#i have LOVE for you edward!!! because my love is some kind of FUCKING DISEASE. it's INCURABLE. it's REVOLTING.
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regardless of whose name it is it drives me fucking insane that the tattoo exists. izzy with his whipping scars and his carefully buttoned demeanor and all of his soft, bleeding places he keeps hidden away from the world. all of the love and devotion that he keeps solely to himself. izzy hands is the one character in this show most consumed by love.
#love for you izzy is larger than the usual romantic love isn't it!!! it's like a religion!!! it's terrifying!!!!#his love tattooed on his wrist THAT HE THEN TRIED TO CARVE BACK OUT OF HIMSELF - [is euthanized for rabies]#i have LOVE for you edward!!! because my love is some kind of FUCKING DISEASE. it's INCURABLE. it's REVOLTING.#izzy hands#our flag means death
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Because I cannot go five seconds without smashing my interests together, here is which tma fear entity the ibvs characters would (!in my opinion!) align with; (feel free to ignore I'm rambling)
Isaac - the lonely, right off the bat this one is self explanatory,an introvert, no friends and everything else yada yada you have read the fic. He's with the lonely, but less in a enthusiastic way? More in a doesn't really want to be lonely but kinda fell into it on accident way? His power is definitely spiral coded tho.
Edward - the eye!!!!! His weird hunches?Eye coded. Him literally showing up on Isaac doorstep? Eye coded. The fucking binoculares? Eye coded. He was also the one who wanted to start the investigation club in the first place, which come oonnn.
Chris - The corruption. This is a big "hear me out' moment so hear me out. The way Everyone just likes him? He just walks in and everybody loves him for some reason?Mhm, exactly. The way you could technically see Charlie as a parasite? Yeah that's corruption coded. I know I'm kinda reaching here but think about it tho, like really think about it. It makes sense in my head. I'd say his power is slaughter coded? Like only the sword specifically.
Drew - The flesh. This is another hear me out moment but this time I don't really have a good explanation for it. All the scenes where he heals people seem kinda flesh coded to me? Sticking your fingers into a wound? Also healing could be seen as body manipulation but now I'm really doing mental gymnastics. Maybe the lonely in season 1. MAYBE the vast but I have absolutely nothing to back me up on that. The corruption could also still be an option here if I find a way to connect it somehow. Drew doesn't fit neatly into any of the categories so I'm having troubles.
Nevin - The web. He is a manipulative little ass, that's the explanation. If you wanna go the other route and connect it to his weird goop powers instead I GUESS the corruption.
Barry - Also the eye. He literally made an entire PowerPoint in the background. He gets called the "lore keeper" multiple times.
Dez - Again the eye. I guess technically everyone in the club could be aligned with the eye? Anyway, her cornering Isaac in that one chapter felt especially eye coded to me, kind off in "give a statement" way. Anyway girly pop who summons demons for the fuck of it and explores random buildings that are supposed to be haunted? Eye coded. Her power, is leaning more towards the vast I think? I'm not sure
Niki - also the web. The floor plan thing from late season 1, that's web coded. Also she just gives me that vibe. Maybe the desolation but I don't think she is quite evil enough for that.
Rachel - the stranger, she got possessed TWICE which is kindaaaaa like demons wearing your skin, so, stranger. Possession in general feels stranger coded to me.
Felix- the slaughter, because he makes me want to commit acts of undescribable violence (and everyone else around him too)
Charlie - The slaughter because he wants to commit acts of undescribable violence. In the name of justice of course. maybe the hunt, but I'm leaning more towards slaughter.
Fresh/Dillain - the spiral. Neon outfits? Spiral. The way he talks? Spiral. I think he also might be a bit insane so, spiral. Spiral overall.
Louis - The hunt. his entire families schtick is banishing demons and shit, that's the hunt. That's it's entire thing just less physical violence and murder.
Cody - the flesh. Lmao. He strong
Reuben/Cory - the end. One can kill shit with a touch the other sees ghosts. Don't even.
Geno - the dark. No real explanation aside from him having albinism and not being able to go into the sun (thats such a great concept for a dark avatar)
Tiny extremely oversimplified explanation of the fears so this at least somewhat makes sense; The eye - watching and knowing shit. The spiral - insanity, stranger - Uncanny valley horror, the flesh - meat, the corruption - bugs, disease (specifically for this post it's also about love/company), the end- death, the dark - darkness, the web - manipulation/control/spiders, the slaughter - violence/blood, the hunt - Hunting, the lonely - loneliness, the vast - big space/insignificance
#this wouldn't leave my brain so you're getting it too#any ibvs tma fans out there???#ibvs#not tagging all the characters#ghostpiss said calmly
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Zigi PR Relationship Analysis
Firstly, I don’t think many people are aware of just how often fake relationships occur in the entertainment industry. They happen all of the time. And it isn’t a new thing, either. It dates all the way back to the early 20th century and what was known as Lavender Marriages, where men would marry women to hide the fact that they were gay. Although the practice has evolved since then, as it’s not necessarily about bearding anymore as it is about attracting attention, whether that be for a movie/tv show/musician/model and create hype around their relationship.
Okay, *cracks knuckles*, onto Zayn and Gigi. Zayn had a lot of people against him for two reasons; abruptly leaving the band and the mess of the end of an engagement to one Perrie Edwards (I haven’t heard that name in a while, LOL). He wanted to release solo music, but because so many people were angry at him he needed a way to distract them, and what better way to do that than a new relationship with an up and coming model who connections to the Karshian/Jenner clan?
A Hollywood publicist who admitted to producing these kinds of relationships had this to say about one of his clients due to a movie that didn’t do so well:
“It was more of a mutual agreement between the agents and we had a male who actually had a movie coming out and it was getting a lot of bad reviews and slack and they wanted to take the negativity of the movie away and make it more about him”
Sound familiar at all? Try swapping at “movie” with “music” and “negativity of the movie” with “recent fandom drama” and bam! You have Zayn Malik circa 2015.
This wasn’t just beneficial to Zayn, either. Hardly anyone outside the US knew who Hadid was, and she had had PR relationships in the past that weren’t all that successful (Joe Jonas and Cody Simpson), so having someone like Zayn who was known world wide thanks to his success with 1D, this would have been a no brainer. And it worked, incredibly well. Everyone was talking about the new up and coming couple and this brought a lot of attention Zayn’s first music video as a solo artist and people outside the fashion realm began paying attention to her. Mission successful.
There’s a lot more I could say about this couple that definitely raises eyebrows (like the fact that she has pulled similar stunts with Cody in the past, both starring in his music video and couple photo shoots), and if you’d like to go into it, feel free to message me or browse my zigi is fake tag. Or better yet, visit some of the many other ziam accounts that go into a lot more detail than I have in the past. I recommend @yaz-the-spaz and @somewhereisaplacethatziamknow off the top of my head. But I hope no one goes over there to be rude and disrespectful, because honestly, what’s the point? If you’re trying to change someone’s mind, you’re not going to do it by insulting them and not bringing anything of substance to the conversation. If you ask politely, I would be more than happy to answer, as I am doing here.
As for your point in regards to how I can look up to someone who would part take in such a stunt I have two responses; he doesn’t like doing it, and he doesn’t have a choice in the matter - that’s just how the industry works. If you look at all the times the paparazzi have “caught” (take this however you want) them leaving that NY apartment. Zayn, and sometimes even Gigi, don’t look like the happy, loved up couple all the articles claim them to be:
I find this one particularly funny because he is holding his own hand and it looks like she just slipped her hand in there for the photo.
And then you have this photo of them finally reconciling in the street conveniently in front of some paps:
He’s not touching her anywhere other than the mouth (look at that starbucks promo lmao), his hands are pockets, and he may have actually missed her mouth:
And in the rest of the photos he looks fed up and barely touches her, if at all:
Remember, this was after they’ve reconciled, and yet he doesn’t look interested her in the slightest.
Even if you think they were an actual couple, this would be an incredibly toxic relationship. They have “broken up and got back together” how many times now? (legitimate question, I have lost count). They paint the narrative like Zayn riddled with mental health problems and Gigi is the only one that can save him, but sometimes, it just gets too much for her:
“A second source explained there was an honest effort to make their second go at their relationship a success. The two “tried hard to make it work,” the source said, but Malik has “a lot of his own issues that she couldn’t help him get through.”
You could make the claim that this quote is made up, but then I could argue the very same thing about every quote ever made about their relationship. Why would you want to support a couple if this is the way they are portrayed?
And then “Zayn” tweets this when Gigi is rumoured to be dating someone else:
“When lord knows I don’t deserve it” What the hell is that supposed to mean? It’s just honestly so fucking gross no matter which way you look at it.
As for your question as to why she would have a baby for PR, look at the amount of attention she has gotten over these pregnancy rumours just in the last few days. Imagine if she would begin talking about it all of the time, all the promotional deals she could get. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was tired of modelling and ends up doing YouTube or something full time.
There is a lot of things that don’t add up with this pregnancy nonsense. Like the fact that she isn’t showing at all despite the fact that, going by the timeline, she is five months along. Not only would she have gotten pregnant immediately after after they apparently rekindled their relationship (which, with her Hashimoto’s disease is incredibly unlikely), but she doesn’t look pregnant in the slightest. That baby is five months along, and is almost completely formed, organs and all. The baby is the size of a mango, and yet her stomach has remained flat this entire time? No growth at all?:
That, and her own father called it gossip. If she has been pregnant for five months at this point, shouldn’t he know that his daughter is pregnant with his first grandchild?
And I will give it to you that she might be drinking decaf, but how about recording yourself horse riding? Not only that, but horse riding in general while you are pregnant is incredibly dangerous to both the baby and the mother’s health:
But as your pregnancy progresses, the risk of serious injury – to you and your baby – increases. If you get thrown from or kicked by a horse after your first trimester, once the baby has moved higher up in the abdomen, there’s little to protect the baby from harm.
What’s more, the jostling motion of horseback riding can increase your risk of placental abruption, a serious pregnancy complication in which the placenta separates from the uterus.
What’s more, is she apparently has Hashimoto’s disease, which makes it incredibly hard to get pregnant in the first place, and can increase the likelihood of a miscarriage. Why would she even want to risk it, given the fact that she already has a high risk pregnancy during a pandemic where healthcare is limited, the likelihood of her getting pregnant is low, and she increases the risk by not even paying attention to the task, but record herself doing so? It doesn’t make a shred of sense.
There’s so much to this narrative that doesn’t add up.
Again, I appreciate the civility, and I like being challenged, it gives me a good opportunity to back up my beliefs in evidence, which I believe to be incredibly important. So if anyone has any other questions feel free to DM or send me an ask.
Disclaimer: Initially this post was a response to someone who responded to an ask I answered way back in April about Gigi’s pregnancy, but was deleted for some unknown reason. I added some parts in to construct a more detailed and accurate analysis.
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20 Questions
20 Questions tag~
Tagged by @deadlyglacier! Thank you! <3
How many works do you have on AO3?
5!
What’s your total AO3 word count?
16,903
How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?
In total? I’ve written for three. Rockman.EXE/Megaman NT Warrior when I was younger and on FF.Net, Persona 5 (that I deleted from AO3), and FMA
What are your top 5 fics by kudos?
Well I only have five, so that’s easy at least!
Aureate - Roy is a sap disaster when it comes to Ed. Contains lots of references to the color ‘gold’, copious amounts of schmoop, and some NSFW in the form of consensual somnophilia.
The Waning Moon - Ed is dying from ALS. This was inspired by my work as a nursing assistant in an Assisted Living home, after I found that so, so many medical fics disregard the most ugly parts of dying. So I set out to make this as accurate and ugly as I possibly could.
Floo-ke Encounters of the Magical Variety - The obligatory HP/FMA fusion set in the FMA-verse. Ed’s a wizard going to Hogwarts with a time turner and after a problem with the Floo, he comes out of Roy’s office fireplace when he’s supposed to be on a mission in South City. Whoops.
En Garde - The college tour-guide AU that I couldn’t actually bear to write as a tour-guide AU, so I wrote about Ed and Roy being on the fencing team. There’s a horrible amount of fencing innuendos, courtesy of Roy - and Ed threatening to shove Roy’s foil up his ass. I had way too much fun with this one.
Dance with Books - An Ed/Al drabble that I wrote with two excellent prompt one liners.
Do you respond to comments, why or why not?
I try to? But I kinda suck at it... I’ll get better at it, I swear! And comments make me scream happily.
What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?
The Waning Moon. I gave the fic two different endings, with the ‘bad’ ending being the ‘true’ ending that I had in mind when I wrote it. In it, Ed offers what remains of his life to Truth in order to return Roy’s vision to him, and so that Ed no longer has to suffer with his disease.
A snippet of the end of the 2nd chapter:
He buried his face in his hands, covering his wretched eyes in the process. Edward might have given him his sight back, but now everything he saw was forever tainted with death.
Which was, Roy mused, a fate most befitting for the Flame Alchemist.
What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?
Hm... Aureate, probably? It’s a sappy fic that you need to make sure you brush your teeth after reading, because it’ll give you cavities otherwise. It ends with the two of them saying ‘I love you’, so I’m not sure it gets much happier than that!
Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?
Yes! The Harry Potter one is the only one I’ve posted so far, but I’m currently planning out one for Persona 5 based in the FMA verse, where Roy and his team all have personas and the ability to enter the cognitive world. Roy and Ed are together, and Roy starts to have the nagging sensation that Ed might be suffering from a palace - and it turns out he’s right.
Have you ever received hate on a fic?
Thankfully no! But I also avoid FF.Net like the plague, so... that might have something to do with it. I also try to be very clear about anything that may be triggering, such as the pairings I write for, or any sensitive topics. So far, the haters have stayed away from my fics, phew! I hope it stays that way!
Do you write smut? If so what kind?
I mean, I wrote Aureate, so... yes? I struggle a lot with it, but I plan to keep writing to hopefully get better at it. But consensual smut is a must.
Have you ever had a fic stolen?
Thank goodness no!
Have you ever had a fic translated?
Also no!
Have you ever co-written a fic before?
Yes! I’m working with someone right now to write an ABO-verse FMA fic. More details to come when we finish it :3
What’s your all-time favorite ship?
RoyEd. Preferably with Ed being aged up into adult age. There’s something about having two characters who both understand the demons that the other suffers from, and they can exist (and thrive) in each others’ worlds and minds that I absolutely adore. They’re also amazing foils for each other that cover each other’s weaknesses beautifully.
What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?
My P5-like rewrite of Brotherhood. Sigh. I want to. It’s one that incorporates the social aspect of P5 into FMA for Ed. IE - for each ‘rank up’ of each person that he bonds with, he grows his knowledge of alchemy, and gathers different talents that Truth gives him as he grows.
For example, Truth is represented by the Fool arcana, and at first Rank with it - Ed gains the ability to read the intention behind any array that he sees. As he hits rank 2 with Truth, Truth has the ability to speak to Ed without being in Truth’s realm.
With the other arcana, as he maxes out the social rank with each person, he gains knowledge of an array that he’ll need in order to fight Father on the Promised Day. But Maes dies before Ed can complete his social rank, SO WHAT IS HE GONNA DO?! :3
What are your writing strengths?
Uh, I’m not sure? I like to think that I channel the character whose POV I’m writing through pretty well. And I like showing their thoughts and attitudes through the story itself.
As an example from En Garde -
“Alright! Let’s get started, everyone! Sabres to the north, Foils with me in the center, and Epees to the south!” Roy called out, his voice projecting without making his voice sound any less attractive.
Holy fuck, Ed was already in over his head. He was screwed. Dead. Done. Double done. Absolutely and utterly fucked. And judging from Roy’s flirting, potentially actually fucked.
Shit.
And with that lovely thought, practice started.
What are your writing weaknesses?
I get bored, especially if there’s a part of the story that I’m extremely excited to write. I either start to skimp out on the details of the part of the story prior to it, or I’ll just skip right to the part that I *want* to write, which can sometimes make it read a bit awkwardly when I go back and try to connect it.
What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?
Eh. I find it pretty distracting, unless the words/titles are ones that are well known in the fandom. But if I have to scroll to the beginning or end of the chapter to get a translation, I’m not really going to enjoy it. If you *really* want to write in another language (which I’m not at all against), just put the english dialogue in a different type/font to show it’s in a different language.
What was the first fandom you wrote for?
Megaman NT Warrior (Rockman.EXE). God I loved that show so much when I was younger. I used to carry around notebooks and whenever I had to go to appointments, or I was on the bus, I would jot down ideas and write out stories. But holy shit I was *awful* at it!
What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?
Floo-ke Encounters. It was so much fun to write from start to finish. Roy singing into a stapler and dancing around his office (And can I just say that I am beyond disappointed that NO ONE noticed that he was singing “The Ring of Fire” from Johnny Cash. DISSAPOINT.), Roy having a more or less panic attack as he realized that there were, in fact, TWO Edward Elrics existing at the same time, and Ed’s sheer glee in tormenting Roy. I love it!
Tagging: @kylermalloy @konekowrites @kugisaki-nobara-rights
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Reddie College/Uni Masterlist pt 1
sixteen weeks by Redburn (17/18 | 81588 | explicit)
“Well, I mean…” Richie starts, as if this entire situation was like any other reasonable discussion he’s had. “We can, if you really want to. I’m game.”
Eddie chokes on the coffee that was still running down his throat. He looks at Richie as if he’d just grown several heads. Surely it couldn’t be this simple, right? “Um, what?”
Richie remains nonchalant. “Roommates with benefits, you said? Not the worst idea ever.”
(Or, Eddie and Richie are roommates in college and one day decide to start casually hooking-up. Things go about as well as expected.)
Find Your Fire by endversed (1/1 | 16354 | teen)
Richie Tozier meets a cute firecracker of a guy when he accidentally sets off the fire alarm in his apartment.
It's just too bad that said guy has got a boyfriend - doesn't he?
your heartbeat is the only sound I wanna hear by eddiefuckinkaspbrak (8/8 | 16008 | explicit)
Richie meets a very interesting young man at his university's library and is determined to be able to talk to him.
or deaf!eddie au
walk alone or run away by tozier (1/1 | 46891 | explicit)
Richie Tozier is Eddie Kaspbrak’s rival. At least, that’s what Eddie says to everyone who will listen—including Richie most of the time.
Richie Tozier is a man, not of lies, but of half-truths and truths said too plainly out in the open that they sound like lies to the untrained ear. He does not lie—he lets others lie for him.
or, a college au where lots of things go wrong and some very important things go right.
Coffee and Carnival Bears by StarshipDancer (1/1 | 7198 | teen)
"Eddie Kaspbrak knew how many germs were in a person’s mouth, and he would only swap spit with his fucking soulmate."
Finding your soulmate should be pretty straightforward, but not for Eddie. Not when there were two possible candidates, and he had no idea which one it fucking was.
I'd Rather Cut Out My Tongue Than Let You Kiss Me With Yours by inoubliable (1/1 | 7288 | explicit)
Eddie hooked up with Richie only once, way back in freshman year. Richie never texted him afterward. Eddie thinks he has learned his lesson.
(He hasn't.)
--
And it would be hot, except Richie’s an asshole. Like all attractive college-aged guys with angular jaw lines and sharp hipbones, Richie Tozier is a fuckboy. And Eddie Kaspbrak does not fuck fuckboys. At least, not more than once.
a (number) neighborhood of seven by BookRockShooter (32/? | 33688 | teen)
Richie decides to text his number neighbors - all at once. Thus, the "number neighbors wassup" group chat is born.
-
modern day au where richie literally just makes a gc with his number neighbors and it's the losers, but they don't know each other irl... yet
let's hear it for the boy(s) by Kandakicksass (1/1 | 6531 | teen)
In which Richie and Eddie go to different colleges, and all of their friends are curious about their unnamed significant others - right up until those significant others come to visit and everyone is both shocked and confused.
Aka, Tumblr user starstruck-stargazing's amazing idea, which I have gleefully expanded into a fic.
dreamboat by weepies (5/5 | 47558 | not rated)
“What are you? A third grader? What the fuck is this?” Eddie asks. He looks at Richie, confused.
“A list of fun stuff to do, duh. Can’t you read? I thought you were studying creative writing.” Eddie glares at Richie, who raises his hands in surrender as he chuckles. “Okay, okay. Hear me out. Your professor tells you to write what you know, and you said you don’t know anything. Well, sugar, here’s your opportunity to learn something about yourself.”
Dumbfounded, Eddie cannot tear his eyes away from Richie, his mouth agape. “You’re insane,” Eddie says.
“And proud,” Richie replies.
...
In which Eddie Kaspbrak is a writer with no ideas, and Richie Tozier is a coffee shop employee bursting with creativity.
Most Beloved by idaemilia (9/9 | 41820 | mature)
"But he had eyes like rain
and hair like waves
and a soul as vast and deep as the ocean
and I guess I didn't mind drowning in him"
-xvaniex on tumblr
Eddie keeps pining for Richie who is too blind to see it. But maybe he already knows.
Fall Away From Me (I Just Can't Take It) by The_lazy_eye (6/6 | 19675 | explicit)
It’s okay, though, Eddie tells himself. It’s all fine. This is part of their arrangement. This is a casual thing they have going. It’s his own stupid fault for catching feelings for someone he agreed to casually fuck. Especially when that person is his best friend from childhood.
Only the Good Die Young by happytreasure (10/10 | 36881 | explicit)
Eddie Kaspbrak is starting his senior year of college when Beverly Marsh decides to sit down next to him in his first class of the year. She later introduces him to her tight knit group of friends, and ultimately Richie Toizer, who ends up drastically changing Eddie's life.
Suddenly he's exposed to a world he thought only existed in fairytales, and despite all the new dangers that come with it, Eddie’s never felt more alive.
It just so happens his new found happiness comes at a price.
To the guy at the bus stop: by Ragno (8/8 | 43020 | explicit)
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, especially if the other side of the fence is Ireland and the grass is Eddie living his own life for the first time ever away from his mom. An International Students Exchange Program is what he needs to finally stand up for himself and doing what he really wants. Who cares if he won't know anybody there? Who cares if he'll be alone in a foreign country? Who cares if he won't have his car and will need to take the bus to go anywhere?? Okay, maybe Eddie does care about that last one...
But, hey, at least the real grass is really greener there. Right?
one wave short of a shipwreck by palisadespalisades (5/5 | 16013 | teen)
The problem began when Eddie decided he was going to make out with Stan Uris. Make out, possibly take on some dates, maybe hook up — the details of what they’d do were still kind of up in the air, but Eddie was sure of one thing: to some degree, he was going to do Stan Uris.
(Eddie wants to make out with Stan. Eddie doesn't actually know Stan, which poses a significant barrier on the making out front. He does know Stan's bandmate, Richie, though, and from that, he formulates a plan. Shenanigans ensue. Inspired by the music video for Shura's "What's It Gonna Be?")
Black on Black by sunxcherries (1/1 | 6941 | explicit)
Eddie licks his lips. “Who deserves to put their hands on me?”
Richie’s staring at him like he’s not sure if Eddie is real. In all honesty, Eddie’s half-convinced that he’s dreaming—worried that he’s gonna wake up back in his dorm with his dick aching under his covers, Richie snoring soundly across the room.
As it is, Richie is standing in front of him in the middle of a college party looking like he could eat Eddie alive.
Star Struck by a_day_in_derry (6/6 | 6013 | mature)
Eddie is suddenly falling head over heels, and he has no idea what to do.
Based on a prompt from @gabriellefe on tumblr:
"I came up to your apartment to ask you to turn down your music and have quieter sex, but it turns out that you've just been jumping up and down on your bed in your underwear listening to music alone"
Un Nouveau Soleil by eddiefuckinkaspbrak (3/3 | 33353 | explicit)
It was three months into his first year that Richie met Eddie for the first time. Edward Frank Kaspbrak. The man who would become the love of his life.
And Richie had no idea.
or: Richie is the heir to the British Throne who decides to study abroad at Harvard University. There, he meets Eddie Kaspbrak and they fall in love...duh.
The Blind Box by tinyarmedtrex (10/10 | 20493 | mature)
Eddie works at Gamestop and a dark haired stranger comes in and starts flirting with him. Eddie doesn't think much of it until they keep meeting.
Another College AU! Because why the hell not
Nightmares by MargotCelvin (33/33 | 134345 | teen)
Richie Tozier is trying to start over in New York. He left California behind and wants to leave his old life there as well. The only thing holding him to his old life are the nightmares that have plagued him for so long. But is there something in New York that can cure him of this disease?
#reddie#richie tozier#eddie kaspbrak#reddie fics#reddie fanfiction#au#college#college au#university#masterlist#college masterlist#reddie masterlist#masterlists
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reddie + pet headcanons?
I think that Eddie was never allowed pets as a kid. Sonia was far too overbearing and flat out dismissive of anything that might hurt Eddie at all, he would never have ever been able to have a pet. (And I think that kind of went out the window when Bowers poisoned Mike's dog, anyway. There's this agreed upon knowledge, a general 'it is known' that you cannot have Nice Things in Derry.)
And then, with Patrick Hockstetter running around (seriously the movies and the miniseries cut out Patrick's whole character entirely and he is a fucking piece of work, my god), there's not a whole lot of room for him to have pets or to keep animals that aren't a livelihood.
I don't think the thought occurs to him more than once, and he brings up the idea to Sonia tentatively and then he is immediately shut down with a four hour lecture on why animals are disease-ridden plague factories and how she will never have one inside the house where it could hurt her Eddie-bear -- think of his asthma! His allergies! So, like a lot of his childhood experiences, he lets it go, for the sake of not having to hear his mother warble on about it.
I honestly think Sonia couldn't stand the idea that Eddie loved anything other than her. She very obviously thought his friends were some...phase, but a pet? That would be a slap in the face. Narcs can't handle that.
Richie was never responsible enough for a pet, I don't think. In my headcanon, he's undiagnosed ADHD, he's got a whole lot of authority issues, and he's not real great about taking care of his stuff. He's the type of kid who kicks off his shoes and leaves them where they lie, that kinda thing. I don't think he ever really brought up the idea to his parents, I think Went and Maggie might've had the discussion with him, set rules and boundaries and maybe would have fostered a dog for him, but it just...never came up.
As they get older?
Eddie puts the thought from his mind. He's already wearing in the ruts of Sonia's A+ parenting, where he weighs the pros and cons of everything, and the whole thing is just -- it makes him itch. He swears he's allergic. Myra never wanted pets, and that's fine by Eddie. (I think he feels the same way about kids, that mild sense of panic that makes a hard right into Nopesville, population: one Edward Kaspbrak, at least with Myra.) Any sort of 'togetherness' with Myra feels...ech. He can't bring himself to do it.
Richie tours way too much to have an animal. I think he decides early on that he'd like a dog, but it would cut into his destructive partying phase that he goes through between 22-35, where he really leans a hard left into Trashmouth, where he earns that fuckin' name. TMZ and gossip rags and all sorts of nastiness. He doesn't wanna bring a dog or anything into that, privately he knows he's fucked up. A couple of his one-night stands have dogs, and he loves playing with them probably more than he likes the sex, because, well, the dogs don't have weird strings attached or hangups about him petting them.
As he gets older, he thinks less about it. He's making enough money now, he has a nice apartment, he knows that he's got things going well for him.
He still doesn't get a dog.
One day, though, he's smoking on the balcony of his apartment, enjoying a warm summer night free from having to be anywhere at all, and a big orange cat hops from his neighbor's balcony to his. Makes itself home on his shoulders and purrs like a motorboat. And that is how he meets his neighbor Grace, a little 72-year-old lady who has a big orange cat named Percival who loves to come and visit Richie. He might leave his balcony door open a crack for the cat to get in. (He lives on the fourth floor, it's not like anyone's gonna climb in, right?)
And this turns basically into joint custody, to the point where Eddie comes for a visit and sees Richie standing outside, having a smoke, this cat draped across the massive planes of Richie's shoulders, blinking slowly at him while Richie talks to the cat about whatever happens to be on his mind.
Eddie's heart might crack in two, the halves might fill up with love for this big dumb bastard and this orange cat. And he might think about them getting a pet of their own, someday. Something that feels so permanent isn't so scary.
Not when it's with Richie.
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LOVE’S GONNA GET YOU KILLED ----- BUT PRIDE’S GONNA BE THEDEATH OF YOU.
TW FOR HOMOPHOBIA, HATE CRIMES, BLOOD, AND SLURS. ( inspo. )
It’s hard to hear that a ton of different arcades are shutting down. It’s kind of depressing. The town over- the place that many would go to flex on people that didn’t live in the area- had lost their arcade a month ago. It made Derry’s arcade more popular. But it also brought a lot of strangers into Derry that Richie doesn’t actually know.
There’s a redhead that shows up one day and Richie is immediately captivated by him. He sits back, watching the other play Street Fighter with amazement. It doesn’t take awhile for Richie to realize he’s not paying as much attention to the boy’s gameplay and is now watching all the freckles on his face. Bright blue eyes trail down to the other’s lips before he catches himself and looks away fast. Guilty. He feels like a sinner. That’s what the church calls him. Not him, specifically. God, no one knows. Bowers has maybe a hint of knowledge. The same with his gang. Their murders flash through his memories. Brief seconds. Bowers is locked up for good. He’s safe. For now. It’s nothing to panic about.
He doesn’t even realize due to the fact that he was so caught up in thinking about everything that the redhead is now talking to him. His eyes dart up and Richie clears his throat to pretend like things are okay.
“You can play now, if you want,” is all Richie hears, as his eyes glance over at the high scores. TZR. Second. He rushes to the machine and looks at the high scores. Second?! He’d been top ranking in Street Fighter for three years straight. He looks at Rank #1. JMS. He turns back around to face the other and looks severely impressed.
“Woah, you’re insane,” is all he can get out. “Do you know how long it’s been since anyone’s even remotely tried to get top?” He asks, pushing up his glasses so he can just stare at the other. Richie is amazed. “I’m Richie, by the way. Most everyone calls me Trashmouth,” he sticks his hand out for the other to actually shake. Richie is more than excited to make another friend around his age who actually likes Street Fighter. The stranger shakes his hand, accepting the invite for friendship.
The stranger’s name is Jaymes. He lives another city away. Around a 25 minute drive. Richie wonders if this shit stain of an arcade is even worth it, but he’s also sure maybe he’d be the same way as this guy if Derry’s arcade shut down. Richie wonders what Jaymes’ score was back in his original arcade. How’d he get so good? Especially to beat Richie?
He spent the next two hours until the arcade closed just playing with Jaymes. The entire time, Richie felt like his heart was being thrown into his throat. This boy was cute and they had a lot of mutual interests besides Street Fighter. He figured that this would actually be a good way to be able to start getting friends that weren’t the losers club---- seeing as they had all started to slowly stop hanging out with each other. He still saw Stan, and he still saw Bill, and even he’d joke around with Eddie here and there, but it was like they were in high school now--- things changed. Bev had moved away and it was just difficult for any of them to care anymore.
It was good for the first few weeks. Great, even. Richie tried not to stare at Jaymes a certain way, or smile around him, but by god, he was hot and Richie couldn’t help but stare sometimes. He’d hope that Jaymes didn’t notice. He really did hope that Jaymes didn’t know. He remembers the day he asks Jaymes if he wants to catch a movie and that he heard great things about Edward Scissorhands. To Richie’s shock, the other actually agreed.
Richie had been waiting the whole week for the date-- well, though it was just literally the two of them catching a movie. It wasn’t a date. That’s what he kept having to remind himself as he got ready. He chose a muted colored hawaiian shirt this time, instead of opting for the more colorful ones he had suddenly acquired at the start of the decade. Something subtle. Something that wouldn’t gather too much attention to the two. Two boys seeing a movie together that wasn’t an action film? Especially since it was a romantic movie, according to critics. They were playing a risky game.
The movie had gone splendidly, though halfway through Richie had been distracted by the fact that Jaymes had actually held his hand. It was secret. Under the security blanket of their popcorn box---- no one would know either way. It had made Richie want to throw up he was so nervous. But he remembers glancing over and pushing his glasses up in the dimly lit theatre to look over at his date. Jaymes was just smiling back and Richie could have sworn he saw the other wink at him as they continued to hold hands throughout the rest of the movie.
As the movie ended, Richie left the theatre, unsure of what to say to Jaymes. The redhead had told him to walk him to his car and that he’d parked behind the theatre just to be on the safe side, and Richie believed him. They went down the alleyway next to theatre and stopped behind it. He saw a few employee cars but the workers were still definitely in the theatre. “Hey, I just wanted to thank you for coming with me. I know you didn’t have to or what----” The Tozier wasn’t entirely used to being interrupted so when the other actually leaned in and kissed him-- Richie’s heart soared. Holy shit. His first kiss. Oh god, he felt like a fucking fish. But he was so stunned. Once Jaymes pulled back, he just saw that the other was laughing after kissing him.
What? Wait, laughing? Richie was pretty damn sure he hadn’t said any type of joke. “Wha-- Sorry, uh,” Richie cleared his throat and felt his face was entirely heated. Pushing up his glasses quickly he looked back at Jaymes in confusion. “Sorry, like, that was my first kiss-- so I don’t really get what’s so fucking funny.”
“The funny thing is you actually were a fag. One of my boys pointed it out to me and at first I didn’t believe it. You queers really do fuckin’ think that you can just pretend to be straight to trick people into your little web, then you use them to get your own sick fantasies out of it ----” Richie looked stunned. He looked behind him after hearing a few leaves crunching in the street behind them. Oh god, had anyone seen them? Coming up on them was a group of four different guys. Maybe around their age. Richie didn’t recognize them either.
Richie suddenly realizes what’s going on. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. He has to get out of here. “No, no ---- fuck you, “ he spits, pushing at the other. “ You fucking kissed me you asshole. If anyone’s gay here it’s you. “ That’s about the last thing Richie can get out before he’s grabbed and held down by two of the guys that had come up behind them. He’s recognized them. Slightly. He’s pretty sure he’s seen them around Jaymes. This was all some fucking set up. He can’t even scream because if he grabs attention to this, someone’ll spill the beans that Wentworth Tozier’s son was kissing a boy behind the fucking cinema. It’d ruin his dad.
The first punch is what knocks his glasses off his face. It’s in his jaw and he’s automatically regretting ever laying eyes on Jaymes. He hears one of them --- a blur, he’s not even sure how close that person is to him---- pick up his glasses and then smash them on the ground. “Fuck off, all of y--- “ his face is slammed into the brick building. Once. Twice. Richie can already taste the iron dripping from his gums. Everything is a blur and it makes him feel dizzy. He’s surrounded and he keeps getting knocked down, picked back up again and he feels a lot of pain coursing through him.
It scares him. Is he about to die from a hate crime? Oh fuck, oh fuck he might die ---- until he hears one of them after what seems like ages. He’s pretty sure it’s Jaymes but he can’t see anything. It doesn’t help that he’s crying. He’s a fucking mess on the ground. “We don’t want to kill the faggot, “ is all he hears. It’s at least mercy. One of the other friends says that Richie deserves to die because they’re just spreading their fucking diseases everywhere anyhow. Richie spits out blood as he tries to pull himself up as they’re talking amongst themselves. A swift kick to his head knocks him out fully.
It’s maybe a few hours later when Richie finally comes to, on the floor next to a dumpster---- hidden, dried blood all over him. There’s also a foul stench that is something Richie recognizes but can’t actually figure out. It’s rancid. He feels around for his glasses on the ground, hoping they’ve at least let the glasses slide somewhere near him. It takes a few minutes for Richie to find his glasses and even hoist himself up. His glasses are broken. Half the glass is missing. He has a horrible prescription, so even telling his mother or father what happened is going to be hard. That’s money they have to spend, but his mom will make some quip about how all they do is spend money on Richie. Once his glasses are on his face, the bridge of the glasses hit up against his nose and it automatically makes him revolt in pain. Oh fuck. Oh god, his nose is absolutely broken. He leans up against the wall of the cinema and looks down at the dried blood everywhere. Then he notices the permanent marker that’s on the ground.
Oh no.
He’s not fast. He’s honestly wishing he had just never went back to walk Jaymes to his car. As he hobbles, he’s glad that it’s late in the night. Perhaps even early morning. Once he gets to his car, he realizes the paint that’s all over the windshield and he curses. Fuck. How’s he going to be able to get this off his car? Once he unlocks his car and gets in, struggling to not sit in a position that spikes pain through his body, he turns on a car light and looks at himself in the mirror.
There’s ‘FAG’ written all over his face in permanent marker. He just takes his hand and smears the blood over the words, hoping to god it helps masking a little bit of what he says. The key turns the car over and he is relieved to know the assholes didn’t siphon his car of gas, but he’s also dreading even driving home. He punches his steering wheel and just starts crying all over again. Who the fuck is he even going to go to?
Never mess with Derry. It was too dangerous of a place. No matter how hard people marched, Richie was pretty sure Derry, Maine was always going to be the worst place to grow up no matter who you were.
#「 HEADCANONS 」 → ❛ ᶜᵃⁿ ᵒⁿˡʸ ᵛᶦʳᵍᶦⁿˢ ˢᵉᵉ ᵗʰᶦˢ ˢᵗᵘᶠᶠ.#homophobia tw#hate crime tw#blood tw#slurs tw#did i go into serious detail? no bc that shit kind of triggers me too SO#i mean it's... vaguely detailed#do i like how i ended it? no#but was it getting too long? yes#final word count 1925#i've always had this headcanon that this canonly happens to richie#like worse than what we saw in the movie#and when i saw that tiktok i had so much inspo to write that for my richie#mutuals can reblog i guess
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Got a very sad phone call yesterday. My first love (who remained one of my best friends for a decade after our connection ceased to be romantc) phoned me to say he is very ill. He was born with a disease, which has now gotten past the point of no return. He is deeply depressed, listless, and tired of fighting. This was the first time we have spoken in a year— after a falling out we had a few years back... he called to tell me that he is dying. Essentially he has only one option left available, and it’s very risky and experimental, if he misses a dose—then there really is nothing they can do. He has decided to stop taking his medicine, which means he has maximum four years left to live.
A series of complex emotions have been plaguing me ever since yesterday. Numb disbelief, shock, anger, confusion, understanding, and deep unconditional love. This is devastating news. I wonder why when faced with our own mortality... only then so we realize just how much people have meant to us in our lives.
He was one of my best friends for over 15 years... that is more than half my life. He was the first boy I ever fell in love with... there is always something special about the first time you feel that emotion, because it is all so new and consuming. I gave my virginity to him, we survived so much together, and he was the only one of my old flames that I was able to reconcile my differences with and salvage a friendship with... a really... important friendship.
I feel heartbroken and devastated that he is choosing death over life, but it is his life, and I won’t invalidate his pain. Who am I to tell him he shouldn’t feel the way he does? After all he has suffered? With all that was denied him. All that he can never have. He needs someone to hear him, and understand him, and I do. I always have. That’s why I fell in love with him all those years ago in the first place.
I know he could get better if he wanted, but he doesn’t want to. “I’m tired of feeling like an accessory in other people’s lives.” He feels like he has lived for other people since he was thirteen years old... when he first discovered he was sick. After being adopted... to inherit a life sentence like that... it’s enough to make anyone bitter to say the least. It’s just sad. There is nothing I can do now, except love him, and let him go.
We always want people to stay with us, because of our selfish feelings of wanting to experience them. Yet we don’t have to live their life, and if someone is really ill, and in a lot of pain, they shouldn’t have to stay just because we aren’t ready to let go of them. It has been hard for me to make peace with his decision, but it is his choice to make. Going through the stages of grief right now, and a lot of memories are coming up strong. Memories I locked away, and forced myself to forget.
Thinking about all my failed relationships in general today, and trying to find the gift I got from each of them. This person took me under their wing when I was a freshmen in high school. After being bullied so mercilessly in middle school, I was petrified of high school. He saw my value immediately, and went out of his way to greet and include me. He was so popular, that being his kid sister offered me some measure of protection. He saw my worth, when I didn’t, and went out of his way to spend quality time with me, he was genuinely interested in who I was as a person, and would sit and listen to me for countless hours on the phone, sharing every thought in our heads. He was brutally honest, wether I wanted to hear it or not, and so I believed him when he let me know that he saw me... and that He was glad I existed.
He understood me, better than any other boyfriend I’ve had. My deep pain and alienation, he secretly always felt that way too. As an Aries, he is my opposite sign, but no other sign understands the deep loneliness Libra’s feel like Aries does. It’s an unspoken, deep rooted commonality between them, different as they are in all other areas. In fact that was what endeared us to one another I think. We shared the same pain, and it created a kinship.
He could see and feel my pain, and often we were able to comfort each other without having to say anything. The romantic connection was a tragic one, because of his illness it was very “Edward Scissorhands”, we could never really be together. He was always pushing me away, and he had so many others girls in his web it made me feel inadequate and insecure. Truthfully, I chose to devalue myself and let his rejection crush my self esteem over time. but the truth is, he inspired me so much as an artist. He encouraged me to go out and create. He is so talented at so many things, with so many gifts, and truly... he has a good heart.
Even when things were bad between us, he never raised his voice to me, never called me a name, always spoke to me with respect and kindness. Never once hung up on me, he is far too noble to ever do that to anyone. I often kept him on the phone for ages because I knew he would never hang up. He has strong morals and principles, and he lives rigidly by them. We both have strong characters, with high morals and expectations of others, so we were always disappointed in people. My love went unrequited it seemed, as he outright refused to commit to me, but I do know that He really cared about and respected me. Whenever he got a girlfriend who was jealous of our connection, he would always put them in their place and say: “she’s my friend. She’s very important to me, and she’s not going anywhere, so you will just have to deal with that if you want to be with me.”
He never abandoned me when I needed him. He dropped everything to come and be with me at two in the morning on more than one occasion. The romance may not have gone well, but he was always a good and loyal friend. When I went through my abortion, the Capricorn I was dating at the time took off to party while I was home crying and clutching my belly in agony, but the other person called, and was there for me. “Megan, where is your boyfriend during all of this?”
“I dunno. Out with his friends,”
“Then you need to leave him. No man will not stick by his woman through this.”
I began to cry softly at these words. Feeling at that time, so alone and unloved. His voice grew soft with sorrow as he said: “i’m sorry Megan, you always deserved better than anyone was able to give you.”
I think the feelings were mutual once. We grew very close when he was away at film school on the east coast, and I was still a junior in high school. He always had excuses for why he didn’t want to be with me, because there was clearly intense physical attractions those days, but his true feelings betrayed him. When I went to visit him at his apartment in Pennsylvania... he had photos of me...all over his house. In every room almost, (more than any other girl friend of his). I remember being in shock. In those days, I loathed relationships, the idea of getting married. I had no desire to want to have children or what have you. Granted I was only 13-14, but as soon as I met him, I saw myself wanting to be his wife. I just got him, and he got me, but his infidelity with other girls was always what crushed me. That was where the seed of taking drugs was planted, in the wake of not feeling good enough for this person I was so in love with. It was my choice, no one else is responsible for my actions, but these events influenced my choices for sure. He was very popular with women, and had a ton of female friends he very obviously had flirtations/relationships with. Some people are just not meant to commit to monogamy I guess, I often wondered if he was one of those.
But as we got older, and the romance dwindled away. The only way I got over him, after six years of pining and crying myself to sleep every night... was falling in love with the narcissist. Soon as they painted the picture of the ideal partner, I let go of the unrequited relationship I had prior. He noticed too, and soon as I was gone, I think he realized what he lost. Though... it was always complicated. When I wanted to give my life up to be with him, he couldn’t go through with it, and before anything could really happen, he ran away into the bathroom, locking himself in to cry where I couldn’t see him. He said to me: “I can’t do it. I can’t ruin your life.”
He used to look at me sadly sometimes. I could see this longing in him for connection. He would brush my hair out of my face, and have this moment of silence where he would look at me very intently.
It was a toxic connection to be sure. We were both suicidally depressed teens, wallowing together, but he really did know me. I think he knows me better than anyone, even Jeanne. He trusted me, and I trusted him. He never hid the other girls from me, and he was always very clear with me about us not being together, at least at first. He thought I was too young. He was a senior when I was a freshmen, and he kept me at bay because it made him feel uncomfortable, but once I was older, I got caught in a love triangle with him and a Pisces girl. I knew she was all talk and wouldn’t last, and she didn’t. I know he loved her though, and she fucked him over, just like I knew she would. He still chose her over me, and that was the first time I tried to kill myself.
Again, I realize now, how incredibly toxic and unhealthy I was myself... I wish I had been strong enough to take it in stride, but I had no skills or coping mechanisms for pain back then. All I had was substance abuse. I do remember, I never took drugs, not until he rejected me, that was the turning point where this whole nightmare began. Well, actually it Began with my father and was reinforced by that.
My point is, he vaguely brought up how much damage he realized he did to people. I know he always felt guilty about me. His care for me was deep, and genuine, though never the same as mine. He saw me as a sister, but later when I was older her saw me differently for a moment, then I realized our connection was familial, like he was an older brother. Maybe we were meant to love each other in that way, not romantically. So I let it go, and after many talks, we cleared the air and were able to be friends. He was very considerate of my feelings though. He never spoke about girls he was involved with, he knew that would crush me, and only after years of friendship, when my feelings subsided, were we able to talk freely about people we were dating with no hurt feelings. It was liberating to reach that place with someone. To go from being madly in love, to being like family.
He was there through it all. My miscarriages, my abortion, the sociopath, the abuse, allmy different houses etc. after a while I became like his mom, nagging him to go to his dr. Appointments and to eat a carrot once in a while. He would always roll his eyes and say: “yeah yeah”. Our dynamic was playfully argumentative, like one of those witty screwball comedies in the 1930s. He was a riot, boy he could make me laugh.
We talked everyday for ten years, and then something changed. I barely survived the connection with the sociopath, and he got out of a bad situation too, but I fell in love again, with another Scorpio, who was 7 years older... someone who actually wanted to commit to me, to get married and start a life... I hardly knew how to take it, I had always been “the other woman” before... no one ever wanted to commit fully to me before. I was so starved for love and attention of this kind, that I would do anything to keep it. This new person... I may have tested their boundaries with my substance abuse, but I knew his infidelity issues were REALLY deep, and he felt threatened by my friend, and do I cut him out to save my relationship.
I felt guilty about it the whole time. This other person had always been there for me no matter what, and may not have been a good lover, but was a true, blue friend, and I abandoned him. He felt very hurt and betrayed obviously. For he had stood up to other girls for me, and I did not do the same for him. I just wanted my relationship to work so bad, I thought it would be worth the sacrifice.
Rhstvrelstionship was very volatile, and it was really good in some ways, and really bad in others. As our relationship wore on. I felt guilty for leaving this person behind me, and I finally worked up the courage to tell my partner, and ask if I could reach out and apologize and try to rebuild my friendship. That was the beginning of the end I think. He was on his way out anyway. I did reach out to my friend, and he was really hurt and unwilling to patch things up. We talked it out, and he said he would try, but he felt really unsure about it. He felt I abandoned him, when he needed a friend most. He had some serious shit going on at the time, but we were in one of our many dumb fights, and he never reaches out, so I just stopped.
It doesn’t matter. We patched things up, he had this new girlfriend who was clearly jealous of me. She went out of her way to be cruel. He must have thought she was his last chance, but he only half liked her on the first place. She was awful to me on this road trip from hell with the three of us... long story short, we got in a huge fight because I refused to be around her ever again, and he felt I was being completely unreasonable. I felt betrayed, like I got my karma back for ditching him before. We fell out the last few years, and I was spiraling out of control after my longest relationship ended.
He called me about a year ago, apologizing for how he acted. Saying he was wrong. I never thought he would apologize, I was stunned. In the past, even if he was wrong, I always came back and made up. This time I held out, and he unfollowed me on FB, said he couldn’t rely on me, that I wasn’t a good friend. Now he was admitting he was wrong, and I knew I forgave him a long time ago. He told me he lost some loved ones, and was in therapy, yet was very cryptic, and stopped responding to my messages after that initial conversation.
Then to get this call yesterday, after all we have been through...there are so many layers, and chapters to the story, I could write a book...someday, I just miss him. I miss being able to call him whenever. I miss the way he would always give me shit, all the play arguments. I miss making him laugh, or seeingvthat smirk on his face when he pulled a prank. He is very like Fred and George Weasley from Harry Potter (personality wise). He’s like Oscar the grouch popping out of his trash can to add his two cents.
I sincerely miss our friendship, and I hope he gives us the opportunity to reconnect, especially if the days are numbered.
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The Dirt
@sashimisurimi humbles and honors me so here’s a massive welter of personal information:
Nicknames: useda be “Rice Krispy” for like ever - for a short time it was “Crispix” which briefly mutated into “TimesTwo”, decades ago (brr) but if some younger cultists calling me “senpaiiiiii” doesn’t count, it’s just me
Gender: Edward Gorey group-portrait
Age: fantastically old, ask me about the 70s 80s and 90s sometime
Height: 6’5”
Build: skeletal
at the chime: it is 2:27 am, Mountain time UPDATE: it’s 3:19 now UPDATE 3:30 bcs edited
Ethnicity: lapsed / nonpracticing goth
Current Location: denver CO
Astro: my meat’s sun sign is The Centaur, which is said to represent my far-ranging ideas and tendency to say “oh thank you oh please yes don’t ever leave me” to the sexy, sexy scorpions leaping off my back & laughing
Chroma: I used to have favorite colors but now it’s all ingredients - pale yellow to desaturated dark purple gradient is a color/s that tricks the eye into seeing any number of other colors - you might think it was pink, or blue, or brown if you were walking by quickly. I like that!
Food: a sauce of hot tahini, salt, sweet vegetables and bitter greens, poured over something starchy
Music: I used to have favorite music but now it’s all science or magic or something. Billie Holiday, Christian Death, early Test Dept., Skinny Puppy, Marty Robbins, Laurie Anderson, Chopin - honestly? 2-5 drones from obsessed home-studio maestros on Soundcloud, played simultaneously, in dim green light.
Artists: I used to have favorite artists - now I like all art except that done by the ones that used to be my favorites. Remedios Varo Uranga is really kicking my ass lately. Have you seen her work? It’s like a fever dream, intensely meaningful but inexplicable.
Songs: uhhhhhh Veslemøy's Song, Beatrix (twins), She’s In Parties (haus), Human Disease SKUMM (puppy) Marching For Trash (crucifucks) Big Iron (marty)
Earworm: Separate Ways (journey) SORRY
the Last Film I Ever Saw: is a song by Kissing the Pink, which will also get stuck in your head until you have to cut it open
last show I saw: Gogol Bordello at the Ogden; one of the staff knocked me to the floor and I am pretty sure I will never be able to get myself to go to a live show again in this lifetime, unless it’s a sombre affair with cellos and very comfortable chairs
the last thing I googled: the name of the band that did “The Last Film I Ever Saw”
last book: CSLewis The Abolition of Man and gosh I would love to argue with that motherfucker
other blogs: ocularcannibal, radiosanity, radioattic, anarchistettin
do I get asks: people are afraid of me or disgusted by me on this site for whatever reason - the anarchist blog gets hatemail from terfs and (not kidding) angry Iron Man stans every day. With the Tonyists it’s easy to brush off, but I’ll confess: some of those terfs, the really fundie ones, threaten my composure a great deal. It’s hurtful as shit to watch feminism die in those clothes.
why the username: when I was in second grade I was visited by a (brain seizure? magical sending? avatar of brahman? heathen spirit-consciousness?) that gave me those names. I made a portmanteau of them. When the internet came about, it began to live there kind of more than in the world, which is slowly killing me and rendering all I’ve accomplished pretty much meaningless and stillborn. Hooray! Ashes, ashes.
Followers: 629 immensely tasteful and perceptive souls
Following: whoah 2,663 …… I need to trim out some shit I think
Sleep: right now it’s phases of 2 hours; hopefully I can do something more healthful soon
Lucky Number: 3, 9, 11, 17, 27, 51
instruments: piano, woodwinds, percussion, vox, practicing electric bass lately - ProTools is my best instrument imo but some like my piano thing better
what I’m wearing: I look horrible let’s revisit this when I’m in better shape
dream job: consultant that shoots down 100% of big studio ideas on the basis of insipidity, all the producers hate me, but every time they ignore my advice, they lose actual billions or just get arrested
dream trip: picture it: you, driving me, to the store, while everyone else is at work
Top three mythopoeic milieus (that someone other than me created): hm. The more I think about this the more I realize I really don’t want to live in those worlds, because I’m fantastically old and the idea of having to deal with any of that shit at all is tiiiiiring. IF I were to live in the Elder Scrolls universe, I’d make the best of it by selling a lot of those potions that have deleterious / mismatched properties but cost a lot. I assume they get you rightly fucked up? because why else would they cost that much. Dark Crystal seems like it would be nice - but, something would eat / infect me, I feel certain. Star Trek is a thought because the premise is that famine and war have been ended on Earth. That shit is pretty intoxicating. All that military shite, though. Oh well: at least there’s Tuvok there.
What’s My Deal: I want to build a residential community, serving a creative collective / collaborative studio, in a cannabis-legal place, to help make other mad creatives safer and more fulfilled, especially those with chronic illnesses and endangered demographical markers. I have some resources and a lot of experience with this kind of thing, from multiple angles. It’s why I’m still alive - the hope of such a home, not too far in the future.
tagging people scares me (because of my fantastic age and growing madness) but I might do it someday
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I got bored so here some things
I'm a huge fan HP:Mystery, so in these i was reading a lot of Headcanons and i was thinking about my MC and also about my Big Brother's MC(in my family is the only one who support my omosexuality...bc to him "So you're lesbian...well probably my future wife probably will be an alien(i know how huge fan of Mass Effect 1,2,3 he is...so he's joking but i know him enough to say that probably he'll be married with some kind of alien for real)" so then i asked about his MC and now i'm going to say something about him(don't worry give the time to find and re-copy my MC's Headcanon and i'll post them too ^_^) Prepare yourself my Brother mostly love 3 things: FullMetal Alchemist and Dramas(and here Jacob is Rowan's big brother), Harry Potter
Name: David "Jager" Denneth(His Dad call him Jager/Hunter, He is German and her mother is English or Wells, he isn't sure for now...but she's born in Great Britain)
Family: Father(Fritz Denneth, He was orphan and adopted by a old wandering Monk who use Alchemy "FullMetal Alchemist Style"), Biological Mother(Christine Wellburn, she is a pureblood witch with a disease who block her ability to do magic but her family was rich and powerful enough so she went to Hogwarts anyways mostly for study a possible cure),Big Brother(Glaive Denneth is a Jacob's friends but David knows about him during the Sorting Hat thing and he was a normal wizard without disease and mostly a curious Ravenclaw like her mother but without disease then).
Born in: Second Half of August in a little village on the borderline between Germany and France there are like 1000 people around the area and mostly they're working adult or old enough to go to retirement, not much child like him or his best friend/like a sister, Elizabeth(She hate get called by full name, even the teachers call her Liz, bc she thinks it's such a long and uncool name)
Hair: Ginger like a Weasley and his father and they haven't a good Father/Son relationship until the end of Year 4(and even then...it's like "Can we just try to not argue everytime and enjoy a meal with shouting?" kind of relationship)So he hates his hair color but when got invited by Bill to Weasley's house, Molly was like "Charlie finally you're out of your room...wait..you're not Charlie...Bill, who did you take here?"
Eyes: Blue like a Sapphire and like his mother
Background: He grew thinking to be a only child in his family, and without a mother(Dead some days after his birth, Fritz says he get killed by an evil monster called Severus Snape, later he'll discover Snape try to cure her disease and...something went bad...but for that time Christine was mad/insane unable to be a mother even when she already had Glaive, Snape usually insult David by saying "Not even your mother wants to give birth to you, how can you think we want you here in Hogwarts?"). His Dad just buy a house in Germany right after his wife's death, and leave Glaive to some relatives of his wife and time from time Fritz disappear and go to Glaive trying to be a good dad and neglecting David who grew by hanging out with Liz and her mother(a muggle who also married a wizard, dead by a muggle landmine leave it there during WW2 while he's going in a near forest to take some ingredients for some healing potion, his wife knew he was a wizard and know mostly about it. She knows that someday Liz will go to a magic-school). David feels lonely while his Dad put him in the forest and force him to learn Alchemy/Trasmutation, mostly because he don't want another mage-child, so he tried to keep him with him even if he go often to Glaive to support him. So feeling lonely someday tries to do the thing(you know...the same resurrection thing of Edward and Alphone from FMA) he failed in the worst way possible losing the right arm and left leg(God Said "So you couldn't enjoy the feeling to braid the fingers with Liz when you feel scared and lonely during the storms and the leg to chase her till the lake where you both swam") He got panicked like hell, alone in that house while was dying...Liz came there just in time to save him, carrying him on the shoulder while he was losing so much blood. Got saved but unable to explain to Liz and her mother(she's a doctor in that place and wizard and muggle in that place stick together pretty well), too scared, so much traumatized to refuse to talk about that. Without his father for almost an year so, almost 11 years old while this kind of mother was making the impossible for making him some prosthesis enchanted with magic(found it while she was investigating in her dead husband study) not the best ones, but enough good to move, run and trying to be happy again. He got his letter for the Beauxbaton's accademy(the nearest from that village) and he was also thinking about to go, to find some help, but when his dad came back, he just listen his voice for freak the fuck out the window and run away in France where he meet Minerva during a travel. Fritz talk a lot about how scary wizards really are, but she was kind and he try to be gentle by help her with her luggage, he's not so strong but his trasmutation's ability made McGonagall curious enough to takes him to Hogwarts and pays for him. During the travel he tried to talk about what he did in his house, how he still feel about that horrible day and how he can't sleep well because the nightmares scares him enough to prefer to stays awake or just napping when he feels to need it. At hogwarts got sorted in Griphyndor but the Hat want him in Hufflepuff for a lot of reasons, but Minerva during the travel talk a lot about her job so he wanted be in the same house(OT: and other reasons but i can't traduct them pretty well..sorry).
FINALLY OH MY GOD, I LOVE MY BROTHER BUT HE IS SUCH A HUGE CHIT-CHATTER AND THE WHOLE BACKGROUND WAS NECESSARY FOR SHOW SOME SENSE IN HIS HEADCANONS(and nope, he doesn't have a tumblr account, and i wrote all i know about his CrossoverMC because tonight i'm bored like living in a bored hell, sorry if you reading this)
Headcanons:
- Everyone in Denneth-family have a personal diary/agenda where to write their discoveries or their thoughts about what they do, David wrote things about Magic, Alchemy and experiments with both, for a short period even wrote his feeling about everything. Nobody is sure why he writes so much, but he could hate someone forever if they read without permission, after a bad joke by Merula trying to steal that diary he begin to use a secret code based on cooking recipes that he likes, so nobody is sure if they're reading about a secret alchemy experiment or a very sweet lemon cake recipe(also thanks to that he learned how to cook and begin to cook for his friends).
- David meet Rowan at Diagon Alley but with Minerva by his side because he was still nervous about the whole magic-world thing, Rowan use some jokes and loose him a little even in the train they're reading Hogwarts: A history together trying to calm him each other
- During the train-travel Rowan noticed the metal arm of David, but he didn't want to tell the reason and Rowan was even more curious but he was sympathetic enough to don't ask, so no problem still pals.
During the first year when he noticed Snape for the first time he assults him asking question about his mother shouting a lot, Minerva came right before he could punch him and has reassured him but losing so much house points
- In the dorms he always take the bed nearest to the windows, it helps to sleep a little better even when he had nightmares.
- Watching Ben get bullied by Merula makes boil his blood and he confront her even when the whole school was laughting at him because(they still don't know) because how can a mage unable to cast even Lumos, to duel a real mage? Ben thought David was the coolest first year because is uncapable as a mage but still fight knowing to lose, and he lose, until someday tried to fight back with trasmutations and took off the wand from Merula hand, totally pissed off and even Flitwick secretly cheers him after so many times he lost those duels, and he permitted to use Alchemy during duels and he gotta admit(and the other students who watched him) he's pretty fast and agile, even without using Alchemy at all, so Flitwick just say "It's good have a duel with different kind of enemies, so we should be grateful to have an unique student like Mr.Denneth"
- Minerva bought him a female cat and he called her Ortensia(it's the italian version of hydrangea) and mostly he talks with her and try to fight his inner nightmare but it's real hard, he doesn't even feels hungry, and during winter the metal limbs hurt so much, even get up from bed it's hell, but Ben helps him without asking question, but by listen him screaming and sobbing during the sleep, he has some idea but it's alchemy/trasmutation things so he knows but without understanding.
- Meeting Penny was heaven, so cheerful, so funny...one day just tell to Rowan(he is a Ravenclaw and the jacob thing is hell for him, but David likes to listen him talk) "Penny's smile is like coffee, without her, days can't start for me". Rowan just laughts but also agree with him
- In the third year, knowing Penny sad story, saved him from suicide...he wanted to put an end to nightmares..but knowing about someone like Penny go through almost the same hell like him, was inspirational so he just fight back the pain, even during the whole boggart in the cursed vault where thanks to Minerva intervetion got saved and go to German for repairing his metal limbs, still scared and that's why Bill went with him. His almost-mother was so happy to see him, she was crying a lot while she was hugging him, Liz was pissed off enough to insults David a lot, but after some hours she calmed and tell about the fact their parents got married while he was at Hogwarts during those years...so Liz now is his step-sister for real. David was so surprised like almost fainted during dinner at home also watch his dad eat dinner calmly without even talk about the whole Human-Trasmutation thing was like "Ok, this whole travel is a joke and i'm imprisoned in some Cursed Vaults without even know it, and i'm watching something i would love to be real" They laught a lot
- His way to say "I love you" is "A world without you is not a world i want to live in" and he said these words only to Penny when is God-Boggart tried to attack Penny in the Cursed Vault. She took almost the whole summer to understand why he said those words, literally she write to him asking some explanations and he was like "You saved me that day in so many different ways" and wrote the date of the day she talked about Scarlet, she took a very intimate moment when they meet during summer to totally knows what David was going to do that day...and he got slapped and then kissed on the same cheek he got the slap.
- Barbaby, Charlie and David are the Kettlerburn's most enthusiastic students, also the most favourite ones, Barbaby for his caring about creatures, Charlie for his curiosity(he does a lot of questions), David mostly plays with creature, he is such emphatic with them, he treat them well like human-friends, even the scariest creature loves David, who just enjoy like a kid those lessons and still get good grades by taking notes when he isn't unsure to remember something, also David called his step-mother for taking care of mechanical limbs of Kettlerburn, totally free, because metal limbs are such a pain when it's raining or during the winter, they hurt like hell, so David take care of Kettleburn's hard job with creature when he doesn't feel well, sometimes Kettleburn doesn't show up during the lesson for that pain, so David, Barbaby and Charlie hang out with the creatures just for fun.
- Barbaby tried to learn Alchemy from David, it didn't went good, so for now David will be the only Alchemist in Hogwarts but David repays his attempt by teaching him some magicless-selfdefense because he need a sparring partner and Barbaby is pretty tought to fight, David wins most of the times but Barbaby is pretty strong so..he loses a few times
- Talking about Melee-fighting, David NEVER hits people with his metal limbs, mostly he use them as shields trying to block dangerous spells or hunt dangerous creatures
- Before Penny's secret, he loves the way Tulip doesn't care about rules like him, and he tried to make some bad jokes to Filch and Mrs.Norris, with Tonks otherwise ask some love-advice, but he didn't use them a lot those...he just be honest with Penny and got lucky(even when someone ask him love-advice now that he dates with Penny, he just says "I was lucky most of the times, i just tried...but i feel like she did the all love-thing...i asked her after our first kiss if the kiss meant i'm her boyfriend now...and she said yes, i was unsure if i was doing a good job by trying to take her to hogsmeade or to watch some movies during the summer, i asked her everytime...") they all laught about those story but they think an "In love David" is the cutest and funniest thing ever because after the third year David was joining the Quidditch team and he was really good, so confident during the matches and the lessons, so listening about how shy he is when he is near Penny is so funny and cute..
- His favorite '80s movie is Breakfast Club, he watched it at cinema trying to take Minerva as "Lesson about Muggle-world" he chose that film totally at random and love it, then invite Penny for watching it with her, thinking she probably will likes it, and she finds it a really good movie.
- His Favorite love Song is Nothing Else Matters, but of course it's came out during the 1991 so...until then, the other love songs feels like "This song doesn't describe how i really feel when i think about Penny, it's a good song but not enough to like it"
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Then there’s the goddamned pregnancy.
So, first of all, for those of you who have never read this book, or those of you who can’t remember because you’ve suppressed a lot of it, her pregnancy is highly accelerated. So she and Edward have been on the island where they’re honeymooning for seventeen days, if I remember correctly (I’m too lazy to double-check), and Bella is experiencing all these weird mood swings and extreme hunger. Then she gets sick, and Edward watches her throw up in a toilet, because everything she does is fascinating. She goes digging through her luggage looking for something to help her upset stomach, and she spots her tampons, and suddenly it occurs to her that she should have had her period. We get to sit through a fascinating montage where she sits on the floor and counts and recounts and recounts and recounts how many days it’s been since her last period, so she can come to the conclusion that every single reader had already reached the moment Bella spotted the tampons and it was clear their appearance was significant.
Then she thinks to check her stomach, and there’s a noticeable bump. Now, my question is, how long has this bump been there? Did it literally just appear? Has it been there for a couple of days and she attributed it to bloating? You see, we don’t fucking know, because she’s stupid enough that she could have been lugging this thing around for a while and just not noticed. If I were suddenly sporting a hard, football-sized lump in my general stomach area, I’m pretty sure that would stand out to me, but I do occasionally breathe through my nose, so there’s that.
Then we get subjected to all of Bella’s frantic reassurances that this can’t be what we all know it is, because that’s impossible. Brilliantly, she tries to tell herself that this is probably just some weird South American disease with symptoms that just so happen to exactly coincide with those of a demon bun in your oven.
The most hilarious part, though, is when she finally starts to come round and begins contemplating how it actually COULD be possible that Edward’s 100-year-old dead venom jizz has active babymakers in it. She muses to herself that vampires can’t have babies because their bodies are incapable of change; they are frozen exactly as they were when their bodies crossed that threshold between life and sexy reanimated splooging marble corpse. However, a brilliant thought strikes her: men have no biological clocks, unlike women. They can keep on fathering children into old age. (She bolsters this very scientific musing with a little aside about Charlie Chapman having fathered a son at the ripe old age of seventy.) Female vampires are incapable of reproduction because their bodies cannot change; but the male body doesn’t have to change for a pregnancy to take place. Ergo, in a twisted sort of way, this kind of does make sense.
Bella, sweetie.
I guess your parents didn’t smack some Barbies together when you were a kid and gently explain to you the origin story of those baby things.
You see, the fact that a man’s body doesn’t need to physically change in order to father a child has no bearing on this situation. It has no bearing on this situation because do you know something else that’s integral to the reproduction process?
Viable sperm.
Do you know who doesn’t have viable sperm?
A guy who died a hundred years ago and had all his bodily fluids replaced with venom.
In order for you to be knocked up, an egg from one of your ovaries must travel down the fallopian tube, meet a nice sperm and set up house in the uterine lining.
Now, let’s examine the difference between sperm, a vital ingredient in impregnation, and the thing Edward actually shot into your inexplicably gagging-for-it vag:
se·menˈsēmən/
noun
the male reproductive fluid, containing spermatozoa in suspension.
ven·omˈvenəm/
noun
a poisonous substance secreted by animals such as snakes, spiders, and scorpions and typically injected into prey or aggressors by biting or stinging.synonyms:poison, toxin; archaic bane"snake venom"
extreme malice and bitterness shown in someone's attitudes, speech, or actions."his voice was full of venom"
Basically, sweetheart, that hot (or not) flood of burning love milk Edward injected into your hoo-ha after seizing twice on top of you and biting some pillows was the equivalent of having a cobra spit directly into your vagina.
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BASIC INFORMATION
FULL NAME: edward michael kaspbrak
NICKNAME(S): eddie, eds, spaghetti head, eddie spaghetti, spagheds, etc. by the losers/party. also wheezy, “sissy little queer boy,” and uh a bunch of other… more aggressive things by non–partylosers according to the book thanks a lot steve (king, not harrington)
AGE: eighteen
DATE OF BIRTH: september 3, 1976
HOMETOWN: derry, maine
CURRENT LOCATION: derry, maine
ETHNICITY: he white
NATIONALITY: americano
GENDER: cis male
PRONOUNS: he/him/his
ORIENTATION: het thanks!!!!! just kidding he’s a homoromantic homosexual
RELIGION: a good christian boiy. he was raised methodist. what is he really? who knows. fighting a giant clown monster demon thing makes you really question a lot about religion and he’s not willing to go too deep into it
POLITICAL AFFILIATION: left-leaning, but very moderately so, mostly influenced by his friends and also by the fact that maine has been a blue state pretty much for the entire time he’s been old enough to think about these things. his mom’s a democrat solely because she lives off the welfare system ( and because she finds bill clinton incredibly charming and charismatic ); otherwise she’d definitely be a republican
OCCUPATION: student, a sad small gay
LIVING ARRANGEMENTS: he lives with his momma in a very toxic environment also his mom is lowkey a hoarder it’s not so bad that he’s embarrassed to invite people over but like she’s a hoarder
LANGUAGE(S) SPOKEN: english and…. english
ACCENT: um idk a maine accent
PHYSICAL APPEARANCE
FACE CLAIM: timothée chalamet
HAIR COLOUR: dark brown
EYE COLOUR: hazel—sometimes more green, sometimes more brown, sometimes more weirdly gold-ish; depends on the day and lighting
HEIGHT: five feet, eight inches.
WEIGHT: one-hundred twenty-two pounds.
BUILD: skinny af and long-limbed ( for his stature ). not crazy short anymore, but still below average height
TATTOOS: LMAO
PIERCINGS: y’all. pls
CLOTHING STYLE: from my head canons, bc i’m too lazy to rewrite it: eddie often looks like he’s stepped out of the pages of a ralph lauren catalogue not because he is stylish or fashionable at all—he isn’t—but because he wears a lot of polos and shorts, though he doesn’t fill them out nearly as well as the ralph lauren models do. Especially pastel polos. he also frequently wears your good ol’ graphic tee and jeans combo, because you can’t go wrong there, right?
USUAL EXPRESSION: concerned tbh
DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: slightly doe-eyed, extremely doe-bodied, a preppy haircut, an inhaler in hand, and also he’s probably getting squeaky-voiced about something and/or visibly shaking. like a chihuahua.
HEALTH
PHYSICAL AILMENTS: technically? none
NEUROLOGICAL CONDITIONS: LORDY okay so the number one most important one is munchausen syndrome and hypochondria courtesy of being the proxy of his mom’s munchausen by proxy; severe anxiety (including generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and social anxiety disorder); clinical depression; and, finally, i believe the medical term for it is “FOMO"
ALLERGIES: supposedly pollen, animal dander, insect bites/stings, dust, latex, mold, wool, and, like, a bunch of other shit. he does actually have some allergies, especially to pollen/animal dander/dust, that aren’t super severe and therefore don’t necessarily present typical allergy symptoms and contribute to his constant feelings of general illness and malaise that heighten the aforementioned hypochondria. he also is actually allergic to latex. womp womp
SLEEPING HABITS: not the best but not the worst—eddie falls asleep early enough and wakes early enough, especially when left to his own devices, but he’ll often stay up later just to be in the group chat because of the aforementioned FOMO and also because richie will usually show up at his house and they’ll just talk for a while. but even then tbh he has a hard time staying up later than like 1 or 2, and even on the weekends he’ll wake up pretty early. so……… all this adds up to having ambitions of getting a good amount of sleep, not getting Terrible amounts of sleep, but also not getting Enough sleep.
EATING HABITS: you would think he would have some special diet and maybe in 2018 he would be raised eating nothing but kale and granola and gluten free shit but bitch it’s 1994 eddie eats hella processed foods
EXERCISE HABITS: that’s cute idk he gets exercise from running from bullies and riding his bike w his friends although they don’t do that as much anymore now that people have cars
EMOTIONAL STABILITY: 1 probably eddie is always on the verge of a nervous breakdown. in actuality he’s probably around a 7, which is much higher than you might think; as much as he is indeed constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown, he’s done a pretty good job of pushing down literally everything into a well so deep that most people, including himself, can’t really tell what’s wrong or what’s going on, and it’s been that way for a long, long time. or anyway, repression is the only version of emotional stability he’s learned to manage and maintain, which probably doesn’t actually count as very stable, so who knows, maybe he’s a 3.
SOCIABILITY: not as introverted as one might think; he’s definitely an introvert and needs some time alone to recharge, but in general, he prefers being around his friends to not being around them and will go out of his way to be with the people he’s closest to
BODY TEMPERATURE: runs cold, typically, which also means he gets cold easily, which sucks when you live in fucking maine
ADDICTIONS: none
DRUG USE: a seasoned pill popper of all kinds of vitamins and various placebos. he’s also on like 35 different mental health related medications. i know this isn’t what you were looking for but this is eddie kaspbrak
ALCOHOL USE: fam, come on
PERSONALITY
LABEL: “the little nervous one,” according to me upon my first watch of IT (2017); the crepehanger
POSITIVE TRAITS: loyal, feisty, energetic, brave
NEGATIVE TRAITS: defeatist, anxious, rambling, hypocritical
GOALS/DESIRES: to overcome his biggest fears, mainly—which means to be able to leave derry ( and his mother ) behind; to accept that he is not some sickly boy in need of protecting; to feel comfortable in his own skin.
FEARS: disease, death, abandonment, intense feelings of any kind honestly, his sexuality, exposure of said sexuality, change, his mom, disappointing his mom, independence, failure
HOBBIES: comics, movies, spending fucking HOURS reading medical websites and learning that all roads lead to cancer, hanging out with The Gang™, annoying his friends, lecturing his friends, sneaking out of his house, super mario bros, is candy a hobby? it is now, not dungeons and dragons ‘cause he’s not a fuckin nerd
HABITS: nail biting, compulsive timekeeping, pencil chewing tbh but only at Home, ice chewing also…..it’s super bad for your teeth but man does he love it……., assuming death lurks around every corner and shouting at everyone else about it
FAVOURITES
WEATHER: he likes a sunny day in weather that is slightly crisp, like late september, bc he has seasonal allergies
COLOUR: blu. particularly a good royal blue. sometimes sky blue if he’s feeling festive
MUSIC: pop music mostly…………. he loves a diva. he is a Loud whitney houston stan but he keeps his madonna love much closer to the vest
MOVIES: comedies definitely. he doesn’t care much for movies that are like, cinematically renowned and artsy or whatever. he’s here for something stupid that’ll make him laugh. he really likes dumb and dumber, embarrassingly enough. he also loves bill & ted. it’s his favorite movie. good ol wholesome fun, there.
SPORT: tennis obviously
BEVERAGE: an arnold palmer he’s really wildin out here
FOOD: honestly? a fuckin ice cream sundae
ANIMAL: penguins they’re gay and they mate for life
FAMILY
FATHER: frank kaspbrak. he died of cancer when eddie was a wee bab ( he was five so not actually a wee bab, but wee enough )
MOTHER: sonia kaspbrak, a devil woman
SIBLING(S): none
PET(S): he had a goldfish named arnold once that’s it
FAMILY’S FINANCIAL STATUS: lower middle class. his mom doesn’t work and lives solely off disability checks and the like, but they never seem to be for lack of money for eddie’s extensive medical care or, like, food or shelter.
EXTRA
ZODIAC SIGN: virgo binch
MBTI: ISFJ ( the defender )
ENNEAGRAM: type 6 ( the loyalist ), but actually he’s a type 6 with a type 5 wing that’s almost balanced, which, hilariously, is also called the defender
TEMPERAMENT: melancholic
HOGWARTS HOUSE: GRYFFINDOR FIGHT ME
MORAL ALIGNMENT: lawful good
PRIMARY VICE: envy
PRIMARY VIRTUE: charity
ELEMENT: earth
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The completely unnecessary news analysis
by Christopher Smart
March 31, 2020
WHY TRUMP HATES CORONAVIRUS
& WAFFLE HOUSE CODE RED
1- Donald Trump hates coronavirus because he can't spin it: “It's a low-energy virus with small hands.”
2- Because Ivanka can't make a buck on it. “Daddy, what about my designer “Ivanka” handbags? China doesn't want them anymore.”
3-Trump hates coronavirus because it doesn't respond to tweets: “You Loser Virus. YOU'RE NOTHING”
4- Because he can't bluff his way around it: “We are very, very prepared. In a minute, we'll have a vaccine. Did I say we were great? I'm a 10.”
5- Because he didn't believe those dicks at the NSA when they warned of the coming pandemic in January. “They are liars. Deep State bad people. We're gonna get rid of them.”
6- Trump hates coronavirus because Fake News sucks. “You are terrible reporters. Trying to scare people, just because everybody in Italy is dying. You're scum.”
7- Because science is bullshit. “I know a lot more than those scientists. A lot more. My grandfather was smart. I've been right a lot. It'll magically disappear.”
8- Because Obama did it. “We inherited everything bad from Obama. It was a broken system. All broken. It's really the Obama virus.”
9- Because it doesn't like Easter. “All of everybody loves Easter. It's special. We're going to open up. Everything will open up. Coronavirus can't stop Easter Bunnies.”
10- And Donald Trump hates the coronavirus because the stock market is tanking. “It'll come back, like in a second. We do numbers very well. Nobody does numbers like we do. We had the greatest economy in the world. Fucking virus.
WAFFLE HOUSE CODE RED; TOILET PAPER CODE BROWN
OK, this is bad. Waffle House almost never closes — not blizzards nor tornadoes; not terrorists nor the Ku Klux Klan can shutter these symbols of Americana. They stay open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. When they do close, you know it's cataclysmic. As such, Waffle Houses have become a disaster barometer for FEMA. The Waffle House Index shows Code Green when the local restaurant is open and Code Red when it’s closed. It's now RED, RED, RED. (No Wilson, we did not make this up.) As FEMA Director W. Craig Fugate said: “The Waffle House index doesn’t just tell us how quickly businesses might rebound – it also tells us how the larger community is faring.” Well, our emergency preparedness unit here at Smart Bomb determined to institute new codes valuable to public awareness during this trying time: Code White — when ski resorts close early causing people's heads to explode. Code Brown — when grocery store shelves are emptied of toilet paper by panicky people who fear... well, you know. And Code Black — for the scariest times, such as when President Trump says, “If we have between 200,000 and 240,000 people die, we will have done a very good job.”
WHEN FLU KILLED 675,000 AMERICANS
—World War I ended on Nov. 11, 1918. It claimed about 16 million lives worldwide, including 120,000 Americans (The U.S. didn't enter the war until April, 1917). The influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 killed 50 million of the world's 1.6 billion people. The U.S. population of 130 million was reduced by 675,000 flu victims — 555,000 more than perished in the war.
—In March 1918, more than 100 soldiers at Camp Funston in Fort Riley, Kansas become ill with flu. Within a week the number of flu cases quintupled, leading to 47 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
—The first written report of influenza appears April 5, 1918, in a weekly public health report. It detailed 18 severe cases and three deaths in Haskell, Kansas. It quickly spread across the country.
—The end of World War I cases of influenza surged as people celebrated Armistice Day and soldiers begin to demobilize. In October, alone, 195,000 Americans died.
—That fall of 1918, the U.S. experienced a severe shortages of professional nurses when they deployed to military camps in the US and abroad. Trained African American nurses were not utilized.
—In November 1918, Salt Lake City officials placed quarantine signs on front and rear doors of 2,000 homes where occupants had been struck with flu. Utah had one of the highest death rates in the country.
—A third wave of influenza struck in the late winter and spring of 1919. In San Francisco, 1,800 flu cases and 101 deaths were reported in the first five days of January.
—More than 700 cases of influenza and 67 deaths were reported in New York City, triggering fear of a recurrence of severe flu activity.
—New cases diminished and the pandemic subsided with the coming of summer and warmer weather.
—Officials at Boston City Hospital requested a special appropriation of $3,000 from Boston Mayor Andrew James Peters to study treatments for the mysterious disease.
—Recent pandemics include: 1957 Asian flu; 1981 HIV/AIDS; 2003 SARS; 2009 swine flu; 2014 Ebola.
—“The panic-then-forget cycle was broken briefly in 2014, when Ebola tore through West Africa. President Barack Obama created a new office and established a special emergency fund to improve federal response efforts. His administration also launched a global initiative meant to help high-risk, low-income countries prepare for future outbreaks. By 2018, that progress had been undone by the Trump administration. The office was disbanded and the funds were rescinded, even as a second Ebola outbreak emerged in the Democratic Republic of Congo.” — The New York Times.
THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW
Ever wonder if things would be different today if there were only three TV networks and no internet. Well, that was the case in 1973 when the Watergate scandal threatened to take down President Richard Nixon. Jill Wine-Banks, then a young attorney who served on the committee investigating Nixon during the impeachment proceedings, recently said that partisanship now is much worse than it was then. “We were all dealing with the same facts,” she said referring to the plethora of information sources now available. In the end, Nixon resigned after top Republicans abandoned him. It is interesting to note that it was a coverup that brought Nixon down and not the secret agreement — a quid pro quo — he struck with South Vietnam President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu to boycott the Paris Peace Talks before the 1968 election in exchange for enhanced power in Saigon. That could have been the difference in the Republican's razor-thin victory over Hubert Humphrey. But that was then. Now, of course, we have cable TV and scores of internet info sources, such as Breitbart and the Drudge Report. There are two Americas — one watches Fox and listens to Rush Limbaugh and the other is tuned to mainstream media, which includes The Washington Post and The New York Times. Back then, when political parties had power, someone like an eccentric real estate tycoon from New York with a reputation for bankruptcies and groping women would likely never have been nominated for president. That's progress for you.
Post script — Well, that's it for another week of pandemic lockdown hell — which for folks like Paris Hilton isn't all that bad because they have lots of mirrors in their houses. But seriously folks, this coronavirus thing is getting old and we've got a long way yet to go until we're free. But try to look on the bright side, it's better than Syria — uncounted old folks, women and children are being killed daily by bombs, bullets and famine. That's easy for us to ignore, especially when we've got our own troubles and HBO. When Wilson and the band get tired of watching the tube they jam, while honoring social distancing and drinking beer. Lately, they've been tryin' out all kinds of old stuff from the Glory Days. For example, they did a rendition of “Quicksand,” by Jesse Colin Young and the Youngbloods. They tried some Byrds stuff from Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, including “I Like The Christian Life.” They even took a swing at “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” by Warren Zevon. But if you're not a musician, like most of the staff here at Smart Bomb, it's more challenging to entertain yourself. We have done some reading, of course, including a new book on our disastrous war in Vietnam by Washington Post columnist Max Boot, called “The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam.” Unfortunately, our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq shows that we didn't learn much from our misadventure in Southeast Asia. Somebody soon will write a book called “American Tragedy in Afghanistan and Iraq.” Hey did you know the blockbuster political novel called “The Ugly American,” was based on Lansdale's role for the CIA in Vietnam before the place blew up? See what you can learn when you can't go to bars.
All right, Wilson, wake up the band and take us out with one of your new covers:
Quicksand closing in around my eyes
Quicksand forcing me to realize
Nothing that I see
Can get through this wall to me
This wall of quicksand closing in around my mind
Quicksand and I'm losing track of time
Talking about Quicksand...
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I saw It Comes At Night
It Comes At Night has been in theaters, at the time of this writing, for about two days, and already it seems to be the most polarizing film of the year thus far. I’m sure anybody who saw the way it was marketed and then watched the film can understand why. I decidedly only watched the initial teaser trailer for this movie, didn’t read about it on the internet other than that Joel Edgerton would be the lead and Trey Edward Shults would be directing. This is, in part, because I did that recently with The Void, and I’m really thankful for it, and I’m trying to make a bigger effort to continue to go into things blind with few or no expectations.
If you haven’t seen Joel Edgerton’s other fling with the “horror but not like horror horror” genre, The Gift, I highly recommend you do so now. Another film I saw in theaters without seeing literally any promotional material, The Gift is a sadly overlooked gem from 2015 about a childless couple who move into a new house and run into someone from the husband’s past. The husband conveys to the wife that he doesn’t want this stranger (played by Edgerton) hanging around, and it’s basically up to the wife to find out why. It’s an excellent, very fucked up thriller with a pretty shocking end that I certainly didn’t see coming. Edgerton is great as the creepy, stalking stranger, and he’s also a total surprise as the film’s director. I mean it. I didn’t know he directed it until I Google fu’d it a minute ago.
Another film I would consider “required viewing” going into this is Trey Edward Shults’ first movie, Krisha, which I included on my list of favorite films I watched in 2016. While it’s categorized as a drama/dark comedy, I put it in my horror list- because for those of us with a little dysfunction in our families, it is mind-numbingly, hand-wringingly horrifying. Krisha stars mostly non-actors, including the director’s aunt (IIRC) in the title role. It details a recovering alcoholic’s return to the family she ghosted on for a Thanksgiving dinner. It doesn’t go well. When I say this is required viewing, I mean it. Krisha is as non-traditional as horror films go, and I feel very similarly about It Comes At Night.
I suppose, based on the trailer, that I expected some kind of supernatural/walking dead aspect to the film going in. Let me take a second to outright demolish that preconception- this is not a monster movie, it’s not a ghost movie, it’s not got anything fantastical or even out of the realm of possibility in it. In fact, it’s a fairly stripped-down, barebones outbreak film. And, for what it is, it’s great.
The film is about Paul, his wife Sarah, and their teenage son Travis. They live with their dog, and Sarah’s father, in a big boarded-up cabin in the woods. Right away it becomes pretty clear that Grampa’s got a potent superbug, because they have to handle him with gloves and respirators, and quite early on, they’ve got to take him out back and shoot him like Ol’ Yeller. Father Paul is utilitarian, practical, a little controlling, and does what needs to be done to avoid infection and ensure survival. When a looter, Will, breaks in, he’s caught and explains himself to Paul- that he also has a family in need of supplies, that he thought the house was abandoned, that he means no harm, and that he’d be happy to trade food for some water. Paul and Sarah reason that they shouldn’t kill him in case he’s got people waiting out, they shouldn’t send him on his way lest he come back with a posse to kill them, and reason that the best option is for Paul to leave with Will and bring Will’s family back to the cabin so that they can share resources and work together. When Paul and Will come back with Will’s wife and son, Kim and Andrew, the real horror of the film unfolds- not the disease that seems to have decimated society, but the nature of humanity itself.
It Comes At Night is a horror film, but further down the Antichrist end of the spectrum and not remotely close to the land of The Conjuring or Insidious. It’s a psychological thriller that uses muted, dreamy photography and contemplative scenes (long shots of dead bodies lying in a ditch, mundane conversations between normal people) to build dread and tension. Already there is precariously placed trust between Paul’s family and Will’s, and it seems just a matter of circumstance before these people become desperate and murderous. There are very few jump scares (maybe two or three), and they aren’t ones that I think most horror fans will roll their eyes at. Paul’s son Travis has trouble sleeping and lots of nightmares that make it hard to distinguish how much of the fear and distress is real and how much is imagined. He has dreams of his dead grandfather oozing black blood from his dead face and dreams of becoming infected that seem prophetic. Outside of Travis’s dreams, there is nothing that happens on screen that couldn’t happen in real life during a catastrophic epidemic. All of the horrors are real and fully human- murder, betrayal, mercy killing, etc. The film is exceptionally dark- as in, what an old house looks like at night when the power goes out. If you’re uncomfortable wandering around with no light and a germophobe like me, this movie is going to kick your ass.
I’m about to get into some critical details of the movie and don’t recommend reading further if you’re planning to watch it.
One aspect of this movie that people are really up in arms about is the matter of the open door(s). Who the fuck opened the door? Shults leaves this completely and utterly up to the imagination of the viewer. The cabin has a “clean room” that has one exterior door, and one interior door into the house, and Paul claims to have the keys to these doors, and that he always keeps them locked. However, they also have sliding bolt latches. Near the end of the film, Travis wakes from a nightmare, walks through the dark house to find that Andrew, who is probably about four or five, has wandered away from the room Will and Kim are sleeping in, and has fallen asleep in the grandpa’s old bedroom. Travis leads Andrew back to his parents, but as he is returning to bed, he sees that the red door that leads into the makeshift clean room is open. The whole house is alerted, and Paul and Will discover the dog, Stanley, is hemorrhaging blood and dying on the floor within the room. Both doors are now open, and there’s no telling who opened them, how the dog got in, or if Andrew or Travis touched the sick dog. This event is what leads to a bloodlessly violent and dour ending for everyone involved, but the question remains- WHO OPENED THE FUCKING DOOR!?
I think, first of all, that we have to assume Paul (probably unintentionally) left both doors unlocked with just the bolt latches secured, if at all. I think it’s likely that Andrew or Travis opened both doors, although I’m leaning toward Travis. I think that, as established throughout the film, Travis was having a nightmare, heard the dog at the exterior door, and let him in. I think it’s likely this is where he became infected, and he then possibly infected Andrew when he found him misplaced and led him back to his room. The other possibility is that Andrew was just barely tall enough to reach the latches and opened the doors while sleepwalking. I think that it’s also possible that Will opened both doors and let the dog in hoping that Paul’s family would become sickened, and his family would be able to take the house and supplies for themselves. After all, they never show that Will’s son Andrew is sick, and his family is in an incredible rush to leave the house shortly after the dog is found. Perhaps they wanted to leave and hide out in the woods until Paul, Sarah and Travis are dead. Even further, it is possible SOMEONE ELSE ENTIRELY got the dog into the house hoping to sabotage the inhabitants. After all, we never actually see what Stanley the dog went running after in the woods and we never see what Travis thinks that he heard. Any one of these things is a possibility, and I think it was a bold choice on Shults’ part to leave it ambiguous and up to the viewer. I guess that, realistically, it doesn’t really matter WHO actually opened the doors. What matters is what happens after, when no one trusts anyone else, and no one knows who might be infected and who isn’t. We never actually find out if Andrew is infected, however we do find out by the end that Travis was. Therefore, at this point I think Travis is the most likely culprit. I think that Shults tries to lay enough clues to lead to this assumption, and if there is one weakness in the film, it is here- that perhaps a little more could have been done to make any of these inferences a little more likely. After all, why did Paul leave the doors unlocked at all in the first place? If Andrew opened the doors, why didn’t he mention the dog to his parents while Travis is eavesdropping? If Travis opened the doors, how is it that he didn’t react to his dog being in such a tragic state, even if he was sleepwalking? If it was someone else, how might it have happened if the latches were shut? I loved that this was left up in a dizzying, mysterious place, but I would have liked a slightly thicker trail of breadcrumbs for me to get there.
At any rate, I think the creepiest part of the movie is that Travis essentially predicts his death, by dreaming about all the most impossible of horrors, even though the real threat seems so mundane and unlucky by comparison. It’s not a reanimated corpse that kills him. It’s SOME contact with the plague that we never see, because that’s how plagues work. I like that we never find out if Andrew was truly sick. I love how hopeless and depressing the whole thing is. It seems really fitting for the times we’re living in.
I can’t recommend this movie enough if you like your horror movies atmospheric, preponderous, suggestive and difficult to digest. If you’re sick of artificial jump scares every eight and a half formulaic minutes, this might be right in line with your needs. If you need exposition and spoon-feeding, I wouldn’t spend a cent to watch it and recommend instead that you spend the evening screening Wonder Woman or Guardians of the Galaxy, which I’m sure are entertaining and likely to give you a good time. It Comes At Night may seem deceptively titled (I don’t think that it is) and deceptively marketed (absolutely). I think the title fits because Travis’s prophetic nightmares are where the horror is. It is still one of the most uncomfortable, effective horror movie experiences I’ve had in a while and would place it a shelf below the likes of The Witch and Get Out. It’s a straightforward movie with an unsettling score, photography that brings to mind the term “brain fog” (I’m a chronic sufferer, if it’s not evident in my scatterbrained reviews) in the best way, and it feels very vividly real. Not a single thing in this movie is outlandish or supernatural. While I appreciated the care taken to let me figure things out on my own, even I would have liked a few more definitives. I also would have liked a longer film; I think it wouldn’t have suffered from an extra 29 minutes, but all things considered it’s a minor complaint. I highly recommend it, if only to those who don’t mind the lion’s share of the detective work placed in their hands and those who are tired of the standard horror narrative. It’s not perfect but it’s pretty close to what this particular asshole likes in a movie.
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
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Dwight Garner’s favorite quotations
For nearly four decades I’ve kept what is known as a commonplace book – a bound notebook, and later a long computer file, passed from desktops (1990s) to laptops (2000s) to my cell phone, into which I’ve poured verbal delicacies, “blasts of a trumpet”, as Emerson put it, and bits of scavenged wisdom from my life as a reader. Yea, for I am an underliner, a destroyer of books, and maybe you are, too. Commonplace books are not so uncommon. John Locke kept one, as did Virginia Woolf. W. H. Auden published his, as did the poet J. D. McClatchy. E. M. Forster’s was issued after his death. The novelist David Markson wrote terse and enveloping novels that resembled commonplace books in many regards; they were bird’s nests of facts threaded with the author’s own subtle interjections. For fans of the commonplace book genre, many prize examples have come from lesser-known figures like Geoffrey Madan and Samuel Rogers, both English, who produced books that are notably witty and illuminating. These have become cult items. Christopher Ricks noted about Rogers that, although he may not have been an especially kind man, “he was very good at hearing what was said”.
I use my own commonplace book as an aide-mémoire, a kind of external hard drive. Reading it is a way of warding off what Christopher Hitchens, quoting a friend, called CRAFT (Can’t Remember a Fucking Thing) syndrome. I use my gleanings in my own writing. Like Montaigne, I quote others “in order to better express myself”. Montaignecompared quoting well to arranging other people’s flowers. Sometimes, I sense, I quote too often, swinging on them in my writing as if from vine to vine. It’s one of the curses of spending a lifetime as a word-eater, and of retaining, so far, a semi-reliable memory.
I am no special fan of most books of quotations. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, the Yale Book of Quotations and the New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations, to name three dependable reference books, have their uses, for sure. They are sturdy repositories of literary and verbal history. (Countless other books of quotations aren’t reliable at all.) But even the best contain a good deal of dead weight. They lean, sometimes necessarily, on canned and overused thought and, more grievously, are skewed to the upbeat. So many of the lines they contain seem to vie to be stitched on throw pillows or ladled, like chicken soup, on the credulous soul. “Almost all poetry is a failure”, Charles Bukowski contended, “because it sounds like somebody saying, Look, I have written a poem.” The same is true of quotations and aphorisms; too many have a taxidermied air, as if they were self-consciously aimed at posterity.
This small slice of the material I’ve hoarded is a sliver of a much larger book project, one that will break with the conventions of commonplace books and volumes of quotations by organizing quotes by feel rather than by category. There are few life lessons except by accident. I must add that I do not agree with everything that is said: retweet does not, as they say on Twitter, necessarily equal endorsement.
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(small selection)
“It’s only words, unless they’re true.” – David Mamet, Speed-the-Plow
“Why are you all reading? I don’t understand this reading business when there is so much fucking to be done.” – Sheila Heti, How Should a Person Be?
“Better a good venereal disease than a moribund peace and quiet.” – Henry Miller, Quiet Days in Clichy
“Everything that is true is inappropriate.” – Oscar Wilde
“Everyone nodded, nobody agreed..” – Ian McEwan, Amsterdam
“Let’s, as if sore, grab a few things from the flood.” – A. R. Ammons, Complete Poems
“Fragments, indeed. As if there were anything to break.” – Don Paterson, Best Thought, Worst Thought
“He licked his lips. ‘Well, if you want my opinion–’
‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘I have my own.’ –Toni Morrison, Beloved
“Love poems must be bounced back off a moon.” – Robert Graves, Paris Review interview
“See the moon? It hates us.” – Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories
“You know where the Beatles got that shit from. You know that’s our shit they fucking up like that.” – Albert Murray, South to a Very Old Place
“How come the Beatles never got busted for statutory rape – because they’re white?” – Eve Babitz, Eve’s Hollywood
“I hope you don’t mind, I’m from the South. We’re touchers.” – Charlie Rose, attributed
“Mick Jagger should fold up his penis and go home.” – Robert Christgau, Village Voice
“Somehow he knew, based on very little experience, that this faux-casualshit spelled money.” – Tom Wolfe, Bonfire of the Vanities
“Being rich is about acting, too, isn’t it? A style, a pose, an interpretation that you force upon the world.” – Martin Amis, Money
“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.” – Dorothy Parker
“Oh, fuck, not another elf.” – Hugo Dyson, as J.R.R. Tolkien read aloud an early draft of The Lord of the Rings
“I am putting a mental jigsaw together of what a hobbit looks like, based on a composite of every customer I have ever sold a copy to.” – Shaun Bythell, Diary of a Bookseller
“You put your finger in it, and go swish, swish, swish.” – Jane Jacobs, on how to make a West Village martini
“Wasn’t the whole 20th century a victory lap of collage, quotation, appropriation, from Picasso to Dada to Pop?” – Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence
“I suddenly began to realize that everybody in America is a natural-born thief.” – Jack Kerouac, On the Road
“The not paying for things is intoxicating.” – Philip Roth, American Pastoral
“I don’t trust anybody who hasn’t shoplifted.” – John Waters
“Cleanliness might not be next to godliness but it is certainly adjacent to horniness.” – Geoff Dyer, on hotels, in Otherwise Known as the Human Condition
“The assumptions a hotel makes about you! All those towels.” – Stanley Elkin, The Dick Gibson Show
“The meat around my skull can’t stop smiling.” – Catherine Lacey, The Answers
“Let’s have some new clichés.” – Sam Goldwyn
“I need some new attitudes, some new affirmations and denials.” – Lionel Trilling, letter
“Good-bye, and I don’t mean au revoir.” – Christopher Ricks
“Of course it’s all right for librarians to smell of drink.” – Barbara Pym, Less Than Angels
“Edward worried about his drinking. Would there be enough gin? Enough ice?” – Donald Barthelme, Flying to America
“I have no enemies. But my friends don’t like me.” – Philip Larkin
“There was obviously nothing to recommend me to anyone.” – Deborah Levy, Hot Milk
“I have always disliked myself at any given moment; the total of such moments is my life.” – Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise
“Talk into my bullet hole. Tell me I’m fine.” – Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son
“Every time he played a note he waved it goodbye. Some times he didn’t even wave.” – Geoff Dyer on Chet Baker, But Beautiful
“Let us reflect whether there be any living writer whose silence we would consider a literary disaster.” – Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave
“If we did get a writer worth reading, should we know him when we saw him, so choked as we are with trash?” – George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying
“Book publishing should be done by failed writers who recognize the real thing when they see it.” – Robert Giroux, Paris Review interview
“Books are, let’s face it, better than everything else.” – Nick Hornby, Ten Years in the Tub
“Revenge is the capitalism of the poor.” – Aravind Adiga, Selection Day
“It makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears – dissolution, disappearance.” – Zadie Smith, White Teeth
“The face of ‘evil’ is always the face of total need.” – William S. Burroughs, preface to Naked Lunch
“In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things.” – Edna O’Brien, The Love Object
“How desperate do you have to be to start doing push-ups to solve your problems?” – Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle: Book Two
“The primary object of a student of literature is to be delighted.” – Lord David Cecil
TLS, 2018
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FIVE YEARS LATER….
I’ve been wanting to write a few more long-form things that aren’t specifically about movies. Believe it or not, I don’t like really writing much about myself, but this seemed to be the perfect day to do a bit of oversharing. Warning: If you already feel that you know way too much about me, then feel free to stop reading now. I doubt the people who really need to read this will do so, because few of my colleagues ever read anything I write.
For those unaware, in April 2013 I was diagnosed with a form of leukemia that’s normally found in children and has a relatively low survival rate among adults. I went through chemo to put me in remission and five years ago today I received the stem cell transplant that would save my life and hopefully keep cancer out of my bloodstream. I’ve had a chance to meet my wonderful donor Michael Levin, an Army JAG, and watch his own family grow through Facebook. His selfless choice to be a donor helped me move back to the city I love and go back to doing the things I love doing. To a point…
I don’t want to be a stick in the mud, especially when I received so much support and love through my treatment five years ago, but anyone who thinks that me returning to New York was the end of the story clearly never dealt with cancer before, either within themselves or with loved ones.
I don’t want to use this post to talk about my “struggles,” because there are people out there who have had it much worse than me, both when dealing with cancer and with life in general. I do want to let people know that being cured of cancer through a stem cell transplant is by no means the end of that story.
You’ll forgive me if I feel a little entitled to overshare after facing such a tough battle and surviving for five years, because life has taken such a dramatic toll on me the past few years, I’m often wondering if beating cancer was even really worth it.
Let me explain…
There are much worse side effects that can occur when one gets a transplant from something called GVHD (graft vs. host disease) because the stem cells, in trying to build a new immune system, literally can turn against the body its inhabiting. There’s a lot of science mumbo jumbo involved with getting a stem cell to take, but it’s a process that leads to a lot of potential side effects and complications. As much as people probably look at me and think I’m back to as normal as I’ll ever get, my year-long fight with leukemia has not left me quite the “man” I used to be, and that’s kind of what I want to talk about here.
It’s hard to believe, but a long time ago, I was a 13-year-old boy with all sorts of dreams and ambitions, but one of them was always to have a family of my own – hopefully a nice wife and at least one or two kids, living in a house somewhere nice. I never had delusions of fame or success of great riches, but I also never thought one day I’d move to New York City and become a writer, because honestly, writing was not even a part of my life until I was midway through my 20s and had already moved to New York City for other reasons.
Imagine being that same boy forty years later, still having similar tastes in music and still enjoying the company of women, but realizing that the fairly reasonable dream I had when I was younger to have my own family will probably never come to pass.
You see, one thing I learned before I got the stem cell transplant five years ago was that I would be unable to have kids afterwards. I’m not sure if it was due to the radiation or just the general process of having my immune system rebuilt from scratch, but I was told this so late into my cancer treatment that even getting sperm frozen for later wasn’t an option. (I won’t go into the details about how I had to miss a press screening of All Is Lost – how’s that for irony? – to go to a sperm bank only to learn that the chemo so far had already done too much damage.)
But the knowledge that the stem cell transplant that preserved my life has also pretty much sterilized me has made it impossible for me to have any sort of normal sexual relationship, so I don’t even bother trying to date. To be brutally honest, I’ve pretty much lost all interest in sex and have declared myself an avowed asexual having already had many years of celibacy under my belt even before the treatment that would make sex impossibly awkward both for myself and anyone else involved. So yeah, there’s that, too.
The thing is that I love kids, and I’ve had to live vicariously through my friends who have kids, since I know I’ll never be able to have my own. I’ve grown accustomed to being called “Uncle Ed” even though I only have two actual nephews by blood. Still, this is the kind of thing that can really fuck someone up, and that’s not even the worst thing I’ve had to deal with the last five years.
That isn’t the only issue I’ve faced, as some of you might remember me wearing a bandana covering my eye/face due to the shingles I got in early 2016, almost three years ago, but that’s led to some of the most aggravating pain and irritation of my life, something called postherpetic neuralgia that I’m still desperately trying to deal with. There’s a light at the end of that tunnel, but it keeps drifting further and further away every time I think I have it resolved.
Probably the saddest and most surprising side effect of having cancer is seeing people who I considered friends (or at least work colleagues) before I moved to Ohio for ten months slowly drift out of my life, not because of anything I’ve said or done, but just because… well, I don’t know why.
Actually, I’ve come up with a theory, as I often do.
I honestly think that many of the people I know were being supportive of me and my fight against cancer, only because they thought I might die. They wanted to be nice to me before what was inevitably my demise… only to learn that you have to be WAY tougher than a little blood cancer to kill Edward Douglas. I can’t even imagine how disappointed they must have been to learn how unkillable I am. Believe me, I’ve tried with very little luck.
Sure, some of these people just want to improve their own lives and careers, and that weird guy Ed just doesn’t fit into those plans. I can’t really hold that against them, but there’s definitely an “out of sight, out of mind” factor in play for those friends who I don’t see as much anymore. Others have literally turned on me and some have even (purposely or inadvertently) helped get me blacklisted after I worked so hard to build a career writing about movies. I don’t want to mention any names, but it’s hard to see these people at screenings and not immediately be reminded of what shitty fucking people they turned out to be.
It’s kind of shocking to me, because when I got back to New York, I was constantly being asked how I was doing or told I was looking good, the latter being quite uncomfortable for me since I’m not used to getting any praise. It’s something I tried hard not to take for granted that people cared how I was doing, but it also something that confused me, because it wasn’t something I was used to in the years before I was diagnosed with leukemia.
All of the above ties together, though. Maybe I wouldn’t have snapped and called out Disney for their bullshit if I wasn’t dealing with all these other personal issues. Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten in trouble on Twitter last November when I felt the need to vent and did so in a way that goes against my normally conscientious and considerate nature. Who knows? All I know is that I’ve been hurt more by those two bad decisions then anyone else who got involved either directly or tangentially. Disney sure as fuck wasn’t hurt by me complaining about a couple publicists who were treating me poorly, and most people (other than a couple assholes I won’t name) have probably already forgiven and forgotten for what I said on Twitter last year. As I told my editors as it was happening, it was a blip that would quickly be forgotten… and it was.
And yet, it’s hard not to feel like I’ve been completely blacklisted for it, as I haven’t worked in the last five and half months since Tracking Board fell apart. I just don’t know what I can do beside apologize for my behavior (which I’ve done now… MANY times) and continue to offer the hard work, service and loyalty I’ve prided myself on for my entire life.
It’s left me feeling more alone and outcast than ever before on top of all the physical and emotional issues that have built up in the couple years.
I can’t speak for everyone who has fought cancer because every situation is different, but working so hard to come back to NYC, only to find that many of the friends who were so supportive before have basically turned against me, some quite literally, it really, really hurts… and then you compile that with the neuralgia and other physical limitations put on me by my treatment, I hope people can understand when I sometimes get down or just don’t want to talk to people at screenings like I used to.
All I know is that my life is nowhere I would want it to be five years after facing a potentially life-threatening illness and dealing with the after-effects for five years. I have no idea how to get out of this rut I’m in so that I can enjoy whatever’s left of my life, and I have less and less people that I can talk about any of this stuff. (My brother, who has been one of my rocks over the past five years, has basically stopped talking to me for reasons I won’t get into.)
I’m not looking for pity or sympathy or even a response/solution, because I just don’t think there is one. I’m just going to try to get by and get through however much time I have left and hope that I don’t end up back in the place I was a few months back when I didn’t even have enough money to buy a bottle of water on a very hot and humid day.
Things are better now, and I’m doing okay, but it definitely seems like the doctor who diagnosed me with leukemia five and a half years ago and told me it would be a “life-changing experience” wasn’t kidding.
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