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flying-elliska · 3 years

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one of the most impactful things I have read lately are two of French author Edouard Louis' books, Pour en finir avec Eddy Bellegueule and Qui a tué mon père (translated into English as The End of Eddy and Who Killed my Father). It's been two months and I'm still thinking about it.

The first book is an 'autobiographical novel' about the author's childhood growing up as an obviously gay boy in one of the poorest areas of France, until he leaves and reinvents himself as a writer. It's fraught with bigotry, abuse, bullying, violence, deprivation and social despair, and it's one of the most harrowing things I have ever read. It reads as many things as once : a recognition of trauma, an angry exorcism, a cry for society at large to pay attention, and to be honest, as a horror story.

It was criticized by some in France as portraying the working class in a manner that was too negative, which tells me they missed the point entirely...ironic for a book by someone who actually grew up poor - one of my least favorite things ever is progressives telling a marginalized person they can't talk about their own experiences because they don't fit the desired mold. (The French love to romanticize the working class and I'm pretty sure it's often an avoidance mechanism.)

The point of the book is so obviously not about 'look at how terrible and bigoted those poor people are'. Little Eddy spends a big part of the narrative trying to escape - himself at first, then his family/circumstances and the persistent homophobia everywhere. In the end of the book, he finally manages to get accepted into a fancy high school in the city on a scholarship and tries really hard to fit in. The last scene of the book is a bunch of his - educated, upper/middle class - classmates throwing homophobic taunts at him, starting the cycle anew. I can't think of a clearer way to say 'this is not a story about a sad gay boy escaping the evil bigoted countryside for the city and then everything was wonderful!!!! this is a story about a systemic, pervasive problem.'

One of the key arguments of the book, to me, is how homophobia, sexism and bigotry in general are both a product and a reproduction mechanism of social and economic exclusion. For instance, he describes how the norms around what it means to be a man in his village (being tough, disobeying authority, quitting school early to go work at the factory, drinking alcohol, neglecting your own health, fighting over women, repressing your feelings, etc) perpetuates the cycle of poverty ; but again this isn't 'oh these people are so stupid' and more 'these people are trapped'. Because he makes it evident how degrading and dehumanizing poverty can be, this masculinity reads as a desperate attempt to cling to a certain amount of dignity - it's an extremely dysfunctional coping mechanism. At the same time, anyone falling outside of the mold is violently ostracized (like Eddy, who tries and fails to fit in). So the system keeps reproducing itself.

In Who Killed my Father, the author makes his political argument clearer. This is more of an essay, centering on his father, arguably the most complex figure in the first novel. The man is an angry, bigoted alcoholic who makes his family miserable ; at the same time he is the son of an abusive father who makes a point of honor to never hit his kids or wife even though it's very normalized in this context. In this essay the author keeps talking about the moments of almost tenderness with his father that haunt him, the picture he has of him doing drag in his youth, the fact that the father tried to leave the village when he was young to find a better life for himself with a close friend but failed and had to come back - the moments of what-ifs, of trying to struggle free from the cycle, when the system appears almost fragile and not so unbreakable after all, that the son kept holding close like a sort of talisman.

The narrative is structured around the fact that his father injured his back working in a factory and that he had to keep doing physical labor afterwards for money, instead of resting to recover, until it completely destroyed his body. Now he finds himself bed-bound at 53. Louis inquires into who is responsible for this premature 'death'. After considering individual choices, he turns towards political decisions - the successive governments, left and right, who have been destroying the French welfare system for decades and accelerating inequality. The point is to step out of the neoliberal obsession with personal responsibility and who is guilty and who is a bad or good person, and look at systems.

An element that isn't focused on but hovers over the story constantly is that this village is one where the majority of the population consistently votes for the extreme right National Front party in most elections. The book is too angry and nuanced to be some stupid "it's not their fault that they're racist because they're poor!" argument. It doesn't make any excuses for how awful this is but instead illustrates how dehumanization replicates itself, how people being denied basic dignity leads to them wanting to deny it to others. If you want to really understand the rise of the far right you have to look at where the inequality comes from in the first place, and how easy it is for people in power to wash their hands of it by blaming the bigoted masses. (Just like you can blame societal ills on minorities ! Two for one strategy.)

Towards the end of the essay, the author talks about how proud his father is of his son's literary success - for a book who clearly depicts him as a horrible person ! And this is a man who has spent his life openly despising anything cultural, because it never showed him a life like his own. But maybe now he feels seen, now he knows people want to read about these things. Maybe there is a reclamation of dignity through looking at the horror head on. Maybe his son somehow slipping through the cracks of the cycle gives him more room. The man stops making racist comments, and instead asks his son about his boyfriend. Most importantly, he asks his son about the leftist politics he's engaged in. They talk about the need for a revolution.

I think what strikes me the most is this attitude of "wounded compassion" that permeates the book. What do you do when your parents are abusive but even after you grow up, you can't help but still love them, and you know they've been shaped by the system that surrounds them ? Recognizing, speaking the harm is essential. You need to find your own freedom, sense of worth, and safety. You need to dissect the mechanisms at hand so they lose at least some of their power over you. You need to find people who love and believe you. But then what? Do you dismiss your persistent feelings of affection and care for those who hurt you as a sign you're just fucked up in the head ? You could just decide to never speak to them again, and it would be justified, but is that really what is going to heal you the most? It's important to realize you have the choice. But there are no easy conclusions.

This makes me think of a passage I have just read in Aversive Democracy by Aletta Norval. The essential ethos of radical democracy, she says, is about taking responsibility for your society, even the bad parts, instead of seeing them as a foreign element you have to cleanse yourself of. It's too fucking easy for queer progressives, especially the middle class urban kind, to talk about dumb evil hicks, to turn pride into a simple morality tale, and forget that any politics that don't center the basic dignity and needs of people are just shit. The injury is to you and by you and you have a duty of care just as much as a duty of criticism. (And this is obviously not only applicable to class matters.) You can't just walk away and save your sense of moral purity. (This is not an argument that the oppressed are responsible for educating the oppressors ; it's about how privilege is not an easy simple ranking and it is too damn easy to only focus on the ways in which you are oppressed and forget the ways in which you may have more leeway.)

There is no absolute equivalence between political and family dynamics but the parallel feel very relevant somehow. Several truths can coexist at once : you needed help and it was not given. You were let down. It's important to recognize that people are responsible of how they treat each other. You need to call out what isn't ok and stand up for yourself. At the same time, there is a reason why things are like this. Making people into villains is often bad strategy (within reason!), and in the end, easy dichotomies are often an instrument of power. The horrors you have been through might have given you a very specific wisdom and grace you do not have to be afraid of ; you are not tainted by your compassion (it is very much the opposite of forced forgiveness ; it has walked through the fire of truth.)

To me these books fit into what French literature does best, sociological storytelling a la Zola or Victor Hugo - the arguments aren't new and they can come across as heavy handed, even melodramatic. But I'll argue that the viscerality is the point, how the raw experience of misery punches through any clever arguments about how exploitation persists for the greater good of society. Really worth reading if you can do so with nuance.

#edouard louis #french literature #france #queer culture #queer literature #lgbt books #bookblr #also just like the first book is a walking trigger warning in every possible direction so like careful #also the dude is literary buddies with ocean vuong and im curious to see if there are any parallels there #long post #poli sci

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rllymilerlly · 4 years

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Okay so this is for my (And essentially @toph-beifcng too because omg they have helped develop this a ton) Avatar Band AU.

Now these are the Songs I think would be on The GAangs Album “Water Earth Fire Air” (I know very little about music terminology and such so please excuse my lack of knowledge)

This Album is one of their only albums that tell a story from start to finish. It’s a story about love, loss, found families and growing up.

-The Avatar: This Song is almost purely instrumental and uses a lot of motifs from the actual show. There is only a little Narration throughout it and is done by Katara (and it kind of is similar to the shows in a way)

-The Boy in the Iceberg: This Song starts off with a very dramatic chord but then Aang enters in and is very bubbly and light. It focuses mainly on Aang with vocal accompaniments by Kat and Sokka. But as the song progresses it gets a little more desperate and you realize it’s about this kid in denial about the horrors that have happened to him. And Zuko is playing these underlying tones that just make it feel like there is this impending doom. And it ends with Aang solemnly saying “I never wanted to be-“

-Kyoshi Warrior: This follows along with the tone Zuko started in the previous song and focuses on Suki. This is about the obstacles she has had to overcome especially being a woman. And it’s a very empowering almost angry song. Sokka has lil harmonies with her too in this song which is pretty cute. Katara has a keytar solo in this too dont @ me

-Imprisoned/Jet: I’m debating putting this song in but I want an early Katara feature so I just might. This one would be about her dealing with her not so great relationships in the past. And kind of a not so subtle fuck you to Jet

-The Blue Spirit: This would follow up with Katara’s slower vibes and start out kind of eerie. It’s a Zuko and Aang duet (Mainly Zuko though). It’s about Zuko’s internal struggles and moral dilemmas. Aang in the song represents the goodness he knows he has in him. But Zuko keeps pushing that away for the time being. And it gets more and more harsh. And it practically ends with Zuko scream/sobbing

-The Siege of the North: This features practically everyone vocally. This one is dedicated to their passed friend (Girlfriend in Sokka’s case) Yue. And it starts off angry and sad and it just hits everyone. Then it does end on a solo from Sokka that’s wow so emotional.

-The Avatar State: A 15 minute masterpiece that puts all their styles of music together. And cannot decide if I want this as just an instrumental or not. But fun fact for the fans: Aang actually originally composed and recorded the whole thing by himself as sort of a dedication to all of his pals. But in performance and the soundtrack it’s all of the Gaang playing

-The Cave of Two Lovers: Essentially it’s mostly Katara and Aang singing a funny little tune as they try to just laugh off the insanity of their life. They’d even include a nod to “Secret Tunnel”. It’s a simple tune that contrasts great with the complexity of the Avatar State before. It’s a sign of hope of a brighter future. (Also during the performances of this everyone is on stage and sings a little part of the song. Except Toph who’d be getting ready backstage)

-The Swamp: This is just a Ethereal experience. It stars Sokka Katara and Aang. And is about strange ‘visions’ in a swamp. It Starts off with Sokka accepting Yue’s gone and Katara accepting her mother’s death. And finally it ends with Aang, he feels hopeless and alone but he keeps hearing this voice calling to him. And at live performances this is where Toph comes up from below stage as the fog machines pour out everywhere making it this insane mystic vibe. And the two of them are harmonizing together as the song builds up. (I imagine it sounding kind of similar to this song). And when they finally come together Toph saying something totally just Toph Like and that ends the song. (Also towards the end of the song they are singing this fun harmony and at the end take it up an octave (kind of like in the end of ‘show yourself’ from Frozen 2) and fans think while listening to the soundtrack that it’s Toph who hits this super high note but low and behold at the live performance it’s revealed it’s Aang in his wild falsetto)

-The Blind Bandit: It’s a 4 minute Drum Solo that’s just Toph center stage fucking killing it (LIKE PLEASE WATCH THIS VIDEO FOR REFERENCE OF HOW ACTUALLY INSANELY HARD SHE GOES. THEY TURN HER UPSIDE DOWN) Toph doesn’t need words to express her emotions. Okay enough said.

-City of Walls and Secrets: The Whole Gaang features in this one vocally at some point. And it’s about society keeping things away from the people. Because the Gaang really says fuck Authority.

-The Crossroads of Destiny: A Zuko and Katara duet. Their styles blend perfectly and create this somber piece about hope of redemption. And how they both lost their mother in a way.

-The Painted Lady: A mystical Katara Solo. That has everyone shaking. I’m not sure quite what it’s about but this is the song that made fans gay for Katara that’s all imma say.

-The Runaway: Look this is about to be the 3rd Katara feature in a row but I’m not mad. This would be a duet with Toph. And it’s a head banger and is about unlikely friendships okaY

-Nightmares and Day Dreams: An Aang solo. This one is just straight up wild. It’s a similar vibe to Boy in the Iceberg. Where a lot of it is Aang in denial of his problems and wanting to avoid responsibilities but it’s causing him insomnia. He wrote this when he didn’t sleep for over 72 hours and the weirdness it has definitely shows that.

-The Swords Masters: THE SOKKA SOLO WE DESERVE. In this album Sokka takes a way more serious vibe to his music, But this one does have a little more fun. It’s very energetic and shows off Sokka’s guitar skills.

-The Boiling Rock: The Zukki Song we have all been waiting for. It’s just straight up a good time. And is about finding love and accepting ones flaws. And it’a just iconic. This is where Suki hits a Whistle note in the album. They also each get an instrumental solo. This is one of the best headbangers in the album.

-Agni Kai (Lightning Strikes): @toph-beifcng is APPARENTLY WRITING THIS SO I DONT WANT TO SAY ANYTHING BC I DUNNONWHAT THEY WRITING BUT I KNOW ITLL BE STRAIGHT FIRE. I’m ASSUMING IT’S A ZUKO FEATURE THO.

-Sozins Comet: The final song in the album. It’s theme consist of a brighter future with their new found family and acceptance of the past. Overall it’s a straight jam. But in the end of the song it ends with the ‘Avatars Love’ Motif at the end.

BONUS TRACKS:

-Tales of Ba Sing Se:

Features fun little melodies from the Gaang that didn’t make full fledge songs. This also includes ‘Leaves from the Vine’ sung by Iroh still that Zuko plays with him. In memory of Lu Ten.

Please feel free to add on or suggest anything! Or send me an ask if you would rather do that :^)

#avatar band au #zukki #taang #avatar #atla #I REALLY LOVE THIS IDEA #OKAY

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rainbowyouthproject · 4 years

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Interview #2-Ruthie(she/her)

Hello! This second interview I did with myself. I ask myself the questions I am using for everyone I interview(although they are allowed to select those which they feel comfortable answering). Each question is related to my experiences and thoughts as a young member of the LGBTQ+ community

Bio: My name is Ruthie and I am 17 years old and live in the suburbs of Chicago. I will be attending Purdue University this fall and majoring in Data Science. I started this project for my final senior English project and my goal is to share stories of LGBTQ+ youth, support them, and show other LGBTQ+ youth that they aren’t alone in their experiences or struggles.

What are some struggles you have faced/are facing within yourself in terms of your gender identity/or sexuality as an LGBTQ+ youth?

I didn’t really know that people could like someone of the same gender until I was 11 and after that a little part of me began to re-evaluate my sexuality. I always just figured I was supposed to like men only, but now, when I look back at my younger self, I see that my attraction towards women was always present. I finally came out as bisexual to my friends when I was 16. I’m 17 now and I’m out to those closest to me except for my parents(I’ll explain that later). I didn’t really begin to examine my sexuality until I was 15 and had my first serious high school boyfriend. After that, it was more of an internal battle of whether or not I wanted to accept the fact I was sexually attracted to women. I thought my girl friends wouldn’t want to be friends with me anymore and I thought my parents wouldn’t believe me. I had always thought I was only supposed to be with men so everything was confusing. It’s still confusing to me, but I’m working to love and accept myself more. My sexuality doesn’t define me as a person and if someone has a problem with my sexuality they can leave.

What are some struggles you have faced/are facing in terms of your gender identity/ orsexuality in relationship to those close to you?(friends and family)

So as I stated before I’m not out to my parents. It’s a personal decision I’ve made to not come out to them until I’m more of an adult. There’s been many times where they’ve doubted me when I tell them how I feel or don’t take me seriously. I felt like they would most definitely approach me in a similar way if I was to come out to them, and I still feel this way. When I was trying to come out to my friends I was scared they wouldn’t accept me because some are more conservative, but they did and they were very kind to me which I loved. So I didn’t have as much trouble with my friends. Also if anyone close to me see’s this please don’t out me to my parents that’s something I have to do myself thank you :)

What are some ways that you show your pride?

Since I haven’t been out that long and I’m not out to my parents it makes it very hard for me to have anything pride related. So I can’t hang up the bisexual pride flag or anything like that, but I try to do it anyway I can. I’m showing my pride by answering my own interview questions for one thing haha. I Shibori dyed a tapestry using the bisexual pride flag colors so I could have a subtle pride flag for my dorm at college. I’m working on showing my pride in more ways as well. I make tiktok’s(don’t judge) related to my sexuality and that’s a big thing for me especially because I get kinda insecure when I tell people, but I’m really getting better about not caring what people think and just living my best life.

What is a message/lesson you would give to yourself when you were younger?

My message would be that princesses can marry princesses. I stated this is my first interview with Lexi that I always thought could only be princesses and princes, but now I know that it doesn’t have to be that way. I would tell myself that the way you feel about that pretty girl in the movie isn’t weird. I would tell myself to accept the way I feel and love myself for who I am. I wasn’t always comfortable with myself, but I always put on a front to act like I was. I would tell myself that it’s okay to be you and you should be unapologetic about who you are.

What is a message/lesson you would give to other LGBTQ+ youth?

I would give them the same message I would give my younger self, to be unapologetically you and not give a heck about what others think. Don’t think you’re weird or you need to change and be “normal”. I would also tell them to be supportive of others in the LGBTQ+ community who may be going through a hard time or simply just go to a pride parade, protest for those who may not be able to protest for themselves. Stand up for what you believe and for who you are. Try to make good change in the world for the LGBTQ+ community. It’s still very hard for some to be open about their sexuality or gender identity and they need to be supported. Another message would be to remember you are not alone, the LGBTQ+ community is very loving and supportive and if you don’t have anyone close to you that is understanding or supportive they will be there for you.

How has your perspective of the world as an LGBTQ+ youth changed over time?

I have seen a lot of things differently as I’ve grown up(naturally), but I’ve started to see not just global issues differently, but also closer issues that personally affect those I care about. As I’ve learned more about political action regarding LGBTQ+ issues and injustices towards the community in the past, I’ve become more motivated to use my voice. It wasn’t till 2015 that gay marriage was legalized. That was only 5 years ago. This has made me see that action is needed and there must be change. It’s ridiculous to me and I used to be blissfully ignorant of these issues, but now, especially as a member of the community, I see that it’s not all perfect. To turn from the negatives, I’ve also realized how beautiful and loving the LGBTQ+ community is. I see LGBTQ+ individuals supporting each other and being open about who they are and it gives me hope that someday the whole world will be just as loving and accepting.

What are some hopes you have for the future in terms of the LGBTQ+ community in relationship with the world?

As I stated before, I hope that one day everyone will be loving and accepting of everyone no matter what their gender identity or sexuality is. I also hope to see more representation in the media of LGBTQ+ individuals. I’d like to see a Disney movie with a princess who falls in love with another princess(I know I talk about princesses a lot, but that was a lot of my childhood). I’d like to see more LGBTQ+ characters on TV, in movies, in books, everywhere. A large part of why I was slow to come out was because I felt like I would be alone, that I was weird. I want children to grow up knowing that it’s okay to be who they are. There has been some progress in terms of representation, but as we had talked about in the first interview, it’s all only about coming out or focusing on homophobia. I’d like to see it normalized, LGBTQ+ people living their best life like everyone else. It’s important to do this in order to bring about more progress. Another thing I’d like to see is for LGBTQ+ people to not have their rights threatened. There has been political action taken that is harmful to LGBTQ+ rights in the US lately. Trangender people were banned from the military not long after gaining that right, transgender people are about to lose protection against discrimination in terms of medical care, and many politicians have been openly homophobic or transphobic. LGBTQ+ are not being given the support and rights that they deserve by their government. It makes me so unbelievably sad. I love this country, but I am disappointed in the way the government tends to threaten the liberties of it’s people. I hope to see this change and I will be a part of it. I will fight for the change that my community desrves to see in this world.

This is the piece I did for myself! I included the tapestry I mentioned as well!

#lgbtq #lgbtq positivity #lgbt rights #lgbtq community #lgbtq books #interview #pride #biseuxal #lgbtq pride #story #realtalk #lgbtq stories #rainbow youth project #art #colored pencil #artists on tumblr #aesthetic

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rainandhotchocolate · 5 years

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Tutors Pet - Part 4

A/N Hey friends! I just realised this didn’t go up in my queue yesterday oops so dw I will be posting twice today <3 This is a little filler-ish but I hope you enjoyyyy ! :)

“Y/N” A voice was calling her. It sounded like it was coming from a distance, as if on the other side of a tunnel. She tried to shoo them, but her arms were heavy and wouldn’t move. She just wanted to sleep.

“Y/N!” The voice called out again – louder this time.

“I’m tired” Y/N murmured, wanting to turn over to one side and just fall asleep…

Suddenly she felt herself be pulled upwards as strong arms lifted her up and the pain hit here like bullets through her spine. Her entire body seized up, pain shooting up and down her hips, a piercing in her upper bicep, her head spinning as it began to wake up and desperately want to shut back down.

Y/N groaned loudly, her head beginning to spin as she was carried somewhere, making her feel progressively more ill. When she had begun to feel like she couldn’t hold back any kind of puke she was lowered down onto a kind of bed.

Her vision was still blurry, and it hurt to try to open them, so she kept them shut, drifting in and out of a kind of sleep.

“Is she ok?”

“I don’t know, we still don’t know what happened.”

“Was she hexed?”

“I think so- there was blood everywhere”

“Has she been unconscious this entire time?

“When has Madame Pomfrey said she will wake up?”

“I’m up I’m up” Y/N muttered, groaning loudly as she felt her back crack when she started to sit up. Her eyes were still blurry but she could make out multiple figures in front of her, all beginning to lean in as she sat up.

“Are you ok” She heard Louisa call out, a figure rushing towards her, pushing through the others to sit next to her and grab her hand.

“Uh, I don’t know? I don’t really remember much. Am I in the hospital wing?”

“Yes, you-“

“Everybody PLEASE move out of the way, stop crowding my patient!” Madame Pomfrey came pushing through the group, muttering about how long they had been crowding up her wing, “Ok drink this up, dear”

She held out a cup filled with a yellowing potion and began cleaning up the bedside table so that she could place more medications across it. Y/N took a large gulp and gagged audibly.

“Oh my god what is this”

“It’s for your leg wounds, they were magically cut and wouldn’t heal by itself, did you expect it to taste like pumpkin juice?” She tutted at her, “Come on now, finish it off”

Y/N pouted when she’d turned her back but took a deep breath and downed it, shivering involuntarily as it slipped down her throat.

“Jesus that was awful” Y/N groaned again, trying to get comfortable in the bed. Louisa reached out and plumped up the pillows behind her, pushing away Y/N’s hands as she tried to help her.

“Stop it, let me help you, you fool” Louisa shook her head, smiling at Y/N as she rolled her eyes.

“So… does anyone know what happened, at all?” Y/N rubbed her eyes, turning back to face the group in front of her. Her eyes were focusing in again, revealing James, Sirius and Lily all standing over her looking very concerned.

“Well Sirius found you” James faced him, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Sorry I didn’t see anything, I had been going out to-” He cut himself off, clearing his throat, “I found you on the floor of the courtyard, mostly unconscious. It took some yelling to get you awake.”

“I remember leaving the Great Hall to get some air, and then nothing?” Y/N narrowed her eyes, trying to focus in on what had happened but there was just a large gaping hole where the memory should be.

“What did I say earlier! Do not rile up Miss Y/L/N when she wakes up. Everybody out!” Madame Pomfrey had come bustling back in and was glaring down the group with a new fury in her eyes.

“But Pomfrey!”

“Friendship heals wounds!”

“Out- Mr Black, Mr Potter, you two especially.”

The group trudged out in frustration, Louisa sitting up, giving Y/N a kiss on the cheek and following suit. Lily walked out slightly slower than the rest, turning at the door so she could give Y/N a smile.

Madame Pomfrey came back over to her and began checking on her wounds, carefully unwrapping each one on her legs and arms to make sure they were all healing. She reached the top of Y/N’s bicep and paused, taking a deep breath.

“I wanted to unwrap this one separate from everyone else” Madame Pomfrey sat down in the chair next to her, giving her a comforting smile. It somehow made her feel worse.

“This wound was a little different to the others” Pomfrey began unwrapping it again, pulling off the bandages and placing them on the bedside table.

Y/N watched as it was taken off and looked down at her arm. There was writing cut deeply into her arm, still bright red and raw, reading “Fag”.

“Oh…” Y/N felt herself grow red, unsure what to say. Madame Pomfrey watched her carefully.

“It has been hexed into your arm and may take some time to get rid of” She continued to watch her closely, waiting for any reaction, “But I also wanted to check in. Was everything ok? Has this kind of thing happened before?”

“I – uh” Y/N stammered unsure what to say, “uh… no. I… didn’t think that anyone else knew” She muttered quietly.

“Well look, I don’t want to do anything that would make this worse, but this has happened before, and likely has been done by similar groups of people. I do feel like this is something we need to share with the headmaster, but I don’t want to do anything that would make you feel more uncomfortable.”

Y/N didn’t say anything for a minute, her heart beating a mile a minute.

“I would prefer if you didn’t” Y/N finally said, “for the moment at least. I just... haven’t even really shared this with anyone else yet. I’d feel kind of weird if it was told to Dumbledore.”

“Ok” Madame Pomfrey smiled at her and began wrapping up her arm again.

“Is that ok?” Y/N still felt like she wanted to puke. What if this stopped someone else from getting hurt? Was she just enabling people to feel like they can keep doing this because she was so scared about letting people know she was gay?

“Of course it is. It’s ok, it is a process sometimes and as much as there are benefits to letting Dumbledore know, there is also the very real possibility of it becoming school-wide knowledge which you may not be ready for yet.”

“Right, ok. Thanks for, you know, being so nice about it” Y/N wanted to roll her eyes at herself for sounding so ridiculous.

“I’m here for the students of this school, always,” Madame Pomfrey said curtly, smiling at her before patching up the rest of her bandages and handing her another potion, “Drink up, it will taste awful”

Taglist: @maraudersandco @northscorpio @seesaw-it @lustfulcry @depressedcoffeebean @supercuteasalily @palaisdecouture @blackpinkdolan @fashionlive15 @creepysweet

#lily evans fanfiction #lily evans x reader #lily evans imagine #lily evans x you #Lily Evans #Marauders #marauders fic #marauders era #marauders imagine #rainandhotchocolate

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ratandphilgames · 6 years

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Our Lives Don’t Collide

{chapter one: out of the closet}

summary: Shit hits the fan when famous actor!Phil is caught smooching a boy in an alleyway. Only problem? He’s not out and what's worse? The boy he was smooching was a journalist who set it all up to get a quick picture and now Phil is royally screwed. The only answer Phils management can come up with is a fake relationship to try and do damage control and famous actor!Dan is the perfect candidate.

word count: 2585

rating: t

note: thanks so much to @definitelynot-danielhowell for editing this fic and all the people in the writing gc who hyped me up enough to post this! I’m going to *try* updating every Thursday but bear with me as I get the hang of this. Thanks!

{read on ao3}

{next chapter}

-----

Nothing was meant to come of the night, he was just going drinking with some old uni friends and he wasn’t going to be famous actor Philip Lester for once. He was going to be fun, free, reckless Phil Lester. What he ended up being was a dumbass.

He’d been drunk. He’d been drunk and horny and lonely. It was a mistake for him to think he’d been safe, to assume he could go back to being that kid he was in uni just because all his old friends were around. He wasn’t the same kid he was in uni, now he was famous and he had little kids looking up to him and nobody knew he was gay. He couldn’t just do what he wanted anymore. The alcohol, however, made him think otherwise.

The moment Phil let his guard down, shit really hit the fan. He was drinking and when his university friends had to leave, he decided he had to stay. The night was still young, and Phil was determined to prove he was too.

He started talking to the cute guy that had been making eyes at him from across the bar. The guy didn’t mention seeing Phil in any movies and that was enough reassurance for Phil’s tipsy mind. Still, he wasn’t a complete idiot. He suggested that if anything were to continue they should move to the alleyway and a minute later that’s where they were. Making out.

Phil didn’t noticed the black SUV parked at the end of the alleyway, he was too focused on the task at hand. It wasn’t until he saw the flash of a camera that he realized he’d royally fucked up. In a split second there were several more bright-ass lights in his face, then the boy he was with fled to the car with the cameras, and it sped off.

It didn’t take a genius to realize Phil had been set up. Immediately he sobered up and processed everything that went down. The alley boy undoubtedly worked with the man driving the car and taking the pictures. He’d used Phil to get a quick buck from a scandalous picture. That shit sold for thousands.

Before another paparazzi could show up, Phil whipped out his phone and called a car to come get him. Where there was one of the clingy bastard, there would be more and Phil was not about to wait around for them to show up.

It wasn’t uncommon for journalists to go ‘undercover’ in attempts to get more information from celebrities, but it was a whole new level of low to trick Phil like that. The more he thought about it, the more red flags he saw surrounding the guy. His dumb alcohol induced brain just chose to ignore every single one of them.

By the time his car arrived, Phil was fighting back tears and trying desperately to figure out any sort of way he could salvage the situation, but nothing was coming to mind.

He needed to talk to his management team asap. They were good in these kinds of situations, they could help make everything right again.

With tears still in his eyes, he dialed his managers number into his phone and prayed to the gods that he would pick up at this hour.

Being caught with a boy attached to your lips wasn’t exactly easy to explain when you were seen as straight to the rest of the world, no matter if you never actually said you were straight.

Fuck. He really fucked this one up.

-----

Dan woke up around 8am to the sound of a bell. Waves of confusion overcame him as he tried to find the source of the sound. He slammed his fist on the snooze button, attempting to turn off his alarm clock, but found it wasn’t on at all, as it shouldn’t be. He had absolutely no reason to be awake this early.

After an embarrassingly long time, he realized the sound was coming from his phone, hidden somewhere in his duvet. By the time he found the shiny box of magic, the noise had stopped and Dan realized that he had missed a call.

He gathered his thoughts for a moment and then checked his notifications.

One missed call: Shannon the momager

He was going to be in big trouble if he ignored Shannon. She’d been his manager since he had started his career and truth be told, she was like a second mom to him, hence the momager.

With a big, excessive sigh, (he was an actor after all, he had to dramatic) he clicked the call back button and sat up in bed. It was unlikely she was going to let him fall back asleep after this, so Dan figured he might as well get a headstart on waking up.

“Hey Shan, you called?” He yawned while speaking, so it came out far more slurred than intended.

“Yes, I did, lazybutt, I’m sending a car your way. There’s a big idea in the works and I need you to be here like, now. Like yesterday, actually. Sam’s waiting on you.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Dan wasn’t going to argue with her, despite the 8am call in, mostly because Sam was involved. Sam, his ‘agent’ only got involved if there was a movie opportunity, or some sort of contract that needed to be signed, because legally, Shannon couldn’t do that crap. That never stopped her from getting involved, though.

The last ‘Sam is involved so get your ass here fast’ call Dan had gotten was because the casting director for a new and upcoming film had loved him in his previous work and requested an audition with him personally.

That audition had resulted in Dan getting a huge supporting role in “Switch Hitter” a movie about a young baseball player juggling the fact that he likes boys… and girls. Equally as much. It was the bisexual representation Dan dreamed of, and he got to be a part of it. It had yet to be released, but there was a lot of talk of award season already, and it was set to do very well.

When he first started out in the industry he faced a lot of biphobia. He’d been out since he was 14, and despite the quickly progressing world, a lot of people turned him down once they learned he identified as bisexual. It was tough, but eventually Dan ended up on Shannon’s doorstep, and she took him under her wing. She found him an agent, Sam, who worked his magic and got Dan some amazing auditions. He was only ever unapologetically himself and people loved it. He was a fast growing bicon, and quickly became a fan favorite.

As soon as the call with Shannon ended, Dan was scrambling around to find clothes and straighten his hair, something he probably wouldn’t have done on this particular day had he not gotten this wake up call. But he was going outside, which meant he needed to look perfectly presentable. There were people with cameras everywhere, meaning in even the short distance from his door to the car he would be photographed tens of times.

He was constantly aware of the scrutiny he would endure for every little thing he did when a camera was around. What he wore, how he walked, his posture, how his hair looked. Everything. It was a lot of pressure for a 22 year old mess.

By the time he was unplugging his straightener, there was a knock at the door meaning the car had arrived. He was sprinting around his room, looking for some kind of matching shoes (preferably black) and running low on time.

Dan managed to stumble to the front door of his unnecessarily large home with his phone in his hand and his shoes on his feet, which was a win in his book. Upon opening the door, he was met with the icy eyes of his bodyguard, Andreas, who seemed to dislike Dan on an impersonal level (and maybe on a personal level). The people pleaser in Dan tried to let it go, but sometimes it really stung.

“Ready?”

“Yeah… yeah.”

It was awkward, having someone walk you from your front door to a car not even 10 feet away, but there had been some incidents and having Andreas around, despite his frosty attitude, made Dan feel a bit safer.

Per usual, a few fellows were perched right behind the iron gate installed all around the property, itching to get a shot of Dan leaving his house.

Dan’s driveway was unnecessarily long, to try and discourage people (paparazzi) from driving down it so it took a solid 5 minutes before they were even on a real road. By the time they were pulling up to his agents office building, it had been a solid 30 minute drive of pure silence. Andreas wasn’t much of a talker.

By ‘here’ Dan had assumed Shannon meant her office, but the driver had taken him straight to Sam’s. Business was really going down today.

Andreas ushered Dan out of the car, thankfully few seemed to care about his existence at the moment.

After entering the building, Dan was directed into an elevator. He had a lovely bout of awkward silence as annoying little tunes played in the background. Once, when Dan had first been introduced to Andreas, he had tried making small talk in a situation similar to this He had been met with a stern glare and a ‘we aren’t friends, I work for you.’ which had been very blunt, but very true. He’d been warned by Shannon prior that he was not to make a friend out of Andreas, as that would ‘compromise his morals’ or some shit. Really, it just made him feel awful lonely most the time.

They reached Sam’s office and Dan knocked on the door rhythmically. He was always unsure if he had to knock.

“Come in!” hollered a shrill voice that was unmistakably Shannon. Andreas stepped in first, ensured the area was safe, and then exited. The little routine check always threw Dan off his rhythm, but it was essential if he was going to be left alone in a room, according to Andreas. As soon as Andreas left the room, the door was shut and he was undoubtedly standing on the other side of it, bored out of his mind.

Sam, sitting behind his big executive and fancy looking desk, motioned for Dan to sit down in the empty chair next to Shannon, who was looking at him with excited eyes. Surely only good news could come of today's meeting.

“A huge opportunity unlike any other has fallen right in our laps, Dan.” Shannon started off, clearly unable to keep her enthusiasm contained.

“Daniel-” Sam always used his elongated name when addressing him “you will be required to sign an NDA today before we will disclose any information about this business opportunity. Do you understand?”

This was not new. Non-disclosure agreements were common in this line of work, when the public is avidly trying to dig into your personal life. It’s important to make sure the information you don’t want out there, isn’t getting out. Sometimes the only way you can hold people accountable is through legal binds. He had to sign them in many instances, usually so he could read a script for a high budget film in order to audition.

“Yeah, I understand.” He answered, and before he could even blink, a piece of paper was being handed to him along with a pen.

“Your legal team looked it over this morning. Read it and then sign if you wish to continue.” Sam was being overly professional in this case and it was making Dan nervous. No matter how many of these papers he signed, he always felt like he was going to be tricked some way or another. He’s seen too many lawyer shows to be unsuspecting of loopholes thrown in. No matter how many professional lawyers looked over the piece of paper and confirmed his safety in signing, it always felt just a bit sketchy.

This document was fairly standard, and after reading through it Dan felt as though it was safe enough to sign. As soon as he had committed ink to pen and wrote out his name Shannon started talking.

“So here’s the basic rundown, there is a certain actor who is in a sticky situation, and you're the perfect person to unstickify the situation.”

Shannon was being very vague. Very unsettlingly vague.

“Just, look at this picture.” Sam said as he handed Dan his phone. Displayed on the screen was an image of 2 boys kissing. 2 very familiar looking boys.

The first being Phil Lester, academy award nominee for best actor and Dan's ‘celebrity crush’ should he be forced to give an answer.

The second boy in the photo looked very similar to Dan, in fact the only reason he knew he wasn't the one in the photo is because he was pretty fucking sure he'd remember snogging Phil motherfucking Lester, no matter how drunk he was.

After a long stare at the image, Dan remembered people were still in front of him.

“That's not me.” He said quietly, afraid they were accusing him of pulling a publicity stunt. Not that he would be upset if that were him. Phil was very handsome.

“No, we know it's not you. But the public doesn’t know that.”

Shannon was still being vague as fuck and Dan was so beyond lost.

“I’m sorry, I just don’t understand. Is that actually Phil Lester? As in the actor? What the hell does this have to do with me?”

“So basically, he was outed by the paparazzi last night, and to minimize casualties his management team is attempting to make it look like a loving relationship, instead of a drunken hookup. Try to keep some dignity and all that. They’ve contacted us because, as the internet has pointed out, you look very similar to the boy in the photo. All you have to do is confirm it’s you and everyone will believe it.”

Sam was a lot more blunt when it came to, well, anything.

“Wait, wait, wait. You want me to pretend to be the boy in the picture? Isn’t that like, lying?”

“It’s showbiz, Dan. Lot’s of celebrities have purely ‘Hollywood’ relationships. It’ll be great positive publicity for you and it’ll help get Phil out of a hole. The man just got outed unexpectedly, his team is trying to salvage the situation. I think this will be a great step for your career.”

This was… not what Dan had been anticipating when he got the phone call at 8am.

Sam had done all the talking, and Shannon, who never shut up, was being uncharacteristically quiet.

“Shan? What do you think?” Her job was to manage him after all, Dan wanted her opinion on what he should do.

“I think this is a good idea if you think you can handle upholding a believable relationship for the length of time they demand. We can set up a meeting and discuss the details if you think you want to pursue this, otherwise we won’t waste our time. It’s all up to you, hun.”

It’s all up to him.

“Okay, then I guess we should set up a meeting. I’m not saying yes to anything yet, but I’ll hear what his team has to say.”

#dan and phil #phan #dnp #phanfiction #phandom #ima try to update #please like/ reblog if you like it!#our lives dont collide

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joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh · 6 years

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Season in Review - Spring 2018

It’s that time of year again folks, Spring 2018 has come to a close! And since I’ve done this once before in the past, it’s time to do it again – sharing my thoughts on the things I watched this season. I’ve also got 2 new segments this time, but you’ll see those at the end. That being said, let’s just jump right into it.

Amanchu Advance

This show needs a quick mention here. See, after seeing some YouTuber’s “what you should watch this season”, I decided Amanchu might be a good watch because gay diving iyashikei sounds fun, and @kokichi-owoma recommended it to me properly afterwards. Course, I needed to watch season 1 first, and I planned on doing just that. However, within my first 12 minutes of watching I was already so put off by the weird art style and even more so by the absolutely disgusting school uniforms that I dropped it. If you want to be specific, I never even started Amanchu Advance so it shouldn’t be on this list, but since it relates to the season I thought I should mention it.

Now though, it’s time to get into the good shit – into shows I actually finished.

Uma Musume

I watched the first episode of this with @meme-emperor around 3 or 4 weeks into the season, and nothing about it really made me want to watch anymore of it. Not that it was bad or anything, just that I wasn’t super interested. However, as the season progressed and I started seeing Special Week everywhere, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to maybe watch all of it. It’ll mean I watched more shows in the season, so why not, right?

Anyway, Uma Musume is certainly an interesting one. The premise is just absurd and weird. It’s a cute girl show where the girls are horse girls, but it’s also a sports anime focusing on the races and featuring a race in like every episode, and while this part isn’t so prominent, it’s also an idol anime. Not a combination you hear every day. But what about the actual quality of the show? Well, I’d say it’s okay. Special Week is a very fun main character and one you’ll find yourself quickly falling in love with, and Silence Suzuka, though she starts off painfully boring, gets good later on and develops a good relationship/rivalry with Special Week. Though all quite one-note and forgettable, the rest of the cast are still decently entertaining when they’re on screen. The show doesn’t pretend they’re more important than they actually are and yet gives them enough screentime to where if your best girl somehow isn’t Special Week or Silence Suzuka you’ll still be content.

As someone who’s very unfamiliar with sports anime, I can say this anime did pretty good at its sports stuff, I think. Most of the focus is actually on the races, and in almost every race, I wasn’t actually sure who would win, which I’m pretty sure is a good thing. Not gonna lie though, while the races are pretty fun to watch, they re-use footage a lot and even when they’re not re-using footage, they still use the same camera angles and while I was invested enough in the plot to not be too bothered by that, it was still pretty tiring.

All in all, Uma Musume was a pretty good show. It’s not something I can recommend to anyone, and I don’t see myself ever rewatching it, but if you can get past how silly the premise is, you’ve got a pretty good watch on your hands.

Comic Girls

Yet another cute girl anime, I watched all of Comic Girls in one sitting at the end of the season, and I had a lot of fun! Like every modern cute girl anime, this one has a unique gimmick to set itself apart from the competition, that being that our girls are all mangaka. And guess what? They actually utilise this premise! As someone who’s not a mangaka, I can’t comment on how accurate this anime is to that line of work, but it felt genuine. Like it was written by someone who constantly submitted their own manuscripts that got rejected, just like our main character, Kaos.

Speaking of the characters, they’re all distinct and likeable. Kaos is the tiny cute one that everyone mistakes for a child, but she’s a massive fucking otaku loser, buying figures and she even has a body pillow. Also, she completely loathes herself. Her self-hatred is used for some genuinely funny comedy quite often, but I also appreciate it because I don’t really see many cute girl shows explore characters that actually hate themselves so much. Only real problem is that she screams a lot and it’s really high-pitched. That got annoying almost immediately.

There’s also my best girl, Tsubasa. An excellent short-haired waifu that’s a passionate shounen author. She’s cool and very friendly, though occasionally quite oblivious, and also she’s secretly from a rich family that she hates being a part of. It’s not the most complex personality in the world or anything, and she doesn’t really develop as a character either, but she still stands out as a likeable character and embodiment of the simple appeal these shows can have.

There’s also Ruki, a hentai mangaka, which is already a joke in and of itself. Even greater than that, she actually wanted to be a children’s mangaka but her art style was too weirdly suggestive. She’s passionate about getting her work done and wants a boyfriend to more authentically capture the love feelings and such, but she’s also massively embarrassed about, you know, drawing hentai. Once again, another example of a waifu that’s pretty simple, but she’s still appealing and cracks some good jokes.

The last girl, Koyume, is the most generic of the bunch. She’s just blond genki. Still likeable though.

While the main cast are all likeable, the supporting cast are a bit more mixed. The teacher is actually a fan of Tsubasa’s manga, but doesn’t know Tsubasa wrote it until later, where she then acts like a total fangirl. It’s funny and the teacher’s likeable. Kaos’ editor is also a character, and all I can really say is that I liked her. The matron is forgettable. Lastly is Fuura, who is honestly extremely annoying. She’s a horror mangaka and the joke is that she’s always screaming and being scary. It gets tiring quickly.

Anyway, I know that was effectively just a character summary, but the show’s pretty good. If you’re a fan of the cute girl genre, this one’s definitely worth a watch. And if you’re unfamiliar with the genre and want to explore it a bit, this anime isn’t a bad starting point.

Magical Girl Ore

This is one of three shows that at the start of the season I knew I was definitely picking up. I watched the PV Crunchyroll uploaded and was instantly baffled and extremely curious. A Magical Girl anime where they turn into JoJo characters? I had to get in on this, and doing so was definitely worth it. I mean, all you really need to do is read the MAL summary:

“This story is about a 15-year-old girl who is a newbie idol in love with her best friend's brother who is also a popular idol. But she runs into a scary yakuza guy and finds out that her mother was an ex-magical girl, and the yakuza guy was her mascot. Her love interest gets kidnapped by demons that look like burly men with cute squirrel heads. So she contracts the yakuza to become a magical girl, which in this story means she turns into a handsome guy in a magical girl outfit. On top of that, her love interest shows an attraction toward her magical guy form. Her best friend turns out to be in love with her and also becomes a magical cross-dressing guy to save her life. Thus, their manager, who is a magical girl geek, then decides to turn them into an idol unit.”

It’s as silly and hilarious as it sounds. And they make all sorts of genuinely funny jokes throughout. Not just jokes with the characters either, the entirety of episode 5 is a joke about the horrors of producing weekly episodes, making jokes about budgets, deadlines, and also being a hilarious Godzilla parody. Is it completely disconnected from the rest of the show? A bit, but it’s still hilarious anyway.

All things considered, the show’s actually got a pretty good main plot. It’s got the classic Magical Girl format of just weekly weird battles and fun circumstances, but in the background, it’s building up to a big reveal regarding why there are so many demons appearing, and the climax answers this question with two major plot twists that were genuinely hard to predict and yet also made sense in the show. The ending even gets surprisingly emotional with a rather interesting confrontation between Saki and her Manager, who was revealed to be the “antagonist” all along.

Overall, Magical Girl Ore is a good watch. Absolutely watch it if you’re a fan of Magical Girls. It can be hit or miss with some of the comedy, and episode 6 is honestly very boring, not to mention if you’re not into jokes about tentacle porn you’ll be turned off by episode 2, but it’s still a good watch. I’m glad I picked it up.

Magical Girl Site

This was the second of the three shows I knew I’d watch this season, primarily because I’d heard the manga was edgy as fuck and also I wanted to get more into magical girls so thought this’d be worth the watch. And of the two magical girl anime I watched this season, Magical Girl Site is the lesser of the two. Magical Girl Site is genuinely the worst anime I’ve seen to completion other than Slow Start. And to be honest, I don’t even know where to start with this one. But I’ll try.

Let’s start off simple. The soundtrack is completely forgettable. The art and animation start out okay, but just get worse and worse as the show goes on to the point where the final episode looked genuinely disgusting. The OP’s fine, musically, and the Frieza cover is fucking hilarious even though I think it’s supposed to be creepy. The ED is forgettable musically and features weird laughable live action sections with actresses that cannot convincingly be high school pupils and just look like 10 year olds who think they’re martial arts masters if they just jump and flail around. Voice acting’s mostly average or below average, with characters not really emoting appropriately when they should be.

With the technical stuff out of the way, let’s get into the meat of this. This show’s plot is fucking awful. Our girls are magical girls because the plot demands it. What does being a magical girl actually entail? You get a weapon and the admins hate you. Why do the admins hate you? I have no idea. How do the admins even work? Well, dead magical girls can become one under certain criteria. The admins’ goal is to make more magical girls and get them to kill each other because of some convoluted rules about weapon usage and gathering negative energy, the latter trait of which is only brought up once but takes up the entire episode even though it’s never relevant again. Oh, and admins can be brought back to life if you’re extra nice to them. Just in general, this anime’s magical girl system makes no sense and has no reason to even exist. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by better magical girl shows, but this is just dumb and convoluted and nonsensical.

But that’s not the only way the plot’s dumb! It’s also tryhard edgy bullshit! In the first episode, before we’re even given reason to like the main character, Aya Asagiri, we see her being bullied to a stupidly unrealistic degree, physically abused by her brother, nearly fall onto a traintrack as a train approaches only for people to be like “ugh what a bother”, and nearly raped. Don’t get me wrong, that shit’s all horrible. But this is episode 1! We’re not attached to this character in the slightest! We know nothing about her and you’re trying to make us care by making us pity her! That doesn’t work in fiction. Throughout the entire show she’s just boring and generic, her only noteworthy trait being the actually pretty good relationship she develops with her mentor figure and best character in the show – Tsuyuno Yatsumura. Rather than just be a teacher-student dynamic, it evolves into a genuine friendship where two people genuinely start to love each other and want to spend time together, to get closer. There are multiple scenes showing the development of their relationship and it’s the best thing this show has going for it. Alas, the anime adaptation cut out the kiss scene they have in the manga. Kinda shitty that they’d cut that out, but whatever.

There are two other characters I’d like to briefly touch on. First of all is Kiyoharu surname. She’s canonically trans. She’s introduced alongside a bunch of forgettable and superfluous characters, but unlike them, Kiyoharu actually contributes things to the plot pretty frequently thanks to her cool magic ability. I’ll touch more on those later though. Kiyoharu’s pretty okay is all I wanted to say with her, really.

Next is Nijimin Anazawa, the worst piece of shit in the show. Remember all those horrible things I mentioned happened in episode 1? All pretty dark, right? Well, Nijimin is part of an idol group called Dog Days where they dress in dog ears and tails and bark and sing, and she also has magic mind patrolling panties. If you’ve been reading my weekly reviews you’d know I complain about her being the embodiment of tonal whiplash all the time, but can you blame me? Imagine being this tone-deaf as a writer. Plus, while I’m down with plot happening because a character was being stupid, so many plot points in this show happen because Nijimin was being a fucking idiot. Nijimin falls in love with the Aya’s stupid fucking brother Kaname why? Well because that way he can get her panties, kill her, and then be kidnapped and raped by some secret agent man.

Oh, yeah, that happens. Kaname Asagiri, the abusive cunt with a god complex for some reason who also RPs as some friendly honours student is raped by a secret agent that comes out of nowhere and is inexplicably working with a site admin just because. This secret agent is never explained. Kaname’s god complex doesn’t make sense. Kaname is abused by his own dad but that’s only shown once and they don’t do anything interesting with it. I mention this in a previous review but why not have him have a bit of a crisis over him being just like his dad – abusive? He’s abusive because he hates the abuse he suffers. That may be cliché but it’s still interesting and could allow for a good story, you know? Maybe make us care for him to literally any degree? Not even in a sympathetic way, just make us want to be interested in the story with him. But no, they never do.

The rest of the girls are completely forgettable and have no dimension. There’s this hilariously edgy scene where we’re introduced to a girl whose Stick lets her heal people with her own blood. Of course, that means she has to self-harm to do it, so when she mentions this power, she pulls a whole “I already self-harmed anyway”. This is never elaborated on. It’s just edgy bullshit this girl does because that way we feel “sorry” for her. Except we don’t

Also the weird rape thing with Kaname happens in-between two scenes of happy endings for the girls. We’ve got a “conclusive” ending but Kaname’s just left being raped by an agent that some of the admins wanted to kill anyway. It’s just stupid. Kaname’s a complete fucking waste of time and is so disgustingly forced as an antagonist in a completely nonsensical way.

Speaking of the ending, what the fuck even was it? Yatsumura dies in one of the funniest scenes this season even though it was supposed to be a completely serious and emotional death but then she’s brought back to life literally next episode by the power of positivity? And then when they kill Nana, the site admin we’re most familiar with, it kinda just ends. They take on all the negative energy or whatever and now none of the girls are gonna die, but why? How did they actually do that? And how come it doesn’t negatively affect them in any way? Love triumphs over all? That’s just terrible writing.

Another thing I’d like to mention is the main force of nature villain we’re fighting – The Tempest. The Tempest is something that’ll kill everyone by getting rid of malice and malicious emotions and most people will die. However, whatever girl uses her stick to gather the most negative energy will be fine. I think? Again, that part’s only relevant in one episode and is dropped immediately after. The Tempest has no explanation as to what it is or where it came from except from a connection to a character called “King”, who, if I recall correctly, made the magical girl site? Please don’t quote me on that though. Much as I’m happy to shit on this show I do want to be honest. Anyway, King also has no explanation as to who or what they are and what they want. They’re just there to set up for a season 2 we’ll never get. Maybe the manga does more with them later, but as it stands, they accomplish nothing and mean nothing. Also the Tempest’s design is as boring as they come. It’s just a mountain of “spooky” black arms with claw-like fingers. I can’t even tell if it’s supposed to be intimidating or if the designer actually put thought into its design whatsoever.

Anyway, I alluded to this earlier but now it’s time to talk about Sticks – the magical girl weapons in this universe. Sticks are pretty simple, really. They’re just weapons with a specific gimmick that drain the life-force of the user. While each magical girl is given their own Stick, the Sticks can technically be used by anyone, and the consequences will affect the new user. All of this is pretty simple stuff, and you’d think there’s nothing wrong with it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there. Sticks are also disgustingly imbalanced for no reason, with some being flat-out useless. I don’t mind power imbalances but some of this is just fucking stupid. Yatsumura can freeze time. That’s busted. I’m not complaining. But there’s also a Stick that lets you use your magic elsewhere. What. That’s fucking stupid. That relies on the magical girl owning other Sticks, but the only way she’d be able to get another Stick is by fighting another magical girl, a battle she’d lose since her Stick is shit. Seriously, what’s the point? And again, there’s the question of why the girls even get Sticks. The admins want to make more magical girls for no reason but also regularly kill magical girls, but then they can die to the Sticks anyway. It’s just stupid, nonsensical, and convoluted.

With all that being said, you’re probably wondering why I even watched this show to completion? Well, because it’s fucking hilarious. The writing’s so awful and easy to laugh at and shit all over. There’s a sense of catharsis to watching garbage like this and just mocking it. So honestly? I recommend this show. It’s fucking garbage but it’s a wonderful time. Maybe even watch it with some friends, get drunk doing so if that’s your thing and it’s legal. This show’s a laugh.

Serious warning though, this show is graphic. I’ve already mentioned the attempted and real rapes, as well as the self-harming girl. It’s all executed laughably bad in the show, but if you don’t want to see that sort of content, I don’t blame you. It’s a dangerous recommendation for that reason.

Hinamatsuri

Like with Comic Girls, I watched all of Hinamatsuri at the end of the season in one sitting. And I’d love to tell you I had an excellent time throughout, but, I honestly didn’t.

Episodes 1-7 were basically perfect. The comedy was fucking incredible, the art style and animation are very nice to look at, and the characters are all distinct and hilarious.

What really stood out to me was Anzu’s story though, because it’s so beautiful and emotional.

See, Anzu’s story is actually born from a bit of a gag. She told Hina she’d go home but then she couldn’t get home, rendering her homeless. That’s already kinda funny. She’s so prideful that she doesn’t want to go back on her word to Hina. And, there’s no dancing around this aspect, homelessness is often used for comedy. There’s nothing wrong with that whatsoever by the way, but Hinamatsuri chooses not to treat homelessness as comedy. It’s shown as a serious thing. Anzu got by by stealing at first, but a homeless man by the name of Yassan teaches her how to effectively be homeless. And she learns. She learns to work hard. She starts doing things to help herself. She’s introduced by Yassan to the homeless community, and she works to be accepted. And she is! They work together, they co-operate, she pays back all the people she stole from, she makes all sorts of friends along the way and it’s beautiful.

But then we get to the part that’s legitimately making me tear up right now thinking about it. The place where the homeless made their community, they’re moved out of it, they have to split up and go their separate ways. Anzu is taken in by a couple that run a restaurant, but at first, she feels awful. She feels like she doesn’t deserve this life. Like she has to work for it like she was doing before. That’s already pretty emotional, but then we get this extremely heartwarming scene where Anzu’s new dad tells her that all the things she’s been taught will live on inside of her, that all those other people will live on inside of her and she’ll live on inside of them. My description can’t even begin to do it justice. It’s so beautiful and so heartwarming and makes me cry so much with how wonderful it is. Honestly, Anzu’s story alone would be enough to make this anime of the year.

However, at the end of episode 7 is where the problems start. See, the second half of episode 7 focuses on the main character, Nitta, trying to get a girlfriend. Nothing wrong with that. It then sets up Hina wanting Nitta to get a girlfriend because then she’ll get a mother. That’s characterisation right there. She wants a mother, and then Nitta wants to be successful now more than ever for Hina’s sake. It’s plot. He unfortunately doesn’t get one, and when he sees Hina again who’s hospitalised thanks to a broken leg, he makes a sock puppet mother. And then the episode ends. We don’t get to see Hina’s reaction. She was desperate for a mother and expected one, but we see none of her disappointment from not getting one. Even though this part of the episode is treated like it’s plot heavy, it means nothing. It’s dropped and forgotten. What’s even weirder is that from this point forwards, Utako, the girl Nitta wanted to date, is just mysteriously absent from the anime, OP and ED included. You’d think that’d be significant but no, it isn’t.

Anyway, it gets even worse from episode 8. For plot-reasons, Hina has to go home, but again for plot-reasons, she can’t, and she’s happy about this. She wants to be back with Nitta. But when she gets home, he’s literally celebrating that she’s gone. That’s a pretty terrible thing for him to do. That’s dramatic. It’s plot. It’s a hurdle in their relationship they need to overcome. When I saw this scene, I was shocked. Completely and utterly shocked. And I wanted to see how it would resolve. I wanted to see Hina’s reaction and I wanted to see Nitta attempt to redeem himself. I wanted to see the conclusion to this plot point.

And we don’t get one. Episode 9 spends the first 10 minutes on a completely irrelevant character that contributes nothing to the plot. During the second ten minutes, everything’s cool again between everyone. Utako’s back, though not in the OP or ED. Hina and Nitta are on perfect terms with one another. We’re literally told through textbox:

“Things got a little awkward between Hina and Nitta after his one-man party, but they spoke about it and things are cool now.”

What. The. Fuck. That’s not a resolution. That’s not a resolution at all. That’s absolutely atrocious storytelling. @meme-emperor defends this by saying “it’s a gag” but no, I won’t accept that. Anzu’s homelessness was a gag and it evolved into one of the best and most heartwarming stories I’ve seen. Just because something’s a gag doesn’t mean it should be treated as irrelevant. And much as I hate to say it, this single textbox and lack of real resolution completely soured my thoughts on Hinamatsuri. As beautiful as Anzu’s story is, and as much as I’ve got other praises for it that I’ll get into in a bit, this little celebration party “joke” just pissed me off. And it’s not like they didn’t have the time to resolve it either. The girl from the start of episode 9 that survives could be completely cut out and since she occupies some time in the last episode as well, we’d be given 20 more minutes that we could actually do stuff with. You know, like resolve the conflict between Hina and Nitta? The fact that we even get a textbox to tell us a conclusion means there was definitely something there they could’ve done something with, but they didn’t, and it pisses me off so much that this show, which was my original Anime of the Season, lost that title.

Also this isn’t much of a big deal but Hina’s seiyuu isn’t great. On like the two occasions where Hina feels actual physical pain and seriously emotes, she completely fails at capturing any sense of injury and it just comes across as weird. She’s otherwise good though and sounds cute.

OP and ED are both pretty boring and forgettable to be honest. The OP in particular is a lot of shots panning up to see a whole character and it’s really unexciting.

But I mentioned other good stuff I’d go over, so let’s go into that. See, there’s a character called Hitomi and I completely love her. She’s so fucking cute and is the basis for some incredible comedy. She kinda picks up a part-time job at a bar and that evolves into working several jobs all the time, and she’s just tired and sleepy, but really cute and qualified and funny. She’s also a good friend to Anzu and Hina and I loved it.

Also, anything involving Nitta and the Yakuza is funny and hilariously executed.

This show’s mostly a solid comedy all around, and the earlier episodes explore family values in an interesting way through Nitta and Hina.

In spite of my opinion of this show being permanently worse thanks to episode 9, it’s still a good watch. The comedy’s solid and Anzu’s just wonderful. This show’s a lot like Maid Dragon in a way, except with stronger side characters and a weaker main cast, weaker themes of family, weaker plot, weaker OP and ED, weaker animation, and weaker comedy. That sounds pretty bad but honestly Hinamatsuri’s still pretty good and definitely worth a watch. Sorry if my hatred for episode 9 made this section unbearable to read.

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online

This was the third and final show I knew for sure I was watching this season. And I had to. I’ve gone over my history with SAO a few times, but the tl;dr of that story is I love SAO, but I know it’s a steaming pile of shit for the most part, but I want to see it do well. I had faith in SAOA. It’s SAO but under a writer that’s probably better than Kawahara. And it delivered! It delivered in practically every way!

SAOA has a pretty simple plot, really. Some tall girl wants to be small and cute, so picks up VR games. She gets really into them and makes a friend who takes them a little too seriously. So, after the game boosts her own confidence in her real self, she saves the friend from being an idiot and everything’s cool. It’s that simple. And it’s all executed pretty well. One complaint I see often that I’d like to quickly chip in on is people saying it doesn’t go anywhere for the first 6 episodes. Now, I disagree with that. Yes, the main conflict as it were is introduced in episode 6, but that doesn’t mean the stuff before is irrelevant since it’s just a games tournament with no stakes. The stakes by that point are Karen’s height complex thing. If you weren’t invested in that, I can’t completely blame you, but don’t disregard those first 5 episodes just because nobody’s life is in danger.

Anyway, one very interesting thing about SAOA is the ways in which it contrasts SAO. And not even in just a “haha SAO is bad SAOA is good” way. The two shows have very different approaches to the value life in VR has. In SAO, they have VR life be as important as real life by literally making you die for real if you die in VR. And while everybody hates the risk of death, Kirito and all that talk about how meaningful VR life is. However, I don’t think they really pulled that theme off well until Mother’s Rosario, where Yuuki’s entire life had value but she could only properly experience that value in VR.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with that approach other than Kawahara sucking at exploring it until 4 arcs in, but SAOA goes the complete opposite direction. Life in SAO VR has value because you die for real if you die in VR. In SAOA, life in VR has value because games are fun, but dying for real because you died in a game is stupid. That’s the lesson LLENN teaches Pito. These games are for enjoying yourself, and maybe even bettering yourself. It’s a totally different approach but it works even better than what SAO was up to.

Also worth mentioning, there’s a good amount of fanservice for SAO fans in here. I know, take that statement as a joke all you like because yeah SAO sucks, but they reference events and characters in SAO in completely believable and realistic ways. If you saw SAO you can be like “oh yeah I get that” and even if you haven’t, the statements still make sense and won’t confuse you.

SAOA also keeps the cast small, memorable, and distinct. While there are lots of named characters, LLENN, Fuka, M, Pito and Eva are the only ones that are really relevant, and the show goes to great lengths to make them all likeable and actually relevant and important to the plot. Everybody involved has a purpose in the narrative and they’re all just wonderful.

SAOA is also a genuinely funny show. SAO shoehorns in such boring and irritating comedy as accidental breast-groping, whereas SAOA actively mocks that trope by having all the perverted male fucks be shot and killed and mocked. There’s also the comedy of LLENN herself as a character in game. Some tall awkward college student wanted to be cute so played a gun game as a tiny avatar that garnered a reputation for being terrifyingly good at the game and intimidating as fuck. I didn’t mention this in my review of the last episode, but LLENN takes down Pito by viciously biting at her neck. It’s honestly kind of horrific, but it’s also hilarious. LLENN is completely ruthless and takes down her enemies in a variety of creative ways. She never wins by sheer “I’m better than you”, she wins by being creative and taking advantage of the environment and the game mechanics. SAOA actually makes things feel like a video game and it’s wonderful. To use the term “gamer” unironically here, SAOA makes me feel good to be a gamer, and it feels like it was written with gamers in mind.

All in all, SAOA is just a wonderful show that’s genuinely well written and extremely enjoyable thanks to actually being interesting. I highly recommend it to anyone, even if you’ve never seen SAO.

Anime of the Season

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online

It had to be. It couldn’t be anything else. I mean it might have been Hinamatsuri if not for the later episodes but no, it was SAOA. I assume you’ve read the segment directly above this so you should know why I’m saying this, but man, SAOA was just really, really good.

Girl of the Season

LLENN/Karen Kohiruimaki

This is just more SAOA praise, but Karen is such a fun and likeable and extremely endearing main character. She gets good development in terms of overcoming her height complex, and her relationships with M, Pitohui, Fukaziroh and Eva and the rest of SHINC are just wonderful. Plus, there’s the aforementioned hilarious ruthlessness behind LLENN. The reason she’s so good at the game and the reason she garnered such a reputation is because she grinded for 3 months straight and became a player killer after taking the tutorial lady’s advice too literally. That’s just funny. Also, did I mention that LLENN – both in game and as Karen – is absolutely adorable? Forget Tsubasa, LLENN is the best short-haired waifu this season. Also, LLENN’s seiyuu kills it. All the genuine rage in LLENN’s voice when she says shit like “I’m going to murder Pitohui!” is captured wonderfully, and it’s a hilarious contrast between LLENN’s line and what she actually looks like. I could probably say more about what makes LLENN so great, but this post is beyond long enough as it is.

Boy of the Season

Konami “Manager” Yamo

I’d be surprised if anyone predicted this outcome. The manager from Magical Girl Ore is just hilarious. He’s got such a fun filled and happy voice and his genuine love and passion for magical girls, idols, and his own pair of magical girl idols is sweet to watch. And the reveal of him as the “antagonist” at the end was shockingly good and pretty emotional. Deliberately taking on the role of antagonist just so his magical girls would have someone to beat up and save the world from is a sweet gesture, even if questionable. And the scene where he asks Saki to beat him up and she starts crying? That nearly brought me to tears man. Manager is such a sweet and considerate and loving guy, and while the plot twist of him being the main antagonist was unexpected, it still made sense. I just love this guy, man. Plus there’s the karaoke scene. He’s fun in that.

And with that, this little 6000 word Season in Review is done. I ended the last one pretty poorly and this one’ll probably suck too. Anyway, this was a good season. The end.

#season in review #sao #magical girl ore #magical girl site #amanchu #comic girls #slow start #uma musume #hinamatsuri #3.7.18

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drippinwalchemy · 6 years

Text

This Thing That I’m Saying

Part 1 of the Either/Or Series

Summary: Simon and his friends have graduated from Creekside and are ready to enjoy their last summer together. Hanging out at Leah's one afternoon, Simon, Bram, Leah and Abby make plans for the rest of their time together.

Pairings: Simon Spier/Bram Greenfeld

Characters: Simon Spier, Bram Greenfeld, Abby Suso, Leah Burke, Nick Eisner

Tags: Fluff, Canon compliant, Gay male character, college, summer, angst, pining.

Words: 2149

Canon Compliant with Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14134404

“I can’t believe you guys talked me into getting my face painted before we took all these” Leah groans.

“Aw, Leah that cat on your cheek is so cute though!” Abby exclaims.

“That’s Totoro,” Leah says, never missing a chance to correct Abby or an opportunity to talk about anime. “He’s like a giant rabbit forest spirit or maybe a small bear? It’s unclear.”

“Thanks for clarifying,” Abby deadpans, “Can’t believe I got a diploma never knowing who Totoro was.”

Graduation was a week ago, and we’re going through pictures from the senior party on Leah’s deck. I guess a couple of years before Alice was in high school some kids had left graduation and gone to a party where there was alcohol and they all drove home drunk. They were in a pretty bad car accident and one of them even died, at least that’s what the rumor was. Ever since, Creekwood has had a mandatory Senior Party right after graduation. All the seniors head to the school which is decked out in Creekwood color balloons, full of food, and set up with events and activities to occupy our time all night. We had gotten our faces painted, then decided it was a good idea to head to the photo booth. It’s pretty lame but we all secretly (OK very openly) had been psyched about it for weeks.

“Not a problem, we still have all summer to knock out that Miyazaki marathon you guys promised me!” Leah says with a smirk.

“Yes! And that Buffy marathon we’ve been talking about FOREVER. I still can’t believe you think I’m Cordelia-” Abby laughs, missing Leah’s purposefully obvious eye roll.

“Hey we talked about this,” Bram interjects, “we’re done making plans for this summer, graduation was a full week ago! Let’s start making some headway on this list of ours.”

“Yaaasss!” Abby howls, “we could really make some progress if Nick would hurry up already! Where is he? It’s not like our coffee order has changed over the last two years.”

Leah and Abby start guessing what was taking Nick so long: he had forgotten the drinks on top of his car again and they flew off as he clipped the corner out of the parking lot, he’d gone home to change out of his work clothes to look nice for Abby, he was at the hospital from burning himself on the cappuccino maker again.

Bram turns to me “You OK? You’ve been quiet since we got here.”

I realized I wasn’t talking as much today but honestly, I'm fine with that. I like listening to my friends talk, soaking up their banter. I woke up after the senior party reliving how much fun we had getting our faces painted, playing giant Jenga, Bram even did a cake walk but the prizes were a bunch of ridiculous pairs of boxers. All the soccer guys won a pair and wore them over their jeans, except Bram of course, he was so modest I think having anyone see him in his underwear even with a full set of clothes on would cause him to disintegrate (‘cept me of course). Since the party though I realized I had taken a back seat with my friends, watching them joke and make all our plans for the summer was something I knew was quickly going to change. After all we’re starting college in August, and aside from Leah and I we’re all scattering, even Bram and I, but I can’t think about that yet, I won’t.

“Yeah, I’m good,” I say, grabbing his hand. “I’m just really happy it’s a Thursday afternoon and I’m somewhere other than Calculus.” God, why did I think Calculus was a good idea, college credit be damned there’s no way it was worth all that grief, although I did get to use the “Mom I need to go to Bram’s for help with Calc” excuse pretty loosely.

“Simon look at this picture of you and Bram!” Abby cooes, holding up her phone. Someone had taken a bunch of the “winners” from the night and posted them to Creeksecrets. On her phone is a picture of Bram and I laughing, me with my head buried in his neck, a hint of the Harry Potter scar I had painted on my forehead peaking out between my hair. Bram got a soccer ball on his cheek, he said it was the boring and obvious choice, I told him it was authentic. I smile and stifle this weird feeling in my chest that maybe words like ‘forever’ don’t mean what they used to.

“Oh my God look at all the hashtags on this!” Leah says grabbing the phone. “#CoupleGoals #Gay #Boyfriends #Spierfeld, you guys this is seriously giving me heartburn it’s so dumb and cute.”

“Aw, I love that picture Babe” Bram says squeezing my hand. We exchange side glances and I know he’s as over it as I am. Ever since we came out Junior year there seemed to of amassed a low key following on the Tumblr of straight girls who had essentially turned us into a meme. At first it was flattering and felt empowering almost, but it quickly became a very high key freaking nightmare. Leah says straight girls fetishize gay guys because we subconsciously remind them of what a heartthrob could look like in the absence of toxic masculinity (Leah started reading a lot of queer books when we came out to be supportive, she’s kind of like my gay guru). Bram has never been one for the spotlight and heck I had gotten so used to being an extra in musicals I never thought I would be at the center of my own story one day, let alone one about love. Dammit there’s that feeling again. Like my heart is beating in my throat and if I speak my friends will get covered in blood. I wonder if Elliott Smith ever wrote a song about this feeling, I doubt it, but I mentally add going through his song book when I get home to the other list of things to do this summer.

Leah senses Bram’s tone. “Look it’s weird for sure, and a lot of these sophomores really should be focusing on studying for the SATs, not fantasizing about you two.”

“Oh wow” Bram says under his breath. I think the idea of anyone but me fantasizing about him makes him nervous, let alone a 16 year old girl.

“But there’s a lot of people who look up to you for legit reasons, people you’ve inspired and people you helped in ways you can’t even fathom, just by being yourselves,” Leah goes on, “that comes with some responsibility so just revel in it while you can.”

Bram’s holding my hand tighter and locks his fingers with mine. I know what he’s saying as soon as he adjusts his hand. Sometimes I can’t believe how special he makes me feel. After prom, we all slept over at Nick’s house in his basement, Bram and I on a pile of blankets underneath his stairs (I may have made a scene to ensure we got the most Harry Potter spot in the basement possible). He fell asleep with his face towards me, his forearms wrapped up in mine. I must’ve stayed up for hours after he drifted off just looking at him, at his perfect knobby fingers and his gentle angled face barely visible in the light of Nick’s VCR clock. How could I be this happy at 18? Who gets to be this blissed out of their mind so early in life? I can’t help but think this means something is coming, I start thinking about the word forever again.

“Yeah guys sorry you’re so dang CUTE!” Abby chimes completely over exaggerated and thank god because this all got way too real way too quickly for how I’m feeling today.

“What gives you NEVER tell me I’m cute!” Nick runs in carrying five iced coffees and his guitar.

Leah and Abby look him up and down. “Definitely went home and changed,” Leah says staring at Nick’s henley.

“Oh you’re not foolin’ anyone with this caught up at work business babe, I smell your body spray from here, what did I tell you about that stuff?” Abby says “You won’t make any friends in Athens wearing that junk”.

“Hey I’m trying to save as much as I can for college and deodorant is expensive!” Nick replies. “Plus I’ve got like 6 flavors left from middle school, this one’s called Beast Mode ”.

“That’s horrifying.” Leah says grabbing her drink.

“Yeah please go shower this is not working for me” Abby says grabbing her coffee and pushing Nick’s face away playfully.

Bram and I both start cracking up as Nick slinks off to shower.

“OK you guys so let’s get to work on this summer then!” Abby says. “What should we do first?”

“Well I was thinking,” Bram says. “We had talked about getting away to the lake, I could ask my Dad maybe about going to his lakehouse next weekend?”

“Bram that’s brilliant!” Leah exclaims. “We should get out of town, I’m so sick of all these grad parties anyways. We get it Taylor Metternich, you’re going to Juilliard, I do not need to eat that information off a fucking cookie.”

“What do you think Si, want to go away next weekend?” Bram asks me. All I can think of is going away with him forever, whatever that means to me now.

“Let’s do it” I say with a smirk.

“What is who doing?” Nick yells from upstairs.

“We’re getting outta Dodge Eisner!” Abby yells back to him. “Make sure you get work off next weekend.”

Nick comes barreling back downstairs. “Yes! I love the lake, dibs top bunk!” Nick says without any hint of irony and Abby rolls her eyes and smiles into her hoodie.

Nick’s grabs his guitar. “Any requests?” He says.

“Play something to cheer Spier up” Leah says. “Where you at today Si?”

I’m a lot of places. I’m here, with my best friends, with my boyfriend. Shady Creek, my home my entire life, soon to be where I grew up. I’m at the end of Summer, I’m at Thanksgiving break when we’ll all be back and I’m even further out than that. I’m thinking about where I was, before I came out, when I met Blue, when I realized he was Bram. I’m everywhere between then and now. Once in physics our teacher said Einstein thought time was a circle and we could theoretically experience all of existence at once in the right dimension. I wonder if Einstein realized that before moving away to college.

“I’m just thinking about how much we still have left to do this summer!” I sigh. “How about some Tegan & Sara?”

“Aw Simon they’re so sad though!” Abby groans.

“That’s the whole point!” I exclaim and Bram starts to laugh cause I swear I’ve had this conversation with him so many times he could write a thesis on it.

“As you wish” says Nick, and he launches into an acoustic Leah’s deck version of Call it Off . Leah grabs Abby’s arm and gives her a side hug, Abby whips out her phone and starts an Instagram story filming Nick, he really is a good singer.

Maybe I would have been something you'd be good at

Maybe you would have been something I'd be good at.

Bram plops his feet up on my lap and I squeeze his calves, his cute firm soccer calves already starting to bronze from the week we’ve been out of school. I listen to Nick, to Tegan & Sara and look around and let myself feel what I’m feeling. I look at Abby and Leah, swooning and laughing and exuding the freedom that comes with this golden space between high school and college. I look at Bram, and oh my god it’s like looking at an eclipse, every muscle in my body transfixed on him while my nerves simultaneously burst into flames from how beautiful he is. I let myself be in this moment in my life, for today and for all the days that still remain in this perfect group of humans I get to call my home.

But now we'll never know

I won't be sad, but in case I go there

Everyday, to make myself feel bad

There's a chance that I'll start to wonder if this was the thing to do.

Leah and Abby chime in on the now we’ll never , and I close my eyes and feel the sun speckle my face through the leaves of Leah’s oak tree. I wonder if this happiness, our happiness, is worth the risk of the sadness it keeps at bay. It has to be, I tell myself as I hum the harmony and return to right now.

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bardqueenofgallifrey · 7 years

Note

I didn't have a tumblr account in 2013, so I have no idea how the fuck a 53-year-old Sci fi show became part of something as cringe as "superwholock". I mean, I watch Sherlock but damn this match makes no sense. Could you explain to me how it happened please???

Honestly? I don’t know exactly.

I was never really a part of SuperWhoLock, and I don’t think I was on here for the origins either, but whenever it was that I did get on here, I was just a passionate Whovian who also watched and liked Sherlock (these days I’m pretty indifferent about Sherlock one way or another, and give as few shits about Supernatural as I ever did).

BUT, I’m gonna see if I can try and work out/theorise how SuperWhoLock rose and fell, if only to try and make the point that Doctor Who never deserved to be lumped in with it. Feel free to challenge any points I make, because I’m guessing here.

although, frankly, this idea of cringe culture is kinda snobby and gross. let people like shit, damn, if they’re not hurting anyone or trying to say Supernatural is the best show ever, who gives a fuck, honestly

Firstly, the thing about Doctor Who is that it has been around for literal multiple decades. Almost fifty four years. It has been around since before some of our parents were born.

Doctor Who fans were around long before the internet was invented. They were here before, and will be here long after everyone has forgotten what the hell Supernatural ever was. Doctor Who fans are now the ones making Doctor Who. They were the ones who, when it got cancelled, created an entire thriving Audio Drama business through the love of it that still existed everywhere, and they are the ones who brought it back and now create it. They’ve never let it die.

You know why? Why Doctor Who’s endured, and is so passionately loved by so many, and before all this mess wasn’t any more cringy than being into Star Trek? Because it’s good.

It is a flawed show, of course (always, somehow, in some way, in ways that vary across different eras), but one that is good in a reckless, nonsensical, optimistic way. No matter the ups and downs of its objective quality, it’s never really lost its heart.

It is a show with a protagonist that uses words/intelligence/compassion over violence to fight, a show that focuses on telling hopeful adventures that can be watched by children and also inform them of some of the harsher aspects of the world in an interesting way.

Also, it’s always been quite progressive. It had the first female drama producer at the BBC, and a gay Indian director. No one wanted it to succeed and it’s a miracle the show ever got off the ground.

People like to talk about the “screaming Classic companions” but you know what? Fuck that. The Classic ladies were all wonderful, including the biggest screamers. Susan? The Doctor’s granddaughter, genius, with telepathic abilities and a whole lot of heart. Mel? Computer programmer aka fucking smarty pants, who once flipped the Doctor over her shoulder, and was such a genuinely nice person that it was genuinely impressive. Zoe? Adorable 60′s companion who canonically had a higher IQ than the Doctor.

Doctor Who ladies have been awesome since the beginning, and calling out misogyny from the beginning.

(It ALSO had errors of its time, especially an Orientalism issue that is pervasive through a lot of older sci-fi, that can’t and shouldn’t be forgotten either. But that’s for the most part irrelevant to this discussion other than the general whiteness which is still obviously a problem albeit one the show is slowly working on.)

The reboot then brought in (some, not enough) queer characters and main characters of colour, etc, and its general diversity has only been getting better and better on that front for the most part, especially in the last couple of years.

But anyway, how the hell did it get mixed up with the whole SuperWhoLock mess?

Well, the reboot brought in a whole new generation of fans, and only got bigger and bigger and bigger, and was peaking RIGHT about when Sherlock aired.

The Doctor Who and Sherlock crossover is easy enough to work out; they had the same headwriter(s), and they’re both about neurodivergent (coded??) genius white guys that theoretically have a kind of unconventional attractiveness to them. You can see how they drew in the same crowd.

Now, how the hell Supernatural became a part of that, I’ve no idea. I’ve never been a Supernatural fan (even if I did watch the first four and a half seasons once, more or less enjoy them, but also not find them massively interesting).

But I’m going to assume it’s because it again involved white guys with Big Emotions, that the fans could thirst over, who were undertaking some larger than life shit.

My theory is that it, at least partly, was the White Male Slash Fandom.

You know. That group of mostly straight girls who treat shipping conventionally attractive white men like a fetish and a kink to explore, who will ship basically any two CAWM under the sun if they so much as look at each other. I imagine the Johnlock crowd overlapped with the Destiel and Wincest crowd, and Doctor Who, since it had Ten/Simm!Master (and Eleven/Rory to a lesser extent) as well as some nice hetero ships, kind of got dragged along because almost everyone in the Sherlock fandom was probably in the Doctor Who fandom too.

You can kind of see how it fits. The Supernatural gang and the Team TARDIS are big damn heroes with a lot of heart, while Sherlock fulfilled the ideal levels of pretentiousness that we all go through in our teenage years.

Of course, then everyone realised that Supernatural kinda sucks because it’s an incredibly white, incredibly male, incredibly STRAIGHT show that just queerbaits its audience and doesn’t know when to call it quits, and so everyone started jumping ship.

Then everyone looked at Sherlock, either went “this has its issues but it’s still fun”, “this is QUEERBAITING TOO, WHY WONT JOHNLOCK KISS, FUCK MOFFISS”, or “this is also incredibly white, incredibly male, and incredibly straight, so fuck this also”, and that was it for Sherlock and general opinion too.

(For the record: Johnlock was not queerbait. Johnlock was an expression of Steven Moffat’s own very intimate, but platonic, friendship with Mark Gatiss, and they explicitly told everyone they were not gonna make it gay. And then the toxic ass fandom, deluded out their minds, started sending Gatiss - an actual gay man - abuse about being “an honorary straight” for not making their fetishised fictional relationship canon, at one point literally the day after the Pulse massacre. Seriously. What the fuck. Never speak about it being queerbaiting ever again and leave Mark Gatiss the fuck alone.)

Now. Doctor Who had meanwhile been dealing with the changeover of the showrunner.

Series 5 went down pretty well for the most part, but a lot of people had their issues with Series 6 and Series 7. The fandom had kind of gotten too big, for a show this unconventional. To the point of a lot of people not being able to deal with the distinct change from the style of Russell T Davies, because they weren’t really aware of how the show needs to reinvent itself constantly even on a stylistic level. Because they were treating the show like any other show, when one can’t really do that.

It was all kind of a mess of:

very mixed fan reception on Series 6

Series 7 being on the weaker side (not as weak as some people who missed the whole point of Clara’s storyline make it out to be, but weak nonetheless, though Moffat has admitted to this and explained it was because he was under so much pressure about the looming 50th anniversary, and like, fuck, fair enough)

people being pissed at Moffat for Sherlock shit

Russell T Davies having done quite a few things in his era that are questionable from a wider Doctor Who standpoint, which Moffat as the Ultimate Who Fan didn’t go along with, only to then receive hate from people who were convinced that if RTD did something it must be right, because they haven’t seen Classic Who or apparently bothered to do a couple of google searches to educate themselves

plus, a few of Moffat’s quotes around 2012ish got taken out of context because he’s a sarcastic little shit who runs his mouth

and so people got the idea that Moffat’s a narcissistic misogynist who “loves white men”

also people confused “plot hole” with “is going to be explained later” and complained about him having plot holes in series 5-7 when really it’s just that he was waiting to tie up all the loose ends in Matt Smith’s finale episode

Anyway, thus began the popular - to this day! - sentiment of thinking that Moffat is one of the worst things to happen to television, or at least Doctor Who (and Sherlock Holmes).

And so, that was the “downfall” of Doctor Who and SuperWhoLock, so to speak, as all three shows were written off by the wider Tumblr/nerd community as being incredibly cringy.

Now, to examine it from today’s view, in light of recent series/opinion about the series/the female Doctor reveal.

The problem is, the general attitude about Moffat - who don’t get me wrong, is far from a flawless writer, or person - has literally reached the point of mass delusion. It’s very clear that literally thousands of people have a completely fictionalised version of him in their heads.

How do I know this? I saw someone say that a female Doctor was a “defiance of everything the Moffat era stood for”.

As in, the same Moffat era that, in the last three seasons:

explicitly made the genderfluidity of Time Lords canon (Dark Water/Death In Heaven, World Enough And Time)

changed the Master into a woman (Dark Water)

had the now female Master refer to becoming a woman as an “upgrade” (The Witch’s Familiar)

had a companion’s whole storyline be about “becoming the Doctor” in her own right, with her getting a whole episode of her pretending to be the Doctor, and her flying off in her own TARDIS with a companion of her own in the end of her final episode! (Flatline, Hell Bent)

had ANOTHER companion’s storyline end with her immortal space girlfriend at the console of the TARDIS, offering for her to travel through all of time and space with her in a direct parallel to the Nine/Rose offer from the first episode to the reboot (The Doctor Falls, Rose)

had a Time Lord regenerate from a white guy to a black lady onscreen just to FINALLY shut up people who said race/gender changes couldn’t happen (Hell Bent)

had the Doctor positively reacting to the suggestion that he could be - or had been - a woman, multiple times (Death In Heaven, World Enough And Time, The Doctor Falls)

Moffat’s era has been statistically proven to have shifted public opinion in favour of a female Doctor (ask @scriptscribbles, if you want proof), thanks to the above.

Simm!Master: “She? Is the future going to be all girl?”

Twelve: “We can only hope.”

Also, Moffat wrote Lumley!Doctor in The Curse of Fatal Death in 1999. He’s been pushing for a female Doctor for 18 damn years.

So, the idea that anyone thinks he’s against it, as opposed to having explicitly worked to help make it happen for years, shows that the general opinion of him is literally a mass fictionalisation/delusion.

(It’s just one example, but there are hundreds of others, like how everyone seems to think he thinks of himself as The Greatest Ever and having a huge ego, when he’s literally one of the most self-deprecating people ever, if you watch him in an interview. He’s openly admitted to mistakes he’s made on his time on the show, such as the way he handled the scene at the end of Flesh and Stone, and how Series 7 wasn’t his best because of the pressure he was under about the upcoming 50th anniversary; he is aware of his fallibility.)

He’s not a perfect person, or writer, and no one knows that better than him. There’s a lot of critical discussions we could have about his writing, and there are a fair few actual problems with it, just as there are in the RTD era, and every damn era of Who that has existed. I’m not saying everybody has to like it, because every era of Doctor Who is down to personal preference, and that’s fine. There are plenty of rational, well-informed people, fans and otherwise, who have their -often sound - reasons for not liking Moffat and/or his era of Who in general. I am friends with some of them.

But those rational, well-informed people are like, 5% of the people who otherwise make up a sea of loud, ignorant delusion that condemns Doctor Who under Moffat’s direction and downright refuses to acknowledge some of the amazing stuff it’s done in the last few years.

(Like, Series 10 featured a black lesbian co-lead who got a happy ending, leaving the Moffat era finishing strong on six canonically sapphic women, four of whom are still alive, none of whom died pointlessly or without agency, and three of whom are immortal or close enough, in a time when all other TV sapphics are dropping dead like flies. It also had the Doctor punch a racist in the face and comment on how history is whitewashed, and had an episode slamming capitalism. Plus, the finale canonised that Time Lords don’t view gender the same way, reinforcing canon genderfluid Time Lords.)

Between his second and third seasons of DW being divisive and/or a bit weak, all the Sherlock shit going down, and the fall of Supernatural, and the issue of people taking RTD Who as the baseline for everything Doctor Who when they really shouldn’t have, anti-Moffat sentiments got so big that masses of people fell off the show, and continue to refuse to acknowledge that he might have done anything worthwhile with it since they left. That he might, as a person, have developed and improved.

And so, that is potentially how Doctor Who got lumped in with SuperWhoLock, labelled “not progressive”, and considered “cringy” to this day.

Or at least, that’s my theory, as someone who wasn’t really paying a lot of attention, but knows her Doctor Who.

#doctor who #steven moffat #fandom theory #dw fandom #fan theory #i say shit #fuck this became an ESSAY #my god #I might be totally off base here but these are my Thoughts #anon asks #I spent HOURS on this god #i edited it more than I've edited essays for uni lmao

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just-some-other-reviews · 7 years

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Ah... My Friday and Saturday were quite busy... What’s going to happen to me, since this drama took an end?

Strong Woman Do Bong Soon is a romantic comedy with, also, action, supernatural and mystery. Bong-Soon was born with a herculean strength, a heritage from her ancestors. The thing is that the powers disappear if they are wrongly used, so she tries her best to only use her strength to help people out. It’s how she ends up trying to help a bus driver and catching the attention of the CEO of Ainsoft, Min-Hyuk, who cruelly needs someone’s help to catch the man who is menacing him. As she starts to work as Min-Hyuk bodyguard with a place in the company at the stake of her success, crimes start to occur in her neighborhood.

Since like the quarter of the drama is a crime mystery, I’ll really try to keep the spoilers to the minimum, even though I’m pretty sure a few thing will slip, so stay careful as you read the review.

There’s probably no better way to start a review about this drama than by talking about the plot. First of all, I found it quite original, even though I’m pretty sure it was used more than once. It has a reversal between the usual female and male lead role. The plot has the must of combining a more ‘’thriller’’ look-a-like drama with a very heartwarming and light story. The first episode sets a promising story by introducing various characters, but, also, by having hilarious dialogues and situations that are, by the way, completely exaggerated and improbable and introducing, in parallel a murder case. I’ll briefly talk about the murder case since it’s something, once spoiled that is completely unenjoyable. I’m a big fan of crime drama, so it really pleased me, at first. Many thought things were quite dragged after a few episodes, but I was still understanding and let it go, even though, with Bong Soon’s powers and Min-Hyuk’s information seeking, it was ridiculous that the kidnapper wasn’t already caught. But, after episode eight, things were a bit too stretched when it came to the murder case. Luckily, the screenwriter did a nice save by having a completely epic ending for the murder case, even though it was quite cliché, but who cares. I enjoyed it, since it helped summarize the whole evolution of the lead characters. Since I talked about one story, I should start writing about the romance. It surely isn’t the most original thing ever. I mean, it’s quite typical, but it’s really cute and awkward, so it passes. Also, the romance becomes really central (well, in my opinion) only around the thirteen episode, so most of the drama is more focused on the characters’ evolution and them learning to appreciate the presence of the other. Because I talked about the romance, it's unavoidable that I’ll quickly talk about this. The drama has a lot of really cliché scenes and events, but it doesn’t mean it’s less enjoyable. The story line is quite original and the progression is well-done. In general, the drama is well-paced, which allows it to not have many lengths. What’s more, the story stays coherent through the whole 16 episodes, which is really a must. I mean, I never felt lost while I was watching and found out that most of the thing was explained and detailed in such a way that the viewer wouldn’t have difficulty to follow. There’s only one flaw in the drama (even though sometime it’s one of its strength) and it’s the humor. Sometime the drama was hilarious, which is completely awesome, but sometime it was a bit over the top and because they tried so hard to do sketches or funny events, it wasn’t funny at all. I’m especially thinking about the monk… Damn… I skipped nearly all those scenes, they were just too much. Finally, the drama has a really satisfying ending that isn’t sad. Recently, a lot of drama I watched seemed a bit uncompleted when they reached the end or were extremely sad, so I happily welcomed such ending.

For the characters I’ll start by saying that they are pretty typical. No matter how cute and adorable you find the male lead, it’s unavoidable to see all the ‘’type male lead’s characteristic’’ that he has. I mean, awesome, rich, has eyes only for one girl. He’s seen everywhere. Yet, strangely, I found him unique in his way. Even if his characteristic, status is seen everywhere, I felt as if his character – well some part of it – were quite original by not only being ‘’mean that soften’’ or ‘’controlling’’. Sure maybe some might see him that way, but I felt as if Min-Hyuk was more the resourceful, always ready to help and slightly marginalized character in kdramaland. The key word is that I found him marginalized. Often in kdrama I have the impression that they try way too hard to make their characters fit some kind of social mold, but Min-Hyuk clearly wasn’t going that way. He didn’t fit the stereotype of the bratty heir that does nothing productive. He created a company of his one. But, yeah, that’s not quite what marginalized means, so let me explain more. He sure fits the ‘’successful genius’’ mold, but by his actions (that I don’t necessarily find acceptable) he isolates himself. He’s not someone who’s bothered over the fact of being called and rumored gay. He’s not someone who uselessly hate his family, even though they wronged him in many ways. He’s not someone who’s necessarily after success. He’s not someone who seems especially into the idea of finding a spouse. He’s not someone who, at the first problem, goes run to get some help. He’s not someone who stays powerless through most of the drama. Because of all those actions, he probably is a bit different than other male leads, but I should just pass to other characters now. Bong Soon, the female lead, is the most adorable character. I mean she’s just the cliché of the sweet, cute and clumsy female lead, but brought to a whole other level by having a completely awesome super power. Also, she isn’t as helpless as most female lead and compared to many female leads who just go around kicking annoying boys or slapping them (don’t know why I’m thinking about Boys Over Flowers…), she uses her fighting ability through the whole drama in a productive way that, generally, helps the drama to progress. She’s also the character who undergo the most change through the drama by her own and because of the people around her. I don’t want to give too much merit to Min-Hyuk because I feel as if, yes, it’s due to him, but not completely. She’s the strongest (literally and mentally) character out of all and the one that truly helps the story go forward. But, she does a lot of self-pity in the first episode, when she complains about her genial ability that make her so unique. I don’t want to spoil too much, but, by the end, she’ll completely embrace who she is and, at the opposite of many bad-ass female lead, won’t go downward when she meets the male lead. She’ll rather get stronger and more resourceful and full of confidence. Then, I can talk about the second male lead that is just completely adorable, even though he doesn’t stand a chance next to Min-Hyuk. I was quite glad that Bong Soon didn’t screw things with him by getting involved, even though it broke his heart. I could talk about a lot more characters, but this review is already way too long for its own good. I’ll just end up by saying that all the characters change through the drama and I really thought it was really great, since, even if there was many characters, each of them had the right to their own development and personality.

I’ll conclude here, since this review is already over 1000 words. There’s probably many other things that I could say, but, well, after all, I shouldn’t spoil. The plot would deserve a 8.5/10 because the murder case was a bit boring at some point, which doesn’t allow me to give it a 9/10. The characters would easily deserve a 4/5 since they were all developed and even the psychopath who didn’t have much backstory was completely awesome by having his own personality. The tearjerker factor would be a 2/5 for a few scenes, but, mostly, it’s a comedy.

#strong woman do bong soon #kdrama #K-Drama #korean drama #review

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chvrchesrp · 7 years

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This is more like a “meta Apocrypha”—it is meant to help understand the philosophy and perspective of our game and its Churches. The Admin team thought it might be helpful for me to share, so, here it is! I just didn’t have an appropriate header image for ‘the CHVRCHES concept origin story in May’s brain,’ haha. So this might get a skosh personal.

When we opened CHVRCHES, responses from the community were predominantly great. However, there were a few folks—people I respected—who had questions for me along the lines of “what about other religions?” and “the religious aspect makes me feel uncomfortable?” and I think, seven months in (haha), it’s a good time to talk about that a little bit.

The first question has earned a brief Forward on out plot page: all pantheons are canon here. Greek gods? Real. Norse gods? Real. They won’t be appearing here, nor will our pantheon folks have interacted with them much, but they would know of their existence. Kind of like, Heaven and Olympus can both exist, but Olympians don’t go to Heaven. Not much of cross-pollination. Because belief is precious, there’s a wariness between pantheons.

In this verse, belief gives power. Belief doesn’t create these gods, but it feeds them. Their strength—though not their existence—relies on how many people believe in them. That is why the foundation of ours, around loss of belief due to humanity expanding belief into other pantheons and atheism, lands us in the power struggle our story’s pantheon is in. We are dealing in the Christian pantheon’s response to this phenomena in current modern society.

I can only speak for myself and my views, having been raised Roman Catholic, and I understand other folks are entitled to their own views. I believe that, if you’re Christian, you can believe there is only One God and he is Your God. Even if other ‘gods’ exist, in that perspective, they wouldn’t be gods—they’d be mythology, or spirits, or any number of things they are called by Christians today. We are an “angels and demons” roleplay, more than anything.

With that aside, the next thing that tends to comes up is: isn’t this a little too close for comfort, drawing from the Bible as a text?

And to that, I say, I don’t believe so. For 2 major reasons—

1) Dogma, Supernatural, Lucifer, Preacher, and so forth... all of these exist. They incorporate biblical stories and scripture, show portrayals of biblical characters and people. A ton of songs explore biblical canon. Christianity is the dominant religion in much of the world, and certainly in the United States, where this verse is set. It is also an open religion that actively converts, asking people to engage with and believe in it. Exploring the stories between the lines seems a natural progression. People do this regardless of whether or not its an online writing game. If these other mediums are generally accepted, I haven’t yet been presented with a reason CHVRCHES should be deemed different.

2) Predominantly, the people I’ve spoken to have spoken of a discomfort they can’t quite name. I don’t know if this is true for them, but I imagine it’s a similar feeling to the one minority religion practitioners feel—like pagans, hellenics, and heathens—when engaging with other media portraying witches, Greek gods, and Norse gods and practices, respectively. There is certainly a dissonance when you first experience your beliefs as perceived by someone outside your own familiar religious group. I think this discomfort may stem from not being used to others exploring your religion as mythology, the way our culture—and Christianity— treats other religions.

I wanted to incorporate the text in order to revive and honour it in a different way. Christianity is the dominant religion here. As I type this, the line of the separation between Church and State is thinning, and the aspect of the church that is wielding political power is literally one that wants to kill me (for being a woman, queer, disabled, chronically ill, et cetera—and those like me, for being those things and more). That church isn’t the interpretation of Christianity that I grew up on. Granted, I grew up Roman Catholic in New York, so take that how you will, but I wasn’t kicked out of my Church for being gay, nor did I have to undergo conversion therapy. I know that isn’t true everywhere.

My intention isn’t blasphemy any more than my existence is blasphemy.

Understandably, belief among my generation and those like me is waning. That is part of what inspired me to create this verse. A future many articles have written about: what happens when the younger generation finds other faiths, becomes secular or atheist or spiritual, empties out the coiffers and pews of standardized churches? That’s the world I created: one where all the churches we are already familiar with are small, quiet, defunct, fringe. As a foil, I kept the Roman Catholic Church with Pope Francis as canon, as a bastion of the old era in this new society and verse I conceived. My intention was to take biblical text and re-consider it, wonder:

What might it look like if we focused on the parts that were positive and not alienating? What if, for all the cherry-picking held against us, we could cherry-pick back in support of ourselves?

After all, every sect of Christianity began with a man and some interpretation of the text. This is me, creating fictional sects, with my interpretation. All churches started somewhere. Protestantism wasn’t a new stone tablet from God: it was Martin Luther with 95 Theses nailed to a church. These are mine. I’m not trying to make a revolution, I’m just trying to offer an alternative vision. It can’t happen in the real world, but in our escapist verse here, it was a thought process I wanted to see come to fruition. The possibility of a Church where the emphasis wasn’t on judging your identity, but instead focused on what kind of person you were; what you did and how you perceived the world around you.

And so, the Church of Saints isn’t “Christianity” and the Church of Sinners isn’t “Satanism” nor “Luciferianism.” It’s important to not perceive of the Saints as you would our current-day churches and assume that the Sinners are ‘the individuals,’ a way out of current dogma, a different perspective catering to outcasts. The thing is that they’re both different perspectives from what we’re familiar with because their fundamental construct is from not-now. These are Churches who managed to capture the hearts and minds of a generation that wanted to leave the pantheon altogether. Out of a failing ideology, both Churches emerged and thrived to become the top Christian sects, succeeding where what we are currently familiar with in our world waned.

In a way, both Churches are the churches of outcasts, created in safety until the minority became a majority. That is how Christianity thrived, in this verse. That’s how you wind up with a bisexual, multiracial man who is a former-pirate heading the Saints—and now a biracial, asexual lesbian who questions everything, a daughter of an immigrant pragmatist. That’s how you wind up with a Vice heading up the Church of Sinners who conceived of the idea after bonding with a demon, carving her own path by the skin of her teeth and the dirt under her nails, not accepting ambition as ugly—traits utterly unbecoming of a woman, in theory. Both of these Churches are the song of the unsung, singing themselves into a better tomorrow.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

That’s why that’s #9 on both of the Church’s 9 Beliefs.

The Churches were based on two basic ideas: Saints believe you make the world better by caring for self and others. Not to a fault, not to self-sacrifice and do only good and be perfect and conform to the hive mind—no. But with self-care and good boundaries and consideration for one’s own self and others. Sinners believe you make the world better by bettering yourself first. Kind of like an emotional trickle-down, the concept is that if I am the best me, and others are the best them, then we will have the best world. It’s self-focused and charges oneself with the responsibility—and consequence—of choice; less considerate, it asks you to do for you before anyone else. Both Churches try to create the best people as individuals, encourage their individuality, and aim to make the best world.

Both Churches’ views are flawed, of course.

That’s the point: it has to be that way, in order for a “real” Church to be “living, breathing, and responsive” to its congregation in our verse. These Churches are more attentive than what most of us have experienced in our lives, both Churches more interested in experiences as ‘mass’ rather than broadcast-sermons. It’s about the nuance of believing, existing, and moving through a text these muses thought failed them and breathing new life into it, making it work for each of them. Each Church is meant to make room for each believer. One believer might be startlingly different from the next, each believer might have their own individual interpretations of the Bible.

So with that perspective, I invite you to re-imagine your muse’s relationship with the Church they chose. Try to let fall away the projections and ideas of how we feel about the churches in our world, be those feelings positive or negative or neutral, and try to perceive a world in which these Churches are familiar, personal, and the hope of both their people and their God.

#worldbuilding #admin chatter

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artificialqueens · 7 years

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Primary care (a.k.a. the Poundcake ficlet collection) 2/13 [Katya/Alaska] - Spoky

A/N: I was so happy to see that many people enjoyed Chapter 1 of Primary care! (You can read it here !!) Getting even one star would’ve made my day and I am forever grateful that you guys made the effort to share the love. Thank you, so so much. *teary eyes*

On a happier note! Some info on Primary care: all parts will work independently (very similarly to Poundcake) but they also form a hopefully coherent story (very similarly to Poundcake) on how we all need someone to take care of us every now and then. <3

See disclaimer in Chapter 1.

Thank you again. xx

P.S. Any feedback hiiiiighly (pun intended) appreciated!!

Primary care (a.k.a. the Poundcake ficlet collection)

Chapter 2 - ‘High’

Neon sticks, smell of vodka, people bumping into each other, outrageous dance moves, a familiar tune… Now sissy that walk!

Justin stood in the crowd and sipped his Becks Blue. The show had thus far been excellent and the idea to wear a mask to the party had worked as planned. Only the bouncer had any inkling that he was in the club, watching her. They had started as rivals, which quickly had been replaced with friendship, which then had progressed into a small interest and now could be accused of being a full blown obsession. He would of course never admit to it, but to pay entrance fee to a show he knew he could get into free, just in order to hide his presence, was rather pathetic. Even for him. Maybe not as earth shatteringly mortifying as watching old youtube clips of Alaska drunk on stage, in the worst case scenario sucking Sharon’s cock - but somewhere on those lines. Justin shook his head to banish the flashbacks and focused to study the audience instead.

She’d gathered quite a turnout. The club was full and everyone seemed to be at good spirits, excluding the blasé twink behind the bar.

‘… and then it fell! It fell! Can you imagine!’

Justin recognised the voice easily, especially as the person was practically yelling into his ear.

‘Sorry sorry, excuuuse me. Can I pass? We need to get to the-’

Justin squeezed himself to the wall, but knowing Violet the extra ten centimeters provided would not make her happy.

‘Darling, can I call you darling? You really need to step asi-’

Violet stared at Justin and then smirked. ‘Pearl! Come here bitch! I found us a bear!’

Justin swore silently.

Pearl arrived similarly to Violet in full drag. Just 15 minutes ago the pair had been on stage, what were they doing in the crowd?

‘Bear? I’m really not into bears, why do you- oh! That’s more like a teddy.’

Pearl and Violet examined Justin’s mask in fascination.

‘That’s really appropriate for this show, you know, bears are Russia’s national animal.’

Violet turned to Pearl. ‘Seriously? How the fuck do you know shit like that?’

Pearl shrugged. ‘Long story bitch.’

Violet chuckled. ‘Well then, Teddy, you coming? We need to get drinks.’

Justin panicked. Think! Think fast! Did he want to be exposed? He was going to get exposed. Maybe if he just came clean now? Maybe if… Could he try a different voice? Would the two queens be drunk enough not to recognise him? Not Alaska, something else, a higher voice, something boyish, speak quickly rather than drawl, use language Alaska and Justin wouldn’t.

‘Alllrighty’then.’ Justin said cheerily and grimaced. What in Michelle Visage’s name was wrong with him? That was awful!

Violet grinned and grabbed Justin’s hand. ‘This way!’

Pearl pushed Justin from the shoulders and together the three arrived to the bar.

‘Two rum and cokes and a-’ Violet turned to Justin, who shook his head and lifted his half full Becks to indicate he didn’t need anything. ‘Two rum and cokes.’ Violet repeated to the blasé twink, who rolled his eyes.

The music quieted down and people started to fidget to see the stage better.

‘Oh, second act,’ Pearl noted.

‘It’s not like we need to be ready, we’re done,’ Violet said raising her eyebrow.

‘I promised to help out at the back. Give me that,’ Pearl grabbed one of the drinks that had just arrived and hurried back to backstage.

‘Bitch,’ Violet noted and sighed. ‘Well, it’s just you and me, Justin - just you and me.’

Justin choked to his Becks. ‘There there, no reason to die on me,’ Violet smirked.

Justin took a deep breath after his coughing fit. ‘You knew?’

‘Never have I ever seen a guy in a gay club drinking a nonalcoholic beer while wearing a ridiculous animal mask - no, wait, I have, namely Alaska.’

Justin had to admit Violet had a point.

‘Also the bouncer is a friend and might have mentioned it.’

That made more sense.

‘Pearl knew too?’

‘Yup!’ Violet smirked and took a sip of his drink. ‘Why else would we risk coming into the crowd, we wanted to say hieeee!’ Justin sighed in defeat.

‘You do realise that in backstage you could see her dancing half-naked?’ Violet asked but refused to turn her gaze from the stage where Katya Zamolodchikova had just started her number of ‘All that Jazz’.

Justin decided not to respect the comment with a reply. What could he even answer to that? That he knew, and that it was exactly why he avoided the backstage whenever possible? Because of Katya half-naked Zamolodchikova. And yes, he could pronounce and spell Zamolodchikova now, thank you very much.

‘Look, it’s none of my business but-’

‘No, it’s really not.’ Justin interrupted Violet who took immediate offense. Justin could see it on her face - and to be honest, she probably just wanted to help. Justin sighed. ‘Sorry.’

‘Mm.’

A long and awkward silence surrounded the pair. Katya bounced on the stage like a duracell bunny and Justin knew he had to offer Violet some type of peace offering.

‘It’s awkward.’ Justin started and Violet nodded her beautiful head once, indicating she was listening. ‘It’s lust and want and I haven’t been properly fucked for a while an-’

‘And Kayta is one of the rare tops in RuPaul’s Tupperware collection,’ Violet interrupted.

Justin burst out a laugh. ‘Exactly.’ Not quite.

‘Oh trust me, I get it girl. Just fuck him out of your system and then you can move on. That’s what I did.’

Justin froze. In many occasions had he wanted to strangle Violet fucking Chachki: when she pretended to have stolen Sharon’s crown, when she acted like a privileged prat on season 7, when her overflowing confidence showed Justin exactly how shaky his own was, but none of those times compared to the feeling of wanting to jump the younger queen right at this very moment and claw her eyes out. Justin forced himself to relax. Jealousy was such an ugly feeling.

‘Oh yeah?’ He asked and placed his now empty bottle of Becks on the bar.

‘Yeah, and don’t get me wrong, he’s amazing. Very attentive. But like, way too old. There was no real connection, like at all.’

Justin chuckled. Old indeed. Well maybe for the baby primadonna in front of him Katya seemed ancient. For Justin, well, not so much.

‘I’ll remember that.’

Violet nodded in approval. ‘Look, I think you should just chill, she’s a slut, just ask, she’ll do you - and if not, you can always pay her,’ Violet laughed at her own joke and Justin rolled his eyes. ‘Here.’

Justin glanced down to the open pack of cigarettes Violet was offering him. They looked suspiciously wonky.

‘My treat,’ the young queen smiled. ‘I know you appreciate the natural remedies.’ Justin nodded and picked one. It would be pleasant company while walking back to the hotel.

‘Thanks.’

‘No problem. Look, I’ll see you around. Don’t be a stranger.’

Justin nodded and watched Violet disappear after Pearl. What a night.

It was chilly outside when Justin stepped out of the club. There was barely anyone on the streets and the bright lights of advertisements lighted the wet asphalt. He lit the joint Violet had given him and started to walk toward his hotel just a couple of blocks away. It really was amazing how happy he felt after just seeing her from afar. To see her energy and hear her humour. To know that underneath, it was really him. The sexiest bisexual Russian hooker Justin had had the pleasure to meet.

He reached his hotel room and opened the curtains. He was faced with a beautiful dawn. The sun was playing with the damp scenery and everywhere sparkled like small diamonds. Justin was relaxed, and happy, and calm. He considered the view, it really was breathtaking. Almost exactly as beautiful as the alluring creature that had danced on the stage tonight in her prostitute red boots and messy platinum bob. Justin started laughing at his own train of thought.

‘So hi-i-i-i-igh on the view, high oh the view,’ he sang spreading his arms wide. He really was baked.

Couple of blocks away Brian McCook sat in front of a mirror and fiddled with his phone. He’d heard from Pearl that Justin had come to see their show, but had not come to backstage to say hello. Brian couldn’t figure out why. Why an earth had he not come to say hello?

—

A/N2: If someone is wondering why Violet and Pearl were chosen as co-stars for this chapter and why Visage was mentioned in a rather odd way, I would like to refer to the second verse of ‘High’:

I found the words to fight it / The sweetest smelling violet / Like diamond to a dazzling pearl / Your scent intoxicates me / While your Visage elates me / My universe before you unfurls

#alaska thunderfuck #katya zamolodchikova #katlaska #fluff #romance #hurt/comfort #spoky #primary care #rpdr fanfiction #submission #poundcake ficlet collection #canon compliant

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queenofpotatoes · 4 years

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On trans narratives

I had a recent conversation with a friend, an old one, but maybe not one of my closest. Still, it was my birthday and I had a moment to talk her and fortified by a beer or two, I came out.

“Hey, uh, (redacated), I’d like you to know I’m trans, and I am using she/her pronouns now, I’m starting to use the name (redacted).”

Five, ten seconds in, a smile, a nod from her. Well, isn’t this going well? She says, “I understand.” I let out a sigh of relief.

Then we hit fifteen seconds. Her, “So, when are you going to Montreal?”

(FYI, I’m Canadian, Montreal is a major centre for trans surgery, there is a cluster of doctors who are pretty much Canada’s assembly line for trans women who are choosing bottom surgery.

Cue me, then, slack jawed, the bottom having just fallen out of things. Fifteen seconds into things going alright and we have gone nought to sixty. Fifteen seconds to go from name & pronouns to, literally, “When are you going to get your genitals done?”.

I mumbled my way through this, threw up a few vagaries about it all being a ‘work in progress’ but I left the evening deeply rattled, and remained so for days, even being, well, combative with my pshrink at our next meeting when we spoke of the event. I was, well, mad as hell.

I’m not going to apologise for being mad as hell, nobody has the right to just up and ask my about my junk, its status or fate, and I sure as hell have no right to ask about anyone else’s. If things are, well, intimate, and becoming physical then maybe, yes, this starts to become appropriate, but so far I’ve spent 40+ years on this earth not asking people, particularly seconds into a conversation.

It’s rude, it’s reductive, it makes me want to pull out a stack of book and start shrieking at the top of my lungs how focusing on genital conformity is the start of an existentialist line of thinking that can only end in the exclusion of trans, GNC and non-normative women: Cisgender, transgender, transfemme, demigender, whatever, what what whaaaaaatever.

It made my blood boil, it hit me in the hideous sore spot, that impostor syndrome I’ve been stewing in, that “I’m not a real girl.” So to go from “Hi, I’m trans” to having to explain (or rather having to refuse to explain) the state of my junk, well, that felt like leaping into the deep fryer over the “When will I be a real girl?” (I’ve coined the term ‘Pinocchio syndrome’ with my pshrink because although we speak of a little wooden boy, his quest to become ‘real’ feels like a metaphor for my preciously fragile validity and the steps I take, sometimes counterproductive, to protect my need, my desire to feel like a ‘real’ woman, and yes, I will someday start pulling apart the term ‘real woman’ but not now).

Though on reflection, I’ve come to believe the question came from the very, very limited knowledge of trans narratives possessed by most cisgender people, sometimes even very supportive allies.

They have seen, heard, read or spoken enough to have built a picture of ‘how a trans person works’, and that it, like the story of a pupating caterpillar, proceeds along a series of set steps. The gestalt is that we are all suffering mounds of gender torture until a bright-eyed surgeon lifts their scalpel to reshape our flesh and eliminate our suffering.

Or rather, hop, chop, say g’bye pop, you’re a girl now!

So rewind, if you will, I’m sitting across the table with this yawning chasm in front of me, that I haven’t recognised yet, feeling shocked, betrayed and appalled. How do I bridge this? I am probably, no, I am going to definitely have to do this again, many times likely, as I imagine this will not be the only conversation I have of this somewhat sordid nature.

I recall a quote from ‘Dune’

I am like a person whose hands were kept numb, without sensation from the first moment of awareness-until one day the ability to feel is forced into them. And I say, "Look! I have no hands!" But the people all around me say, "What are hands?"

It also reminds me of a conversation I had with my Trans Godmother (aka: my best friend who transitioned well over a decade ago, before I had my own epiphany). Anyway, we were talking about sexualities, and I expressed a certain confusion, if not fluidity to mine, when I was a self-described gay man with perhaps nascent bisexual tendencies.

As I rolled around a pit of self doubt, she replied with what should have been a blindingly obvious observation, “You know, most people don’t think about this, like, ever.”

That stopped me dead, it hadn’t occurred to me, even momentarily, that this wasn’t something agonized over by everyone. That to most folks out there their orientation wasn’t even, a question, maybe, someday, slightly, but almost certainly, no.

It was like being struck, and I am repeating that feeling here, of thinking back to my friend, across the table, casually reducing my trans validity to the story of my genitalia. How do I reach out to someone who has possibly never questioned their gender?

How do I tell a story to someone who has no anchor to relate to? I mean, authors have been doing this for centuries. So there are some long, hard lessons I need to learn, about how to make this happen.

Though in the meantime I can only hope and dream that the depth of trans narratives that folks, all folks, cis, trans, enby, GNC, you name it, is increased. Tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousand, ten thousansfold, until it never stops. Until it’s understood there’s as many ways of being trans as there are of being a person.

There’s no wrong way to be trans. There’s no One True Story of how a trans life unfolds. We are everything, and everywhere, and everyone.

I’m sorry that went long, this was a therapeutic piece of blather. If you made it this far, have a good day,

#trans #trangender #normativity #transnormative #narratives #stories #mtf #cis #cisgender #really hard shit

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lisamarieblair · 5 years

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“May: the lilacs are in bloom. Forget yourself.”

― Marty Rubin

This May didn’t feel at all like May should. I usually look forward to the month since it’s the time of year when the weather gets consistently warm and the summer unofficially begins. May is supposed to be the end of the cold, of struggling, of coping, of having to be so resilient but this May was no such thing. This May turned out to be a nothing but a tease and a trick. It turned out to nothing but more drab and dreary winter.

This May we saw more cloudy, rainy, and cold days than any May I remember before. We even saw a record-breaking snowstorm! And that dreary, depressing, disappointment got right into my soul and I saw more unproductive days in a row than I normally do and anticipated I would. I didn’t meet any of the reading, writing, or learning goals I set for myself and my selfesteem subsequently took a hit. May, all in all, was a most miserable month for me.

And now June has come and with it the fast approaching middle of the year. When it’s over, I’ll have just six months left on the downhill side, the side of a slow decline into winter. I have from now though the arrival of autumn to find something to sustain me through the dreary darkness until spring will arrive again. I’m determined to make the most of it and do whatever I can to make up for May.

I want to hike, to explore, to breathe the smells of spring and summer, to look upon the leaves and flowers, to listen to the birds and to take as much sunshine and joy into me as I can. I want to spend as much time in pools, parks, and bar patios with friends as I can. I want to find happiness and enthusiasm again.

But before I do, here is what I am currently…

Writing blog posts or trying to, still. The problem now is a creeping inferiority complex. Who am I to think my words would add anything at all to the public discourse? Who am I to think I not only know anything at all but that I could help anyone when I so struggle so much myself? I am no one, but I love writing and I have to be true to that passion. I’ve been writing for myself lately, just notes and small bits, and fitting together to form short coherent pieces I’ll begin to share once a week at least this month.

Making centerpieces, signs, playlists, and big wedding decisions. We are down to just over a month and a half to the big day and things are moving fast now. It’s time to make our vision a reality or as sometimes is the case, for reality to finally make a compromising version of our dream. What I mean to say is, wedding planning is fun until you have to start paying for things and sticking to a budget but it’s better if you make things and stretch your dollar further.

Planning what married life might be like, or trying to. We’ve already been together for nearly 17 years now. Our house is already a home and in our hearts, we’ve been a family for a very long time, but we still wonder what if anything will change for us once we sign that license and change our names. We wonder if there is some higher or hidden aspect to living life together that we haven’t yet seen. We worry about what new challenges we will face or what changes each of us might yet go through. I’m trying to imagine the worst and to plan for it but we’ve already weathered so many storms it hard to picture what ellse is on the way. I’m sure we’ve survived the worst but also terrified worse is on the way.

Reading James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son. I’m not sure if I could this as “reading” since it was my first audiobook, but Goodreads does and I suppose that is good enough for me. I’ve always struggled with audiobooks (and ebooks too) but I think the fact that this was a collection of essays made it much easier to follow than a book of fiction. It was like listening to a podcast. I still plan to buy a physical copy in the future, one in which I can underline my favorite passages and argue in the margins but all in all it was a good experience. I’m also reading Notes from Underground, The Double and Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, still, but I am making progress, slow excursiating progress.

Watching Chernobyl on HBO, a heart-wrenching and fascinating dramatization of the 1986 nuclear disaster. I finished Game of Thrones and am so disappointed by ending I refuse to even discuss it. I finished season 2 of the BBC’s spy thriller Killing Eve and loved it. I also liked Hulu’s adaptation of Joseph Heller’s dark comedy Catch-22 though I admit it is lacking when compared to the novel. I’m planning to start the Netflix mini-series inspired by the central park jogger case, When They See Us, tonight and I’m looking forward to the return of Hulu’s Handmaid’s Tale, Netflix’s Black Mirror, and HBO’s Big Little Lies in the coming weeks too.

Learning nothing. I have fallen behind in my learning goals. I’ll have to reset my deadline for International Women’s Health and Human Rights and find the time to begin again with Modern and Contemporary Poetry. The problem is one essay, just one simple essay that I am too afraid to write and submit and get a bad review on. For now I think I will move on and take another course rather than continue to stall and fall further behind. My goal was to finish at least 7 massive open online courses by the end of 2019 and I don’t want to lose my momentum or enthusiasm over a course I am not paying for and can begin anew whenever I feel ready.

Feeling overwhelmed, worried, down. I’m not sure what is going on or why I feel like this, or how to stop feeling like this. I know it’s understandable with the wedding, and work, and having a chronic illness but part of me believes I should be able to cope better than this. It should be so hard to keep up, to keep moving, or to keep making progress. It shouldn’t be so hard to do the things I love, the things I’m excited about and the things I know will help me feel better. So why am I struggling so much?

Anticipating a lot more stress. This summer I’ll be working a lot fewer hours than I’m used to which means less money coming in during a time when I need it the most. I’m worried by the time school starts again we’ll be in the hole and regretting not just the money spent on the wedding but the money I wasn’t able to make because I couldn’t work as much and because I’m spending time doing so many other things that don’t make money at all. There are also our property taxes that will force our mortgage payment up, and income tax benefits we weren’t able to get this year, and what we may owe next year. It’s been a long time since we’ve worried about money but I fear that old stress is waiting for us just up ahead.

Reflecting on how it feels not just to be getting older myself but to watch my entire community of family and friends, and the celebrities and public figures I have grown up with grow old with me too. My youngest sister graduated from high school this month and now none of us are children anymore. We are adults with stories to tell a new generation of sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, who are living in what feels to me like a whole new world, connected to mine yes, but different too in ways I’m not always sure I understand. I’ve up until now focused on the way that time passing has affected me but I’m beginning to notice that time passes everywhere all around me too. The city is changing, technology, entertainment, and culture are changing too. Everything is always changing. It’s exciting, sad, and scary all at once.

Fearing the future of abortion rights, gay rights, and the rights of immigrants and people of color in this country. Everything we feared would come to pass has slowly been becoming a terrible reality but the only thing worse than fearing what you can imagine is knowing the is worse that you cannot. So much that I thought would never happen and more I couldn’t even imagine has too and I grow increasing fearful of what I cannot fathom. I’ve had to turn off the news more and more and distance myself from what I feel I cannot control. I feel guilty to have the privilege of ignorance when I choose it and I know that in order to go on living with myself I will have be stronger, do more, and give more.

Hating that no matter how things change they never change fast enough. I hate that sometimes it feels frustratingly like nothing has changed at all. The days pass, we make progress; we move forward, experience, choose, and change, but it all just keeps coming back around again and again. THe same struggles, the same mistakes, the same lack of courage and imagination. Human beings, as a whole, I believe, are stunted and stuck. We won’t be forever, I think, I hope, but I know in my lifetime we’re going to go on fucking it all up. We’re going to go on fucking up the planet, killing each other, oppressing each other, and wasting the lives, talent, and potential of every one of our lives. I hate it. I really fucking hate it.

Loving everything about life right now. I love my fiance, my home, my family, my friends, my job, my city, and increasingly my country and myself. Nothing is perfect, and a lot is messed up, and painful, and bad, but it’s life and I do, despite it all, love life. I love living and I enjoy helping others love life too. I love laughter, discovery, connection, progress (however slow), and the experience of every single day even the bad ones, even the cold, dreary, depressing ones. I love my messy contradictions and my never ending struggle to find meaning and fulfillment. I love that nothing makes sense and I love that nothing much really matters. Being alive, being a person is hard, and I love it all, every minute and moment.

Needing to stay focused. I think I need a little less time online and a little more time with the good old, tried-and-true analog ways of doing things. I need less distraction. I need a schedule, a timer, and a to-do list. I need to make time, to sit my ass in the chair, and to create rather than curate. I need to get away from the T.V. and sometimes I need to get away from people too. I’m distracted constantly. I’m always doing anything but what I should be, what I deep down want to be.

Hoping that can find, and keep, my sense of enthusiasm and excitement again. It’s summer now, finally, my favorite season of the year and I do not want to miss it because I was too stressed, too tired, too overwhelmed and afraid to make the most of it. I’m hoping I can find the energy to give myself some tough love and a swift kick in the ass as needed to get up, get moving, and get out of the house for more than just work. I know that no matter how hard it is I’ll feel better for it and I just need to keep telling myself that.

So, yeah, all in all, May was actually not as bad as I’m making it out to be. There were good days. There were warm days. There were good writing days and good reading days. There was good news and progress was made. It’s just hard to look past the failures and the stroms to see it all but that’s why I write these, to get a better view of the past, of where I am, and where I hope to go.

But what about you? How has the unofficial start of the summer found you? What progress have you made? What obstacles have you come up against? Are you looking forward to the middle of the year or dreading it? What kind of year is 2019 turning out to be?

Let me know in the comments.

“And then, one fairy night, May became June.”

― The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald

The inspiration for these posts comes from Andrea at Create.Share.Love

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

#lisa marie blair #mine #wordpress #blog post #writing

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