probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.
we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."
at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.
the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.
the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.
what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.
here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.
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thinking about mizu from blue eye samurai. thinking. thinking so much. thinking about how mizu operates outside of gender. like we joke about her gender being revenge but straight up? it literally is. like she grew up as a boy and is most comfortable being a man, but behind that is the feeling of betraying himself because he isn't being honest about who he is and he lives in fear of being discovered. and when he lived as a woman, she found joy there as well. she fell in love, and though she wasn't good at it, she liked being a wife and enjoying a simple life. but in that life too, she isn't being honest about who she is. and when she reveals her true self, it's not a woman, she's a demon, a weapon. she's to masculine to be a woman, and too feminine to be a man. ultimately, mizu is most comfortable when they are being a murder machine. that's when they feel they are being the most true to themself. like a sword, they are neither man nor woman, but a blend of both, which makes them stronger.
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you have to be sexy but you have to be sexy in a way that's kind of bloody. you learn this early because you are wearing a ruffled skirt and the snow around your ankles kicks little sand particles against your calves. baby's first catcall. welcome to sexiness! welcome to the eyesore of your own body!
you have to be sexy like high heels. like sculpted eyebrows. like lean stomach and highly treated hair. you have to be sexy like youth is sexy, which means you have to be sexy like boxtox and plastic. a 30 year old can be sexy but she's not going to be bloody, and they like the bloodiness of it. a 30 year old is sexy when she is a whiskey glass and a wooden desk.
but you need to be sexy like an open mouth. you need to be sexy like a bitten apple. like plucked skin and white-knuckling the waxing kit.
so sex is a performance, not an enjoyment. for a while, you just assumed everyone else was also in on the joke - nobody actually likes sex that much, right? like, some men probably do, but why would you? it is like a gender - your gender is sexy. your gender is the performance of sex. you are thigh highs and garter belts. which, to be fair, do make you feel sexy.
part of what does make sex good is that you can tell that other people want you, which means the performance of sexiness is both bloody and wanted, which is good, which means you are winning at having a body. being wanted is the prize. being wanted is the thing you are searching for, not hope. you think you are looking for a soft grave in easy loam, but that is bloody but not sexy. to be sexy you must be bloody like a red open sign. bloody like a handprint. this will make you wanted.
any wanted or unwanted body is subject to supply and demand, which is to say that the more demand, the better you are valued. you must be highly demanded to be valued. this is stated in matter-of-fact by some men. sometimes it is a priest that says it, and sometimes it is a podcaster, and sometimes it is the 45th president of the united states of america.
(if you do not have any experience with being told your value, i want you to grab the nearest bird to you and i want you to crush it into a thin paste in your hand. spit into the center, and then hold your fingers closed tight around it for days and days, long after the rot has set in. feel bones itch inside of your fist. this is only a fraction of what it actually feels like, but it will suffice for a moment.)
good sex feels like you have earned their desperation. you have earned your own value. for a while you operated under the understanding that everyone knew about the power structure, even him. that their desire to take you - the violence of it - means that you must desire to be caught. little prince, guardian fox - you would rather have cut your own arm off. you liked the secret, cunning little voice you keep tucked into a box. you think you are fucking me. i am not even here right now. you are fucking what i conned you into perceiving. this is a painting, not a person. dominion over the body before all things.
so you bend your body like a wheat shaft and learn the steps so perfectly that it almost seems graceful. (if you do not have experience faking your own connection to your body and sexuality, cut each of your articles of clothing just a little bit incorrectly. pour fishbones into each of your meals. this way, you will experience the average noon on a tuesday.)
you have to be sexy like light spilled over a desk, but not desperate. not a noose. you can't be sexy like an electric guitar, you are the acoustic. you have to be on top of the bull but you can't have control over the animal.
okay, okay. the little rabbit of your heart went to sleep so long ago that winter has ravaged your concept of the human soul. there's something very-bad inside you, something that has taken over, a little fetid and rabid animal, angry and hurting and willing to bite first.
oh but even that's a pain that's sexy. open your mouth. be careful not to let the canines show.
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im-- im just trying to process this "twitter rebranding to x" move like-- WHY is elon so obsessed with the letter x?
he named his cars x. he named his rockets "SpaceX". he maybe got booted out of paypal partially because he tried to name it x. he named his KID x.
and now he's trying to rebrand TWITTER, the brand so ingrained by now they got us to call tweets TWEETS, into x too????
what IS WITH this man and the letter x? why does it have him in such a chokehold???
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So y'all know the Gravity Falls production bible that leaked three weeks ago. Someone in one of my discord servers pointed this out:
And, naturally, that spawned an entire AU.
AU Concept: Ford was kicked out instead of Stan and takes a job as a trucker to makes ends meet since he couldn't go to college, while still studying the weird and anomalous however he can.
Ford driving around from quirky small town to quirky small town, drifting through the liminal spaces of truck stops, meeting odd people in isolated diners, seeing strange things out on the road—a deer with too many eyes bounding across a two-lane highway, a flirty woman at a rest stop who doesn't blink or breathe, mysterious lights in the sky at night, inhuman growls on the CB or 50-year-old broadcasts on the radio—and taking notes when he stops for gas or food.
Aside from having gotten kicked out before graduating high school, Ford's the same person he is in canon.
He's still an ambitious guy, and here "ambitious" means working hard and saving as much money as he can—so, a long haul owner-operator who spends weeks at a time on the road. (He goes through a LOT of educational audiobooks.) Plus, this is the easiest way for him to get to travel the country; and since it looks like his "travel the world" dreams with Stan are dead, he'll take what he can get.
Since he's never in the same spot long and carries his life in a truck, almost all of Ford's research is in his journal. His bag of investigation supplies has an instant camera, a portable tape recorder, a thermometer, a flashlight, rubber gloves, and a few zip lock bags—and that's about it. It has to share space with all his clothes, toiletries, and nonperishable food when he's on the road. He doesn't have much opportunity to closely examine anything odd he finds, unless he's lucky enough to run into something when he can stop for the night. He has to cram his paranormal research around the side of his full-time job.
He doesn't live in Gravity Falls, but he knows it exists. Every time he moves—to Chicago, to Nebraska, to California—he seems to inch closer. He currently lives in Portland and usually hauls loads between the Pacific Northwest and Chicago or New York. He stops at the truck stop outside Gravity Falls when he can and has gone fishing in town a few times. He doesn't have the benefit of extensive research to know that this is the weirdest town in the world; but it seems pretty weird to him, there are local rumors about the town, and he's had some weird experiences in the area.
Plus, he can't explain it, but it's like the town's calling to him. He wants to move there, but it'd put him over an hour outside of Portland where the nearest jobs are. Maybe if somebody chucked him like $100k to build a cabin in the woods; but what are the odds of that?
He does know Fiddleford. Truck broke down somewhere and Fiddleford kindly pulled over to fix it on the fly. They looked at each other, had mutual knee-jerk "dumb trucker/hillbilly" reactions, and within ten minutes both went "oh wait you're the most brilliant genius i've ever met." Fiddleford's living the same life he was in canon before Ford called him to Gravity Falls—with his family in California, trying to start a computer company out of his garage—but they make friends and keep in contact.
One time Ford stops at a kitschy roadside knickknack store that also sells new agey magic things—crystals, tarot cards, incense, etc. He bought a "lucky" rearview mirror ornament that looks like an Eye of Providence in a top hat and hung it from his cab fan, and ever since then he's had weird dreams whenever he sleeps in his truck.
Things I don't know yet: what Stan's up to; or why Ford's the one who got kicked out. I tend to believe that in canon Stan wasn't just kicked out because he ruined Ford's college prospects, but rather because the family thought he deliberately sabotaged Ford; so in this AU, Ford would've been kicked out over a proportionate crime.
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