does anyone else have extremely strong visual/sensory imagination and therefore have a ton of highly specific individual headcanons for every character in every piece of media you consume that you can’t justify and can’t talk about without sounding utterly insane

hi! day 2 back from my tumblr dot com hiatus and I watched ice age for the first time in ten years.

if you don't know what ice age is, it is about a mammoth, a sloth, and a saber tooth tiger going the opposite direction of migration (so like north, where it is cold and ice) to return their beloved baby to his "herd" (his tribe). obviously all taking place during the ice age.

overall, the movie was... ok, I guess. the animation? absolutely horrendous. but pretty ahead of it's time. the story? WHY DO I LIKE IT THIS MUCH.

(the jokes were RLLY cheesy tho)

ok onto the post. I am not sorry

here is all of the homoromantic undertones that I gathered in the 2002 animated movie 'ice age'

•   ok, so in the beginning there is literally 2 male rhinos who share a salad together and one saves the dandelion for the other. they r practically background characters but CLEARLY husbands

•   sid:  "you have beautiful eyes :)"

    manfred:   "get off of me >:("

•   sid calling manfred 'manny' affectionately

•   they find the baby and immediately have this sort of. yknow. married couple energy

•    diego makes this known by saying, and I LITERALLY quote, "'Us'? You two are a bit of an odd couple." and then when manfred says that 'there is no us' he says, "I see. can't have one of your own, so you want to adopt." (diego says gay rights)

•    (immediately after diego says this, manfred and sid go on to argue like a married couple.)

•     now they r all together!! baby starts crying. sid has to be responsible to shut it up like the male-wife he is.

•     they ALL take turns trying to cheer the baby up

•     (LITERALLY ACTING LIKE NEWLY WEDS WITH A NEWBORN, I KID YOU NOT)

•     "his nose is dry, that means something's wrong." "he's wearing one of those baby thingjes" "so?" "if he poops, where does it go?" ".......humans are disgusting." "I bet he's hungry. how about some milk?" "I'd love some" "NOT YOU. the baby."

•      they all, as a team, fight a whole troop of dodos to get food for their baby

•     sid:  "how about a good-night kiss, for your big buddy sid?"

      manfred: "he (the baby)'s asleep."

      sid:  "I was talking to you."

      manfred:

•    sid shows off their beloved baby to some lady sloths

•     manfred does not like this.

•     diego practically saves sid's life by pretending that he killed him (and has this look of nervousness/concern when it almost doesn't work)

•     CUE THE ENTIRE MONTAGE OF THE FAMILY TRAVELLING

•     yknow that thing in movies where the wife is like "we're lost ask the guy for directions" and the husband denies it? this literally happens between manfred and sid.

•     they play charades with a squirrel. diego flicks him into the sun to Burn.

•     cue the iconic slide scene that lasts for like idk two or three minutes straight. diego breaks character and gets pumped up. manfred and sid stare at him like "dude we almost lost our kid r u nuts"

•     manfred has this. revelation after realizing that he has been missing a family in his life and comes to terms with the fact that, oh my god, I need to get this baby back home.

•      he immediately becomes SUCH a dad after that

•     Manfred saves Diego's life and diego is like. oh my god. I love these guys. and this whole time he has been leading them into a trap to kill them

•      manfred almost dies. diego RLLY feels shitty after that

•      sid creates fire. "from now on, you can refer to me as Sid, Lord of the Flame. from now on I will call you Diego,"

       diego: "lord of touch me and you're dead."

       diego:  ".....NAH I'm just kidding you little knucklehead <3"

•      manfred calls diego and sid lovebirds.

•      baby takes his first steps, and they all share this tender, loving look between one another :))

•      "look at that, our little guy is growing up."

•      once manfred goes to sleep, sid and diego gush over him. "I've never had a friend who would risk his life for me." "yeah, manny's a good guy :)"

•      then comes the part where diego leads them into the trap and he feels awful and nervous about it.

•      manfred gets angry. >:(( but diego feels rlly bad and wants to save them :((

•      the other saber tooths come. sid tricks them into thinking he is holding the baby. and when they find out he isn't, he runs away.

•     he goes to where the baby actually is. gentle little sid moment..

•     manfred gets cornered by diego and the leader of the tigers. diego turns on his leader to save his husband.

•      diego risks his life like how manfred risked his. almost dies. he tells sid and manfred to leave him and get the baby to his family :((

•     "we were some team, huh?"

•     diego to the baby: "you gotta be strong. you have to take care of manfred and sid. especially sid."

•     manfred and sid take the baby home. tender moment. sid and manfred are both sad to see him go :((

•     "don't forget about us, ok? we won't forget about you."

•     SURPRISE diego ends up living!! sid runs to him, relieved.

•     "you're ok!"

       "nine lives, baby"

       "you're ok. I could kiss ya!"

•     (if I remember correctly, sid does kiss diego's head multiple times)

•     manfred asks diego if he needs to hitch a ride. ends up giving sid a ride instead.

•     ends the movie with something about sid saying that it will be the best migration ever and then something about global warming idk!

masterpost ☀️ main masterlist ☀️ taglist

previously on...

We meet Lucy, we meet Samantha and her twins & Mother Nature gets a little bit mad. But on the upside - she loves Tony :)

Kind reminder that this story will have horror/thriller elements & graphic descriptions of blood, gore and all the nasty stuff associated with superhero battles described in some detail. This chapter contains some of that.

Honestly, this story is getting- uhh- 8-12 notes on Tumblr. It's got a decent following on AO3 which brings me joy because I truly do enjoy the worldbuilding to a, perhaps, guilty amount. So if you like it too - please reblog :)

The fabric of my skirt was suddenly yanked and I jumped, dropping my phone and startling out of my daze. Two big, blue eyes stared up at me, curiousity mixed with impatience in them. I crouched down to pick up my device, coming face to face with a tiny blonde girl about nine or ten years of age.

"Lucy, hi!" I squeezed out a smile at the child. She looked pale, as if she'd never seen the slightest bit of sunlight, chubby cheeks contrasted by an overall spindliness of her body. Her dress was a puffy, long-sleeved, red and white polka dotted monstrosity with at least two petticoats that made her seem bigger than she actually was. "Sorry, didn't see you there. Long day at work," despite there being a worm of anxiety crawling deeply in my chest, I heeded the warnings on the list of rules and swallowed any unease I had.

Which was a hard feat. The stairs had gotten confused and I lost ten minutes of time going back, over and over, after encountering floors "5", "8" and "19" instead of my third floor, in a five story building. The building providing extra floors shouldn't have surprised me that much but the worst was fighting with the desire to explore them, my rational brain unhelpfully supplying that if this building was truly dangerous, nobody would be living in it.

The pull was almost unnatural in its strength yet my protection charms remained unaffected. Too tired from returning to work, I decided to distract myself with my phone - and nearly ran poor little Lucy off her feet.

"You are new," she signed to me slowly, carefully observing my reaction to her using ASL.

I had been truly unsettled by the rule list, perhaps more than I wanted to admit to myself, so I spent a night wide awake brushing up my meager sign language skills. "Yes, my name is Star," I replied, not quite sure if I wanted to shake her hand or simply make myself scarce as soon as possible.

Lucy gave me a closed-lipped grin, swooshing her puffy skirts in what I perceived to be a calculated amount of shyness. "Can I play with you, please?" Her hands moved a little more rapidly as she side-eyed my apartment door.

I briefly ran a mental checklist of the contents of my fridge. "Sure," I figured that two leftover steaks in it would be more than enough for the little girl. I'd splurged and gotten four prime pieces of meat to treat myself after a hectic moving process, cooking only half of them on the first day. "Come on it. You hungry?"

The door swung open as I led Lucy in, her bright dress and pale skin standing out in the twilight of my apartment. She nodded her head seriously, looking at me from head to toe as shivers ran up and down my spine. My bag was unceremoniously dumped on the couch, my socked feet shuffling into the kitchen and beelining for the fridge.

Lucy followed me quietly, taking a seat at the dinner table and folding her thin arms atop it, expectant blue eyes following my every move. As I plated the meat and reached for the roll of paper towels, I felt like I was being examined under a microscope. Somewhere in the distance, a quiet hissing noise was beginning to rise.

Lucy politely declined the fork and knife I attempted to give her so I just set down the plate in front of her, leaving the kitchen to change out of my dusty, sweaty clothes, too tired to really worry about the loud, sloppy and wet chewing noises and low growling coming from the dining area. I decided as long as she wasn't attempting to have me for dinner, I was going to be just fine.

I found Lucy on the carpet of my living room, flipping through a fashion magazine she'd found somewhere after I was done with scavenging some sweatpants from my mostly-unpacked closet. Her blonde curls bounced as she looked up at me with another tight smile, this time looking calmer, friendlier somehow. "I like those dresses," she signed, pointing at a few pictures with models wearing ballroom gowns in all kinds of colours. "And these..." She pointed out a tiara, probably not knowing how to sign the words.

"This is a tiara," I spoke slowly, signing the last word with my hands carefully as she observed. And then a few more times, until she repeated her last sentence perfectly. "Good job, Lucy," I praised her as she beamed at me. The river of quiet, scratchy giggles never stopped as she pointed out various things and I tried to sign them to the best of my ability, Lucy not showing any signs of upset whatsoever if I couldn't get the name for something right.

After some time, it was beginning to get very dark outside and a couple of pointed glances at the clock was all it took for her to stand up and carefully dust off her skirts. "Thank you for playing with me, Star," Lucy signed excitedly. "I like you. Do you want to know a secret?" She leaned in conspirationally, bursting into my space bubble with a lack of care only a child could posess.

I nodded, not trusting my mouth whatsoever. The closer she leaned in, the more overwhelming her smell became. Her pretty dress reeked of mildew and stale water, her breath - of dried blood and something earthen, like moist soil and cold cobblestone.

Lucy's eyes widened dramatically. "If you need answers, go on to the seventh floor. Bring some warm milk and cookies, they won't bother you too much, but be careful and don't stay for too long. You look tasty," I struggled to keep up with her rapid signing, my eyes firmly trained on her. Lucy's hand carefully patted my cheek and in my frozen state, I could only wave back as she skipped to the door and unlocked it, giving me one of her closed-lipped smiles before disappearing behind it without a noise.

The lock slid shut on it's own after the girl's departure. My heart briefly jumped up into my throat, trapping my jerky inhale in-between my throat and my esophagus. Coughing, I went on to double check the door lock before scrambling for the TV remote to add some background noise to the suddenly eerily quiet apartment.

The sit-com that popped up wasn't any of the ones I knew so I sat helplessly watching unfamiliar people get themselves into more and more absurd situations as the grating noise of pre-recorded audience laughter mocked the characters actions. A sudden shriek pierced the late night stillness, followed by a sound of breaking dishes and a woman's voice tiredly chastising the miscreants.

Samantha.

I'd seen her a few times as she smoked her strong cigarettes in front of the entrance, her twins running in circles around the large pothole in the middle of the driveway. She'd been friendly enough, the dark circles under her eyes and the unkempt state of her clothes telling me more than her words, "I love them, I really do. But I just want some sleep," she rasped as she sighed and attempted to gather her two kids.

I didn't examine them too closely but on first moment's notice their eyes and teeth appeared... Wrong. Samantha had taken them inside after that, clutching a coffee thermos of a size truly impressive, and I went on my merry way, trying not to think too much of the poor, single mother and her two mutant kids. I felt a little proud, even, as she didn't just abandon them like many other people did after discovering their children had an active X-gene.

It didn't take me long to cave in and offer my help with watching the twins, Anya and Arman; one noisy weekend bled into the next and I began to genuinely feel bad for the overtired woman. Inviting the two terrors into my apartment was a choice I had made mindfully: having asked Odette about advice on hyperactive children, she had proposed a puzzle or two.

The thrifted, wooden items weren't able to hold the twins' attention for long, and Anya was the first one to begin gnawing at the hard blocks, covering the area around her in splinters. Arman was a quiet boy compared to his sister: he'd stare at the TV or at the walls, avoiding eye contact and conversation at great lengths.

My couch was jumped on, my dishes were taken out and my houseplants rearranged chaotically; it was almost as if they purposefully tried to get a rise out of me without doing any actual damage. I spent the remaining few hours of my Sunday putting things back in their places - all that pent up frustration had done wonders for the state of my apartment; it sparkled, looking cleaner than the day I moved in.

The babysitting became a somewhat regular occurrence, more often than not with me popping in for a couple of hours so Samantha could run some errands and the odd weekend when the twins came over to me so Sam could get some much-needed sleep.

She was a kind, gentle if chronically overworked woman. We clicked pretty quickly over our shared desire for comfortable stability and some fucking peace; neither I nor she had it in sights for the foreseeable future. Sam's reaction to me being a witch was a shrug and a top up to her wine glass as she pointedly looked at her daughter who was busy chewing on a door handle, leaving small, jagged marks all over the dull metal.

I just had gotten sorted with a bunch of complicated orders when the radio interrupted Eric Clapton with an emergency message and instructions to steer clear of the next few blocks over. Something had hit NYC again and Avengers had been called but nobody knew exactly what it was or when it was going to be dealt with.

As soon as I shot a text to Sam, explaining the situation, I immediately retreated to the back rooms, setting up my healing station over the noise of Odette preparing her office for visitors. For some time, I waited with baited breath, jumping at every little noise coming from the outside. The people tickled in slowly, mostly one by one and all were covered in foul-smelling sludge that evaporated with a loud hiss when the concentrated light of the UV lamp in my office touched it.

"Some kind of aliens, I think," a man with a face somewhere between a human and a hedgehog told me, wincing as he retracted his spikes back into his skin. "There's a hole- a portal, right on a crossroads and there's these things coming out. They kinda look like dragons, or flying snakes maybe," the more light breached the surface of his skin, the more relaxed he became. "The Sorcerer and the Witch are trying to close the portal, unsuccessfully might I add, and the muscle is just," he paused, scratching his chin. "Just killin' 'em, I guess."

I nodded enthusiastically, prompting him to continue to rely the state of the affairs as I applied the thick, viscous ointment on a gash on his leg. "It's hammer and Frisbee time," I mumbled to myself sarcastically.

"Yep," the man popped the 'p'. "Most of us are trying to keep the creatures contained to that one block. I saw Iron Man blasting off some of the creatures off of some of my friends," the last sentence contained a great deal of puzzlement. "Though you won't be seeing much of us this time. These things... They're vicious. They've got claws the size of my foot. A lot of us are going to die where they gut us," the sentence was spoken so matter-of-factly, my hands paused on the man's leg, bringing my eyes to his unblinking dots of black.

"What do you mean?" I swallowed in an attempt to chase away the dry, rough feeling in my throat.

"Those beasts... They're smart. One of my friends - she's a... Telepath of sorts... Says they're an intelligent hivemind," the man's broad, warm palm closed over mine. "The beasts leave only the ones that won't get help in time. They can smell death from a mile away. That's how they hunt," his voice was gentle, soothing over the sudden ringing of my ears.

"I..." My mind stuttered, a sticky ball of anxiety, fear and sorrow gathering up in my chest. "I'm so sorry. I..."

"We know what we're doing, out there, we know the risks," his smile was tight and full of grief. "You're doing your part here, makin' sure our babies have parents. We're out there makin' sure our streets are safe. Such is life," the grin acceptance in his pitch-black, small eyes set fire to the tension in my chest.

I exploded, inside out. The sudden burst of decisive, clear-headed energy made the objects around me vibrate, metal resonated my sorrow and my determination, the wood heated up with the force of Mother Nature itself responding to an act of cruelty bestowed upon her creations.

As soon as the man's bandage was finished and he headed out, I grabbed my old, ratty backpack, hastily shoving things into it in a semi-organized fashion. Clean linen strips, bandages, some premade elixirs and draughts, a few jars of salves, carefully tucked in-between the cloth. As I knocked on the door of Odette's office to retrieve the last few items I would need for my reckless journey, the door handle turned on its own, letting me observe her tending a woman who's skin was peeled off most of her back.

"Can't you see I'm..." Odette exclaimed, throwing her free hand towards the door, which did not budge. She turned on her heel, eyes widening when she observed my wide, solid stance in the doorway, lips immediately curling into a small grin. "I understand. Take what you need. It's not wise to resist Her call," the words were spoken carefully, as if not to spook me, before Odette resumed her delicate work of putting the injured woman back together.

Without a word, I finished packing and left through the front door, not needing more than my scarf and my light sweater to keep me from the freezing gusts of wind. My very core was the centrefold of an active volcano, bursting with white-hot bursts of energy as I approached the injured people on my way towards the terrible screeching noise.

This far out, most of the injured were able to make it to Odette's or to the other healer, who's name I had found out only then, but they were thankful for the water I offered them. Not once did they question me: my star-patterned scarf, out of all things, had become somewhat of a symbol for me among the different folk. Mutants approached me fearlessly, giving generous updates on the direction of the battle and the hotspots I probably should have avoided.

The louder the screeching noises grew, the more people needed my help. The stops took longer, my painkillers were becoming a short supply, the main relief provided by a couple of mid-range, mid-strength energy manipulating mutants that began to tail me after I offered to patch them up in exchange for help with the injured.

It was as if I instinctually knew where I was most needed, my decisions were seldom my own. Me and the two mutants bid a haste goodbye after loading up their truck with the injured, although deep inside, I knew that the amount of corpses, bloody and messy, littering the streets had begun to get to them. In a normal state of mind, I would not have been able to look at them either: then, each mangled, broken body only added fuel to the fire within me.

As I stepped foot in an intersection where someone had piled up bent and broken cars, the shadow flying over my head shrieked, taking a fluid nose dive towards another, smaller flying figure. I dropped flat on the ground, the contents of my backpack clattering, watching the small figure in the sky blast the beast with an off-blue ray of concentrated energy. As soon as the creature began it's graceless drop, Tony turned around and flew off, looking none worse for wear.

At the very centre of my chest, a faint feeling of fondness and hope blossomed into tiny little flowers that soothed the aching sorrow for the dead. Each warcry of the beasts from another world fed the anger, the anguish Gaia seemed to exhibit at their intrusion; the revolt I felt upon laying my eyes on one of them made me sweat, hands clenching into fists until my skin crawled under my nails.

The last part of me that wanted to pretend I was in control was gone; my soft, untrained body a mere vessel for a force stronger than me, stronger than anything. Noise around me grew in pitch, some of the creatures circling around my hiding spot cluelessly, aimlessly, as if they could not find what they were looking for.

I moved spots in a daring series of runs, bringing me almost to the portal itself, and the hellish lizards dived into my previous sanctuary, shattering the concrete and the wood of the house under the amused black stares of glassless windows.

The realization set it - they could not see me. Or perceive me properly, I deduced, inspecting the creatures for any sort of orifice except for their mouths and finding them to lack eyes and ears.

My own stare fell onto Sorcerer Supreme, floating amongst a variety of moving golden circles; I was close enough to hear him talking in a language I did not know. Wanda was hovering nearby, holding up a wall of red energy, protecting the chanting sorcerer.

A united screech invoked a shiver from every living being within it's reach, the creatures circling the portal for the last time before flying off in haphazard directions as the portal slowly began to close. I was prepared to cheer, yet, something stopped me; not a second later, the circles surrounding Stephen dimmed as the man himself jumped up onto his feet in alarm, screaming something unintelligible at the Scarlet Witch.

The overturned food cart I was hiding behind slowly began to creep towards the portal. A couple of rats, a pigeon - the animals flew in front of my eyes, rapidly, as they struggled against the unseen force. My hands grasped the handlebars of the cart in vain, I struggled against the force, seeing a moment of confusion on Wanda's face as I floated- no, rocketed past her as Stephen's golden magic forcefully pushed her out of the portal's reach.

It's size no bigger than a doorway, the vile thing blew cold, dry air under my sweater, muffling Stephen's cursing as we briefly collided during our violent expulsion into another world.

And then, there was darkness.

Taglist! @couldntbedamned @mikariell95 @letsby @sleep-i-ness @toomanyrobins2 @mostly-marvel-musings @persephonehemingway @schemefrenzy @lillsxd @bluecrazedandbeautiful @slothspaghettiwrites @xoxabs88xox

This has been on my mind a lot and Islamic why because it’s random and irrelevant but Piper and Leo had 3 kids. As far as we know there’s only 3 bedrooms, so do you think Wyatt and Chris had to share a room until one moved out or??? Sorry if I sound annoying or stupid. It’s late and I have no common sense to stop me. I can be dense.

It’s late and I have no common sense to stop me. I can be dense. should literally just be like the new motto of this blog what are we if not all impulsive lil lads sending whatever charmed thots currently passing thru our brains onto tumblr dot com. but yeah okay so the way i think about it is wyatt and chris very likely shared a room throughout childhood as they just had like a pretty small age delta. like we saw i’m pretty sure in the show there was like The Nursery and both wyatt and chris lived there as babies at the same time. I think by the time that melinda had rolled around, especially considering that both paige and phoebe had fully moved out by then, wyatt and chris probably got promoted to their own individual rooms and melinda got The Nursery (because obviously there were two extra bedrooms while there was also a nursery as we saw in episodes like cheaper by the coven and imaginary fiends when there was a place there like a room And phoebe and paige still lived in the manor). so, like, if i’m to work with the logic of there are only three bedrooms, i think once melinda gets promoted to bedroom she gets her own and wyatt and chris would end up in the same room But. i mean like. the manor is so huge, right? like it’s three stories. i guess four if you count the basement (yes i’m counting the attic as a story) (also, a basement? in san francisco? which they literally like brought up in their episode with an earthquake like um?? there’s a reason u don’t put basements on the san andreas fault like i think u can maybe guess why. they’ve got it tho!!) and like. we’re pretty familiar with the floorplan of the ground floor with the foyer to sitting room to the living room to the solarium to the dining room to the kitchen with a lil bonus laundry room as well. it’s big. so i feel like we can assume there are just like more than three bedrooms? like, in season 8 we had billie staying in the manor, though that might have been in phoebe’s room. other evidence against the potential of guest bedrooms is that paige moved into prue’s old room, which i feel like you wouldn’t do unless your guest bedroom is shitty. and your guest bedroom isn’t supposed to be shitty, like it’s supposed to be the opposite but as previously established by handyman leo frequenting the house early on the joint was probably in shambles and prue piper and phoebe probably just selected the nicest three rooms and left the bad room empty. more evidence for this theory is the fact that we never heard of the girls sharing a room, meaning that, growing up, grams would have a bedroom, and each sister would have their own personal bedroom. and then like, on top of this, again, the manor is huge. and leo’s crafty. i feel like the odds of, if they didn’t have a 4th bedroom, piper and leo constructing one is like pretty high. idk. the halliwell manor is like insanely vague with its layout shout out to the bathroom that became a closet and just the entire mystery of the second floor. my heart says each kid had their own individual bedroom.

You mentioned a thing where people post about how dean and or cas are great! And then add a little insult for Sam at the end, and I wanted to talk about it a bit

Fundamentally, I agree. I’m a “dean!girl” who (therefore) adores Cas. I like Sam. I do! mostly. But often enough he makes me really irritated. I’m not sure if it’s that Jared irritated me and so when I look at Sam I go urgh, or if it’s that Sam has a few specific traits that I share that I fucking hate, or what. Sam also reminds me of a few other people that I don’t like for other, varied, reasons.

So when I see a post that goes Dean is so great! I’m like, yeah, he is. And then the post goes and also Sam did [bad thing], I’m like “fuck yeah, he did, he’s so urgh”, which is a bit unfair to Sam. At least I’m self aware? I tend to like destiel-fanon Sam, where he’s an important and loved character, but still not the main character. It gives me a bit of space from him, which I need, but still allows him to do his thing and be needed and wanted.

On another, semi-related topic, cas slaughtering bigots only counts as a war crime if you think that people who advocate for the deaths other groups of people are peaceful citizens and not (genocidal is the wrong word. But you feel where I’m going with this? All things have political relevance and all political things are violent towards someone. We just choose who we’re gentle towards). I’m personally on the fence about it because I’m against the death penalty in all cases, but for cas, I’m going with “I’m lov him” and so he’s -erm- off the hook for this one.

Also last I checked - I could be wrong, our brains Absorb Things here on tumblr dot com and maybe this is one of those - America doesn’t recognise war crimes (something, something USA, freedom rights blah blah blah) or at least not the set that the “rest of the world” does, so. There’s that, too.

when i say war crimes i'm being extremely flippant. also i'm less talking about the murder cas did on earth, and more talking about him depopulating heaven, which is something he iirc did do. like that's what i'm saying when i refer to purges. and it's pretty bad imo jdhdhdgdhshs

that's really interesting! i've never really disliked sam as a person, i just find him boring and therefore get annoyed when he takes up screentime which i would rather go to someone i like better. it's odd to think of actively disliking him

Camgirl 101 - 2019 Edition (The Absolute tl;dr)

I wrote the first “Camgirl 101″ nearly 6 years ago - wild to think that so much time has gone by! So much has changed about this industry, and yet in many ways, so much has stayed the same. Since my initial “How 2 Cam” post is a tad outdated at this point, and since I have the time to kill typing away on tumblr dot com today, I figured I’d do an abbreviated, updated 2019 edition of the basics of the basics of webcam modelling, as well as my top tips and tricks to making the most out of your initial push as a camgirl.

What site should I cam on? The site I cam on is MyFreeCams, but there are other popular sites out there, such as Chaturbate and Nood (just to name two of many, many more). I would suggest sticking to sites that have been established for a while to be on the safe side, as many new sites are opening, but not all actually attract much in the way of traffic. MyFreeCams is female-only, where Chaturbate allows males and trans performers as well. Nood is a higher quality streaming platform, but you’ll need to be OBS savvy before starting, so it’s better for people who already know what they’re doing, at least to some degree.

Because I work exclusively on MFC (and have been doing so for the better part of six years), the advise I give is specifically about MFC. While most general advise can be extended to other platforms, things like payment processing and technical support I know nothing about outside of MFC. 

What do I need to get started as a cam model? You’ll need a steady internet connection, a webcam, some sort of a lighting source, and yourself. You do not need fancy equipment, a perfect cam space, a complicated profile or an ungodly amount of self confidence to get started - while these things can help, they’re not required, and are things you can amass over time as you become more established.

How do I make money? Camgirls on MFC make money in tokens. One token = $0.05USD earned by a model. You make money by persuading paying patrons, known as Premium Members, to tip you tokens. Payments are processed on the 1st and 16th of each month, and can be sent to you via cheque, wire transfer, or through third parties. I advise you choose cheque or wire transfer, because third party payment processors have been notoriously unreliable over the years. For US models, you can also have your income direct deposited. For international models (aka anyone outside the US), you’ll either need to ‘make payout’ for a wire transfer, which is earn a minimum of 20,000 tokens ($1000USD), or you can opt for a cheque in the mail for free after earning a minimum of 400 tokens ($20).

Camgirls do not get paid hourly. All earnings come from tips. 

What can I do to encourage people to tip or talk? Generally speaking, you entertain. Camgirls entertain by engaging in conversation, showing off their bodies, stripping, and doing live masturbation or sex performances, in addition to selling homemade content, whether in the form of videos and photos, or over apps like snapchat. The best way to increase your odds of making money is to make people like you. For this, you’ll need social skills, physical attractiveness, patience, and business savvy. While it may seem simple, this process is incredibly dynamic and complex; for this reason, I (nor anyone else) can tell you with any guarantee how to make money. My best advice is to read this blog for inspiration, watch cam models to see how others are doing it, and then most importantly, try it yourself. There is only so much you can learn by watching and asking questions: the rest you will have to figure out as you go. 

Do I have to show my face? Yes. You cannot wear a mask, or hide your face; it’s against the Terms of Service of the site, and you can’t build relationships with human beings when you have a bag on your head. That’s just not how it works.

Do I have to get naked or masturbate? No! You don’t. While these things are definitely the norm on the site, there is no rule that says you have to get naked on MFC. You can literally log on and just stare at the camera, unmoving, silently, for hours on end if you want - no one will stop you - it just obviously wouldn’t be particularly entertaining, and would be unlikely to make you much money. If you choose not to strip, or choose to restrict your stripping to certain environments (only in private, only with certain people, only at certain price points), you’ll have to figure out how to entertain in other ways. I would like to highlight that this is not only something non-explicit models have to figure out: the best of the best on the site do far, far more than just strip. Sexuality is part of it, but not the whole story.

How often should I cam, and for how long? The most successful models on MFC tend to rely mostly on the support of their repeat customers, known as ‘regulars’, for the bulk of their income. Making regulars is an important part of camming, because members who return again and again build a relationship with you, and those who have supported in the past are more likely to support again in the future (a psychological concept known as the ‘foot in the door’ phenomenon). Rooms that have groups of returning regulars are also more attractive in a community aspect, because the members aren’t only returning for the model for a sense of togetherness and familiarity, they’re also there to talk with their other member friends. 

In order to build a base of regulars, you should aim to cam relatively consistently, and at somewhat similar time slots. There are no real “best times” to cam - the best times to log on are times where you can expect yourself to be the most consistent over the long term. This way, people know where and when to find you. As far as how long your cam shows should be, this is up to you for the most part. I prefer to cam between 3 and 4 hours at a time.

What is camscore? Camscore is a rating system that is based off of tokens earned per hour. Every new model starts with a camscore of 1000, and depending on how many tokens she makes each hour, her camscore will either raise or drop. The goal is to make as many tokens as you can an hour so that you can raise your camscore - this will sort your icon higher up on the main page, making it more likely that random passerby’s will see your room and hopefully enter it. While camscore is important, it isn’t the only way that members find model’s rooms. For the first six hours of broadcast time (NOT account life: broadcast time, as in time actually live streaming), models are given a ‘new model’ badge on their icons, which can attract members to check out the room. While ‘sort by camscore’ is the default settings for members, they can also choose to sort by other styles, meaning a low camscore isn’t always a low placement on the page. Lastly, models can use social media to boost their visibility. All that said, a low camscore can make things increasingly difficult and frustrating for a model; please read here for more details on overcoming low visibility:

http://camgirlsurvivalguide.tumblr.com/post/169514561900/how-to-overcome-low-visibility

Will camming hurt my chances of getting a vanilla job? Depends on the job. There is always a chance that the people you know will find out that you cam. The best things you can do are weigh your options carefully before starting, geoblock any areas that you don’t want watching you (you can block regions from accessing your cam, but this doesn’t protect against VPNs, and doesn’t stop people from taking screenshots or recordings of your streams and uploading to other unblocked sites), and take caution not to use the same photos connected to your real name as you do for camming - but there is no way to ultimately protect yourself from the stigma of sex work. Facial recognition software is becoming more accurate each and every month, and I feel that soon, programs like google image reverse search will be able to quickly and easily pull up any and all profiles connected to certain faces; take that as you will. 

Do camgirls pay taxes? Yes. You are in charge of your own business, including filing and paying your own taxes. This is different in each country/region, but it’s a good idea to save 30% of everything you earn for tax purposes. Hire a tax accountant to do it for you properly so you don’t get audited.

Do you have any additional tips to share? Why yes! Yes I do. Here are some miscellaneous shit knowledge that I’ve picked up over time. Enjoy.

- I cam using a mac. Before I cam, I’ll often take 10 to 15 cute selfies using the photobooth app, which I then quickly edit using VSCO cam on my phone. I upload these to an album on my MFC Share (the content hosting ‘store’ page that MFC has) so I can sell these cute photos to people for cheap. Often I’ll make a monthly selfie album that I upload photos to as the month progresses, which encourages members who purchase it early in the month to keep checking back for more photos. It’s a good way to hype myself up and feel cute before cam, while also creating content to sell that fosters the building of my regular base. 

- Also with respect to camming and my mac, if I do something sexy on cam, like a strip tease or a bath show, I’ll hit record on my photobooth app while I’m streaming to record my webcam’s output. I can then edit this footage after I log off cam to sell for cheap, or to give to members who contributed toward my goal or something. 

- It’s good practice to reply to all offline tips. While I might not reply to video or photoset sales through MFC share all the time (sometimes my inbox gets super busy), it is important not to let offline tips go unnoticed. Appreciating people’s tips makes them want to tip again. Ignoring them makes them not want to return. 

- Do not just sit on your phone when you’re bored on cam. Get up, dance around, show off your body, talk to yourself about nothing. You’re not there to be entertained (although it’s fun when you are, of course) - you’re there to be entertaining. Shake off the anxiety and shake ya butt instead.

Waiting For Your Moment To Fall On Me (Vixie) - Pilandok

AN: I haven’t been here in a while. Oh wow, I’m writing Vixie again. It’s because of the odd resurgence of Vixie pics on tumblr and Trixie’s ig story of that poodle figurine and she tagged Violet. *tears*

This is part of my drabble collection in Ao3 although it’s longer than a drabble. Read the other drabbles here:

I Love You Anyway

It’s the Same Old Thing

The first time Violet kissed Trixie, it was a joke, though more like a prank. A little mean-spirited gesture meant to throw Trixie off and it did. He reacted the way Violet wanted to: frustrated, blubbering, and blushing furiously. Before Violet could bask in her victory, production came over and scolded them, saying they should stop bickering like children and in not too many words that this was not the kind of drama they were looking for. Not them throwing playground insults (“no, you’re the ugly bitch”) at one another.

           Trixie had all but forgotten that fight until he watched that episode of Untucked and found that it didn’t make the cut. Trixie didn’t think too much about the disappointment he felt. He wanted to know how it looked like.

           “It would’ve made great TV!” Violet shouted. This was in another time, in another place—in Violet’s New York apartment just after her fashion show. Miss Fame was there and, through a series of random happenstances, Trixie was, too.

           “Yeah, if I was going to get assaulted by you on day twelve of you not showering then the least I could get was more screen time.”

           “Must be because they couldn’t think of a storyline between the season winner and someone who was there for like a total of two seconds,” Violet replied. She was clinging to Miss Fame, demanding affection like a cat.

           “Bitch!” Trixie screams.

           “Wait, that happened? That happened?” Fame asked, confused as ever. She turned her head side to side to look at Violet and Trixie who were sitting either side of him. They didn’t answer her. Trixie looked at Fame affectionately and hugged the arm that Violet wasn’t clinging to. Fame leaned against him slightly. When Violet saw this, she made a sound and repositioned herself to curl up on Miss Fame’s lap.

           “Did you just purr?” Trixie asked, laughing.

           “Shut up,” Violet retorted. What she hated was that Trixie got under her skin as much as she did him and can that he can throw her off, too. She still hadn’t forgiven Trixie clocking her missing contact that first day in the workroom.

           “That’s what happens when you spend too much time around that evil cat of yours.”

           “Do not come for my cats, bitch.” Violet sat up to glare at Trixie. “Just because your only friends growing up were the feral mutts you had to take flea baths with, you country hick.”

           “No, I’m serious, Violet. Your cat looks like it’s plotting to kill you for your pasties.”

           “Bitch, you’re just jealous they got more hair than you.”

           The bickering and fighting for Miss Fame’s attention wasn’t new, it was a familiar scene for all of them. It wasn’t just Fame, it was anyone who gets caught up in their stupid arguments. But with Katya, she has enough affection to give both of them, and Pearl doesn’t care enough to humor either of them. Fame enjoyed the attention but she can’t help but think about those cockfighting videos he watched when he was younger that left him traumatized.

           By the time Fame left them for a sanity break, Trixie and Violet have circled back to “you’re the ugly bitch” and “no, you’re the ugly bitch.” Back and forth, they throw shallow insults at each other that became so convoluted and obscure that it was driving them to hysterical laughter.

           “Fuck,” Violet was tearing up, the laughing was hurting her sides. “In drag, you look like a factory-reject matryoshka doll that came out of Katya’s ass.” Trixie opened her mouth to scream but Violet wasn’t done yet, “and out of drag you look like a homunculi baby Jesus that Mary regretted not aborting.”

           “Oh my god,” Trixie laughed in disbelief. After a beat he quipped, “it’s homunculus, by the way, singular.”

           Violet punched his abdomen slightly and Trixie realized that she was resting her head on his lap. With Fame in the other room, Violet had redirected his affection to Trixie.

           “No bitch, plural,” Violet answered, “you’re literally a thousand ugly babies.”

           Violet had been tracing her fingers absentmindedly on Trixie’s stomach and suddenly he became conscious of the shift in the mood. An odd tension bubbled up He felt compelled to continue their insult trade-off to escape the strange atmosphere.

           “And you… you’re—you look like…” Trixie was coming up with blanks and he caught Violet looking at him smugly. He realized that Violet knew exactly what was she was doing.

           “You can’t think of anymore cause you know I’m pretty,” Violet said, now fully confident, “you know I’m hot.”

           Trixie is sure that it was meant to be a jab but it sounded like a challenge. They’ve been arguing the whole night, he wasn’t about to give up now. He just needed to throw Violet off once more. And he knew exactly how to do that.

           They had their second kiss that night—and their third, their fourth, and fifth, and sixth.

—

           Their seventh was the start of a game. In a boat full of drag queens, the objective was to not get caught. Trixie didn’t know how it escalated to that point, but the next thing he knew, they were ducking corners to sneak quick kisses from each other. In the crowd, they catch each other’s hands with lingering touches and without anyone looking, they share knowing winks.

           It concerned Trixie slightly that Violet was living her best life playing this game—giggling whenever she managed to steal a kiss before Trixie even saw her coming, grabbing her ass in the presence of other people, then whispering for him to follow her to darker rooms for full make out sessions. Trixie followed, naturally, though he realized soon enough that it stopped being a game they played together because now they were on different teams. His task became that he had to keep up with Violet jumping around endlessly, popping out of nowhere to tease him. Violet’s objective seemed to be to get Trixie, who wasn’t in drag, to pitch a tent. And with that, Violet nibbled on Trixie’s ear then ran off. Trixie’s sure she was playing to win.

           Maybe they weren’t as secretive as they thought they were, especially with the free-flowing drinks leaving them significantly buzzed.

           “You have something on your neck,” Kim Chi said, making a motion to wipe it off. Trixie rushed to wipe it himself and found some pigment of what was unmistakably Violet’s purple. Kim Chi looked at her with a raised eyebrow. Trixie ignored it and turned to look for Violet, spotting her a few acquaintances over talking to some people. He waited for a few seconds before marching over, catching her as she was trying to slip away from the conversation.

           She laughed when he explained her carelessness, “thought you knew, bitch.” Violet patted him on the crotch as she walked away for good measure. Despite his irritation, he felt something stir up inside him. He was losing bad. Trixie rushed to follow Violet who was already talking to another group of people. He cut in unceremoniously.

           “Oh, excuse me. I’m going to need to borrow Violet because some folks were looking for her to talk business,” he said innocently and turned to Violet. “Vi, those people from ancient-twinks-dot-com want to talk to you about the project you proposed?”

           Violet’s mouth dropped in disbelief but before she could protest, Trixie grabbed her by the wrist and began cutting through the crowd. He led them to the bathrooms, gendered signs being ignored throughout the night, and pulled them into the nearest one.

           “Bitch, you—mmph! “Violet’s lips were quickly occupied by Trixie’s as he pushed her against the wall of the bathroom. It was a hungry and hurried kiss with his face pressing harshly onto Violet’s. Her arms darted out to steady herself but Trixie was quick to hold on to her wrists to pin them above her head. Fuck, Violet thought she may be starting to lose again, whatever this game was. They kept changing the rules that she didn’t know exactly what it entailed to win.

Violet didn’t struggle against the grip, instead returning the kiss with equal vigor. Trixie didn’t let off, continuing to kiss her roughly and in the heat of the moment, he bit down on her lip harshly.

           Violet responded with a strangled noise, bucking her hips instinctively.

           This reaction surprised Trixie enough to pull away. He released his grip on her arms and they fell limply to her sides as she slid slightly against the wall. Violet looked spent and the sight of her flushed and panting redirected whatever blood flow was left to his brain southbound.

           Trixie let himself slump forward on to Violet. She felt his whole body against hers and found the rigidness between his legs pressing against her thigh. Trixie took her hand again and guided it to press against his erection over his pants. Violet perked up, this had got to be an admission of defeat.

           “Nobody makes me as hard as you do,” Trixie said in a strained voice. It was a strangely intimate statement. More intimate than Trixie probably realized. This caught Violet off-guard and despite her flushed skin, she blushed. Her sure-win was suddenly becoming unclear again as her mind began to race at Trixie’s words. Violet kept thinking about how much she liked having Trixie like this, pressed up against her and so very conscious about how much he wants her.

           Trixie didn’t make an attempt to move and was seemingly unaware of Violet’s internal crisis.

           “It wasn’t the game or whatever,” Trixie began, “I brought you here cause I wanted to do that.”

           Violet wondered if Trixie was hearing what he was saying, she wonders if he’s still playing the game because her winning was starting to feel like she was losing again. But this time, he seemed to have little desire to analyze his own words, just content in having said those things out loud. Violet remained quiet, although she could swear that Trixie could feel her heart rattling against her rib cage. If he did, he didn’t say anything about it.

           A few minutes more passed before Trixie pushed himself off Violet, gesturing to the door. Violet understood this as them needing to get out before people got suspicious. Trixie chuckled when he saw how messed up Violet looked. She glared at him but was met with Trixie’s apologetic smile. For some reason, neither of them was saying anything. Trixie left first and Violet took the time to fix herself up and gather her thoughts. Her mind was in a whirl, she wanted to do something about it.

           It was easier than she thought, to forget that they were in a game. Even though everything before was just that.

           Violet suddenly rushed out of the bathroom to look for Trixie, the thought of the game now filed under things that don’t matter. No more sneaking around, she just wanted to kiss Trixie again. Maybe in the middle of a boat full of their peers and queer cruisers, it didn’t matter.

           She found him on the other side of the deck, leaning against a railing. Violet made her way to Trixie, not noticing that he was talking to their friends. Trixie spotted her when she was a few meters away and made a face as if he hadn’t seen her all night long. The fake expression fell away, however, when he realized Violet was making a beeline for him.

           Right before Violet reached him, there was a loud explosion in the sky behind Violet. She didn’t turn around, however, fixated only on Trixie. She watched the flashes of colors appear on his face and only then did she realize that they were surrounded by people they knew.

           Fuck it, let them see.

           Violet pulled Trixie by his shirt and pressed her mouth onto his. When Trixie wrapped his arms around her waist, it felt like her last victory for the night.

           When they pulled away from the kiss, the fireworks were still ongoing. Everyone on the deck was fixated on the sight. Including everyone around that they knew.

           Trixie looked at Violet incredulously. Nobody saw them.

           “How did you know that there was going to be a fireworks display?”

           Violet laughed, as surprised as Trixie was because she had no idea, no idea at all.

🔥🔥🔥 rant freely. go wild

send me a “ 🔥 “ for an unpopular opinion — ( accepting )

🔥 

let’s get controversial ! SGKLGFJFLGDS

gonna start off strong bc this will never Not bother me and i read someone else’s rant about it earlier. Stop Making Self-Inserts/Projecting Muses !!! i’ve seen my fair share of them over the years but some of y’all ( generalizing here as always, dw dgfklsd ) OUTDID yourselves in the last what, fourteen, fifteen months ? if they’re either a placeholder for how you view yourself/how you work through your insecurities/whatever or for what you WISH to be/what you wish to DO in relationships or something of the sort, Log Off. all it does is put more pressure on people Not to offend you, thus compromise their characterizations if you’re particularly sensitive over Any amount of teasing or critical, IN CHARACTER, discourse. now, obviously certain topics are exempt from this behaviour, but if you’re projecting your insecurities onto Most of your muses, are almost Too invested in how other muses perceive yours/get defensive when people hit back or respond in a certain way, or are making them like yourself for any other reason, you’re no longer portraying a muse and people can see that from a mile away. i know it sounds harsh, but cut it out, log off, take a walk and some much needed time to yourself before getting back into a group or your indie because it’s not healthy for you nor the muns you interact with

🔥 

branching off of that Slightly and to a topic i’ve ranted about Enough, but ( generalizing again ) some of y’all need to fucking STOP getting contrary over ships or pushing for them, BOTH preferably. you should also stop initiating flat, boring ships the Second you join a group bc of your thirst and your gay asian fetish. DSLJGFDK this is really just specific to a couple of muns i’ve encountered, but i cannot stomach any of this shit anymore. focusing on the rampant Hets in the rpc, some of them can’t accept their target giving anyone else their attention, thus they have to sabotage it in some way or they have to get pissy in general. and it’s fucking ridiculous, it’s Fictional Cock honey ! as for those ( a MINORITY, let me make that clear ) who portray mlm muses Specifically, y’all have to be the most pushy and disturbing people i’ve encountered ! during my time in the k*rp scene, i saw so many cringey and fetishized portrayals from girls and guys alike ( the guys are usually not at fault, they wanna show some representation ! they just get involved with, at times, questionable muns and muses when it comes to shipping ). the worst was, and still is, seeing borderline harassing shit ic that They think is charming and is gonna get them a ship or just some smut. but what bothers me most are the mlm muses who are portrayed as the same whiny asian twinks, sometimes still MINORS in their home country and getting involved with fcs in their mid-to-late twenties, and get outrageously sexualized by their muns — it makes my stomach churn when it’s a mlm mun doing all this too, and acting like a kboo even with their WHITE bottom muses. basically, every Gross element that comes with these pushy, possessive and petulant muns can fucking ROT already, stop validating them bc of representation, their fc, the mun’s hierarchal position in an rp ( such as an admin or an admin’s friend ) or my personal favourite angle, “ their sexually liberated, bold personality ! ” with a specific, lgbtq mun in mind

sidebar, i know it’s odd of me to go on a tangent mostly focused on mlm muses and at times, mlm muns, but it’s only because a lot of shit with m/m interactions that would not be acceptable towards m/f or f/f interactions have often gotten a pass and i don’t agree with it at All. idk if it’s certain sections of the community enabling it or what, but it has to stop because it doesn’t do mlm muns or muses any favours, it doesn’t do other lgbtq+ muns any favours either and in acting like these “ cool and bold and funny ” portrayals and muns are above the standards Set with other pairings is honestly vile. i wanna see mlm muses be given dimension in groups, i wanna see them flourish without being predominantly sexual beings or sexualized, and i wanna see them treat other muses ( and the muns behind them treat other muns ) in a rational fashion — not tossing out some weird blowjob insinuations at them out of left field and without talking about it, ESPECIALLY with minor muns. frankly, i want it for all muses, but godDAMN people, do right by your boys who like boys, they deserve so much better than they get

🔥

uhh, so i snapped a little Too Much in those first two that idk what else to say rn KJGDSFFG

pineapple on pizza isn’t the fucking end of the world ?? like, this constantly, imo heated more than chill debate is SO childish and for what, a topping you Don’t have to check the box on when ordering in if you and your pals don’t want it ? or better yet, one that doesn’t need to be on the Whole pizza, just a section for the pal who likes it. pineapple’s Good, sometimes it’s good with a decent meat topping because sweet + savoury ?? is Good. do i have it all the time On the pizza ? 90% of the time it’s on it, bc my mom likes hawaiian sometimes, i pick it off and eat it by itself because i like pineapple in itself, but will i bitch and bawl because it’s on there ? at 21 years old, you best believe i’m grown up enough not to care, much like i don’t care if there’s mushrooms on anything when i Despise them. because i pick them off and move on with my day or i ask for them Not to be on it. and yeah, i’ll reblog posts about controversial foods or toppings, but it’s before everyone takes So Much of the piss out of it that it comes off as bitter and snide. @ tumblr and twitter dot com, stop making lighthearted debates so Deep that people get uncomfy or get side eyed for it, that it doesn’t feel like a joke when it gets to a Point, and over fucking pizza toppings especially, jesus

I recently had my senior recital for upright bass and would love to share the link to the YouTube video with you for you to watch at your leisure. Is there a way to do this while remaining anonymous and not having to make a Tumblr account? Prayers and good vibes coming at ya.

my submissions are open and good for anonymous sending, it'll look similar to this

but where it's got my name it will as you for a name and email address,

feel free to lie

Then you click up where it says text and that dropdown menu shows up and it will ask you for the embed code or video URL, so you can just paste it in there.

I will also happily not publish things you don't want published, I had so many weird things in my old inbox that I was asked to not publish.

one of my favs was a tour of Blue's house when he was in the process of looking for one to buy, that and some odd pictures and other stuff

Anything you want kept private will be kept private, I'm not the type to betray a confidence.

Or even easier you can send the link like you do with these asks but just

youtube com /watch? v=LKkhfH8zSxM

delete the dot between and add a couple spaces here and there like I did with that.

Not sure why I didn't start with that.

Hopefully one of these works because I'm looking forward to hearing this.

Prayers, good vibes, and good feeling back at you and I hope your mom's foot is healing well.

Halloween 2021 - Day 1 - Us (2019)

‘tis Halloween season once again!

It’s October, it’s Tumblr dot com and that can mean only one thing; another boat load of horror adjacent movies and possibly the odd TV show thrown in for good measure. And hey, we might have skipped out on the Stand finale and I didn’t do Halloween 1978 as I planned but I had a fair few entries last year. Christmas...not so much. Some of these years really seem to blend together because I thought for sure I had watched Get Out last year but, no, apparently it was 2019. Relevant because for this opening day I’m looking at Jordan Peele’s directorial follow up; 2019’s Us. Maybe next year I’ll watch 2021’s Candyman that he, whilst not directing, was involved in writing and producing. I love how certain sections of the internet immediately flipped their lids over that and were like “He’s going to make it political and about race. Stop bringing politics into movies!”. Ah yes, unlike the original Candyman which we of course know did not involve race in any way, shape or form.

This movies broader points about class structures and wealth ineaquality can easily be applied to all of society but it’s perhaps no coincidence that the protagonists are an African American family. Whilst the racial themes are quite as strong as in Get Out, it’s still evident to see the difference in opulence between the Wilson’s and their more wealthy white friends.

There’s a moment in particular when the Wilson’s are at their friends house and you get this shot of their two boats side by side. Their dirty speed boat that constantly veers to the left and with an engine that cuts out all the time is dwarved by the SS BYACTCH. It’s not something that’s dwelled on or talked up but I think it’s a nice little piece of visual universe building. And for that talk of wealth inequality, you can’t complain too much if you’ve got yourselves a summer house and a speed boat, no matter how shabby it is.

That boat does lend some measure of humour to the film that kinda threw me off guard given how tense the second quarter of the movie gets. There’s something really funny about this vicious killer stopped dead in their tracks when the boat cuts out, having to resort to the old bloke trick of ‘Technology doesn’t work? Smack it with your fist!’ It worked for the Fonz. I feel that’s something we’ve really lost in this modern age of techonological advancement, you can’t get any good surface area to give the telly a smack these days with all these LCD’s and OLED’s. You could really bring the smackdown on those old CRT’s.

That whole vicious killer thing is also something of a departure from Get Out which was more of a psychological trip. They both share these creepy elements but there’s something more immediate and visceral here when you have this family being stalked by these shadowy figures in the middle of the night before they start being set upon and this whole home invasion plays out.

Actually, the start of that scene is a bit of a mix between the creepiness and terror when they just see this family holding hands in their driveway in the middle of the night. I know I’ve probably touched on this before but you know where you stand when Michael Myers or Jason Vorhees are marching towards you with their bloody knives drawn. What the hell do you do though when there’s just bunch of people on your property at 2am, unmoving and smiling politely?

Not that they have polite intentions, when we find that these are the dopplegangers of this family referred to as ‘The Tethered’. Sort of like corrupted, shadow versions of their normal counterparts who have gone through near enough the same exact experiences but in a more twisted way. The normal person might eat a warm, delicious meal but the shadow consumes only raw, bloody rabbit meat. The normal person might meet someone, fall in love and get married but the shadow is compelled to meet with their partner based on the actions of their double. The normal family might give birth to beautiful, healthy children but the shadows are blessed only with wicked, sadistic offspring. And, again, it’s hard not to draw parallels when you have a black character talking about living this less privileged life in the shadow of the more well off.

It becomes infinitely more terrifying when you come to realise that this isn’t just isolated to the Wilsons, their friends have also been visited and killed off by their own evil selves. It’s like, even if you outrun your own shadows, it seems like there’s nowhere to run with the news showing shaky footage of similar red clothed people committing seemingly random attacks.

Small point on the other family but, between this and thinking back to her role in The Invisible Man remake, Elisabeth Moss just kinda ‘gets’ that whole facial expression thing. Whether it was the paranoia and fear of Invisible Man or the maniacal expressions of her evil version here, she does a really great job of selling it. Again, it’s only a small role in the grand scheme of the whole movie it’s pretty chilling to have her preening herself in the mirror to the sound of classical music. And then the Wilsons arrive to bludgeon everyone to death to the sound of ‘Fuck the Police’ by N.W.A so, you know, contrast...

I feel like parts of the finale are a little tacked on, like the whole story behind where the Tethered came from just feels a little thrown together, that they’re these clones that were designed by the government in order to control their counterparts on the surface. It’s just sort of left at that and not explained any further.

The setting is certainly very eerie though, a lot of strange imagery going when Addy ends up going through the underground complex with it’s singular escalator that is lit up like a Christmas tree, or the long, white corridors littered with rabbits. I’m not sure what the metaphor is behind the rabbits, other than her following one into the complex which is maybe a nod to Alice in Wonderland or the general idea of ‘going down a rabbit hole’.

Bit of a nod to A Nightmare on Elm Street too as she makes her way through a boilerroom.

The whole Hands Across America thing I’m a little confused on too, it’s something that’s focused on near the end that it’s something the Tethered have almost idolised with this one item they have referencing it. Quite why they’re replicating it though, maybe it’s symbolic of how the Tethered have all joined together in this one cause. Or, as the Evil Addy says she wanted to make a statement, maybe this was her way of doing that in a similar way to how Hands Across America was so widely covered in its time. It kinda goes along with the idea of the Tethered being this mirror image, them doing it now is like an inverse of the original idea of it promoting charity and helping the less fortunate. Now those truly less fortunate are using it to their own ends.

And that ties in to the coolest part of the movie, this general idea of symmetry. It’s something that’s touched upon near the start with the idea of symmetry and coincidences brought up, like when one of the kids points out the clock reads 11:11 which had up to this point popped up on a few signs referencing a bible verse. It affected me a little bit in a similar way to Invisible Man where I started to really look for things in the movie that were maybe going on in the background that were meant to be subtle hints. But as the movie wore on, I started to realise it was itself playing out in this mirrored way; like how it starts out at this fun fair at night but ends at the fun fair in day time. Or how the normal version of one of the kids is encouraged to snap along with some music at the start of the film, then near the end his evil version is snapping along too, only he’s mimicking a lighter since he’s a bit of a pyromaniac. That song incidentally being ‘I Got Five on it’ which is used near the start and then again near the end, only that time it’s an eerie orchestral remix that soundtracks the fight between the two Addy’s.

Which is a really neat fight scene as well, you’re used to these slasher type villains just overpowering their victims or brutally stabbing them but the evil Addy uses her dance background to gracefully dodge Addy’s attempts to attack her. It’s like a bizarre dance routine between the two of them, brings a whole new meaning to fight choreography.

Oh, and that ending too, that’s a whole different level of confusion too. Not in terms of what happens, more just the way it makes you feel. I saw it coming that the two Addy’s were switched in the incident that took place when she was a kid but it plays with your idea of a happy ending. Like, this whole time you were rooting for the ‘good’ Addy to overcome the evil version that had come to kill her and her family, but then you find out that she was the evil one all along. It’s not quite on that level of gut puncher as The Mist but still a neat twist.

But yeah, really cool movie on the whole. Aside from Candyman, I’ll also be looking forward to Peele’s next movie which is apparently slated for next year and will feature Daniel Kaluuya again.

do all the odds :~)

ur crazy for this shit1. Is a kiss considered cheating?uh ya i think so3. If you could have one superpower, what would it be?shapeshifting duhh5. Tell us some funny drunk story.apparently when i was drunk a few months ago i befriended a girl i had just met and forced her to promise to watch forrest gump with me and i have no recollection of this7. If you had to choose one way to die, what would it be? stabbed/murdered in general9. Do you like someone?uhh i mean kinda. i have small crushes on a few ppl rn but nothing big!11. Do you like your body?no i hate it 13. If the whole world listened to you right now, what would you say?this is such a big q, i guess id promote my art idk tht seems boring15. If you could choose only one food to eat to the rest of your life, what would it be?begetals. i love a good veggie17. Something you don’t mind spending all your money on?i only ever spend my money on my friends and food19. When was the last time someone told you you were beautiful?elizabeth said it like the other day but she says it all thw time, besides that probably never tbh21. Do you keep a journal?i make a lot of lists of things which is similar, i also keep a sketchbook but not a real journal i guess23. Is farting in front of people irrelevant?i dont understand the question and i wont respond to it25. Are grades in school important?umm artistically i wanna say no27. What was the last book/movie that really impressed you?i watched american psycho again last night and it always leaves me absolutely shaken because its an amazing movie. also when i saw 2001 a space odyssey i like couldnt even speak after it was so good!! for books: misery by stephen king29. Dumbest lie you ever told? god i dont even know i lie about dumb shit constantly but its mostly just small stuff its never rly gotten me in trouble31. Something you did and you are proud of?got a REAL job designing logos for a business :))))) im really excited33. Something you are good at?this is hard to answer honestly. im pretty good at art but not lately35. How are you feeling right now?nauseous mostly. a bit depressed37. What do you need to be happy?the thing that makes me the happiest is spending time with my friends that i love39. What was the last gift you received?someone made me a friendship bracelet41. What was the last concert you went to?saw twin peaks at taste of chicago :-) and LOVED it43. Who inspires you?my dad45. How old were you when you first got high?ripe age of 1647. When was your first kiss?the day after my 8th grade graduation49. Is there something in the past you wish you hadn’t done?i regret a pretty big chunk of stuff from my past but most recent big one is letting this horrible person fuck me over badly and KNOWINGLY51. Who are you most comfortable around?my closest friends53. What kind of books do you read?sci-fi/fantasy mostly!! but i also love a few realistic fiction books55. What is your favourite flower?poppies i think57. What kind of people are you attracted to?this q is pretty vague but nice and funny people. nice is essential59. Is there something you don’t eat? Some food that truly disgust you?i fucking hate mushrooms61. Something you find romantic?its SO easy to be romantic to me like just going out of the way to think of me is like the number one thing to make me fall instantly in love63. What are 3 things that irritate you about the same sex?i love girls theres nothing every girl does that bothers me65. What are you saving money for?moving out asap67. Are you actually a good person? Why?tough. im chaotic neutral and very much so, im rly good to people i care about but anyone who makes me upset i treat them like shit with no remorse69. Have you ever done anything illegal?i KNOW a cop is reading this. i uhhh decline 2 answerjust kiddin ive done the usual illegal stuff. drugs and alc and some small time crimes71. Have you ever made someone feel bad about themselves intentionally?ya and i havent really regretted any of the times that i have73. Have you ever cheated on someone?nope i would rather die75. Is there a blog you visit every day, or almost every day? Tag it! i go on tumble dot com once a week at most77. Favourite TV series?the office, psych, twin peaks79. What was the last book you read? Did it impress you and why?the last book i actually finished was misery by stephen king and it was VERY impressive and i would recommend it to anyone who likes horror/thrillers81. How long have you been on Tumblr?since 2012. god83. McDonalds or Subway?subway is disgusting and expensive. mcd85. Alcohol or drugs?im typically more of an alc guy87. Meaning behind your blog name?its my one personality trait and my age89. Last time you were insulted?my therapist told me my haircut was ugly today but it was indirect91. Perfect date idea?perfect date idea is someone taking me on a date. but uhh idk a picnic at night with some good music would be so ideal93. What colour are the walls in your room?yucky purple color that i hate with some painted over areas in random colors95. Share your favourite quote.quote from man stabbed: "what are you going to do, stab me?"97. Do you like horror movies?love! them! but its hard to find good ones i feel like99. Do you feel lucky or special in a way?i feel incredibly lucky that i know the most amazing people and that they are my friends

Anna told me to do the whole thing so here we are I guess

How did you choose your name? IDK I just wanted to still have a name that wasn’t like ~weird~ but still unique 

What gives you the most dysphoria? (Acknowledging that not all trans people experience dysphoria) even tho I got my tiddies removed i still feel kinda weird abt my chest if i’m not wearing a top lol…also a weird one but lipstick

Do you have more physical dysphoria or more social dysphoria? social maybe? it’s just sort of there all the time so

What do you do to perform self-care when you’re feeling dysphoric? what i always do when im feelin down - EAT LOTS OF FOOD

What was the first time you suspected you were transgender? uhhh i think the first time i suspected it as a like TANGIBLE THOUGHT was this one time when i was out w/ friends and had to go to the bathroom and i absolutely had an epiphany in the bathroom that i wasn’t a girl hahahahaha

When did you realize you were transgender? idk how this is different from the last one and i dont rly remember when it was that i like officially stopped thinking of myself as a girl

What is your favorite part of being transgender? other trans ppl probably. stay awesome, trans peeps

How would you explain your gender identity to others? mostly genderless, but i fluctuate around

How did you come out? If you didn’t come out, why do you stay in the closet? Or what happened when you were outed? im out w/ family/friends, who all found out in diff ways i guess? some ppl i just told, i also wrote stuff on tumblr & fb about it

What have your experiences with packing or wearing breast forms been? no experience with either lol 

What are your experiences with binding or tucking? binding sucked haha i defo wore my binder way more than i should have and got that Big Back Pain so i eventually mostly stopped and then got my bops chopped off

Do you pass? nahhh (is it even possible to pass as nonbinary??? question for another day)

What (if any) steps do you want to take to medically transition? got top surgery, idk abt hormones cuz i dont see myself as transmasc and am not interested in looking Very Masculine but i would like to look Less Feminine

How long have you been out? uhhhhhhh year a half maybe???????

What labels have you used before you’ve settled on your current set? none, tho i wouldnt say i’m particularly ‘settled’ haha

Have you ever experienced transphobia? sure have

What do you do when you have to go to the bathroom in public? usually the women’s restroom, sometimes mens if it is more convenient

How does your family feel about your trans identity? mixed reviews lol, some of my family is super supportive, some of them are like “why are you doing this” etc

Would you ever go stealth, and if you are stealth, why do you choose to be stealth? i mean i guess i’m stealth at work bc i worry abt my job

What do you wish you could have shared with your younger self about being trans? i wish that younger me just knew there were options i suppose

Why do you use the pronouns you use? I use they/them bc she/he felt too gendered for me and neopronouns just sound too strange to me personally. I respect and admire anybody that uses neopronouns bc those ppl are paving the way for future generations to have more options that are normalized tho. I just can’t do it myself cuz I have a big fear of standing out which is totally at odds with like everything I wanna be lol

Do your neurodivergencies affect your gender? i dont think so but who fuckin knows

What’s your biggest trans-related fear? NOBODY’S EVER GONNA LOVE ME

What medical, social, or personal steps have you already taken to start your transition? i feel like this has already been covered by previous questions

What do you wish cis people understood? that my gender isnt anybody’s business!! who cares!! 

What impact has being trans affected your life? idk honestly. dont know where to even begin trying to measure that

What do you do to validate yourself? well sometimes i like to argue with strangers on the internet 

How do you feel about trans representation in media? i love the increasing representation in the media and it makes me very happy to see being trans normalized and validated, but obviously there still just isnt enough good representation

Who is your favorite trans celebrity? angel haze maybe

Who is the transgender person who has influenced you the most? hmmm well i think that trans people i know irl are the ones who have given me the most courage. when i see other people come out or change their name or use they/them pronouns or WHATEVER i’m like “wow if they can do it i can too”.

How are you involved with the trans community, IRL or online? i wouldnt say im really involved w the community in any way aside from just being present here on tungle dot com

How do you see yourself identifying and presenting in 5 years? pretty much the same

What trans issue are you most passionate about? affordable & accessible healthcare!!! 

What advice would you give to other trans people, or what message would you like to share with them? hey buddy i did it (am doing it?) and so can you

How do you feel your gender interacts with your race, disability, class, weight, etc. from the perspective of intersectionality? i feel like skinny white androgynous ppl are the ‘default’ nonbinary ppl which sucks. i esp feel the weight thing bc i feel like it really prevents me from being seen the way i want to be seen. on the class front, i feel fortunate that can afford surgery and whatever else i need

What, if any, is the difference between your gender identity and your gender expression? i feel like my gender expression is super feminine to other people. but to me i feel like my expression is pretty much aligned w/ my identity  

Do you feel more masculine, feminine, or neither? neither

What is your sexual and romantic orientation, and what are your thoughts on it? sexual - idk i think i need somebody to figure it out and tell me. don’t really feel like labeling it right now, but sex is just not big for me. romantic - panromantic cuz i just like everybody. somehow much easier to figure out than my sexual orientation

Is your ideal partner also trans, or do you not have a preference? no preference tho if theyre cis they better not be a douchebag about it

How did/do you manage waiting to transition? honestly i’m a huge procrastinator LOLLL. as long as i keep telling myself ‘haha yeah it’ll happen eventually’ i’m just like ‘cool so i dont have to do it NOW…’ as long as i have the knowledge that it WILL happen im like..i can wait. If I think abt the possibility that it might not happen I freak the fuck out…for a bit I thought it might not be possible for me to get top surgery (due to medical issues) and I was in panic mode.

What is the place (blog, website, forum, IRL space) you get most of your info on being trans or on trans related things? idk i guess i learned a lot on tumbles

Do you interact with other trans people IRL? not super often, i mostly know trans ppl that are just like acquaintances or casual friends. our interaction is limited to liking each others instagram or facebook posts lol

Are you involved in any trans-related activism? nah tho i think it’d be cool

Free space! Answer any question you want, or make up your own question to answer. i refuse to make up my own question