then systematically erasing her Jewish roots, even going so far as to put a cross in her bedroom in Civil War, and now the character is being butchered even more by forcing her into an American sitcom housewife role that she apparently willingly chose for herself, which is laughable. I mean say what you like about Magneto in the X-Men films, at least they actually depicted his Jewish culture. At least they recognised his Jewish background was important (though not important enough to cast a Jewish actor apparently). Wanda’s steady cultural erasure over the years is incredibly insidious and judging by Olsen’s comments in interviews, where she called Wanda’s comic book outfit a quote ‘gypsy thing’ unquote, it seems nobody has an ounce of fucking respect for the character or the culture she’s supposed to be representing. (and to all those kissing her arse saying it was a slip of the tongue, she has been repeatedly called out for using the slur in the past, so at this point I’d describe her behaviour as wilful ignorance)

If you want further proof of how much Marvel doesn’t seem to care about Wanda, look no further than her brother Pietro, aka Quicksilver. At the end of Episode 5, Wanda brings Pietro back from the dead, except it’s not Pietro. It’s Peter Maximoff, the Quicksilver from the X-Men films played by Peter Evans, who coincidentally is not Jewish or Romani either. So Quicksilver has the dubious honour of not only being whitewashed three times, but also twice within the same franchise. But should we really be surprised at this point? It’s Marvel after all. The same company that whitewashed the Ancient One in Doctor Yellowface and claimed it wasn’t racist because Tilda Swinton is ‘Celtic’. But now I’m going off topic. My point is that this isn’t a simple case of recasting an actor like Mark Ruffalo replacing Edward Norton as the Hulk. WandaVision actually acknowledges the recast in-universe, which makes no sense. Why would Wanda bring back her brother, only to make him look like a different person? We the audience may be familiar with this version of Quicksilver, but she isn’t. That would be like me bringing my Grandad back to life and making him look like Ian McKellen. He’d be perfectly charming, I’m sure, but he wouldn’t be my Grandad. 

If Marvel really cared about the characters or narrative consistency, they would have brought Aaron Taylor Johnson back. Instead, now they have absorbed 20th Century Fox into the hellish Disney abyss, they use X-Men’s Quicksilver as a means to keep viewers from switching off and so that people will write stupid articles and think pieces about whether the rest of the X-Men will show up in the MCU. It’s like dangling your keys in front of a toddler’s face to distract them from the rotting corpse of a raccoon lying face down in the corner of the room.

And it’s here where I decided to stop watching the show because fuck Disney.

Epilogue: One Foot In The Grave

You know, I am sick and tired of the so called ‘professional’ critics bending over backwards to praise these god awful films and shows when it’s so clear to anyone with a functioning brain cell how bad they truly are. WandaVision is without a doubt one of the most cynically produced and poorly structured TV shows I’ve ever seen. Its riffs on classic sitcoms are pointless and self-indulgent, the writing is terrible, the characters are unlikable and unsympathetic, and it’s entirely emblematic of what the entire MCU has become of late. And it’s only going to get worse as Disney drowns us with more ‘content’ to keep the plebs ‘engaged’. In short; pathetic.

[seattlesea]

The Wasted Potential of Piper McLean’s Backstory

I think it’s safe to say that Piper’s backstory was easily the weakest, most boring, and worst-written one of all the characters in Heroes of Olympus, but it didn’t have to be. Riordan wasted a lot of potential for her backstory that could’ve added much more to her character just for ‘My dad doesn’t pay attention to me!!11!!!11!’ and then showing multiple flashbacks of Piper and Tristan spending quality father-daughter time alone together and completely invalidating all of Piper’s annoying complaining. Not only that, but Piper’s backstory is just a boring copy of Rachel’s. 

So, this is what Riordan did with Piper’s backstory:

1. ‘Neglectful’ dad. Piper spends 50% of The Lost Hero complaining about how little time her dad spends with her (and 49% thinking about Jason) instead of focusing on actually helping him. And while neglectful parenting can be very dangerous to a child’s happiness and social skills, Piper clearly wasn’t neglected or ‘ignored’. How do I know? Well for one, there are multiple flashbacks in The Mark of Athena of Piper and her dad hanging out- surfing, researching Greek mythology stories, watching Tristan’s movies and laughing over them, Tristan telling Piper Cherokee stories, etc.- and two, Piper isn’t unhappy nor unsocial and doesn’t show any symptoms of child neglect besides being clingy and possessive (but remember that the McLeans weren’t always rich, and were actually quite poor before, so Piper didn’t learn that behavior from her father). Besides, for someone who is claimed to be ‘smarter than all her other siblings’, Piper clearly doesn’t know that it’s her father’s agent that controls his schedule, not Tristan.

2. Rich and pretty= bad. In a lot of different circumstances, being rich and pretty has its cons, but Piper’s complaints about it are completely offbeat. Why? Cause we don’t know why she’s complaining about it. She complains about being rich, but why? She complains about being ‘too pretty’ (as if that’s something people legitimately complain about), but why? There’s no backstory or reasoning given to this. If there was, Piper’s constant complaining might have been valid, but Riordan just threw it into her story to give the readers a reason to take pity on and feel sympathy for her, and because he didn’t give Piper an actual reason for her complaining, it made it unbearable. If he had written it in smaller doses (much smaller) and wrote it realistically, it could’ve been really awesome. Because if you’re going to complain about something, make sure you’re complaining for a reason. Why does Piper hate being rich? Why does Piper hate having a bunch of awesome things most people would kill for? Why does Piper hate being attractive? And how Riordan tried to validate her complaining with ‘She wants to be normal’- NO ONE WANTS TO BE NORMAL. What teenager wouldn’t want a private airplane and giant mansion after living in a shitty wood house most of their life? Cause yes, Riordan, write your character complaining about her private chef making her a gold-wrapped sandwich while most of the other characters were worrying about where their next meal was going to come from and have her complain about having things while most people didn’t have 5% of what she had. That’ll totally make her a likable character. There’s a difference between being modest and being ungrateful.

3. Bullies. Being bullied sucks, and Piper has every right to complain about it. But...she didn’t. She didn’t complain at all. She didn’t even care about it. So she’s perfectly fine with being bullied and pushed around for her ethnicity, but her dad working a little overtime is the end of the world? How??? Besides that, Riordan didn’t write in bullies to shine a light on racism towards First Nations people, but for one reason only- to degrade femininity. Piper is described as a ‘tomboy’ (even though she doesn’t actually dress tomboyish, but that’s for another mini-rant) and the only bullies towards her we have been introduced to are girly-girls- Isabel and her group of friends who wore ‘matching pink tops and enough makeup for a Halloween party’, Drew Tanaka, Khione, etc. That’s not progressive, it’s sexist. ‘Femininity’ and ‘weakness’ are not synonymous, and nor are ‘masculinity’ and ‘strength’. Also, how did Isabel and her friends not know who Piper’s dad was? I’m pretty sure Tristan didn’t hide her from the entire world (though that would’ve been a way cooler backstory). 

4. Stealing. Anyone else out there who also knows that Piper isn’t actually a rebellious trouble-maker? Cause she isn’t. She got kicked out of four schools for being accused of stealing, but she never actually canonically broke any rules. As for the stealing part of her backstory, it was really, really lame. It was just a bad, invalid excuse to make Piper look like the badass and cool trouble-maker when in reality, all she did was politely ask for things. Not exactly ‘badass and rebellious’, and it was completely unnecessary. Piper wanted attention from her dad, but she got it multiple times and could’ve gotten it in many other different ways that didn’t enforce the racist ‘kleptomaniac First Nation’ stereotype. 

And this is what he should’ve done with her backstory:

1. Rich and pretty= distrust. Piper was reluctant to tell Annabeth about her famous father in The Lost Hero, but for the wrong reason. She didn’t want Annabeth to know about her movie-star dad because she didn’t want the ‘attention’, but she should’ve not wanted Annabeth to know out of distrust. And by ‘distrust’, I mean ‘not knowing if they want to know you for you or for your money’. This is a common con for rich and famous people, and they often turn paranoid and distrusting because they can never be certain if someone wants to be their friend because they think that they’re a cool person or if they want to be their friend because they’re rich and famous. That would’ve been a perfect reason for Piper to be reluctant to make new friends (especially after announcing to her whole cabin that her father was Tristan McLean), but she didn’t care. She even said that she ‘hated using the famous dad card’ but never showed signs of being dubious of new people who knew who she was. As for being pretty, a lot of attractive people are also distrustful because they never know if someone wants to date them for their personality or for their looks (and in Jason’s case, it was definitely the latter. No one wants to kiss someone a few minutes after knowing them and never actually talking to them one-on-one and it be anything but sexual attraction). Piper should’ve been very reluctant to get into a relationship (especially after Jason embarrassed and sexualized her in front of the entire camp calling her a ‘knock-out’) and it would’ve added a valid reason for her to complain about her looks. Cause again- why does she hate being attractive? Cause she’s tired of being stereotyped? No, cause she stereotypes other people. Cause she doesn’t want to be attractive? No, cause she never said anything about that. There was no reason for it, so it was a huge waste of many chapters and made for a horrible character arc. 

2. Alone in a big house. Piper complained about her dad being ‘too busy’ despite him being a very loving, caring, and inclusive father, but why didn’t she even mention the other part of it- being alone? Sure she had personal chefs, assistants, etc. with her, but no one related to her and no one who wasn’t being paid to be around her. Being alone sucks, but being alone in a giant house with a bunch of games and other stuff you’d love to share with another person but can’t? Damn. Speaking of which, what about Piper’s past schools? Five schools and no confirmed friends? It’s not like Piper has a hard time making friends since she was able to become friends with Leo (and only after being at the Wilderness School for a few months versus full school years at the others). Riordan could’ve written a very interesting backstory that didn’t have to relate to monsters (like Leo’s) but focused on the wrong parts. 

3. Impossible (and toxic) beauty standards and pressure. While being unattractive (or thinking you’re unattractive, cause you’re not ugly, you’re just not your type) sucks, being attractive (and extremely attractive) has multiple cons. Not only is there- racism in the beauty industry, society’s toxic and even deadly standards of beauty, not being open to relationships out of fear of only being liked for your looks, fear of not being taken seriously and being stereotyped, being cat-called and even the fear of rape, being compared to others, etc., but there’s the constant pressure (especially from family members, friends, and peers) of showing off your looks even if you don’t want to or are not comfortable doing so. I have an ‘hour-glass’ shaped body, and at first I loved my body and was very confident about it, but after the constant urging from my family members to wear tight (almost revealing) clothes to show off my body starting at only twelve years old despite me not being comfortable wearing those types of clothes, I hated my body and wore exclusively baggy and layered clothes for nearly 3+ years. This would’ve been perfect for Piper’s backstory, especially since her mother literally sexualized her by putting her in an ‘embarrassingly low v-neck dress’ in front of tons of campers. She wore basic, simple clothes, but she only wore them to avoid being labelled a ‘girly-girl’. It’s not even canon if she actually likes those clothes or are actually comfortable wearing them or not, she only wore them to avoid being something else she didn’t like. It could’ve led to an awesome character arc- going from insecure about your looks because people keep pressuring you into showing them off to only wearing and doing what you like. Piper tried to hide her looks, but for what reason? To avoid being stereotyped as ‘girly’? Yes, Piper, because girly-girls are the only type of girls that are pretty. Obviously.  

4. Charity. Rachel rocked this one. If Piper wanted to be kind and modest, why didn’t she give any of the things she had to people who actually needed it? Instead of moping about how rich you are, give the things you don’t want to those who need it. It’s a lot more effective and moral than spending all your days complaining and sulking, and it’s much more likely to gain readers’ favor than constant whining. 

5. Stereotypes. Riordan tried so hard to avoid the ‘snobby rich girl’ stereotype, but in my opinion- he should’ve utilized it. Piper went from ‘I don’t care about what I have’...to the exact same thing. She didn’t grow at all regarding her fortune and riches. Even in The Trials of Apollo, she lost everything and didn’t even care. Who wouldn’t care if they lost everything they had? Piper could’ve been grateful that she still had her dad and humanity while still being upset she lost everything. Back on topic- Piper could’ve gone from spoiled, obnoxious, and money-obsessed to ‘It doesn’t matter what I have or what I am but who I am’. She should’ve started off as the basic, stereotypical rich girl- a greedy, selfish, idealistic, spoiled, rude, dramatic, and overly ambitious primadonna diva who tried to buy her happiness and relationships but realized she couldn’t fill the hole in her heart with money and lipstick. Or how about the reckless homewrecker who broke hearts just for fun before realizing she actually wanted a real relationship, so started letting people in? Riordan avoiding the rich girl stereotype to make Piper more likable is what helped make her dislikable, because it ruined the chances of a good character arc. Besides, while not showing it on the surface, Riordan did actually sink into the rich girl stereotype by making Piper a selfish, ungrateful, and attention-seeking whiny brat, but she never grew from that or even realized she was doing it. 

6. Looks don’t matter. The fandom thinks that Piper is the one who stands for ‘looks don’t matter/it’s what’s on the inside that matters’, but she’s the opposite. She: -dismissed Percy and stereotyped him based off how he looked -hated her entire cabin and mother just because they were girly -hated and stereotyped Drew just cause she was wearing jewelry and makeup -constantly fussed over her looks and looked at herself more times in one chapter than all the other characters did combined -commented on Jason’s appearance multiple times, etc. So no, she isn’t the one who stands for that. The character who doesn’t think about their appearance at all is the one who stands for that, not the character who thinks about their looks 24/7. She should’ve been the character to stand for that, cause who better than the daughter of beauty and a famous, attractive movie-star? She should’ve been the one to scream to the mortal world that ‘Hey, I’m attractive but I’m not my attractiveness’. 

7. Racism. If Riordan wanted to expand on Piper’s character, why not write about the number one thing she should’ve been struggling with before being introduced to the mythological world- racism? She’s Cherokee, and there are multiple things against First Nations people nowadays like horrible living in reservations, living in the land she knows was stolen from her people and watching her father pay taxes to the very people who stole it, etc. Bullies suck, but bullies are common. The struggles of First Nations people is not, and it should’ve been added to Piper’s backstory not only to make her more realistic and better-written, but to shine a light on the racism and oppression against First Nation tribes. 

8. Monster attacks. So Piper is the daughter of a rich and famous movie star, most likely used multiple different pieces of technology, was out in the open only a few hours away from Camp Jupiter, and was out in the mortal world her whole life, but didn’t experience any monster attacks whatsoever, even at fifteen years old? That’s extremely unrealistic and dumb. Monster attacks should’ve been used to make her backstory more interesting and realistic. 

9. ADHD and dyslexia. Was I the only one bothered that Piper didn’t show any signs of ADHD or dyslexia? Every demigod has them and Frank is the only one confirmed not to, but Piper had no trouble focusing, staying still, reading, concentrating, forgetfulness, short attention spans, etc. She was even able to read the directory at Medea’s Department Store, the writing on the wall at the Cyclops-infiltrated warehouse, Greek stories with her dad, etc. In canon, she doesn’t even have ADHD or dyslexia, but showing her struggling with it (especially as the daughter of a famous movie star who’s pressured into being perfect and poised at all times) would’ve added so much to her backstory and character.  

10. Abandonment issues. So Piper’s mother literally leaves her before she was even born...and she didn’t care? It’s understandable that she would accept her mother’s choice after finding out that her mother was a goddess who couldn’t stay with her, but what about before? She didn’t even comment on it. She showed signs of abandonment issues (insecurity over her relationships, the inability to trust her partner’s intentions, constant jealousy, difficulty with feeling actual intimacy, possessive and controlling behavior, clinginess, constant need for attention, etc.) but they were never expanded on or even called out. She was portrayed as the perfect one without any faults or need for help cause she was (in Riordan’s eyes) supposed to be the ‘strong one’ who didn’t need others to help or save her, but that just led to a dull character and flat arc. 

11. Standards of perfection. Piper is the daughter of a rich and famous movie star, is extremely attractive, etc., so writing her backstory as being constantly pressured, raised, and even demanded into always being poised, presentable, and perfect her whole life would’ve been way better than whatever the hell Riordan was doing. Piper should’ve rebelled against society, not her dad who didn’t even do anything wrong. Basically- What Piper did: My dad wants to bring me to a nice salon cause he loves and cares about me? NO! I’m going to cut my own hair even though cutting your hair in First Nations culture is literally taboo without even bothering to tell my dad that I don’t want to get a haircut to see if he’ll agree! What Piper should’ve done: Society wants me to always be perfect and presentable? NO! I’ll show them that I’ll be whatever I want to be without their input!

12. Rich and famous ≠ a perfect life. People are often mistaken that rich and famous people have the best, perfect life, but they don’t. With society’s impossible standards, controversy in the fame department, tons of hate for a bunch of different reasons, and more, Piper could’ve been the one to show that more money doesn’t equal more happiness, cause who in the world would constantly want flashing cameras in their faces, the inability to go out without being followed and/or harassed, fake friends, constant judging, the inability to have any privacy or being able to do anything normal people can, etc.? 

So, yeah. Piper’s backstory was just a steaming-hot mess, a pile of wasted potential, and flat-out bad writing. Riordan could’ve written an awesome character with a great character development, but it was trashed only because he couldn’t focus on the right aspects of her backstory. 

[clolikescloquetas]

THINGS I HOPE TO SEE (OR NOT) IN ACOTAR4

Nesta NOT STAYING AT THE ILLYRIANS MOUNTAINS for long, and travelling to other courts or the continent instead so she sees the world just like she wanted to do before the war. I think sending her away to a cold mountain surrounded by misogynistic warriors who hate her and are scared of her was a stupid af decision. Especially when it's a war camp and war triggers her PTSD. Oh and let's not forget there's a revolution about to take place. I see it as a very forced way of the narrative to make cassian and nesta interact. I understand an unexpected turn of events was needed as a beginning for acotar4, but going to the mountains shouldn't be anything more than a beginning that quickly leads us to another location. We've been told many times that nesta is "illyrian at heart" but I don't buy it. She isn't such thing, and her character is way too complex and interesting and has too much potential to just make her fit into a culture she doesn't belong to and has nothing in common with (it's stupid to think a place that reveres war and bloodshed will help her heal).

Besides, after all the places the previous books introduced I think it would be boring to stick to the same court. I loved Velaris but now that Feyre's story has ended it's time to move on. Not to mention that the Night Court is the worst place for Nesta, it reminds her of all her trauma and its high lord is a male she despises. Nesta needs to go somewhere else where she can recover her spirit and independence, and be free of the commands of a male that gives her orders as if she were her subject (she is not).

Hopefully, knowing how much sjm loves plot twists and given how she's already told us where nesta is supposed to go, it won't stay like that for long.

NO TRAINING. Maybe learning self defense techniques but that's as far as I'll go. No training to turn her into an almighty warrior. Nesta has power from literally the mightiest magic device in the world, and you're telling me getting beat on a ring will empower her?? Even when she's previously stated her refusal to train and said fighting isn't the only thing that makes someone strong?? And we're talking about Nesta, whose powers make her lethal. Making Nesta train would butcher her character and istg if they pull the "fighting helps her go back to her old self and empowers her" I will lose it. Enough with making that troupe work for everyone. We've seen it before and it has worked out well for other character, but in this case it wouldn't feel right and would be boring af.

I've seen a few people say they want Nesta to command the Illyrians, and help with the whole misogynist issue they have, or that she should do the Blood Rite I don't know if the name is correct, I don't remember it to gain the respect of the warriors. How should I put this: NO. This is more of the "Nesta is Illyrian at heart" bullshit Rhysass likes to pull, when what he actually means is that she is proud and stubborn. She, and I can't stress this enough, is not Illyrian. She shouldn't be participating in traditions she doesn't understand and doesn't engage in (she doesn't want to learn how to fight for fuck's sake) and we certainly don't need nesta to pull a white saviour behavior. I don't want her to come and solve a centuries old problem of a culture she doesn't belong to. And I don't see how she could do that in a credible way either, given how they all are terrified and wary of her. This also applies to the rioting issue that is looming over the illyrian camps.

Nesta healing and improving her mental health with cassian at her side to support her, without making him the reason why she gets better. And showing the effects war has on a veteran as Cassian too.

Someone, preferably Nesta, calling out Feyre, Rhysass and the rest of the IC on their shitty behavior and actions, and the narrative finally acknowledging their mistakes and portraying them as the deeply flawed characters they are. Now that we don't have Feyre's POV anymore there are no excuses for condoning their shit.

Cassian realising he has judged, ignored and said cruel things (like he doesn't know why her sisters love her are u kidding me) to Nesta and how he hasn't stood up for her before his friends. Oh and how he ignores her when Mor is present. I'm a sucker for nessian, but before they are a thing, he should apologize. I don't like how he treats nesta poorly and then expects her to love him, when she doesn't owe him shit. It's selfish of him to expect her to fit into his family even when they all hate her. I hope acotar4 handles well these issues. And I can't wait too read Nesta's POV and know why she didn't want to be close to Cassian after the war.

Nesta making new friends on her own, people who respect her and love her. I love nessian but I don't want their relationship to be the only deep interaction and relationship Nesta has. I would LOVE to see her and lucien become best friends (they were supposed to be lovers after all, and although a romantic relationship has been dismissed I'm sure their friendship dynamic would be amazing), or get acquainted with Helion or even Azriel. She needs to meet new people, and preferably not from the night court.

We've read many times how Nesta's powers are described as great and terrible. The source of her power is the fucking cauldron, used to create the world. Even tho no one knows yet what those powers are exactly, she has used them to turn hundreds of soldiers to ashes and even the bone carver, a death GOD, has spoken of the way the earth trembled at her power when Nesta was made. I want these powers to be a huuge part of the plot in this book. I want Nesta to master them fully, and for us to see the process. I don't know if I'm the only one who thinks like this, but when Feyre discovered she had powers from all the high lords, it seemed to me that she mastered them too quickly. I was hoping to get more attention on that issue, but it got dismissed quite quickly. Now that it's Nesta's time, I want the book to fully focus on these powers. Oh, and what I want the most is my baby to become the most powerful creature in the continent. More mighty than Rhysass and the other high lords by far. You can't give us a whole book preaching how nesta is really powerful, and how she took something from the cauldron that made the earth tremble, and then turn her into a common witch or something similar. I mean you can't expect me to believe the high lords have more power than the cauldron.

Although I find that to be another plot hole, bc the cauldron was supposed to be almighty but then Rhys and Feyre restored it when it broke?? Does that mean they are more powerfull than the object that created their world?? If that is so, they why didn't they win against hybern sooner??

Anyways, I want Nesta to never have to bow to anyone. Ever.

Well that is what I'd like to see in the next book. Which, based on the information we have, is basically the opposite of what will happen. As far as we know, sjm said there would be a lot of training in this book (I assume she was talking about Nesta) so there goes the chance of her not been a warrior. We know she'll go to Illyria, and although it's my hope she leaves soon or that she never goes in the first place, I know that's not what's going to happen.

And then there's the sex. Sjm said she had to delete some of the sex scenes bc her editor said they were too much and unnecessary. Which means there are still plenty of sex scenes in the books, as sjm confirmed. Don't get me wrong, smut is fine if handled correctly. But I don't think it will he handled correctly.

In fact, I think acotar4 will be placed on illyria the whole book or at least a huge part of it, and that we'll have lots of unnecessary and meaningless sex scenes inside of Cassian's cabin in the mountains instead of a well written and interesting plot, a well developed and complex relationship between the characters and a well handled depiction of PTSD and trauma healing.

In my mind it'll go like this:

Nesta arrives in the mountains. She and cassian are mean to each other for a while and the sexual tension is pretty obvious between them. Nesta starts training. At the beginning she hates it but over time she ends up loving it and excelling. Sex. Nesta makes a few friends between the illyrian female warriors she trains with, whose characters are shallow and totally secondary. Sex. More sex. Maybe something about Nesta's powers. A scene where cassian and nesta have an openhearted conversation about their relationship. Cassian never acknowledges how he treated Nesta, but she will apologise to him for how she kept him away. This leads to more sex. Nesta makes up with feyre, and apologies to her for being mean or whatever sjm comes up with. Feyre doesn't apologize back, or it's a shitty apologize for sure. Sex. Nesta stablish a cordial although cold relationship with Rhysass and Mor bc apparently she and Az are not destined to interact (even tho Az would totally oppose Nesta's situation of being sent to the illyrian camps). Sex. Nesta does the Rite. Sex. Sex. Something about the illyrian rebels. Cassian gets hurt. Nesta goes feral and gets a hold on the illyrian people. They respect her and answer to her now. Sex.

Or something along these lines. Oh and I have the impression sjm loves her main characters too much to write any scene showing how the decisions, actions or behaviour regarding Nesta of Feyre and Rhys were wrong. Acknowledging this could make it seem like they are flawed people like the rest, and apparently that's not possible.

I pray to be proved wrong once the book is released. Only time will tell.

[spice-chan]

Give me your vows.

Pro hero!au , marriage!au

Bakugo x fem!reader

Chapter 1 - My husband.

Word count : 2.4 K

There was no wedding. He was a hero, so it was a bit dangerous, plus, it’s not like you are in it for love. Still, it kind of felt like you were missing out on something every women should experience, the joy your friends described, how beautiful they looked in wedding dresses. You were prepared to get that, but now it felt like a massive loss that you never would, even though a part of you didn’t even want it anymore.

Love. The word still brought a searing pain through your heart, knowing you will never have what you once did. You dreamed of a future of the man you loved, Yuki’s kind smile filling your days as the two of you built a family together. All his little habits leaving a mark on your day, it was ripped away from you so cruelly.

Now your ‘husband in name only’, Bakugo, who you only had one conversation with, is in the car with you, driving you to your humble abode.

You were bitter, the taste remaining in your mouth throughout the whole drive.

It was so awkward as well, and you could guess that he also felt the same way, his default scowl was there, strong as ever, and his mouth had been sealed shut the entire drive, he didn’t even bother starting a conversation.

He parked the car, the house already fully furnished and ready to be moved into, including all your clothes and his.

Now all that’s left is to sleep and ignore the man next to you, or pretend like it’s a friend having a sleepover.

You moved to the door, unlocking it and twisting the doorknob, letting the fresh wave of clean air hit your senses. It was unfamiliar, not cozy like how you’d expect a home to be, it was stale. You slid inside, taking your shoes off at the door, your heart pounding in nervousness as he came inside too and took off his shoes. You went to the vase, taking out the extra key and handing it to him, deciding to break the ice.

“Here’s the key.” You said, holding it out to him, who took it wordlessly.

You offered a polite smile and went to the bedroom to change. Now that the situation sunk in, you accepted that you’re stuck for now, might as well try to get along. Bakugo saw the smile she sent him. He thought it looked oddly detached.

...............

You changed into your pyjamas, just some comfy shorts and a matching tank top. You hurried the process, knowing that Katsuki is waiting for you to finish changing to get on with it himself. You padded into the living room, and found his bulky form on the couch, scrolling through some of his social media. You coughed awkwardly, gaining his attention, and bringing to your own just how piercing and intense his gaze is. It made you nervous in a way, unsure of his thoughts.

“Uh, I’m done, you should go change.” You said, trying to hold the eye contact he seemed to be trying to make with you.

He promptly locked his phone, and left it on the coffee table, while heading to the room that you both now share. Damn, wedding nights aren’t supposed to be like that, ugh.

Now thinking about wedding nights, your expression fell, unable to maintain an optimistic view on the situation. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, in your eyes, fate had been too cruel to you. You were supposed to be with Yuki, and he was supposed to be with you forever. Now here you were, stuck with another man.

Why did you go through with this again ?

Taking a deep breath of the house which only smelt of sanitisers, you tried to bury your anguish. Bury it in the deepest parts of your heart, where Yuki resides, dead or not.

.........

Katsuki put on his loose sweatpants, mulling on his current situation.

He went to the dresser mirror, running his hand through his ash blonde hair.

His thoughts are interrupted when he hears your soft voice and gentle knocks on the door.

“Uh, Bakugo, I’m making some tea, would you like some? .” You asked. Bakugo was surprised that you decided to use his surname. He wanted to say ‘yes’, but was scared that would sound too desperate. So instead, he opted for -

“Tch, guess I could spare some time.” He heard you hum, then the sound of your footsteps padding away to the kitchen.

Bakugo had a contemplative look on his face.

This situation was so weird for Bakugo. He had zero experience with women, now suddenly he’s married ? Didn’t he skip steps ? Because this was awfully backwards.

He never thought the arranged marriage fiasco was for him, then again he never thought he’d be married to begin with. But here he was, with the most beautiful women he saw, married, living together, sleeping together...

Bakugo scowled as he felt warmth rush to his head. No, nope.

He heard your harmonious feminine voice call out to him, snapping him out of his reverie. He made a strangled noise and made his way to the living room. You looked up, but your brows furrowed in concern when you saw his face.

“Bakugo, you ok ? Your face looks really red. Is it a fever ?” You rambled on, making Bakugo growl.

“Shut up Shitty woman, I’m fine !” He exclaimed, his embarrassment growing at her show of concern. Unneeded, totally unnecessary and stupid concern.

You made a confused face, but couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it.

“Ok shitty man.” She responded.

“HAH” his hair literally stood up as he suffered an internal explosion, ready to wipe that mocking smile off her face.

“Do you take your tea with sugar ?”

“No no, repeat what you just said, damn scum!”

“Such fine tea, I’ll put you a table spoon then”

A fuse popped inside Bakugo.

This was going to be eventful.

Before Katsuki could snap at her, she give him his cup of tea, and started drinking her’s as if nothing happened. The fun moment was over, and no one wanted to address the elephant in the room.

She opted to scrolling through her phone while enjoying her tea then having another go at a conversation with him, but all in all, he seemed harmless, just enjoys exercising his lung capacity.

After a while, she finished, and moved to put her cup in the sink, from what she could see, Bakugo greatly resembled her current state. He looked like he was so sleepy, he could fall at any moment now. She moved to him and tapped his shoulder, once again becoming the target of his intense stare. The intense, vermilion stare.

“You should go sleep, you look tired, I’m heading to bed too. Good night.” You walked out then, leaving Bakugo to his own thoughts. Katsuki decided he should go to sleep to, but, next to you ? The idea of sharing a bed is discomforting, a notion never explored before, and now he suddenly has to do it with his wife who he only had a handful of conversations with, about two or three.

Fuck, should he just sleep on the couch ?

No, that’ll only make this more awkward, and Katsuki likes keeping his back in good shape. He walked into the room, twisting the doorknob and walked inside nonchalantly, but if anything, there was a scowl on his face. Your eyes ripped away from staring at your phone harshly. You locked your phone before Bakugo could slide into the bed and see the picture you were staring at. Putting your phone beneath your pillow, you turned your back to Bakugo and eventually fell into deep slumber.

...........

you read the document to be handed to Bakugo, finding that the only thing missing is his signature. Ok, it was all set. Although there was something that your parents agreed on with Bakugo and that is if the firm ever needed financial support in the future, he will help, that was a minor possibility and the ten percent share he will get will be very beneficial for him. The publishing firm your parents owned, which will fully belong to you in a few days, was extremely successful, having opened in several countries too. Your parents also have very suited quirks for the job, your mum’s quirk is photographic, she can remember any image she says, and show the image on any part of her body, while your dad’s quirk is memory, remembering any text he sees. It was probably a quirk marriage, but I never bothered to ask. I did inherit somewhat of a similar quirk to them, more so my dad. I can take one glance at a text and memorise it, while I can also paste it down anywhere I want, be it my body or a piece of paper. It fades when I want it to. Would have been a great quirk for a hacker, too bad me and computers don’t get along, so I settled to reaping the advantages during examinations only. And giving quickie book reviews.

Oh well.

Now that you are married, where you supposed to go hoke and make dinner ? Do take turns ? Do you pretend the other doesn’t exist like in wattpad stories ?

Ok, the last one just seemed like opening the door to drama.

Maybe you’ll be nice and make dinner, then that will make the atmosphere comfortable enough to discuss things, even if every cell in your body screamed ‘avoid situation’. This is something you can’t avoid, you had to be mature in this situation. But while your thoughts were in a state of chaos, someone else’s weren’t in a better shape.

Bakugo sat in his own office, looking at a document that entailed the things he needs to get working on to improve his agency. He debuted three years ago, making him 21- two years younger then you- but his agency was only established a year ago, and there was many things that could be done better, such as the support material and such. However, money wasn’t really the reason he married you, no, that was only a helpful benefit he can reap from it not to raise suspension on his intentions. And his intentions demanded he treat you well.

As one of the heroes known to be single and successful( he was in the top ten on his second year as a pro-hero), and your parents reached out to him for the set up. But Bakugo wasn’t a stranger to you.

He debated accepting, but in the end, not only can it help his company, but help him understand the enigma that is you.

Plus, you wouldn’t know what kind of greedy bastard you might’ve ended up with, even if he was foul mouthed with anger issues, he was still the lesser of two evils.

He decided to bring his document home to read over it at home, he packed his things and prepared to leave. He was getting nowhere anyway, maybe a change of setting could help.

His patrol hours were over, so he changed out of his hero costume, and took a quick shower, before promptly making his way home.

He unlocked the door, twisting it, causing a rush of air to spring out, a certain aromatic smell assaulting his nose, making his stomach grumble in complaint.

She made food ?

He walked into the kitchen, confirming what he already knew, as he saw a simple set up of two plates and cutlery, with drinks next to them, and your tiny frame-he failed to observe before, but your stature was pretty chibi sized compared to his- bringing the ramen over to the middle of the table.

“Oh, hey ! Good that I decided to make this when I did huh, I wasn’t totally sure when you get off work.” You greeted, smiling a tiny smile at him, hoping to ease him a bit. To be real, you were kind of walking on eggshells, would it be like romance stories when the guy decides to tell his arranged wife not to bother him and that he doesn’t need -

“Tch, thanks, I - uh- appreciate it I guess...”

Katsuki said, cheeks tinting at having to express gratitude like that. This was entirety too domestic for him, back when he roomed with dumb, dumber and dumbest, he was the one who cooked or they had take out, convenience store food was an option too. Definitely no women telling him ‘welcome back home I made dinner’. You were probably just trying to be friendly, he shouldn’t get ahead of himself.

He went ahead to change, opting to wear sweatpants again and just a sleeveless shirt.

When he came out, he saw her sitting on the dinner table with her serving of Ramen, putting an excessive amount of pepper flakes in it. Interesting, did she not put any inside because she thought he was some wimp who can’t handle spice ? A tick appeared on Bakugo’s forehead at the thought, finding it irritating when he was underestimated, be it war or food.

“Thank you for the meal.” He said, getting the pleasantries out of the way before taking the red pepper sprinkler from your hand and dumping an unholy amount on his plate. Your eyes bugged out, but you stayed quiet, waiting to witness his untimely demise. He took his first slurp, surprisingly handling it better then you thought, but you can see his cheeks starting to flush after a while. Seeing his struggle triggered your sadistic tendencies.

“Oh, you like spicy too ?” You asked innocently. He nodded, attempting to finish all his food without anyway water. You grabbed the sprinkler, “oh, this one doesn’t taste all that strong to a seasoned eater, you should have more” you said, putting some more on top of his food. The look on his face was comical, his red eyes looked defeated, until they burned with battle like determination.

“Tch, yeah, can barely taste it.” Bakugo lied, eating his food with renowned vigour. You resisted that urge to giggle. In no time, he actually finished his ramen, even though his ears and face were a fierce red. He then got a second serving( must be hard to try to maintain all those muscles) and put spicy in it again. What a simpleton. You grabbed the glasses and filled one with juice, directing your gaze to him as you gestured to them.

“Want some ?” You questioned.

He begrudgingly nodded, believing that he finally proved his tolerance to be worthy.

You found his insistence to be somewhat comical.

.......................

So this switches from second to thid point of view sometimes, I should rlly work on that. I wonder how Bakugo knows you 🤔🤔 guess u’ll find out soon enough. This chap was kinda filler, but i wanted to couchen the story before it gets more intense.

[mst3kproject]

Bog

Imagine Creature from the Black Lagoon but made by the creative (for lack of a better word) team behind The Giant Spider Invasion.  That’s Bog.

Bog Lake is the type of little nowhere town that looks as if it ought to have a local cryptid, like the Flatwoods Monster or Mothman… and sure enough, tourists who come to fish in the lake are getting drained of blood by some creature with a chitinous proboscis!  The police are baffled, the locals are buying guns, and the coroner straightfacedly suggests it might be Count Dracula.  The only person who seems to really know what’s going on is The Old Hag of the Woods, and she claims that the swamp monster is some kind of ancient god.  Once awakened, it must feed on blood before it can return to the slime at the bottom of the lake and sleep for centuries more.  At this point, the viewer is probably expecting something like the Giant Leeches crossed with Cthulhu, but the truth manages to be even cheaper than a Corman film and, unfortunately, infinitely rape-ier.

Why does this movie remind me so much of the works of Bill Rebane?  The main reason is probably the 70s soft focus and the midwestern accents, but there are quite a few points that spark specific memories of The Giant Spider Invasion.  The movie’s heroes are two people in at least their forties, in which the woman is a more qualified scientist than the man.  The married couples we see are totally dysfunctional and dissolving in booze. A shotgun-wielding mob forms and chases the monster towards the instruments of its demise.  There’s even a middle school chemistry classroom that stands in for a laboratory (I particularly enjoyed the fact that this, which presumably represents a room in the town morgue, has a map of the moon on one wall) and science that starts out grounded in reality but then dives headfirst into bullshit while hollering “cowabunga!”

On the other pedipalp, there are also ways in which Bog is notably better than The Giant Spider Invasion, most of which have to do with the characters.  Admittedly, these do not get off to a good start.  The first people we can really be said to meet are two assholes who have come for the camping and fishing, and their wives who have come to complain.  The couples clearly hate each other and we can’t imagine why they ever got together in the first place, and each individual is kind of an idiot.  I won’t complain too much, though, because the crabby wives get eaten almost right away and the asshole husbands fulfill their plot function by bringing it to the attention of the authorities and then follow their spouses out of the movie.  Good riddance.

The real characters are the Sheriff, Ginny the Coroner, and Brad the Doctor.  None of them are exactly likable but they come across as the sort of very ordinary people you’d probably meet in your day-to-day life and while they’re not your close friends, you don’t dislike them.  Ginny is of an appropriate age for her position of authority, and her colleagues treat her with the respect she is due.  Her romance with Brad is clearly something that’s been going on for a while now and doesn’t suddenly develop over the course of a weekend, and the two of them are close in age.  All three of these characters behave in a professional manner and seem to have good working relationships, which is a breath of fresh air.  Far too many movies try to insert unnecessary drama by having characters who hate each other for no reason.

The best of the three is actually the Sheriff, who is one of a very few small-town movie sheriffs who actually seems to take his job seriously.  Aldo Ray used to be a real actor, and you can tell – he plays the Sheriff a with nice everyman quality and a great deal of integrity.  This unfortunately makes it all the more puzzling when the character suddenly runs off to fight the monster with fisticuffs and gets killed for it. Brad says it was in the Sheriff’s nature to do this but it doesn’t seem to match the sensible and down-to-earth characters we’ve seen so far.

I got the impression, actually, that the Sheriff was what was keeping the movie sane because after he dies it starts getting weird.  Ginny does some scientific tests that consist mostly of pouring coloured liquids into Erlenmeyer flasks, and determines that the monster is made of cancer and molybdenum. If either of these facts have any effect on the plot I missed it, although I did imagine Crow deciding the monster was his long-lost relative.  Then we get into how it reproduces and things go right off the deep end.

You see, there’s only one of these monsters, and it’s a boy.  Fauxilla got around this through hermaphroditism, but the monster from Bog prefers the Humanoids from the Deep route.  If you’re lucky enough not to have seen Humanoids from the Deep, its fish monsters have decided they need human genes to speed up their evolution.  The monster in Bog does kind of the opposite, devolving humans to make them compatible with itself.  It does this by injecting a dose of its own blood into the victim and the result is a huge clutch of transparent spawn that Ginny describes as ‘not really a seed, not really an egg’, whatever that means.

This, we later learn, is how the Swamp Hag knows so much about the creature – she’s apparently been its mate for hundreds of years! She dies attempting to warn the monster that it’s walking into a trap, which leads Brad and an ichthyologist to conclude that one effect of this infusion of monster hormones is that ‘the victim becomes willing’.  That is icky and I hope it doesn’t reflect the writers’ feelings about real-life situations of sexual assault.  The idea is intended to add urgency to the need to rescue Ginny from the creature.

Creature from the Black Lagoon never did give a reason why the titular monster was interested in kidnapping human women.  It was obvious enough that the Creature was supposed to be a sexual threat, but its quest was clearly doomed and it was not apparent why the women were attractive to it.  Humanoids from the Deep appears to have arisen from the brain of somebody who spent way too much time thinking about these questions and trying to come up with answers to them.  Bog decided its monster simply didn’t have any choice – there aren’t any other bipedal things around for it to mate with.  What neither of these movies realize is that the questions didn’t need answers to begin with.

There are things movies need to be explicit about, and slimy swamp creatures raping women is not one of those.  A lot of times, horror works better when the details are left to the viewer’s imagination, and the fact that Creature from the Black Lagoon doesn’t understand that it cannot get what it wants from its captives actually makes it worse. The writers of Saturn 3 did something similar with Hector the robot’s crush on Alex and while Saturn 3 was not a good movie overall, that aspect worked fine.  Going into the details just gives the audience an opportunity to think about how stupid it is.

It is worth noting that neither Creature from the Black Lagoon nor Saturn 3 felt a need to use the words the victim becomes willing, either.

The monster’s silhouette resembles a man in a fish costume he probably bought on Amazon, and it sounds like it doesn’t want to get up in the morning. I suspect that hidden in the poor lighting is something that would be a shitty movie monster classic on the order of The Giant Claw or the spidermobile from The Giant Spider Invasion, if only we could see it.  There are very few things I enjoy more than movies that are loud and proud of their abysmally cheap monsters, but sadly Bog doesn’t want to show off.

This is doubly a shame because a lot of this movie just drags. The bit with the scuba divers takes way too long for the payoff it gets.  Brad and Ginny’s makeout scene lasts way after we’ve gotten the point, whether or not it bothers you that the people doing the kissing are middle-aged. And anything with the two fishermen and their wives is not only slow, but annoying.  The movie is at its Giant-Spider-Invasion-est here, when everybody on screen is a repulsive caricature of a human being and you can’t wait for them to die.

There may be a slight 70’s Nature’s Revenge angle to this film, in that the monster is apparently awakened by some idiot fishing with dynamite, but Black Lagoon is evidently the primary inspiration.  Unfortunately, all the things that made that movie enjoyable are missing here.  The monster doesn’t look particularly realistic or well-adapted to its environment. Attempts at suspense are just boring and the movie is unnecessarily explicit about things that should remain implied. Bog is not a complete write-off as bad monster movies go, but it’s not all that great either.

[thinkingbookthoughts]

Strange the Dreamer, post read thoughts.

I just finished it last night, and hoo boy was it a read. This is the first book I’ve read by Laini Taylor, and it’s got me wanting to read more. I’m starting Muse of Nightmares tonight or tomorrow, and maybe after that the Daughters of Smoke and Bone trilogy. Anyway, [spoilers probably]:

First off, I don’t care for fantasy. I tend to have little patience for made up words (yes, I know all words are made up, you know what I mean) and hyper detailed world building. I enjoy the fantastical, but fantasy as a genre generally bores me to tears. I don’t want to read about fake cultures when I could be learning about real ones. That’s personal taste, whatever. Taylor however, writes it almost exactly the way I want to read it. She dips occasionally into exposition dumps, but I find it nowhere near as tiresome as the typical Tolkienesque approach. Even then, I’m interested. She’s created such a wonderful world that I want to know whatever she’s going to give me, and uncovering some new detail feels like a treat, not a slog. My eyes still glaze over at all the made up words and politics, but everything else makes up for it.

What keeps this book interesting to me is definitely not the plot though. I have no major issues with it, it’s fine, whatever. But it falls into the category of legendary fantasy tale that generally I have no interest in. Hero’s journey and all that. I find it boring. Again, personal taste, whatever. I tend to enjoy character driven more than plot driven anyway, and this book is absolutely character driven. The story itself is so simple I might even go so far as to call it formulaic, but the people who carry it are something else. When their hearts break, so does yours. I won’t lie, she does go for some easy gut punches, but they do still feel earned and in their place. She’s not afraid to let you dislike her heroes. Except maybe Lazlo, I’ll talk more about him later (though I feel like the sequel may challenge him more). Most of the people that we grow to like are complicated. They’ve done terrible things, or harbor toxic beliefs, but they’re also justified to a certain extent. And to what extent that is, is left up to you.

She does kind of beat you over the head with her themes, but I mean, this is technically YA. It’s not terribly clumsy, you just find yourself wanting to go, “OK I get it! Move on!” every once in a while. But that’s a hard line to toe as a writer, and as far as shortcomings go, it’s really not that big of a deal. I’m willing to forgive it, anyway. Sometimes you can feel when the “correct” answer is coming through, usually because Lazlo is taking a hard line moral stance, but it never felt so overwhelming to me that it seemed like right and wrong were being truly dictated. It’s not perfect, and writers are allowed to have opinions, so eh.

In general, I’m a big fan of her writing style. I get the feeling the novelty would wear thin if I read all of her books back to back, so I won’t lmao, but from the one I’ve read I love it. She has issues with repetition to the point where it crosses from emphasis to unnecessary and redundant pretty often, but god I am a simp for flowery prose, so I will forgive it. If I had to describe the way she writes to someone who is deciding whether or not to read it, I’d say that she writes like those verbose, rich paragraphs you find on tumblr. You know, where someone has had a few nice sentences flow into their head, but they aren’t going to expand on it so they post it as is, without the context that might make it anything more than pretty words. (No shade, but... look they’re not exactly high art, ok?) Except that she’s actually written the book. And I find it a very pleasurable experience. Like I said, I am a simp for all things purple. If you’re not, you’ll probably hate it.

It can, at times, absolutely feel indulgent, but in a way the whole book is. I mean the fantastical elements of this story really go hard. She’s not really attempting realism here. Grounded (enough), sure, but definitely not realistic. And it’s fine by me. I’m willing to give a story a lot of passes if I feel like the writer has earned them in other ways. I don’t care if every little detail is what would really happen. Not at all, actually. If I wanted realism I’d go outside. I’m reading a book, not a newspaper.

One example is what I saw described as the “insta-love” between Lazlo and Sarai. Personally, I had no issues with it. It felt earned and in place in the context of the story. It makes sense for the two characters, both of whom are young and have felt painfully isolated for their entire lives. And then in walks someone with a mutual attraction, who can interact with them and appreciate them in a way no one else ever has. Yeah of course they fall in love. Even if the relationship wouldn’t have worked out long term, it makes total sense that one would have started. And as for how quickly it happened, eh. They literally met in a dream, what do you want?

There are plenty of other crimes that I’m sure I would defend, but here’s one I won’t. Thyon Nero. He is so criminally underutilized in this story, I question his place in it at all. Which is a goddamn shame because I love me a petty bitch like Thyon. It feels like he’s all wasted potential. In a sea of interesting, well drawn characters, he’s flat as Saskatchewan. Unforgivable. If it had been another character, fine. But Thyon? Come on! We spend enough time with him that he should feel more interesting, but he just doesn’t. There’s an attempt to give him a tragic backstory and whatever, but it’s so cliche (rich pretty boy with an abusive family behind the scenes controlling him and making him feel like a pawn in their game. Snarky on the outside, hurting on the inside, blah blah you’ve heard it a million times.) that I need more! You can’t just give me a scene of him getting whipped by his shitty dad, toss off a sentence about him wanting to free from his family’s exploitation, and then dust your hands and call it a day. UGH. He honestly serves as little more than an occasionally funny, almost interesting character foil for Lazlo. He exists to show you what a good boy Lazlo is. And that’s it. They aren’t even proper enemies. How much they dislike each other in any given scene is directly inverse to how much the plot needs them to get along in that moment. Before they’ve even reached the city Thyon is little more than a mild inconvenience. So why set him up as this scary antagonist??? I’m really hoping the second expands on him. I need more. You cannot dangle a funny bitch like him in front of my face and then do nothing with him! RUDE.

Ok, now Lazlo, I said I’d talk about him. Here we are. Lazlo Lazlo Lazlo. First of all, hate his name. That’s a nothing issue, I just had to say it. Second, he’s kinda lame, huh? I wouldn’t say that he’s underdeveloped, I feel like I have a much better idea of who he is than I do Thyon, it’s just that his development isn’t that interesting. He very much feels like a protagonistTM. He’s passionate and funny, driven and like... always in the right on moral issues. He’s the immediately accepted outsider who’s also able to bring a new, but more importantly, morally correct perspective on their issues. He’s charming, but humble, shy but not enough to actually impede social interaction. I don’t hate him, I’d probably hang out with him if I was on that journey (assuming I wasn’t following Thyon around like the simp I am). He’s just that kind of perfectly imperfect character. His flaws only make him more likeable, he’s never outright wrong about anything. I’ll say it, Lazlo is a Mary Sue.

Lazlo is a Mary Sue and Thyon was wasted on his basic ass. And that’s that on that.

I will let that (correct) declaration wrap this up. It’s way too long already. Thank god not a single person on earth reads these. Small miracles.

[dweetwise]

day 23: childhood bedroom

prompt from: flufftober pairing: felix x ace notes: panicking dad felix is a mood warnings: very briefly mentioned past child neglect word count: 1160

“What if she doesn’t even like pink?”

Ace resists the urge to roll his eyes at his partner’s unnecessary fretting. Felix has been nervously walking in a circle around the room for close to ten minutes, needlessly stressing over every small detail in their little renovation project.

“She’s a year and a half,” Ace points out, for once trying to be the rational party in their relationship. “I don’t think she even knows what ‘liking’ something means.”

He’s sitting on the narrow bed in one of the guest rooms and watching his lover pace. Felix is trying to figure out how he wants to convert the room into a nursery, but he’s doing a whole lot more panicking than actual planning.

“But what if she grows up and thinks I’m trying to force a mold on her?” Felix fusses, running a hand through his already messed up hair in a familiar nervous gesture. “I don’t want her to feel pressured.”

“From wall paint,” Ace deadpans.

“W-well, what about the bed?” Felix insists. “Maybe I shouldn’t get her a crib. Maybe she wants something like... a race car bed!”

Ace tries and fails to suppress the amused snort, chuckling at Felix’s absurd ideas while his lover huffs in offense and continues pacing.

“I’m sorry baby, you’re just being ridiculous,” Ace reassures with an encouraging smile.

“I know, I just—” Felix sighs, sweeping the hair out of his face again. “I don’t want to mess this up.”

Hearing the worry in Felix’s voice, Ace gets up to envelop him in a hug.

“Hey,” he says softly, chin resting on Felix’s shoulder. “You’re a great dad. As long as you don’t install a spike pit or something, nothing in this room can change that.”

Felix huffs out a shaky laugh next to his ear, and trembling hands come up to rest on Ace’s back.

“I hope you’re right,” Felix says, and then he takes a long breath and grips Ace’s shirt tightly. “I don’t… I don’t know if I’m ready,” he whispers, like it’s something he’s afraid to say.

It breaks Ace’s heart, but at the same time, he has absolutely no doubts that Felix will be anything short of amazing.

“Whatever you decide, I’m here for you,” Ace murmurs, bringing his hand up to stroke Felix’s hair. “But in my not-so-humble opinion, you’re probably the best prepared dad in the history of dads.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve read like, what, twenty baby books by now?” Ace reminds.

“Fourteen,” is mumbled into his shoulder.

“Which is thirteen and three fourths more effort than other dads put in,” Ace says. “And all this worrying? Just proves that you care about her, and that’s the most important thing.”

“But what if I do something wrong? What if she misses her mother? What if she gets sick? What if—” Felix rambles, pulling away from the embrace to gesture to one of his countless worries in the room.

“Babe,” Ace interrupts firmly. “That’s where the nanny comes into the picture. If there’s something we can’t handle, she’ll take care of it.”

“But I should be able to handle it, I’m her father! And I haven’t been there for her nearly as much as I should have," Felix protests.

“Yeah, because you were stuck in another dimension with no way out,” Ace points out. “Not because you wanted to ditch her!”

“Still, she barely knows who I am,” Felix frowns. “And growing up with separated parents? She deserves so much better.”

“Are you kidding me? She’s the luckiest kid in the whole damn world!” Ace protests.

Felix doesn’t look convinced, but at least he’s not putting himself down anymore, so Ace continues.

“I mean, one of her stepdads is a total nutcase,” he grins, and Felix lets out an adorable little chuckle at that. “But she’s got four parents who will do anything to make her happy. A lot of kids don’t even have one.”

His voice cracks on the last word, reminded of his own childhood with a struggling single mother who disappeared for days on end, leaving her kids to fend for themselves in a small house that was practically falling apart.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why the subject is making him sentimental, and now it’s Felix’s turn to pull him back into comforting arms.

“You’re right,” Felix says, cupping the back of his head and holding him close, his own worries forgotten at least momentarily. “Thank you for putting things into perspective.”

“Anytime, sweetheart,” Ace replies, leaning into the familiar comfort with a smile. “I’m here to keep your feet firmly on the ground, one shitty joke at a time.”

“I mean it. I can’t even begin to describe how grateful I am for everything you’ve done for me,” Felix says, intertwining their fingers and pulling away just enough to look deep into his eyes. “I don’t think I could do this alone.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself,” Ace grins, squeezing Felix’s hands clasped in his. “But I’m happy to be along for the ride for as long as you’ll have me.”

“Bold of you to assume I’m ever going to let you go,” Felix teases with a mischievous little smirk.

And Ace smiles and nuzzles into the skin of Felix’s neck, a warmth he’s only recently come to recognize as the feeling of home spreading through his chest.

Ace knows Felix is going to have many more episodes of parental panicking. He also knows his own parenting skills are questionable at best, and he definitely knows they’re going to end up spoiling Felix’s daughter rotten.

But none of that matters, because they’re going to be a family, something Ace hasn’t experienced in decades and didn’t even know he wanted until the opportunity presented itself. It still blows his mind that Felix would trust him with the responsibility, having much more faith in him than Ace thinks he deserves.

He’s getting sentimental again, clutching Felix tighter while blinking away a sudden wetness in his eyes. There’s a soothing hand in his hair and a soft murmur against his ear and that’s enough to ground him, sighing against the fabric of Felix’s shirt.

And then his brain does a complete 180, a thought so inappropriate for the intimate moment popping up in his mind Ace is helpless to stop the surprised guffaw against Felix’s shoulder.

“What?” Felix asks, amusement clear in his voice and already used to Ace’s mind coping through the worst jokes at inopportune times.

“Does this mean I can start calling you ‘daddy’?” Ace offers with a lecherous grin, wagging his eyebrows for good measure.

Felix snorts and shoves at him and Ace barks out a hearty laugh.

“You’re terrible,” Felix chastises, but fails to stop his mouth quirking up into a smile before turning to leave. “Come on, we’re going paint shopping.”

“Pink?” Ace clarifies, needing to know if he successfully reassured his boyfriend.

“Pink,” Felix nods with newfound determination.

[wordsinwinters]

Then Again, Part 25  (Peter Parker x Reader)

Masterlist (with AO3 links)

Total word count: 47,470

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 26, 

Summary: After an intense argument and a forced-to-share-the-bed situation during their junior year decathlon trip, Peter and the Reader examine their faults and failings. As they attempt to fix their mistakes and improve their friendship, that friendship quickly begins to evolve into something else. 

Slow burn fic in which all characters are included and their dynamics explored; multiple character POVs. 

Betas: @girl-tips-from-satan and @fanboyswhereare-you

Without further ado,

Then Again Part 25:

(Words: 3,948)

“It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

The thought of Peter making more of an effort, of him consciously choosing to pay me closer attention with the active intention of improving our friendship-- it isn’t the worst idea. If anything, it’s a rather attractive solution to a nonexistent problem. The suggestion alone is already prompting imaginary scenarios I refuse to acknowledge right now; though, inevitably, they’ll become daydream fuel within a couple days. Still, the whole plan is unnecessary, and I know it. I’m not angry with him anymore. I may have a few questions (some I plan on asking, some I’ll keep to myself), but if I do have any hidden resentment for his behavior stowed away in my subconscious, it’s as small and inconsequential as a handful of sand in the sea. Allowing him to carry this plan out would be using him. The pretenses would be false. 

Even apart from that, though, his texts gave off an odd, metallic aftertaste. The proposal reads mechanically-- it’s a scientific study with a simple hypothesis (and a reluctant dependent variable). It’s the idea of being a lab mouse, I think, that earns it the title the dumbest thing in my mind. It’s condescending. Even if tempting. 

Then again, I know Peter. I understand he doesn’t actually view me as a test subject to analyze and discard after the results come in. We’re friends. He feels bad and tossed out a poorly worded solution because he thinks I’m secretly pissed at him. It’s only an idea he offered, one I have full power to reject. 

Maybe I’m trying to dismiss it quickly because, if I’m being honest, I’m selfish. Selfishly, I want to say yes despite knowing the sort of negative message it would send to Peter. A small part of me is willing to let him feel worse so I can pretend his own guilty feelings are more significant than they really are. The possibility, the mirage just within reach, of balancing that tightrope between reality and fantasy with him is... alluring, to say the least.

And impossible. It would be wrong. Wouldn’t it? Of course it would be.

Like blades slicing fruit in a blender, my brain whips through these thoughts within seconds. Across on her bed, Michelle’s expression can only be described as disapproving or faintly disgusted as she too digests Peter’s idea. It’s the male stupidity is endless look we share when near particularly annoying men in public. It’s not often one we have to exchange in reference to the boys; their moronic moments tend to be entertaining rather than obnoxious, ignorant, or misogynistic.

She meets my eyes, and I wonder if my face gives anything away. 

“That feels weird to me.” 

The sentence is a verbal tiptoe forward, an almost-question probe.

“It did sound weird saying it out loud,” I agree. 

“You know,” she says, her tone mildly serious as she sits up straighter. “You’re not obligated to say yes to everything because you don’t want to disappoint someone. Especially a boy. And especially if he’s trying to fix his dumb mistakes by pressuring you into something you’re not comfortable with.” She pauses, glancing at the ceiling and raising an eyebrow. “If you want, I can make him come to his senses.”

Michelle tightens her fists and mimes three exaggerated punches. I imagine it, amused: Before the bite, Peter wouldn’t have stood a chance against her if she really meant it; now, he’d probably put his arms up to block her blows, minimally annoyed, and wait for her to tire herself out. I roll my eyes and can’t help mirroring her smile. 

Nevertheless, her wording is…. 

The same question pops up for the millionth time. 

Do I want her to know?

“It’s Peter, it’s not, like, ‘a boy,’” I say first, air quoting the last words. Maybe later, depending. But for now, I’ll avoid it. “And I’ll pass, but I appreciate the offer. I’m not uncomfortable and he isn’t being pushy or anything. I only meant that the…” nearly impersonal approach to our personal relationship? “the hyperconscious wording is weird. I wouldn’t turn down free snacks if the offer wasn’t described as a….” situation in which he views us as mere associates or abstract friends--

Again, I remind myself he probably doesn’t see it that way. 

“Monitored social experiment with unequal power dynamics?” she offers.

That fits.

“Precisely.” 

She snorts. Shaking her head, Michelle pauses for a few more seconds. Mentally chewing it all over again, her expression bounces from annoyance to curiosity to neutrality to annoyance again to what looks surprisingly close to compromise or understanding. In the meantime, I focus on watching her facial journey and not thinking. 

In the tune of surrender, she sighs before she speaks.

“I’m sure he’s trying his best,” she says reluctantly, her hands opening outward like a shrug, “his best is just bad. If it were anyone else, I’d tell you to refuse and block them. But, as much as it pains me to admit, I think we both know him too well to think his motives are as stupid as his phrasing. If anything, he’s probably excited about his ‘new genius friendship plan.’”

Nodding, relief hums under my skin: I know she’s right. I mean, how many people would fight crime to protect countless strangers in their city, then turn around and have cold, detached views of their chosen, personal friends? 

“That’s true,” I say. “I should probably text him back, then.”

She holds up a finger as I reach for my phone.

“Still,” she adds with a tone of subtle authority, “it’s up to you. I’m not saying you should say yes -- no obligations, remember? -- I just don’t think you need to worry that he isn’t trying or isn’t being genuine. That’s all.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Michelle’s stare lasts a moment longer, her sincerity as visible and certain as the brown of her eyes. After a second or two, she sits back onto her pillows and relaxes, turning to face the t.v. once again, leaving me to work out my final decision on my own. As I allow myself to reiterate my own arguments in my head, the Cullen family discusses the mythology of half human, half vampire fetuses with Jacob. 

It doesn’t take me long to reach a conclusion. Maybe it’s because I’m pretty tired, but the answer seems obvious, straightforward and simple in logic. I unlock my phone with the feeling Michelle knows exactly what I’m about to type. I begin to write the message I had settled on before: “I’ll think about it.” Simple and honest. And temporary.

But then something else pops into my brain, and, foolishly, I write that instead.

“What about you? Do you need new reasons to be around me?”

I send the text without a moment’s reflection. Rereading it, it sounds a little… coded, to say the least. Like a Freudian slip. Don’t overthink it. God, I hate Freud. But it does sound desperate. And awkward. Damn. It definitely does. It reminds me of the embarrassing things I used to post on social media in middle school, which I really shouldn’t think about either. 

I only wondered if the idea should go both ways. Instead, the message sounds insecure... which I am, I suppose, but he doesn’t need to know that.

Bubbles appear on his side. I resist the urge to send a series of backpedaling messages. They disappear. Again. My self control dissipates and I quickly send the original one: I’ll think about it.

Unthinking, I pull the small keychain out of my pocket as I wait for his reply and massage the edge. Sticking the pointed corner into my thumbpad, I accidentally dig it in harder than intended. And I realize something. 

The keychain was the first. The gifts or incentives or things. 

A flat click of a nearby door closing snaps my attention. The boys’ room? Glancing up, I see flash of Edward pleading with Jacob on the t.v. screen, and to my left, a shadow stepping up to the door. A gap in the golden line of outside light.

For half a minute, nothing happens. Aside from Rosalie shouldering past Jacob as he walks in to speak to Bella. After that, when it does come, the sound is soft.

Knock. Knock knock knock knock, knock knock.

It’s Peter. Ned’s knocking pattern is shorter.

The sound jolts my heart rate a smidge, like a phantom defibrillator.

Michelle’s head rolls to one side to stare at the hallway, her shoulders slumped in an I’m giving up posture. 

“That’s very obviously for you,” she says, pushing herself up and tossing the Twizzler bag on the nightstand, “so I’ll let you go deal with it. I think I’ll brush my teeth and get ready for bed.” She hops off the mattress, raises her arms, and stretches them from side to side. “You okay if we call it a night?”

“More than okay,” I say, standing up as well, the carpet cool under my toes. Once I speak to Peter, I’ll need to knock out. Otherwise my brain will spiral. And maybe, if all goes well, my dreams tonight will be better than staying up to snicker at this hilariously shitty movie. “But what if it is for you?” 

She rolls her eyes.

“Tell them I’m gone. Missing, dead, whatever.” Michelle clamps her eyes shut and sticks her tongue out to mimic cartoonish death. Then she pops back to life with a fake warning glare. “So long as no one bothers me.”

She hits the off button on the remote, Jacob and Bella dissolving into nothing, and as she trudges to the bathroom, I slip the keychain and a keycard back into my pocket before copying her arm stretch to calm my buzzing nerves. Michelle salutes me before turning and closing the bathroom door. I walk to the hallway’s. The handle is cold to the touch.

I swing it open. As expected: Peter. The empty space surrounding him is relatively quiet, only muffled laughter and television sounds coming from rooms at the opposite end. The air smells like linens, cleaning supplies, and artificial lavender. This too is as expected: the typical, sanitary comfort of staying in a nice hotel at night. I tell myself it’s a calming environment. 

Peter’s in his usual pajamas, an old beat up t-shirt and sweatpants, standing slightly to the left, hands clasped in front of him. His height drops a tiny bit at the sound of the door, like he was rocking from heel to toe a second ago, and as his eyes lift from the floor to meet mine, he smiles. A warm swooping sensation envelops my stomach. 

“Hey! You answered.” 

He almost sounds surprised. I make a face in response. 

“You thought I wouldn’t?”

I mean this as a joke, a reference to the couple late nights he’s shown up at my door (window, really) to clean or patch himself up before going home. As he knows, I’m not in the habit of shutting him out. 

Still, his head tilts and his eyebrows go up into an expression of, Well, you weren’t exactly answering me before. It isn’t a challenging or upset look. If anything, it’s almost flustered.

“Fair enough,” I concede, lukewarm guilt sticking in my throat. “I was thinking about it though, I promise, I just hadn’t decided for sure yet.”

He nods, fidgeting with his fingernails and momentarily glancing at the floor.

“Yeah, I get that,” he says, looking back up. His ears redden. “I, uh, phrased it pretty moronically. Or at least that’s what Ned said.” 

He takes a step or two back, closer to his door. It seems like an invitation to make the conversation more private, so I close mine and Michelle’s and step forward.

“All I meant,” he continues, his hands rolling over one another in gesture, “was that I thought it might be helpful if I did a few nice things for you when we get back. Not like I’m actually trying to condition you, like a, like a--”

“Dog?”

His hands halt and his face pinches into an expression that practically reads I am painfully aware of every mistake I have ever made and how the number continues to grow in marker across his forehead. His eyes retain a lightness though, the sort that suggests he’s able to laugh about it. He runs his right hand through his hair. Mine twinges.

“Exactly. I feel like that makes it seem kind of, um--”

“Bad?”

“Very bad,” he confirms, nodding. He takes a deeper breath, half smiling in an embarrassed, self pitying way. “I honestly forgot about that Pavlock stuff, I was just trying to use psych terms to make it sound more persuasive and, um, I don’t know, impressive?”

He shrugs and offers an I know I’m an idiot, but thank you for being patient smile. I bite my tongue against correcting Pavlov, which he seems incapable of pronouncing properly. Even when we studied for that exam, he only said it properly a handful of times, despite Michelle flicking bits of paper at him each time he said Pavlock.

I smile too, noting the irony. And I think of what she said: he’s trying his best, his best is just bad. It doesn’t seem so bad when he’s standing in front of me, though. If anything, it’s easy. 

“You mean,” I begin to ask, more to tease than to clarify, “as opposed to the highly offensive and disagreeable, ‘Hey, I want to make up for being a jerk, so I’m going to stash some snacks for you in my locker’?”

He bites his lip as if it’ll keep his grin pinned down, though it doesn’t really. A blush spreads across his cheekbones and for a split second, he looks away to the other end of the hall. When he looks back, his smile falters, just a little. The vulnerability reminds me of his apology last night, when he thought I was sleeping. 

“I was thinking maybe it’d be more than snacks?” he offers. “Like, I don’t know, I don’t really have it figured out yet, but hanging out a bit more? Movie nights or that sort of thing? Or if you have a lot of homework, we could study together and help each other stay focused?”

That last suggestion seems like an oxymoron. Study together to keep ourselves on track? It’s a laughable concept. Well, only if it’s--

“Just us?”

Peter freezes, his shoulders straightening slightly, his height rising a few millimeters. 

That is the central question, though. Whether it’s a positive or negative point toward my decision, I can’t tell. All the same, it’s been ages since we last tried studying together, just the two of us. It works best with Michelle and Ned there as well, seeing as we tend to get distracted. 

His eyes move quickly between mine as if he’s trying to read my thoughts before answering. He squints.

“Is that okay?” he asks, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “I understand if not, if it’s uncomfortable or--”

I shake my head, putting my hand on his arm to stop him, only realizing it when his eyes flicker to that hand.

“Of course not,” I say, removing it. “I mean, of course it’s okay. We’ve hung out without Ned and MJ tons of times before. It’s been a while but it’s no big deal. That’d be fine.”

“Okay, good!” he says, the tension in his body evaporating. “That’s great!” 

His eyes have lit up. I imagine he’s relieved those two won’t be around the whole time to make fun of his movie choices or whatever he has planned. I try to hold a smile to reassure him and clear his doubts while internally pinching myself to remember to not think too much on this. There’s no need to dust off those old, useless daydreams of movie nights and falling asleep on his shoulder with his head atop mine and May lightly laying a blanket across us and all the rest. Absolutely no need. Shut it down.

He runs a hand through his hair, nodding in a way that’s usually accompanied by him saying cool, cool, cool, cool.

“Would Fridays be good for movie nights?”

I barely register the question before I answer it.

“Probably, sure. That should be alright.”

His smile widens and he shakes his head once and continues nodding. 

“Perfect! We can have it at my place.”

I nod back, chest tightening as I process. At the same time, I beg my brain not to process. Just for a minute. But then, since I refuse to let them move forward, the gears in my head turn backward, thoughts reeling like a bicycle chain. Judging by the look on Peter’s face, we’re realizing the same thing:

“Wait,” he says carefully. “So you’re saying yes? Like, you’re cool with it? You want to try?”

God help me.

“I suppose so,” I say. At hearing my own answer, a different type of swooping feeling runs from my feet up. The looking over a high balcony type.

“And we’ll figure the rest out later?” he asks.

“Peter, really, if you’re still planning on the locker snacks, that’s more than enough.”

He laughs.

“Yeah, that’s what you think because you’re being lame. And limiting. And--”

“Leaving?”

It’s time, definitely. I’d forgotten how blinding Peter’s excitement and positivity can be without interference. Today has been full enough, I should end this now. 

“That’s fair,” he says. “I think Ned rubbed off on me. All that obnoxious energy.”

He shakes his whole body as if ridding himself of said energy and I restrain myself from making a joke about his word choice. Instead, I nod and with an exasperated “Night, Peter,” and step back toward my room. He does the same, heading toward his. Just before he makes to use his keycard, he pivots back. 

“Wait! I almost forgot.”

I turn around and he’s closer than before. Peter suddenly looks particularly nervous, his head angled to the side like a question, his hands fumbling over themselves. His cheeks are reddening again too, spreading from his cheeks to his hairline.

“Yeah?”

He steps forward to place himself directly in front of me. His eyes flit a quick path which his hands follow-- they reach out to touch my elbows before jumping up to my shoulders, settling there almost steadily before shooting a little higher to suddenly but gently hold my head. And then he leans over and firmly kisses my forehead. As he pulls away, one hand disappears and the other musses up my hair.

What is he--? 

We both take a tiny step back. My pulse pounds as my thoughts blur into nothing but impressions of nonsensical, ridiculous questions my brain won’t dignify with clarity. Peter’s expression is halfway between an apology and.. a dare? His eyes are as wide as I know mine must be, but there’s something playing at his lips. For a second, it feels as though we’re balanced on a challenge neither of us is willing to answer. 

The bubble of the moment pops as he shakes his head and gestures vaguely to his and Ned’s room, his floundering arm movements returning him to the strong appearance of embarrassment.

“May,” he blurts, “Aunt May threatened to, uh, um, well, that part’s not really important, if I didn’t pass that along with ‘all her love.’” The red in his face deepens. “Apparently she’s not too happy I didn’t do that last night too.”

Of course. It makes immediate sense. The memory rushes back. She told him to do that to all of us when she dropped us off at the bus that morning. I might laugh at my own stupid shock and poor memory but I can’t seem to manage it. 

“Do you want me to get MJ too?” I ask, realizing May likely demanded that he make the rounds. Maybe this is what started that play fight between him and Ned tonight. Either Ned dodged it or made a joke about wishing May were there to do it herself. 

It clicks together.

“What?” He looks lost, his head tilted to the side, brow knotted up. “What do you mean?”

“Unless, do you want me to pass it along from May?”

The realization hits across his face. He shakes his head rapidly.

“No, no, no, she’d probably kill me if I tried to do that to her. But, I mean, if you want to pass it along-- or just tell her to lie if May asks. She probably won’t, honestly, but, you know, just in case.”

His shrug and half smile are practically helpless. May ought to have more mercy on him. And me. 

“Alright.” A grin breaks over my face in a way I don’t quite understand and can’t stop. “I’ll see you in the morning then.”

“Right. Goodnight, then. See you in the morning.”

“Night, Peter.”

Rather than stepping back, as intended though, I rush forward. Involuntarily, or at least I’ll pretend, since it’s just as surprising to me as it is to him, I lean forward and kiss his cheek. Or try to. It happens too quickly to register fully, but I’m almost positive I knick the corner of his mouth? That would definitely be unintentional.

“ThatwasforMay,” I explain, stumbling backward. Seeming to sense it, Peter grabs my arm to steady me before I trip outright. He releases his grip and stares, stunned. 

If I thought his eyes were wide earlier, it turns out they can open much wider. His pupils are comically blown open. 

“What?” he asks, seeming concerned. “What was that? I, uh, I didn’t catch what you said.”

“That was, um, that was for May. You know, in exchange.”

That’s perfect. For the first time in a while, my brain saves me.

His face, though still flushed red, relaxes.

“You’ll see her tomorrow,” he points out. “Like, we’ll all see her at the same time. It’d be kind of pointless to pass that on, wouldn’t it?”

Shit. My brain is useless.

“Then, uh… keep it?”

His facial muscles twitch as if he’s glitching between a smile and bewilderment. Then a flint of mischief.

“Unless,” he says slowly, “you want me to pass it along to Ned?”

“And it’s official,” I say, resisting the urge to smack him. “Goodnight!”

He grins as near as he ever gets to a smirk (a term I associate too closely to ass-hattery to assign to him) and I turn to my room as he repeats it back.

We both step to our doors and open them. I glance back just in time to see him practically jump into his room with a speed that reminds me he’s a superhero, even if he’s an idiot. Filled with tangled emotions, I pause, listening or waiting or catching my breath. I only need a moment.

Behind his and Ned’s door, there’s a sudden crash, a sound like leaping bedsprings and something smashing, immediately followed by Peter groaning and Ned’s mocking laughter. Right before I go to my own room, I hear Peter’s exasperated voice: Shit! Dude, can you help me fix it? 

The room is dark when I slip back inside but the alarm clock shines enough red to see vague outlines of the walls and dressers and beds. Legs slightly numb, I stumble my way to the small bathroom to get ready for bed. It only takes a couple minutes, distracted as I am. 

I slip into the blankets of my bed. The warm body heat next to me can only mean one thing: Michelle.

It’s just one of those unspoken things. 

Next update: God only knows.

Tag List: If you’d like to be tagged, send me a(n) ask/message or reply* to this post!

*Notice: If you reply, I may not respond back; if you need/want confirmation, send me an ask/message instead :) Also, there are a few blogs whose tags aren’t working and I haven’t been able to contact them. For the time being, I removed most of the dead tags.  If you weren’t tagged and should have been, or if you’ve changed your url, send me a quick message and I’ll put you on my message list!

Tagged: (If I’m missing anyone, send me a message!) @spideymood @solarspidey @tiffanypooh @carrotsunshine  @breebree1198 @idontlooklikereginageorge @stumb1ing @bit-bot0711  @justthatshortlittlenerd  @avzuzu   @melonmochi   @happysynonym @the-redthread  @i-love-superhero @ohgloryyy-blog @nicunty @pxrrished @shugr12110629 @realitykilledtheteen @thehanneloner @lionfart   @tryn25 @slythergirlimagines @twentyjuanpancakes @hollandorks  @littlekay15  @hi-mishamigos  @eversweet-imagines  @thisisthetragicstoryofme @augurydemon @daisy-john @siriuspadfoot14 @debiwolf-t @casual-vaporwave @swimmeranxiety @dangerousluv1   @ghosthiam @homecomjng  @deep-thoughts-in-the-shower @bughead-isendgame @qu3en-of-letters @brightcolorsoffendme @cutehollands @enoumen-t  @dottirose @justthatshortlittlenerd  @thatgirlthatlikesmarvel @moonofmy-life @royal1958  @ashleyhearto   @pinkleopardss @cutie1365  @spideyschmood @dragoste-lunes @peterparkley  @gold-masks @stonesandskeletonbones @myhealingstar  @a-typical-antisocial-fangirl   @love-and-protect-bucky-barnes @fangirldreamsandstuff  @fandom-stuff  @unabashedlyswimmingtimemachine @jellzu  @aussie-mantle @stevieboyharrington  @septicquill @thingfromlove  @dude-whatawave   @me-a-hopeless-romantic @condy-wants-a-cookie  @susurrantsoul  @kawaii-girl-101  @lxstneverfound  @ukulele-tea-and-ocean @tepidtrash @emilymarie0422 @styles-bucks @shortstack-ofpancakes @lilbeatlebear @imyourdadssideblog  @the-introverted-loner-art @marvelcuties @lesdragly @atomic-chickenwings  @reanne @schwankyblock @nedthegay @kateelyse96 @outsider-underwater @omg-lexiloveyou @le-yona  @desteweirdo @thingfromlove @madasameg @bookish-and-shy @lowkeyfriggason @aelinashryv 

[theartoflivingalways]

i’ve been awake for over 24 hours

I haven’t been on tumblr in years. i stopped using it after high school, but I don’t know why. but now I’m back tonight, because I needed someone to talk to, but I have no one to listen. i have friends, i have family, i have a boyfriend. i have a therapist. but no matter what: i feel so unheard, so unseen, and so ignored by everyone in my life that i literally feel like i have no one to truly turn to. for anything. so, here i am. hope i get a warm welcome!!!

here’s the thing: i’m NOT a depressed person. i’m not sad, i don’t have any major mental health issues apart from anxiety and some adhd. and before you take that the wrong way, please don’t. i just got my master’s degree in social work and i’ll be starting my new job as a therapist in a couple of weeks.

but, i’m also NOT a happy person. tbh, i can’t really describe my overall ~mood~ or whatever you wanna call it. i kinda just wake up and survive the day, every day. i take it one day at a time ... kinda like what AA says to do; but no, before you ask or the thought crosses your mind, i’m not an addict. at least not a alcohol/other drugs addict ??? sorry

maybe this is why there’s no one to listen when i need them to. i fucking ramble about literally nothing before getting to the point. 

it’s weird that i’m writing right now (ok, typing???). i haven’t done this since i was little. it feels good to do this, to have some sort of outlet when you feel so fucking unseen and unheard by every. single. person. around you. 

so i haven’t slept in over 24 hours. it’s my own fault for sure and i have adderall to thank for that (yes i’m prescribed). i decided to start a blog again because i’m sitting here, still wide awake in my apartment, alone, while my boyfriend is sound asleep in my bedroom.

so what’s my fucking problem??? why do i want someone to talk to?? i don’t know honestly. i just feel like lately all i do is listen to others, help others, give myself completely to others. and in return, i get nothing. nothing even close to what i give, or to what i’m capable of giving. which is sad. not for me particularly (maybe?), but for others, yes, i think so. 

i’m not saying that i expect anything in return for helping others, because i don’t. i didn’t enter the field of social work for the fucking money. and i know a lot of fucked up shit is going on in the world right now, and in no way do i want to minimize ANY of that. i’m just feeling a little lost and lonely, so i’m hoping this is a new outlet for me to sort out those feelings.

the last couple of hours, i’ve had a LONG string of thoughts. if you read through, you’ll eventually found out how they started. but one of the things i’ve been wrestling with in my mind is the type of person i am. 

you see, it’s difficult to be “that” person for others your whole life, especially all the fucking time. if you’re anything like me, you know what i mean by that. and if you aren’t anything like me, well, first of all congrats!!!!, and secondly, i’ll explain what i mean.

when you’re “that” person for others, like myself, it’s easy for other people to walk all over you. take advantage of you, take you for granted, expect you to ALWAYS be there no matter the cost. and of course, why wouldn’t they? you’re always there to help. you’re ALWAYS there to offer support, guidance, and advice. you’re nurturing. you listen. you’re a fucking irreplaceable, loyal to death friend. if you’re VERY much like me, you’re also the one person in your family who isn’t a total fuck up (at least not publicly?)

you’re also nonjudgmental, and you were blessed with the curse of being empathic towards others at all times. empathy of course is beautiful and a very good thing to have in this life, but do you know how hard it is to feel for every single person around you.. and not have anyone feel for you???? damn

also, you never let anyone down!! ever. you’re reliable, dependable, trustworthy to the point where it’s almost sketchy because like??? who can be that way to everyone else at all times? you guessed it- people like me and people like u!! (if this is even semi-relatable, i’m sorry) 

but people like us, like you, like me, tend to do this thing where we keep the same shitty fucking toxic people around that have hurt us, continue to hurt us both indirectly and directly, and who have let us down time and time again, because we continue clinging on to the fucking useless hope that “someday they’ll change”. someday, they’ll realize how fucking important you are to them and how shitty their lives are, and would be, without you in it.

you- we - also live by honesty and truthfulness, and assume others just live by this as well. but then you’re proved wrong over and over and over again, yet you never fucking learn your lesson because you are STILL hopeful that somewhere, somehow, deep down, other people DO stand by the morals you try so hard to stand by in life. most of the time, though, you’re completely avoiding the reality of other people and their experiences and who they really are, only to try to fit your own narrative of how you see things and how you think things should be. 

if this sounds anything like you... i’m sorry. i know it all too well. 

i grew up as the “golden child” in my family. not just my immediate family. my entire fucking family. the pressure to be perfect has lead me to develop debilitating anxiety in my 20′s, and it is what it is, but like, why the fuck couldn’t i have anxiety in high school like a normal teenager? why now? 

so yeah my anxiety’s pretty bad. it’s pretty bad tonight, which is why i turned here. to tumblr. to try to write out my thoughts. which, by the way, i’m sorry, because this is an absolute fucking mess and makes no sense. if you are reading this, though, thank you. thank you for listening when no one else seems to.

anyway. growing up with the pressure of being *perfect* has a cost. at least for me it did: 1) anxiety of course, and 2) perfectionist tendencies. these have literally- LITERALLY - ruined my entire college and graduate school experience. perfectionism combined with anxiety is a recipe for fucking disaster, and i’ve been cooking it for years.

i am deliberately writing this without proper punctuation/grammer/whateverthefuckyouwanttocallit, not capitalizing my letters etc., because i want to not have to be so perfect all the time on here, if this is something i’m going to stick to.  i know that sounds silly but it’s actually been very difficult for me to write in all lower-caps and i’m very worried that no one will even read this and HEAR ME because of my literacy negligence (i have no idea if that’s even a real thing or if it even has meaning but it sounded right)

do u want to know why i decided to write this though, truly? what lead to me feeling like i’m “spiraling” - apart from no sleep in over 24 hours now? well, get ready to laugh, because i truly think i’m pathetic and going crazy.

i went to dinner tonight with my boyfriend and his fam. our waitress was a girl i used to know years ago in high school. my boyfriend knew her too. in fact, he knew her VeRY well. for the sake of my anxious overthinking, i don’t feel like going too much into the details of *that* situation, so thanks in advance for understanding.

anyway. this corny bitch made a joke about the current political environment. i won’t say what exactly, because i’d really like to keep my identity as concealed as absolutely possible on here. but long story short, no one really laughed - every one just kinda smiled awkwardly. but you know who did laugh? my boyfriend :) 

TO ME, it seemed intentional. she wasn’t fucking funny, for one. she made a bad - no, a very bad- joke. like one of those corny dad jokes. not even a dad joke actually. a step-dad joke, except your step-dad is a loser that you hate, who treats ur mom/dad bad, has no sense of humor or a horrible sense of humor and idk, just fucking sucks you know ???

sorry that got kinda dark and it was unnecessary but do u know what i mean??? and no, that was literally not relevant to me or my family system/structure in any way. just kinda came to me, ya know? ...writing works in mysterious ways man

alright so if you don’t agree, that’s fine. i already told you to get ready to laugh, because i am well aware of how insane i fucking sound. but you know what makes anxiety & perfectionism 100x harder to cope with? insecurities. and i’m FULL of them. 

so anyway. we left dinner. him & i were driving home. i will admit that i did have some wine at dinner, and i wasn’t drunk but i definitely was feeling cocky enough to stir the pot with him. so, i casually said, “hey... didn’t you date _____?” *insert annoying waitress’s name who i knew once upon a time*

i said it very calmly. very coooool. v collected and nice. he said “no? i’ve never even talked to or hungout with that girl”.

i wish u could see my face as i’m writing this right now bc i cannnot. like i gave u a choice.... the opportunity. tHE SIMPLE opportunity - a chance - to be fucking honest................................

this dude. straight up. lied to my face. about this fucking girl. ???????

YEARS AGO, they most certainly did talk. a lot. in fact, my crAZy ass searched their names on facebook to find their old little love notes to each other that they posted on each others’ walls. which were very cringey but nothing that made me feel jealous or insecure (for once). after all, they were from years ago- i’m talking 5+ - so likeeee.... why would he lie (: 

oh and they definitely did hang out because.... i remember clearly.... a PICTURE OF THE two of them *together* *hangin* (prob bangin too) (sorry) years ago in this now-waitress’s bedroom. i believe it was a ~webcam photo~ that they took on the new mac computer her parents prob bought her. so this photo is now NO WHERE to be found. and believe me, i looked. no, i LURKED. i went to the beginnnning of her instagram posts and deep into her uploaded facebook pictures. ok, not ‘deep’, i literally got to the first pic she ever posted on FB just to try to find this damn picture. and it took me for. fucking. ever. because this bitch has prolly posted a million pictures in the last 5+ years like who does that???

but i swear to fucking whatever the fuck that this picture exists. i have fucking seen it. i’d describe it in perfect detail right now as if i saw it today, but, once again, i’m concealin my identity, yo, so i can’t do all that. v sorry

anywho. this dude - who i call my boyfriend (and yes i love him very very much and our past is absolutely fucked but that’s a whole other story for a very different time) - had the nerve, the audacity, to tell me to my face, that he “definitely doesn’t have a picture with her” because “they’ve never hung out or talked before” ... ?!??????

obv i sent him screenshots of the dirt i dug up on facebook from 5+ years ago (i.e., the old posts between them in case ya forgot during my rambling) bc like, caught ya in a lie sir. red handed.

i might be late on mentioning this part, but here’s the fucking kicker (and i’ve never used that phrase and i don’t know why i said that but ok?): TODAY, for the first time in MONTHS, literally!!!, bc of the virus and the quarantine and all that, i got ready today for dinner with his family. like actually got ready. i spent HOURS doing my make up. i don’t even remember the last time i did my make up, ok. i dressed in a really cute outfit. i felt fucking very good about myself. i thought for sure when he’d come pick me up to go to dinner he’d at least say something. at least acknowledge it. he has literally only seen me in raw form for too many days now. like, complete bare face and sweat pants basically every day since march.

but. did he even look at me twice?!!? no. did he mention anything about how i looked? how it was drastically different from my everyday attire the last couple months? did he take 2 seconds out of his day to say something corny or flirty to me? even just, “you look beautiful”??? honestly i would’ve even appreciated, “you look beautiful, for once” ???

did u guess the correct answer? well if u didn’t, it’s N O.

but u know who he did look at twice.

our waitress at dinner.

(: 

i think i wrote enough for one night. if u think this is my anxiety/perfectionism/insecurities combination spiraling out of control after being tamed incessantly for 20+ years, PLZ TELL ME.

but also, if you have a fucking brain, you’d know that:

1) this is definitely NOT the first time i’ve responded to something like this the way i did, and 

2) i really just needed to ramble on and vent about all the shit that’s been going through my mind the last 2 1/2 hours, so there’s that.

have a good night get some sleep!!! thank u for ur time. 

[invertedeidolon]

The Longest Library #6: The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up: A Magical Story by Marie Kondo

This is a series in which I attempt to read and review all (or most of) my library of 297 books.

Rundown: Chiaki is a twenty something on her own, with a messy apartment that's been attached to a lifetime of failed relationships (although a lot of them seem like unrequited crushes she tried waaaay too hard for). The clutter and the drain it causes literally buries her own dreams and aspirations. Even if you don't intend to use KonMarie's method for things, it's a cute and concise way to see the impact it has when properly applied. Very wholesome, 5/5, would even give to my grandma.

Because of copyright and being respectful to the authors and artists, I'm going to try and keep pictures to a minimum, and do my best to describe things without them. Such is the hazards of reviewing a manga.

First off, before you even open the book, it's got this really nice matte satin finish on it. It's extremely pleasant. I had to just pause and say that for a second.

When I first picked this up in barnes and noble about a year ago, I didn't expect it to be so... I guess rich? There was no part of it that felt wasted or unnecessary. All of it felt good, and if it wasn't good, it was better. The art is pretty simplistic, almost all of it done in the same pen, and if you look close enough it all retains that human element. You can tell a hand did that. But it's still so consistent and, I suppose experienced, that it doesn't become distracting. The characters stay on model and don't look too weird, even when drawn tiny and comedically.

I like how the very first step is deciding that you want to tidy up. Even if the method described is much different than what everybody thinks it is, still coming at it with that same willingness and energy, resolute to do some real work, is necessary. It isn't as frantic and energy consuming as the heavy cleaning most people think of, but instead the method can be emotionally and mentally taxing. It requires that same decision to dedicate yourself to it.

Even though my house isn't as fine tuned as it would be had I used the konmarie method, I still make a point to do small tidying sessions as soon as I see there's a need for it. I come from a hoarder house and so do my partners, so there's an extra motivation to keep the space as far away from that as possible.

That being said, I recognize the main character's exhaustion. The startling mess that comes from such a professional seeming young woman just doesn't really register, she just kind of lives with it 'for the time being' (this is a phrase that pops up later).

As an aside, When she goes to answer the door, there's this curtain she pulls over to kind of hide the rest of the apartment behind her. I have no idea if it's a staple of Japanese apartments (in which case, what a neat idea! Nobody who's just at the door needs to know what my home looks like). If it's just her, deciding that she needs a curtain to hide her embarrassment, however... just damn.

So the reality of needing to tidy up sets in when the neighbor accidentally DOES see what her apartment is like. (He initially came to tell her to please get the garbage off her balcony because it's starting to stink... she kept putting it there, intending to bring it down in the morning, but then forgets). So a valiant? effort is made. But the roadblocks to starting on such a huge mess is apparent. Can't do garbage, there's too much on the balcony already. The sink is so backed up and she can't find the sponge. You kind of move from task to task and can't really find a place to start because you don't know HOW to start. And tackling something that huge in more manageable pieces isn't for everybody. Sometimes you can make messes faster than you can clean them. So it feels like treading water, like you're not getting anywhere. And that's usually where people give up. So she does.

Also, I find it hilarious that she found out about KonMarie while on a search for proof that there's people who are way messier than her.

She was totally expecting a Hoarders type situation. Nope! It's all just you and this tiny fairy woman.

So this being my first exposure to KonMarie, I was actually super invested when she asked this question. I appreciate this question so much. My (literal) garbage television of choice is Hoarders, and usually on that show, if they set goals, it's extremely short term. Mostly because they have only so much time that the workers can be there. Sometimes it's even so small as 'clear this one hallway so that my husband doesn't fall and break his leg and potentially die in his own home'. Meanwhile KonMarie is over here like 'what's your life going to look like after your place is clean'? Which is a very good question to ask, especially if you don't want someone to fall back into old habits. Cleaning is basically making room for yourself and your life, instead of just your stuff.

So, living 'for the time being'. I see this way of living as a form of energy preservation. You don't make the effort to do the 'right' thing, which would be expending the small effort to clear your coffee table so you can have a nice place to eat breakfast tomorrow. That's okay, it's just temporary, right? But then the next day, you go to have breakfast. You see the messy table and immediately deflate. You need to eat standing now because you don't have the time to clear the table AND make breakfast. You don't feel as great as you could be, but that's okay, right?  The trend unfortunately continues. It also spreads to other areas of your life. Unfortunately, by preserving energy by not doing the small tasks, the small tasks become bigger ones. That you no longer have the energy for. Especially now that you're having to SPEND energy working around those large tasks. Doing the small thing in the first place would mean you would RECEIVE energy as a result. Clearing the table the night before means a nice, calm peaceful breakfast, and you get to the rest of your day feeling energized now that you've had that bit of quiet to yourself. If you find yourself avoiding tasks, you might need to do something specifically to restore yourself. That's what self care is about in the context of maintaining your space.

“Nine out of ten items demoted to loungewear...are never worn!”

So, I have this talent for knowing where everything is in the house at all times and remembering what I have (a Forbidden Skill that comes from living with hoarders and also a shitty birthgiver who would arbitrarily throw stuff away). And I know exactly which pieces of clothing she's talking about. The huge pair of pj pants that I barely use unless it's abnormally cold. The various camisole tops with the missing underwire that I don't wear because the straps are synthetic and melted at the ends so it makes this unfortunate stabby bit. Yeah. I should get rid of those. Tshirts and shorts are better off as loungewear because that's what I use them for apart from exercising.

"Besides, why would you wear joyless clothes inside when you would never wear them outside? Your time at home should be special too."

This is something I've come to appreciate during quarantine. I feel TONS better when I'm wearing something nice, even inside. I get more work done and I feel more professional when I actually 'get dressed' instead of trying to work in my nightgown. Even putting on an apron makes housework feel more purposeful. (I'm going to take this to the next level and eventually make my own apron)

This is what I mean by it becoming draining over time. Even a good day is hampered by coming home to a cluttered area. Even having one space to sit that looks nice helps. (for context, Chiaki only just tidied her clothes, but nothing else yet, so she had an amazing day, feeling great in clothes that made her feel great, and then came home to this.)

"Books that haven't been moved in a while are dormant, so it's hard to judge whether to keep or discard them."

I appreciate this humanizing element of objects. I feel like a lot of us are taught early on to stop caring so much about our belongings, especially when they're no longer age appropriate, and we're pressured by peers and parents to 'let go'. When I give any object in my home a character or spirit, I find I take much better care of it. It's also partially the basis of my teddy bear medical project (the stuffed animal is essentially an emotional mirror, and taking care of the bear helps it echo back a need to care for yourself). Also interesting, to quote from wikipedia: "Kondo says that her method is partly inspired by the Shinto religion. Cleaning and organizing things properly can be a spiritual practice in Shintoism, which is concerned with the energy or divine spirit of things (kami) and the right way to live (kannagara)"

Also on the subject of books, I readily agree that #thelongestlibrary is a way for me to avoid immediately throwing away books. But now that I can make regular content out of them, they all have a purpose now, don't they?

This bastard. No matter how many times I purge my writing stash, one of these always shows up. Why is it sticky??????

"That's right. Things that are kept 'just because' are stored 'just because', and accumulate 'just because'."

This is true. However, I'm in a weird place because of my skills and profession. Can KonMarie please come validate my decision to keep crafting supplies and surplus packaging???

"Instead of buying storage goods to make do, wait until you've completely finished and look for ones you really like" "You mean don't buy things 'Just because!' "

I don't know how many times I've seen a messy house with a stack of brand new storage bins, never used, or storage bins overstuffed and sometimes broken. Something I forgot to mention that is a huge part of the KonMarie method, is organizing by category, and not by room. You get ALL of one object in the house, and put it in a pile in the middle of the floor, so you can see just how much you have (clothes, books, cosmetics, etc.) If you clean by room, you may have gotten all the clothes in the bedroom put away nicely, but they there's still dirty laundry, and also the workout clothes in the living room, and some in the bathroom, and it all doesn't fit and has to go in a storage container or gets stuffed in a weird place and you never see it again! So don't get storage. If it doesn't fit in your house, that means it likely doesn't fit in your current life. And either the object has to go, or your life needs to change.

"Wait, it's not the things I'm discarding, but the things I'm keeping that are in this room!"

This is a principle that I think didn't really occur to me, or a lot of people. Getting rid of excess stuff is important, yes, but making sure what you're keeping is meaningful is equally and sometimes even more important. It's something that could be applied to all areas of your life.

"Your home is linked to your body. If it isn't comfortable to live in, you'll feel exhausted, just like I did."

KonMarie puts so much love into her method. If you've never seen her show, I highly recommend it. It isn't like Hoarders at all. It's like the difference between American Gordon Ramsey and The Great British Bakeoff. Even if the families depicted are a little tense, it's clear they still love each other deeply and just need to be guided into making their home a place where that love can happen unimpeded.

If you've never gotten into KonMarie, I'd say this is a stellar first exposure. I love the hell out of this tiny, thoughtful woman.

Have a couple of bonus faces because the artist is a gem.

*don’t be suspicious, don’t be suspicious*

I’ve already lost count of my books. 6 down, 200 something to go.

[peachychibi]

ante merediem | Johnny

ante merediem 

Genre: friends-to-lovers!au, college!au | fluff 

Member: Johnny / Reader

Word Count: 1,600+

Warnings: n/a

The more you looked at the three-year old photograph of yourself on your laptop, the more she looked like a stranger to you. It went behind your comprehension, the smiling girl on the screen was you. There was no doubt about that. The memory of the day when the memento got taken was still vivid in the back of your mind. 

There was a gathering for the freshmen on your year, all majors were invited. High on being a newcomer, you got this unexplainable urge to attend any social activities that the campus offered. The excitement was so palpable back then, you actually thought it would last forever. (Funny, because in reality your socalled excitement did not even last for any more than three months). You got to the event with the friends whom you met just one day before. They were practically strangers with mutual condition as yours. It wasn't like you were provided with any other options anyway, you were basically a mere local immigrant who knew nobody in the new city. 

One of the things you remembered the most from the function happened to be the disappointment of how disastrous it turned out to be. You should have known better though, of course your expectation would be so farfetched from actuality. Who even thought it would be a great idea to plan an outdoor event in the wet monsoon? The air was damp, there were mud all over the field yet the sun was unforgivingly bright. The event was delayed for almost an hour leaving the students drenched in cold sweat. To top it all off the MCs who were supposed to lighten up the show were just as awkward as everyone. Truly an absolute failure.

The picture which you took with your new friends remained as the only keepsake from that day. You stood up from the comfort of your bed to walk to the mirror. The reflection was someone you knew, a short-haired young woman with perpetual dark circles under her eyes. This, this person is familiar. It was baffling how the girl on the picture seemed like a total stranger to you. Was it the hair? The girl had longer hair, wavy black hair cascaded pass the juncture of her shoulder. Her eyes, they looked so hopeful. The gleam in her orbs were visible, captured in the moment. But it was her smile that surprised you the most. It looked so genuine, she--you looked like you were basked in unadulterated happiness. So absurd. It did not make any sense to you now, just how could you manage to find any bit in your heart to pull up a perfect fake smile like that. At least you thought it was fake, it should have been right? 

As you sauntered back to your bed, you saw a flicker of light going on and off on through your peripheral vision. It seemed to come from your phone, the vibrating sound indicating a not-yet answered call. You shuffled to the desk in a hurry, impatient to know who was the person on the other side of the line. It's 2 A.M. for God's sake, who on their right minds would contact you? 

Oh, your heart skipped a little when you read the caller ID. It has been five days since the "realization", as your friends gladly put it, and you found it hard to act normal in front of him. In your defense, slipping out of your own obliviousness was an overwhelming experience. Realizing that you had been in totally-not platonic-love with your best friend for God knew how long gave off a sense of foreign anxiety. 

For a second, you were hesitant to press the green button. A wave of nervousness was opening up the subdued floodgates of emotions within you. Curiosity won over though. As per usual, you could never control yourself when it came to him. He was your best friend after all, random 'morning call' was a normalcy between you two. Why should it be different now? 

'Hello?', you answered in a steady voice. Your inner self cheering quietly at this small win. You would never let him notice just how affected you were by his unexpected call. 

'Hi', a shuffling sound could be heard from his side, it sounded like he just dropped something. Knowing him and his clumsiness, the assumption was likely to be true. He continued when it sounded calmer 'Sorry, I accidentally dropped my glasses, did I wake you up?' 

Ha, I was right after all. Deciding to walk the sassy route, you replied, 'No, you didn't. I'm still awake which is exactly why I can pick up the phone, you see' 

His chortle reverberated through the line, 'Nope, I can't see it. This is a voice call not a video one, you hear?' 

'Wow. Real funny, Johnny. Really. I can barely hold my laughter', you could not hold back your smile this time. 

'When was I ever not funny? I am the funniest man in your life!'

'Oh shut up, John', you groaned. Not long after the exchange of silly banters, you both were smoothly falling into mindless ramble. Conversing with Johnny was easy. You both had quick wit and an ability to jump from one topic to another in the speed of light, there was almost no moment of silence to fill the gap. 

'By the way, did you remember the gathering on our freshmen year?'

'Hmm? The one on the basketball field? It was on our first week of college, wasn't it?', he answered correctly. 

'Yeah, that exact one! I'm impressed, you've got good memory.' 

He snorted, 'Duh, of course I do. What about it, anyway?' 

You were going to describe that certain day but he beat you to it, 

'I even remembered that it was the day where we first met. I bet you forgot that fact already, right?' 

Thrown off guard, you were. Now that you think about it, Johnny was the one who took your photograph from that day. 

Shit. 

How could you be so dense? That day turned out to be not shitty at the end. You remembered a tall guy in denim shirt, confidently (and randomly) throwing a witty remark in your conversation—or more like a soliloquy consisting of whines and nags about the event—'I agree this is a shitshow. Why are we even here anyway.' Not gonna lie, you were judging him hard at that time. 

'Oh God. How could I forget you? You were the weird stranger who jumped on another stranger convos.', you opened the forgotten laptop on your bed to see the picture again. 

He squawked indignantly 'Hey! You were the shameless girl with no sense of public decency. Your hateful commentary was not very graceful either.' 

You did not really pay any heed to his words because once again you were curious about the picture. 'I only had literally one remembrance from that horrible gathering and it was a picture which was taken by you.' 

'Which one? Send it to me, I wanna see it' he demanded.

'I'll send you okay, chill.' You logged in to your messenger to send it to him. 'The weird thing from the photo is that I looked unrealistically happy ' 

He laughed 'That's morbid, what the fuck. What's wrong with being happy—Wait I just got the picture.' 

There was a five second silence before he continued 'Well, you did look genuinely happy in it.' 

'I know right? This is so weird because we all know just how shitty that gathering was.' 

He hummed in response 'Perhaps..' 

His words lingered and honestly your lack of sleep did not have time for this unnecessary pause. 'Perhaps what, John?' 

'Well, perhaps you smiled like that because of me' 

It would have been funny, you could have laughed at his words. Hell, you could entertain him by saying how he had been right. Of course, Johnny-honey. You brightened up my day! 

However you just could not bring yourself to joke along. Somehow you sensed that something.. something was off. He was uncharacteristically serious. It even seemed that he was hesitant to say it, as if he was scared of your reaction yet at the same time, he sincerely anticipated it. 

The time gap has been way too long now, none of you dared to say anything. It felt like tip-toeing around a ticking bomb, you both were one second away before the eventual awkwardness. 

You took a glimpse at the clock on the wall, it was currently way past 3 A.M. Maybe your sleep deprivation pushed you to making a rash decision or there was a glitch in your system. 

‘I think so, too.’ you finally breathed out the long overdue answer. 

It was eerily silent, your reply sounded like a hush of wind. You were not even sure he listened to it at all. You hoped he did, though.

‘…You do?’, there was a hint of shock in his voice.. but it did not have an unpleasant tone in it. In contrary, he sounded thoroughly pleased by your answer ‘You really, truly do?’

You were pretty sure by now that he was clearly overjoyed, he sounded like a hyper puppy. Weird comparison, you brain that was wired for linguistic fluency has apparently went fried. 

‘Yeah’ you tried so hard to stop your smile. Biting your lips, hiding your excitement—and failing. 

He suddenly cracked up, it was the infamous boisterous laugh of his, contagious. You ended up laughing with him as well. It was all silly, the situation was all kinds of ridiculous. What were you both even laughing about, your own stupidity? 

The laughter died out not long after, you wept off a tear from your eye. A consequence you had to face due to uncontrollable guffaws. 

‘I’m glad, then.’ He said, ‘Going to that damned gathering was one of the best decisions I made, honestly.’ 

‘Why? ‘Cos you got to meet me?’ you teased him. 

He chuckled, ‘Yeah’ 

‘Okay, then.’ 

‘Just okay?’ 

‘More than okay.’ 

[casnovakisded]

I’m back.

03/03/18 | 04:14am

So... life’s a bit shitty at the moment, and I just remembered that Tumblr exists.

I don’t really talk to anyone anymore and I think it would be good for me to vent to you guys. I had a meeting with a super sweet manager at work today and it gave me a little bit of hope. We touched on talking to people and just venting and how that can help, so i’m going to give it a go. Honestly, I think going through work to try and rebuild my mental health is my only viable option at the moment, which kind of sucks because I can’t often mentally deal with being at work right now. I’m getting ahead of myself - more on that later.

So, to those who may be reading this that don’t know me (If anyone’s reading this), i’ve been juggling anxiety, depression, (undiagnosed) bipolar, eating disorders and (undiagnosed) schizophrenia since I was around 14 (I’m 20, nearly 21 now), and i’ve only just started to try and get help.

I was forced to go to the doctors when I was younger by my mum when I opened up to her about harming. She told me that I was to stop, and if I didn’t, ‘they’ would come and take me away and lock me in a room until I was ‘better’. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame my mum at all for saying that. She panicked, and as far as i’m aware she’s never suffered with any mental health issues, so I don’t imagine there’s too much of an understanding there. She was trying to scare me out of it, but it just made me feel like I couldn’t talk about it. It kind of became a grey area that we just didn’t really discuss so I just got on with it and mostly just learned how to be secretive. 

From that point on i’ve always told everyone of importance that i’m fine, because that’s better than being locked in a room until i’m better, y’know? Don’t get me wrong, I knew then and I know now that that’s not going to happen, and that I just need help, but I can’t say it doesn’t make me feel anxious every time I go to the doctors. It’s a feeling I don’t quite understand, but then again, I don’t really understand any of my feelings. Woo. 

So from the beginning... 

I started harming when I was around 14. I don’t really know why I did it - probably a mixture of being bored, sad and exposed to a lot of triggering material. Like I mentioned earlier, I opened up to my mum about it because we had a super good relationship, and I felt like I was lying to her in some way by not telling her that i’d done it. What was said was said, and that was that. I was made to go to a doctor’s appointment at 7.30am the next morning (Which was actually before the practice even opened so I think that was just a bit overboard tbh). I couldn’t understand a word of what the doctor was saying (that wasn’t meant in any kind of negative racial way, I just simply couldn’t understand what he was saying because of his heavy accent), I could just tell from his tone of voice that he was being patronising as fuck. By the end of the super drawn out and generally painful doctors appointment, I was referred to CAMHS. So off I went to this appointment with this top dog guy at CAMHS (We’d recently had a fair amount of young suicides in our area so they were pretty onit). It was an odd session. My mum was there and she was obviously going off on one about how terrible it was and how I had to stop, and then this doctor guy is trying to convince her to not take away my blades because at the end of the day, i’m only going to find something bigger and sharper.. oh it got interesting. I sat silent more or less the whole way through, but I smiled and I nodded and I said I felt fine when I needed to.

After this appointment, the doctor concluded that I had symptoms of anxiety and depression due to previous emotional trauma and that I could totally be fixed with counselling sessions from my school counsellor. I played along and I remember speaking to the woman once. Again - I smiled, and I nodded and I said I felt fine when I needed to. 

I didn’t go again. 

Having anxiety, depression and being bipolar all at the same time is just fucking exhausting. 

First of all: depression. My depression makes me feel lazy, and menial tasks just seem like an awful lot of effort. I showered yesterday, for the first time in around a week and a half. My house hasn’t been cleaned in a loooong time. Talking? That’s becoming an effort (which is really annoying because my job requires me to talk to people all day. I’m still brushing my teeth every day though, so that’s good. 

Anxiety. This makes me feel like nobody cares, that i’m a burden to everybody, everyone would be better off without me, people would prefer it if I wasn’t there, people are talking about me, people are making fun of me, people are looking at me and judging me. Anxiety also makes me bite my nails, a lot. I don’t even know how I bite my nails so far down, but it sometimes gets to the point where I just don’t have a nail at all - like literally at all. Anxiety also makes me feel nauseous, and sometimes it feels like the world is literally going to end. If you’ve ever had a near death experience and felt the sense of impending doom, that’s probably the best thing I can relate it to. 

Lastly, bipolar. Oh the joys. So i’ve not been diagnosed with bipolar (As i’ve said, i’ve not really pursued help for my issues up until now), but one moment I will be on the highest high, nothing can defeat me, and i’m totally ready to face the world and whatever it wants to throw at me, and then the next moment everything’s gone grey and dull and the light at the end of my tunnel is actually a train that’s plummeting towards me, and I don’t want to move out of it’s way. 

So. Fucking. Exhausting. 

As you can imagine, having all of these all at once is just a big ol’ mess. It’s so draining (both mentally and physically), and it’s just proper difficult to try and balance all of the conflicting emotions.

Now imagine all of that, with an added voice in your head. Again, I’m not diagnosed with schizophrenia. It’s not something that was effecting me when I was younger, but it’s not something that i’ve managed to talk to anyone about yet either. There are very few people that do know this about me. It brings me back to my earlier point - if there’s one thing that’s going to get me locked in a room until i’m better, it’s hearing voices in my head that aren’t real - surely. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all the time - It’s mostly when i’m tired. I don’t even know if it’s schizophrenia, but what I do know is that when i’m in a bad way and i’ve had little sleep, I can hear a voice clear as day in my head. Mostly it just repeats things, usually what i’m thinking, usually not very nice things. It’s almost like your own inner voice, but it’s loud, as if i’m listening to it through headphones. It’s funny actually, i’m as good as deaf in my left ear, but I swear to god I can hear that voice in surround sound. I’ve been tired quite a lot lately, so y’know, that kind of sucks.

Eating disorders are just shit. There’s no other way to describe them. Whether you: restrict yourself, purge, fast, over eat, binge, or like myself, just don’t eat until someone forces you to, it’s all just really shit. It’s a mixture of an addiction, and extreme emotion. It’s a mixture of wanting to be as pretty and as perfect as you can be, and feeling like this is the only way you can make yourself worth something, whilst also feeling like you have to keep going, you owe it to yourself, you feel like you have no control if you slip up and eat. Obviously i’m aware that not eating is not healthy. I know that. You need to eat to stay alive and you can’t expect your body to function correctly if you don’t look after it, I know. I only have myself to blame for the fact that i’m dizzy all the time, and I always need to wee because the only thing I ever consume is tea, and that every time I stand up everything goes black for a short while - like when you get head rush from standing up to quick. As much as I know that all of this can just be solved by eating, what’s to say that’s going to be the better alternative? When I start putting on a fuck ton of weight because I feel too depressed and fed up to actually exercise and I inevitably start taking that out on myself, what position does that leave me in? I’d rather be sad and skinny than sad and fat. I guess my point is that eating disorders suck - they manipulate the way you see yourself and convince you that you’re never going to be good enough, for anyone. 

I’ve always hated the way I look. I lost all of my hair (head, eyebrows, most of my eyelashes) when I was around 13 and this opened a whole new world to me. A whole world of bullies, unnecessary comments, staring, and laughing. My school made the situation a million times worse. Apparently it was too much of a distraction for me to sit in class with my bald head on show, so I was forced to wear a wig through school. I was given £500 from the school to spend on wigs, so I bought 2 of the exact same style. 

They were horrible.

Wigs are uncomfortable. They’re hot and itchy, and they’re basically a massive flashy sign that says ‘bully me’ - great when you’re in a room full of other 13/14 year old kids that simply do not give a fuck about how you feel or how their comments may affect you.

Recent events over the last, let’s say, 4 years of my life have really fucked me up. I think i’m going to write a post for each event in the hopes that maybe writing down what happened will help me process it and eventually get over it, but I quite simply can not be bothered to do that right now after typing this essay.

In the last 4/5 months, i’ve been actively trying to work on my mental health through my GP/seeking help through work and friends. Well what a task it has been. 

Originally, I was advised by a manager at work to go to my GP. I can’t quite remember whether I went to my GP or to the EAP line (Employee Assistance Programme - provided through work) first, but either way that was 4/5 months ago, and i’m still awaiting some kind of solution or action plan. I just feel defeated most of the time. It seems that every avenue I go down just gets blocked off - every turn is just a dead end and I can’t for the life of me figure it out. When I went to the doctors, they told me I had a ‘mood disorder’ and an ‘eating disorder’. I was signed off work for 2 weeks, and then instructed to make another appointment to go back to the GP (the first date they could see me was around 4 weeks after my return date to work from being signed off, so that was super good). When I went back to the GP, I was referred to IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies) and SYEDA (South Yorkshire Eating Disorder Association). I was given a date, a time, and a name of a person that would be calling me from IAPT, and I was instructed to self refer myself to SYEDA. I was also given a fit note stating that amended/shorter hours could be beneficial. The date came for the IAPT phone call, but the phone never rang. I tried to chase them up, but apparently they weren’t allowed to discuss the account with me because it was booked through my GP. When I tried to get through to my GP, their line was just constantly engaged. When I had a look into SYEDA, the first thing that popped up in a banner across the top of the page was a message saying “Our waiting list is currently closed to all new referrals other than those referring from Barnsley”. 

Well i’m not from Barnsley so that’s really great, thank you.

I went back to the doctors to let them know of my super successes with IAPT and SYEDA. To my surprise, apparently it was my fault that I had ‘missed my appointment’ with IAPT, even though I never actually received the call. All they could say about SYEDA was, ‘oh’.

When I finally had an assessment with IAPT, they said I had scored too high on their risk assessment and that someone would be in contact super quickly to talk to me about what we can do next, but i’m still awaiting that phone call. 

I don’t even know how many phone calls and doctors appointments i’ve had. I just want someone to help. I feel absolutely drained and I just don’t know what to do anymore. I’m just sat waiting. I’m not living because all I can focus on is trying to get through the day without breaking down into a big emotional mess.

I’m not actively suicidal all of the time, it’s more like.. if I was being held at gun point, I’d probably piss him/her off on purpose. Or, if a car was speeding towards me and I could probably jump out of the way in time, I think i’d just let it hit me. 

I don’t know.

I’m lost.

I don’t really know what i’m doing on a day-to-day basis, and i’m currently just scraping by.

I guess i’ll keep you updated.

[movienotesbyzawmer]

Return of the Jedi

December 16: Return of the Jedi

(previous notes: The Empire Strikes Back)

Source: Limited Edition DVD, original 1983 edit (See my Star Wars and Empire notes)

I was 12 when this came out, and I think I saw myself as a very loyal Star Wars fan. I played with the toys a lot and had a cool picture book of this movie before I saw it. Plus the soundtrack. I was living in England at the time; IMDb would have me believe that this was released only a couple weeks later in the UK than the US, but I seem to remember having to be very patient and determined to get myself to a theater that was playing it. I took a train into London with my sister and my friend Steve, and we saw it at the Dominion Theatre, which was at the end of its decades-long history as a movie palace and entering its current incarnation as a venue for concerts and West End productions. The point is, I loved it but of course I loved it, it was my identity. Looking back it seems like it's a lot hokier than Empire but still good. Right? Let's check it out.

Opening shot recalls the first movie, except with the cool half-finished Death Star 2.

Pretty unusual to begin a Star Wars movie with Imperial characters.

Seven minutes in and we are introduced to the Imperial shuttle with the fold-up wings, and now two Tatooine creatures - Bib Fortuna and the Gammorean Guard, whose names I only know because I had the action figures - that again all demonstrate the importance of alien design.

And sure enough here's… "Jabba Du Hutt", and his motley band of creatures, at least one of whom inhabits Jabba's very fat folds and cackles like a kiddie cartoon beast.

Jabba's in-house party band, with a blue inflatable keyboardist, performs an attempt at a sequel to the Cantina band song. The song on the soundtrack album has a different chorus than this song, though.

Quite a lot of that goofy talking-in-different-languages stuff here; C3PO speaks English to both of the people he's translating to. I'm not complaining. I'm NOT complaining.

Lando furtively removes his mask for the express purpose of informing the audience of his presence.

The look of this movie is significantly improved over Empire. The big rooms. The lighting. Better production values.

Leia takes her helmet off and we get the Han/Princess theme because of course we do, and I love it.

Han is still struggling with being just recently unfrozen, but Harrison Ford still has to deliver lines that aren't really appropriate for his condition. Doesn't work out too well.

0:22:00 - Luke arrives. I kinda see why George Lucas made Han say "delusions of grandeur" because that's an important perspective on Luke. He's acting like a straight-up Jedi but he's not all that well-trained or experienced.

The Rancor is a pretty badass monster, he eats that Gammy guard, eats him up good!

Actually there's some not-so-great rear projection in this scene.

Pretty funny how sad the Rancor-master is.

C3PO translates a few syllables from Jabba into a whole paragraph describing the pit where they're going to die. By 1000-year digestion. A death so hard it makes you live way longer so you can die for a super long time.

Luke: "Free us or die". It is corny. But it's part of an arc that takes us way into the next generation.

VERY overt Wilhelm scream during this fight.

0:33:05 - Boba Fett's slapstick death, with the oopsie fall and the pit monster burping. Fans think it's stupid that such an intriguing villain got such a trivial death, and I agree.

Parade of Imperial fighters honoring the arrival of the Emperor, impressive looking! And now our first look at Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine in this trilogy. In the late 90s I joined in all the speculation about who would play the younger Palpatine in the upcoming prequel trilogy. It turned out they went with the same guy, because as old as he looked here in 1983′s Return of the Jedi, he was in his mid-30s and just wearing heavy makeup.

"No more training do you require," says Yoda. Seems like he's going easy on Luke. Although he does say he won't get to be called a Jedi unless he kills Vader. Totally making up the rules on the spot. Then he dies and vanishes like it's an appointment on his calendar that he's gotta keep, and yet barely gets around to saying "there is another Skywalker". Just being dramatic. That Yoda. You guys, fuckin' YODA.

Then speaking of being a bullshitter, Ghost-y-Wan spins some garbage about how it was kind of true what he said before FROM A CERTAIN POINT OF VIEW. Buncha FAKE NEWS.

We're at a Rebel fleet place with new kinds of ships, and the unabashedly shellfish-y Admiral.

0:52:50 - Shot of TIE fighters flying over the surface of DS2, just looks way better than the first movie.

"It's an older code, but it checks out". For some reason that simple bit of dialogue has been useful in my life.

"Hey! It's me!" That's some of that OG Han humor. Also a line that has been useful in my life.

For some reason I thought all this Forest Moon of Endor stuff didn't come until much later in the movie.

The speeder chase is pretty fun - of course they came up with neat, imaginative vehicles. With cool sound effects. Of course. They go SO FAST through all these trees.

1:01:55 - Ewok sighting. Some people really hate the Ewoks. Is that fair? They kind of purr."Eee cha wa ma". If there's a spectrum with Yoda on one end and Jar Jar on the other, I'm feeling hopeful that Ewoks are closer to Yoda.

Leia's missing and maybe dead and all Han can say is "I hope she's all right". That dialogue could have done with a rewrite.

They see C3PO and think he's a god! They burst into reverent chanting. It's kind of an insult to religion. Thumbs up.

And I gotta admit, this screwball bit is actually a good use of C3PO.

Leia sure got comfy quickly in this village. Her hair is down and she’s wearing like a nightgown. Dude you're trying to bring down the whole entire Empire, maybe stay focused.

Sometimes the Luke Skywalker performance is like a child trying to act like more of an adult than he is. It's gotta be deliberate, right? That acted earnestness?

Lando's co-pilot is a new kind of alien who talks pretty cool.

Ooh, very cool looking big fleet jumping to lightspeed!

One thing that works is when a forest speeder thing gets damaged, it destabilizes it and makes it go in a spiral. For some reason that just makes sense.

1:34:40 - Impressive volume of fighters in this battle, definitely a step up from the other movies.

It's really quite a lot of this movie that's set on Endor. The other movies do more planet-hopping. I miss it.

I'm really not having major problems with the Ewoks. But I do think that they invested a lot of this movie's story in them. Could have gone with a "leave us wanting more" approach, while maybe traveling to one or two new locales.

"I will not fight you father." That sanctimonious tone like he's pretending he's been morally consistent.

The shield dish thing blowing up looks very good! Good splody!

Drawn-out melodrama with the Emperor zapping Luke a lot, ends with Vader grabbing him and chucking him down a ginormous shaft. This famously had a "nooooooooo" added into a later version. Can confirm, such a nooooooooo is unnecessary.

Lando's character is a little tempered here. Unlike the last movie, he's just a piain ol' soldier leader man with a pleasant demeanor.

The mother ship gets all fucked up and it spears DS2 in a big flamejob splodytime! Pretty cool!

There's actually a big, shitty flaw on the left side of the image that’s been present for like the whole second half of this. A double line thing. Under normal circumstances, wholly unacceptable.

They made what seems like a weak choice to have the climax of this movie also be blowing up a Death Star, but it looks different here and it's very exciting.

Oh but now because it's the theatrical version, I have to hear the jub-jub song. Ironic that it comes across as overly Disney-like.

Well, that's done. Return of the Jedi, you have some virtues, but you are not quite as fun to like as the first two.

(next: Star Wars: The Force Awakens)

[t--o--f--u-blog]

☼☼☼☼☼ also think tank a white lecturer using the n-word when quoting literature in a lecture? I think she used it once outside of quotation as well certainly not meant in a disrespectful way, just seems unnecessary

☐☐☐☐☐ better have a justification at least but if you just use it out of the blue it always seems like some attempt at provocation 'i can say this because my interests are purely academic'

☼☼☼☼☼ mmmmm we're reading uncle tom's cabin, so it's hard to avoid

☐☐☐☐☐ should only be quoted verbatim if absolutely necessary, if there's no alternative I think

☼☼☼☼☼ yeah seems like she could have avoided it pretty easily

☐☐☐☐☐ if she's making no acknowledgement of the word's relationship to her privilege, that's rly not good

☼☼☼☼☼ yeah she's older so there might just be an outdated perspective there 'I'm just quoting the text, it was anti-slavery so I'm fine' sort of mentality maybe?

☐☐☐☐☐ still she would know about the contemporary attitude to the word and she should at least mention that! ugh like it doesn't sound malicious or super super racist, but eh

☼☼☼☼☼ Yeah I feel iffffy about it

☐☐☐☐☐ should mention it!

☼☼☼☼☼ Trying to work out if I should send email and if so how to word it

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ be interesting to actually properly discuss it

☐☐☐☐☐ yep

☍☍☍☍☍ heck I’d be interested to know more of a history of the word basically teach properly why its offensive

☼☼☼☼☼ Yeah, I might bring it up in the tutorial different teacher, but maybe good discussion

☐☐☐☐☐ mm that seems appropriate i'd love to hear how that goes

☍☍☍☍☍ uhhh there was someone who used it at Bar Oussou  the host reallllly should’ve said something and I normally would but just too tired for confrontation

☼☼☼☼☼ Yeah ☐☐☐☐☐ was telling me Sounded very cringe

☐☐☐☐☐ v unfortunate most disappointed in yhe host tbh

☐☐☐☐☐ he maybe had a old-worldy attitude to it and didn't mind or was too cowardly lol which do u think?

☍☍☍☍☍ I think he thought it was in the context of the poem she didn’t use it to degrade someone directly, but the word itself is degrading

☐☐☐☐☐ ugh but the poem is in the context of fuckin oussou yep ppl need to have a think before using words

☍☍☍☍☍ I just think its great to have a stage to do emotional work, but it can cross a line into normalising shitty white behaviour

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ I went to a coloured school so I can’t b racist wah wah wah

☐☐☐☐☐ and you have to consider your audience if your rant is dehumanising or brushes aside/causes suffering u gotta reconsider felt pretty ashamed on behalf of bartender/various black audience members not saying that dumb white shit would be acceptable with a different audience, but her obliviousness was kinda astounding

☼☼☼☼☼ wow yeah cringefest

☍☍☍☍☍ lol spoken word scene as a whole can b so lame haha rings true to why I/we left

☐☐☐☐☐ mm so macho! that's what I liked about talkbox some sensitivity there, gentleness

☍☍☍☍☍ still, I just wish people read more lok *lol

☐☐☐☐☐ yep I wish I read more

☍☍☍☍☍ like the stylistic range is generally pretty lame

☐☐☐☐☐ I guess that's why anyone reads mmm

☍☍☍☍☍ I wish I read more too

☐☐☐☐☐ hahahaha

☼☼☼☼☼ :')

☍☍☍☍☍ don’t mean to shit on everyon, I just think the scene as a whole and the conception of poetry is lacklustre - it doesn’t seem like the time for poetry, sometimes

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ ppl too distracted by netflix uwu sounds like phones but too much

☐☐☐☐☐ doesn't seem like the time for art, sometimes! hahhh

☍☍☍☍☍ its definitely a time for music

☼☼☼☼☼ I think there's a place for poetry It's just raps and memes

☍☍☍☍☍ yeh but I play dat long game there might not b a place now but I’mma fkn make one whether you like it or not lol

☼☼☼☼☼ Oh yeah fair go 4 it

☐☐☐☐☐ loll

☍☍☍☍☍ I just mean that I think 'poetry' has evolved into other forms, and now the traditional form is struggling to find a place I mean does anyone pay attention to Victorian satirical cartoons? I don’t I think it’s also tho that the low brow is more apparent in the moment, the high brow more apparent from a distance the shit sinks, basically

☼☼☼☼☼ elaborate?

☍☍☍☍☍ time brings forward higher brow material while a lot of lower brow stuff falls back or like there’s an art for getting through your days, and there’s an art for elaborate long form spiritual liberation

☼☼☼☼☼ so u don't mind about a lack of audience now if your work has staying power?

☍☍☍☍☍ different works have different digestion time and yes that is what I’m saying

☼☼☼☼☼ hmmmmmmm

☍☍☍☍☍ hmmmmmmmm?

☐☐☐☐☐ personally I don't know whether I'm prioritising the reception of my work or its value to me right now i feel poetry/art in general are useful tools for thinking about the world useful philosophical tools i guess and idk whether i'm learning for the sake of my own knowledge/making 'better' art or learning so what I put out into the world is better received I suppose the two aren't mutually exclusive but yeah - feeling fairly indifferent to the idea of creating work that will persist right now part of me feels more comfortable with being lost forever lol or at least that I should become comfortable with that, bc that is what will happen inevitably

☍☍☍☍☍ I just think in this atmosphere of complete denial of the arts as an important component of society, as well as the stigmatisation of ritual and other mystical practices that used to house what we now might describe as an artist, its important that we follow our intuition rather than give in to a system that routinely prevents us having access to basic resources like I want to be there for whoever is there when this period comes to end and those peoples are looking for anything to rudder them, whether or not I’m alive

☐☐☐☐☐ you want to add to the cultural record?

☍☍☍☍☍ I want provide a map for future generations is how I would put it

☐☐☐☐☐ mm how do you feel one can ensure the persistence of their own work? or are you just hoping it'll be around for others I suppose whether or not anything lasts is out of ur control past a certain point

☍☍☍☍☍ for one I make an effort to give away a lot of work

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ I also store it all and make sure that that stockpile is kept w care but I also think there’s something to be said that I try and operate within many pre-existing canons I also it’s important to use the more meme-y, short stay work to bring attention to the slower works yeah, re: canons, like tanka and before that wakka as poetic forms stem back as far as a thousand years - perhaps more by putting myself in conversation with the ancients... idk it feels a bit like entering a cultural refrigerator haha

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ sometimes I find it better to see my individual works as modules that make up a whole more prescient than its parts (Morton lolz) soo... maybe my work won’t carry the same weight until I finish, so to speak who knowsss but this how I think about it lol

☐☐☐☐☐ best to try and contribute something I spose rather than do nothing w ur resources

☍☍☍☍☍ I’m weird with this shit u don’t have to be

☐☐☐☐☐ mm it seems fairly simple to me and not that weird

☍☍☍☍☍ not everyone should spend their life tending their gravestone it’s a job for a particular type of person, and I am it

☐☐☐☐☐ but in a sense everyone does anyway everyone does things with the future in mind or without it in mind I suppose

☐☐☐☐☐ and i guess that influences what you leave when you die eheh, whether you do it consciously or unconsciously

☍☍☍☍☍ I just am particularly stubborn that I have something to offer - I think its partially a result of being denied that a lot in school, I found other ways to have social bonds that were more... non linear bonds with past peoples, and inadvertently bonds with future people

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ I find it frustrating that its seen as arrogant to suggest your work should be read after you die - if anything its remarkably humble as I'm acknowledging that I will never properly see the fruits of my labour it's a ridiculously isolating position to find oneself in, where your best friends - books, music, content - have no form of human intimacy with you and completely defy all survivalistic, lizard-brain humanity plus you're just on a total different dimension from most people you meet

☐☐☐☐☐ mm you're in a very specific position here

☍☍☍☍☍ lol goodluck catching up ☼☼☼☼☼

☼☼☼☼☼ unrelated btw

(☼☼☼☼☼ posts a meme in chat)

☍☍☍☍☍ see y'all @ da rally (in reference to the meme)

☐☐☐☐☐ where and when is this? oh oops thought you meant a real one

☼☼☼☼☼ hahaha

☍☍☍☍☍ xD

☼☼☼☼☼ structurally is the meme ok ? took the photo the other day, and just added the text.

☍☍☍☍☍ yes are u going to weigh in on the conversation tho lol

☼☼☼☼☼ nah not really

☍☍☍☍☍ meme fine

☼☼☼☼☼ I have so little to add

☍☍☍☍☍ well hm why make memes? why not write novel? do memes have staying power?

☐☐☐☐☐ it's a question of what timescale is important to you at any given time maybe

☍☍☍☍☍ oh absolutely - not trying to infer a hierarchy here, I just think there are different approaches for different problems

☐☐☐☐☐ sometimes I'll say something to someone so they'll remember it for tomorrow, sometimes I'll say something to someone and hope they'll remember forever lol mm I don't think I care about staying power that much

☐☐☐☐☐ memes have such a short lifetime, they're like cultural mayflies haha

☼☼☼☼☼ Yeah defs

☍☍☍☍☍ why tho lol

☼☼☼☼☼ Because the art itself can date while still inspiring change

☍☍☍☍☍ yeah so using it pragmatically like a single use tissue

☼☼☼☼☼ If you create something short lived, it (with the help of other artists producing similar work) is able to push art and society in a specific direction The butterfly effect I guess

☍☍☍☍☍ it's true that you have more effect in the current conversation

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ but that conversation draws intensively on a language formed by the ancients so the two are dependent on each other, a back and forth

☐☐☐☐☐ and that's dependent on their work's longevity?

☍☍☍☍☍ not following ur question

☐☐☐☐☐ not following your point haha hmm

☼☼☼☼☼ so you're suggesting a works longevity is crucial in that it helps reinforce and update the ancient language in which short term work of the future will be influenced by?

☐☐☐☐☐ mm also - what if of all the work you make, it's only a meme that survives the passage of time?

☍☍☍☍☍ basically... like you're just reiterating points that have been made more in depth in 'higher' brow culture - that's definitely how I feel when writing raps

☐☐☐☐☐ like Roman graffiti surviving on the walls or whatever

☍☍☍☍☍ did you a hear copy of the I Ching, the Chinese numerology classic more than a thousand years old, was found in the 70s and had a heap more sections and a different order? effectively completely changing the understanding of the I Ching gotta get those nice lead storage chambers ayyyyy ahahaha it was found buried in a coffin, obvs haha

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ a lot of Chinese philosophers only exist in so much as someone else described them

☼☼☼☼☼ But what does that changing of contexts of that piece actually mean for us? Is updated Ching from the coffin helping us in any way?

☍☍☍☍☍ I think for me finding the I Ching and looking over it is like a person in a thousand years finding a functional iPhone it gives great insight into human impulses regardless of time and offers a way of writing the past a new, which in turn presents a new future (thinking of the cowboy article you sent me) reconceptualizing the past IS the future look at 'Make America Great Again' or calls to restore the caliphate both are founded on histories that have more to do with our current state than the actual happenings of the past

☼☼☼☼☼ I do see where you're coming from I like the idea that it's important to preserve our work for understand the past better And I hope that someone in the future will have a clearer understanding of our time through your well preserved works But what fucking future is it

☍☍☍☍☍ haha but like looking back we see people been asking that for a veeery long time I get it seems on a new scale but we're on a new scale too

☼☼☼☼☼ It does seem that yes Also if we do survive and keep on teching on

☍☍☍☍☍ I'm for an integration of the human/natural binary where we properly acknowledge our mutual codependency, the earth and humanity that is

☼☼☼☼☼ Are we even going to be translatable? Is the functioning iPhone found by the future person going to even be able to be translated? Or will it be meaningless because everyone is already part of the grid

☍☍☍☍☍ where artificially effecting the climate for the benefit of 'nature' isn't seen as strange but completely akin to Aboriginal burn back practices

☐☐☐☐☐ i guess it's productive to hope that it will be translatable

☍☍☍☍☍ we've always interfered in the running of nature

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ ehhh idk we translated fucking hieroglyphics

☼☼☼☼☼ Or future tech can look into the past and someone is watching our lives as we type this now, constantly being understood through our context in a way we can't comprehend through our recording processes shrugs

☍☍☍☍☍ I mean yeah, imagine if the internet was even vaguely archived

☼☼☼☼☼ You probably have a better understanding of how the future will pan out than I do tho

☍☍☍☍☍ even if 0.1 % was kept, it would be a massive resource

☼☼☼☼☼ No sass intended there, I'm sincere

☍☍☍☍☍ lol idk I just try to see a bigger picture and it keeps me calm remember me old saying? we survived the plague and nukes lol

☼☼☼☼☼ I just don't see the issue with creating short term work, especially if it is preserved

☍☍☍☍☍ oh neither do I

☼☼☼☼☼ Like a meme may have more impact than a novel rn

☐☐☐☐☐ well it could be argued that we're yet to survive nukes but I see your point impact on various timescales

☼☼☼☼☼ I've heard the plague make be thinking of making a comeback too haha

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ oh duh peasantry is fully hip rn

☐☐☐☐☐ but like

☍☍☍☍☍ bring back the boils, they look great with my Balenciaga sneakers

☐☐☐☐☐ lol bubonic chic

☼☼☼☼☼ Pretty close to heroin chic tbh haha

☍☍☍☍☍ not jking that was tb

☐☐☐☐☐ but like, I don't find a huge amount of solace in the fact that we survived the plague

☍☍☍☍☍ "The Victorians romanticized the disease and the effects it caused in the gradual build to death. For decades, many beauty standards emulated or highlighted these effects. And as scientists gained greater understanding of the disease and how it was spread, the disease continued to keep its hold on fashion. and the severity of the corsets was known to harm the lungs in such a way that would increase the likelihood of transmission LOOOL

☐☐☐☐☐ mm Balenciaga look out idk it's a question of what capacity we survive in

☼☼☼☼☼ lollllll

☐☐☐☐☐ quite depressing to think about

☍☍☍☍☍ eating disorders have a pretense

☐☐☐☐☐ what if ecocide leaves a few insular eco fascist regimes who gradually diminish over centuries always engaged in pointless wars of attrition with one another lol

☍☍☍☍☍ I mean you could probably say the same thing of colonial regimes now

☐☐☐☐☐ just because we can survive, doesn't mean my outlook should b at all rosy :((

☍☍☍☍☍ point is its a big ol' world that has plenty of room for pain AND love any future pain you think is imminent probably already is happening, and nonetheless breakfast tasted good this morning

☼☼☼☼☼ 'The hipster middle class would dress with raggedy beards and large jackets and refuse to use deodorant, perhaps to reflect the look of people suffering from homelessness at the time. It is suspected that this made them less likely to be hired, and therefore more likely to become homeless themselves.'  ☍☍☍☍☍ ahahaha

☐☐☐☐☐ mm that's true hahhh

☼☼☼☼☼ Planning on making this into a full essay. Might not be popular now, but I think it has staying power? Soz for shitposting haha

☍☍☍☍☍ I was talking with ☲☲☲☲☲ a while back, and something struck me - she said, "I never thought this age would have its own fleet of particular medical conditions." (or something like that lol, translated via my nerd brain)

☼☼☼☼☼ Yeah that didn't quite sound like her But that sentiment is great

☍☍☍☍☍ 'fleet'

☼☼☼☼☼ In that ofc there is, but also wow yeah ofc!

☐☐☐☐☐ mmm hahh these conversations should be recorded so we can all think about em without scrolling up endlessly

☼☼☼☼☼ I do like the idea of people reading these works in the future tho

☐☐☐☐☐ and also so that they can be preserved for 10,000+ years of course

☼☼☼☼☼ In the same way we read the letters sent between dead artists now

☐☐☐☐☐ mm very true

☍☍☍☍☍ mmm

☐☐☐☐☐ messenger is not a particularly stable storage medium and also is more vulnerable to third party scrutiny although the fact we're reading artists letters now means that medium is also pretty fucking vulnerable to scrutiny lol

☍☍☍☍☍ I fucking found the word! (sorry was searching for it so hard) Neurasthenia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurasthenia

☼☼☼☼☼ Americanitis lol

☍☍☍☍☍ uhh the page doesn't rly talk about this, but its like a condition of over-working effectively, and people would try and get prescribed the pills to treat it as a way of signalling they were a dedicated worker its total hokey

☐☐☐☐☐ wow yeah you mentioned this a while back

☼☼☼☼☼ oh I've heard a similar thing in Japan were workers will pretend to fall asleep at their desks to show how hard they're working No idea the trust behind it tho

☍☍☍☍☍ to this day, "In Japan, shinkei-suijaku is treated with Morita therapy involving mandatory rest and isolation, followed by progressively more difficult work, and a resumption of a previous social role. The diagnosis is sometimes used as a disguise for serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and mood disorders." a dignified mental illness uwu none of that lower class shit I'm a classy fuck with money, I don't get the same mental conditions as the poor lolol reminds me of now: I don't have shitty parents, I just have adhd (not to deligitimise all uses of adhd, just over diagnosed)

☼☼☼☼☼ mmmmm i feel u yes this has been a wild ride

☍☍☍☍☍ yes I’m leaving to get late lunch uwu have a good day in this cosmic spider web lololol

☼☼☼☼☼ :')

☍☍☍☍☍ Like the burning of this charcoal fire, our years too will soon expire Kobayashi Issa listening to Krista Tippet talk with Maria Popova, this particular phrase resonated with our conversation: we live in a world where disruption over-fetishised; we need cultural stewardship to help along new waves of disruption

☼☼☼☼☼ How would u define cultural stewardship in a practical sense?

☍☍☍☍☍ caring for the legacy of those past as a means of refreshing their insight for a new age a very straightforward example would b the importance of new translations, in this regard - as our understanding and depth of connection to Japanese society has deepened, so too have our translations dusting off the books so to speak in some sense I see that in our music too or reappropriating to a new context

☼☼☼☼☼ Well remasters are a time terry literal example Fuck

☍☍☍☍☍ time terry

☼☼☼☼☼ Pretty* not time terry lol

☼☼☼☼☼ lime berry yeah exactly

☼☼☼☼☼ Slime Jerry

☍☍☍☍☍ I mean rereleasing is an obvs example mhm but more abstract examples are how I’ve exported into both your brains Bridle/Steyerl/Haraway via conversation and art lolol I’m helping it move from one place to another same w Zappa lol

☐☐☐☐☐ also - looking after artist friends being generous I feel these are acts of pre-emptive cultural stewardship

☍☍☍☍☍ haha yeah definitely different time scales it could function on

☐☐☐☐☐ looking after and maintain communities

☍☍☍☍☍ hosting open mics lol helping teach ppl poetry lollll

☐☐☐☐☐ not allowing hate speech to creep into open mics lol

☼☼☼☼☼ Truuuuu Or anywhere for that matter

☐☐☐☐☐ not becoming so dusty that you actually have a detrimental impact on cultural progression

☍☍☍☍☍ I think religions only exist in so far as they have active practitioners

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☼☼☼☼☼ Tru

☍☍☍☍☍ I think my sense is, in religion, this same argument plays out with orthodoxy versus mysticism Maintenance of buildings is in there too for religion People being assigned paid positions as the keepers and givers of religious knowledge oh yeah thinking a lot here of Shanzai, ☐☐☐☐☐, and the idea of an object as a lived practice

☐☐☐☐☐ when home I'm gonna do my best to archive this conversation mmm

☍☍☍☍☍ you’re going to steward our conversation bout stewardship ...

☐☐☐☐☐ this is all going in

☍☍☍☍☍ ...the tv where I am says “The comedian getting behind ‘Know Thy Nuts’” and there are big walnuts on the screen

☐☐☐☐☐ ???????

☍☍☍☍☍ “I didn’t realise chemotherapy would be such great comedic material!”

☐☐☐☐☐ ¿¿¿¿¿¿

☼☼☼☼☼ Huhhhh

☍☍☍☍☍ lol highly recommend https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/on-being-with-krista-tippett/id150892556?mt=2&i=1000429408054https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/on-being-with-krista-tippett/id150892556?mt=2&i=1000429408054

[theangelmojo]

4am Wiki Adventures

I typed “Lord Byron” into Wiki. Don’t ask me why. Those early morning hours, you know.

And I knew stuff about him before, but not stuff. Not like the stuff Wiki can, so I was not prepared for the awesome of Lord Byron. 

This guy’s insane, like, he is The King of Le Drama. The biggest drama-llama to ever ding-dong, I stg. He takes extreme to a whole new level. Like, you know those posts where they go “well that escalated quickly”, he is that. 

So I have some facts I’d like to share. Random facts. Hilarious facts. Facts that are totally unnecessary and unimportant to know, but are the thing I am probably gonna think about for the next solid week. 

Hold onto your hats, folks, we’re in for a long ride. 

1. His father was a douche. Only married women for their money, bled them for that money, stuck babies in them and then ditched them. What an asshole.

2. He had Issues with his mom, who was understandably depressed because of her asshole husband, and reportedly called her “short and fat” (assholery is genetic, probs). In return she had Issues with him, but also spoilt him and is part of the reason Byron is well known for being stupid with his money (also genetic, probs). 

THIS CONTINUES FOR A WHILE, SO I’LL PUT THIS UNDER THE CUT TO SPARE YOUR DASH, SORRY

3. He started falling in love with people at a reaaaaally young age. Like, whoa son, steady on chap. His first crush was a distant cousin (Mary Duff) at the age of 8, who he then forgot about till he turned 16 and found out she was gonna get married. Then he remembered her and was like oh heck, how will my heart go on and wrote a big paragraph about it, wherein he acknowledged the fact that his feelings were ridiculous but nevertheless intense and true. 

4. That one wasn’t a sexual love though, apparently, but he also acknowledges that he started developing shall we say certain ‘cravings’ at a considerably young age. He claims this is partly the reason why he writes like he does. In his own words: “Perhaps this was one of the reasons that caused the anticipated melancholy of my thoughts — having anticipated life.”

5. At this point there are a bunch of people who want to claim that his, how shall we put it, ‘young sexual awakening’?? is the reason for his “sexual propensities”. Like, no dude, he’s just bi. Accept it.

(I’d like to cut in here and say that the next fact made me very sad. Very very sad. 4am Me was not prepared for the sudden hit of sadness and started sniffling a lot. Prepare yo’self.)

6. There are reports that he was sexually abused as a kid. One of his abusers was one of his caretakers, Mary Gray, who was later dismissed when he turned 11. She also used this abuse as a way of keeping him silent about the bad company she kept. I mean like, holy shit, that is such a nasty bitch. My god, I hate reading about stuff like this. (4am in the morning and I whimpered “poor baby” to myself, blinking through tears) Then this guy called Lord Gray De Ruthyn, who was also one of his mother’s suitors, also forced himself on Byron. The poor little guy was “deeply disturbed by this” (no shit) and apparently never told his mom, which in hindsight is probably part of the reason for his Issues with her. My god, this guy was so destined to be an angst-writer. Jesus Christ. 

And then some asshole historians or god knows who have the audacity to suggest that these events led to him having sexual liaisons with men at college like what the fuck. How many times do you have to say “he was bi” till it gets through their fucking skulls mother of god --

Moving on.

7. Onto the more interesting and hilarious facts. His first male loves were found at Harrow, where he found a fondness for a bunch of lads, all named John. John FitzGibbon, John Thomas Claridge, John Edleston, John Cam Hobhouse. Must have been real confusing trying to navigate all these Johns, but one thing he knew for sure is that he definitely likes boys too. 

8. Proof of him liking them boys is him pouring all his fucking money on them. This guy was such a freaking Sugar Daddy. Jesus. He left £7000 in his will to a 14 year old boy he met in Athens who taught him Italian. I mean, the sum of money got cancelled, but still. Come on, By. This isn't even the only time he shoved his money at a guy, no siree, but we’ll get to that part later.

9. The most likely reason he left England was because of his reportedly incestuous relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh. Ugh. Okay, this one grossed me out, but he like, had children with her too, apparently. Around this time he also got married to Annabella Millbanke and had a kid (Ada Lovelace!!) with her, but their marriage was too shit and she thought he was insane so she left him. All this scandal forced him to leave due to all the rumours circulating, plus the fact that he was majorly in debt too at the time. No surprise there.

10. Once he left England, he never came back. He went to Belgium. Then to Switzerland, where he met another John -- John William Polidori, who became his physician, and there he also befriended Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Shelley (née Godwin). He had another affair with another lady, this time Clair Clairmont, who was Mary’s stepsister. Got her pregnant too. 

11. This lovely bunch of drama-llamas then got rained in, and due to the shitty weather they were stuck indoors for 3 days. During this time they read a bunch of cool horror stories, which then inspired them to write their own. Yes guys, this is where Frankenstein was born, but not only that -- John William Polidori also wrote The Vampyre (with a Y) which is The Start of the romantic vampire genre. That’s right folks -- thanks to this guy, we have Twilight. (But in all honesty, his story is far better, go check it out.)

12. Byron is super clever. No surprise there, but an example of this is that he learnt the Armenian language and culture well enough over a couple years to write books on it. He was passionate about Armenian culture and history, dude, like he proper went for it, and his writings and teachings inspired a wave of Armenian poets and writers. Not bad, Byron. Not bad.

13. Dude falls in love every-freaking-where, and not casual love, oh no -- he falls madly in love every fucking time. Where does he get the energy? God only knows. This time he falls for this 18 year old Countess, Teresa Guiccioli, and ends up eloping with her. Thing is, she’s married. (Byron NO)

14. Byron likes animals to the degree that Damian Wayne likes animals (sorry for the Batman reference, but I can’t help it, it’s who I am), ergo: he loves them. In one of Shelley’s letters, he describes the house as such: “Lord B.’s establishment consists, besides servants, of ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon; and all these, except the horses, walk about the house, which every now and then resounds with their unarbitrated quarrels, as if they were the masters of it… [P.S.] I find that my enumeration of the animals in this Circean Palace was defective… I have just met on the grand staircase five peacocks, two guinea hens, and an Egyptian crane.” Get on that, Dami. You’ve got a long way to go to reach this level.

To add to this fact, he also had a Newfoundland dog called Boatswain (???) who he loved so much that when the animal contracted rabies, he nursed him “without any thought or fear of becoming bitten and infected.” (cue: 4am Me hysterically sobbing about this). Also, even though he was in debt at the time, Byron commissioned a funerary monument to be built for Boatswain at Newstead Abbey, which was the only building work which he ever carried out on his estate. The thing was bigger than his own grave, and in his 1811 Will (what is this guy with Wills), he requested that he be buried with him. Also, he wrote a 26‐line poem called "Epitaph to a Dog" in honour of Boatswain. That is some serious dog-love there, you have to give him that, and as I said before: he never falls casually in love, only ever madly.

ANOTHER THING. I’m just gonna quote this straight from Wiki cos I can’t put it any better: “Byron also kept a tame bear while he was a student at Trinity, out of resentment for rules forbidding pet dogs like his beloved Boatswain. There being no mention of bears in their statutes, the college authorities had no legal basis for complaining. Byron even suggested that he would apply for a college fellowship for the bear.” Byron, my man, that is So Extra. (“What’s that? I can’t have a dog here? Well, no problem, I’ll just get a bear.” “BYRON, Byron what the fuck. Where did you even get a bear? Bears aren't indigenous to England.” “He’s very intelligent. Loves to read. Heck, lemme get him enrolled here.” “Byron what the fuck.”)

15. Skipping ahead a little, he ends up in Genoa, right, and gets Bored. Probably because of lack of pets. Possibly because he’s not Fallen Madly In Love with anyone recently, though he’s still technically ‘with’ the Countess, let’s be real -- this boy isn't good with commitment. So, he gets bored and this is where he starts getting involved with the movement for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire. He realises he still has his lady with him but cannot join this military movement whilst she’s still around, so he ends up shipping her back to her dad (dick move, Byron). 

Then this guy called Edward Blaquiere tries to recruit him, and Byron realises he has no fucking clue what he’s meant to be doing. In his own words: "Blaquiere seemed to think that I might be of some use-even here;-though what he did not exactly specify". Get it together, Byron, FFS. He boards a ship called Hercules (ha ha) to go to Greece, and the poor Countess lady weeps while waving him goodbye, but then Hercules has to return to port, so that dramatic farewell wasn’t nearly as dramatic as he’d probably been hoping for. Oh well.

Moving on -- 

(-- okay, to be honest, I kind of glossed over the whole part with his involvement in the war. I mostly picked out the parts that stood out to my 5am Brain, which were mostly to do with money or the boys he was eyeing. No offence meant in the way I’ve interpreted things. I fully blame the fact that I should have stopped reading Wiki five hours ago, but didn’t, and also I have a dumb sense of humour.)

16. Byron chucks money at the Greeks. Where did he get this money? No one knows, but he gives the Souliots £6000. Then, to be fair, he gets fed up of them asking for more and more money. He cuts off the Souliots and tells them to get stuffed. 

At some point he sells his estate, Rochdale Manor in Scotland, which gets him some £11,250, which means Byron has something like £20,000 altogether, all of which he plans on giving to the Greek cause. “In today's money Byron would have been a millionaire many times over, and the news that a fabulously wealthy British aristocrat known for his generosity in spending money had arrived in Greece made Byron the object of much solicitation in a desperately poor country like Greece.” Byron, old chap, that is super generous of you but what the fuck. I kept thinking to myself, reading this, what the fuckkkk?? Like, the cockles of my heart were warmed, but my brain couldn't comprehend it. May I remind you, he got into this because he was B O R E D, and now he’s throwing all his money at this ??? What even a r e  y o u  B y r o n ? ? ?

I don’t mean to make any judgements here, but this is then where Byron draws some Attention to himself again. Throwing all this money around -- it’s no surprise that suddenly all the different Greek factions start to fight over him, and in my 5am Brain, all I could see was Byron being like “kids, pls, stahp” and getting all exasperated with it. In Wiki’s much better written words: “he complained that the Greeks were hopelessly disunited and spent more time feuding with each other than in trying to win independence.”

17. As a little ‘aside’, whilst all of this is happening, Byron falls in love. Again. Madly. To another boy. This time his Greek page, Lukas Chalandritsanos, who he spent some £600 (equivalent to about £24,600 in today's money) over the course of six months on, and wrote his last poems about his passion for. Holy hell, Byron, control yourself please. And then Wiki slams down the coldest line to all this drama and goes: “but Chalandritsanos was only interested in Byron's money” -- and I’m sorry, I almost peed myself laughing. Omg Byron, that is cold. 

18. Spoiler alert: Byron dies young. He dies at 36, just before setting sail on an expedition. On 15 February 1824, he falls ill and then, my friends, comes the usual, in the form of the typical historical medical fuck-up remedy of bloodletting. When I read this I legitimately SMH, because how many books have I read where they use bloodletting to try to cure someone and SHOCK HORROR, it ends up killing them? Poor guy gets made worse by it, makes a partial recovery, but then catches a violent cold which then more therapeutic bleeding (insisted on by his doctors) ends up making worse. It is suspected that this treatment, carried out with unsterilised medical instruments, may have caused sepsis, and then he dies. 

Sometimes, looking back on historical medicine and treatment methods... I realise how lucky we are nowadays, to know better. Things like this also remind me that despite how much I’d like to go back in time to see history and stuff, it’s probably not a good idea. Not only because of this, but also the lack of plumbing. And hygiene. And sanitation. And wifi -- omg no internet, no thank you.

19. So, to end it all, Byron’s English friends are shocked to hear he’s died, and his Greek friends all mourn him as a hero. 

20. Now, to describe how Byron looks... according to Wiki, he was: “5 feet 8.5 inches (1.74 m), his weight fluctuating between 9.5 stone (133 lb; 60 kg) and 14 stone (200 lb; 89 kg). He was renowned for his personal beauty, which he enhanced by wearing curl-papers in his hair at night.” Ha ha ha, ha... 

Then he’s also famous for having Foot Issues, namely a deformity of his right foot. Whether he’s clubfooted, a consequence of infantile paralysis, or dysplasia -- what’s agreed is he had Foot Issues. The Foot gave him a limp, and “caused him lifelong psychological and physical misery, aggravated by painful and pointless "medical treatment" in his childhood and the nagging suspicion that with proper care it might have been cured.” At this point, in my head I went ‘awww, poor baby’, and felt sorry for him (I still do), but then I read on, and.

Byron was his usual Byron-like self about it, so I couldn't help but giggle.

Firstly, he nicknamed himself ‘le diable boiteux’ (French for "the limping devil", also the nickname given to Asmodeus by Alain-René Lesage in his 1707 novel of the same name). 

Secondly, although he often wore specially-made shoes in an attempt to hide The Foot, he refused to wear any type of brace that might improve The Limp. Byron, seriously, wear the brace. A Scottish novelist (John Galt) said he felt his oversensitivity to the "innocent fault in his foot was unmanly and excessive" because the limp was "not greatly conspicuous". 

[He first met Byron on a voyage to Sardinia and did not realise he had any deficiency for several days, and still could not tell at first if the lameness was a temporary injury or not but by the time he met Byron he was an adult and had worked to develop "a mode of walking across a room by which it was scarcely at all perceptible". The motion of the ship at sea may also have helped to create a favourable first impression and hide any deficiencies in his gait, but Galt's biography is also described as being "rather well-meant than well-written", so Galt may be guilty of minimising a defect that was actually still noticeable]

Byron. Oh Byron. I feel sorry that he was so self-conscious of his foot deformity, don’t get me wrong, but I can’t help but also giggle imagining him doing all this. It’s so dramatic. This boy. 

In short, simply from reading the Wiki article on Lord George Gordon Byron, I feel incredibly fond of, exasperated by, entertained by, and confused by this hugely influential, incredibly dramatic and complex historical figure.

I already love reading poems and quotes by him, but knowing more about him now... I am also inspired by him. Even from just a Wiki article, even from just reading this one source about his life at a questionable time of night -- I feel like I understand better why people have coined the term “Byronic hero” in honour of him. 

[The Byronic hero presents an idealised, but flawed character whose attributes include: great talent; great passion; a distaste for society and social institutions; a lack of respect for rank and privilege (although possessing both); being thwarted in love by social constraint or death; rebellion; exile; an unsavory secret past; arrogance; overconfidence or lack of foresight; and, ultimately, a self-destructive manner. These types of characters have since become ubiquitous in literature and politics.]

I see Byronic heroes all over the place. In all my fandoms, in all walks of life. From the classic Heathcliff to the likes of the Hunchback of Notre Dame (sobs), to The Phantom of the Opera (sobs), to Lestat from Interview with a Vampire, to Batman (LOLs), to fucking Edward Cullen from Twilight (gags).

The drama-llama lives on in all types of characters, in so many fictional worlds. As someone who lives to read and loves to write, I am completely unsurprised that stumbling across a Wiki page such as his has moved me so deeply, because in so many ways it was like reading a fanfic (albeit the driest, flattest fanfic I’ve ever read in my life). In so many ways I saw so many of my favourite characters written in his life, and by golly, it’s just fantastic to think that he actually lived in our world, isn't it? To think that and know that is both wonderful and strange. 

So, without anything left to add to this long, ridiculous post, I apologise for rambling on about a dead poet and contributing absolutely no new information to what is already known about him. I am aware all I’m doing is regurgitating old facts and basically oohing and ahhing over them, like an idiot. All I can say is I’m glad for Wiki, and Jesus Christ, I’ve got to start going to bed earlier than this. 

Auf wiedersehen.