ahh~ i’m so glad you liked my little essay~!! i have a knack for analyzing and interpreting stuff, i just think it’s so fun. plus i needed a way to vent out my thoughts and feelings on the little hyper-fixation i’ve developed from your story, my brain just went into overdrive because of how unique it is so i couldn’t resist.

anyway, thank you, seriously thank you for enjoying it, and i’m super happy to say that i have come up with few a headcanons of my own. these are mainly könig headcanons, so they’re more of my interpretations and analysis on him. let me know what you think~! i hope you have a wonderful read, and please keep doing you, you are a wonderful writer, and incredibly talented!!

okay, so first:

despite könig’s openness and acceptance to engels interest in his weaponry, i highly doubt that he would actually allow her to indulge in using any of them. i would even consider that he wouldn’t even teach her how to use one, especially his guns. sure, he’s gifted her knifes but notice that they’re quite feminine and dainty even, könig does try to engage with engel and her interests but emasculates them in a way that should suit her, a cute little knife is practically harmless compared to the massive destruction of his guns. the furthest he would go to showing her anything is how to hold it, but he still wouldn’t want her to hold it herself, and he won’t even shoot it in front of her considering that would damage her hearing, and he can’t bring himself to do that to his baby.

with that, i do think könig is careful and cautious with his engel. i feel like he tries to filter through the good and the bad for her. yes, we’ve been given instances in which the exact opposite has happened, i.e. him stabbing her boss right in front of her, but that was acted purely on impulse. i think after that, he tries his best, and i mean he really tries to shield her from that ever again unless absolutely needed. however, if she were to ask for that twisted ruthless side of him again, because she has the tendency to be twisted herself, then i’m sure he would have to lay down some ground rules, and although hesitant, in the end, he would do anything for her. but despite that, he does not allow angel to consume things that he perceives to be negative for both him and her, and what i mean by that is that he doesn’t allow her to consume any material that could be triggering for him or anything that could alter her behavior that would negatively effect both of them. so, stuff like world news, social media, anything that could give her a sense of empowerment, he doesn’t allow her to have her own phone, she’s constantly monitored, and she’s never alone once she leaves home because könig has to always check in on her. könig absolutely does not want her to be influenced by anything, it’s another reason why she doesn’t have friends, and knowing she isn’t influenced by anything other than him helps keep him from being paranoid, anxious, and violent.

now, back to könig being a raging misogynist at times, he would definitely believe in the value of gender roles, and i mean nothing is more important to him than the normalcy and complacency of the ideal of gendered roles and relationships. also, i hate to admit it, but he just can’t see his woman doing or portraying anything too masculine, it’s a turn off for him, he prefers if she were to just stay at home and do “womanly things” and be a woman, whatever that entails. i think he would even encourage engel to quit the job that she has now, he probably never liked the fact that she worked in such a masculine environment, working such a dirty job in the first place. the only times when he’ll allow engel to even be remotely dominant is during sex, and it’s only if she wants to be, but even through sex he still has the upper hand and has this, ‘this is only happening because i’m allowing it to happen’ mentality. plus it’s a nice thing to let go, relax, and allow her to take control for a little bit, but he would always remind her, both sexually and domestically, where her place is.

könig is completely shameless when it comes to his physicality. he knows what he’s capable of and he knows engel loves his body, so he uses that to his advantage to show off and impress her more. so that means, more unnecessary bouts of strengths used in front of engel, more commitment to his workouts, wearing less clothes around her (he honestly prefers to be casually nude more than he likes to admit, i also think it’s a kink for him to see her so flustered from it too), and insane sex positions. i think he would really enjoy fucking/eating her out standing up, just anything that involves comfortably lifting her up and possibly manhandling her, in a safe way at least.

also, könig is the most expressive when it comes to his sexuality. again, he has little shame, but it’s only because there’s something so special in sex that allows him to let go and just do what he wants in such an intimate environment, and it’s because of engel that it only amps up way more. so, with that being said, the guy is incredibly kinky and experimental. like i said, he likes casual nudity, but only done on his part, he doesn’t really like engel flaunting her body the way he flaunts his and prefers for her to stay modest, it’s really because of the innocent aspect that she tends to play that gets him going because of it. i also see him thriving in animalistic, predator/prey type of sex, especially if it’s outdoors. every time they’re out hiking, camping, or just happen to be in a large remote wooded area, expect some wild sex happening between these two. he just really enjoys pushing his limits and boundaries through sex for the purposes of showcasing the emotions he is unable to communicate normally, which is why he often has an intense sexual drive, but he also enjoys letting go once in a while, being taken cared of, and feeling loved by engel. könig really bonds well when he has this outlet where his emotions, something he constantly suppresses, can be catered, and very often is his emotions expressed dominantly, whether as a hard dom or soft one, it’s mainly about control and acceptance for him.

something könig would slightly be ashamed of though, is receiving open comfort and affection. his upbringing is super fucked and his lack of affection and love as a child definitely shaped himself as a very undeserving man of any of that, although he craves it immensely. so, as contradictory as it is, while he loves giving devotion and intimacy for selfish reasons, he does have trouble accepting genuine love and warmth for himself. it’s something that takes time for him to recognize that he needs and accepts, especially with the right person. so, yes, he’s very hesitant of these instances, but by god, does engel make it so much easier for him. it’s no wonder he’s so indulgent with her and why he’s constantly pushing her limits, it is not because he’s consciously choosing to do the most insane shit but rather, he doesn’t realize it and it’s inappropriateness. i think if engel were to teach him how to properly love and care more respectfully and appropriately, you know something he wasn’t taught as a child, i think he would be a bit more mentally stable in his behavior. however, i do not think she will, it’s because of his dangerous behavior that drew her in the first place and his toxic, overwhelming personality that solidified her place in their relationship, so there’s no way she’s getting rid of könig’s obsessive, possessive, dominant traits that practically has made him into a sex god, but she will suggest therapy from time to time if he continues to exhibit insecure-like behaviors and especially when he’s going through ptsd episodes. i’m pretty sure he has both ptsd and c-ptsd, and to top that off, personality disorders, and mood disorders, soooo…

last but not least, and this one is purely self-indulgent on my end, he is a serial spender for his engel. dude makes an absurd amount of money for what does, and has no reason to use it… until engel walked into the picture. even since then, könig will buy anything for engel and help her splurge to keep her happy, comfortable, and away from society. this man will get her all the material items that she wants, clothes, a big new house, lots of land, entertainment, all the foods that she wants. want a dog and/or cat? sure! he’ll even supply her with weed if she’s that type of girl, but anything to keep her sane and occupied, he is willing to buy, just nothing too illegal, and definitely no vacation spots, dude is way too paranoid to travel and is not willing to risk it.

IM AM SO SORRY THAT THIS WAS SO LONG 😭😭

These were just pure gold, *chef’s kiss* exquisite!! Every single sentence is perfection. So well thought out, and so well put! I don't even have the words to express how incredible this is (and I call myself a writer lol). Seriously, thank you again!! 💖

Also I want to participate (teacher teacher lemme participate please) by adding a few things:

The first one I wholly agree with, but I also believe König might have a little teeny tiny kink for watching how his innocent Engel brushes her fingertips down the barrel of his huge shotgun or holds one of his biggest knives in her *cute* little hands... The contrast between a woman’s softness and a massive, cold, brutal weapon drives this man crazy.

To indulge in his dark fantasies, he might allow Engel to come to the range with him once or twice. I imagine König getting off on showing a “fragile woman” how to handle and shoot a rifle 🙄 He thinks it’s both horrifying and drugging to see how her smaller body tries to absorb the recoil from his guns. Soon enough he’s like “Ok that’s enough” but not before he has enjoyed that peculiar scene a while longer.

And the fourth oh god. Gave me butterflies. He's shameless. I just know that König sleeps naked. Guy associates nighttime with masturbation – and nowadays, sex with his Engel – so off with his clothes, and off with hers, too. König also gives me semi-somno vibes: he would try to wake Engel up with his dick if he can't sleep. (Give me attention and love and provide me with a distraction from my anxiety! Now...!)

The sixth: yes, I don’t see things getting any "better" as in them suddenly calming the fuck down and learning healthy ways to live and love. They are too enamored with their dark side and as you said, I don't know if Engel would be that fascinated with König if he suddenly developed a conscience and healthy ways to cope with his trauma(s). Their escapades resemble a shared psychosis sometimes, but with time and patience this couple will perhaps find true love and relief together – something bigger and better, a way out of the spiral. They learn to dance on the knife’s edge, so to say. They might even start to behave 🩷

And the last one: YES he would spoil her to bits! One of the reasons for this is that König feels guilty. He doesn't know how to show love and devotion through emotional intimacy so he will try to show it through spending money on her. So yes to all of this.

I see Engel wishing for a pet to keep her company while he's away on longer missions. And König is so thick-skulled he wouldn't even bother to ask what type of pet she wants or if she has allergies, he just shows up with a cat one day like: "Hier. I brought this to you. Do you like my gift? I will bring you a different pet if you don't like this one. 🤨"

(And omg the image of Engel smoking a fat one or using a cute little bong on their porch, perhaps chilling out with that cat and giggling when König comes home... ^^)

Thank you so much for bringing these to us! Tbh I never wanted this essay to end 🩷😭 You're amazing I hope you know that!!

Types of Undertale fans depending on their favourite characters in my experience

Frisk: melts in tears at emotional moments and probably has very interesting headcanons

Chara: impish and a prankster, they have a knack for theory blogs/videos. Also likes chocolate

Toriel: warm and friendly, may have some angst on the side but will put it aside to have a good time. Give them a hug.

Sans: either one of the fangirlsTM of the geocide route or someone who finds him funny for his jokes and friendly attitude. Might break down in tears if hugged.

Papyrus: very passionate and with the most friendly attitude towards other fans. Has encyclopedic knowledge of most hidden details of the game and will use it to their advantage in an argument. Do not try to talk down upon, you will regret it.

Napstablook: Very sensitive and emotional person, deeply cares about others and gets mustteated often. Protect at all costs.

Undyine: DO NOT TRY TO CHALLENGE THEM THEY WILL NOT BACK DOWN AND THEY WILL BREAK ALL YOUR BONES, I REPEAT, DO NOT TRY TO FIGHT OR CHALLENGE THEM IN ANY WAY DO NO-

Alphys: very similar to Papyrus fans, they'd rather analyze the characters for their own merits and have a vision of the story mostly unaltered by fandom exposure

Mettaton: Drama queens/kings/monarchs, very charismatic. Get upset when not at the centre of attention.

Asgore: very reliable, makes you feel welcomed. Might have a difficult family history, loves found family stories.

Flowey: would give the game an 11/10, likes a lot of different types of media, they just think he's neat (might have depression)

Asriel: don't yell at them they will cry. Will be supportive no matter what.

Side characters: quirky, has 1 single feature that defines 90% of their identity (it might be good or a bad thing, depends), VERY passionate about their fave. Consumes fanfiction regularly.

.

W.D. Gaster: forever tainted by fandom exposure. Either into one of the fanmade version or has completely forgotten that Gaster isn't even part of the main story of Undertale. Is fuelled by UT/DR theories

I posted 768 times in 2022

88 posts created (11%)

680 posts reblogged (89%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@gardenvarietyfae

@faerieshearth

@honeyfireandspices

@happyheidi

@the-forest-library

I tagged 30 of my posts in 2022

#marebearsews - 9 posts

#marebearhome - 2 posts

#future home - 1 post

#so many different lil options you can stuff into your bag or pocket - 1 post

#cottagecore - 1 post

#earthy goth - 1 post

#knick knacks - 1 post

#supernatural ended on a good pace to me tbh - 1 post

#im excited about the prequel but i can understand why people dont care about it!! - 1 post

#metal straws !!! - 1 post

Longest Tag: 81 characters

#im excited about the prequel but i can understand why people dont care about it!!

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Sent off hubby and I's Ancestry kits!!! Can't wait for the results huuu

0 notes - Posted November 4, 2022

#4

23 🎈

0 notes - Posted November 9, 2022

#3

man I have like zero energy to message anyone, I feel so bad but also I gotta charge my battery;-;

0 notes - Posted October 28, 2022

#2

✨🌙2022 Goal List🌙✨

-Read one or two books a month, should read about 12 books by year's end

-Finish Atelier Rorona

-Graduate driving school

-Get my G2

-Change my last name

-Get caught up with Endwalker content

-Cosplay Miyuki, Konata, and Pamela

-Stay on top of daily workout or at least remembering to stretch

-Paint the bathroom

-Finish quilt project

-Get craft room in functionable order

-Buy Christian his new PC

-play Star Ocean 2, Suikoden 1-2

-Play Deadspace 1-3 again

-PLAY DEADSPACE REMAKE

-Finish 4 model kits by year's end

-Go vegan and STAY vegan

-Stay ontop of tattooing practice (and don't doubt my abilities!!)

-Put time towards violin practice

As we head into the new year, I've come to realize I need to truly find my passion for my hobbies and move forward with finishing projects. I'm so excited to learn new things and consume new media. I am beyond happy and appreciative for all I have in my life.

0 notes - Posted January 1, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

February 2022 Goals Update

February was really slow for me. I had a really tough go with my mental health struggles, but I did get the craft room done and lookin cute! I've decided to remove violin practice, cosplay, and, some gaming goals because I don't want to feel as restricted when it comes to my free time, plus hobbies are heckin expensive lol Hopefully, I can get my driving school done this March (at least the online bits hehehe) and my last name changed!

2022 Goals

-Read about 12 books by year's end- did like 0 reading lol

-Finish Atelier Rorona- ✅

-Graduate driving school- haven't touched yet lol

-Get my G2-not yet lol

-Change my last name- got paperwork in! Just waiting to go to the office to change it hehe

-Get caught up with Endwalker content-almost done shB main content then it's just the patches to 6.0!- haven't progressed lol

-Stay on top of weekly workout/daily stretch- worked out maybe 3 times? Suck at stretching lol

-Paint the bathroom-gonna do in the spring or late winter, still sticking with doing the walls burnt orange or maybe terracotta- still waiting for springgg

-Finish quilt project-not yet lol

-Get craft room in functionable order- ✅✅ just gotta finish tidying up a couple surfaces but she DONE

-Buy Christian his new PC- still saving $$ but debts are gonna have to come first lol

-Play Deadspace Remake- waiting on release stillll

-Finish 2 model kits by year's end- One out of two complete!

-Go vegan and STAY vegan-not yet lol it might not be right for me with all my allergies but I'm gonna do my best to switch out as much as I can!

-Stay ontop of tattooing practice (and don't doubt my abilities!!)- One practice session is done!!

Feburary Highlights:

-GOT A VINYL PLAYER!! eeee

-finished Persona 5 Royal! I love that game so much and it's one of my favourites hehe

-changed me online handles

-went back to FB and deleted alot of people who I just don't talk to anymore or treated me badly

-got Shining Pearl for switch and I want to cry because it brings back so many memories to my playthrough of Pearl as a kid

- GOT A SNES!! Next is to get a flash cart 😈

-finished TMoHS and it's a lovely anime that's been on my list for like 7 years since I saw it in Christian's collection xD

-finished TDoYN and I swear to god it's in my top three anime. I love and relate to Yuki so much

-started the Planetarian visual novel and it's been pretty good??

-finished that mirror project I've been meaning to do for two months xD

-hair is back to brown huhu

1 note - Posted February 28, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

Blood

Formative media has always been a fascinating subject to me while the idea of objective measurement of media quality has slowly become less so. Review scores and sales seem so quaint next to art and history. Nostalgia, the map-able path someone has taken through the media landscape, their personal feelings, and effects these things have had on their lives is infinitely more interesting than mapping a "canon" path of correct products to consume at the expense of the bad or weird. Meaning and feeling and the esoteric and idiosyncratic; I feel like I need more of these thing in my life. 1997's Blood exists in a weird spot in my mind (and is a weird first topic, perhaps) lighting up a lot of wonder and happiness in my brain when I first played it a couple years ago. A resounding feeling of “I would've really liked if I had a played it around the time it released” stayed with me as I played through it. I played Doom and Quake a ton back in the day though I don't remember a lot of progress; I remember the two Barons of Hell and...no Quake bosses. I think I played Duke Nukem at a VR setup at a theme park or something but otherwise the Build engine games were totally unknown to me. During the quarantine of the earlier parts of the COVID pandemic, I got into boomer shooters. Spurred by Civvie11 videos, I played Duke, Blood, and Shadow Warrior. I finally got into Doom WADs and the massive creative, personal wonderland of that fandom's offerings. Coming out of the full-on zombie mode that had become my work and life and being able to sit and live and not thinking about that place and what else I could be doing with my life was really refreshing. The mix of personal nostalgia, Civvie's sharing of his own childhood favorites, and finding new things to love was euphoric. Quarantine was hard for a lot of people but, for me, deep in my depression and failure and already living a heavily isolated life, it was a welcome change. Blood just works in a lot of ways for me. The pitchfork feels like you're really just prodding enemies, the shotgun is a top tier video game shotgun, the Tommy gun has right amount of pop...just a great arsenal. The Build Holy Trinity, perhaps spurred by a direct sense of competition with Doom and Quake, really go out of their ways to have a fun and diverse toolkit for the players with a lot of explosives and wacky sci-fi and supernatural weaponry. I almost feel like I can leave it at the guns; jumping around with the shotgun, blowing away swarms of zombies with dynamite, and dominating monsters with the Napalm Launcher and Tesla Cannon just feels good. The weapons match the tone of the game perfectly. Blood is spooky Halloween-y and maybe a little steampunk-y; the occult and the macabre mix with cities and industrial areas. The difficulty is high and you are a one-man-army glass cannon alone against the cult that betrayed you and all of this combined with great music and Stephan Weyte's wonderful voice coalesce into something really wonderful. This sense of isolation is something I relate to in a lot of games. I've always felt a hard to time connecting to gamers and sharing my feelings about games partially due to a feeling that these experiences are so personal. This is what I do with my time. This sense of loneliness is really amplified sometimes in these games. Caleb is a drifting zombie man trying to hold it together after losing everything and his shotgun's really neat. I decided to write this after hearing about the Fate of the Damned mod for Blood and decided to play and maybe write my thoughts on it. ...It's pretty good, lol. Both episodes have opened with pretty interesting, slow, light on combat, heavy on atmosphere levels. Cultist at the end of long, dark hallways or around corners is definitely a trend. Fun train level. Accepting Death Wish as an absolute exception of one dude clearly just having an extreme knack for making Blood levels, I wish I was wowed more by Fate of the Damned but it's fine. It's more Blood and it all works, corner after corner of Cultists be damned.

Mods help curb that awful feeling of a text being finished and finite. Blood isn’t just a game from fifteen years ago, it’s a medium in itself for more play and stories and expression.

me before starting anything: I will like this piece of media a normal, acceptable amount.

me twenty seconds in:

Okay I just need to go on a rant about Whirl because I love him he might just be the most tragic character in the entirety of MTMTE and considering the candidates that’s a pretty hard position to cinch. Some of this is gonna have mentions re: self harm, suicidal tendencies/ideation, overall bad coping mechanisms etc so if that’s not your cuppa please scroll on. 

This gets long so here’s the obligatory read more. 

Let’s write “tragic” in flickering neon letters with the fact that Whirl’s first appearance in MTMTE, dropping the titular “how to say goodbye and mean it,” is a personal soliloquy delivered as he’s in the midst of constructing his own funeral pyre. Whirl is lost, directionless, trapped and unwilling to be such in a postwar environment. But how did we get here? 

Whirl is without a doubt a driven character. In the prewar functionist society, he had no qualms switching careers, risks be damned. Whether he’s always had a knack for disobeying authority or was simply driven by passion or both isn’t elaborated on, but he’s got a hell of a hardheaded streak that’s impossible to ignore. When destroying his business wasn’t enough to deter him from further rebellion, the Senate was happy to turn him into an empuratee and destroy not only the opportunity but the capability of continuing to rebel by pursuing his passion. This is what I’d personally consider the big ‘whump’ moment, less so the use and abuse as a pawn that followed but the point of trauma at which we begin to see Whirl’s psyche begin to twist.

From this point forward we see Whirl in and out of prison, let loose when he can be useful to someone else’s ploy and otherwise incarcerated for a buffet of offenses. No longer able to be constructive and having little if any control of his life, Whirl becomes aggressively destructive. In response to having everything he aspired toward ripped away from him, permanently, he builds a mental defense of bitterness and anger and paves over his black hole of self worth with a veneer of outright assholery. It’s here that he bares his metaphorical fangs and pushes - with gusto - anyone who might even suggest they’re trying to appeal to reason or get close to him as an individual. 

It’s hard to imagine, given even subtly different circumstances, that Whirl would not side with the decepticons for the war. While he’s single-handedly responsible for radicalizing Megatron towards violence, the ‘con intent at the start of revolution - that movement in society should be possible and a caste system based on alt mode is unethical - aligns quite nicely with what he’d already aspired to do with his life. His conscription to the side of the autobots is just another instance in which his autonomy is cast aside. 

Whirl is a tool. Whirl had a passion for watchmaking, but now he can’t, so his new passion is violence. Whirl is a gun and someone else has always told him where to point and all he’s ever been given for his cooperation is the blame of pulling the trigger. Whirl is an asshole, Whirl is unpredictable, Whirl isn’t a mech anybody would ever think twice about saving - the answer would always be no. Whirl wants to die. Whirl only wants to die on his own terms and he’ll be damned if he’s going to keel over under the orders of someone he doesn’t respect, for a cause he doesn’t believe in. 

A few years of this sort of treatment would be enough to drive anyone insane, let alone the millennia of warfare he suffered through. Worse yet is the one time he found a group, a team that was known for the unorthodox and taking on the big messy challenges, the Wreckers kicked him out. Whirl was too much for the mechs that were too much and there’s no way in hell that doesn’t still sting. 

That’s how we get here:

Whirl defends himself through isolation from others. He can’t be hurt by others if he never lets them close enough to be hurt by. In a hypersocial society, he has no close long-term friends, he is one of the few with no roommate aboard the Lost Light. He made himself as unpalatable as possible. He’s crass, he’s volatile, he makes it clear with every word and action that Whirl is first, you don’t mean anything, I’d leave you for dead in an instant..... But that’s not true, is it? 

Whirl is shown being completely, dramatically, self-destructively caring throughout the series. Between risking his life for the scraplet colony disguised as a protoform, participating in an untested spark jumpstart to save a life, coming up with a plan to rejuvenate Tailgate’s spark, and performing a spark transplant surgery on Megatron - without whom the world would never have been even a fraction as cruel to Whirl as it had been - Whirl is far from the most selfish character in the series. It’s in his nature, however, to deny such, to the point where he more than likely believes his own narrative that he’s irredeemable, self-absorbed, invincible, degenerate, and neither capable nor deserving of close interpersonal relationships. 

It’s also how we get here:

Whirl is one of the characters that we more frequently see in a state of disrepair. He fights passionately and recklessly, with no regard whatsoever to whether or not he makes it out of a scrum with all his limbs intact. Injuries like these, and those that he experiences elsewhere in the series, would put other mechs out of commission through pain alone, but as long as Whirl is conscious he doesn’t stop until the fight is over. 

As depressing as it is to think that Whirl is simply at this point accustomed to extraordinary pain, it’s even moreso to think about the more likely concept that he wants to be hurt. Whirl doesn’t have control of a lot that happens to him, but do you know what he does have control of? Who he chooses to shit-talk. More often than not we see Whirl being blatantly disrespectful of his superiors, and some of the more dangerous mechs aboard the LL. While obviously his intent when insulting Ultra Magnus isn’t to start a fight, harping on Drift (and subsequently getting cold clocked) or Cyclonus is a little more self-destructive in nature. 

While Whirl has been in therapy, we see during the encounter with Fort Max that he’d shared very little of what he actually considered traumatic with Rung. With no material to work with, Rung wouldn’t have been able to give Whirl instructions or advice as far as a healthy coping mechanism, and so I’m firmly of the belief that Whirl goes out of his way to get himself hurt as a way to have a vague sense of control. 

On his actions and guilt:

Whirl is immensely guilty. When he’s overcharged, he admits that everything feels like his fault - and unfortunately a lot is. Whirl believes he’s the bad guy, and he’s willing to take the fall for actions that others might find immoral. There’s a lot Whirl has done that he’ll likely never forgive himself for, even if he garnered the ability to start forgiving himself for the small things, but the character he’s created for himself has been part of him for so long that it’s near impossible to tell where to draw the line between caricature and his genuine self. 

At this point in time, Whirl is not capable of improving himself without external assistance. 

He has accepted (however wrongfully) that he is not cared about, trusted, wanted, or respected. 

His assumptions become self-fulfilling prophecy as he - consciously or not - works to perpetuate his image. Whirl is a dick, he’s unfazed by anything anyone says about him, if someone is insulting him they’re probably right, why bother arguing unless it’s with the intent to get in a fight? He doesn’t pay attention to others, he doesn’t pay attention to himself, nothing that anybody could say could possibly make a difference. 

Right? Right?

Wrong. Part of what makes Whirl so heart-wrenchingly tragic is that it is so incredibly clear that nobody has ever told him he mattered. Rodimus throws out what could be interpreted as a snide remark, “even the crazy bastard makes a difference,” and that aside sticks with him. Millions of years of warfare, of being a tool to use, an expendable soldier, a rabid dog to throw at their enemies, and not once did someone turn around and say he was anything good. He’s been thanked for saving lives, for contributions, for individual acts, but his reaction to Rodimus really cements in my mind that nobody has ever said that he, that Whirl, was important. 

Whirl is a broken character. He’s subsumed by his own self-hatred that he perpetuates and justifies with a mask of cruel indifference and aggressively abrasive snark. He’s alone, by what he thinks is his own choice but is really a horribly misguided attempt to keep himself safe. He’s got no potential for growth unless someone wants to force their way through his defenses in order to help him find the line between who he is and who he pretends to be in order to keep from being hurt. Whirl is terrified of abandonment, and guarantees that nobody will ever be able to leave him by never letting them come close to begin with. He’s not a good person, he’s violent and callous and has little regard for the consequences of his actions, but he is that way because of the life he was forced to lead. He falls into consistent patterns because he craves control, even if those patterns are self destructive. It’s proof of the little growth he was allowed during the course of MTMTE/LL that after their quest was over, he didn’t attempt suicide again but instead got into the revolving door of incarceration for petty offenses. 

All in all, Whirl is one of the saddest characters in any media I’ve consumed and please someone get this despicable bastard helicopter a new therapist and a stiff drink 

Hope | Bucky Barnes x Reader (Part 1)

 My Masterlist

Series Masterlist

Summary: Being back in your childhood home had certainly brought you some well-needed inspiration. 

Word Count: 2900+

Pairing: (Eventual) Doctor!Bucky Barnes x Patient!Reader, OMC Harry Nelson x FWB!Reader, Rebecca Barnes x OFC Rosie Bender

Warnings: Heartbreak, Bullying, Grey’s Anatomy Spoilers

A/N: This fic was my entry for @wkemeup​‘s 4K Writing Challenge. I DON’T DO TAGLISTS!

When Harry Nelson had first moved to Los Angeles at the age of eighteen, he’d had many dreams of becoming a screenwriter and director. He wanted to make movies that seemed relatable to the general public, with no action sequences or elements of science-fiction, no monsters  or magic, no million dollar budget to be spent on visual effects. Just simple stories about real people, whether it was the kind that made them laugh or the kind that made them cry.

Throughout the span of his twenty-year long career in Hollywood, he had come to realize that the genre of romance movies had their own built-in audience that he could definitely make money off of. The hopeless romantics, as he liked to call them, were a group of people who were always longing to see love stories that don’t necessarily end happily, but still leave them believing that true love existed. 

While he had since directed several romance films that went on to have the cultural impact in the likes of Notting Hill and The Notebook, it hadn’t been until he had met another hopeless romantic did he realize that he was one of them. For a man who never believed in true love, he sure enjoyed love stories. He was a hopeless romantic, as much as he hated to admit it. Whether his story was going to end happily or not, he still had a part to play in it. 

Back when the first instalment of the Hopeless series had turned out to be a success, Harry had simply approached you in request of the movie rights to your novel series. While you hadn’t given in to his request due to not knowing how you might even end the series yourself, he decided to play the long game and wait until you figured out the ending. 

Years had gone by and the two of you had only become best friends, bonding over your mutual love for the romance genre. Many movie nights were spent watching the classics such as Casablanca and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. He had invited you to his premieres and parties, to simply take part in the discourse of what it meant to write a beautiful love story that stood beyond its time. But the friendship you shared had turned to something more when you had found yourselves drunk at an after-party and consumed by lust of all things and not love as one would have assumed. 

Even though becoming one of the love interests in your story had certainly not been his plan all along, he couldn’t complain about it either. A newly single romance novelist and a divorced filmmaker with a knack for romance getting involved with each other was not the strangest thing to take place in Hollywood, not even when you had a ten year age difference. You had kept your arrangement as secretive as you could though, for you did not need the prying eyes of the media to ruin what you had. 

By the time the third instalment had been published, no one had suspected that the muse behind Dr. Jake Winston was Harry Nelson himself. Harry had seemed to figure it out early on though, when you had let him have a glimpse of the first draft. But when he gave you his approval to go ahead with the story, you had made him promise you that he would play the role he helped create if your novels were ever made into movies. Harry had been delighted to accept that if he were to make his acting debut, it would be as one of the love interests of Hope Anderson. 

Being the man who taught you what it felt like to be safe in a relationship, he had always given you a way out of your friendship with benefits. After all, the strings had never been attached to begin with. But that was a path you did not think you would want to take, at least not until now. 

Not that the two of you had managed to drive each other crazy like most Hollywood couples. As unsurprising as that would have been, you felt that you really needed a break from living the California dream and that included what you had with Harry. 

With the fourth and final instalment of your series being due in just a few more months, you found yourself hitting a brick wall with where you wanted Hope Anderson’s story to go. Writer’s block was a curse that you hadn’t really experienced with the last three novels. But inspiration for the fourth novel had just not struck. 

You were well aware that your readers were longing for a happy ending for the girl who had spent a majority of her life being heartbroken. For a strong and career-driven woman like herself, she could easily find someone to settle down with. But that wasn’t what you wanted when it came to the ending of your series. 

You wanted Hope to find some kind of purpose for the journey that she had taken since leaving her hometown for college. You wanted things to be right for her, even if they weren’t necessarily right for you. There needed to be a purpose behind her journey, that was meant to be fulfilled in the final book. 

It had been Harry’s suggestion, being a fellow writer himself, that it might be plausible if the fourth novel took a rather ‘coming-of-age’ kind of path compared to the last three instalment. Reid made her realize that she had moved on too soon, Ethan made her realize that love was messy, and Jake made her realize that there are good men in this world. Neither of these men had been right for her, but then who was? 

“I think our girl Hope needs to go home.” Harry had suggested one night in the midst of your pillow talk. “She hasn’t been home in ten years. I think she needs a little trip of self-discovery, a walk down memory lane… she needs to find herself in order to find her one true love.” 

“What makes you think that she’ll find her true love when she finds herself?” You had asked him, curiously. 

“There’s only one way to find out.” 

The air was crisp as you stepped out of your Uber and grabbed your suitcases from the trunk, leaving a heavy tip for the driver at the end of this dreadfully quiet ride from Indianapolis International Airport to your humble home in Shelbyville, Indiana. 

Being back in this little city after an entire decade in the West Coast sure brought back the good old days for a moment there. But when the cold breeze hit you, you were reminded why you had fled your hometown in the first place. Certainly, you had gotten used to the California sun. But who could blame you though? This place was hell on earth. 

As you dragged your suitcases up the driveway, you could not help but look around the neighborhood that you had grown up in. It seemed as though nothing had changed in the last ten years. Or perhaps, it was just the nostalgia of being back here that made it seem as though everything was still the same when it wasn’t. 

Old man Nick who lived next door still had his ratty old truck parked out front - was that thing still kicking; you couldn’t believe it. The last you heard, his daughters Carol and Maria had moved out to Indianapolis after college and visited the man every now and then. Apparently, he refused to leave Shelbyville as he had lived there his whole life. His wife had lived and died at that house, and he could not see himself leaving behind the memory of her. 

The girls had asked your mother to keep an eye on him, and she had kept an eye on him because she seemed to be the only one in the neighborhood he trusted. Your mother had told you that they were bonding over their mutual empty nest syndrome, but not even her attempt to guilt trip you had brought you back here. 

You hadn’t even bothered to come back here when you had found out that your mother was ill. You had flown her out to Los Angeles instead, and did the best you could to give her the medical care she needed at one of the best hospitals in the country. 

Not even when she had passed away did you ever try to come back and take care of the house she’d left behind for you. You just hated everything about Shelbyville, Indiana, to ever come back. 

But nothing like a little writer’s block to bring you back here. 

You made a mental note to leave a rather sarcastic voicemail for Harry, for convincing you to fly out here on your own and facing a part of your life that you never wanted to return to. God, you hated him sometimes, mostly because he was always right and he seemed to know it. You loved him too. Not the kind of love that destroys you, but the kind that made you realize that you always deserved to feel loved by someone. 

Truth be told, the house was not as bad as you had thought it would be. It just needed a little dusting and maybe a paint job, but it was still your childhood home in every way. Nick had kept it in good shape while you were gone, because your mother had asked him to take care of it in case you had ever thought about coming back home. 

You thanked the man when he handed you the keys, and asked him if you could borrow his truck to run some errands later that day. You just needed to run into town to pick up some groceries and stop by the hardware store to grab some supplies. 

In the meantime, you could use the quiet and the nostalgia to come up with the perfect plot for the final instalment of your novel series. Perhaps you could start off with Hope Anderson returning to her hometown due to her mother being ill, putting a pin on completing her residency and giving herself a break from her arrangement with Jake. 

She spends hours on end sitting by her mother’s bedside, losing her hope as the days rolled by. And when her mother passes away, she copes with her loss by spring cleaning her childhood home and fixing it up. 

*EDIT: 4th love interest? 

You had written a few pages of your first draft when you finally decided to take a break, stretching your arms as you stepped away from your laptop on the dining table. You had been avoiding your childhood bedroom like the plague ever since you had arrived, claiming the master bedroom as yours for the duration of your stay. 

But as you ascended up the creaky stairway and turned the corner to your childhood bedroom, you could have sworn that the last ten years had never gone by. The paint was chipping off of the cream colored walls, multiple posters of the Jonas Brothers pasted against them, never being taken down in your years away. 

You recalled the time you’d had the chance to meet them following their comeback, as one of their wives had starred in one of Harry’s films. You may not have been an overly enthusiastic fangirl on the red carpet, but you were certainly proud of how far you had come from your childhood bedroom. The teenage girl who used to live in this room had clearly grown up, living every dream she’d always had… except one. 

You walked over to the desk at the corner of your room, where the first few scenes of your Grey’s Anatomy fanfiction had been written. You had written more than one hundred thousand words about the undying love between Mark Sloan and Lexie Grey, as though they had never died after that plane crash, not even realizing that the basis of that story would eventually inspire the plot of your third novel. The attending and the resident with a significant age difference - God, could you ever be original with your own writing? 

This was the room where you fell in love with writing, but writing was not the only thing you had fallen in love with at the time. On the bulletin board above your desk remained one photograph, being held together by a thumb tack. 

You remembered the day after your high school graduation, when you had forcefully ripped out most of the photographs you had pinned to that bulletin board and chucked them in the trash bin, along with the feelings you had for the seventeen year old boy who was in those photographs with you. 

A part of you wanted to rip up the last remaining photograph that still remained on that bulletin board, but the ten years you had been away had certainly suppressed the anger you felt towards him. So instead, you left that photo where it was and returned to your laptop, picking up your writing from where you had left off but the thought of him now lingering through your mind. 

James Buchanan Barnes. Your best friend. Your first love. Your first heartbreak. The reason why Hope Anderson’s love life, and yours, had become hopeless in the first place. Perhaps the best way to end this story was to go back to the very beginning, to where it all had started, to the man who had been a part of her life before Jake, Ethan and Reid. 

“Oh Harry, you son of a bitch!” 

Dr. James Barnes let out a yawn as he eyed the CT scans in front of him, even though it was only the beginning of his twelve hour call shift. Only into the second year of his three year residency in emergency medicine, he was starting to familiarize with the intensity of his life as an emergency room physician. Sleepless nights were only the bare minimum. 

Not that he could not handle the stress of running the ER one day, but Bucky was well aware that outside of the walls of Shelbyville Hospital, he did not have a life. No girlfriend to go home to, no hobbies to kill time with and no friends from outside of work to hang out with. Work, sleep, repeat… life was starting to get boring for the poor twenty-eight year old man. 

“You look miserable.” Rosie Bender, the ER nurse on call and Bucky’s former classmate, remarked cheekily at her friend before she slipped into the seat next to him. 

He shot her a fake smile as he set down his patient file back onto the rack, leaning back in his chair and looked over at the nurse. “I’m just bored as fuck, Rosie. As you can see, the ER’s pretty quiet tonight. I just want something to do.” 

“If you’re so bored, you can help me make some calls. I have to finalize the number of people who are coming to this thing by the end of the week. The catering people have been asking for numbers… and don’t even get me started on picking the menu.” 

For the woman who had been head of the Prom Committee back in senior year, planning their ten year reunion was supposed to be a piece of cake. But Rosie was struggling with juggling all of the responsibilities that came with planning this reunion, being the only who seemed to care so much about being able to reunite with some old friends from what had been the best four years of her life. Why did no one else care about this as much as she did?

Truth be told, Bucky could care any less about this so-called ten year reunion. He was well aware that the one person he would be hoping to see would never show up. You hadn’t even come back to town when your mother had gotten sick, let alone to this stupid reunion that was meant to be a remainder of your senior year - the memory that he had ruined for you by being so inconsiderate towards your feelings for him. 

He could never forgive himself for what he had done to you, and to think that he would never have the chance to apologize to you in person. He fucked up, and he pushed away the one friend he had. If he could just see you one last time and tell you how sorry he was, Bucky would give anything. But he knew that all hope was lost on that, at least until Becca Barnes had come rushing into the ER. 

He had just assumed that she was only dropping off some dinner for him and Rosie, but instead she looked over at the two of them with beaming eyes. “You two are not going to believe who I ran into at the hardware store just now...” 

“Is old man Nick renovating the Y/L/Ns’ house again because he’s bored?” Rosie perked up at her girlfriend, giggling softly as she stood from her chair to lean over the desk and peck her lips. 

“No, but close…” The younger Barnes chirped before she turned to her brother. “Y/N’s back in town.” 

Perhaps, all of his hope was not lost after all. 

Every time I read a fic where Nicky just inexplicably ~understands~ Andrew or is the one to explain Andrew’s actions *TO* Neil, my suspension of disbelief automatically snaps. I get that people want to like Nicky and therefore make their versions of him more palatable for themselves, but it’s annoying. That’s not who he is. He doesn’t make any more of an effort to understand Andrew than anyone else and he doesn’t have an inate knack for it either, which some fics would have me believe

the all consuming, uncritical, absolutely blind love for nicky in the fandom is one of my biggest pet peeves. welcome to another rant.

i remember when i read aftg for the first time and dived into the tumblr fandom i very much expected to see posts calling him out at for what he did during their first trip to eden’s bcs isn’t it the bread and butter of tumblr discourse - taking one problematic thing a character did and cancelling them for it forever. however i was surprised to find not a single such post. seriously i’ve been in the fandom for almost a year now and i have been lurking on the old blogs and following the new ones and i have yet to see such a post. here’s the one i wrote back then

https://bloody-wonder.tumblr.com/post/189107928398/so-nicky-discourse

there i mostly talk about the eden’s incident but the point i tried (and probably failed) to get across was not that what he did is Problematic but rather that why he did it is. bcs like with roland it’s self-evident that nicky did a bad thing and it’s also framed as such by the narrative. but taken out of context this single incident can be easily dismissed as a mistake commited by a young inebriated person which they realized was a mistake and apologized for. the fandom is certainly ready to dismiss it and to accept nicky’s apology to neil. fair enough. in fact it would be an example of some very mature thinking on the part of the fandom - if the context of nicky’s behavior and personality wasn’t discarded along the way.

and the context is this: nicky has very rigid and one-sided views about what’s normal and what’s not and he acts accordingly. he thinks it’s normal to feel attraction like he does and to strive for a romantic relationship - hence the “neil you have to date someone or you’ll die unhappy” pep talk. he thinks it’s normal to casually kiss a guy he likes at a club despite him being very obviously uninterested. he thinks it’s normal to comfort people by touching them, so he will do it to andrew although it’s common knowledge that andrew doesn’t like to be touched. when andrew lashes out at him for it - it must mean andrew’s not normal bcs “normal” people like to be touched. andrew doesn’t behave like a “normal” person would, ergo andrew’s crazy. how do we “fix” andrew? how do we make him “normal” again? apparently by forcing “normal” things and behaviors upon him until he’s magically healed by the abundance of care and hugs.

instead of trying to understand andrew and connect with him “from below”, he’s dead set on imposing “normalcy” on him “from above”. like i said in my old post, he doesn’t even seem to give andrew credit for defending him against those jerks and winding up on the pills bcs of it. nicky just doesn’t get andrew to the point of calling him soulles, but seems to be under the illusion that he does everything in his power to understand him. well, on second thought, is it in his power though? i had some hope that after nicky finds out about the nature of andrew’s trauma, he’ll realize some things and his treatment of andrew will change. that didn’t happen as far as i remember. when the gang returns from the easthaven with andrew, nicky’s like “andrew won’t you ask neil why he’s all beaten up? well that’s just rude”. in fact, now i’m remembering that nicky and aaron were telling everybody that andrew’s much worse when sober but?? what’s worse about him? that he isn’t smiling at them? what a scary behavior indeed. or that he isn’t chatting with them? well it’s their problem that they aren’t as stellar conversationalists as neil. i digress. what i’m getting at is that it may very much be not in nicky’s power to understand andrew bcs they are very differend people and come from different circumstances. i’m not saying that you can’t write a plausible arc where nicky learns to communicate with andrew but most people don’t even try. as far as i understand nicky is seen as nothing but kind and if sometimes he makes mistakes, well, they don’t count bcs his intentions are good. but there’s a road paved with good intentions. you know where it leads.

that’s the insidious thing about nicky, that’s why i think he’s one of the most well-crafted morally grey characters and why he fills me with rage - the problematic side of him is hidden beneath the good intentions, the kindness, the jokes, all the other little things that make him nice and relatable, that the fandoms tend to latch on to. we have no problem engaging with characters like andrew critically, it’s easy for us to separate his good sides from his flaws bcs he’s upfront about it. we sure love andrew but we don’t romanticize his bad boy attitude and his knives bcs the media shift in recent years has taught us that “bad” boys tend to be Problematic and you have to watch out. andrew is hard to swallow so you swallow only if you absolutely want to, but nicky is so palatable you don’t even have to drink anything to wash him down, all the while oblivious to what you just swallowed. the “good” boys you have to be critical of as well.

sorry, this metaphor was weird.

lastly, we have to address the elephant in the room - nicky’s gay as the fourth of july. he’s the uwu gay cinnamon roll that has to be protected at all costs. we’re still at a point where, despite gradually getting more and more media rep, gay people feel like the characters they’re represented by have to be paragons of virtue lest the general public think that all gays are like this one imperfect character. so i can see how the aftg fans would want to overlook all nicky’s flaws because they like him and relate to him so much. i can also see how, if he were straight but otherwise retained the uuh... lets say “sexually enthusiastic” facet of his canon personality, he’d probably be burned at a stake by now. there’s this wonderful trend where people rehabilitate seth and aaron by treating them as complex characters. i can only hope that the same thing will happen to nicky some time soon.

so yeah, i 100% agree with all you said. nicky doesn’t understand andrew and the fics where he magically does are ooc. or, you know, those where nicky explains demisexuality to neil. don’t. make. me. laugh. nicky who has forced himself on neil and when that ended in a disaster tried to allo-splain the joys of a romantic relationship to him? nicky, who, upon seeing that neil doesn’t seem to be interested in girls, thought that the only possible conclusion must be that neil’s gay? all of this after neil explicitly told him that he doesn’t “swing”. i’m sorry, writers who hc nicky as some kind of wisened by life sexuality mentor, but he doesn’t know a thing about the ace spectrum.

tl;dr nicky really needs to do some self-reflection but, since he isn’t a real person but a fictional character, the readers need to reflect upon his canon behavior instead, before declaring him to be the kindest, most perceptive and tolerant person in existence. 

1056

survey by katesmarie13 

(Merry Christmas! Or Happy Holidays! Or Happy Friday! <3)

Okay, just a few basics first...THEN the new stuff.

Your full name? I only feel like sharing the name Robyn today.

Your hometown? Manila, kinda. I won’t give away the city I currently reside in.

Age? 22, and a waste of a year it was. I’m so tempted to just turn 22 again in 2021.

Now for something different and completely random...

When you're having a bad day, what comfort food do you reach for? It differs per bad day and it also depends if I can afford to get whatever it is I’m craving. Though for the most part, I’ve found myself pining for samgyupsal the most often. It’s just the ultimate problem-fixer and makes-the-sad-go-away-er.

Do you have an item that is your good luck charm? I don’t really believe in those, so no. The farthest I’ve gone with a certain item and luck is how I insisted to use the same paddle that was available in our gym whenever I trained for table tennis back in high school. The reason I don’t think it has anything to do with luck is because I simply thought I had the best grip with that paddle, not because I was convinced I can win any game with it.

If so, what is it? See paddle situation aboe.

Your favorite thing about your job (or school)? It’s in the media/public relations field so there are lots of freebies and treats that come with the job that make what I do worth it, and a lot more fun. The entire team also consists of Gen Z-ers and younger Millennials, so there are practices we follow that bigger corporations might not have, like longer office shutdowns during Christmas (we don’t get back to work until Jan 4th), reminders to take mental health breaks, and a no-video-meetings rule every Friday afternoon.

Least favorite thing about your job (or school)? It’s very, very hectic so I have the tendency to get overwhelmed as early as 10 AM. There’s never any dead air and I don’t get rest for nine hours straight (my shift is technically eight hours, but I work through the allotted 1-hour lunch break as well). OT is also common, but at least I get paid for it. Demanding clients who micromanage and/or ask for too much work to be done from our end also make the job stressful.

Does global warming and the hole in the ozone truly bother you? Of course. My heart sinks every time I come across a new article saying glaciers are melting, that animals living in polar regions are suffering, that sea ice continues to drastically decrease, etc.

Do you have a "funny" toenail? I don’t think so? All my toenails look...the way they’re supposed to look like, lol.

How many times have you moved in your lifetime? The times I can remember, just twice. But my parents moved around a bit when I was still an infant.

Do you watch professional wrestling and is it real? I do watch and keep up with it, just not as much as I used to. I don’t recognize most of the new faces anymore, and I wouldn’t be able to give you a decent breakdown of the current storylines in any promotion, not even in WWE. The angles, results, belts, and characters all aren’t real, but the movesets (especially the submission holds) risks, and injuries very much are. Are we going to debate this in 2020 still? Lmao.

What's your favorite thing to microwave? Don’t microwaves just heat stuff up? I dunno if it heats a certain food better than others lol.

Could Pop-Tarts survive a nuclear attack? I doubt it.

Does anyone know where the UP (Upper Peninsula) is? Can I give you a different UP? That’s where I went to in college, heh heh.

What's the regular unleaded gas price where you are? I have no idea. I never paid attention. I usually just give the gas attendant anywhere between P300 to P700 and see how far up it would fill my tank.

Do you know someone who's been injured in Iraq? I don’t know. Probably not. None of my relatives who migrated ever signed up for the US military.

Do you remember what a Puff-A-Lump is? I’m pretty positive I’ve never heard of it before.

Least favorite TV show? Game of Thrones.

Favorite canned soup? I don’t consume that.

How far does your belly button stick out or sink in? How can I even measure this?

Do you have a particular coffee mug you drink from? Yes, but I’ve described it so many times in surveys from just this month alone.

What does that mug say/have on it? The first line reads “Seattle, WA” then “Starbucks” in big bold letters, then “Coffee Company” below it, and the last line reads. “Est. 1971.”

Your take on declawing cats? I don’t like cats a lot but this does not sound like a responsible thing to do, and it also sounds like a painful procedure for a poor cat.

Do have smoke detectors in your home? No. That’s not really a requirement or standard practice here.

Would it be easy to erase YOUR identity? I suppose it’s technically easy to hire someone who can do that (a la Breaking Bad), I just would not be willing to do it and give up who I am for anything in the world.

Do you know anyone named Sam? Lots. My cousin is named Sam; I also went to school with multiple Sams.

How many drawers do you have in your room/office? Five.

What was your favorite snuggle toy when you were a child? I was happy with a pillow. I was never into stuffed toys all that much.

Great! A few firsts then...

What was your first pet and their name? I had a goldfish that I simply named Goldy. I vividly remember this because Angela’s first pet was also a goldfish; and there was a time we did show-and-tell in first grade and she bought her pet. We had been bickering that day, as 7 year olds do, and I remember being an absolute asshole and snickering when she introduced her fish as Fishy because I thought it was a cheesy name and that Goldy was far superior. Sorry Fishy. You had a great name.

When your mind wanders, where does it go first? My biggest stressor for the day, usually.

Your first knick-knack (item you placed in your room/house)? I have no clue. I was 10 when we first moved in here, and a completely different person.

First "real" piece of jewlery? (This goes for the guys too) I’m going to forgive this survey for being a little sexist because it’s nearly 15 years old; but anyway, I’ve never had any expensive jewelry of my own. All the pricey ones I’ve ever worn are owned by mom.

What did you do on your first date? We went to a museum and had early dinner at an Italian-American restaurant. We also had coffee after, and then she slept over at my place where I let her play GTA V on our PS3 because she wasn’t allowed to play it in her house.

Who was your first best friend? Kaye. I can’t trace her down now because she has such a common name, but I hope she’s been doing well.

When did you first realize that life isn't easy and fun? I was 12, going through puberty and a generally not-nice time of my life, with everyone in the house hating and isolating me.

And lastly...

The last thing you thought about before you fell asleep last night? I briefly thought about how many hours I need to sleep to get a decent rest, but I passed out in like 10 seconds.

Your last argument? Last night my mom and I had an argument about where I last placed my phone because I had already misplaced it two times prior during the day.

Your last words to someone...? “You’re wearing black; it’s not too obvious” when my mom was complaining that she looked a bit big in her outfit for today.

The last place you'd go? I’m not very sure about the wording here. Do you mean the last place I went to (outside the house to pay for a delivery)? Or the last place I’d want to go to before I die (no clue)? Hahahaha.

The last thing you'd find yourself wearing? Again, not so sure about the grammar here.

What will be the last thing that you do today? Trying to doze off.

Fuck You, Animu (1/4)

A dumbass’ war of heart and mind A few months ago, I hit a creative block. Despite considering myself a jack of many mediums, I couldn’t for the life of me bring myself to make--well... anything. While I do have a Google Keep of creative ideas I’ve come up with over the years, I was unable to find the drive (pun shoehorned) to get started on any of them. This sent me into a bit of a spiral. A lot of creatives probably empathize: you find yourself lacking the motivation to create so it starts to negatively affect your self-worth, which is tied to your ability to make things, and this lack of confidence compels you to just succumb to melancholy, finding yourself the victim of a self-fulfilling prophecy to become a slacker because you think you already ARE one.

I was a couple months into this when a buddy of mine hit me up asking if I heard about a call for local anime reviewers. At that moment, it almost felt like divine intervention from God, who I only ever felt in the burning sensation radiating through me whenever I was within 10 feet of a church. An anime news site, let’s call em Animu, with a relatively large following, was searching for writers who would join their staff to review anime being released in the winter season with a salary to boot. As an avid anime fan myself, who just so happened to have honed his critiquing skills over years of media consumption {that has since ruined my viewing experience for the foreseeable future (I legitimately suck the joy out of every piece of media I consume now)}, I saw this as my opportunity to be able to use my skills for some form of monetary gain; which was always a concern of mine throughout my life. Growing up, I was never really good at anything that could easily become a profession later in life. I was too awful at biology to become a doctor, not smart enough at maths to be the next Pythagoras, nor was I athletic enough to shoot a basketball, let alone make it in the NBA. I was good at talking in, and understanding, English... and that was it. At the time, I didn’t realize I had a knack for writing and oration, but even once I did, I found that the trajectory towards being a professional for either of those fields wasn’t so simple. Most people still have the childish idea that “Oh, writers write books and speakers do… speaking things!” but it waters down such a wide yet closed off section of the professional world. Writing alone has so many different specializations: journalism, screenwriting, book authoring, all such niches that don’t have as established a path as scoring high on the Bar exam or being scouted on varsity; it’s difficult to find a place in this world with that skill set, a fear that a majority of creatives have. So I needed some form of validation, an instance of acceptance that’ll allow me to finally believe that my work is worth something and, most importantly, enjoyed by someone. So I started working on my application for Animu by selecting three different series that I was interested in tackling: Re:Zero, Cells at Work, and Kaguya-Sama: Love is War. Starting from zero The posts after this contain these reviews in the state I submitted to Animu. I spent about a month working on these. Re:Zero’s review was close to my usual style of critique, which focuses on the technical aspects and their execution as well as commentary on any relevant subtext, minus the subtext. I wanted to seem as professional as possible with the first one and tried to keep to the proposed 1200 word word limit. With Cells At Work, however, I tried to have a bit of fun. There were many rumblings around the community about the series’ cancer episode which I was eager to capitalize on. That said, upon rewatching the episode, I came across some potentially problematic scenarios that could’ve been blown out of proportion by some headline-chasing media outlet; so that’s exactly what I did. No, I wouldn’t in my right mind compare chibified blood cells to Nazi sympathizers (then again, I’m never in my right mind). Lastly, was Kaguya-Sama, which became my favorite anime of the past couple years. This series was the first anime that got me to actively follow the source material as it hit two of my most identifying traits, being a cinephile and humor academic, as well as a side I’m slightly embarrassed by, my interest in romantic comedies. I wanted to attempt a review that was just hype-hype-hype as it was what the series sparked within me. Oh, and you SHOULD read Kaguya-Sama. Bleeding out After a modicum of proofreading, as well as some peer review from my closest confidants, I sent over my application and I waited. As my heart raced on the day of the announcement, my name was nowhere to be found. To add insult to injury, I was informed that I scored absolutely horribly by Animu’s criteria, my highest grade being one that’d flunk in the most forgiving of schools. While you’d expect me to be crestfallen, I was actually ecstatic to know that the community I’ve been a part of, a local one no less, had people with an even larger passion and greater skills than even I. As someone who went through childhood being made fun of for my interests that have somehow developed into geek chic and gone mainstream (something that, contrary to most of the community, I’m happy to see), I was glad to see how much people like me had developed from waifu worshipping weaboos to outstandingly ornate otaku. Hell, I was content to have made some content. I was looking forward to seeing the fruits of labor from those who were more deserving than me. So imagine my surprise when what I found posted a month later was absolute garbage. I’m not going to get into detail, seeing as said details could lead to someone getting doxxed just because they didn’t meet MY oh so high standards (/s), but what I will say was that the quality of the content indicated something more telling about the whole ordeal. I have taken part in two completely different student publications in my time, and I can say with utmost certainty that THE GRADE SCHOOLERS I MENTORED WROTE BETTER, AND THEY WEREN’T EVEN PAID. Still, it was nice to know I still had it in me to make something of substance. And on this commemorative day, I open up my blog by making public my entries for all to ridicule. As much as I talked down the winning entries, I don’t believe mine were perfect. Like most of my work, it’s rushed and rambly, full of tangents and misnomers. But, it’s very me, and I’m quite happy to see something from me see the light of day.

I hope you find some amusement in my bemusement.

p.s. Yes, the headers are attempts at relating to the three shows p.p.s.s. Yes, they’re BAD attempts at relating to the three shows

Floyd, Chauvin, and Race in America: Where Do We Go from Here?

[My audio commentary here:

https://soundcloud.com/user-31492767/floyd-chauvin-race-relations-where-do-we-go-from-here-jttg-may-2021]

This article employs race relations as the backdrop for tackling some universal challenges we all face.

It's less about politics than it is about exploring two skills that serve well in all walks:

1) A knack for asking the right questions. 

2) The ability to get others aligned with your way of thinking.

Through that prism, it's an intriguing read for anyone.

I've fielded some questions about the Floyd/Chauvin case, now that the verdict has been handed down:

Where do we go from here? What are some of the implications surrounding race relations, public and personal accountability, and activism?

A few thoughts:

1) There are (visible) cracks in the Blue Wall.

John 3:20: "For every one that doeth evil hateth the light."

Exposure to natural light dries up the conditions that allow bacteria to flourish.

Ditto for bad actors.

Public pressure, however misguided, is leading to important questions that are holding municipal departments accountable. It's increasingly-difficult for police unions to sweep criminal malfeasance under the rug.

You'd like to see the public do more of this in other arenas, like public and private education, but independent, critical thinking is seldom found in the middle of a herd.

2) Will More Conversations About Race Lead to (Significant) Change?

Doubtful.

Setting aside the question of what the specific goal is for some of these movements, how often does "talk" actually lead to change?

Intentional, thoughtful action is what gets things done.

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement will struggle to produce meaningful, positive change for reasons I've outlined in the past:

Two problems facing the protest community:

1) Inability to Create Change

2) Sullied Reputation: “Protesters are Thugs.”

“They only have one question: What’s in it for them?

Why should they invest the time and effort to help you, beyond offering empty gestures and lip service? It could be an emotional reason or a financial one. 

It could be to create tranquility inside their own minds. You have to give people a reason to get off the sidelines. 

Article: Freddie Gray, Dirty Cops, & The Problem With (Peaceful) Protests

As we've seen with many would-be revolutionaries of the past, how the spoils of early victories are divided reveals much about BLM's long-term viability. Integrity of leadership is one of the canaries in the coal mine for spotting movements that can stand the test of time. Unchecked spending from BLM organizers has brought increased scrutiny over how donations are being managed.

BLM leadership putting winning Monopoly strategy to good use.

Most campaigns sputter because they ignore one---or more---of the following tenets:

Three Steps to Producing Effective Community Organizing Campaigns:

1) Provide clear information on the problem, including reasons why people need to join the cause. Use incentives.

2) Present specific actions for participation that further the cause, including easy access to donation links and support for policies that actually move political and economic levers.

3) Routinely examine strategy and tactics, assessing how much progress has been made and whether the current course of action is appropriate for the scope of the problem. Adjust accordingly.

Article: Slacktivism: The Problem With Social Media Movements

Shaming people, especially when your own hands aren't clean, isn't going to get anything beyond nominal concessions. 

Most of the old boy network---or, "The Man", to put it more humorously---knows this. That's why they can get on board most any cause, with little fear of any real loss. They know standards for change agents worth supporting have plummeted, so companies are happy to capitalize, picking up market share and goodwill in exchange for token displays of support.

The biggest sports leagues in the world have gotten in on the act, hopping onto the protest bandwagon that first picked up steam a few years ago. A few commercials and planned anthem demonstrations are hollow gestures that will ultimately do nothing to help minority communities advance.

(Although the dollars that have been pledged to aid communities could do some good---if used properly.)

3) How do we avoid being killed by the police? 

Stay out of the line of fire.

Looking for a "safe" stance on police-related incidents that won't get you “cancelled”?

Me neither. :)

But hey, this site doesn't shy away from controversy.

If you live in an impoverished community, you're more likely to have interactions with the police. When they're not setting up speed traps to meet monthly quotas, they're patrolling high-crime areas where illegal activity is fiercest.

The cops have mandates to hit areas where their efforts can register the biggest impact. Those tend to be areas with higher concentrations of minorities.

You're much more likely to be hassled by police in East St. Louis than you are in East Hampton.

Although ongoing calls for change may lead to negative unintended consequences for those inner-city zones.

You can only campaign for reduced police presence so long before politicians start to listen. People respond to incentives: Shifts in policy come when jobs get threatened. Pushes to defund the police---an ill-conceived response to relatively-rare high-profile incidents---will lead to an increase in crime. Remove deterrents to crime---police presence, policies that punish quality-of-life infractions---and you'll see anti-social behavior spike.

But if you're paying attention, you already knew that.

That's something to think about in the most vulnerable communities, where per capita income leaves residents least capable of defending themselves when the wolves are at the door.

City life without cops.

So, how do we avoid fatal encounters with the police?

What’s the lesson here?

The onus is on the public to recognize that the police are human, subject to the same fears and frailties that we are. You’ve got to minimize your exposure to danger as much as you can.

Article: What We Learned from Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and Ferguson 

Do not resist arrest.

You may have been profiled or detained unlawfully---fair enough. If you're still alive, you will have a chance to fight your case later.

We've got a lot of agency, ability to influence the world around us.

It's up to you whether your run-in with the cops ends in a conversation, a citation, or a trip to the hospital.  

And, unfortunately, nowadays one has to define what "resisting arrest" means:

Yelling at the police, attempting to wriggle out of handcuffs, running away, brandishing a knife---these are no-nos that could get you killed.

This is common sense and goes without saying among older generations. They understand you can be respectful without being obsequious. 

But in a society where subtle messaging and normative cues are fed to individuals less-practiced in critical thinking, population manipulation is easier to achieve. 

Be careful whom you accept marching orders from. 

The media has no stake in your individual well-being, so they'll tell you whatever they think will get you agitated and ready to do what they want you to do: 

Support the right interests and buy products and services.

Emotional thinkers make great consumers.

I love feedback, so do share your thoughts.

Pride month has come and gone, but we are still here

Gif credit: @bisexualdonatello

I don’t talk about it very often (mostly because I am not officially out) but I’m bisexual. I am attracted to those who identify as my own gender (female) and those who identify as an opposing gender. It has taken a few years of rationalizing and actually sitting with myself to come to accept this. In fact, very recently I had contemplated the legitimacy of my sexuality again. This is due to a few things: I have never had a relationship of any kind, I live in a conservative community, and I am still learning about the terminology and culture that comes from the LGBTQA+ community as a whole. Popular media—visual media specifically—has been a great influence in this regard. The older I got, the more access I had. The more access I had, the more I was able to learn. I grew to have a better understanding of the world around me and could explain how and why the media I consumed resonated with me personally. It took a while, but this is how I got here:

Bi Awakening (Film)

It was the late 00′s when I saw Van Helsing for the first time. I was immediately hooked. It has all the things I loved and still love to this day: monsters, a gothic aesthetic, an anti-hero with a heart of gold, bad-ass women who are immaculately dressed and fight hard, and a tragic ending. I had always been interested in Hugh Jackman ever since I watched him play Wolverine in the X-Men films. This character was what did it for me. Van Helsing was brave yet troubled. He had a knack for fighting evil and finding good where others couldn’t see it. This is a character I would daydream about going on long adventures around the world with. After watching the movie several times, my eyes also followed Anna Valerious, played by Kate Beckinsale. She was determined and a fighter through and through. Her skills and her dedication to her family drew me in. I wanted to hug her and fight monsters by her side. Oh, and did I mention they were both highly attractive? Because they are, just look at them, oh my gosh!! I took a while, but I finally admitted to myself that I like both men and women. Despite never acting on these feelings, I felt content with the conclusion I’d come to. This went on for a few years. It wasn’t until this year that I started questioning it all again.

Bi Confusion (YouTube)

I’ve watched my fair share of ContraPoints videos. In her video Shame, Natalie explains how she came to the conclusion that she is a lesbian. Throughout the video she explains how she was in a heterosexual relationship that, while loving and nice, was not fulfilling. She brings up the topic of compulsory heterosexuality, the feelings some women experience due to the norms of our society. I went in search of the “Am I a Lesbian” article mentioned in the video and read through the whole thing in one sitting. I came away from it feeling like I had unlocked some secret. Maybe I had been confused and conditioned all this time. Often my fantasies with women are more detailed and complex than my fantasies with men. That must mean I'd been avoiding one and embracing the other, right? And since I’ve never been in any kind of relationship, maybe I’d just been conditioned to include men in the equation from the start and couldn’t let it go? I had been entertaining a man I’d met online and had felt the relationship was forced on my end. Maybe I’m just not into men? After much consideration, I decided to give the lesbian label a try. That sounds horrible in retrospect, but I did it. I said the word to myself in private. I thought about spending my life pursuing only women. I excluding men from my fantasies. That didn’t last long. It just didn’t fit me. I learned through that exercise that my feelings for one gender don’t outweigh my feelings for another gender. The reason my fantasies vary is because of limited experience, not lack of interest. The reason I cut things off with the guy I’d been speaking with wasn’t because I was a lesbian, but because we just worked better as friends. I wasn’t a lesbian. I had just overthought my feelings. I’m attracted to people, not just their genders.

Bi Confirmation (Video Games)

My first exposure to Resident Evil was through several LP’s on YouTube. I have managed to play through a few games myself, though. The past few years have been really good for the Resident Evil franchise, the most noteworthy additions being the remake editions of Resident Evil 2 & 3. Leon’s a bad-ass super cop who just wants to do the right thing. Claire is an amazing person who cares so much about the people closest to her. Jill’s the most OP character in Resident Evil and just wants to save the world. Carlos is a genuinely good guy who wants to help. These people are heroic, bad-ass, and hot? Excuse me, I need a minute...Basically, I want to be these characters and be with them. I can confidently say that I am bisexual. There are other fictional characters I can point to that I would say affirm my sexuality—Casey Jones and April O’Neil from TMNT, Diana Prince and Steve Trevor from Wonder Woman, Markus from Detroit: Become Human, Harley Quinn from Birds of Prey—but Resident Evil has the most characters I love in a single franchise. When I was questioning my sexuality, I looked at these video game characters I had come to like and realized there was no denying myself. It’s okay to like both. Both is good.

Bi Acceptance (TikTok)

In conclusion, sexuality is weird. You might think you’re a young straight when all of a sudden you realize you find both a dashing monster hunter and a beautiful cursed princess attractive. Then, years later, you might watch a YouTube video that has you questioning yourself all over again, only to realize you are who you though you were after playing a game about fighting zombies. Basically, visual media helped me discover myself. But that’s not the end of it. I’ve found myself on TikTok a lot since the pandemic started. It’s nice seeing people in the LGBTQA+ community having fun and making the most of a shitty situation. I rediscovered Sarah Schauer, which was a nice surprise. Come to find out, she’s bisexual too. Seeing this community band together in times like these has been a heartening experience. So many positive vibes. There may be people out there who say you should only like one or another, or that being in a heterosexual relationship diminishes your sexuality, but those people are wrong. The bottom line is that you cannot tailor how you feel to fit the expectations of others. This post is kind of weird and out of nowhere, and a little very self centered, but I had to get this off my chest. This will likely never be read by anyone. However, if you are reading this and you have had a similarly weird experience, know that you are not alone. You may have just realized your feelings, you may have known for a long time, or you may still be trying to figure things out. That’s okay. Your feelings are valid. Your experience is valid. You are valid.

TL;DR Whenever I am questioning my sexuality I remember Resident Evil and I am at peace. Also through all this I’ve learned I have a type: bad-ass hero with a kind heart.

@gruvfru tagged me with 10 questions and make up 10 of my own!! Very cute and very fun, thank you, thank you!!! <3

- What kind of music do you listen to? Do you play an instrument? If not, if you could play any instrument, what would you choose?

I listen to all kinds of music!! I’ve been getting this question at work a lot and I straight up don’t have an answer. Lately, I’ve been pretty into sappy boi bullshit like Conan Gray and Joji, I don’t know why! Sufjan Stevens used to be my favorite but the more I’ve distanced myself from LA & from my dad’s passing, I barely listen to him anymore. Love that guy, though.

Also, I play alto sax! I picked it up one day while quarantined and was able to just suddenly remember how to read music, it was wonderful!! I need to put together a practice booklet for myself and practice again. I used to be pretty good at it and have a couple of awards, but that was from the ye olde days.

- Have you ever travelled outside of your home country? If so, where did you go? Would you go back?

Nope! Maybe someday. I actually don’t have a whole lot of wanderlust, but I do like roadtrips.

- What type of stories do you like to read/watch/listen to (movies, tv, books, comics, podcasts, etc.)? Are you currently writing anything? Is it similar or different than what kind of media you like to consume?

I like horror and always have. I’m drawn to mysteries/spookies/macabre shit. I have a narrative I’ve been slowly working on and it’s basically just everything I consume but probably a lil’ more modern than most of it. Like, Bloodborne is a huge influence for me, but my IP is set in the 90′s. It’s absolutely meant to be a spooky mystery / apocalypse scenario. I want to say it’s horror but I don’t know if it’ll actually be scary as much as it’s just gonna have creepy elements.

- What kind of weather is your favorite? Least favorite?

Rain!! I love rain. I hate the sun and I want it to leave me alone.

- If you could learn any new skill, what would you learn?

Gardening! Normally, when I’m interested in a new skill, I pick it up, but I haven’t been able to garden at all. I know vague things because of my mom’s farm and because I often just sit around and research plants, but someday I’ll actually plant stuff.

Also, driving.

- What would your ideal home look like? (interior and/or exterior)

Queen Anne architecture, painted purple in some way, with natural foliage and a big tree. Interior would have antiques and would be painted however I feel and a lot of space for my knick-knacks and tea sets. There’d be an enclosed porch where my cat can sit with me while I paint. There would be a garbage disposal and a dishwasher because I’m a simple man with simple needs.

- What is your favorite plant? Why?

GOOD QUESTION. Tacca Chantrieri, maybe. Or lilacs. Or fly amanita. Tacca Chantrieri is pretty obvious if you just look at it. Lilacs, because I had a huge lilac tree as a kid and I’d hide in the bush, surrounded by them, smelling that good good lilac smell. Fly amanita because cute.

- Do you prefer movies or television? Why? What are your favorites? Least favorites?

Movies, I think. I’ve always been the type that just eats up movies if I let myself and I think I got that from my dad. TV is for when my brain doesn’t wanna fully focus on something and do other shit at the same time. My favorite movies would be Anna Karenina, Girl on the Train, The Witch, uhhh... other things. I have a letterboxd here! Off the top of my head, I hate Wonder Woman because it’s only cool for 10 minutes and then Chris Pine shows up.

- Do you believe in extraterrestrial life? Ghosts? The Hidden Folk?

I don’t know! I think my answer for these kinds of questions tends to confuse/irritate people because I don’t have a straight answer. I don’t think I know enough to say whether or not anything like this is real or fake. Sometimes, I feel like my dad is still around--my mom absolutely does. I just don’t know. I don’t feel him there like she does. But, I want to believe.

- Do you like collecting? If so, what do you collect?

I do!!! I collect so much shit. Cat figurines, for one, and tea sets. I also collect bottles these days, don’t know when that started. I also collect paper and stuff for scrapbooking, so I have a book that’s full of random shit I’ve kept, esp at work. It’s fun!!

Next are my questions! Feel free to answer them if you’d like! I’m going to tag @i-say-spooky-you-say-scary @webkitten and @wubby-desu though.

- What’s your favorite song at the moment? What song did you last listen to? - What book have you been wanting to read? - If you were a DND character, what would your sheet look like? - How do you like your coffee/tea? Would you put a lil’ cream in that bad boy? - Tell me about your pet... please. - What would your last meal be, if you could pick it? - What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream? What are your thoughts on flower flavored ice cream? Asking for a friend. - What’s the weirdest shit you did as a kid--repeatedly or even just once? - If you could ask one person in the world, alive or dead, for a piece of advice, who would you ask and what would it be? - What’s your favorite thing about your favorite person?

My Corona

Unless you have been living in a cave the last couple of months, we have a global health emergency going on. Nearly 3000 people have died from the coronavirus, and social and professional media peeps are going crazy spreading all kinds of information that ranges from news to fearmongering.

And it is hard to tell the difference sometimes.

Worse yet, there are some very real implications of the coronavirus, which had its genesis in China and is where the majority of the ripple-through effects are now spreading out across the world. If you have never considered your personal or company’s supply chain before, you might want to brush up on the concept, because suddenly everything from component parts to toilet paper are falling into short supply.

What started out primarily as a B2B matter with retailers like Best Buy and phone makers like Apple and Samsung worried about finished goods and component parts finding their way to their respective locations, has suddenly caused panic buying among end consumers on basic staples as well as preventive goods.

Toilet paper. Disinfectant wipes. Face masks. Gloves. Bottled water. Food that will keep forever. You name it, anything that would have been good for a fallout shelter in the 1950s is now good enough for a self-imposed quarantine from society.

The problem is that panic buying begets more panic buying, and news articles are like gasoline on a wild fire. And please, don’t any of you suddenly get the bright idea to drop whatever it is you are doing to go shopping.

Because we need some toilet paper right now for general use, and I don’t want to find empty shelves when I get to Walmart. So hey, don’t freak out everybody, but make sure you share this across social media so no one else does.

Right. I think it’s too late.

As for B2B concerns, if China doesn’t resume and ramp up production soon, there will be problems throughout the economy, not just with tech products. We are very dependent upon China for imports; about 21% of our imports come from there, totaling about $540 billion. And at the risk of an awful pun, that’s nothing to sneeze at.

As I taught my undergrads this week, B2B relationships are hard to alter in the short-run, simply because the contracts, which tend to be large, are negotiated and often have highly specific requirements. Just like an ocean liner has difficulty executing turns, companies do too. The result is unexpected shortages like we are experiencing now at a growing number of levels in the economy.

The most important thing, though, is that we not panic, in spite of the fear of running out of toilet paper. It’s just like when the weather guessers mention the word snow, sending everyone into a tizzy and buying up every last loaf of bread, jug of milk, and carton of eggs. French toast for everyone, right?

Maybe living in a cave isn’t such a bad idea right now. Let me know when this is all over so we can get back to living.

Dr “Get The Knack“ Gerlich

Audio Blog

7th October, 2018 23:05 pm Average, Mediocre, Loser

For the longest time, I had myself fooled. I was on a secret mission – to study for all 8 papers even though I hadn’t done classes for 4 of them (the really tough ones) and there was hardly any time to prepare for them without sacrificing my marks in the others. I didn’t tell any of my friends or the senior who was mentoring me this. I just picked up the books and began to try to figure things out myself, going into panic and frustration when I couldn’t understand something.

I’d spent time drawing up timetables that required studying 300 pages a day, which was obviously impossible, even if I sat for 16 hours a day with barely any breaks. All of my friends were appearing for only 4 papers, which was the sensible thing to do because it meant passing with good marks and a part of me wanted to do the same, to make things easy for myself, because it meant I wasn’t going to have to resort to extremely unhealthy sleep/eat/social patterns such as alienating every single person I know, completely switching off from social media, and most importantly, sacrificing my creativity in terms of writing. Giving up everything else seemed like a small price to pay – and I have endured years of mental, emotional and social sacrifice for this course already, so I’m used to it – but writing is in my blood. Writing is the one thing that brings me immense happiness. I can’t give it up. Even if it’s not monetarily viable, even if nobody is reading what I have to say, it is as important to me as breathing.

But I wanted nothing more than to somehow pass. To wake up one morning in January close to my 23rd birthday and find that I was a Chartered Accountant. I knew that seeing that four letter word on my marksheet wouldn’t mean pride for having “made it.” It would mean giddy happiness for finally being DONE. Done with this course that I never wanted, would never be good at, would never enjoy no matter how hard I tried.

I just wanted to slap the degree in my parents’ hands, pack a bag, move to Bombay as soon as my articleship ended in March. I had so much to do – my unfulfilled creativity, a half written book to finish, a part time job in poetry waiting for me, and most importantly – the new-found freedom of being a young, single, self sufficient wild thing in a city where nobody knew who I was. It was a new beginning and when I was falling asleep every night, when I woke up every morning, and when I couldn’t force myself to keep going – it was all I would think about. I associated Bombay with the first breath of fresh air after being in jail for 5 years, because that’s how sickening this city, the course, and the people had become for me.

I knew I would never fit in the minute I walked through the doors on the first day of class for the first level. These people weren’t like me, and I wasn’t willing to change what I enjoyed for the sake of a 5 year period, or even for a single day. Words would always be my poison. Not law, not numbers, not the robotic ways in which the students around me seemed to be able to sit in one place for hours, learn things I couldn’t get myself interested in despite trying so hard.

But from the first day, I forced myself to study, because what choice did I have? I’d shunned science when my parents offered it to me, and arts was not a choice. I passed, faltered once, but landed a big four articleship and kept going. On the surface, everything seemed to be working out. Inside, I felt suffocated. The artist in me was screaming for release, which is how I started to get more involved in my Instagram account. For 2 years I spent all day at work, trying to excel in a field I was starting to dislike more and more by the day, but convinced that quitting so close to the finish line was stupid and out of the question.

There were only 2 things that kept me happy – a boy I was in love with, and narrating stories for my Instagram account. I relied on them heavily and hopelessly as reasons to wake up every morning and go to work, or class. I watched the girls I call friends do much better than me and began to develop a serious inferiority complex. They loved what they were getting to learn and wanted to be better. I was trying to chameleon their behaviour, and failing miserably.

In June of 2017 I lost the boy. But like Nikita Gill and Rupi Kaur would remind me in numerous poems, he lost me, not the other way around. Either way, it was a loss, and my happiness took a monumental blow. I held on hopelessly to hope till my hands turned to scabs. I did things I’m not proud of. I resorted to reckless behaviour to replace the big, gaping hole that seemed to have opened up in my heart. But heartbreak was not a new concept to me, so I gritted my teeth, wrote some poems, and pretty much managed to put it in the past. I still had the writing, after all.

Still, emotional loss can leave you marinating in nostalgia forever, especially if you have the tendency to feel things deeply. As Pablo Neruda so beautifully put it, love is so short and forgetting so long.  

Writing kept me alive in those months. I began to compile a collection of poetry and stories that I would someday turn into a book. That people were excited to buy.

Work was getting worse and worse because I had been allotted to a team that was not welcoming at all. I travelled for almost 4 hours every single day. I got into several fights with my seniors, who were rude and callous and made me feel worse while I was already dealing with coming out of emotional trauma. The deadlines we were asked to meet were insane. I began to fall sick a lot. I would look out of the window and sob in silence every single day.

But I decided to put my health first and left. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t. Because even though I didn’t realise it then, work, no matter how bad, kept me distracted from the terrible thoughts that were forming in my head every time I let it be idle for a few minutes. I moved into a smaller firm and suddenly had a lot of free time. The jobs I was assigned there were much more mundane, and the people working around me had no ambition at all. I stopped making the small but relevant amount of money that was guaranteeing my financial independence of sorts, and brought a completely self-dependent girl back to her parent’s allowance.

All in all, it’s safe to say that in the beginning of 2018, I walked myself into a mental trap. On one hand, my heart was broken and it was extremely hard to get over the fact that even though I hadn’t done anything wrong, somebody I was convinced would stick by my side chose to hurt me when I was least expecting it. I began to distrust people and alienate them as an impact. Lots of good, kind friends were lost. Romantic and platonic connections that could have been beautiful if I had allowed someone past my suddenly very high walls never got a chance.

Second, my workplace and academic environment was choking me with monotony. There was no incentive – earlier, at least the ping of money credited into my bank account made me show up and put on a show, but now I didn’t even have that.

Third, and most disheartening of all, was nothing to look forward to for the rest of the year but this endless tunnel of having to stay home and study for exams that were in November. I felt handcuffed all times of every day. The only momentary happiness I felt was when I was well sedated with alcohol or hanging out with two of my best friends, one of whom moved to London for the last year of his university and our conversations became limited to Facetime calls.

Writing got spotty because every time I opened a word document, this voice in my head would remind me that I needed to study. When I tried to study, I could never get enough done because I simply hated it. I fucking hated it all.

In April of 2018 I decided that if I kept going this way, I would send myself into chronic depression. I already felt like I was there – what with the self-imposed ban on writing. It made more sense to space out the papers, even if it took 6 months more than I had originally planned. At that point in my life, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

Giving 4 papers in November and 4 in May of 2019 meant I wouldn’t be pulling 16 hour days for 6 months. This way, I could balance my dislike for the subjects with allotting enough time for social outings and just being a normal 22 year old. But on 20th July, the results for everyone else’s exams came out.

I found a seething jealousy begin to build in my heart because the girls and boys who were my age were now done and would be embarking on the life that I would have to wait a year for. It consumed me. I couldn’t sleep at night. I screenshotted their marksheets and stared at them. I would check their facebook pages and compare every little detail of their lives to mine, causing my already fuelled inferiority complex to grow. I completely forgot that CA was not my gift, art was.

It felt as though I was standing in a room of overachievers holding bulky files of their accomplishments, and the only thing I had was a knack for poetry. Except, nobody CARES about your knack for poetry in the Chartered Accountancy world. No one gives a fuck if you can write. And so I felt like the biggest loser in the room.

I still do. It is October now, just days away from the exam, and even though my secret mission was always impossible, I was unwilling to accept it. Even if I was able to sit for 16 hours, even if I was able to study for all this time like everyone else probably had, I would never have been able to complete the course by January. This is not because I am dumb. It’s because I put myself into the wrong race and I’m trying to compete with people who are in love with what they do. Put me in a room of poets and I will outshine most of the room (or so I like to think).

But all these 5 years – and especially these last 5 months – have done for me is cause my brain to believe its inferiority. Everyone else my age has either graduated from university, or is months away from getting a well paying job. Their lives are starting to bloom, while mine just looks dark till May of 2019. Till July, in fact, because that’s when results come out.

I am handcuffed to my identity, to this city, to my mediocrity, to my parent’s supporting me financially for the next 8 months, with absolutely no way out. I have no space for writing. I have nobody to call my own that doesn’t live oceans away.

I wanted to be great at something. I wanted to be doing well in at least one thing, you know? But it seems impossible now. I am not good at anything. I feel mediocre at best.

The voice in my head does not fail to remind me that I am standing in a room where nobody sees me as competition or a threat. That they never will. Accept it, she says to me incessantly, you are average. You will always be average.

What do you do when your self belief in your own failure is so deep rooted, your brain is mocking you constantly? How do you fight your own mind?

The Custodians

The Custodian’s an Introduction

    Times are tough, but aren’t they always? I can’t remember when life was ever easy, where the universe allowed me one moment to catch my breath. A mother who never cared, a father who lost himself to his demons, the Darkness was everywhere. I was feeling thankful, as I slopped fresh water across the lunchroom, swirling figure eights repetitively. Happy to drown it all out and just mop, there was only the suds, only the sloshing sponge, squelching water, reflecting the fluorescent lights. Above all, I loved the solitude, the quiet hum of nothing, it was completely euphoric.

    EnvivoClean tended to attract a certain type of person with their standards, but there were a couple who made it worthwhile. Most of this crowd acted like they were in high school, concerning themselves with petty and irrelevant squabbles that don’t even matter. No one tells you the whole segregated cliches didn’t disappear once you graduated, you just traded it for another corporate triangle ruled by popularity. My personality didn’t exactly scream customer service, which is why I love this job so much, the independence and the separation from the human race... I’m not saying that every single person out there is bad, but most of them suck and will do what people always do, rip your heart out bleeding and broken. Diagnosed with chronic insomnia I always ran on invisible fumes. It takes a lot for me to get burned out.

    I’ve seen my share of weird things here at Brick Elementary, but recently things have been getting extra crazy. Bats flying during the day instead of at night throwing their natural patterns out of whack. A balance was shifting, everyone could feel it. It wasn’t just the pandemic, the unpredictable mutations and the new strains that popped up everyday, something sinister was behind it all, I’m sure of it.

    When it first hit, I was numb, nobody had seen anything like this before. First it came on like the common cold, then after twelve days of pure agony and near asphyxiation, the darkest parts of you take over and become reality, there's no more hiding, the Darkness consumes you. First she was known Covid-19 and then her name changed to Covid-Black, referring to the blood that rots in your veins when infected and runs black instead of red. Doctor’s can’t explain or make sense of it. This virus is a mystery, almost mystical, it couldn’t be rationalized.

    A few nights back I was rummaging through lost storage in the attic, and found this strange volume, in an even stranger language. There was only one word in English, Colloqúgarou. Through extensive research, because I’m a nerd and have no life, I was able to find a translation. In modern tongue, it meant Darkening, to be darkened or corrupted. I couldn’t help but wonder if there was any connection? The hoops I had to jump through just to translate one word, the internet never heard of it, no books mentioned it anywhere, just this crazy old man with starling eyes, a white I'll never forget. He warned me to be careful tonight, a bad moon was rising. In my heart his words carried weight, even though he did seem slightly unhinged.

    “Hello Annie, how are you today?” Beth was sporting wild, frizzy hair braided in a cute fishtail, with the most obnoxious glasses ever conceived. It wasn’t her fault of course, being blind was never a choice.

    “Eh, just as good as ever,” flinging my crimson stained hair over my shoulder, I placed a freckled hand across my hips. The one thing I hated doing in these conditions now, was wearing face masks, the itch that only seemed to happen when it stretched across my face was absolutely unbearable.

    “I swear, the level of laziness in this building is infuriating!” Even when she was mad, Elizabeth had a knack for saying everything in a perky, high pitched tone, forever wide-eyed.

    “What can you do?”

    “Oh yeah, there was a complaint about the boiler room, do you mind checking it out, I have my hands full here,” snapping on fresh rubber gloves and wielding a plunger like the ultimate weapon, she took a deep breath and walked into the boys bathroom wreaking something awful.

    All of my life, at least as far back as I can remember I’ve hated my body. I’m sure the media is to blame or maybe it was the absence of any real parental figures to tell me all the things a little girl needs to hear. Everything about me is too small, too understated. I yearned for thicker hair, plumper lips, a bigger bra size. Maybe I’ll just pack up and leave. This next paycheck could buy me a one way ticket to Hawaii and I could set sail and leave Belleville behind and never look back. What is keeping me here anyway?

   Nothing. No one would miss me, except maybe Beth, but she has a kid of her own, her own life to live. Maybe it was time I lived mine. Walking through a large empty gymnasium, just before the break room was an ominous looking stairwell, leading down to the basement.

    “God, this place gives me the creeps…” What was it down here that revolted me so? As my sneakers scrapped against the dark, concrete steps my heart raced a little.

    It was natural I suppose, this building was over 150 years old, that's a lot of history. With so many different human impressions there was bound to be some residue left behind. Venturing deeper into the belly of the beast, I could feel every hair on my arms stand up, possibly warning of something below. Finally reaching the bottom, it was pitch black, swallowed in blindness. I had to feel my way to the light fixture, but the switch was dead. How strange, could it be faulty wiring? Before I was able to brainstorm my next move, the door at the top of the stairs slammed shut locking me in, possibly indefinitely.

    “Ok. Okay, I’m stuck in here, no one is coming in for hours and the big bad wolf might be down here with me. No problem, we all have to die someday, right?” Suddenly remembering the flashlight attached to my belt loop, a small swell of relief fell over me like a pleasing waterfall. Unclasping the clip, I firmly clicked on my only beacon of light, partly feeling like an involuntary character in a cheesy horror flick. Rest assured, there were no naked bimbos here, I do possess at least a microcosm of common sense.

    The first thing my bright, white light revealed was just another broken down piece of equipment, EnvivoClean apparently couldn’t even be bothered to keep functional tools on site. None of this of course was surprising, around here you just worked with what you had and hoped it didn’t break down, cause who knew when it would be replaced.

    “Poor guy, you were much too young, just sitting here gathering dust…” Chuckling to myself as I grazed the peeling tape connecting the red backpack vacuum, I heard a rustling up ahead in the shadows.

    Quickly flicking my wrist I could see a strange envelope sitting alone but ebbing with a peculiar energy. Inching closer, looking around nervously, I picked up a letter addressed to me personally.

    “Um, this isn't’ weird or anything.”

 Concerning Annie Mctavish,

    1,000 years ago a great crime was committed, one unknown to the Children of Earth. Because of this obscenity a Darkness ascended to all the realms as tiny spores, which grew as we did in corruption.

    Do you have what it takes, Annie? Would you like to be a part of something much bigger than yourself? The Custodian’s are more than just cleaners, but purgers of the first dirt, the supernatural scum that clogs the plumbing mortal eyes can’t penetrate. Will you lead us into a new era and fight in the coming war, or run away in search of what has been waiting here for you the whole time?

    Only a true Custodian can see what lies beyond. If you’re ready to embark on the quest of a lifetime, a purpose, then sign below and open the door, we will be waiting.

Annie Mctavish_____ : Crew lead of The Custodian’s

    I didn’t hesitate, I couldn’t explain it or make sense of it, but this was real, it was happening. I’d book my psychiatric hospital stay later, but first I had to satisfy my curiosity. After I finished signing my name a door literally appeared, Tim Burton style.

    “What is happening?”

    Walking closer to the pulsing doorway, the copper door knob felt warm against my hand, vibrating almost coming alive. What was waiting for me beyond? As the latch broke free from the strike plate, slowly creaking open, any doubts that I had were evaporated just as quickly. There are no words for what came next…  

To Be Continued