some annie stuff (but also TP meta)

she doesn’t fuck cooper

this^ is, like, the only significant canon divergence she has (other than getting to live), because it just doesn’t make any sense for her character. or. his? really? the only reason it happens in the show is because A Cooper Romance (which obviously cannot happen in tp without sex/some teenage girl naked in his bed) was so expected to happen that they brought her in to do just that. but they also made her a csa survivor (x2) & an ex-nun, like, 10 days out of a convent. so. be honest. she’s not touching that man. or any man. if i had my way it would take them like 2 months just to hold hands. but whatever.

she does survive the end of season 2 (canonically), and is taken to hospital where she ends up in a coma for...ever? and then taken to a psych ward where i guess she remains in her trauma coma forever and only comes out of it to try and kill herself?

^ that’s stupid so i’m retconning it <3 she lives but i’m not trapping her in another facility (her entire life was catholic boarding school -> [csa] -> psych ward -> [more csa] -> convent -> [more sexual(?)* violence] -> psych ward [forever]) where she’s in A Dream World presumably for BOB to torment her whenever he likes because m.ark frost forgot about her/never cared about her to begin with

*i kind of (reasonably) assume that all violence that happens to women on this show is either literally or allegorically sexual violence (there’s probably even some kind of analysis to be had about leo’s violence towards shelly being about repressed/rageful sexual violence because he... is impotent [i think this is correct but forgive me if i’m misremembering] when he’s not around a... <17 year old girl). like even audrey who was minding her own business at the end of s2 had every possible ending deleted from her storyline so that BOB could rape her, which was absolutely only shoehorned in for the return so they could connect the villain to her/bob. but whatever.

(it honestly is kind of surprising that they forgot about annie and gave audrey the ?birth storyline, rather than virgin marying annie a la sarah p.almer (you can still have your “gives birth in a coma” cake and eat it too, m.ark frost); but i think they’re trying for bob/judy take 2. this is just my #theory though.)

so like. she is not dead. she is not in the black lodge (anymore). and she feels very bad about dale and laura (or. just dale, in the verse that we write in <3)

Ask and ye shall receive lmao. Anyways this whole wedding shenaniganery takes place like 2 years after the finale. Dean DID get cas outta the empty but he is bad at words so instead of saying anything TO cas he just kinda. Avoided him until he couldn’t stand it anymore and then kissed him. And then fucked him. Dean assumes that cas will be able to interpret this as “I love you but don’t know how to say it”. Cas does NOT interpret it like this. Cas basically thinks that dean is giving him a pity fuck, but doesn’t turn it down because he has massive massive issues and tells himself he is content with whatever scraps of affection dean will give him. This interpretation is reinforced when dean isn’t affectionate outside of sex because he has Issues (internalized homophobia and several complexes about intimacy). Eventually cas is like dean we can’t do this anymore, this meaning their perceived fuck buddy arrangement. But to DEAN they aren’t fuck buddies, they’re dating and in love. So dean takes this. Poorly. And they end up having ANOTHER divorce.

Anyways in this mamma Mia but slightly to the left au dean is Donna, obviously. He is bending over backwards trying to give Sam the perfect wedding because he deserves it, dammit!!! He may not like the idea of a big white wedding but by god sammys wedding is gonna be the best goddamn wedding these stupid motherfuckers have ever SEEN. Sam is Sophie, but instead of inviting three potential dads, he’s inviting cas. Cas is, of course, pierce brosnan.

Some key facts:

-nobody actually KNOWS that dean and cas used to fuck. Dean was way too repressed about it. All anyone knows is that they were extremely close, and then they weren’t. Sam has like. An inkling. But that’s all.

-u know how Sophie is trying to hide her three potential dads from Donna for like half the movie?? Sam is doing that with cas. Everyone else knows cas is there but Sam thinks that if dean finds out he will, quote, “flip his shit”. So he’s just stashing cas in increasingly weird places until dean spots him.

-in this au dean is Donna, which means he retired from hunting and decided to buy a big, old, condemned house and turn it into a bed and breakfast. The house is in idk. Georgia?? Wyoming?? Either way dean found it while he was on a hunt. It was extremely haunted, he un-haunted it, and then impulse bought it for a couple grand.

-it’s a nice house. An extremely nice house. It’s so nice that Sam is having his reception there. The ceremony is at a church in town. I haven’t decided if Sam is catholic or a Unitarian, but either way there is a church, and he is getting married in it.

-the reason dean is planning most of the wedding instead of Sam is because Sam is a bridezilla and needs everything to be perfect, but has no idea WHAT perfect looks like. So every time sam tries to plan the wedding he ends up spending six days looking at napkins. Dean, being a self-sacrificial big brother, basically takes on all the planning duties.

-Eileen does not give a fuck. She’ll marry Sam in a fancy ball gown, she’ll go down to the courthouse, she’ll happily spend the rest of her life living in sin with him if that’s what Sam wants. Eileen is hashtag woke and thinks that marriage is nothing more than paperwork and a couple of tax benefits wrapped in false narratives about romance. She is, of course, extremely right about this.

-rowena tries to upstage Eileen at the wedding because she has winchester derangement syndrome and is acting how we all think Crowley would act at the deancas wedding. It does not work because Eileen is a girlboss.

AnYways dean finds out cas is at the wedding thee NIGHT before and predictably flips his shit. The day of the wedding there’s a winner takes it all type convo right before they head into the church where they’re like *this* close to communicating enough to understand what’s going on between them BUT BEFORE THEY DO, dean storms off.

The church scene plays out EXACTLY like it does in mamma mia. Dean and cas have it out in front of the whole fuckin wedding party. Cas finally realizes that dean thought they were dating the whole time, dean finally realizes that cas DIDNT. During this absolutely insane shouting match it is very clear that they are both still hung up on one another and very much in love. Sam is like actually Eileen I DONT want to get married yet!! I was just doing this because even though it’s been a decade, I still feel like I have to be normal. Only I don’t want to be normal!! I want us to hunt together and live together and maybe one day I want to elope to fuckin. Idk. The Bahamas or some shit.

Meanwhile the poor officiant is like. So... y’all aren’t getting married?? And Sam is like no, sorry. It’s a shame tho bc we spent all this money... and then cas is like wait. Dean. Dean. I know we only just figured out our shit, but I love you. I never stopped. We should get married. And dean is like yeah ok. There’s always divorce right?? And then they get married and go back to deans house and throw the party of the century.

this is probably the most insane thing anyone has ever put in my askbox and I WOULD read 50k of this but I’ll take the nearly 1000 word outline you’ve gifted me. thank you

*holy fuck, it’s GALLAVICH time* 💖🧑🏻‍🦰🧑🏻💖 - if you had an infinite amount of inspiration and time, what would be the Gallavich fic or art you would create? 💖 (& feel free to send this to anyone you like!)

hell yeah i have three ideas swimming in my head lately 🥰

1) i really want to write more hornygaythug slice of life scenes, of the spicy and non-spicy kinds. i want to write more about ian exploring the bdsm life and discovering shit about himself, like in relation to sex hence the “leveling up” thing, i feel like he would make it into a fun little journey as he builds up his confidence with having the control in the bedroom, and mickey…encouraging and being really turned on by ian’s ministrations really lights a fire in ian. like today they explore breathplay, and tomorrow? the world. type beat. like my headcanon is that mickey is his first relationship where the power balance is equal for the first time ever, and ian has a pretty good hold of who he is as a person by the time he meets mickey…yeah i just wanna explore ian’s pov…maybe that’ll be my next task 👀 but yeah i’d like to continue filling in the gaps from the actual blogs with exposition 😈

2. lesbian gallavich catholic school au. listen this one is ambitious BUT a) i was catholic growing up b) i am a lesbian…so who else is better equipped to write this fic? the premise is ian is a good catholic girl, does community service, lives a very humble life, is actually catholic (with the last name gallagher, come on now)…and she’s very canon ian but instead of westpoint…it’s servitude for the Lord our savior…she’s a little repressed and is discovering her sexuality at 18, but keeping it under wraps. she knows she’s into girls but she’s like “as long as i don’t act on it, i’ll be fine” she’s closeted and she figures she will just never date or be in a relationship and that’s ok with her. her family is catholic too but to a lesser degree because ian is the only one who went to the school voluntarily. she likes the routine but feels lonely. she’s very involved with the school to fill a void that god is not filling somehow…

then: enter mickey, a mysterious but very weird girl with a dump truck under her school uniform. mickey’s had a rough life and moved from school to school due to behavioral issues so she’s constantly getting expelled, but she’d never hurt anyone, just acts out for attention, damages school property, and fails every class. she eventually gets expelled from all schools in the area except for one, a catholic boarding school. her brother gets her into the school, pays for tuition and everything just so she won’t get hurt by their dad anymore. she initially thinks the school is stupid but when she moves in, she realizes it’s way nicer than her actual home and her roommate is a godly little freak but her long curly red hair hits the middle of her back nicely, and if mickey squints a little from where she is sitting on her bed, she can see her roommate’s bra straps through the thin white gym shirt and—oh god. leave it to mickey to get a crush on her uptight catholic roommate.

👀👀👀👀

3) ok this is another ambitious one but we are gearing up to write it. trans!mickey southern au. takes place in georgia, modern times.

mckayla and ian were friends as kids. well more like, mandy and ian were friends and mckayla tagged along sometimes. ian was always intrigued by her and always asked her silly little questions as kids do when they are interested in someone…they all grow up together, dancing around, sometimes flirting, mostly not, and just having innocent kid adventures around the town. the milkovich twins were infamous for getting in trouble, but mckayla always took the fall and faced the consequences for them both. she was definitely the black sheep of the family.

one day at the age of 16, mckayla disappears. mandy has no idea where her twin went, this causes her to really lose her way, her family won’t share anything, just that her sister is in a “place that will help her get on the right track again.” mandy believes she ran away and will come back when she’s ready but she is still angry because “how could she leave me here alone??” ian is upset about it too, but life moves on and he vows to work on having a better life, motivating mandy to join him as they get serious about college together, they’ll be the first kids in their families to go to college.

ian is 23 when he moves back to the town. he graduated from college in atlanta, where he has been living since he turned 18. he got a full-time job after graduation that burned him out and his mental health was suffering. his mentality throughout school was “i’ll graduate and get the best highest paying job and live a happy life” …well the first two wishes happened but ian was miserable. he moves back to the town to spend time with family and is starting from scratch again. he has major imposter syndrome, thinks he’s a failure, and is just jaded all around. he gets a job as a counselor at his old high school.

enter mickey, a strange dude that works as a janitor at the school. he has a permanent smile on his face and loves his job more than anything. ian thinks he’s weird, but familiar.

Look. I can’t talk for american people who were actually afflicted by Trump’s presidency. Nor I can’t talk for POC people since I am not one of them. Nor I can talk for other LGBT+ people like me, even If I’m one of them, because I am only one person and can’t speak for everyone. I, however, can speak for myself and for what I think when I read all about this controversy in our fandom and community. This morning I woke up with people on Twitter (who had already harrassed, not called out gently, mind you, harrassed, people for things already addressed off) screaming at Dream (wow, what a fucking surprise) because when he was younger (and I think a minor? Or around that age) he was, apparently, a Trump Supporter and way more conservative than he is now. Dream tweeted out both some apologies and a very long explanation about the situation (I linked it because some people are completely ignoring it, saying that he only “tweeted once or twice some short excuses”)  Now. I’m sorry to say that I... don’t see what the actuall fuss is all about? I mean, I could see it if Dream was a Trump supporter now. I could see it if he didn’t say sorry, or if he didn’t address anything at all about it, deciding to stay silent. Otherwise...  People... can change...? Especially young people? When I was a child, I was a classist piece of shit. I was born not only in a wealthy middle class family, but I’m a descendant of three fucking noble lines, apparently, which means nothing in the place I live but still influenced how we tought about ourselves. And even if my mother was trying to make me a better person, educating me on respecting others, I still grew up in that context. A context that was white, rich, catholic and heterosexual.  Until I was around, like, 10, I was homophobic, because I really did not know anything about LGBT+ people besides stereotypes and only learned about them through fandom and fanfiction once I started using internet. In middle school I was lesbophobic, because I was a closed repressed little shit who was scared of the tought of actually liking a girl in that way. And I stayed like that until I was 14 and I met my AFAB partner, who I’m now engaged with, and I started to unlearn everything I had known before - not only homophobia but also classism, as I was thrown up in the real world and not the one I lived before (that had a lot of serious problems regarding my family life, but was still privileged). The same year I realized I was trans, but repressed the tought because I only knew trans people through stereotypes and didn’t want to be “like that”. It was only when I was already an adult, at 19, that after years of meeting new people and making myself a better person, I actually came out as trans. And while I don’t believe I was really “racist” in the oppressive meaning of the term, I still was in a “latent” way - as in, believing in certain stereotypes and having invasive toughts brought up by how I was raised. 

Mind you, I never tried to hurt someone. I never bullied someone because of my beliefs, or harrassed them. As I was a minor, I never voted for laws that would hurt LGBT+, POC or Poor people. I fully believed that I had to be respectful of people even If I didn’t “like them” (aka, even if i was a piece of shit). I, however, was still in the wrong. I still believed those things, I still made some weird jokes both on the internet and IRL that may have hurt someone. I MAY have hurt someone without knowing it, because again, the fact that I believed to be a good person didn’t make me one.  However, I changed. I grew up. Not only because I am now part of minorities but because I learned how the world really was. I get to met the people I ““hated”“ before and I realized I didn’t hate them at all! My family still fucked up in a way about some things. I decided to educated my self. I learned. I changed. When reading Dream’s apology, assuming that it’s true (we can’t really know, but for me? It seems genuine) I saw myself  - a person that, while wasn’t homeschooled, still lived in that kind of context.  If Dream was, when he was younger, way conservative, that doesn’t mean he is now. And that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel like shit for what he was before.  Now, mind you. Saying sorry doesn’t actually “excuses” you from something you have done. But people are allowed to learn from their mistakes, to change. Claiming that Dream is a bad person because years ago he was like that, it’s harmful in a terrifying way. Because people always talk about “educating themselves” but apparently, for some that’s not true? For some you have to be pristine since the day you were born, otherwise it doesn’t count. And that’s... that’s stupid? Everyone makes mistakes? No one is perfect?  Also, mistakes aren’t all the same. Some are not that bad, others are terribly bad. Twitter treats them all like they were the same. If you did something bad once, that’s it. You’re out, for them.  Yes, there are mistakes that can’t be excused, no matter what you do. I mean, duh. I’m not saying that everyone that changes has to be excused, of course there are limits (and altough they still may try to be better people after, that would be only something personal for them, and not something that gives them a “pass” for what they’ve done)  But if Dream is really sincere about what he said, if he’s really changing himself from what he was like as younger, then canceling him it’s not good. Now, you don’t have to like him. Hell, you can think whatever you want about him. If you don’t want to accept his apology, it’s your choice. You don’t have to only because it was made. But if it was sincere, then stop harrassing him for that. If it was sincere, it means that he’s now trying to be a better person, just like he should be.  You can’t go claiming that people need to be better if when they try to do so you go searching in their past for every single mistake they made.   Edit: (Of course, if Dream isn’t sincere at all, or other things come up that show us how he’s still like that, then fuck him, that’s obvious. But the fact that people can change themselves and grow up is still valid)

Chapter Two of See You in the Morning Time

The third in a Rafael Barba/Reader/Frederick Chilton threesome verse written in collaboration with @pascalispretty . Gif by @mrsrafaelbarba . Yep. We did this. Was it necessary? No. Did we enjoy it? Sometimes. Are you going to read it? I sure hope you do and that you like it! Cross posted to ao3!

Part Three of the series So Much Easier than You Realize

Chapter One: A Different Feeling Entirely Chapter Two: Show Me the New

Warnings: Frederick being an anxious (and sad. and repressed) little weenie, discussions of period typical homophobia, bi panic, completely invented backstory (you got on this ride folks lol), Rafael being surprisingly supportive, cuddling, and of course a little bit of teasing Rating: PG-13 Word Count: 2293 Summary: It's not often that Fred instigates anything with Rafael except an argument.

It’s late by the time Fred and Rafael finally make their way to bed. They shower and put pajamas on while waiting for the food to arrive and once they eat, they finish the bottle of wine that Fred had opened earlier and spend the rest of the evening chatting and watching some dumb movie on TV.

Lying in Fred’s bed in his borrowed clothes, Rafael can’t help but smile to himself. After weeks of skittishness from Fred he had finally made it past some of the walls that the doctor had put up. Fred curled close to Rafael while they watched the movie, dragging a blanket over the two of them and cozying up entirely unprompted.

When Fred comes out of the bathroom and flicks the lights off, he’s even more pleased that Fred doesn’t seem to hesitate to lie close to him in bed or reach out for his hand.

“Thank you for letting me stay,” Rafael murmurs, to break the silence more than anything. He hears Fred scoff.

“I was hardly going to kick you out as soon as we were done.” As best as he can, Rafael turns on his side trying to make Fred out in the darkness of the room.

“I know. I just wasn’t sure how you’d feel.” He’s not at his most eloquent or subtle, but he wants to acknowledge what happened between them. “You were… hesitant at first and I just want to make sure you didn’t feel like you had to do this. As of a few days ago you were still pretty clear that you were not comfortable with the two of us having sex.”

Rafael doesn’t want to force a confidence, but he feels like he has to make sure. He’s coming to care too deeply about the arrogant chronically awkward man next to him to just let this go with vague assurances. He hears Fred shift onto his back and wants nothing more than to drag him into his arms and kiss his stupid, conceited face, but he holds himself still and waits for Fred to answer him, giving him the space he clearly wants.

“This wasn’t as sudden as you think it was,” Fred assures him eventually, face still pointed at the ceiling. “I’ve been thinking about this since, you know, that first time.” Rafael can practically feel Fred’s blush from his side of the bed and grins. “And my reticence was never about you, you know that, yes?”

Rafael nods, realizes Fred probably can’t see him, and clears his throat.

“Yeah, I figured as much. I am, after all, a damn catch.”

Rafael yelps as Fred reaches out, faster than he thought was possible for a well-fed psychiatrist who sits behind a desk all day, and smacks him on the chest.

They’re quiet for a few minutes, together in the dark cocoon of Fred’s bedroom, before Rafael sighs. He can’t help but notice the similarities between the blank peacefulness of Fred’s minimalist design and the deliberately organized calm of a therapist’s office and wonders if he did that on purpose. Maybe it’s a natural inclination, he muses idly. It invites honesty. The sharing of secrets.

“I’m only eighteen months younger than Benn, you know,” Fred says eventually, and it’s so unexpected that Rafael finds himself frowning a little in confusion. “All the way through school, I was Bennett Chilton’s younger brother; just the little brother of the handsome quarterback that everyone adored.” Rafael has seen photos of Bennett, tall and painfully handsome. He can see that it might have been hard to grow up in that shadow.

“He came out when he was sixteen, and I was fourteen. And I’m sure you can imagine what that was like at an all-boys Catholic school in Virginia in the eighties.” Rafael winces in the dark. He remembers well enough the attitudes in his own high school, in marginally more liberal New York. He can’t imagine what it must have been like in a place without a visible community to look up to.

“People were mostly smart enough not to say anything to Benn’s face--he was a six foot two starter who never backed down from a fight, they would have had to have been stupid--and our parents were supportive. But the things people said about him behind his back--” Fred shudders, an involuntary shiver that makes Rafael want to wrap his arms around him and never let go.

Instead, he just squeezes Fred’s hand reassuringly and waits for him to continue. For someone who has trouble shutting up at the very best of times--staying silent isn’t Rafael’s forte--he is doing an admirable job tonight. His desire to prove he’s worthy of this unexpected vulnerability from Fred is more than enough to keep him quiet. Rafael is desperate to know more, to know everything about Fred; about what makes him tick, about why he was so reticent, so reserved, when clearly this is something that he enjoys.

“It was awful. The kind of things you never want to hear about somebody you love. And I was hardly in any position to be giving out bloody noses or black eyes whenever someone called him a fag, or made some crack about AIDS.” Rafael shifts slightly nearer, still not saying anything. He smiles to himself when he feels one of Fred’s hands reach up to rest on Rafael’s hip.

“I was a short, scrawny child--I spent a lot of time in the hospital and home sick--and I couldn’t afford to give the other boys in my school one more reason to pick on me so I just… didn’t say anything. I’m not proud of it, but it’s not like Benn had any trouble sticking up for himself. I doubt he would have appreciated anyone stealing his opportunity to get into one more fight anyways.”

Rafael covers the hand Fred has on his hip with his own, deciding now is not the time to joke that he can’t ever imagine Fred as scrawny. Fred clears his throat again and continues in the same calm, rehearsed manner. Like this is something that he witnessed happening to someone else.

“It wasn’t long after that that I had my own month of absolute pure terror and confusion. It was one of Bennett’s teammates from the swim team that actually sent me over the edge. His name was Bobby and he was gorgeous. He had never made any jokes about Bennett, never joked about changing somewhere else in the locker room. He was a little stupid, I can admit that now, but back then I thought he was perfect. I worshipped my brother and this pretty boy clearly did the same.

“Well, I was horrified. Up until then I had been fully and completely in love with a girl I had known practically since infancy. Was all of that a lie? Was being gay genetic? Was Billy going to go through the same thing? It took me a whole month before I had the guts to ask Bennett and I nearly stabbed him with our father’s letter opener when he laughed at me.”

Rafael winces again, knowing how touchy Fred is now, a grown adult well-respected in his professional field and still a little obsessed with slights, perceived and real. Fred huffs, forcing any trace of bitterness out of his voice.

“He told me that you can like girls and boys at the same time and that I should go see if I still liked jerking off to pictures of Jennifer Connolly.” Rafael isn’t able to suppress his snort.

“I always liked Carrie Fisher,” he tells Fred, smiling over at him.

“You would, you pervert,” Fred shoots back. “Probably loved that bikini, didn’t you?”

“I think I’ll plead the Fifth on that one.”

Fred shakes his head and sighs deeply.

“Well, naturally, that was enough humiliation for me for one afternoon and so I threw a throw pillow at him and bolted for my room.”

“Did you jerk off to Jennifer Connolly?”

“Rafael, I can still kick you out of this apartment.”

“Sorry.” Rafael is silent for all of twelve seconds before he asks again, “Come on Fred, I’ve got to know; did you?”

“...Maybe,” Fred reluctantly admits. Rafael laughs and squeezes his hand.

“Moving on from your prurient obsession with my teenaged masturbatory life,” Fred says pointedly, managing to sound arch, offended, and haughty all at the same time. “I contemplated for a while what Benn had told me. A long time actually--that percolated in my brain all throughout the rest of high school. I only ever dated girls, I ignored it completely every time I was even remotely attracted to another boy, but I kept thinking about that. Not only did I have a lifelong conviction that if Bennett said it it must be so, but it just sort of felt right, you know?”

Rafael nods, remembering a similar feeling he had when he was younger. Despite what the other boys in his neighborhood said about “queers”, despite what the Church said, and despite what he knew his father would do to him if he heard Rafael’s thoughts, he was what he was and that was that. Fuck anyone who said different, he remembered thinking. It’s not like he could change it, even if he wanted to.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” he answers when it’s clear that Fred requires some encouragement to continue. Fred twines his fingers with Rafael’s before carrying on.

“I lived with Benn in college. Our father bought him an apartment in Cambridge the day he got his acceptance letter from Harvard, and it only seemed logical that I’d move in once I got accepted too. And, I don’t know. It was a little easier there.” Rafael thinks he grimaces, but it’s hard to tell in the dark.

“It has been a while though, since I’ve indulged. And I've never participated frequently.” Every word seems like it’s forced out of Fred’s mouth.

“All this to say, Rafael,” Fred murmurs, inching closer across the sheets, “Is that the problem was never you.”

Rafael gathers him into his arms this time. Fred goes willingly, releasing a heavy, shaky breath and clearly relieved to not be talking about this anymore.

“I know,” Rafael reassures him. “I know it wasn’t me. I was just… I don’t know. I was worried.” He smiles, giving Fred another squeeze. “You’re a delicate little flower Freddie, I want to make sure I don’t trample all over you.”

“Get out of this bed this instant.”

Rafael laughs and they settle down to sleep.

***

The three of them celebrate in Rafael’s tiny Brooklyn apartment when Fred returns from Baltimore. He insists that he wants to cook and, though he had his doubts about his equally minuscule kitchen, manages to turn out an incredible ropa vieja. His mother would be proud.

When the empty plates are discarded on his coffee table, stacked haphazardly and waiting to eventually be washed by whoever loses the inevitable game of ‘who had the harder day’, Rafael sinks back into the couch and smiles benignly basking in the praise of the two of them and their company. Four days is starting to become too long to go between times when they’re all together and though he wants to frown at the unpleasant feeling of missing the both of them when they aren’t around he loves it a little bit as well. Every other wandering thought was of the two of them and he can’t deny that it's nice to feel these first desperate stirrings of a relationship again.

“I don’t know how you made all of that, Rafael. I’m pretty sure my cousin Caroline had a bigger kitchen in her dollhouse.” Fred surprises him when he leans closer to Rafael, snuggling contentedly against him. Rafael had told the third of their little trio that he and Fred had finally slept together--hiding things in a threesome was the quickest way to hurt feelings. Everyone was going to eventually do things without everyone involved and it’s best to just let that out in the open--but he hadn’t expected Fred to offer such casual affection so freely.

Rafael catches her looking at the two of them with a soft smile on her face and returns it with one of his own. She hid it well but she was a little disappointed during their FaceTime when he had warned her that Fred might not be overly demonstrative yet. Rafael knew she felt a little--guilty wasn’t the word she would use, he knew, if he could ever get her to talk about it--uncomfortable about how much more open Fred was with her than he was with Rafael. He loves how hard she tries to remind him that Fred is just anxious, cautious, a little scared. Rafael is a grown man and doesn’t need his hand held, but the fact that she tries to anyways makes his heart feel like it’s growing through his ribcage sometimes.

When Rafael looks back down at Fred he looks like he’s about to fall asleep with his head nuzzled against Rafael’s shoulder. He would describe it as endearing until Fred moves one of his hands high onto Rafael’s thigh. Rafael smirks.

“All it took was one night and he’s already falling for me,” he says to her in a stage whisper. Fred is unfortunately still awake enough to jab Rafael in the ribs, settling down only after the air is knocked out of Rafael’s lungs with an “oof”.

“As long as you remember to invite me to the wedding,” she teases. Rafael watches her duck admirably as Fred throws a cushion at her head.

“You’re supposed to throw a bouquet at me, not a pillow!”

Osho says. Hein Steff, there is nothing wrong in being homosexual.

BELOVED MASTER, I AM HOMOSEXUAL. I FEEL TERRIBLY OPPRESSED AND STRICKEN BY THE STIGMA OF HOMOSEXUALITY. IT SEEMS FALSE TO ME TO COME HERE TO FIND A WAY TO COME CLOSER TO MYSELF AND AT THE SAME TIME NOT TO HAVE THE COURAGE TO SHOW MYSELF THE WAY I AM. THEN I WANT TO RESIGN AND RETURN HOME SO THAT I DON'T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT ANY LONGER. WHAT CAN I DO?

Hein Steff, there is nothing wrong in being homosexual. You need not feel guilty about it. One certainly has to go beyond sex, but that is as much applicable to heterosexuality as it is applicable to homosexuality. Heterosexuality or homosexuality are just styles of the same stupidity! You need not feel guilty.

In fact, looking at the population of the world, homosexuality should be supported. At least you will not be increasing the population of the world, you will not be loading the earth more. It is already loaded too much. Homosexuality should be valued, respected -- it is pure fun! Heterosexuality is dangerous. And what is wrong? If two persons are enjoying each other's bodies, nothing is wrong. It should be their concern; nobody else's business to interfere.

But the society is continuously interfering in everything; it does not leave anybody any privacy. It enters in your bedroom too. Your society is not a free society. It talks of freedom and democracy and all that rot, but it is pure slavery. It is a big prison. And your priests and your so-called God are all Peeping Toms. They are all looking into your private lives, what you are doing. It should be nobody's business.

What is wrong in loving a man or a woman? Two men can love each other, two women can love each other. Love is a value in itself. And fun should not be condemned. Life is already such a burden, such a drag, such a boredom. Leave at least something in life so people can feel a little less bored.

Here you need not feel afraid to show yourself the way you are. My whole approach is to help you to be the way you are because that is the only way to help you transcend it. Feel guilty and you will remain the same. Guilt never transforms anybody.

And homosexuality is such an innocent phenomenon. Why is it so much condemned? The reason is that if it is not condemned, the fear is that almost everybody will turn homosexual because every child has the tendency. Every child passes through the stage when he is homosexual. Every boy, every girl, passes through a time when boys like boys and girls like girls. The fear is that if many people turn homosexual -- and particularly in the past when the population was not big and every society wanted more numbers because numbers meant power.... To allow homosexuality was dangerous; it had to be condemned, absolutely condemned, so much so that in a few countries it is the greatest crime.

For example, in Ayatollah Khomeiniac's country, Iran, it is one of the greatest crimes. You can be imprisoned for your whole life or you can even be sentenced to death, just for being homosexual. It seems absolutely absurd, ridiculous, but in the past there was some reason in it. Every society wanted to be more powerful. It was a constant struggle -- a struggle between groups, struggle between tribes, struggle between clans -- the deciding factor was your number, how many you are. If people become homosexual, then the population will decrease; hence it has to be condemned as the greatest sin.

It may have some meaning if you think of the past, but in the present it is absolutely meaningless. In fact, the whole situation has become just the opposite: now heterosexuality is the danger; less numbers are needed. If humanity goes on growing this way, then we cannot support humanity, we cannot live any longer. By the end of this century the population will be so much, the poverty will be so much, that there seems to be no way out except a third world war which will kill almost everybody -- so that a few people can start the whole story again.

I have heard a story, a twenty-first century story: The third world war has happened, and a monkey is sitting on a rock taking a sunbath. A female monkey comes with an apple and gives the apple to the monkey. And the monkey says, "My God, are we going to start it all over again?"

Homosexuality is condemned because there is every possibility that if it is not condemned many more people will turn towards it. The inner tendency is there in every person. In fact, the person who is against it... the more he is against it, the more he has the tendency. Deep down, unconsciously, he knows it is there. To repress it he has to be very much against it; he feels disgusted by the very idea.

But nobody is telling HIM to become homosexual. If others feel attracted, then it is not your business to interfere or to condemn them. It is their freedom, and they are not doing any harm to anybody. It is a harmless game -- stupid, certainly, but not a sin. But as far as stupidity is concerned all sex is stupid, for the simple reason that it is a biological urge and you are not the master of it, you are just a victim.

And you need not be so much worried about it, Hein, because homosexuality has a very beautiful origin: it originated in the monasteries. It is something religious! The first homosexuals were monks and nuns -- Christians, Buddhists, Jainas; all great religions have contributed their share to it. It was bound to be so because there are monasteries even now in existence where no woman has ever entered.

In a Catholic monastery in Europe, Mount Athos, for one thousand years no woman has entered; not even a six-month-old girl has been allowed to enter in. What kind of people are living there? A six-month-old girl and they are afraid even of that! What can they do? But repressing sex creates fear, so the whole monastery is full of men; and homosexuality is a natural by-product if only boys are together or only girls are together.

Religious people have contributed greatly. Educationists have contributed greatly, because boys have to be educated separately. They have to reside in different hostels specially for them and girls have to stay aloof in separate hostels, in separate schools. If you put too many girls together they are bound to become lesbians, because when the sexual urge takes possession of them and they cannot find a boy, then anything is better than nothing.

In zoos even animals turn homosexual -- only in zoos, remember. In their wild state they don't become homosexual. There is no need -- females are available. But in a zoo, if females are not available, they become homosexual. A zoo is worth studying. I used to study zoos because the zoo gives you many indications about human society. The human society is a big zoo because everything has become so unnatural.

Go to a zoo and watch the animals and you will be able to see many things. They become homosexuals; they never become homosexuals in their wild stage. They are FORCED to become homosexuals. They go crazy, they become insane, mad. In wild states they never become insane. No animal ever becomes mad in his wild state; he remains sane. But his sanity needs a little freedom.

A lion has a big territory in his wild state, miles of territory, and he is the king of the whole territory. In a zoo he is in a small cage. If you go to the zoo you will see the lion walking up and down the cage, up and down, up and down, the whole day. It can drive anybody mad. He needs freedom, he needs a certain territory. In such a small space he is overcrowded. He becomes angry, enraged, violent.

Many diseases never happen in the wild. For example, no animal suffers from tuberculosis or cancer, but in a zoo animals suffer from tuberculosis and cancer. Strange! In the wild there are no medical facilities for them and in the zoo every kind of medical facility is available. Doctors are there to look after them, great doctors, doing something great! What they cannot take care of on their own -- cancer, tuberculosis -- doctors help them with. Animals become victims of illnesses which they have never known before.

Human society has been so much forced to live in unnatural circumstances -- and the monastery is one of the most unnatural circumstances. It is a zoo, a religious zoo! Homosexuality was born there, so you need not feel very bad about it. You are a religious person! And you have a great lineage of homosexuals....

If you look for homosexuals you will be surprised. Many poets, many authors, many painters, many musicians, many dancers, many great people, many creative people, were homosexuals. Many Nobel Prize winners have been homosexuals.

And don't be worried about enlightenment either, because at least one homosexual I know has become enlightened -- Socrates; he was a homosexual. And there are suspicions about Jesus. I cannot prove it, they are only suspicions -- because he always moved with the boys. Those twelve apostles... who knows? But if he was, nothing is wrong in it. Socrates was certainly a homosexual. Plato was, Aristotle was. Greeks are great people!

One American girl was going to marry a Greek. The mother was very much worried. She said, "Wait! If you can avoid this marriage...." The girl was mad. She said, "No. He looks so beautiful, just like a Greek god!" The mother said, "I know, but after only a few days you will know he is nothing but a goddamned Greek! And one thing more," the mother said, "if you marry this man then remember one thing: never turn your back towards him, never! Whatsoever happens sleep on your back the whole night!" The girl got married. She insisted, and soon she found the mother was right: the Greek god was nothing but a goddamned Greek! And she was also puzzled because he was always trying to tell her, "Why don't you turn over?" -- but she wouldn't turn over; she was also stubborn! After six months all efforts failed. The Greek said, "Listen. If you don't turn over you are not going to have children ever." Then the girl had to turn because she wanted children. The Greek played a logical trick.

Greeks have been homosexuals for centuries. All their great people have been homosexuals. So you need not worry -- you have a great history behind you! Walt Whitman was a homosexual -- one of the greatest poets of all the ages. There seems to be something in homosexuality that makes people creative, or creative people homosexuals. There is something in it and I can see the point. When you stop creating children, your creativity takes new turns, new dimensions. You create poetry, you create painting.

And the people who have been condemning homosexuality for ages are also condemning it for one more reason. As far as the man/woman relationship is concerned it is always on the rocks, because man cannot understand the mind of the woman, the woman cannot understand the mind of the man. They are poles apart. That is their attraction, but that is also their conflict, constant conflict. If homosexuality is allowed, accepted, the fear is that many people will settle into it because a man can understand another man more easily -- they have the same mind. And women can understand each other more easily -- they have the same mind.

That's why homosexuals are called "gay" people. They are really gay! The heterosexuals look so sad. Whenever you see a couple you can immediately know whether they are married or not: if they are sad they are married, if they are looking dull and dead they are married. Marriage kills all joy for the simple reason that it creates so many conflicts. Hence all societies have condemned homosexuality, for the simple reason that if it is not condemned, what will happen to reproduction? In the past it had some meaning, but now it has no meaning.

Now the day has come when homosexuality CAN be accepted, should be accepted as a natural outlet of your sexual energies. I am not against it, I am not for it either. I am simply saying that if you have to live your sex you can choose your style, you are free to choose your style. If you decide to be stupid, at least you should be given the freedom to choose what kind of stupid you want to be! I give you total freedom.

My effort here is to help you to go beyond it, so if you are homosexual you have to go beyond homosexuality, if you are heterosexual you have to go beyond heterosexuality. And there are other people also who are neither, who are autoerotic, autosexual. They have to go beyond their autoeroticism. Man has to transcend sex, whatsoever kind of sex it is, because unless you go beyond your biology you will never know your soul. But meanwhile -- before you go beyond -- it is your freedom to be whatsoever you want to be.

You say, "I am homosexual. I feel terribly oppressed and stricken by the stigma of homosexuality."

There is no need to be "terribly oppressed." You must be accepting people's condemnation. Deep down somewhere you are also against it; otherwise, why feel oppressed? If people are against, let them be against! You need not declare to everybody that you are a homosexual. You need not move with a flag that you are a homosexual! You can remain a homosexual. Of course, you cannot hide it because your sex style changes your body language. The way the homosexual walks is totally different from the heterosexual; the way he talks is totally different. And he looks so gay, so happy!

So you will have to remain a little less happy, that's all. Don't look so happy, and walk a little more consciously, that's all. Don't feel oppressed and don't feel stricken by the stigma of homosexuality. That is all nonsense! And you say, "It seems false to me to come here to find a way to come closer to myself and at the same time not to have the courage to show myself the way I am."

What courage are you talking about? Here there is no question of courage. If you are homosexual you are homosexual! Here it does not need courage to declare it. Here you can write on your shirt, "I am homosexual." Nobody will take any notice of it. People will say, "So what?"

This is a totally different world. Here we accept all kinds of people: sane, insane, crazy -- we have no objection. Unless you start harming others we have no objection. And homosexuality is a harmless game, absolutely harmless. But you think that this is courageous that you are declaring that you are a homosexual. Here it is not; anywhere else it will be. And I will not suggest that you declare it anywhere else; there is no need. Why brag about it? Accept it silently, relax into it.

But you wanted to say it because it is boiling within you. Don't be worried what others say. Just look within yourself, what you are saying to your own homosexuality. You are not at ease with it. The society has corrupted you, contaminated you. The society has given you ideas. It has created a certain conscience in you and that conscience is pricking, continuously feeling hurt. Now you say, "Then I want to resign and return home so that I don't have to think about it any longer."

Just by going back home you will not be getting rid of it. Neither you will get rid of homosexuality nor will you get rid of the stigma or the feeling of being oppressed. You will have to drop your conscience that has been created by the society in you. You will have to understand yourself and clean yourself of all ideas imposed by others; only then will you be able to relax.

You ask me, "What can I do?"

Hein, don't make a problem out of it. Nothing has to be done about it. I don't tackle individual problems. My whole approach is that there are millions of diseases, but there is only one cure, and that cure is meditation.

You meditate -- homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual.... You meditate. You become more still and more silent. You create inner emptiness. You become more transparent, and then things will start changing. You will be able to see what you are doing to yourself. If it is right you will go on doing it with more joy, with more totality, with more intensity, with more passion. If it is wrong it will simply drop, just like dead leaves falling from a tree.

So I cannot suggest any specific method because to me all the problems are arising because we have become minds and we have forgotten that deep down there is a space within us which can be called no-mind. Entering that space, no-mind, will give you perspective, vision, clarity.

Meditate. Sit silently watching your thoughts -- homosexual, heterosexual, whatsoever they are, it doesn't matter. You watch, you become the witness. Slowly slowly, a distance will be created between you and your thoughts. And one day suddenly, the realization that you are not your mind. And that day a revolution has happened within you. After that day you will never be the same again. A transcendence has happened. After that, whatsoever you do is right; you can't do wrong then. And before that, whatsoever you do is wrong. So when I say I have nothing against homosexuality I am not supporting it, remember. I am not saying, "Be homosexual." I don't have anything against heterosexuality either, but I am not supporting heterosexuality. I am not supporting anything. These are all mind games -- and you have to go beyond all the games.

Your mind is created by the society.

Fifteen-year-old Bobby was running out of a theater where he had just seen a porno movie. The manager stopped him. "Why are you in such a hurry?" "My mother told me," said Bobby, "that if I ever looked at anything bad I would turn to stone -- and I have started!"

Two members of London's exclusive Explorers Club were discussing a mutual friend over large brandies and soda. "Well, I'll be damned," said the first old boy. "You say Parkhurst has gone to Africa and married an ape?" "Quite so, old man." There was a pause and the first clubman asked in a discreet tone, "A female ape, naturally?" "Of course," came the reply. "There is nothing queer about old Parkhurst."

The mind functions as an agent of the society within you. To go beyond mind is to go beyond society. To go beyond mind is to go beyond the whole history. To go beyond mind is to go beyond past. To go beyond mind is to enter into God. And then whatsoever happens is good, is virtue.

Osho.

The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 10

Ch. 12. Question 3.

Uhh warning VENT!!! Talks about self harm and shit... also religious bullshit and gender bullshit??? Like I'm really trans and also Catholicism really fucked me up so if ur uncomfy with that just... skip this post. Also if ur Christian and can't handle seeing ur shit defaced then skip this post. Also if ur gonna clown on this post as "cringe atheism" then fuck you because I'm literally coping with pain lol

:readmore:

Anways now that the disclaimer is over... here comes the real shit.

I... have been going through a LOT lately, jesus christ. I was HAPPY today, yknow? I thought I was gonna be happy the whole day.

I was dancing today. That's how happy I was. For the first time in like... a whole year... I was really so happy. I thought I was gonna cry. But then I got home. And well,,,, I did cry. But not from happiness. I just got my math grade back. A fucking 49 percent. MY AVERAGE RIGHT NOW IS A 57 PERCENT. I MIGHT FAIL MATH 20. I MIGHT HAVE TO RETAKE IT. oh my god I'm such a failure I cant do anything ever i try SO fucking hard but honestly??? I cant fucking do this. I can't, I'm not mentally capable. "Just work harder"... BITCH I AM WORKING AS HARD AS I CAN. I AM SPENDING HOURS AND HOURS OF MY LIFE STUDYING AND PRACTICING. I'm starting to think that how hard i try doesn't even fucking matter because I'm STUPID and all i know how to do is PAINT SHIT!!!! NOBODY CARES ABOUT ART!!!! IF I FAIL THIS CLASS I MIGHT NOT BE ABLE TO HAVE A HOUSE IN THE FUTURE!!!! A HOUSE!!!!!

I dont even want to be a fucking orthodontist. Okay??? I wanna do what I love: painting. But NOOOO. I have to get a "respectable" job that will "pay me enough money to live". WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO MAKE MONEY TO LIVE??? WTF??? THATS LITERALLY SO FUCKED UP. everyone deserves to live (unless they like murdered someone? I guess? Idk) BUT LIKE I DIDNT KILL NO ONE SO WHATS ALL THIS BS ABOUT WORKING TO LIVE???? WTF??? I rly gotta do all this shit I hate, all this shit I'm mentally incapable of doing... so i can have a house. Fuck this. Yknow with my average at a 57... I might fail this class even if I get a really good grade on my next quiz. Can you fucking believe it??? I'm literally so fucking stupid I cant even pass a dumb fucking math class god i hate myself. I cant fail this class. I've NEVER failed a class. Almost failed... but never HAD TO RETAKE A CLASS. that's the ultimate failure. I think my parents would hate me if I failed this.

And on top of that... I'm really struggling with uhhh, dysphoria and body image... and it's so fucking horrible man I want to rip all my skin off I want to suffocate god I want to KILL him I want to MAKE HIM SUFFER. I want to gouge his eyes out and force him to eat them. WHY WOULD HE MAKE ME LIKE THIS????? WHY????? WHATS THE POINT IN MAKING A CHILD SUFFER SO MUCH???

What did I ever do that was so wrong I deserved all this punishment???

Well FUCK YOU and fuck your stupid book and FUCK THESE STUPID FUCKING SAINTS. WASNT THERE SUPPOSED TO BE A WHOLEASS ANGEL WATCHING OVER ME?? PROTECTING ME??? WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT BITCH NOW?? WHERE WAS THAT BITCH WHEN... when I was being bullied? When I literally wanted to kill myself?

Where was that guardian angel when I kept making THE SAME MISTAKE over and over again and I KNEW it was wrong but I kept doing it anyways because it was the only way I could feel like soemone cared about me????

I bet that angel motherufcker KNEW they didnt care. DID THE ANGEL EVER ONCE HELP ME??? NOOOO. all those times I was bruised and broken... all those times...

Man, I was just a kid. I was SO fucking young. And I would come like a lamb to the slaughter and kneel. I would pray... ask for guidance. I would pray the rosary too, I would read the bible and try my very best to understand it, I would go to church and volunteer at church and do my best to be a Good Boy and never sin. I did EVERYTHING right. I literally fasted at some point, like a religious fast. I was devoted...

Honestly though? I think it was the same mistake I make over and over again, except not with a real person.

And you have me NOTHING. GO GIRL, GIVE US NOTHING!!!!!!! I literally used to self-punish for the sins I couldnt bring myself to confess. At my communion, there was one sin I didn't tell because I knew it was unforgivable. I still hate myself for that. But man, I used to try and do all sorts of things to somehow cleanse myself of it. I figured THAT whole ordeal was why I was constantly being tortured.

But I was stupid and I am stupid and that makes NO SENSE because if the thing I'm being punished for happened when I was a child, WHY DID THE PUNISHMENT BEGIN AT MY BIRTH????

They used to tell me that god handcrafted every part of me specifically for some sort of grand reason.

Why.

Really? This bitch really "handcrafted" me just so I could cry and cut myself nearly every night??? Fuck that. Like why would you make me this way. It hurts more than you can IMAGINE. The only reason I'm not dead yet is because of ME, MY strength, not any of the bullshit YOU gave me. I hate when people say "oh, god made u so hardworking" or "oh, god made you so passionate/hopeful/full of love/fiery/whatever" LIKE STFU BITCH THAT WAS NOT SKYDADDY THAT WAS ME!!!

you wanna know what he made me?

dysphoric, ugly af, yeah.... but the worst part?

He made me feel.

That doesn't sound bad, right? Well it's the worst thing on the list. It is my downfall, my Achilles heel or whatever. This emotions shit??? It RUINED my life. My whole life I was cursed with a fucking monster inside me. I kept trying to tell everyone that it wasnt me!!! I kept telling them that it felt like I was being possessed. But adults are SHIT. I hate adults. I want to kill them all. They failed me and their god failed me. None of them every listened to me. All they knew how to do was punish, punish, punish.

It's like giving an allergic kid some peanuts and then getting angry at them for going into anaphylactic shock or whatever. Nobody ever thought "hey, why don't we stop giving the kid peanuts?"

ALL THE ADULTS AROUND ME ACT LIKE CHILDREN AND THEY ALWAYS HAVE ACTED LIKE CHILDREN FUCK ADULTS

Anwyays that's how I ended up with all these unresolved issues,.... emotion is a tough one, like I literally dont have the ability to control my emotions at all, I can try and like, repress them but I cant make myself actually feel less.

My emotion hurts more than anyone else's and nobody ever understood that. I would tell them that it hurts, it PHYSICALLY HURTS, and they would say I just wanted attention. I would tell them I literally couldnt control what my body said and did, I would tell them I felt like A PUPPET ON STRINGS and no one believed me. Fuck them.

Healthy coping mechanisms? I literally self ship with Snape to cope. I literally self ship with characters my brain made up and put in my dreams to cope. I used to hurt myself so much trying to feel loved and cared about irl. Fiction is so much better. I sound like a loser but its TRUE. The sort of thing I need, the sort of love I need is like... a parent. You can't go looking for a parent in a romantic partner, it fucks everything up and you end up... well, let's just say it proabbly wasnt the most legal thing, but I wasnt thinking strisght at all I mean dude I was So fucked in my head when I did all that...whatever...anyways so thank u for fiction!!! I love fiction. Want to kill someone? Draw it. Then you'll feel much better!!! And you dont go to jail!!!

Well the pics here... idk, it was really calming to do this. It's new, painting over religious shit. I was gonna do the whole bible but I already burnt that shit so.... and I was going to cut but I'm trying really hard to stay clean... like really hard. It's so weird and like, addicting, once I hit styro I don't want to stop, but also it kinda transfers the emotional pain to physical pain, making it way easier to deal with. I just can't keep doing that because I KNOW it's bad and look I thoguht I was clean for a whole year but then I fucked up and WOW, GUESS WHAT MADE ME RELAPSE??? MATH CLASS!!!!

Whatever anyways here are my wonderful works of art I made while crying and cursing god (like I'm so pissed at all this catholic bs I believed in him again just to swear at him lol)

.... but imagine for a moment, a better world. One in whcih these saints whose images I've defaced are actually good people... a world in which they SEE ME AND THEY HEAR ME... and I go unpunished.... and I am embraced by someone who UNDERSTANDS.

I think I would cry.

Too bad that world doesnt exist and I just made it up to try and feel a bit better. Whatever, whatever. I painted the things, they're gonna dry. I work hard, I'm gonna do good on my quiz, I hope. I just have to be making it through, that's all it is, work work work without a break but I can proabbly do it. I'm really slipping I admit like the mental health is slipping it's getting worse like I havent had a "fuck I am afab" moment in such a long time so yeah...

Anwyays I feel so much better now that I did my little art project yknow???

All of them for juliasam. now. sorry to anyone else who sent any this is my city now

(thank you 😌 also @jmcolt asked 1-8 too, thank u ❤💕)

Who is the most affectionate?

JULIA DUUHHHHH... it’s the repression 😔 he squeezed her hand when he was fucked up from blood loss once though. love. 

Big spoon/Little spoon?

They don’t spoon.. they're the same size it just ends up being weird 😔 

Most common argument?

It’s not really one specific topic, like I said before she doesn’t really agree with most of the crime stuff around 1938 anymore but lets most of it slide.. 

Favorite non-sexual activity?

ahem 😌 i think i already said this on another post but she likes to take walks by the docks on central island (other places too that’s just where she goes because her workplace is there) and drags him along lol.  Also they sit in a corner booth at Salieri’s like freaks and talk shit about the other guests/some guy in the gang they don’t like 😒

Who is most likely to carry the other?

hmm neither lol, Julia would try it for fun but she’s not strong enough :(

What is their favorite feature of their partner’s?

Ew corny 🤢🤢🤢 but for her... he rarely smiles but the maybe 3 times he does.. she likes that she thinks he looks cute 😌 (that one screenshot from the race where he looks normal. i know i said i hate it but I really don’t, I actually like that pic. he has dimples :/) For him uuhh her fucked up small nose.. the way it looks when she laughs. he’d never say that but yk 

What’s the first thing that changes when they realize they have feelings for the other?

mmmjdsjhdfjhdfjdfjjhdfjhdfj sam is fucked up so he avoids her.. he’s obviously not emotionless but rather. emotionally stunted. Doesn’t talk to anyone about himself, not even his closest friends and instead uses random prostitutes as therapists while mistaking physical intimacy for an emotional connection with that one girl even though she was just doing her job.. Meanwhile Julia has been in the “friend you don’t really open up to” category up until that point and the fact that these feelings come from actual friendship with an actual connection of sorts rather than aforementioned physical intimacy (which was already bad enough last time & didn’t end well you know 🤷‍♀️)... BAD... Which leads to the whole “just don’t think about it” mentality clicking because it’s easier than just facing it I suppose.

Julia on the other hand had a dumb little crush early on that she never really acted on - she’s not emotionally repressed, she just cares too much about what other people think about her.. she’s not trying to be liked, just to be taken seriously so talking about your feelings to some mafia guy out of the blue is probably not the best idea 😔 She just kind of ignores it/complains to her friends... after the hand holding thing even more so because she’s pissed he’s acting weird. she kind of knows he’s a fucked up repressed guy but she’s not gonna chase after him or anything.. make an effort 🔫

Nicknames? & if so, how did they originate?

She calls him “chief” lol. Just for fun.. the more affectionate thing is “Sammy” though which is cringe but whatever.. uhh he doesn’t strike me as a nickname person though, he just calls her Julia. Maybe some corny shit in italian if he’s feeling it

Who worries the most?

Julia 😔 mafia boyfriend thingz, meanwhile her job is just to write things for the newspaper so she’s not actively in danger. 

Who tops?

ewww don’t force me to talk about s*x on tumblr. She does. 

Who initiates kisses?

In public... mostly Julia 🙄 which isn’t much she’ll just give him a kiss on the cheek sometimes. At home/private it’s. both :)

Who reaches for the other’s hand first?

Ahem.. She does 😌 see this.

Who wakes up first?

Uhh it depends. They both have to get up early as fuck but sometimes he’ll get a call from the don at some fucked up early hour. Which wakes her up too but she can go back to sleep ig

Who wants to stay in bed just a little longer?

This ties into the previous question but IF it happens.. she :)

Who says I love you first?

She does. she has to do everything I guess 😒

Who leaves little notes in the other’s one lunch? (Bonus: what does it usually say?)

godd neither that’s cringe. Also they probably just eat out all the time 

Who tells their family/friends about their relationship first?

Julia. Sam doesn’t say anything probably, when someone asks he’s like. mind your own business 😒

What do their family/friends think of their relationship?

omg they mostly have the same friends. I don’t think anyone really gives a shit, they have mafia things to do. Olive knows about it of course and thinks it’s uhhhh questionable... Sam is kinda fucked up but once it works out she’s cool with it 😌

As for family (that’s not “the family”).. Sam doesn’t have any. He does but they live somewhere else and do.. idk something. being catholic. they don’t know what he’s up to. Julia’s dad already knew him obviously (sitting at some cringe family dinner & one of your daughters brings some guy who bled out on your couch a year ago ❤), she could have done better but there are worse guys out there, he’s okay with it. Her sisters are just like. ew we hate this man.

Who cooks more/who is better at cooking?

Technically Julia but she’s too lazy/”””busy””” to cook so they just eat at salieri’s every goddamn day

Who comes up with cheesy pick up lines?

Neither 🙄

Who whispers inappropriate things in the other’s ear during inappropriate times?

UHHH maybe he does. sometimes. 

Who needs more assurance?

Sam but not in a “actively craves it” way, more in a.. doesn’t need it but then gets it once & says it’s dumb but has to think about it for 3 weeks way 

What would be their theme song?

I don’t have one but like you (dany) said.. sara by fleetwood mac’s lyrics have the vibes & i get weirdly emotional about them every time i hear it so. that qualifies 😌

Who would sing to their child back to sleep?

GODDDD I don’t know. the mental image of them having a child at all (MAYBE in the au just for fun but.. idk.)

What do they do when they’re away from each other?

gooddddd Sam is just doing mafia shit idk. hangs around with the don/his friends or in his stupid boxing club. Julia goes back to writing some random article/rewriting it if she’s particularly bored. Also hangs out with her friends. 

one headcanon about this OTP that breaks your heart

GODD the entire canon timeline 1938 and after that. We have au’s for this bitch but you know how it is... Like I said in a post on my oc blog, she doesn’t know anything about the bank job/salieri smuggling drugs now/you know what :)... just a bunch of fucked up things all happening on one day. 

She & Olive leave for Empire Bay after Tommy tells them to get out of town before he snitches on Salieri, Julia ends up marrying the nephew of her old editor-in-chief because she never had that (a wedding lol) & feels like she’s missing out. She’s not happy though, she doesn’t really love him so she just drowns herself in work instead/becomes a bitter workaholic :) He’s not a bad guy, there’s just no real connection there. Come back when you’re emotionally repressed 😒  Her husband also doesn’t know anything about her life before moving to empire bay except that she was a reporter in Lost Heaven and that she has a dead boyfriend who he saw on a few old photographs that Julia keeps in a little box :( Sees her with big smile on those that he never saw on her before 🙃

one headcanon about this OTP that mends it

I don’t know what to say here but in regards to the AU i mentioned uhhh.. basically the ending doesn’t happen bc Sam is somewhat normal I suppose, gets over his repression & doesn’t betray his friends 😌.. they get married in 1939/40 something :^)

lost characters based solely on how i portray them in my text post memes

jack: constantly crying and/or screaming. no emotional stability. no social skills. terrible bedside manner. endearingly bland. into powerful women. loves the red sox... a lot. daddy issues. doesn’t believe in himself. has shitty tattoos. being crushed under the weight of everybody’s expectations. more or less hot. he is not cool at all. repressed attraction to guys. chronic hero syndrome. adorably embarrassing as a dad. passionately and violently overreacts to the mere concept of people believing in things. mansplains but in a non malicious way because he is literally that oblivious. gets into fights a lot. dissociates in mirrors. gets injured a lot but doesn’t wanna make a fuss. thinking about caves

kate: desperate need to protect women. bi. is frustrated by jack and sawyer’s personalities but wants to fuck them oh so much. rowdy. feminist. biceps. will call you out. is love with claire and jack and sun and- she has a lot of love to give. she can be ur angel or ur devil. exasperated. doesn’t understand astrology but she’s trying. she’s the slytherin friend every hufflepuff needs. uses guns. doesn’t know how to cook. go to relationship advice is “dump him” or “suck his dick”.  just because you put things in her vagina doesn’t mean you know her. gemini

hurley: sad clown. haha laughter! hiding real pain! has debilitating mental illness. he’s doing his best to stay positive. virgin. genuinely kind soul. overwhelmed by food. awkward around girls he likes. much smarter and wiser than anybody thinks, including himself. a special boy who we all love. says dude a lot. the only valid rich person ever. doesn’t like himself. sees dead people. kinda silly. also he’s fat (but i don’t joke about it in a cruel way)

sawyer: compulsive need to nickname people. from the south. bewildered by charlie’s english slang. covering up vulnerability with jokes and being mean. loves juliet. is an asshole but a loveable asshole (this varies, mostly he’s an asshole). conventionally attractive to the point of boring. got a Thing going on with miles. can’t stand daniel being smart around him. babies freak him out. treats animals poorly

locke: very supportive and new agey type. i’ve made two jokes about him encouraging people to jack off, that wasn’t on purpose but Okay. he doesn’t know what its like to have friends. he says Deep Sounding but odd things. he’s super duper into nature. he suffers. he’s very forgiving of ben to the point of absurdity and he desperately wants ben to love and fuck him. or maybe they are fucking. Who Knows. he loves knifes

sayid: sexy, suffering shannon fucker. he doesn’t respect boone. his life is an endless parade of misery culminating in going on autopilot. respects women

jin: he has no idea what’s going on and his life revolves around sun

sun: beautiful. perfect. very passionate about gardening

claire: bi. frequently ignored. cutesy and sweet. super into astrology and new age stuff. her cheery demeanour can only hold on so long before she loses it. kinda dumb. has baby. vanilla, at least for now. loves charlie but is kinda frustrated by him. goes feral and “kitten thinks of murder all day” sums it up

charlie: that he needs attention and validation to survive would be a gross understatement. bi. trans. punk. stupid. english. really horny and slutty. adores music more than anything. drug addict (again, i refuse to be cruel). severe jealousy issues. inferiority superiority complex. hates himself but will get offended if you hate him. can’t take any form of criticism. is bewildered by sawyer’s american-isms. bit of a madonna whore complex. smol but will go the fuck off like a terrier nipping at ya heels. catholic and riddled with catholic guilt. goofy and obnoxious and he knows it. passive aggressive. terrified of bees. nice ass. mood swings. did i mention he’s short? anyway here’s wonderwall

ben: ugly. just plain terrible. beaten and bruised. seething with rage and pain on the inside. virgin. liar. just causes problems on purpose. resembles a lemur or rat, rodents in general. loves bunnies. doesn’t think sex is real. just a really bad idea for him to be around juliet. has no friends. doesn’t care about other people. says creepy shit just because. he knows he’s a terrible person. killed people. the friend nobody likes and a general nuisance to the other characters

(also my literal first text post meme about ben was a joke about him eating his parents??? 2014 sapphire, i wanna talk...)

juliet: mom friend. seems very calm but she’s screaming on the inside. basically she’s the This Is Fine meme. depressed. has big tits. low-key kinky. feminist in a very gentle way. has no ill will towards kate and will only fight her for fun. concerned for daniel’s well being. has no chemistry with jack. loves sawyer. flat measured calm way of speaking. she’s breaking apart at the seams but will offer you a nice glass of water :)))

michael: has a son..... uh...... enjoys minecraft?

(i’m sorry)

desmond: scottish. drinks. easily and constantly confused. magic psychic time powers, like visions and electromagnetic dimensional stuff. easily angered. fucked off by the concept of time and destiny in general. hhhhhhhot

smokey: Hello Fellow Humans I Promise This Is My Own Skin Haha

miles: bi. aro. loves money (trying to fill the hole in his heart with money and things). emo/punk. pretends not to care but he really does care. thinks emotions and romance are dumb but of course is emotional... and kinda wants love. but not that he LIKES you or anything. exasperated. thinks everybody else is weird. kinda slutty or at least trying to be. masochist and into BDSM. mean to daniel for no reason. daddy issues. resting bitch face. jaded, bitter and salty. responds to romantic things dan or char say with vulgar or mocking comments. grew up poor. can hear dead people. trying too hard to be edgy. deadpan snarker. Fuck Off I’m Not Sad Don’t Look At Me [cries only around the audience and his mom]

walt: becoming older than 10 was when things went downhill for him

shannon: seems vapid but is more than that. deeply insecure. feels she can’t do anything right. constantly put down as worthless by other people. yeah she’s sad but she Looks Great. wants sayid to pound her (mood)

(gee, that was dark)

richard: very old and ageless. sees ben as a son figure. really not holding it together. seems smart but he has no fucking idea whats going on. cult mindset. quips curtly back at miles’ vulgar jokes. in love with miles based on very little interaction. misses his dead wife. has a cute giggle. is also hot. overwhelmed and just wants to go into the jungle and scream

frank: doesn’t understand what anybody is talking about. the only normal person here. doesn’t understand these kids today with their weird kinks. just wants to sleep. pilot. bit of a conspiracy theorist

boone: bi. stupid. soaked in blood a lot.  (L I T E R A L L Y all of my boone jokes are about him being dumb and bi and horribly injured and combos of those. i haven’t even made any incest jokes! what the actual fuck)

ana lucia: “[with tears in her eyes] DO U WANNA FIGHT??”. highly volatile. lesbian. bros with jack but will roast him. angery, sad and underloved

daniel: bi, agender, neurodivergent, just, just especially brain weird. The Scientist trope but kind of a shitty scientist. smart. in love with charlotte. in love with desmond. likes rats a lot. talks weird and soft spoken. withdrawn and polite but with bursts of bitterness. his mom won’t let him live the live he wants to live. time travel weirdness. loves music. gifted kid burn out. has a mental and emotional collapse. thinks a hydrogen bomb will solve all his problems. skinny. touches people a lot. he’s not okay. romantic. overwhelmed. memory problems. his lack of life experience and softness is used to contrast miles. takes some statements literally. pretty vanilla (for now) and doesn’t know what certain kinks are. likes that charlotte is Tough & Rowdy. doesn’t swear much. bad hair. was unhinged in college. has radiation poisoning

libby: neurodivergent and in love with hurley

eko: yeah... i’ve legit only used him for jokes where charlie says something EXTREMELY vulgar and eko says “go to church”

charlotte: bi, loud, passionate, beautiful, angery, knows All The Languages, huge nerd, loves daniel and thinks he’s a Snack, outspoken feminist, archaeologist/anthropologist and wants to explore some fucking ruins, The Lost Lenore trope, loves chocolate, exasperated, great smile, subtly insecure, doesn’t get that she could just tell daniel how she feels, has had many indiana jones like adventures (off screen, of course), for example: crashing her dirtbike into all 7 wonders of the world

danielle: french and unhinged, has seen some shit

alex: just a young lady with no chill

jacob: suffers from terminal apathy. has little understand of human behaviour. doesn’t care about people. he just plain sucks. has no endearing qualities. causes many problems. beats the shit outta richard. doesn’t like technology. so removed from humanity that he’s a touch uncanny valley

christian, eloise, charles and anthony jokes each have their own kind of flavours but fuck it, i’ll sum them all up as: contemptuous cunts who deserve to die

aaron: just a baby boy. does baby things. has like 5 parents

vincent: a dog. a good boy. does he know more than he lets on? is he mysterious? no, he is just a dog

The Key to Understanding Deltarune: The Halloween Hack

So we’re currently in the middle of a 4000 year content hiatus

Which is unfortunate, because ever since the big iconic Halloween-day surprise demo drop, my brain has been rattling a baseball bat against the inside of my skull and chanting “CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT”

Undertale was like candy for the thematic analysis side of my brain. I still wake up in a cold sweat some nights going “fun value......he put a quantitative value on fun.....numbers going up.....”

I am desperate to know what kind of themes Deltarune is going to tackle. Can you effectively predict that from one (1) 3 hour demo? No. Does my brain care? No.

Which is what lead me to the wonderful world of intertextuality, or examining how a media text is shaped by other media texts

It started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this with me doing a playthrough of EarthBound, the video game that Toby has cited as his biggest inspiration for Undertale

That was fun & interesting (the “throwing away an emotionally engaging experience to grimly make Numbers Go Up” thing feels a lot closer to home after trying and failing to get the sword of kings), but it didn’t provide much insight into Deltarune, specifically. It wasn’t enough. I needed more. I was willing to dig into literally any intertext (except Homestuck, which no force on this earth can compel me to read :) )

anyway thats how I ended up playing Toby Fox’s high school fangame

And somehow (sorry Toby) I walked out of there with an unironic theory (a game theory....if you will....): Deltarune is Toby’s adult reexamination of the Halloween Hack.

What is the Halloween Hack?

You know that thing where, like, people take the engine of a Pokemon game and edit it so there’s a new region and a bunch of new fakemon, and also There’s Swears Now

In 2008, Toby Fox entered a contest on an EarthBound fansite for the best Halloween-themed EarthBound hack

In one sense, reducing the Halloween Hack to a “bad romhack with swears” is a little bit of a disservice. There are some glimmers in there of a really affecting, thought-provoking game, and you can see some of the early blueprints of what would later become Undertale (“do video game ‘monsters’ really deserve to die” is a major theme, and the character of Dr. Andonuts was effectively split up into Alpyhs, Asgore, and Sans)

But it’s also. very much a fangame made by a 16-year-old.

You can read a basic summary of the Hack here. High school-age Toby wrote two pretty extensive analyses of his thought process behind the game. I’ll be referring back to them a lot, and I’d highly suggest giving them a read--Toby’s been so famously resistant to making any Word of God statements about Undertale that it’s kind of fascinating to see him being so candid

an extremely long and rambling examination of How This All Relates To Deltarune

The Halloween Hack opens in the town of Halloween Twoson. Twoson is one of the cites in EarthBound, and here it’s been painted orange. and there’s pumpkins now

See, high school Toby had...a bit of a chip on his shoulder. In the Making Of notes, he explains that he was frustrated that “most people generally thought I was just ‘another funny guy’”. So he designed the opening of the game to seem unoriginally close to the original EarthBound--like “a regular, funny, lazy hack”--to lull players into a false sense of security before the horror elements set in.

Two interesting things there:

“Lazily, unoriginally close to the source game” sounds an awful lot like the Dark World segment of Deltarune

Halloween Twoson looks very visually similar to Hometown

Toby’s description of Twoson also sounds pretty Hometown-esque:

The main impressions of Twoson that I wanted to give the player were: It's funny. It's a nice fall day outside. The person hacking this game is ridiculously lazy. It's a nice place to live. If you look at it a little closely, it's kind of claustrophobic.  

And when does the horror kick in? When the player descends into the underground tunnels beneath the city.

The “horror” in the Halloween Hack is, however, Pretty Not Good.

There’s a whole lot of the flavor text narrator (put a pin in that one) insisting “this is so scary. you’re so scared. your hands shake and your head throbs because you’re so scared.” There’s also a thing where the battle text keeps going “the shambling zombie BITES your HEAD OFF!!! (you lose 15 hp).”

I think the True Lab sequence in Undertale is a decent demonstration that Toby’s come a long way since then (and that Honey We’ve Got A Storm Coming :’) ). But you know what the Hack’s style of horror reminds me of?

My first thought when I beat the demo and saw this stinger was “this looks like an intentionally shitty creepypasta.” Now I wonder if it’s lowkey adult Toby poking a little fun at teenage Toby

The Halloween Hack is a game about railroading. It’s Spec Ops The Line before there was Spec Ops The Line.

According to Toby:

The main theme of this game is the lack of choice. There is really no choice in this game. From the moment you start to the moment you finish, you're destined to kill Dr. Andonuts. There are two endings, but they both eventually end up the same way. It's all a big joke on the player.

You know why there isn't a choice there? Because you already chose to make Varik go into the door. You already chose to go forward. The only real choice, as Varik realizes at the end of the game, is to stop or keep going. By "stop" he means "turn off the game," and that's all you can do. Anything you play is your own fault for playing, and that's the only real choice you can make.

Interesting? Yeah. A little obnoxious? Also yeah.

That’s one of the criticisms people had of Spec Ops. "The atrocities we commit when we feel like we don’t have a choice” is an intriguing theme, but “~the only way to win is not to play~ [the game I worked hard on for the express purpose of people playing it]” isn’t a very satisfying conclusion.

Undertale, in direct contrast to the Hack, is all about choice. It earns the right to guilt you for the No Mercy Run by giving you every opportunity not to go through with it.

But even Undertale plays a little with the concept of railroading--you can’t stay with Toriel; you can’t spare Asgore in any of the neutral runs; you can’t save Asriel.

Now Deltarune seems to be returning full-on to the Hack’s “your choices don’t matter” premise. But it’s going to need to find something more insightful and satisfying to say about it.

Which makes me really curious about this:

If the Hack has a secondary theme besides railroading/lack of choice, it’s The Soul-Crushing Impact Of Internalized Homophobia.

The tragic antagonist, Dr. Andonuts, destroys his own life trying to repress his gay desire. He retreats into a dream world made of his neuroses and trauma, and he’s inevitably Otherized and murdered by the player. He’s something of a dark version of Alphys, who “disappears” into her lab without ever meeting and getting support from Frisk, Papyrus, and Undyne.

Undertale takes an opposite approach to its lgbt themes--the Underground is a utopia where homophobia and transphobia don’t exist. Everyone respects Frisk’s and Chara’s pronouns. Alphys finds solace and healing in her relationship with Undyne.

It’s a heartwarming growth from the despair in the Halloween Hack. And it’s a vision that’s been deeply meaningful to a lot of people. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no value in exploring issues of homophobia. 16-year-old Toby tried to do that, but...wasn’t exactly at a point where he was equipped to handle it with a ton of sensitivity and nuance.

(There’s. There’s a boss battle where you fight the physical manifestation of Andonuts’ gay repression. It’s a crotch. You fight a crotch.)

Some of the hints in the Deltarune demo, however--the Toriel Has Become Catholic thing; the fact that Alphys and Undyne haven’t met and Mettaton hasn’t been able to transition; the potential trans implications of choosing a name only to have it discarded for an assigned one (“you can’t choose who you are in this world”)--make me suspect that’s one of the themes that Toby will try to revisit from an adult perspective.

The Hack is interested in the idea of the flavor text narrator as a distinct, intelligent entity, whose thoughts and goals don’t always align with those of the player character or the player. 

The Hack’s narrator makes a habit of dictating “your” emotions to you (you’re scared; you can sense ‘the monster’ and you want to kill it; etc). The narration starts to seem more and more unreliable, until, as Toby put it, “The narrator starts talking to you personally...rambling about incoherent things.”

At the game’s turning point, you’re given a yes/no choice to kill Dr. Andonuts. Choose yes, and the narrator (mockingly?) calls you a good person, describes the murder you commit, and then narrates what appears to be your (or their? or Varik’s?) psychological breakdown. Choose no, and the narrator tells you that’s not a real choice and redirects you back to the yes/no box. If you press the b-button to try and opt out of the choice (the game’s unofficial subtitle is “Press the B-Button Stupid,” and doing so allows you to follow Andonuts into his dream world), the narrator starts to panic, although the game ultimately ends the same way.

Not to NarraChara Real, but NarraChara Real 

The Hack is also interested in the idea of the player character as a possibly-unwilling puppet controlled by the player (who in turn is controlled by the railroading/their need to beat the game).

According to Toby:  

 As you approach someone you've never met that you're labeling as a monster, your body pushes you forward to kill him. What's funny is that it's not even uncontrolled, it's really just the force of the player's controller pushing that little bounty hunter into murdering Andonuts. You might not realize it, but Varik is almost dead, and yet he can't stop moving because you keep pushing those buttons. 

The Halloween Hack is, fundamentally, a nostalgic meditation on an existing game.

It’s a little obvious to say, but the Hack isn’t a standalone game. It’s a hack of EarthBound.

Toby writes:

EarthBound dominated my childhood, shaped my preteen years, and played a large role in molding me into the offbeat pseudohippie I am today. It gave me a sense of humor. It helped me learn how to read. Its lessons served as a basis for my sense of justice and courage.

But at age 16, Toby’s feeling about the game that had shaped him were a little mixed. He describes “the staleness of a fifteen-year-old video game” as one of his motivations for making the Hack.

In Deltarune, he (kind of hilariously) has Alphys parrot his teen-self’s “staleness” line:

(I could write a whole meta just on the Mew Mew Kissy Cutie vs Mew Mew Kissy Cutie 2 thing)

Still, Toby’s nostalgia for EarthBound is essential to how the Hack operates. Earlier, I said there were glimmers of an thoughtful, affecting game buried in the “bad romhack with swears.” The most genuinely moving moment in the Hack, in my opinion, is the Onett sequence. 

You wander though a faded, dream world version of Onett--the hometown from EarthBound--while a slowed down arrangement of the Onett music plays. Snatches of forgotten conversations appear on road signs. Various monsters from EarthBound follow slowly behind you, but don’t attack. The only battles are against creatures called “Remember Me?”

The EarthBound characters appear to recognize “Varik” as Ness, EarthBound’s protagonist--or are they recognizing you, the player, as the same person who played EarthBound once upon a time?

The one problem, of course, is that not everyone has played EarthBound. It’s a relatively niche game. The sense of remembrance and regret and loss in the Onett sequence is universal, but being shaped as a person by the specific video game EarthBound isn’t a universal experience.

But in the years since the Hack, Toby has created something with a wider reach than EarthBound. Something that can evoke that sense of memory and nostalgia in players. A familiar game that he can take apart, rearrange, and examine in an entirely different light.

He made Undertale.

And now he’s rearranging the pieces into Deltarune.

A Response to Postmodernism: Asymptotes

(Inspired most recently by this random ask about metanarratives, but for people just stumbling on the topic check out this SSC post “Postmodernism for Rationalists”. And when discussing pomo, I am always reminded of this tweet by St_Rev: Postmodernism is like nuclear fission; true but too dangerous for humans to be trusted with.) Let’s back up a bit. Lacan broke down mental experience into three parts: the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic. I’m going to accept this, but a) ignore the Imaginary, and b) append Social to Symbolic because they are the same. Which is to say: Our experience of the world consists of the Real and the Social/Symbolic. What does that mean? The Real is well, actual reality that exists independent of human understanding. It’s the stuff that’s still there if you close your eyes. It’s the fact that there isn’t enough food no matter what the Emperor says, or that we will all one day die, or the cruelty of cancer, or the unimaginable gulf between the stars. It is the reality that victory goes to the side with more guns not the nobler cause, or that some people won’t get along no matter how much you love them both and try to negotiate peace. The Real is usually far too complicated and chaotic and unbounded for us to comprehend. Like in the question of “when were the Dark Ages” in the linked SSC post, the Real is all the individual lives and experiences of people over that time period. It’s too big to even put into words, but it’s still undeniably there. Any attempt to just ignore the Real is called repression, and the Real will eventually rise from that and disrupt your plans. The Symbolic is our attempt to make any sense of the above. It is how we split infinitely varied things into simple categories and binaries, like the insistence that everyone is male or female (or good vs bad.) It is the map instead of the territory, and *every single word* we use is just a Symbolic interpretation of far too messy Real. (Like this post recently asking just what is a boss anyway? Or the well written post “The Categories Were Made for Man, Not Man for the Categories”) Whenever we try to say something about every type of apple, or define what “life” is, or come up with an ideology that pits an obvious group of good guys and bad guys, or just try to predict the results of a scientific experiment with a probability curve, we are still thinking using the Symbolic. This is not a huge sin. After all, we can not actually think about the ineffable Real, let alone communicate about it. If we want to make any progress at all, either in reasoning about the world or working with others, we *have* to use the Symbolic. It’s like physicists using models assuming spherical cows - it gets you somewhere, eventually, at least. (Certainly a tribe using imperfect Symbolic thinking would outcompete and defeat a bunch of brainiacs just meditating on the Real. Existence without using the Symbolic is just not sustainable.) I even upgrade the term to Social/Symbolic since all of our social existence depends on how we use the Symbolic to express concepts to others. That’s well, what language is. And once you have a Symbolic term, and you share it with another via mouth-sounds or ink-scratches, then it takes on an independent Symbolic existence that can be read and interpreted by people who are neither you nor your intended target. Then these symbols really do have an external existence, spreading throughout the population, with no direction by a conscious mind. Words and concepts are like a virus living in the social body this way. The narrative or metanarrative, is a Social/Symbolic entity this way - fairly detached from the Real that gave it meaning, and evolving based on what is most efficient for the social rules it inhabits. Two brief examples: - Science. Science is obviously a quest for the Real, and that is admirable. And yet even when trying hardest to do this, we create standards of objectivity and merit that reflect Social/Symbolic understanding. We talk of p-values and grant writing and peer review and hundreds of ways this search for the most raw truth is filtered through simplistic understanding, and incentive schemes that have long since become normal status-seeking rat races. - Capitalism. Markets are a method of social relation of course. And yet the values and prices of things fluctuate in response to the necessities of the Real. If food becomes scarce, or a movie is truly terrible, or a new writer is brilliant beyond precedence, no matter how unexpected these things are to the powers that be, they can earn money and renowned in a market, proving some glimmer of the Real in doing so. Now the price of something is not an untainted mark of its true value, but it is at least related to it somehow. Anyway, the tumblr version of Postmodernism (which is to say, that version that is most politically useful to the class of people who have currently discovered this concept - laypeople arguing about politics on social media) could be reduced to this: 1. In no cases do we ever know the Real, without relying on narratives found in the Social/Symbolic. (We can’t know when the Dark Ages began or ended.) 2. So choose which narratives you want to pursue based on Social/Symbolic reasons. (Do you want to align yourself with the narrative of the Dark Ages spread by the Catholic Church? By labor historians? Etc.) The problem with these is that they are true, but also noxious, as they would always mean dropping the evidence of our own eyes for the narrative of the class we are trying to support. And people who do this too much are very evidently stupid (in action, not in essence.) We see the results of this in Holocaust deniers and Stalin apologists and 9-11 truthers. The issue is that they are forgetting that the symmetric case is true: the complete Real may be inaccessible *but so is the complete Social/Symbolic*. While amateur pomo knows you can never completely reach the Real, it forgets you can never *escape* it either. In actuality, total Social/Symbolic is an eternal fantasy. It is referenced in FALC or the singularity, where you are immune from any needs and can spend all your time engaging with only concepts, or only the social sphere you have chosen, free of all messy entanglements. It is a powerful dream (or nightmare), with a lot to say for it, but it’s as impossible as knowing the mind of God. There will always be some element of the Real under the fantasy, repressed and pushing back in the ways we least expect or want. Everything we know is between two asymptotes - which can approach the Real, but never reach it, and we can approach the pure Social/Symbolic but never realize it. So an attempt to choose your narrative *solely* on Social/Symbolic grounds (like which side you want to support) will find itself constantly interrupted by rude counter-evidence. It might be the people voting against you, or your story not selling, or just an anxious feeling in the pit of his stomach. It’s really impossible to predict how the Real will erupt, but it always will. You have to accept you are just stuck as a mutt in the muddled middle, never have authentic Real knowledge or pure Social/Symbolic simplicity, but a mix of both at all times.

Goodbye to All That

The following post was first published on Message in a Bottle, the Island Books blog, and on NW Book Lovers, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association blog, at the tail end of a very trying year. It’s being revisited now at the tail end of another, by way of celebrating the paperback release of Brian Doyle’s One Long River of Song.

--------------------------------------

2016 wasn’t quite two weeks old when I first heard that it was cursed. On top of the usual bad news (Sharaban tea shop, bombing) came the announcement of David Bowie’s death, and something about it, hard on the heels of his most acclaimed record in years, songs that were released on his birthday, seemed especially shocking and unjust. Public celebration of the music quickly turned into lamentation for the man, inverting Hamlet’s sardonic lines about how “the funeral bak’d meats / Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.”

Given Bowie’s lifelong example of ironic detachment, it felt right to make black jokes about a curse, but as the months went by more and more celebrities died (Alan Rickman, Harper Lee, Prince, Muhammad Ali, to name a few) and so did a crowd of dancers in an Orlando nightclub, and the talk of curses started sounding serious. It became a commonplace that 2016 was the Worst Year Ever.

Not being a superstitious sort, I chalked this up to normal variation. The year may have brewed up an atypical amount of trouble, but there were also some high spots. Scientists identified the gene responsible for ALS and the Cubs came from behind to break a century-long string of bad luck. Things could have been worse.

But then came a one-two punch–well, more like a chin tap and a train collision. Within a couple of days in early November, Daylight Saving Time came to and end and so did my faith in democracy. It started getting dark earlier and, after the election, it seemed like it was going to stay that way for the foreseeable future. I fell deeply into what used to be called a “brown study” and couldn’t see the point in getting out of bed, let alone reading a book. No matter what I did, I couldn’t dispel the fog of depression. For almost two weeks I had no answers, and then it came to me to ask a question instead: “What would Brian Doyle do?”

Yes, the Northwest’s own Brian Doyle, author of beloved fictional classics including Mink River and Martin Marten. Ever since I first fell in love with his work he’s been a touchstone for me, and I like to imagine that we have a lot in common. We are both bespectacled, bearded men in our middle years; both of us have the creaky knees that result from too many hours of basketball and the quirky minds that result from too many years of Catholic education. Brian has written often about his lovely bride, Mary, a woman of Belgian extraction he describes as “no bigger than a heron;” my own remarkable spouse grew up outside of Brussels and has to stand on a chair to look a heron in the eye. Brian enjoys writing wise, witty, and lyrical books that make any subject important and interesting; I enjoy reading wise, witty, and lyrical books that make any subject important and interesting.

We differ, though, in respect to temperament. As he put it when I had the privilege of interviewing him earlier this year (another 2016 highlight):

“My sister the smiling Buddhist nun says I am congenitally optimistic, as the well-balanced middle child in a large family, but I think it’s more that I just cannot repress the constant stream of amazing examples and chapters of grace and humor and courage and tenderness and humility I see every blessed day. Fact. It’s all there if you look hard enough. I am not always stupid, and I get it that grief and pain and loss and evil are everywhere and daily fare, and people I love are hammered and have died, and I am terrified of fouling the nest so badly that kids can’t live in it, and I am enraged at murderous thugs and bloviating buffoons, but still, man, look at the armies of light pitted against it all! Isn’t that astounding?”

As for me, a quote from Leonard Cohen (another casualty of 2016) will suffice: “I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel completely soaked to the skin.” Like him, “I’ve always been free from hope.” That mindset carries me over most crises, but not this one. In this case I needed the boost that only Brian Doyle could provide. This is the man, after all, who made a legendary impromptu speech that brought tears and then laughter to a room full of booksellers in the wake of a terrible shooting in Roseburg, Oregon. This is the man who recently published something called The Kind of Brave You Wanted to Be: Prose Prayers and Cheerful Chants Against the Dark. It’s like he went back in time to write what I needed before I knew I needed it. I decided that not only would I go back to his books and read my way into the light, I’d do what he’s always telling us we have to do, share our stories. I’d write up that true tall tale of the time I was in my twenties and I beat that giant Viking guy one-on-one on a gravelly court with a rusty backboard and a bent rim and I’d send it to him and tell him what he meant to me.

And then the next day I learned that Brian Doyle has brain cancer.

Oh, if I could kick you in the teeth, 2016, I would. But I haven’t got the time. I have to Kübler-Ross my way through this and get my head on straight. I have to think of Brian’s family and friends and colleagues and students and readers and all the pain and sadness they feel. I have to figure out what to do next, because there’s a lot for everyone to do.

The doctors can take the lead. Even though they “can’t delete it or fix it or cure it,” they can treat it, and they are. Brian’s already had surgery that removed almost all of his tumor, and is beginning a course of radiation and chemotherapy that will, with fingers crossed, give him “a few more years of reading and writing and being with [his] wife and kids.” There’s a fundraiser online to assist them with medical and therapeutic costs, which will undoubtedly be vast. For an example of what they’ll be dealing with, one side effect of this kind of brain surgery, hopefully a temporary one, is homonymous hemianopsia, the loss of half the field of vision on the same side in both eyes. Particularly cruel of 2016 to force a writer to look at things from only one side, don’t you think?

Those of us further from the center can contribute, of course, and we can spread the word about the help that’s needed. And we can do what we’ve always done, support his work. Out now is his collection of short-short fiction, The Mighty Currawongs, which contains “This Is the Part Where You Say Something Real,” maybe the best story of a marriage that it’s possible to tell in three pages. Read it. In the spring will come another novel, The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World. Put it on your wish list.

We can also give to each other what Mary Doyle is thankful that her friends have given to her. Give “your tears your hope your compassion your warmth your wit your generosity your respect your creativity your friendship your tenderness your humor your searching your reading your writing your cooking your dog walking your baking your mailing your typing your stamping your donating your sitting your roof cleaning your Christmas lighting your carpentry your hands held together in prayer.” Give the benefit of the doubt to the good who deserve it and no quarter to the evil who don’t.

We can put 2016 behind us and think about what’s ahead. We’ve got 2017, all of it we need, however long it lasts. As a great philosopher once said, “We’re only here for a minute, we’re here for a little window, and to use that time to catch and share shards of light and laughter and grace seems to me the great story. And I love that work.”

More Life. The Great Work Begins.

--James

Hi, me again. Different question. I read somewhere that Ne "wants to be entertained by people" and Fi "doesn't want to feel bad". Is that true? If so, does not wanting to feel bad include avoiding to be sad or angry? What does "doesn't want to feel bad" mean? Egoistic? Against it's own value system? That I would get, but rejecting sadness or anger not so much.

I don’t think people are necessary to stimulate Ne, except in that those people create content for the Ne to absorb and ponder. A Ne can be entertained by a movie, a book, a poem, a philosophical bent, a video game, anything… and if that includes an actual human being beside them on the couch, or texting them, that’s great – but Ne just wants more intellectual property to think about, pull apart, and make part of their greater worldview, not necessarily more people. If the Ne finds a stimulating group of people, then by all means – the more the merrier, but it’s less about human interaction and more about sharing ideas.

INXPs as introverts have a richer internal world they can turn to for inspiration or entertainment; think about (the new, and book - INFP) Anne Shirley creating elaborate fantasies all on her own in her head to help her deal with and escape from reality, opposed to a Ne-dom like Claudia from Warehouse 13 who will scream, “I’m so BORED” if she has nothing to do. Extroverts like to be doing things, even if for a Ne-dom, “doing” something is pondering a philosophical truth or having an argument about… whatever.

“Fi doesn’t want to feel bad.”

This is a little misleading, but also strangely… correct; it implies a Fi won’t steal a stick of gum because the guilt of doing it might eat them up inside – and while that’s true, it goes deeper to the sense of ultimate inner betrayal a Fi has, that in doing something that goes against their core motives, they literally could not live with themselves. These are not superficial things, not every day things, but the things so deep within themselves that they cannot go against those things, even if society pressures them to do otherwise. It’s not about how they “feel” on a surface level (sad, angry, guilt, etc), but rather that this violates who I am.

I’m trying to think of a good example but I’m such a history buff (to the exclusion of all else) all I can come up with on the spur of the moment is Thomas More, a Fi-user, and his refusal to go against his conscience even when it might have saved his life and cost his family less inconvenience. Henry VIII had divorced Katharine of Aragon, and in doing so, made himself the head of a new Church of England, which rejected Papal (the Pope’s) authority and said Henry was the highest moral religious authority in the land (despite him having rampant sexual immorality in his life). He ordered most of his nobility to sign a document saying this was true, he was who he said he he was (practically God), and that they accepted the new Church (among other political statements); it was an “oath.”

At this time, the people who were devout had been taught that rejecting the Catholic Church and the Pope’s moral authority was like rejecting God; the three things (God, the Catholic Church, and the Pope) had become one in the minds of the people. Swearing an oath otherwise would damn your soul. More, an intelligent, ingenious man (a lawyer, statesman, politician, author, etc) used every trick in the book to get out of it, find loopholes, etc., but ultimately refused to sign, because to do so would be a betrayal of his core self, and his central beliefs. His integrity and sense of self (Fi) mattered to him more than his life, and he was “glad to die” upon “his principles” (he even made two jokes walking up to the scaffold).

Now, that isn’t to say Fi’s didn’t sign that oath without remorse, guilt, etc., or even out of self-preservation, fear, or a desire to stay in favor, but to them, it wasn’t a clear an distinct betrayal of who they are, like it was for More. You can look at him and say, “Gosh, why would anyone do that? That’s stupid!” – but that is the nature of Fi. It decides what is right, what is absolute, in the Fi-user’s life; others need not understand or even respect it, but this is something that the Fi cares so much about, it cannot violate it, under any circumstances; and it matters so much that it may even die for it.

As for the rest of the question, anyone can want to avoid sadness, anger, or negative emotions for any reason – but that isn’t type specific so much as related to the individual. Some people do reject sadness, in an attempt to “skip” over it and put some distance between them and the event, in order to better process it, but while that works fine for some people, it doesn’t work for everyone and can cause serious problems of “repression” (which can manifest in undealt with depression in some) if they don’t realize they’re doing it.

Enneagram 9′s reject anger – or rather, downplay or are unaware of how much anger they actually feel, thus not dealing with it.

- ENFP Mod

Aight so I’m going to drop some bullshit on everyone because I have recently gotten on meds and worked through this, so. It’s pressing on my heart and I wanna vent. Reblog and comment if you want, but, this is personal. 

[TW: suicide attempts (non-descriptive), depression, anxiety, sexual harassment, ignorance, heavy religious reppression, sexism, aphobia, homophobia, and minor allusions to racism (I am white, it hasn’t affected me personally, but it comes up a bit in this via general ignoance)]

K, so, Let’s start with my family background. White, Church of Christ or Catholic, Military, and in general, reliant on both the church and the military economy. I dunno if y’all know anything about the Church of Christ,  but it is exclusionary, insistent on being the ONE TRUE CHURCH and ultimately pretty cultish, in their controlling of information, insistence on maintaining higher level education, and distinctive beliefs that they are following the First-Generation Christians despite being founded in the early 19th century. (http://www.theexaminer.org/volume8/number6/leftcoc.htm for more info [TW:religion and repressive religion specifically.) 

ANd I was raised in it. My grandparents are wholeheartedly involved in one of those huge ones in the buckle of the bible belt, middle Tennessee. My mom likes to tell the story of when I was born, the week dad came home from Iraq so he wouldn’t miss my birth, they tried a new Church of Christ and she felt that I was coming Right Then and they had to leave halfway through the sermon. We went kind of inconsistently, but we lived the way Coc wanted, more or less. We (my family) sang a whole lot, (my dad used to be a member of a military chorus) as the church encourages A Capella worship (if a church has instruments, it is not a church of Christ). Coc encourages the father as the head of the household with a really specific tenant: the father of the household is responsible for the faith of all his children and his wife. and all of their children. ad nauseum. He prays for all of them, and they tell him what they want to pray for. This means, of course, that as a human female, your spiritual connection to god is always mediated by a man. forever. So Coc(k) has a patriarchy problem. ABout SPIRITUAL HEALTH! wtf. I never really understood what god WAS, and I guess the inconsistent church going saved me from their indoctrination, cause I’ve considered myself an atheist since I was like 12 and understood what that meant. I got baptized at 15, which in Coc is in a way signing over your body to god, for my dad. He really looks up to his father, they share a name and lots of features, and he respects G-pa for his spiritual conviction, which for him was broken a little by his time in the military. My dad wants to ensure that all of his children get to heaven, like his father wants to, and he was pressuring me because my older siblings got baptized earlier, at like 13, when they were ‘old enough to decide that’. Personally, I don’t think anyone should be allowed to sign themselves over to a deity when they can’t go on Disney.com without parental permission. I recently told my dad I was an atheist and he didn’t believe me because “you’re baptized!” and tbh I can’t believe I had to apologize for lying to my father about something he very much pressured me into. but Wtv. all of this was just set up for:

For the longest time, (ok, like 5 years wtv) I considered myself Asexual. It made sense, I could describe myself as that with ease, and it felt right. I’m only now beginning to unpack the feelings I held in unhealthily. Asexual is a valid and real sexuality, but I am not asexual. I’m pretty sure I’m bi, but tbh I have doubts about even that. I don’t trust myself to know what I want, partially because my family situation drilling into my head the idea that I have to have a boyfriend until I have a husband, and then I belong to him spiritually at least. I told my mom I was asexual, and explained it, and she first decided everyone felt like that, and when I pressed her that I was VERY sure that wasn’t true, she pulled over and ranted at me for Not Giving Me The Grandchildren I Deserve and it just sucked. I was pretty out at school, but around the time I told my mother I was being sexually harassed by this guy, call him Q, because of it. Q believed it ‘was a waste’ for me to be ace, and ‘no one is like that’, ‘everyone wants it’. He had a habit of grabbing me, touching me but I believed he was my friend. One day though, he slid his hand too close to my actual genitals and I sprained my hand punching him, and my friend reported him for sexual harassment after I ranted about him, and I didn’t press charges, because Q Was My Friend. Along side all that bullshit, I had lots of boyfriends through the years because my parents had made it very clear that I was to tell them if and when I had a boyfriend, and I took that to mean I had to have a boyfriend, and if I didn’t I should be looking for one. You can probably see how all of this compounded to make a bit of internal strife. Buckle up, Bois, I’m not fucking done. 

So, I’m not going to out my siblings, no names, no specifics, but it should be made clear that we were going through similar shit, because not everyone is straight. (Or white, as it were. My sister brought home a Puerto Rican guy (I think? it’s kinda fuzzy by now, but not white) and my dad made a joke about ‘thinning the gene pool’. (caveat: he may have been talking about height, but I’m not sure. Again, fuzzy.) ) I didn’t learn that not all my siblings are straight until a long while after they knew about each other because I’m both a dumb rock and 2nd youngest. So, along with all the secrets being the 3rd of four came with, I was hiding this. I was hiding secrets for each of them, from each other, for my parents, from the siblings, for the siblings as a whole, for my older sister specifically, she had lots of lies for me to hide. And damn, that hurt. My parents focus a lot on honesty, and it’s worse in our household to lie than it is to do something bad. It’s worse to show emotions, though, so I guess it’s just fucked up. So there was I, overburdened by half-clear secrets and the need to shield what was left of my emotional core. This was compounded by the fact that everyone I met when I was little thought I was ‘odd’, if they were being polite. My older sister thought I was insane and I believed her because for no other reason would I be having so much trouble ‘controlling my emotions’ as my father puts it, having so much trouble holding what I assumed were a normal amount of secrets and being told I wasn’t fully human to the God I didn’t believe in. 

This might sound trivial to some people, but it has left me fundamentally scared of expressing cheerfulness, sadness, anger, or anything but blind complacency and fear. I have severe Depression and Anxiety, no one can really read my emotions except for maybe my closest sibling and a few people who read what I write when I write expressively. I am scared to cry when I’m not alone, because I’ve been hit for less. I’m scared to cry when I am alone, for someone might hear me. I’m scared to show fear to the extent I apologize to my friends when I have a panic attack they caused by shoving their hand in my face repeatedly in a crowded and confusing party. 

Recently, I was upset my sister wanted my company after I was sick and tired form surgery, she broke a promise she’d made, and she invaded my personal space. He threatened to kick me out because I was being so rude to her, he said ‘go pack your bags’ and everything, meaning it fro shock value, and I did. I went and packed my bags. He called me back down and asked the real question: Do I feel loved at home? I answered him honestly, and I told him I’m and atheist, It wasn’t just a phase, and I was serious. I didn’t tell him that I really wanted to leave, for real, because anyone who says that to their child probably means it, and if they don’t they shouldn’t be saying it at all. I didn’t do this because he’s in charge of the funding I get from his military benefits for college and I didn’t know what I would do without those. I was scared, and I lied. My own mother doesn’t fucking want me and she complains that I’m ‘hard to read’ when she has told me I’m an evil, emotionally-manipulative child for crying when she yelled at me for dropping a plate. I’m not sure I feel loved anywhere, to be honest. I guess that’s dumb, but you know. That’s how it is sometimes. My family says ‘I love you’ a lot, a lot- a lot, but I have never been sure they meant it, especially when it is said the most emphatically when dad is holding and comforting a child he just beat. He forced us to cuddle up to him after he beat us and he held us, telling us he loved us. I can’t trust that man saying ‘I love you’. 

Again, I suppose this is trivial to some, but I have attempted suicide six times. I have had to give my knife to my friends, all that stupid shit. I’m not going to describe how, because that would be irresponsible. However, I’m going to do something radical and explain why I don’t want to anymore. Item one: It hurts. I have a high tolerance to pain, but the physical pain of a failed suicide attempt is dwarfed only by the gnawing regret, guilt, shame, and reminder that you’re Still Here. Item two: there are, really, things that I enjoy. They’re stupid and mundane, but I like breakfast. Eggs, bacon, the sunrise and the cool dew. I like baking, though I don’t do it often. Something about sweets and the making something always appealed to me. I like writing and drawing and handicrafts, though I am not very good at any of those things. Something about making something for others or something physical to hold always appealed to me, because it’s proof that I exist and manipulate reality. I never put any stock in that whole every-life-has-a-purpose bullshit, because if you were out here to do something, you can fuck it up, and I believed I had already fucked it all up. Item Three: While, even now, I don’t want to exist, there’s something mathematically implausible and cosmically coincidental about the fact that I do exist, that a consciousness inhabits this collection of atoms that tricked itself into becoming alive. I like the rebelliousness of it. The sheer existential power I’m flexing on every speck of dust that’s not currently alive. I DO exist, and there’s nothing more improbable or insane than that. 

[TL;DR: I had a fucked up childhood and am now broken as a result. Don’t kill yourself for the status points you have above non-living matter.]