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trashlama · 11 months

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Maybe hcs on yandere rise Donnie in a romantic way who falls for big mama assistant who praises his work ~

Donnie knows it’s wrong , but as Mikey always says the heart wants what it wants

Which leaves to Leo and Raph to kindly tell him he’s being rash , ridiculous, not thinking clearly she’s working for the enemy, she gonna end up using you .

Donnie doesn’t care tho , doesn’t he deserve to be happy , rewarded for saving New York , the world countless of times !

Reader better prepared herself there’s a storm coming , one she not prepared for ~ 😈

Donatello x Big Mama Assistant Reader? I gotcha ya'

At this point in the game Donatello is pretty used to people trying to take advantage of him. Purple Dragons, Big Mama, Master Splinter— basically anyone who throws the dude a compliment because they want to take advantage of him for his tech.

He's weak for that ✨praise✨

Despite being a genius intellectually, emotionally Donatello is easily manipulated into doing things. Like with the Purple Dragons and Master Splinter Donnie is eager to impress those he wants respect/praise from. Believing that if he gives/shows them how great he— his tech is they'll stay. They'll need him. Even if it's not exactly for him. As we find out in Donnie vs. Witch Town.

Praise is Donnie's form of reassurance that he is valued. Needed. To him aside from his tech he believes he doesn't bring anything to the team.

Soooo Donnie crushing hard for one of Big Mama's assistants because they compliment him? Sure I can see that.

Especially if you're literally just feeding his ego so you can retrieve some Intel for Big Mama to use against the Mad Dog's/or to her own personal advantage. Though I guess what you gotta be careful about is what happens when you ghost a turtle who is obsessed with you? Well you might just need to find out.

Sorry if it's a little OOC-ish, I rewrote this like ten times, initially with just head cannons, and then a one shot draft(several). Buuutt I kinda hated all of them sooo I posted the one I liked the most.

Probably should've re-read this more but I got work in the morning...

This takes places some months after the movie. Also check out the author's notes at the end for more!

I hope you guys enjoy it!

++++++++++++++

Fuck maybe Raph and Leo were right....

This might've been a bad idea...

Donatello was a prideful turtle. He didn't like admitting when he was wrong but, in this case scenario standing here under the beating lamps of Big Mama's Battle Nexus arena ten rounds into a seemingly endless fight. Donatello was starting to have second thoughts about his choice of just strolling up to the New Grand Nexus Hotel and negotiating with Big Mama. Somehow he should've anticipated this outcome. The jorogumo is notorious for adding twists to her deals. Especially when it came to her Battle Nexus. Nothing is as it seems with that british demon lady.

However somehow despite every rational bone screaming in his body to call off this arrangement, the possessive creature caged between his ribs refused. It wanted You. Donatello wanted You. The Yuki-Onna who strolled into the mutant's life all those months ago and infected his brain with your spoonfuls of honey coated poison.

The yokai who sang songs of praise and adoration that hypnotized the purple coded Hamato. Transfixed Donnie gave it all. Anything you asked for. It was yours, just don't abandon him.

Immediately Raph and Leo were on his case about the matter. Preaching about how he was just going to get used and dumped to the curb.

Mikey wouldn't say anything.

Donatello knew Mikey wanted to defend his brother's blossoming interest in love but, in those warm grey eyes it reflected back the youngest Hamato's inability to support this. It wasn't healthy. Donatello didn't need Doctor Feelings to tell him such. But he didn't care. Not until out of the blue you start ghosting the softshell. Long story short— he's devastated.

All together your calls, messages, surprise visits stopped. For weeks there wasn't a sign from you and the lack of (Y/n) time was causing Donnie to go through remission. Like a junkie without a fix the softshell was losing his mind. Everywhere he searched at all hours. Day, night, anytime that his brothers weren't there to stop him from pursuing you. During your extended absence both his father and siblings would go on about how this was a good thing for him. Meanwhile Donatello felt like his world was falling to pieces. Patience chipped away every day he couldn't find you. Before the techno turtle knew it, half a month had passed and he found himself standing in the New Grand Nexus Hotel lobby requesting a meeting with Big Mama.

That's why he was here. To get you back. This is your fault that he's this way. Donatello was just a man of science before you came along and muddled up his rational brain. Now the purple clad Hamato was gonna make sure that you pay for it.

Standing tall once more the sound of the crowd and the stadium's intercom speaking finally broke through the ringing that was leftover from the previous match. Allowing the mutant genius to finally tune into Big Mama's message that was being broadcasted.

"—Ahhh my good patrons~ For our last-aroo match of the tourna-warna-ment we have a special guest star instead of the champion we had originally set.... Give her a warm welcome back everyone! (Y/n), The Snow-woman!~ " the eight-legged Battle Nexus owner announced cheerfully. The projection was cut not a moment later and presented on the opposite side of the arena before the Mad Dog was you.

The (h/c) woman looked just the way she did the day the yokai had sang goodbye for the last time. Pressed white kimono and cold (e/c) eyes. Not sparing a single look to the commotion from the crowd behind her. That deadly gaze was locked on him. Beautiful.

Had not been for the agreement that Donatello had struck up with the British spider demon Donatello would've just stolen you away right then and there.

Like the fog they pumped in for your dramatic grand entrance you glided down the champion runway. Not at all inhibited by the fickle geta you used to complain about. Time slowing down for Donatello the closer you crept towards the ring.

Once locked inside with him Donatello could feel a switch flip inside of him. At first he was so happy that you were actually here and not some false advertisement promoted by Big Mama to lure the softshell turtle into her Battle Nexus. Though as soon as the endorphins left his system the mutant's veins were flooded with a different kind of emotion. Possessive anger. How dare the snow demon just leave him like that. The Mad Dog had given her whatever she desired only for the woman to have the audacity to turn around and leave him after she ruined him like this. It's her fault the ninja turtle felt like this. The demon assistant needed to be held accountable.

Without warning catching the techie turtle off guard you bolted forward. Only allowing Donatello just a second to react in time to protect himself from the icicle blade that formed in your (Dominant hand) hand somewhere between your dramatic entrance and attack. Regardless of its origins, the elemental weapon held up against the thick metal of Donatello's tech-bo that he defended himself with. Not wasting any time the softshell shoved the Yuki-Onna off with his staff before returning the attack with some strikes of his own. From there the two of you traded blows.

Some length of time passed before you began to show obvious signs of fatigue. The combination of the heat radiating off the stadium's overhead lamps and the overexertion of your abilities weakened you enough that eventually all you had left to keep the purple clad Hamato away was the wave of ice that blew forth from your pouting blue tinted lips.

What a nuisance

Had you known all those months ago that you'd be back here in this damn Battle Nexus fighting for your freedom, you wouldn't have ever agreed to that seemingly straightforward task. Befriend the purple clad turtle, get some Intel on Baron Draxum(maybe more) and get out. Simple. Until it wasn't. Donatello was becoming too close, too demanding, too far gone in his own delusion of what he called love. So you dipped.

How ironic you left because you didn't want to deal with the turtle's possessive emotions only to end up fighting against said techie genius for your freedom. Damn Big Mama and her stupid whims. If you managed to win this match. You were for sure never going back to the eight legged entrepreneur. Didn't want to risk being placed in a similar situation like this again.

Rolling around all over the place like a RPG character in a boss fight Donatello manages to eventually draw closer to the defrosting Yuki-Onna. Timing it perfectly to slap a muzzle onto your mouth the sudden action catching you off guard causing you to stumble back. Clawing at the metallic restraint that retracted and locked around your jaw.

Seeing his opportunity Donatello knocks you down onto your ass before activating the electrical prongs in his tech-bo. In a swift move the mutant turtle held you down with his foot as he stabbed the ends of the built in taser into your stomach electrocuting you until your vision went dark.

The moment that it was declared the (h/c) haired woman was down for the count. From the surrounding stands a roar of excitement erupted within the colosseum all at once. The cheers of spectators barely drowned out only by Big Mama's announcement of the purple coded mutant's victory. Giddiness evident in the jorogumo's tone despite being out a helper.

However that was not what Donatello was concerned about.

Not wasting another second in hitting the button on his tech-bo allowing the contraption to retract into its small tubbing and to be put away. Leaving his three digit grasps open to scoop up his prize. Overwhelmed with finally having you in his grasp once again the purple coded Hamato completely forgets about his own battered state. Inky pools focused solely on the unconscious yokai that haunted his waking thoughts and dreams.

From behind him Donatello could hear the arrival of a group of footsteps. Standing up with your figure resting in his arms Donatello turns to face Big Mama as she struts towards your guy's battered figures. Two yokai bellhops following dutifully behind the spider demon boss.

" Fufufuh looks like some-bitty-body is a happy winner~ " the business woman teased as she approached. Stopping just in front of the two of you as she analyzed the scene with amusement.

" What a show! I'm soooo pleased that you were able to win dearie~ However there is still one little last itsy bitsy part of our deal you're forgetting~ " the spider demon chided playfully. Although her tone was its usual playfulness behind the lenses of her teal cat-eye frames the jorogumo held an impatient look.

"Oh how could I forget?" Donatello replied sarcastically as he released your legs holding you up against his plastron as his free hand reached back into his battle shell to grab his and your ticket out of this mad house.

" There. Everything I could find left over from Baron Draxum's lab that was salvageable " the softshell turtle said flatly as he threw the flashdrive towards the fox bellhop to the right of the Battle Nexus owner. The fox not wasting a second to handed the flashdrive over to it's boss.

"Splendid! Well~ you better get going young purple one. Yuki-Onna's don't respond well to heat and today is supposed to be terribly hot! Better hurry~" Big Mama warned whimsically as she began to walk away back towards the direction of her luxury skybox.

With that out of the way Donatello doesn't waste a second longer standing around in the middle of the Battle Nexus arena. Quickly the mad dog recollects your figure into his arms bridal style fleeing the Battle Nexus arena and hotel as quickly as possible.

Once out of the mob boss's reach back on the surface Donatello couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief. He made it, he found you. The creature caged in his chest was pleased. Content that he has you at his side once again and this time the purple clad softshell was gonna ensure things would be different. He wasn't gonna let you leave him in shambles again. He was gonna make sure you needed him as much as he needs you.

After all it was like what Mikey said:

"The heart wants what it wants"

And his wanted you even if your's didn't want him.

++++++++++++++++++++++

¶¶ Author's Notes ¶¶

Guys so as I was writing this I was thinking about how the Kraang could've affected Donatello and Raphael in the long run.

Like obviously PTSD but what I mean is like cray cray wise.

Like both Raph and Donnir had fused with the Kraang Hive mind in some form or another.( Raph mind controlled/possessed, Donnie mind melded )

I'm just saying there's gotta be some sort of side effects from that experience. Like having a harder time differentiate between reality and hallucinations. Or possibly maybe their brains chemistry has been fucked up making them more aggressive/possessive? Idk

I'm thinking about writing/or elaborating further on this in a future post. Yandere scenarios of course.

I just got a lot to write but, you guys know me. I'm all over the place~

Anyways thank you guys for bearing with me and my rabbling. I hope you guys have a great day!

Thank you for reading!

Sorry this is long↓ I don't own these memes. I've never claimed to do so. I just come across them on Pinterest when I'm on break at work and think they're funny so I like to share them. If I mistakenly put one on here that I shouldn't have please let me know! I like to respect people's wishes. And if you could add the creator names too that would be great so the same mistake isn't made twice. Sorry for the inconvenience that my sharing may cause. I hope you have a good day.

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peculiarcharlotte · 2 months

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the boy in striped pajamas: my sentiments

rating: 9.8/10

warnings: spoilers ahead + emotional damage (be prepared)

this was in my bucket list for quite some time, and i’ve only gone around to watching it a few days ago. to be frank, i’m still recovering, and i’ll probably never truly recover from this drastically touching cinematic masterpiece.

bruno was the son of an auschwitz’s commandant who moved his family to the countryside for work duties. in my eyes, bruno’s character was so beautifully human. unbothered by the atrocities currently happening, he remains curious and compassionate within his little bubble of innocence. he questions unashamedly, about the strange horrid smell coming from the “farm's” chimneys, (from the burning of jews), about the numbers on shmuel’s so-called pajamas (a jewish boy whom he had befriended).

unfortunately, purity never sustains in our blood-wrenched world. in the end, bruno’s death was a karmic result of the nazi regime, and his father’s ignorance and failure to protect him. it saddens me deeply knowing he died believing his father was a rightful man. he died thinking he’d find shmuel’s father in the concentration camps. he died so unknowingly. what breaks me the most, was he died gripping the hands of his beloved friend, shmuel, inside that gas chamber. i’m not lying when if i tell you i cried for three hours straight after this movie. it’s infuriating, knowing this wasn’t just made-up, stuff like this has happened, and honestly, they’re still happening! how could anyone let these children be stripped away of their humanity and futures like this? how does ethnic identity completely decide your social mobility? how is it justifiable in any way for genocide to even be worshipped?

therefore it’s such a provoking thought knowing if we could just entirely eradicate everything we’ve known about something and approach it through our intrinsic nature, perhaps we would've been so much more connected to our roots: to merge into a mere species, the human race. sometimes i wonder if current and past societies removed all the societal structures, the ingrained bigotries and biases within themselves, would racism and exclusion of marginalized groups ever exist in the first place? would i be able to kiss a person without the fear of being discriminated against? would the gender wars between man and woman become an incomprehensible notion? would we be able to finally collectively strive for the common greater good? would the generation of our offspring still have to worry about whether they’re going to be competent enough for the work market? so many questions and none can be answered. so many voices and none were heard. so many potentials, but none fulfilled.

overall, the film articulately depicts the true horrors of war and the tragic consequences it enforces. every scene was so raw, so full of emotions and authenticity. i would watch this again, probably just to feel something, even if i might be more emotionally damaged from being reminded of the devasting aftermath of bruno and shmuel’s forbidden comradeship.

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o-flynn-o · 1 year

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The Da Vinci code

-Understanding the "Da Vinci code"

Existing structures are your understructure. Your structure is the structure for present and the understructure for the future.

This is the "formula" for building art, music, film, and entertainment.

-System Errors and Fixes

Will not encourage racism and division; Will not rely on scandal and strife for promotion and advertising. You can build without those things.

One of the major ideas is pouring, pouring out sustenance. Creating a thriving garden. And the energy being poured out joining together like a river system being restored after a drought.

This current system is smothering the light and life out of people. It's breaking their hearts. That is a root that causes many problems.

It also reminds me of making sure you have the right nutritional "diet". Your diet is not only what you eat. It's what you watch, what you listen to, what you read, the people you hang around... Be mindful of the things you "consume" emotionally, spiritually, and physically. What you're "feeding" yourself or what you're being "fed" could be making you spiritually or emotoinally sick.

-Current or "Old" system:

It's as simple as the suggestion of product placement.

We know all about this it's been present in our society and entertainment for many decades.

I've been studying this and social media systems. Things being used for "sociological programming". A type of "language" being used to control psychological and sociological "currents".

It's also used to build the structure of entertainment and other things we experience everyday.

The important observation is," What is this being used for?"

In the wrong hands it can be a destructive and devastating force.

In the right hands it can be a source of life and prosperity.

My interest, I'm sure like many others, absolutely wanting life and prosperity.

What is this "Old System"?

-Image association.

-Name association.

-Color association.

-Product association.

-Keyword association.

-"Popular" Idea association.

Definitions:

Image association and color association:

Name association:

Product association:

Keyword association:

"Popular" Idea association:

(Section above is unfinished. Will continue to elaborate and discuss.)

This system is used in preparation for up coming products, celebrities, influencers, entertainment, movies, films, show series, and all streaming service entertainment.

I'm breaking this down from the root so it is easy for anyone to understand. Even though many may understand already.

A portion of the actual formula to build:

Previous + Present + Forward

This expands into a much more complex tree of information compiled in creativity resulting in a finished product.

I have applied this to my own work. Can you spot the "easter eggs", layers, bridges, or "webs"?

I'm going to continue to work on this and walk you through it with as much subject matter as I can; Art, Music, Film, and Entertainment.

I'm sharing this knowledge for free. Because like me, I'm sure there is someone out there who, maybe doesn't have money or certain other resources. God has blessed me so much, walked me through studying so many things, and I've had to fight for years. With what I'm handing you at least with this knowledge you'll have a big jumpstart.

So please, as we work through this, copy, take notes, and save this however you can. Or pass it on to someone who might need it. :)

*This project named after brilliant mind and accomplished master artist Leonardo Da Vinci-

0 notes

archived-kin · 3 years

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simeon with a himbo boyfriend

note from kin: once again i am writing for the boys because this fandom doesn’t have nearly enough content for them, especially for Big and Beefy Men. let them be in dating sim fandoms too!!!!!! give them more content!!!!!

anyway i’ve made you an angel since i don’t want to have to think about the deeper repercussions of what simeon dating a human would be (i mean we all know what happened to lilith when she tried it)

fandom: obey me!

character(s): male!reader, simeon, luke, belphegor, beelzebub, asmodeus, satan, leviathan, mammon, lucifer, barbatos, diavolo, solomon

pairing(s): simeon/reader but it accidentally becomes everyone/simeon’s boyfriend at some point whoops (this ended up as a pretty big block of text as a result so please let me know if you have difficulty reading it so that i can try to format it better!)

warning(s): nope!

genre: fluff!!!! fluff everywhere!!!!!!!!!

simeon thinks you’re the cutest goddamn thing in all three realms

you may be six foot four inches of muscle but to him that is six foot four inches of ADORABLE

you’re very strong so he likes to just run and jump up at you from behind and wrap his arms around your neck because he knows you won’t be fazed by it (physically anyways, emotionally is another story)

the other angels always gasp when he does this in public because it’s so far from his usual ‘poised and elegant’ thing but how is simeon NOT supposed to climb all over you like a koala when you’re so big and huggable???

simeon just really loves jumping at you like that okay

because every time he does you’ll just pause for a second and look very confused as to why your back has suddenly gotten heavier, and then you’ll turn your head, and your smile and excited little ‘simeon!!’ is to DIE for

he has to be incredibly upfront with you about what he wants because otherwise you will not understand

he has to say, word for word, “i want to sleep in the same bed as you every day” before you actually realise that that’s what he meant

the whole exchange kind of went like this:

simeon, being sappy at like seven in the morning: “i want to wake up like this all the time from now on”

you: “??? do you want me to come lie down next to you before you wake up tomorrow morning?”

simeon: “no, for the whole night”

you: “you want to wake up like this for the whole night??”

simeon: [sighs]

he also often has to be the one taking charge when it comes to physical affection

like you’re always willing to give him hugs and carry him around and let him sleep sprawled out on your chest like a starfish and give him kisses but half the time simeon has to ask you because for some reason you just won’t do it on your own???

at one point simeon starts getting a little insecure that you don’t actually really like physical affection and are just going along with it for him

because he’s a sensible angel, he brings this up with you before jumping to conclusions

he was not prepared for you to reply that you always wait for him to confirm that he wants affection because you’re afraid that you’ll accidentally hurt him with your strength if you go for it by yourself

simeon doesn’t cry a lot but dear god did he come close that day

after that it’s just hand holding and hugs and forehead kisses galore from you and simeon couldn’t be happier

now, it’s time for a bit of backstory

you were created purely to fight during the big celestial war, which is why you are so Beefy and Stupid

the beefy is because they needed you to be both strong and intimidating, while the stupid is because they didn’t create you with anything but fist fighting in mind

during the war you were a force to be reckoned with because you could just run at and headbutt a demon and they’d immediately be flung straight out of the skies and back into the devildom

and, even better, this meant that you didn’t have to kill anyone! you could just punt them so hard that they’d be flung out of the realm where the battle’s taking place entirely

once the war was over though they didn’t really know what to do with you

you were basically just this giant baby who didn’t know how to do anything but war

so they just dumped you in a garden and told you to take care of the flowers

which was how simeon originally met you! he was taking a walk around the gardens and saw you crying over a tree that you accidentally snapped in half with your big clumsy hands

now, simeon wasn’t one to believe in love at first sight, but HOLY FUCK

if he hadn’t already been an angel in the celestial realm he’d have thought you were some divine being from the heavens

anyway long story short simeon consoled you and started helping you take care of the garden, taught you how to live a life in times of peace, spent entire nights just lying awake and thinking about your smile and your laugh and how warm your hands look to hold and how it would feel to hug you, and finally managed to confess to you without you misconstruing it as just a Friendly Act of Kindness, and now you two are the proud holders of the title Cutest Couple in The Universe

granted only asmo calls you two that but you’ll take it

speaking of asmo allow me to segue this to the rad exchange programme era

you get so sad when simeon tells you he’ll have to leave for a year

your face falls when he breaks the news and your voice is all lost and quiet when you ask, ‘does that mean i can’t see you?’

simeon is absolutely devastated

it’s like a thousand puppies and kittens are being murdered right in front of him

he nearly cries (when i say nearly i mean he does)

but he can’t back out of the exchange program now, and one year isn’t THAT much for beings that live for possibly forever, so in the end, giving you a giant hug and about a million kisses to make up for the ones you’ll miss over the coming year, simeon leaves for the devildom

he makes it about a month and a half without you before he starts getting all mopey

and you’re not doing much better up in the celestial realm

michael actually has to message simeon and ask him how to deal with you because you spend every day dejectedly shuffling around the gardens that you take care of and it’s making everyone sad just looking at you

simeon reads that message and immediately decides that either he’s going back to the celestial realm or you’re coming down to the devildom

the authorities are a little cautious about it because you’re one of the purest angels they have and they really don’t want you getting corrupted by demons

but simeon assures them that the few demons that you’ll actually be having contact with wouldn’t do that, and you’ll be under both his and lord diavolo’s protection

so you end up being allowed to join simeon in the devildom for his exchange year!!!

honestly with the way the two of you react when you see each other again you’d think you hadn’t seen each other in years

simeon runs up to you and jumps straight into your arms and you spin him around in a big hug and ahhhhhhhh it’s like a teen romance movie but with an actually compelling relationship

and so you move into his bedroom (because of course you’re still going to share one down here) and take up a temporary position as a gardener to take up time since you can’t really do school

pros: simeon now gets to see you every day again and you look very cute bustling around the devildom’s fancy gardens with a watering can and wheelbarrow. also he gets to watch you lift an entire shed and it’s the best thing he’s ever seen

cons: the others are all basically in love with you now as well

simeon’s torn between ‘why wouldn’t they be, he’s literally the most perfect being ever’ and ‘what the fuck, that’s MY boyfriend’

belphie likes you because you are similar to beel and you’re also warm and big and strong so he can take naps on you and you won’t be bothered in the slightest

one day simeon sees belphie just jump onto your back and start sleeping there while you’re crouched in the garden doing some weeding and he’s so stunned by the sheer audacity that he forgets to be mad about it

honestly you don’t really notice that belphie is sleeping on you until you go to get up and feel something move on your back

and then, being the dumb precious idiot you are, you just lie face first there on the lawn so that he can carry on sleeping without being disturbed

consequence: simeon nearly cries at your sweetness but is also incredibly jealous and belphie is now having Feelings that he didn’t sign up for

beel meanwhile isn’t sure how to feel about you at first because he kind of feels like you’re stealing his twin all the time, but then you make him your special candied fruits (from produce that you grew yourself) and he loves you from that point forward

also PLEASE share your workout routine with him he wants to know your secret

it turns out that you don’t really have a workout routine?? you were just made like that

though the constant exercise and heavy lifting and stuff you do as part of your daily garden-care routine (you take care of basically all of the gardens back in the celestial realm) helps as well

he’s a bit disappointed but he does like that you can pick him up without any effort

one time he asked if you were capable of it and without missing a beat you went ‘let’s find out!’ and straight up swept him off his feet

beel was fucking screaming on the inside but no can’t feel feelings that’s simeon’s boyfriend

meanwhile asmo… okay we all know the way asmo is

boy took one look at you and immediately started drooling (figuratively anyway. physically his jaw just dropped)

kudos to him though, he backs off with the flirting as soon as simeon informs everyone that you’re his partner

asmo may be the avatar of lust but he is no home wrecker (he still finds an excuse to hug you every time he sees you though because awooga, muscles)

(he does know his boundaries so simeon doesn’t mind too much)

asmo also very likes the fact that you have such a green thumb because it means you can grow the prettiest flowers and you’re always willing to trim him a few to use as accessories

at some point simeon accidentally eavesdrops in on a conversation between the two of you where you’re just gushing about what kind of flowers he likes and how you’re going to plant them everywhere in the devildom because you like it when he smiles when he sees them

CRITICAL HIT!!!!!

simeon is pretty sure he combusts on the spot, while asmo is just squealing

thus was the origin of the title ‘Cutest Couple in the Universe’

satan on the other hand is mostly disinterested in you at first

the two of you live in pretty different worlds even if you live within the a five minutes’ walk of each other. he prefers to stay locked up in his room or the library and just curl up with a good book or ten for hours on end, while you’re always outside, digging flower beds and pruning bushes and cleaning fences and walls and basically doing every other little bit of manual labour that none of the brothers could be bothered to do before

he does note that you’re pretty good at what you do but that’s about it

until one day

you’re just pottering about in the garden outside the house of lamentation doing your angelic gardener thing when the stray cat that satan’s secretly been feeding for the past month or so comes by for its usual afternoon meal

satan has the window overlooking the garden so he quickly spots its ginger fur as well as you staring directly at it, and he immediately panics because what if you scare it away with your intimidating stature???

(yes, part of the reason satan doesn’t acknowledge you before this is because he was kind of scared of you and your muscles that he heard could punt beings out of entire realms back in your hey-day)

so he quickly dumps his book (though not without carefully bookmarking his place first) and rushes down to the garden in hopes of salvaging the situation, only to find you lying face first on the grass once again, though this time it’s not his little brother on your back

it’s the cat, who is purring like a little motor and aggressively kneading its paws against your back

satan can’t even see your face in this moment but he still basically gets cupid-shot in the heart because this is the cutest thing he’s ever seen

he has to force himself to calm down for a bit before he approaches lest he get overexcited and accidentally incur simeon’s wrath in the process

anyway after that satan makes a beeline for you every time he sees you and learns that you are an Absolute Idiot, but it just makes him like you even more

if satan was intimidated by you at first though, levi is downright terrified

you look like you could snap him in half with a single punch

he doesn’t try to talk to you at all for the first few weeks because how could he possibly find common ground to talk to you about?? you probably hunt dragons and eat rocks or something in your spare time

it isn’t until satan brings you up one day and mentions that you are incredibly dumb of the ass and probably couldn’t hurt a fly even if you tried that levi even entertains the idea of befriending you

he’s still not making the first move though

but it turns out that he doesn’t have to! one day you just show up at his bedroom door holding a giant crate of his latest akuzon haul

turns it got dropped off at the local post office after traffic problems and you volunteered to go pick it up and bring it back

anyway levi thanks you and starts unpacking his stuff, expecting you to leave in silence, but then he looks over and sees you just standing in front of his tv and staring at it

he’d been playing some battle platformer to pass the time before you showed up, and while levi himself doesn’t consider it particularly remarkable, you’re absolutely fascinated

being a gardener in the celestial realm you’ve never really had experience with this kind of thing, and you’re even more tech-illiterate than simeon, so what you’re seeing is basically like magic to you

so levi takes it upon himself to teach you as much about the art of gaming as he can in the short span of the next four hours before simeon gets home from a meeting of some kind and you inevitably immediately run off to greet him

you learn the basics relatively quickly but you’re still pretty awful at it

levi loses count of the amount of times you’ve accidentally run right off the end of the platform and fallen to your death once it reaches thirty two

it’s pretty much the most he’s laughed in, like, forever

congratulations! you have gained a new member in your party! levi will now follow you to the ends of the earth because you are the first person he feels like he can just be totally at ease around without being judged at all and just have fun with

(once, after you leave another gaming session to go cuddle with your boyfriend in the garden, levi catches himself thinking that ‘it isn’t fair that simeon gets to date him’ and has to do some serious self assessment)

mammon meanwhile has none of the reverence for you that his brother does

the amount of times he’s tried to rope you into his money-making schemes (which never work because he fails to realise that you are incapable of doing anything malicious in the slightest) is honestly just embarrassing at this point

simeon has to step in more than a couple of times because honestly mammon could ask you for your wallet and you’d probably just give it to him without another thought

that being said your wallet wouldn’t be much use because you never have any money

you just don’t understand the concept of exchanging money for goods and/or services so you never see any need for it

that being said, simeon does give you some money every time you go out into town on your own because something will inevitably catch your eye and you’ll suddenly realise that you just cannot live without it

the thing is simeon spoils you ridiculously so he always gives you way more money than would be considered a reasonable allowance

which means all mammon has to do is tag along and ask you nicely and you’ll probably buy him anything he wants

he does this a couple of times but then stops because he actually starts feeling bad about it

something just doesn’t sit right with him when he’s walking around with a bunch of shiny new things you’ve bought him with money that was meant to be spent on you while the only thing you’ve bought of your own volition is a pack of chocolate lollipops shaped like rabbits to share with simeon and luke

he may be the demonic avatar of greed but even he has a line that he won’t cross

he makes up for it by buying you things instead

nothing too expensive (he’s still mammon after all), just little things like sweets or bulbs for flowers you haven’t tried planting yet or food colouring for you to use for your candied fruits

speaking of those candied fruits, guess who loves and would probably kill a man for them?

lucifer

man may not seem like it but he has a hell of a sweet tooth

there was a bit of tension between the two of you when you first met (well there was tension from lucifer anyway) because he’d never met you like he had simeon and luke and had no idea what you were like

plus he’d heard about how you’re everyone’s favourite now back in the celestial realm and the little piece of him that still misses his life as an angel is a little petty about it

but then he interacts with you more and he realises that that favouritism is absolutely deserved

he will not admit it but he has wondered what being carried by you would feel like on multiple occasions

figures out how to read you really well which isn’t much of an achievement when you wear every single feeling you have on your sleeve but it still brings him a bit of satisfaction when he notices something that simeon doesn’t

he may be a pridey mcprideface but he is willing to give up a bit of that pride by pretending he can’t carry something heavy so that he can watch you do it

simeon acts like he doesn’t notice this but he absolutely does and he doesn’t know if he should tease lucifer about it or whack him over the head with a newspaper for it

all that aside though, much like simeon, lucifer also thinks you’re just the cutest

he comes across you building a pillow fortress in the middle of the house of lamentation’s living room one day and is understandably like “what are you doing in my house and what are you doing with those pillows”

you explain very seriously that satan asked you for help in an apparently pre-arranged pillow fight with mammon and that every warrior needs a well-protected base of operations and offer to show him all the optimised battle features somehow recreated from nothing but cushions and blankets and chairs

lucifer’s heart goes d o k i d o k i

he also has experience with Big and Dumb men from dealing with both beel and diavolo (when the three of you are together it’s just himbo3) so the stupid doesn’t bother him much

speaking of diavolo (wow i am nailing all of these transitions from character to character look at me go)

this man is basically just a grown up golden retriever boy and you are a big gentle st. bernard so the two of you get along like a house on fire

you’ve seen how much this man gushes about lucifer. now imagine that times a thousand

that is how he talks about you

honestly sometimes you’d think HE’S the one dating you

simeon would probably get defensive if he didn’t get so much whiplash from their conversations about you

diavolo: “i must say, i never would have pinned [name] as being your type”

simeon, ready to Fucking Brawl: “excuse me?”

diavolo: “though i don’t blame you, have you seen his page in that book about the celestial war? the illustration does his true beauty no justice, of course, but it’s enchanting in and of itself. to be honest i’d have loved to have seen him in action during the war, i imagine it would have been quite breath-taking to see”

simeon: “…what”

barbatos is usually just there in the background during half of these exchanges and he has to seriously stiffen up his poker face to resist just bursting into laughter

the other half of the time the conversation is just simeon and diavolo going back and forth gushing about you

barbatos honestly dislikes you a bit at first

not for any personal faults of your own! it’s just that all your garden work + your very forgetful mind means that you’re often tracking dirt everywhere

it doesn’t help that diavolo keeps inviting you over to the castle for tea and a chat and half the time you leave these big footprints on the floor and he wants to cry because he just spent four hours mopping that

he mentions it to diavolo in passing at one point, who then passes the message on to simeon

barbatos kind of gets concerned for himself because he knows simeon does not take well to you being insulted (one time a demon at the r.a.d. called you an ‘unintelligent buffoon’ and he was ready to start a fist fight right then and there)

not that it was an insult, but you never know how love can blind you to reason

but simeon just assures him not to worry and tells you to remember to clean your shoes as well as changing clothes after doing some gardening

normally you’d forget being told these things within a few hours but simeon offers to give you a kiss every time you remember to do this so now you remember every single time you’re about to enter a building after doing some gardening

after that barbatos holds no ill will to you at all

he teaches you how to bake and is honestly so endeared by how clumsy you get in the kitchen

you knock an entire container of salt into the cake mix by accident because your hands are too big and you moved too fast and barbatos is just like 🥺

he low-key babies you even though he’s like an entire two heads shorter than you

you don’t mind though because getting babied by barbatos means you get given all sorts of cakes and sweets all the time

simeon isn’t sure how to feel about it but it doesn’t seem to be the patronising kind of babying (it’s more of an affectionate doting) so he lets it happen

what he doesn’t let happen is solomon’s relentless attempts to feed you his food

you are both too dumb and too nice to realise just how bad his cooking is, but simeon knows you have a sensitive stomach and are actually a pretty fussy eater - you just tend to stay quiet when something isn’t to your liking because you don’t want to complain

having had a sample of solomon’s food himself in the past, he knows that you’ll probably get sick eating it, and he doesn’t want you to be uncomfy so he refuses to let you try even a bite

it’s like he has a radar in his head that goes off every time solomon approaches you will a bowl of ‘noodle soup’ that looks more like something he’s fished out of a nuclear waste tank

solomon, when he’s not trying to indirectly poison you, is probably the guy you spend the most time with apart from simeon and luke

he’ll just hang around nearby with a spell book while you do your gardening and show you some neat little magic tricks every now and then

he tries to help with the gardening but he’s not exactly physically strong and he nearly breaks his back trying to lift a giant bag of compost

so he decides it’s probably better for him to just watch from afar

kind of wants to conduct an experiment to see just how much weight you can lift before you start getting tired

one time he sees you cut down a whole tree with one hard swat of your hand and just walk off carrying it over your shoulder and he has to take several deep breaths

luke knew you already, so not much changes while you’re in the devildom

he really wants to learn to make candied fruits the same way you do but he can never get the hang of boiling the sugar mixture to the right heat and consistency (plus he’s kind of scared of how hot it gets)

you like to just carry him around on your shoulders and while luke would normally bristle at being treated like a child, you act like this with nearly everyone

(once he sees you running around the garden with diavolo of all people perched on your shoulders, arms raised in the air like he’s on a rollercoaster ride, and he nearly passes out on the spot)

he seriously adores you and acts like a guard dog whenever he feels like any of the others are trying to take advantage of your dim-witted naïveté because NO demons are allowed to harm his big brother like that

he will also chase them off with a stick if he has to if they get too close because no being is allowed to even remotely try to disrupt your relationship with simeon

simeon himself is no fool, and he’s well aware of the effect you have on pretty much everyone you come across, but he trusts them because they’re his friends

besides (and he isn’t being cocky or anything), it’s not like the relationship you have with them even holds a candle to what you have with him

they’ve all known you for less than a year, he’s loved you for nearly two millennia

they might be allowed take naps on your back while you work or be carried about on your shoulders, but do they get to spend every night snuggled up in your arms, feeling your chest rise and fall with every breath you take? no, he doesn’t think so

in conclusion: one day himbos like you will probably take over the world with their big muscles and unwavering loyalty and clueless grins that could make anyone’s heart skip a beat, and simeon’s pretty sure he’d be okay with it

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writingquestionsanswered · 2 years

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Heyy :]

I hope you're having an amazing day, because Im certainly in a dilemma for quite a while now. Do you have any tips on writing happy scenes? Not how to actually write them once they happen, but how to MAKE them happen.

When I first started my book, it was very lighthearted, but in the last years it became too dark & full of pain. It's not like I won't keep the sad scenes, it's just that it's not fun reading a book with very few lighthearted scenes inbetween a bunch of pain. It's just hard for me to come up with many nice scenes.

Thank you alot in advance! Your advice is very helpful and I hope it can help me once again :>

Have a nice day!

Incorporating Lightheartedness Into Sad Story

Grief and misery are exhausting enough in real life, most of us don't want to consume a story that offers nothing but grief and misery. That's why it's so important to incorporate a little happiness in your story wherever you can, in whatever way you can. There are a few different ways you can do this.

1) Create Hope - Even the most miserable moments can be more bearable if you can see "a light at the end of the tunnel," so it's important to give the characters something hopeful to strive toward, and to show periodic glimpses of that hopeful thing being in reach.

2) Embrace the Little Things - At the end of the day, we're simple creatures and the "little things"... the beauty and joy that can be found in the every day... are so often the fuel that give us life. The smell of a book, the taste of a ripe strawberry, watching children play, cool rainfall after a sweltering day, a crisp starry night, laughing with friends, seeing two people in love... find ways to incorporate little things like these into little happy moments to break up the monotony of grief and misery.

3) Find Beauty in the Surrounding World - This is an extension of the above, but it's more about the environment. The world around us can be so beautiful if we take a moment to see the beauty. It's the single yellow wild flower that blooms in the smoking ruins of a palace devastated by an evil wizard, the double rainbow that paints the sky after a massive thunderstorm, cricket and frog song mingling in the swamp in the dark hours after a battle, a sky riddled with stars after saying goodbye to a friend lost in combat.

4) Work in the "Everyday" - Even in the midst of a drawn out war between two kingdoms, there's downtime between battles, and during that downtime, "everyday" stuff has to happen. The horses need to be fed and watered, food needs to be prepared, weapons and armor need to be polished, wounds need to be mended, people need to bathe and go to the bathroom, tents and shelters need to be put up, cook fires need to be built... you get the idea. When you show your characters engaging in the business of everyday life in the midst of whatever turmoil they're experiencing, you bring the volume of the chaos down--for just a moment--so that your characters and reader can catch their breath. It's a reminder that life goes on, that no matter how bad it gets, the laundry still needs to be done and the plants still need to be watered. It can also serve as a reminder for the "status quo" the characters are physically and/or emotionally fighting for.

5) Weave in Some Humor - There's no better way to break the tension of a dark moment than to add a little well-timed levity. A witty comeback, a sarcastic comment, a joke, a little bit of slapstick... whatever works. This can be tricky if you don't feel like you're good at humor in real life, but watch some funny movies or some funny movie clips on YouTube and try to recreate that in some moment in your story. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is exceptionally good at this, in my opinion.

Have fun with your story!

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addictedtostorytelling · 2 years

Note

Hi! Not to go back to the kind of sadness after all this happy gsr, but I was wondering what your take is on their conversations when Sara was at the lab and Grissom was abroad? I always found the fact that he had no clue who DB was kind of curious

hi, @frostysfrenzy!

unless we assume that grissom's memory is way worse than it actually is and/or that sara only refers to db as "russell" throughout the entire time that she and grissom are still married and she's working under db at the lab, grissom not knowing who db is is just a writer's mistake*, plain and simple, and should be ignored.

* probably made because zuiker never actually watched s12 to s15** of the original series and so was unaware that sara was working under db back when her and grissom's marriage was still good.

** not that i really blame him, tbh.

as for what they talk about in their phone calls, i presume the same kinds of things they talk about in person: happenings in their lives, sara's cases, grissom's adventures in lecturing and archaeology, developments at the lab, their travel plans surrounding their monthly visits, the status of their elusive research grant, domestic issues like making repairs on the house in vegas or subletting their apartment in paris before grissom goes to peru, hank's latest antics, updates on betty, fun scientific trivia they may have learned, books they're reading, television and movies they're watching (maybe sometimes live over the phone with each other), baseball, philosophical thoughts they're having, life/the universe/everything, memories from their pasts, their feelings for each other, etc., etc., etc.

they may also occasionally have phone sex.

i honestly believe sara in s11 when she tells betty that their long-distance relationship is going strong, so i've gotta think that their phone communication at that time (and all the way up until probably about the end of s12) is likely pretty damn good.

things only start to change for them come s13, when, as i talk about in this post,

starting in s13, grissom and sara’s long distance marriage becomes harder and harder for them to maintain, just logistically speaking. between differing time zones, sara’s crazy schedule at the lab, grissom’s globetrotting, etc., etc., they end up missing a lot of their previously scheduled calls to each other.

at first, it’s seemingly innocuous that they do so—a “hey, i’m pulling a double tonight, so can we talk tomorrow?” here and a “i’ve got bad reception; can i call you back later?” there. but over the weeks and months, it gets progressively worse. soon, both of them acclimate to talking very little with each other. they’ve each got their separate lives on separate continents, and they find it hard to catch up with each other, even when they do have the time to talk.

it’s awkward having to explain weeks and months’ worth of little day-to-day things to the person who should know your life better than anyone, right?

so they stop calling as often to avoid the awkwardness, and that spirals into them dodging each other’s calls at times when they’re not “emotionally prepared” to have in-depth conversations.

and then by the time they know it, they have a problem: their marriage is in trouble, but neither one of them has a clue how to talk to the other one about it.

during this time, i would guess that the nature of the few phone conversations they do manage to have changes. they talk less about the substance of their lives and their interior emotional landscapes and more about superficial stuff—like what the weather is like and world events—because that stuff is easier to put out there than anything more personal, given how vulnerable they both feel.

it's probably somewhat devastating the first time sara starts in on a story about an ongoing case—one that she and the team have been working for weeks—and grissom stops her mid-sentence to go, "wait a minute. who is this witness? in what case now?" and she realizes that she's not actually gotten a chance to tell him about it yet because they haven't had a call since the investigation started. ditto for when grissom mentions some student or colleague and sara has no idea who the person is, even though they're someone whom grissom has been working closely with for the last month.

the more experiences they have like these ones, the less willing they are to try to catch each other up on the daily stuff of their lives; at some point, the gap just starts to feel too insurmountable.

it's kind of a self-perpetuating cycle, you know? like, they go so long without talking that they find they have less and less to talk about when they finally do talk, until at last they just stop talking period.

anyway.

that's my take.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

#answered #frostysfrenzy #asks: csi #**#my meta #meta: csi #later seasons #let's talk shop #csiverse

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allthingsfern · 3 years

Text

In order, my responses to comments in Reply of my COVID19 era post that was my answer to my question “My answer to my questions: Has the era of COVID19 changed your photography? How? And perhaps also, why?“ I am so confused now...

adventuresofalgy

Algy thinks you are lucky and - certainly if compared with Europeans - perhaps quite unusual in not having experienced a more profound effect on your creative outlets and expression. Many of Algy's creative friends have experienced wide-ranging and often severe impacts on their creativity and associated motivation - and therefore on their mental health as well.

themazette

As @adventuresofalgy Jenny said.... you are lucky...

I am indeed very lucky, or as I think of it, blessed. However, it is no way a US thing, nor even a California thing. I add California, because I know many in the US and around the world think of the Golden State as a haven, a progressive, hippie filled state that is all about peace and love and marijuana. However, that is far from the truth. California is like Germany in the 1920s and 30s. There was Berlin, where there was a wildness in the city that was not shared, and was often looked-down on, by those in the majority of the country, who lived in more conservative areas and who, often, economically could not afford the grand life of partying Berliners. In California it is the same. Except for a few urban areas, the state is full of very conservative folks, and for them, like for those in the cities (and in the rest of the world) this COVID19 era has been devastating. Well, and the fires for Californians have been too.

Even in this cool college town where I live, which is lovely and quiet and inspiring, the painfully empty streets, movie theaters, restaurants, shops (think of all those unemployed people) is (still) staggering. In mid-March last year, right after lockdown, I took several phone videos of the deserted street in our town and the campus, but I could not bring myself to share them, since I knew that so many others here on Tumblr were experiencing the same desolation in many different ways. (I figured: “Why add to the sorrow we are living, almost globally?”) I was overwhelmed by the emptiness of the major (well, major for a small town of around 65,000 people) street where I live and the empty bicycle trails and street on campus. And by empty, I mean that even now, I see maybe 3 cyclists per hour, and very little car traffic. Remember, this is a bicycle town; I do not own a car, doing most all my errands on my bike with its 2 fordable baskets in the rear.

And now, over a year later, that same heavy, oppressive emptiness persists. And no, I am not used to it. And yes, I traveled over the last year, but I found the same suffocating blanket of emptiness in each city I visited, even in Las Vegas. It was unnerving. As a matter of fact, last year when I drove to San Francisco 2 months after lockdown for my birthday, I wound up getting depressed and disoriented, in a city where I lived for almost 7 years. Driving back home across the Golden Gate Bridge with tears of sadness in my eyes on my birthday was not what I expected. However, I did get some solid photos of the malaise that hung thick in the air, a malaise that physically took up the space that once was taken up by crowds of people.

Now, I am also very aware that my situation is unique. (Not a fan of the word exceptional, since it can mean both unique and special, and I do not see my situation as special.) My life situation is very unique in that I have a job I love and I work with a great team of characters. We get work done and we have fun, share about our lives. My job is often, especially since COVID19 first got noticed in early 2020, stressful and demands my colleagues and I learn (and sometimes then teach) lots of new technology and that we adapt to the vagaries of the technology gods, which are sometimes unfriendly and unresponsive. And a big part of my job is trying to figure out how to get the technology gods to like us again and grace us with their gifts. (I never realized, until now, with this discussion, that the troubleshooting that is a big part of my job is creative and probably fuels my photographic creativity. Who knew?) Yet, as a group, my colleagues and I support each other. And I am fortunate to count my closest colleague, Steve, as a friend. We have been a great emotional support to each other over the years and now through this COVID19 era. And I recently was reminded (as if I needed reminding) just how unique my work situation is because I participated in a committee that was going over responses to a UC Davis-wide survey exploring levels of employee satisfaction. My 2 colleagues who were also on that committee and I did not have the complaints that others from other departments shared. We work well together, have supportive management that share what is going on and include us (as mush as possible) in the decision making process. And as a department, we get stuff done.

Possibly the best example of how blessedly unique my situation is is what happened this morning when I was talking (yes, on ZOOM) with my immediate supervisor. We discussed the work related stuff, including how at around 10:30 pm the night before I figured something out about an online tool integration I had never done before that I knew was easy but I did not see as easy until I reread the overly complicated instructions a couple of times and just figured out how and where to cut and paste the lines of code (it was that easy, just fucking cut and paste some lines of JSON code) that got the fucking thing to work. Then we talked about his dealing with his young children returning to school and how “normal” now is not “normal” from before and how disruptive the whole thing has been, yet since we work in a supportive atmosphere (and are both salaried), he was able to deal and keep living.

Then, and you are gonna love this, I shared about my original COVID19 question post and the responses and pretty much said to him what I am sharing here.

We talked for a little over an hour. That kind of rapport is rare, for any job, anywhere.

And then there is another way my situation is unique. In some ways, previous “bad things” were actually a preparation for this era of physical distance and uncertainty. In mid-2019, from July to August, first because of my work related bowling concussion and then an antibiotic resistant infection, I was bedridden for about 5 weeks and then had several absences because of concussion issues, like sudden and extreme anger flare ups, nausea, headaches. But however bad I thought that concussion and infection were, the concussion induced forgetfulness and my desire to sharpen my mind and nurture and nourish it have lead me to become, in my old age, organized. I now often take notes of important stuff, add work and personal dates and notes to my Outlook calendar, and even know what day it is, which bugs my colleagues who often find they have no idea what day and/or date it is. Yep, unique, but the bad concussion shit got me to be organized in ways that I was never able to be before, no matter what I tried. This time, I just fucking get organized, without thinking about it too much. And if I fuck up with my being organized, like I did the other day for work, I admit it, fix it, and move on.

Preparation for isolation (and unexpected natural threats) came by way of the 2018 Northern California (the region where I live) fires that year, which caused the campus to shut down for about a week. (As my friend Steve called it, the smoking break.) And for work, my colleagues and I faced a couple of long term, emergency technical outages that impacted all of the UC Davis faculty, one of them for over a month. Pretty much on a professional and personal level, I was, if not ready, at least getting used to the WTF of whatever life decides to surprise me with. (And lets not forget the really bad fire last September, seen in this video I posted of ash “snow” falling. We did not have to shut down the campus because there was no one there anyway.)

Another aspect of this last year, and one that has been present in my life for a few years now, is the BLM movement and the brutal police violence against Black people in this country. As someone who was a teaching assistant and taught in African American Studies and worked closely with students of color on campus in a student run organization, I was and am still devastated, in part because I know, from hearing so many personal accounts, the pain many of my friends, former colleagues, and former students, are still facing and how overwhelmed they felt and still feel. I understand, if as an outsider, their emotional exhaustion. This has been going on for a while, plus add the years of anti-immigrant hate against the Latinx in the US and the rising tide of violent hate against Asians, and yes, it has been sorrowful. Heartbreaking. And I have, in several ways, including my photography, tried to capture the sorrow and resilience of US people of color. It hurts, almost physically, that many people of color are just tired of talking and dealing with the hate.

So, yes, my situation is unique, but with its own emotionally draining weight. And yes, I am extremely grateful. This leads to the other 2 comments in Reply:

kkomppa

Thank you for sharing, Fern. Very interesting. Like you, I would say my output hasn’t changed much. However, I have sought locations deeper in the wilderness. This has been fulfilling.

schwarzkaeppchen

Really interesting thoughts. We live in strange times, but creativity and motivation comes and goes for so many different reasons. My photography has changed a lot. I used to work as a photographer at events and took portraits for fun... Now I'm officially a portrait photographer.

Both of these comments point to another unique aspect of my life situation: For some of us, our photography and how we do it, has not changed much, and if it has, that has been a part of our overall experience with this art form we love so much.

For me, because of my depressive tendencies, the Zen of photography, at least the way I do it, is therapeutic. And I do not use the term “Zen” lightly here, because my spiritual life has helped me come to terms with the WTF surprises that are pretty much life, if at times the WTF of it is more impactful, as it is during this COVID19 era. And that is part of what I was trying to share with my original post: Before this period of isolation and disorientation, I was already coming to grips with the gospel truth that “creativity and motivation comes and goes for so many different reasons.” as @schwarzkaeppchen said. In no way do I diminish the anguish flared up by these bleak times that impact so many around the world. And really, when you think about it, bleak times have been a norm, at least here in the US, since late 2016, though, of course, lockdowns and physical distance make it all worse. But, at least for me, I try to learn from the bleak times, even if I abhor going through them. And when dealing with the highs and lows of creative energy, at least for me, I have a calm certainty that photography is part of my life and I do not have to worry, since I only love it more each day. And the other side to my certainty is that if someday my love of photography fades, some other treasure of creativity will replace it.

Let’s be real, because of photography. I think about stuff like this and get to have discussions with so many great Tumblr original photographers.

And I am grateful for it, and no, this is not unique to my life situation. I know many of us love being here and sharing the good, the bad, the confounding.

Please think about joining @tvoom and me for InConverversation this month. It has been a long time since we talked, and this COVID19 era will be our topic.

I am grateful for all y’all.

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princeanxious · 4 years

Text

Part One; “A Wounded Snake Lies Still”

A continuation fic in the au i built from this art piece I did and this post that I’d written that inspired this whole idea. I don’t know how many parts there will be, but the plan is for it to be hurt/comfort? It’s just that the comfort comes in small increments, but I promise the ending will be happy!

Fandom: Thomas Sanders Sides

Ships: mentions of past healthy Anxceit, start of story begins w/ analogical, end goal is analoceit! Side royality, Remus is lowkey Aro.

Minor Trigger Warnings: in no particular order.. brief mentions of painful memory loss, brief food mention, Remus and Deceit as sympathetic characters in general, accidental revealing of a secret-Remus feeling awful about it and Deceit being completely forgiving on it. Deceit being sorta selfish but also being very selfless without realize it. Deceit lying when he speaks/ backwards talk.

Serious Trigger Warnings: (slight spoilers) Deceit ignores his own distress in favor of keeping up a nonchalant act around the others, and doesn’t process his inner emotions in a healthy way. Deceit repressing years of his own resurfacing emotional trauma that originally came from his separation from Virgil, Deceit also briefly relives said trauma in the fic and pretends nothing is wrong even though something Really Is. Patton has minor empath abilities in this au and accidentally gets hit with a ride of very negative emotions that Deceit is already internally feeling when he touches Deceit.

(Let me know if I need to tag something else!)

Summary: Virgil’s missing memories have always been a touchy subject. After Remus and Deceit gain their acceptance of from the Light Sides and Thomas, Deceit still seems to have a few secrets to hide. If you asked him, he’d tell you it was for the best that he kept them. Partially concealing the truth was a slippery slope, indeed. But, could you really blame him? When Virgil was dating Logan and finally seemed happy again? To him, All the repression of his own trauma was worth Virgil’s happiness. Their years of love were lost with Virgil’s memories of the past, and there was no way in hell Deceit was about to jeopardize Virgil’s current stability now, not when the only person at fault for losing was Deceit himself.(or, was it? He’s never sure anymore. Trauma is a fickle beast.) Well, one slip up from Remus is all it takes before Deceit finds himself faced with that exact dilema fast approaching, and he finds he is less than prepared to face the music..

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“Ugh, gross. In front of my deodorant?? Could you guys like. Not?? Be romance-y in the living room?? You two remind me of when Dee and Virgie were dating.” Remus grumbled offhandedly, too tired to deal with his twin’s particularly loud and loving attention directed towards Thomas’s literal representation of the heart this late into the afternoon.

They’d been loudly and shamelessly flirting back and forth from across the room while everyone set up for movie night, Roman in the living room with the others and Patton in the kitchen with Deceit making snacks. It was only seconds later that the duke realized his slip up as everything and everyone around clattered to a halt, the other sides turning stare at him in confusion.

Three years. It had taken Deceit three long, painstaking years and counting to distance himself from the years of memories he’d spent in bliss, to separate his mind from the heartbreak of losing his only love. Three years to come to terms with the fact that his only love now held no memories of the time they spent together, to accept that his love now deeply loved another.

Three years to come to terms with the fact that Virgil would never know what it was like to watch helplessly as his love writhed in pain. To watch as The Line ripped the memories from his love’s very being, forcing Virgil into a clean slate. Three years to come to terms that Virgil would never remember.

Three years of patience and heartbreak and anguish and lies, telling himself that it’d be okay, telling himself that he would move on and heal eventually. Three years of painstakingly separating himself from the narrative he and Virgil used to share, and ensuring that Virgil never had any inkling to what had been of his past. It was the only secret Deceit ever asked Remus to keep.

Rest assured, he’d tried to respark Virgil’s memories many times in the first few months after Virgil crossed over The Line from Dark side to Light, having ultimately crossed for good. It’d only led to fight after fight, driving a wedge further and further between them with each escalated argument. With a bleeding heart, he’d eventually given in, and stopped any further attempts. After all, each attempt only seemed to fuel Virgil with irritation. It had been clear then, that whatever they’d had, was never going to be again.

Three years it’d been. He thought he’d nearly healed, really. Most days he found he could exist and interact with the others and not be reminded of the past, and be comforted that he himself would not be a reminder to the past. Repression had always been his strong suit, though, conciously or not.

The Line had diminished as of late, after Thomas had really begun accepting Deceit and Remus. They could cross The Line for long amounts of time now, and mostly be fine. Occasionally they suffered from a bout of fatigue when disagreements with the others briefly turned sour, feeling The Line tugging back at them insistently. It never lasted for long, but there was always that underlying worry that The Line would finally snap them back into the dark for good if one of them made a final wrong move. The Light Sides didn’t know about The Line, not even Virgil remembered stumbling away from it after all that had happened. And well, if it were up to Deceit? They would never find out about it. Too many questions, too many messy answers.

Three years later, Deceit finds his heart splintering once more, an ache sinking into his chest that he knows Patton feels as they stand nearby one another. Memories flood in harshly, a deep painful longing resurging from the depths of his mind as it always did when faced with his reoccurring trauma sinking its claws into his psyche.

It’s only been seconds, but the silence is starting to feel heavy. Instead of moving on from the previous comment, Remus glances to Deceit, eyes pleading and devastated by having made his mistake, breaking the only promise to Dee he’d ever been seriously asked to keep. And Deceit knows he must do what he does best to save face, there is still time to redirect the carnage.

“Remus, please don’t refrain from spreading lies, that’s certainly not my job, after all.” He teases lightly, keeping his tone precisely on the edge of amused confusion, though his eyes hold an understanding none of the others know to read for. “Next you won’t be telling me that your favorite animal is a squid, not an octopus. Not your worst try at shock humor, yes?”

Remus catches on after a millisecond, drawing out a full cackle. “Sorry, not sorry! You should’ve seen the looks on your faces though! Priceless!! Who knew a shitty joke falling so flat would shock everyone so good!”

Their reactions held the desired effect. Quickly, everyone around the room seemed to relax, Roman even firing back his own playful quip to further lighten the mood. In the end, it was just a bump in conversation, something Remus caused every once in a while as everyone adjusted and Remus learned. Not a single step amiss that wasn’t already expectedly out of line.

Still, he’d have to talk to Remus in private later. Remus was just as sensitive to rejection as Roman was, and paired with his inherently intrusive thoughts, it would come to no surprise if Remus already thought Deceit now hated him. He didn’t, it’d been an accident, and Remus’s first ever slip up in three years since making the promise. Even if Dee had been mad about the slip up, he wouldn’t have had any right to be. He’d be sure Remus was the first person he sought to soothe when they got a free moment alone, it wasn’t right to let those kinds of thoughts fester.

Remus first, Virgil next, as it wasn’t quite crisis averted. He could feel Virgil’s eyes on his back from the living room. He denied his bleeding heart the closure of meeting Virgil’s gaze, of sharing his expression. He was too vulnerable, even now the anxious side could read his tells far too well, often without even realizing why. There was no doubt Virgil would try and talk to him later about it, and no matter how good the terms they were on with each other now were, Deceit knew the conversation would be a rough one. Virgil knows he has missing memories, and only recently had he accepted Remus and Deceit’s vague answers when he’d asked lightly about his past. It was at least him acknowledging they had the answers to the past he doesn’t remember.

If he wasn’t careful, each and every brick in the wall that Deceit had carefully worked to build up in the past three years could crumble right before his eyes, leaving him stripped emotionally defenseless, his trauma bared for all to see. And who knew what the others would do if they knew so much? What would they think of him then? Deceit inwardly shivered at the thought. It would not come to that.

Slipping into the nonchalant act was an easy card to play, it being his strong suit and most comforting form of security, a version of his own little lie of omission to soothe the bumpy situation over.

What he didn’t account for, was Patton gently reaching to touch his arm when everyone else had settled and their attentions returned to their tasks at hand. Deceit fought against his immediate urge to pull away, knowing the moral side just preferred connection through touch when addressing another, and instead looked up to meet Patton with a questioning gaze.

Whatever Patton was about to say died on his lips as he suddenly seemed to reflect an absolutely heartbroken expression, tears welling up in his eyes. Pain and sorrow and surprise seemed to seep into the other’s expression, warring for dominance amongst the primary confusion. It was only then that Deceit realized that Patton was still touching him, his bare arm with an equally bare hand, to be exact. The memory that Patton bore minor empath abilities that were tied into his existence as the representation of Thomas’s morality and feelings sunk in two seconds too late.

Direct skin to skin contact, something Deceit sought often to avoid in general nowadays anyway, was a direct way for Patton to tune into another's current feelings through said abilities, often by accident. There were limits that Patton could control, of course, and Patton only ever seemed to struggle coping with that ability when faced with an overwhelming swell of emotions from the other side. And, well.. Deceit’s mind certainly hadn’t taken well to being reminded of his repressed past, seeping through his protective mental walls with all sorts of roiling negative emotions.

From self-loathing, to dread. From anger, to guilt. From longing, to grief, then to depression, and finally apathy. It just couldn’t be helped that Deceit, a master of disguise and deception, had had three whole years to perfect the act that hid it from the outside and controlled it all from within.

Carefully, Deceit pulled Patton’s hand from his arm, and gently tucked it against the moral side’s chest. Still, he keeps his gloved hand there, letting Patton grasp it with both hands to ground himself after such an emotional ride.

“Deep breaths, dear Patton. Whatever isn’t the matter?” He asks gently, still playing into his act but his eyes plead a different story. ‘Not now,’ they say, ‘I will tell you, but not here,’ they beg. Patton nods slowly, and Deceit carefully wipes away Patton tears. In a move he knows he might regret later if it raises questions, he slips his hat off to gently plop onto the moral side’s head, and gently presses against the others clothed shoulder with his own in a show of comforting affection. It has the desired effect of distracting Patton and lightening his mood, Patton’s lingering upset masked by a watery smile only they can share. Deceit silently mourns the loss of his safety blanket, but accepts that a few minutes of feeling vulnerable while comforting Patton is a good trade to escape having his distress found out. He couldn’t have the other sides cornering him into explaining why Patton had suddenly begun crying without reason. It certainly wasn’t the fact that he felt guilty for Patton having experienced second hand an echo of his painfully raw emotions, no, not at all.

Thankfully their little scene goes unnoticed by the rest of the preoccupied sides, who are far too busy bickering over the movies they want to watch. Well, unnoticed by all but the one who sits to the side. Said side keeps an unconcerned but intrigued eye on the two in the kitchen, glancing over every time he adjusts his glasses to avoid suspicion. Logan says nothing, but knows he has questions for his dearest Virgil when movie night is over. He can only hope that the answers Virgil gives will not raise more questions.

(..Unfortunately, they do raise more questions than answers.. However, they now know exactly who has the answers they seek. It’s only a matter of getting those answers that is a task far harder than they’d ever expected it to be.)

To be continued..

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krazyclue · 3 years

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Italian in Name Only

I am a mixtape of European influences, but the two biggest are Italian and Irish, so it's maybe ironic that I've never been much for family. Not hostile toward it, more like disinterested.

Italians and the Irish have the reputation of being devoted to their families. If there's nothing quite like a good Catholic upbringing mixed with poverty to convince people to have loads of children, then being middle-class and an only child is the antidote. Never wanted children, never wanted to be part of a family, didn't even really have a notion of them. I just never thought about it.

Not until lately anyway, and I do not mean in the sense of having children myself. I mean of being suddenly conscious of a growing need to know what my origins are, to see how I somehow fit into the larger concept of a family. When my ancestors arrived in America, what they did once they got here, and how that differs from or mirrors what other families have found. This desire might have something to do with the pandemic and all that time spent alone when the world was shut down—the isolation making me want to reconnect and do so on a deeper level.

Most of my knowledge of Italy is from the movies, design, and fashion. My understanding of Ireland is even more limited since I spent my only visit there wandering between pubs listening to white guys with 'dreads spinning drum'n'bass. I don't speak any Italian beyond a stray "Ciao, Bella" or "Vaffanculo." I know the second one because English soccer fans used it in a taunting chant whenever they played Italian teams ("Where were you in World War 2? VA-FFAN-CULO!!"). My father spoke fluent Italian when he was a child but forgot most of it in adulthood. My immediate family is small and spread by time, distance, and some animosity; I know very little about most of the members of my extended one. If I have cultural heritage, it's hard to know what it is.

I am not at all sure what made me start to think this way. It could have been watching the HBO adaptation of My Brilliant Friend, based on Elena Ferrante's novels. The show is a portrait of two women growing up in 50's Naples. We see their lives against a backdrop of a country coming fitfully to life after the devastation following the Second World War, its progress held back by repressive patriarchy. Grim moments often give way to more ecstatic ones before doubling back again the other way, leading to emotionally vivid set pieces that capture the personal and historical in the same scene. The score by Max Richter alone can induce yearning and seeing the young, very inexperienced cast gradually develop into compelling actors makes the whole experience unforgettable, like the best work of the Italian neorealist cinema.

But My Brilliant Friend is set in Naples, and my family is from Tuscany. Italy, like the States, is a country of regions that do not always like each other, the north versus the south, and my ancestors would have been culturally different from the show's characters. Still, carried by the show, I find myself more and more drawn to thinking about Italy—I have roots in Germany and France as well, but for some reason, Italy is the country for which I feel the strongest connection.

Possibly I am entirely led by my stomach. Early in the pandemic, I started getting into Italian cooking, going carefully through a copy of Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hasan, who you might call the Julia Child of that countries' cuisine. I have a copy of Silver Spoon too, a compendium of real recipes from Italian families, from which I've made a few dishes, and I have my grandmother's pasta maker, and somewhere on an index card her hand-written ravioli recipe. It took all day for her and my grandfather to make that recipe; she stirred the slow simmering meat and prepared the ingredients, and my grandfather painstakingly sealed each ravioli with a fork.

My German grandfather may have loved his pig's feet and pickled herring, but that obsession thankfully was not passed onto me, nor, as far as I know, to anyone else in my family. I might like a good stout too, even some Irish stew on occasion, but it's Italian food that captures my imagination. I am only beginning to know how each region has shaped that cuisine and the influences that created so many varied dishes.

I have not kept up with my family. I hardly know most of them, and outside of my parents and my uncle, I am not in touch with any other relatives. I forget the birthdays of even the closest friends and family; I must mark them on a calendar, or I'll miss the day altogether. My uncle has become something of the family historian and has been sending emails to nearly a dozen family relations. While I do recognize many of the names, there are far more that I do not remember and at least two I only know of by reputation. There are also people I met on that list, only once or twice, and those I saw most often were back when my grandparents were making their famous ravioli to go along with the Thanksgiving turkey, and that was a long time ago now.

Those emails coincide with my awakening interest in my origins. I know a few more names now: my great grandparents Enea and Italia Lorenzetti emigrated here in 1916 and had two sons; my grandmother's dislike for Enea, a man with old-world beliefs who thought women shouldn't drive, my grandfather's brother, who threatened to walk out if Enea told them how to run their business; a rift with the Catholic Church because a priest wouldn't baptize Enea's and Italia's daughter unless they paid him an indulgence, and that the girl died soon after.

I've seen family photos, the people captured in those images ghost-like in those black and white pictures, and since I am such a mongrel, I do not look at all like them. Of course, I'd like to know more, but really, what I want is a better sense of what Italy is and why I feel so drawn toward it, not only the particulars of my one family's experience. I will start getting to know my family, but that is only the beginning of reconnecting, not its conclusion.

As I read and study (and hopefully get to make that first trip to Italy after the pandemic canceled my trip scheduled for last October), I want to know Italy without romanticizing it. You can convince yourself that life is better "over there" when it's probably the same or worse. Okay, maybe better too, possibly much better. But I don't want to become an obsessive Italy fan. Or fall for obvious cliches—about how Italy is a place where people know how to live. Italians are all passionate and stylish, speaking with their hands, operatic and over the top, and all the other hot-blooded Italian tropes. I'm sure there's some truth there as well.

But Italy also had one of the worst Covid-19 outbreaks and still struggles with a government, often in disarray, that cannot impede the dominance of the Camorra clans in Naples. And Italy still hasn't quite overcome the legacy of Mussolini: a far-right movement led by Matteo Salvini remains threateningly close to taking power, a rise aided by racism and xenophobia. I do not want to idealize or unfairly condemn the place, but rather know Italy and its' people for whatever they are, so I can see how it shaped myself and my family. I want to take pictures in the streets, wander without a plan until I got lost and needed one. Maybe discover my operatic personality.

Coming out of this lockdown, old age not quite here but getting closer, as in just around the corner smoking a cigarette close, with the world isolated from itself, without any family of my own; maybe that is what sparked this need to connect with a sense of place, a sense of family. That's what being "white" can mean—it's when you've become so absorbed into American culture that your ancestry seems like it started around about 1980 (in my case anyway). I used to joke that my cultural heritage was shopping malls and Back to the Future movies at the multiplex.

I think that has some advantages to being part of a well-defined community or coming from a large extended family. If you have no family, you won't be assigned an identity by what they think you should be. You won't have as many expectations about your choices before you get to choose for yourself.

The problem is that you also have no sense of history or your heritage or how your small part fits into it the larger story. You are isolated. You can claim America, the nation of immigrants, but you make a claim not knowing where your people came from, and that might be the worst side effect of assimilation: forgetting the past. I've never known much about mine. I regret letting so much time slip before realizing family and heritage are so important. Now I am going to do my best to embrace my past, whatever it may be.

#family ancestors identity immigrants Italy USA America

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ralphemerson · 3 years

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Hardest "goodbye" always started with an unexpected "hello"

Have you ever wonder how people can say that they love you but eventually, will change their mind all of a sudden? As if they didn't say such words? As if they already forgotten everything? I mean, how can they do that?

In my 22 years of existence. I almost experienced all of the heartbreaks. They taught me several lessons that I eventually applied in my life. But is it really necessary to experience it three fucking times? When I entered my last relationship, I'm too scared, I'm too sceptical. I came from a failed relationship and the fear of that to repeat again made me doubt but love's too unpredictable, love always come unexpectedly, it will caught you off guard.

It was December 20, 2019, I just came home from "simbang gabi". I was so anxious that time, because you know, failing grades, with board exam on the line. I was too pressured. I was scared to fail. I downloaded this app called "Profoundly", I have no idea how to use it, but I still gave it a try. I talked with several strangers, but this "Albay girl" really caught my attention. She was inspirational AF! Like, damn! How can someone can be this good in telling advice. I became comfortable with her. We talked a lot, day and night. I decided to add her on facebook, but I'm too hesitant to hit her up but I eventually found my courage. I chat her, and there where it all started. We clicked immediately, as if we already knew each other, as if we are a long lost friend. We talked about everything under the sun and believe me! It sounds cliché but it feels like time is flying whenever I'm talking to her.

We became comfortable with each other. We even told our secrets, our personal life to each other. We both came from a failed relationship and that day, I convinced myself, if I will be her man, I will never do such thing to her. She's too precious, she's too kind and I don't even understand how people can hurt someone like her? Are they dumb? Are they out of their mind? Also that day, I said to myself that I was ready. I was ready to fall in love again. I will take care of her and I will love her like no one else did. I want this girl to be happy. I want her to forget about her past. I want her to feel special because that's what she's really are. She's too precious to be hurt. That day, I told my self, I will risk everything for her. I will love her the way she deserves to be loved. I will forever be grateful to God that He gave her to me and I will not take that opportunity for granted.

At first, it is not easy, we are both hesitant to fall in love again but eventually, we took the risk and all I can say is, IT IS ALL WORTH IT. I became happier that ever! That was probably the best decision I ever made. IT WAS SO GOOD TO FALL IN LOVE AGAIN. I told myself that I will do everything to make her happy because she deserves it. I know her well, I know her past. I want to be with her no matter what. DISTANCE IS JUST A NUMBER. We don't considered distance as an excuse, rather we use it as an inspiration to love each other more. It all went smoothly, we had our best life ever. We are happy, we are contented. We know that we both love each other unconditionally and that feeling is CLOUD NINE.

February 25, 2020. The day had come. Finally, I'm gonna see her for the first time! I was excited and afraid at the same time. There's the thought of what if she don't like me when she see me personally? What if this might be our first and last date? That is my thought while I'm travelling to Cubao. But when I saw her, I was in the escalator, and she's waiting for me, it feels like I saw an angel, it feels like I'm in heaven. All the doubts, all the fear got away. I was totally in shock. I was mesmerized by her beauty. The way she talk, the way she treated me, that's all that I could ask for. She's very talkative and that's the way I like it. We talked a lot, as if it is not our first time meeting each other. I never felt that excitement before. That's my first time. I was nervous but she erased it all. She's very fun to be with and I already knew to myself that I will love her with all my heart, with all my might. Those meeting of us were the best moments of my life. The AliMall date, movie date, Intramuros date, National Museum date, Luneta date and even the "bardagulan sa LRT". Those memories will gonna be treasured forever.

Novermber 17, 2020. It is my birthday! She knew me too well. She knew how much I want to celebrate my birthday, she knew how much I want surprises. That day was the best birthday EVER!!! Just what I have said earlier, distance is just a number. If you want your partner to be happy, you will do everything to make them happy, no matter what form it is. Too much surprises, it feels like I'm floating in heaven. Damn, what I have done to deserve such a wonderful girl like her? Do I really deserve this kind of blessing? It feels so unreal. It feels like I'm the most special person in the world. My 22nd birthday was so special, thanks to her. ♥️

I will never forget that day and I will forever be grateful 🤗

But not all relationships are perfect. Even how you think about how perfect and happy the relationship is, there will always be challenges. I never thought of us breaking apart. I was confident because I know she loves me and I love her even more. I trusted her too much to the point that I never suspect her about doing something horrible but I was wrong. We broke up, she fell out of love. I keep questioning why but maybe even I did my best, it will always never be enough to someone who's focus on finding what's lacking rather that appreciating the effort you exert. I accepted it, I never doubted her reason because I thought I know her well. But I found out that there's already another guy who's making her happy now. I was devastated. I never saw that coming. I feel betrayed. I was stabbed in the back. My world crushed into pieces. I'm totally lost of words. I never expected that she will do such thing. I trusted her, I believed in her promises. We both promised that we will be there for each other through thick and thin. We both promised to each other that we will never be hurt again. But maybe, promises really meant to be broken.

There's no such thing as assurance. Even if you give it all, people will always find a way to see what's lacking. They will always find a way to make you look bad and they will eventually leave you in a blink of an eye, as if you never done good to them. People tend to choose what's convenient for them. People tend to forget everything when things doesn't going on their way. Life's a bitch and we need to deal with it.

Never trust too much. Never fall in love too much to the point that there's nothing left in you. People are unpredictable. One day they are good, but there will always the day that they will fuck us big time. Always know your worth. Always know what to give up. Loving someone with all your heart will never be an assurance. Learn to love yourself. Learn to respect yourself. In this world, where people always take each other for granted, the only one who you can rely with is yourself. Don't be too gaga for someone. Don't be too emotionally attached because the day you committed yourself to others is the beginning of losing yourself for others. Learn to know your limits. Learn to love yourself.

Life's too unfair, life's too unpredictable. That's how life works. We need to deal with it. We need to be prepared for everything. We need to brace ourselves for what will happen next. Don't be too complacent because there's no such thing as assurance. Learn to be defensive, learn to know your limitations. Don't give up too much, it will haunt you in the future.

We are all afraid to be hurt. We are all afraid to be left by someone we love but one thing that I learned about is to never be afraid to fall in love again. Never be afraid to try again. Take all the risk, take all the challenges but know your limits. It is okay to be hurt rather than to have "what ifs" in your mind. Don't be afraid to love again because if the intentions are pure, God will bless us with someone we deserve. If it failed again, it will be another lesson but it will always be a blessing. Don't find love, let love find you. We all deserve someone whom we can call "home". This might not be the right time, but believe me, God has a better plan for you. Sulk all you want, cry all you want but believe me, that tears will eventually stop. No one deserves to be hurt, we are all unique in our own ways. If that people don't see that in you, remember that not all people have the same view. We are all worthy in the eye of the right person. Maybe you will suffer, but eventually it will be a blessing and a lesson learned.

Love is beautiful, love is complicated. Don't be afraid to fall in love again. Don't be afraid to try again. Don't let anyone dictate you. Don't let anyone take away your rights to be happy. Just know your limits, love responsibly. As long as we are not stepping on others, then it is all good. We are all worthy, we are all deserving of love. It might not bring any good to us for now, but it is all part of the process. Even how dark the night is, the sun will shine again. The sun that will bring the beauty of life in us. We are all WORTHY. We are all UNIQUE. Don't let that experience bring the worst in you rather use it as a motivation. Always remember, YOU ARE ENOUGH TO SOMEONE WHO SEES THE BEST IN YOU. Trust God's perfect timing. TRUST THE PROCESS.

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glenngaylord · 4 years

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OUTFEST 2020 FILM REVIEWS: The Rest Of The Fest

As the curtain closes on another Outfest, this one presented under extremely unusual circumstances, I sit in awe of the filmmakers and of the staff who put together not only a great group of films, but managed to creatively bring them to its audience online and at drive-in screenings. Typically, you find yourself having to choose one film over several others, but with this new format, you have a great chance of seeing everything you want. In past years, I found myself lucky if I saw 15 films. This year I saw 23 features and 4 shorts programs out of the 160 on the schedule.

As it’s impossible to get full reviews submitted for everything while the festival is still chugging along, I wanted to write capsules of the remaining films not covered at TheQueerReview.com . Please visit the website for all the other reviews I wrote as well as those by my colleagues.

THE OBITUARY OF TUNDE JOHNSON ★★★★★

Melding a Groundhog Day-style concept with police violence against black people, this stunning film could not be more prescient and emotionally overpowering. A black gay teenager relives his moment of murder over and over again, with slight shifts in the narrative taking us to someplace unexpected and earned. Director Ali LeRoi directs his first feature as if he’s been doing it all of his life and has interpreted Stanley Kalu’s ingenious script with a great cinematic approach. Gorgeously framed, beautifully acted, written, and directed, this is one of the most powerful films of 2020.

TWO EYES ★★★★★

I can’t form sentences here so I’m gonna vomit out words: Instant classic. Glorious. Set over three centuries seamlessly melding a triptych of stories about gender identity. I’m a blubbering mess. Fantastic and very funny last line. Travis Fine is a very gifted filmmaker who screams love child of Terrence Malick and Kelly Reichardt. Heartbreaking. Inspiring. Unforgettable. Montana is so beautiful. Barstow is not. A perfect film for anyone who wants to find their place in the world. I wouldn’t complain if TUNDE and TWO EYES both received Best Picture Oscar nominations.

DRAMARAMA ★★★★

Theater nerds rule in this incredibly endearing, early 90s set film about a group of high schoolers discovering themselves in one night at a ridiculous Murder Mystery-themed party. Hilarious script, vivid and wonderful performances, and the opposite of a “Coming Out” movie in the best possible way. Jonathan Wysocki has given us The Breakfast Club for air-kissing, mid-Atlantic accented freaks and geeks.

CICADA ★★★★

What happens when a traumatized, bisexual man who has more sex partners than any standard montage can contain slows things down to concentrate on one kind but also traumatized young man? This elliptically told film has a fun, flirty side but carries its heaviness with great ease. A terrific feature debut for director/writer/editor/lead actor Matthew Fifer.

THE STRONG ONES (LOS FUERTES) ★★★★

From Chile comes this sexy, moving story of two men at cross purposes who form a beautiful bond. Set against some stunning scenery and mining the chemistry between its two leads for everything it has, I am half-jokingly calling it Brokeback Andes. It’s so much more than that trite, hackneyed comparison.

MONSOON ★★★1/2

Director Hong Khaou’s followup to Lilting sets its sights on modern day Vietnam as Henry Golding’s character visits to find a suitable place to distribute his mother’s ashes. It’s a terrific mediation on a gay man finding a sense of belonging in a place he’s never been and Golding proves himself to be a subtle, compelling actor. Perhaps a little too quiet and reflective, the film makes up for what it lacks in narrative drive with its awe-inspiring cinematography and immersive qualities.

P.S. BURN THIS LETTER PLEASE ★★★★1/2

What an unexpected surprise. Michael Seligman and Jennifer Tiexiera’s documentary about a treasure trove of letters dating back to the 1950s brings us into the world of drag queens from almost 70 years ago. With many of its subjects not only alive but in fine form telling their stories and the dishiest voiceover readings ever to grace a film, I was not only thoroughly entertained, but I didn’t expect to weep like Laura Dern at the end. Oh, this is so so so so good.

MINYAN ★★★★

Eric Steel’s feature debut has its own unique tone and a star making performance by Samuel H. Levine, a spitting image of a young Al Pacino/Sylvester Stallone hybrid. With its 1980s Jewish Brighton Beach backdrop, this powerful yet subtle film about a young man coming to terms with his sexuality as well as his place within his religion, it’s a stunning debut. Ron Rifkin is stellar as Levine’s charming grandfather and Alex Hurt (William Hurt’s son) has his father’s intensity. Fantastic, lived-in production design which feels like its decade without resorting to the usual candy colored tropes and a evocative score makes this a memorable experience. Reminiscent at times of On The Waterfront, this film puts a fresh new spin on a coming of age tale and finds so many moving moments from first sex to an elderly gay couple hiding in plain sight. A must-see.

SHIVA BABY ★★★★

Writer/Director Emma Seligman must have studied Rosemary’s Baby quite a bit with this angsty story set mostly at a memorial service. Rachel Sennott is fantastic as a young lesbian who moves from one cringe-worthy moment to the next in an attempt to avoid as much conflict as possible. The great supporting cast includes Polly Draper, Fred Melamed, Dianna Agron, Molly Gordon, and Jackie Hoffman, all note perfect. Less a comedy and more of an emotional horror story, Seligman knows how to make the best of a cramped space and throw up an endless variety of obstacles. You just want Sennott’s Danielle to get her goddamned bagel with lox and cream cheese, but the fates have something else, something better, in store.

COWBOYS ★★★★

Steve Zahn gives a career best performance in this moving story of a father with mental health issues and his trans son escaping into the Montana wilderness. Sasha Knight makes an impressive debut as Zahn’s son and Jillian Bell expertly walks that fine line between villain and empathetic character. Its comparisons to Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid are not coincidental. Not perfect by any stretch, it may feel fairly conventional, but it’s tackling a vibrant subject matter. Extra points for giving Ann Dowd a role where we don’t hiss at her.

BREAKING FAST ★★★

Solid romcom with a Muslim backdrop, this very tight, deceptively simple script provides just the right amount of sparks between its charming leads, Haaz Sleiman and Michael Cassidy. While structurally not breaking new ground, the entry point into a world we don’t see enough of on screen coupled with food porn for days makes this a fun, funny, goes down easy delight.

ASK ANY BUDDY ★★★1/2

Q: Daddy! Daddy! What were the 70s like down at the Piers in NYC? A: Oh shut up and watch this movie.

An experimental collage of vintage gay porn and archival footage from the disco, pre-AIDS heyday gives this film a mesmerizing, museum installation quality. While technically without a story, you feel like you’ve gone on a journey nonetheless. Would pair well with William Friedkin’s Cruising.

DRY WIND ★★★1/2

Slow cinema meets voyeuristic gay porn in this one of a kind Brazilian exploration an arid small town, a workers’ union crisis, and a man obsessed with the Tom Of Finland drawing come to life who motors into his life. Overlong and a little too obtuse as it goes along, it’s worth watching this Alice In Wonderland takes a quaalude, gets a very hairy back, and has a lot of sex in the dirt.

NO HARD FEELINGS ★★★★

This year’s Teddy Award Winner at the Berlin Film Festival, Faraz Shariat’s film uses its backdrop of a refugee camp in Germany to tell the story of Iranians and Irani-Germans searching for a better life. Its three leads bring a spark and youthful energy to a story with devastating undercurrents. A wrenching glimpse into the emotional effects an oppressive culture has on its people, yet told with a driving pulse.

LILY TOMLIN: THE FILM BEHIND THE SHOW ★★★

A look behind the scenes as Lily Tomlin and wife Jane Wagner workshop their legendary 1980s Broadway show, The Search For Signs Of Intelligent Life In The Universe. It’s great to see these two at the top of their game and get a glimpse of their creative process, but this documentary is almost devoid of incident and feels more like a sweet gift to the fans than a fully realized film.

SHORTS: WHAT A BOY NEEDS ★★★1/2

A mixed bag here of people searching for excitement, I found a couple of gems here nonetheless. Not to take away from the shorts I don’t mention, I want to single out two exceptional films. Ruben Navarro’s Of Hearts And Castles looks great, has a beautiful vibe, and shows us a lovely connection forming right before our eyes. Kiko’s Saints proves highly original as we follow a female Japanese artist on assignment in France become obsessed with a gay couple who have a lot of sex on the beach. Combining animation with fairly explicit sex, I loved seeing the male gaze from a female perspective.

THE CAPOTE TAPES ★★1/2

I love Truman Capote. I grew up at a time when smart authors found themselves on talk shows and were treated like superstars. I’ve read his books and always have been in awe of his ability to be himself. Featuring never-before-heard tapes of Capote’s friends being interviewed by George Plimpton, unfortunately, I don’t think this repetitive documentary gave me anything all that new. It’s still touching at times and for the uninitiated, this is a great overview of his life, but I was watching the clock.

OUT LOUD ★★★1/2

A moving look at the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles as they prepare for their first public performance. With its ticking clock storyline, director Gail Willumsen expertly interweaves storylines of its founder and members. As such, you really learn what’s a stake and what it means to them. I was lucky enough to see the chorus perform David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust a few years ago and basked in the power of its mere existence…and was also ridiculously entertained.

TWILIGHT’S KISS (SUK SUK) ★★★1/2

This quiet charmer form Hong Kong shows us something we almost never get to see on film - two elderly gay men meeting and falling in love. The fact that both have been married to women doesn’t stop them from exploring their feelings. A little to gentle by half, I still was in awe of this rarity.

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lady-divine-writes · 4 years

Text

ACITW AU one-shot “Locked Down” (Rated M)

Summary: Kurt and Sebastian have been locked away in their penthouse for weeks. When it all started, Sebastian thought they'd be having the time of their lives, but with anxiety looming, it's been a little farther from that than he'd imagined. (3109 words)

Notes: A lovely Tumblr anon requested a quarantine fic set in the ACITW AU universe, something along the lines of the Bash fic I wrote a while back - with lots of caring, protective Sebastian.

Read on AO3.

“Hey, babe! You up yet?” Sebastian asks from underneath his towel as he scrubs his hair dry, a second towel tied tight around his hips. He usually doesn’t shower without Kurt if he can help it, but it’s been an off morning. But they’ve had a lot of off mornings, even before lockdown officially began.

Sebastian is ashamed to admit he didn’t take the whole lockdown thing as seriously in the beginning as he should have. Not with regard to his actions - he did everything they were advised to: arranging to work from home, washing his hands eighty times a day, wearing a mask religiously, even bleaching the soles of his shoes and leaving them to dry out in the hallway. It was in his mindset - the idea that being locked indoors with Kurt for weeks would turn out to be one endless, naked, drunken orgy, the best time of their lives, a time they’d look back on fondly.

It only took a week for Sebastian to realize it would be nothing like that at all.

Kurt is at his best when he sticks to a routine, and since everything is pretty much shut down and canceled for the indeterminate future, he’s become emotionally derailed, reverted back to old habits of counting and sorting Stevia packets when he makes his tea, wearing exclusively sky blue socks because they’re a happy and calming color, looking at his face in the mirror then away three times before he leaves the bathroom.

Sebastian does his best to help. He’s tried several times to wrangle together a schedule of some sort, get them back to a sense of normalcy even though things are far from normal and won’t be for a long time.

But he failed.

Kurt barely sleeps anymore, and when he does, he knocks out so hard, he doesn’t wake till close to dinner time. He didn’t stir when Sebastian climbed off the bed to take a shower, and seeing as Sebastian couldn’t rightly remember when either of them finally fell asleep in the wee hours of the morning, he figured he’d let Kurt get his rest.

That was two hours ago.

“It’s almost …” Sebastian peeks up, stifling a chuckle when he catches sight of a mournful Kurt awake and dressed all in black, standing at one of the bedroom windows, his fingertips lightly caressing the glass as he stares longingly down at the street below “… two,” he finishes as he drops down onto the bed, invitation for Kurt to join him implied. Kurt doesn’t turn to look at him, but Sebastian can see his face via the reflection in the glass. It’s a gloomy day outside, gray in a way that would have inspired them to venture outside if it were months ago, take a walk to the park, sit under a tree with a steaming hot knish and wait for the rain to start.

“Do you think Bloomingdale’s misses me?” Kurt queries with the dramatic air of a Victorian widow (unbeknownst) waiting in vain for her husband to return from the war.

“Definitely. You and your credit card. But good news! Online shopping’s still a thing.”

“It’s not the same,” Kurt mutters. “Most stores aren’t shipping non-essentials for months, and I’m not giving Jeff Bezos one thin dime.”

“And I fully support you on that.” Sebastian knows it’s not shopping Kurt misses as much as hanging out with his favorite spending buddy. They haven’t seen Sebastian’s sister Olivia in the flesh since this whole lockdown fiasco began, and even though they FaceTime nearly every single day, it’s not the same as strolling arm-in-arm down 34th Street, ducking into Macy’s and manhandling everything on the racks while they talk and gossip and laugh out loud to the annoyance of strangers.

“What’s with the black outfit?” Sebastian asks. “Did I miss a dress code memo or …”

“I’m in mourning. Neiman Marcus applied for bankruptcy.”

“My condolences.”

“Thank you.” Kurt sighs. It’s heavy, steeped in something more substantial than the loss of a favorite designer retail chain (which, of course, they both know will probably not stick). “I’ve never seen the streets of Manhattan this empty before. It’s unsettling. Like something out of a horror movie.”

“Yeah,” Sebastian agrees with a sigh himself. “It is.”

“You know, I think I could stand quarantine, the solitude, being locked indoors without a physical connection to humanity …”

“Kurt!” Sebastian balls up his wet towel and tosses it at the window beside Kurt’s head. “I’m right here!”

“Humanity, dear. I said humanity. Anyway, I could bear it better if everything didn’t look so desolate. And depressing.”

“You’re from Ohio. You should be used to desolate and depressing.”

“Yes and if we were in Ohio, I’d say this is another day ending in ‘y’. But this is New York. It’s not supposed to be so empty. So quiet.”

Sebastian watches Kurt’s eyes scan the city below - his city. The city he’d worked so hard to get to, going so far as to even date Sebastian for money. But it’s not for the loss of his daily non-fat mocha at Starbucks that he’s staring out the window, not for want of a shopping date with Olivia that his hands are trembling.

Sebastian sits up straight, mildly concerned by what he might hear when he asks the question, “That’s not all, is it?”

“Of course it’s not,” Kurt says, more breath than voice. “I’m …” A dozen words catch in the pause - bored, despondent, terrified “… worried.”

“I don’t think you need to be. You’re healthy, you’re young …” Sebastian tries harder to sound reassuring than he would normally because he just doesn’t know. He doesn’t know if what he’s saying is true. Every morning he wakes up and reads the news, there’s a different dumpster fire blazing somewhere in the world, burning his beliefs and the things he knew logically to be true the day before to ash “… you have no social life to speak of.”

Kurt shrugs. “Well, I’m living with you so …”

“You can’t blame me for not wanting to share you, babe. Besides, a night in bed with you is nine times better than dinner and the theater.”

“Can’t wear my new Gucci suit to bed.”

“Not with that attitude you can’t.”

“I bought it at Neiman Marcus, by the way.”

“And yet you couldn’t save them.” Sebastian tuts. “Pity.”

“I did buy it on sale - fifty percent off, marked down from four thousand. Livvie agreed it was a good deal.”

“You animal! No wonder they’re going out of business!”

Kurt’s lips twitch at the corners. Despite himself, he manages a small smile. He knows Sebastian is teasing to cheer him up. The man deserves something for his efforts.

“I’m worried about my dad mostly,” Kurt says in a voice that bounces off the glass to reach Sebastian on the bed. “It’s kind of hard not to. I mean, he suffers from all the things the news says makes a person vulnerable to this disease. Then there’s Carole, your parents, Olivia and Brian, the kids …”

The sentence fades into condensation on the window. Sebastian waits for more. When it doesn’t come, he asks, “What about Julian?”

“I’m not worried about Julian,” Kurt replies in a tone that says otherwise. “Nothing bad can happen to him. The Dark Lord won’t allow it.”

Sebastian snorts. “Can I tell him you said that?”

“Absolutely. With all the spare time I have, I might even embroider it on a pillow for him …”

Kurt tries to keep it together, act like business as usual, maintain this back and forth banter that sustains their relationship. He tries hard. But his lower lip wobbles; every word he can think of, every punchline he’d prepared sticking in his throat. His voice hitches with the threat of tears. A second later, Sebastian is behind him, hands on his shoulders, shushing him gently.

“It’s okay,” he says, giving Kurt the space to decide if he wants to turn around and be held. Kurt doesn’t - not because he doesn’t want Sebastian to hold him. It’s simply too difficult to convince himself to move.

“Why do things like this happen?” Kurt asks, his brow pulling with disgust at how childish those words sound. And they do. As a child, he’d said them - when his mother died, when he got bullied in school, when Blaine broke up with him, when his father had his heart attack, when he thought he’d never make it to NYADA. Over and over he’s been slapped to the ground, and he still managed to get back up on his feet again.

Because he’s Kurt Hummel.

He’s unstoppable.

But things like this - he can’t control this! He can’t predict a fucking virus! Or the devastation it could cause! How do they escape something like this? It’s not like there’s a whole other planet they can run off to! Sure, they’ve locked themselves away for weeks. They’re fortunate that they can when so many people can’t. But that doesn’t mean they’ve completely kept the virus out of their lives. They still order in from time to time, have their groceries delivered, pass by neighbors on their way to get the mail. And even with Kurt’s obsessive house cleaning, his disinfecting every package that UPS drops at their door, his demands about hand washing, and the masks that become permanently fixed to their faces the moment they even think of opening their front door, they could have been exposed to it without them being any the wiser.

They went to the pharmacy for Sebastian’s allergy medication when the delivery service dropped the ball, waited outside in a long ass line to get into the market down the block when there were no Instacart time slots available and they’d run out of everything. They’ve been jogging a few times when the stir crazy got to them so bad they almost did something drastic (Sebastian was a hair’s breadth from shaving his head and Kurt was on the beveled edge of borrowing Sebastian’s only flannel shirt). They both wore masks the whole time. Sebastian almost passed out trying to keep up with Kurt, grumbled something about erotic asphyxiation being more fun at home. Afterwards, they took the masks off correctly, washed their hands the way the doctor who visited The View told them to, and then jumped in a shower and washed each other, just to be sure.

But doesn’t the virus linger in the air for thirty minutes after an infected person exhales? And doesn’t heavy breathing through exercise exacerbate it, send it up higher so it hangs in the air longer? What if they passed through the invisible cloud of someone who had jogged by earlier, someone who was a carrier without knowing it? Kurt had made their masks by hand, added a pocket for a filter, and then bought the filters in bulk. But what if the three layers of cotton he’d used aren’t finely woven enough? He couldn’t see through it when he held it up to the light, but what if? He’d sacrificed one of his best bed sheets on the advice of the CDC but what if it isn’t enough!?

Kurt takes a deep breath in and let’s it out shuddering. Sebastian is right (as far as they know). They’re both young and healthy. They’ve kept their distance from every human being in the vicinity as best they can. They both have excellent health insurance if things start to go south.

After reading a handful of heartbreaking news stories, they’ve both written their final directives.

They’re as prepared as they’re going to be without building a bunker.

From what Kurt has heard, who gets it and how bad it turns out seems like the world’s cruelest game of Russian Roulette, but they stand a decent chance of fighting this thing if they catch it. But things like this - the life threatening things, the things that could potentially strip Kurt to the bone and destroy him - don’t ever go after him, do they?

They always go after the people dearest to him.

This one could actually kill his dad.

“I don’t know,” Sebastian admits, resting his chin on Kurt’s shoulder. “I don’t know why things like this happen. It seems like the universe has it out for us sometimes. And considering the havoc we wreck on the environment and ourselves, I don’t exactly blame it.”

Kurt harrumphs. “It’s good to know you’ve come to peace with Mother Nature pulling an Order 66 on all of us.”

Sebastian grins. That’s a Star Wars reference. Sebastian made them watch all of the movies (in chronological order) three nights ago. Kurt adores the original trilogy but feels the rest of the movies are sacrilege. He claimed forcing him to watch them when he was in no position to leave the premises was against the Geneva Convention and therefore grounds for kicking Sebastian to the curb even if the penthouse was originally his. But he’d suffered through anyway.

“I know you’re down. It’s difficult not to be. And I know this is going to sound hella lame, but I think we should focus on the good things we’ve got going on in our lives. We’ve got such a long road ahead of us. We can’t give up here. We need to live our lives from distraction to distraction, find a way to take our minds off things until they get better. Because they will get better.”

Kurt rolls his eyes, knowing instantly where Sebastian is heading with this. “So sex it is, I guess?” he says halfheartedly.

Sebastian scoffs. “Again, not with that attitude!” He smiles when Kurt does, but too quickly, Kurt returns to near tears. Sebastian softens, backs off the teasing, even the good-natured variety. “Only if that’s what you want. We’ll do whatever you want. We can make brioche, I can kick your ass at Scrabble, we can FaceTime your dad or Liv or one of your asinine friends from high school ...”

“I think, right now, I just need to know that everything’s going to be okay.”

“It will be,” Sebastian answers too quickly.

Kurt sniffs. “Do you honestly believe that?”

“Yes, I do.” Sebastian swallows hard before he adds, “I do believe that. With all my heart.”

Kurt leans his head back on Sebastian’s shoulder and tilts his face up to look at him. “I love you, Sebastian. And because I love you, I’m required to tell you that you’re a horrible liar sometimes.”

Sebastian’s jaw sets. He doesn’t argue. He wishes he felt more optimistic so he could put up a better front for Kurt, but he doesn’t. Not a hundred percent. He can’t say he hasn’t thought the same things Kurt is and about the same people. Every day they wake up, he’s afraid Kurt will receive that dreaded call from Carole saying Burt is in the hospital.

Burt is on a ventilator.

Burt didn’t make it, not even long enough for Kurt to say goodbye, which he’d have to do over the Goddammed phone from their penthouse several states away because hospitals aren’t letting loved ones visit their dying fathers, mothers, husbands, children …

And what about his folks? Greg and Charlotte Smythe are the picture of health. But didn’t a 53-year-old marathon runner recently pass away? They’d had no symptoms, no cough, no fever, no shortness of breath - none of the harbingers they’d been told to look out for. They’d reported feeling a slight uneasiness in the morning, were on a ventilator by noon, and before eight in the evening, when most people are sitting down for dinner, they were gone.

They’d left behind a spouse and three teenage children.

Sebastian doesn’t even remember their name but their story hit him a little too close to home.

Is this how Kurt feels when he hears about the covid deaths on the daily news?

Probably nothing close to it.

Sebastian has always admired Kurt his strength after losing his mother so young, a mother he’d loved more than life. Kurt talks about her from time time, reminisces about the things he can remember - the scent of her perfume, the books she’d read to him, the things they’d bake together after a hard day at school.

Kurt is a stronger person than Sebastian will ever be. Losing his mom and almost losing his dad? Those are two of Sebastian’s biggest fears. If he ever lost his parents before they lived an extremely long and fulfilled life, he’d never recover.

He doesn’t think Kurt ever has, but he hides it well.

“I like the brioche idea,” Kurt decides, taking the pressure off Sebastian’s shoulders to do or say something that will make him feel better, knowing that his fears aren’t likely to be assuaged by anything Sebastian comes up with - honest or no. Nothing is going to be solved in the next ten minutes here in this bedroom no matter how hard he wishes it. “And instead of me kicking your ass at Scrabble, let’s jump online and drag Julian and Cooper into a game of Words with Friends.”

“You know Julian will demand we play strip Words with Friends.”

“Yeah, well, we can rib him about how that’s the only four-way he’s getting from us. Besides, we’ll win.”

“That’s the spirit,” Sebastian says, kissing Kurt on the forehead. Kurt’s gaze meets his, fear and exhaustion brimming in intelligent blue eyes. Sebastian sees him thinking, sees his forehead wrinkle, then smooth, sees the apples of his cheek rise as he comes to another decision.

“But first …” Kurt turns around slowly, sporting a wicked grin, biting his lower lip in that irresistible way that’s both blushing virgin and smoldering tempter. He tugs the towel tied around Sebastian’s waist free, lifts it to eye level, then drops it on the floor. He slides his gaze down Sebastian’s body, grinning appreciatively when he reaches the start of an impressive erection.

Sebastian grins over Kurt’s staring. “Does that mean you want to …?”

“Fuck? Yes, please.”

“Great! I’ll climb into bed while you get dressed.”

Kurt’s eyes snap to Sebastian’s face, wide with confusion. “What? Why? What am I changing into?”

Sebastian winks. “We’re gonna get some mileage out of that Gucci suit.”

“Sebastian!” Kurt gasps. “You can’t be serious!”

“Serious as those murder hornets up in Washington.”

“Sebastian!”

“Kurt! Neiman Marcus is circling the drain because you decided to buy an overpriced suit on sale! Don’t let their sacrifice be in vain!”

#acitw #acitw au #kurtbastian #sebkurt #sekurt

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spicy-mbti-memes · 5 years

Conversation

How the Types Dump You

ESTJ: As you walk into the room, he is sitting at an office desk. He motions for you to sit down. (This confuses you greatly, because you don’t even have an office desk in your house; did he buy one just for this occasion?) He takes out his reading glasses and pulls out a file folder that you can see is extensively tagged with color-coded index notes. He opens it up and begins reading from a double-spaced, 5,000-word essay written in size 12 Times New Roman with in-text citations and a bibliography written in APA format. His essay lists every way in which you’ve ever failed to live up to his expectations in the relationship; the report concludes that there is no other rational choice but to fire you as his companion. He thanks you for your time and writes you a severance check (aka first and last month’s rent) before leaving. You shrug casually because, well, hey, it could’ve been worse: you could’ve been broken up with the way that the ENFP girl’s boyfriend on this list did.

ISTJ: ISTJs don’t break up with you. If you end up with an ISTJ, you’re either going to have to do the dirty work yourself, or you’re going to be stuck with them until you die.

Either that, or they’ll e-mail you from work while they’re on their lunch break (because they can’t send a personal e-mail during work hours, obviously).

ESTP: You walk into your apartment to see your ESTP boyfriend in the middle of having a literal orgy in your living room. “What the fuck are you doing?!” you scream at your ESTP boyfriend (and the twelve other people in the room, too, I guess), who seems genuinely confused somehow. “But I don’t even love them!” he continues to insist, not understanding how you could be so upset about this. “It’s just sex, what’s the big deal? Here, how about this: why don’t you join us? Would that make you feel better? The bowl of condoms is over there. They’re just for decoration and we’re not using them, but I thought I would show them to you anyway.”

ISTP: Sends you a letter in the mail from a clinic advising you to get tested for STDs.

ESFJ: You’ve been talking about starting to try for a baby for a while now, so you and your partner begin to make some preparations to help protect your future family - stashing away money for the down-payment on a house, trading in your car for a family van, filling out life insurance policies; routine stuff. But then, little things started happening; things so small that you only noticed in hindsight. The new lock on her phone that wasn’t there before. How often you caught her smiling to herself as she was texting. How much more often she was suddenly going on out-of-town work trips, or going out for a lady’s night, or having to stay late for work. How irritated she always seemed to be with you, and how little you were having sex despite actively trying to get pregnant. You were in denial at first, but slowly, you’re starting to put the pieces together. You make up your mind to confront her on the weekend, in case anything goes wrong and you suddenly have to go stay somewhere else.

Except you never get a chance to, because one morning, you wake up and your world looks completely different. You aren’t in your bed; in fact, you don’t seem to be anywhere at all. And that’s because you’re dead, because your wife poisoned you so that she could move overseas to be with her new hot 23-year-old boyfriend from Spain, and the money she got from your $250,000 life insurance policy.

ISFJ: Does it the proper, old-fashioned way: by sitting you down and explaining to you why it just isn’t working out. Fuck ISFJs and their wholesomeness and perfection preventing me from shitposting about them. =/

ESFP: Sends you a picture of themselves flipping the bird while sucking your best friend’s dick. Afterwards, texts you a detailed play-by-play of everything they did, and how much of a better lay he was than you. Oh, and how much bigger his dick was than yours, of course.

ISFP: Breaking up? Us? Oh, honey. Honey, no. You’re not going anywhere. I will murder your entire family if that’s what I have to do to stop them from being able to take you away from me. The police? Lmao, that’s cute. Let them come and watch me win the Oscar performance of the year as I cry about how you beat me, and drag you away to jail instead. No, baby, you’re not going anywhere. We’re never breaking up. We’re always going to be together. Forever.

ENTJ: He’s a wildly successful entrepreneur who ended up becoming a multi-millionaire. You’re the beautiful philanthropist and socialite trophy wife and stay-at-home mom who takes care of the kids. Together, you own homes in four different countries (one for each season, and several in Aspen and Montauk - just for the weekends, of course), a yacht, multiple sports cars, an entire room just for shoes, ties, and handbags, and a chef, a housekeeper, and a full-time, live-in nanny. Everything he owns is shiny, new, the latest model - everything, that is, except for you. So he cheats on you behind your back, divorces you when you find out about it, and then replaces you with a hotter, younger replica of yourself.

But hey, at least you got half of everything in the divorce. At least he was gracious enough not to have you assassinated, I guess.

INTJ: Calmly and rationally explains to you why it just wouldn’t work in the grand scheme of things. I mean, for one thing, having a wife (or even a serious girlfriend) just wasn’t a part of the life plan that he created for himself in the first grade; hell, it wasn’t even a part of the ten-year plan that he drew up for himself on the first day of high school. He’s not trying to be rude or insensitive, but he just doesn’t have the time to waste on pursuing empty, meaningless pursuits like social relationships or having a girlfriend. How is he going to meet his goal of becoming the youngest PhD holder in his state if he has to waste time doing things like talking to you?

Joke’s on him, though, because this is exactly how the movie Legally Blonde started, and doesn’t he know how that movie ended for someone like him?

ENTP: ENTPs don’t break up with you, because ENTPs don’t date anyone seriously in the first place. If, by some stroke of (horrible) luck, you actually did manage to get an ENTP to agree to hang out with you often enough under a context that could reasonably be construed as the two of you being “in a relationship”, they would probably get bored and cheat on you within weeks. But hey, if you’re a masochist and getting your heart broken repeatedly is your thing (lookin’ at you, INFxs), then do what makes you happy, man. I’m not judging.

INTP: Meh. Doesn’t really bother to break up with you. Continues to co-habitate with you while ceasing to continue putting any effort into the maintenance of the relationship, and just kind of letting it die a natural death. By the time it’s over, neither of you have cared for months.

ENFJ: Leaves you a length, caring, compassionate, “It’s not you, it’s me” goodbye letter on your bedside table in an attempt to soften the blow of gently explaining that she has decided to leave you and your life together in order to pursue her dream of cultivating relationships with multiple wealthy Sugar Daddies who fund her extravagant, globetrotting lifestyle.

INFJ: INFJs never truly break up with anyone. They keep the door open just the tiniest sliver, so that they can keep you around as their potential back-up plan in case their current relationship falls apart. After all, where are they going to get their identity and sense of self from if they’re alone?

ENFP: You come home after work and she isn’t there. None of her stuff is missing, so at first, you aren’t worried - she must just be running late, or made an impromptu decision to go see a friend. By 10 PM, you’re riddled with anxiety and the fear that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. You call her friends. You call all the local hospitals and jails. You file a police report. But nothing ever comes of the investigation, and no one can figure out what happened to her - it’s like she dropped off the face of the Earth. The whole ordeal is emotionally devastating for you, but eventually life goes on, as it inevitably must.

Years later, you turn on your computer and have a new friend request on Facebook. It’s your ex-girlfriend. You find out that she’s been living on a hippie commune in the Costa Rican rainforest for the past three years. She felt “stifled and trapped” by her old life, she tells you, and felt like she “needed a change from the oppressive grind of daily life”. She can’t understand why you’re so upset about it; shouldn’t you be happy for her for finally getting to live out her dream?

You hang up the phone and never think about her again.

INFP: Ghosts you.

That’s it. That’s literally it. You’ll never hear from them again. It’s like they just never existed. After a while, you start to wonder whether they ever really did, or if they were just a figment of your imagination.

(If you’re an INTP, then this is probably true. Your caring, squishy uwu INFP senpai girlfriend was all a product of your lonely imagination.)

#mbti #memes #shitpost #intj #infj #intp #infp #funny

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lifeonashelf · 3 years

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...INTERLUDE...

Come to Vegas! We can make out, gamble, and forget all our troubles.

This is quite possibly the greatest text message I have ever received. Four days later, I hit the road.

I have never driven to Las Vegas by myself. Once I complete the journey I can’t fathom why this is, because despite the extended sprawl of nothing between us, Vegas isn’t nearly as far away as I picture it in my mind. I arrive in 3 hours and 17 minutes (which, oddly, is the exact figure Google Maps gave me when I checked the route before leaving my apartment—this is even more astonishing when you factor in that Google not only calculated my precise rate of speed for the entire trek, but evidently also predicted that I would be pulling off the road for seven minutes to have a cigarette at a rest stop just outside Baker). On the way, I listen to two volumes of a 10-disc playlist I made a few months earlier. When I burn mix CDs for myself, they are ridiculously schizophrenic—crossing the state line, I hear Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”, my favorite track by the death metal band Gorefest, and then “Cool For The Summer” by Demi Lovato in immediate succession, and I sing every word to each of them. Needless to say, it is an awesome drive.

Everything proceeds smoothly when I arrive. The Gold Coast has my lodgings ready for me two hours prior to the posted check-in time and they are able to accommodate my request for a smoking flat. I take my bag up to the 9th floor, set up my laptop at the table by the window, and then smoke a cigarette in my room just because I fucking can. I purposefully skipped dinner the night before so my stomach would be prepared to maximize the possibilities offered by the hotel’s Ports O’ Call Buffet. I tear that shit up, then head to the lounge to play a bit of video poker and get a cup of coffee—the machines at the bartop are not kind to me; that cup of coffee ends up costing me sixty dollars. Such is Vegas.

The day is uneventful, by Las Vegas standards. I drink more coffee, I gamble some more and win back my sixty bucks, I write a bit, I watch some basketball. But I am really just killing time. Because the passing hours are merely a preamble; the woman who sent me the text message which acted as the siren song for this trip is in the same town as me, and come “around 7ish” we will be in the same building.

She’s here on business. ___ is a reality television producer, and has been dispatched to Sin City to film the upcoming season of the show Hell’s Kitchen. I have not seen her in over two years, even though she only lives 30 miles from my apartment in real life and driving to Nevada is in fact way more effort than I would normally have to exert to visit her. But our real lives are rarely able to intersect. Besides, I love Las Vegas. And there’s something undeniably enchanting about the prospect of walking beside a beautiful girl amidst a panorama of brilliant dramatic neon and exotic stereoscopic night-sounds. Being in Vegas is like being in a movie, and the character you get to play has way more fun than you do when you’re not on-screen. Compared to my daily existence, and the daily existence of anyone who does not live here, the milieu of Vegas feels like an ethereal dream. That’s why it’s the perfect place to rendezvous with ___; being around her is so intoxicating that it feels much the same.

Our history spans nearly two decades. It is as complicated and messy and wonderful as any history I have ever shared with anyone. I cannot possibly recount all of it here, though I will tell you some. I lost a girlfriend when ___ and I became close because that girlfriend clearly identified that we were mutually attracted to each other. I would have never cheated, but my relationship imploded because I aggressively refuted her well-founded apprehensions and pretended like she was acting crazy for even insinuating I was drawn this person who I would 17 years later drive 230 miles to visit at the whim of a late night text. As a result I broke the heart of an incredible woman who deserved far better, and she broke mine by dumping me. Twenty-four hours subsequent, I was on a park bench making out with a girl who I swore up and down was merely a platonic acquaintance, and I was officially a liar.

I was 23 years old. I was also far more charming and attractive than I am now, and in the mindset to actively explore the positive corollaries which arose from that confluence. I spent a few years kissing a lot of girls because I was single and I was in my early twenties and it’s a good idea to kiss as many girls as you can when you’re single and in your early twenties because you won’t get to kiss too many more after that. Despite the sagacity I demonstrated by accurately predicting this, I was an unadulterated fucking idiot when it came to ___. I am horrified by my conduct throughout everything that ensued between us, and I will forever be haunted by the what-ifs brought about by the consequent brazen stupidity I exhibited.

From the moment we began groping each other at Cahuilla Park in Claremont, ___ became sort of a surrogate for the girlfriend I had sacrificed, a proxy upon whom I could bestow both the passion that had been extinguished and the anguish that had been stoked after the break-up. ___ did not kill my relationship, I killed it by being a callous asshole. But I think subconsciously I blamed her anyway (for having the audacity to enter my life and be the extraordinary girl she is, I suppose); that was far easier than owning up to the fact that I had acted like an irredeemable piece of shit toward the girl she supplanted. My pride and my heart were wounded and I couldn’t take it out on the person whose inescapable-in-hindsight decision had caused those injuries since she was no longer taking my calls. So I took it out on her replacement instead. And over the course of the several tumultuous months that followed, I proceeded to meticulously break the heart of another incredible woman who deserved far better.

I have never handled anyone as poorly as I handled ___. She was a dazzling and unequivocal gem, yet I treated her like she meant nothing to me at all. The mere thought of her being with anyone else drove me mad, yet instead of telling her this I told her time and time again that she could never have me all to herself and continued dating other people to underscore my assertion. More than once, I brought her to tears by stating in no uncertain terms that I never wanted to see her again, only to call her the very next night and ask her to come over as if that conversation never happened. I wasn’t simply emotionally abusive to ___, I was utterly fiendish to her. For every year of my life leading up to that one and every year since, I have been proud to conduct myself as a true gentleman, so I will never understand how I was even capable of hurting anyone as persistently and comprehensively as I hurt her. Rest assured, I didn’t understand it at the time, either. Nor did I understand why no matter how awful I was to her, she still saw the best in me and held out hope that I would come to my senses and acknowledge the singularly special thing that was standing right in front of me.

Unfortunately, I realized far too late that the reason ___ did so was because she was deeply in love with me. And I also realized far too late that I was deeply in love with her.

By then I had done about as much damage to her psyche as one person could do to another. Though she wouldn’t know it, my comeuppance was delivered by the next woman I entered into a failed relationship with, who put me through a lot of the same things I put ___ through and came up with several novel doozies of her own for good measure. ___ and I remained in sporadic telephone contact, though we rarely saw each other in person. Bizarrely, this had the upshot of emphasizing the indissoluble strength of our bond, since none of the interactions we had were stilted by our silence and distance—every time we came together, I felt as close to her as ever and she clearly felt the same.

Over the years, we’ve had numerous conversations about what happened between us. I wish to keep those private, but the essence of what has been expressed is that despite everything she considers me one of the people closest to her in the world. She also told me that “Perfect” by The Smashing Pumpkins is her song to me; I listen to it often, even though those beautiful and devastating lyrics always bring tears to my eyes.

Of course, along the way I finally did what she desperately wished I would have done 17 years ago. I came to my senses and acknowledged the singularly special thing that was once standing right in front of me. I made overtures to that effect on a couple of occasions when we once again found ourselves simultaneously single, but they were way overdue. She said she did still love me and always would, but the wall I forced her to build to shield herself from me had grown too tall and sturdy to tear down. A tacit understanding developed between us: we would be friends for the rest of our lives, but I had confused and harmed her enough for one lifetime and she was not willing to give me any chance to add to that abominable legacy. It’s a verdict I had no choice but to accept because it was a much better one than I deserved; she would have been undeniably justified in never wanting to speak to me again.

I know ___ has never wholly resolved the chaos of emotions I stirred within her, neither the amorous nor the angry. Some cuts are too deep to be sutured, and those tend to leave scars. Truthfully, I think she despises me as much as she adores me; she just adores me too much to let the other side win out most of the time. But this paradox is entirely fitting because our entire relationship is a paradox, a saga of two satellites which have shared each other’s orbit since they were launched and create a blinding explosion when they collide. Last night, she kissed me in the lobby of the Golden Nugget casino and we melted into each other just like we did that first time in Cahuilla Park, seventeen years erased by the touching of lips. When we came up for air, she wrapped her arms around me and buried her face against my chest and said, “god, I hate you,” with so much love in her voice that it made my stomach swim. It was the perfect thing for her to say in that moment, both because it is absolutely true and because it is the absolute opposite of the truth.

We had a delightful night on Fremont Street, both of us properly investigating that very cool region of the city for the first time. We had some drinks and we listened to some music and we played some poker and we held hands as we walked the promenade. For a few hours, we got to be the couple both of us wanted to be at one time or another, just never at the same time; we even fought like a couple for part of that span, since the resentment and pain she’s had to bury deep within herself to continue accepting me into her life despite my previous sins still gets triggered from time to time when we speak of the past. Regardless, I wouldn’t have changed a second of it. The night was absolutely magical, because ___ is absolutely magical.

But the spell of Las Vegas gets broken once you realize that nothing there is real. There’s an axiom people use to justify all manner of debauchery they engage in while visiting Sin City: “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” Tonight ___ is out with a large group of people who esteem her, and I am alone in a smoky room sitting at my laptop, which is a lot closer to what our individual non-Las Vegas lives look like. This artificial vacation existence in which we were united as one happened in Vegas and will stay in Vegas, because it has to. Because, truthfully, the life she built for herself without me is much richer than the life I built for myself without her. Tomorrow morning I will get in my truck and exit this city of lights to travel back across a stretch of barren desert the length of two mix-CDs, and after I arrive home I will spend the next interminable number of days and nights sitting at my laptop in a room that is less smoky than this one but no less lonely. Meanwhile, tomorrow morning ___ will continue to work her fascinating job and then she will leave the country on some adventure, and no matter where she is and what she’s doing, she will be surrounded by people whose company is far more gratifying to her than mine ever could be.

The hours we spent holding hands on Fremont Street were unreal. But they were also so real that I am still reeling from the aftershock of our latest satellite collision. Our relationship, both the real and the unreal, befits that manner of contradiction. I don’t think ___ and I are still in love with each other, but I do still love her in a way that I have never loved anyone else. I have committed unconditionally to other women in her absence and redistributed the connection we share into a more manageable framework, but whenever there is no one in my life I can’t help but recognize that there very well could be if I hadn’t once been a soulless beast to someone who was merely pleading for me to appreciate them the way they sincerely deserved to be appreciated. ___ is without a doubt one of the most phenomenal and inside-out beautiful human beings I have ever known and I cannot conceive of my life without her in it, yet I still to this day find it difficult to face her. Every moment I spend with ___ feels like a gift, but those moments also sting in equal measure, because she is a walking reminder of me at my absolute worst.

I don’t think she has ever truly forgiven me. I’m not sure she really ever could, or should. Nothing I do today can undo what I did yesterday. I know that no matter how exhilarating it feels to look into her gorgeous and soulful eyes after we kiss in a glittering alternate universe, there are times when she looks at me and only sees a man who likely hurt her worse than anyone else she has ever known. I know there is a part of her that will always love me, but I also know there’s a part of her that wishes she had never even met me.

While I can only suppose what the world might look like if I had treasured her instead of trashing her all those years ago, I am positive that it would look far better and brighter than it does now. I’m aware that even if I had done the right things then, it’s improbable we would still be together today. Very few relationships go that distance, and despite our exceptional chemistry, ___ and I are not effortlessly compatible. I wouldn’t change a single thing about her, but there are unchangeable things about me I know she could not abide and no one should have to. She detests smoking; I enjoy smoking more than I enjoy most other things. She dreams of spending her days traveling and exploring; I dream of sitting in my easy chair and watching blu-rays.

She thinks I was worth falling in love with; I think strongly otherwise.

I don’t specifically wish ___ and I were together now. Yet therein lies another paradox. Because I got a little glimpse of what that might look like last night on Fremont Street, and it looked amazing. But that wasn’t real, that was Las Vegas; what happens there stays there. It was a magnificent movie, but that’s not what our actual lives look like. We could make out, we could gamble, but we could never forget all our troubles—no matter how much she loved me then and loves me now, I will always be one of hers.

So maybe what I do wish is that I could really be the person she was holding hands with in that unreal fantasy, the person who kissed her with abandon in the lobby of the Golden Nugget, the person she gazed at with unbridled tenderness during that joyful interlude when both of us were able to shelve our past and exist solely and safely in our present. The person she hoped I would become before I shattered her hopes by becoming a monster. Regrettably, untethered from our mutual orbit, I grew to be someone else entirely, someone with numerous regrets he can never completely atone for, someone she will always measure with a watchful and skeptical eye to protect herself. Someone who can never be anyone else except who he is. And that person simply would not be capable of making ___ as happy as she deserves to be, because he already had his chance to do that and made her miserable instead.

Besides, he can barely make himself happy most of the time.

###

The trip home is an inexorably depressing conclusion to every great vacation—you’re doing the exact same thing you did when you set off, except there isn’t anything to look forward to when you arrive. Fittingly, an unseasonable rain is coming down when I hit the 15 Freeway. The water-dappled windshield and the desolate unfolding highway ahead evoke another cinematic scene, perhaps a montage in which the central character takes a long drive to think heavy thoughts. At the risk of becoming a cliché, that is exactly what I do.

My mix-CDs play on, the music blurring past with the miles. I hear “Wonderwall” and I hear “Stairway to Heaven”, which are two songs that everyone should listen to extremely loudly on the open road at least once in their life. Seaweed… Tiamat… Purity Ring… My Chemical Romance… P!nk… The Dillinger Escape Plan... Fleetwood Mac… Each one of them imparts a decisively fantastic tune, but this time I’m not singing along. I am instead blinking away tears as it dawns on me exactly how much I am leaving behind in Las Vegas. Not the money I lost at the video poker machines, but the luminous girl I wagered at the age of 23 when I made a much more foolish gamble than I could have ever imagined and ended up losing the most precious thing I never had. The fortune that I lose over and over again every time ___ and I part from each other and return to the real world.

I discover that her hold on me, this cosmic magnetism we share, has not diminished with time. And I discover that the axiom is not absolute—not everything that happens in Vegas stays there; some things follow you all the way home.

That night on Fremont Street, she told me that she will never be completely over me. At least that makes us even in one respect.

Though the imprint I left on her heart was shaped like a bruise, there will always be a piece of mine that is the precise shape and size of ___. That piece belongs to her, and though it is a woeful consolation prize, it is the only one I will ever have the opportunity to give her.

But it does come with a vow: forever and always, whenever and wherever we meet, in Las Vegas and in real life, I promise we’ll be perfect.

May 9, 2019

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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WandaVision Episode 9: The Big Questions We Need Answered

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This article contains WandaVision spoilers.

With just one episode left in the season – and technically the series – the finale of WandaVision has a lot of ground to cover.

Its penultimate installment was not just a heartbreaking retrospective of just how terrible Wanda’s life has been and how much she has suffered, it gave us an entirely new understanding of a character that’s been part of this universe for four feature films to date. Plus, there’s the whole thing where a secret government agency appears to have reanimated Vision’s dead body to use as a weapon, and Wanda herself is most likely a legendary, all-powerful witch.

How the series plans to wrap up these dangling plot threads in addition to laying the groundwork for the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and establishing what comes next is anyone’s guess. But there are a few things that WandaVision is going to have to tell us in order for this series to truly stick the landing as the MCU’s most ambitious – and best – project yet. (Which right now, with one episode to go, is a title it wins by a mile.)

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Here are nine burning questions we need the WandaVision finale to answer.

What is the Scarlet Witch?

In an episode filled almost to bursting with surprisingly rich callbacks to multiple MCU films, the biggest moment was still probably Wanda being directly referred to as the Scarlet Witch for the first time. But what that actually means is anyone’s guess.

Sure, she’s powerful enough to literally rewrite reality and turn a run-down New Jersey town into a classic sitcom paradise. But that’s not exactly news – she did destroy an Infinity Stone and almost take down Thanos in the Avengers movies. Agatha bestows the name upon her as though it means something significant, as if Wanda’s some sort of magical harbinger that has a larger role to play in…something (and the Scarlet Witch costume Wanda sees in her vision would seem to back that up). But who or what is she?

What Does Agatha Harkness Actually Want?

Most of us have assumed that Agatha Harkness must technically be the Big Bad of WandaVision – I mean, the song says that she’s been pulling every evil string, c’mon – but “Previously On” hints that may not entirely be the case. The creation of Westview was clearly a result of Wanda’s chaos magic, so…what is Agatha doing there? And what is her ultimate goal?

Has she sought Wanda out simply to determine where her power comes from? To try and steal it for herself? To suss out another powerful witch to become besties with? (Agatha was Wanda’s mentor in the comics.)

Are we meant to read Agatha as a true villain – or something more complicated? I mean, she does put Wanda’s kids in choke collar leashes, but whether that’s out of a desire to protect herself from the Scarlet Witch or to use her in some way is still unclear.

Is Vision Somehow Alive Again?

Well, there go our theories that poor Wanda has just been puppeting her dead boyfriend’s corpse around Westview (thankfully – that idea was always dark af). Instead, it appears that this is more of a Vision 2.0, a being created by a combination of an incredibly powerful dose of Wanda’s chaos magic, her memories of the man she loved, and the overwhelming grief she can’t seem to control. But does that mean Vision is actually alive? Like, could appear in another MCU film, alive? And if so, why can’t he leave the boundaries of the Hex? Does he even have a physical body, or is his form just a Wanda-powered projection?

What is Tyler Hayward’s Endgame – and Why Is He Trying to Blame Wanda for it?

One of the biggest revelations in “Previously On” was that Wanda did not, in fact, storm into SWORD headquarters and steal back her boyfriend’s dead body. Instead, she actually experienced a quietly shattering moment of grief in which she accepted that the Vision she loved was truly gone. So…why did SWORD director Tyler Hayward not only insist that she did, he literally put together a deep fake video to prove it?

Hayward has been a fairly shady figure since he first appeared on WandaVision, but this is some next-level mustache-twirling stuff. Has he just been trying to turn Vision’s body into a weapon – seemingly mission accomplished there – or has he been crafting a much larger and more nefarious scheme?

After all, he is on record as hating the superpowered beings that he believes are responsible for both the Snap that erased half the population and the Blip that brought everyone back but ultimately devastated those left behind in the meantime. Is the White Vision his revenge on Wanda – and those like her – in some way? (Truly, so many problems could be solved in the universe of the MCU if people just got some help for their PTSD, but that’s a rant for another day.) Or is Hayward’s scheme more complicated in some way?

What is the Purpose of the White Vision?

The Dr. Manhattan-esque White Vision revealed in this week’s credits scene is both creepy and heartbreaking at the same time. The real Vision, after all, had specifically requested that he not be brought back or used as some kind of weapon after his death. And now he’s been made into what is likely some sort of soulless killing machine, using his soulmate’s magic and against his own wishes. How Hayward figured out how to reanimate Vision, what vibranium he was tracking in the Hex, and what he intends to do with this new weapon he’s made are all outstanding questions. But none of them likely have happy answers.

Look, we probably have to start preparing ourselves now emotionally for the fact that Wanda is going to have to fight the reanimated body of her dead lover, who probably won’t even remember her name. And she’ll have to do it with the magical recreation of him she made in Westview at her side, in a battle that will more than likely destroy both Visions by the end of it.

And at this point, we’re going to need a WandaVision Season 2 in order to deal with Wanda’s trauma from all of that (that’s not a complaint, by the way).

Is Wanda a Mutant Now?

With the X-Men franchise officially part of the MCU, the question has to be asked: Is Wanda Maximoff officially a mutant now? Her exposure to the Mind Stone clearly triggered or otherwise activated some latent abilities – powers that the show implied would have vanished otherwise.

Wanda and Pietro appear to be the only two individuals who survived HYDRA’s attempts to create supervillains using the Mind Stone. Does this mean that Pietro’s survival also indicates that his powers were merely latent and then “activated” by their experiments?

Does this twist give Wanda back her official mutant roots, or is it just an origin story for witches in the Marvel universe?

Where’s Monica?

When last we saw Monica Rambeau, she was getting busted for snooping by Agatha’s nebulously explained fake version of Pietro Maximoff. Since she doesn’t appear in “Previously On” we’re still not sure where she is, what’s happened to her in the meantime, or what role she has to play in the finale.

One has to assume she’ll show up to fight at Wanda’s side – whether that’s against Agatha or the White Vision or both – but how?

We also don’t know much yet about her superpowers. We’re all assuming she’s basically just inheriting her comics abilities as Spectrum, but will those abilities work outside of the Hex or without Wanda to power them?

What Does This All Mean for Pietro?

Though we journey back to the HYDRA base in which Wanda and her brother were experimented on, we don’t see any hint of Pietro in this episode (and, no, the child version doesn’t count). We know that the Evan Peters version is a fake conjured by Agatha to pry information on how she created the Hex out of Wanda – how is she powering that by the way? And how does Fake Pietro know so much real Maximoff history? – but what does all this new backstory mean for the Maximoff brother who died?

What happened to Pietro when he encountered the Mind Stone? Were his powers also latent and only “activated” by the stone like Wanda’s (and thus making him a mutant)? And does any of this somehow open a door to bring Quicksilver back to the MCU?

Who is the Aerospace Engineer?

Yes, we’ve all apparently spent weeks thinking about a throwaway line from Monica back in WandaVision’s fifth episode, in which she references an aerospace engineer she knows who might be up for the challenge of figuring out the Hex.

Maybe it’s nothing, but this is Marvel, so it’s almost guaranteed not to be nothing.

Could Monica’s mysterious friend be Reed Richards and could SWORD serve as a way to finally introduce the Fantastic Four into the MCU? It’s more than possible – it’s practically likely at this point. There are other options – Victor Von Doom and Hank McCoy are also notable Marvel scientists we’ve yet to meet in the MCU – but doesn’t Reed just make the most sense?

How Will WandaVision Lead Into Doctor Strange 2?

One of the few things we do know about the WandaVision finale is that it’s somehow connected to and will likely lead directly into the upcoming MCU film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. At this point, it seems safe to say that Wanda is more likely than not responsible for both the multiverse and the madness parts of that title, and the finale will involve her somehow fully becoming the Scarlet Witch and unleashing some cosmic chaos powers. But where does that kind of ending leave Wanda and Vision? Will Doctor Strange himself show up – either to defeat the White Vision or stop Wanda from ripping down the walls of reality? Will Vision have to die again? And how does Agatha Harkness fit into things? (At this point, she’s more than earned a place in Doctor Strange 2, if you ask me.)

The post WandaVision Episode 9: The Big Questions We Need Answered appeared first on Den of Geek.

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