Woahhhh you have the same icon as that one blog in the post

yeah! lonestatus and i r actually mutuals :3

Date Debacles & Discoveries

Swipe Right Fail: The Time I Found Myself in Never Have I Ever Hell (with Garlic Bread)

The world of online dating, where swipes reign supreme, bios are battlegrounds, and first impressions often involve questionable bathroom selfies. Brace yourselves, for a tale of epic dating app proportions—a symphony of cringe so potent it could score a horror film. Welcome to the saga of Swipe Right Fail.

It all began with a match, let's call him "Garlic Bread Bandit" (more on that later). His profile pic showed promise—decent lighting, no shirtless bathroom mirror selfies, bonus points for an actual dog. We exchanged messages, chuckled at his terrible puns (okay, maybe I laughed once), and agreed to meet for dinner. But the red flags were revealed the moment he pulled up in a beat-up sedan resembling a science project gone wrong. My hopes, like the faded paint job on his car, began to wither. His attire? Picture discount Rick Ross cosplay gone wrong. And his energy? Well, let's just say a lobotomized sloth exudes more vibrancy.

Inside the dimly lit bar, the atmosphere matched the flatness of the beer he ordered. Conversation crawled along like molasses in January, interrupted by awkward silences and the discomfort of sitting on the same side of the booth.

Then came the pièce de résistance: the garlic bread incident. My garlic bread appetizer, the sole food item I dared to order, apparently offended his financial sensibilities. "Too expensive," he huffed, his words dripping with the gravitas of a man who considers ketchup a gourmet condiment. In his world, sustenance is a luxury, not a necessity—though he himself ordered a full 16” pepperoni pizza, spaghetti with meatballs, and 3 cocktails (before you ask, no he wasn't sharing).

Things took a turn for the truly bizarre when he decided to break the ice with a rousing game of Never Have I Ever. Now, I'm all for a little playful banter, but the questions this guy was throwing out were straight out of a Kama Sutra audition. My "nevers" far outnumbered my "evers," and my cheeks burned hotter than the vodka sodas I was downing in rapid succession to numb myself from the date.

By this point, my vodka sodas were doing the heavy lifting in the "keeping me sane" department. But even its powers couldn't resurrect this date from the ashes of awkwardness. I knew this date was a sinking ship, and I wasn't about to go down with it. With a polite smile and a steely glint in my eye, I dropped the "this isn't working" bomb. Now, I'm not a fan of ghosting, but in this case, I made an exception. Leaving him with a confused expression and an untouched plate of pepperoni pizza, I ran out of the bar, garlic bread woes and all.

Here's the thing, dating is a gamble. There will be duds, there will be disasters, and there will be moments that make you question your sanity (and your choice of appetizers). The silver lining here is that these experiences, however cringe-worthy, teach us valuable lessons. So, what did I learn from this nightmare? Firstly, garlic bread is a surprisingly good test for compatibility. Secondly, never underestimate the power of a well-placed exit line.

No but seriously there are some take aways:

Lesson 1: Set Boundaries, my friends, like bouncers at the velvet rope of your sanity! Don't be afraid to walk away from a situation that doesn't feel right. Your time and energy are precious, and no amount of garlic bread (or vodka) is worth sacrificing them for a bad date.

Lesson 2: Laugh at the absurdity. Seriously, sometimes the only way to cope with dating app disasters is to find the humor in them. Share your stories with your friends, write a blog post (ahem - we do take submissions), and let the laughter wash away the awkwardness.

Lesson 3: Ghosting is an art form. If you must disappear, do it with finesse. A simple, "I didn't feel a connection" message goes a long way. Remember, karma is a garlic bread-loving boomerang, and you never know when you might need a date to appreciate your culinary choices (and questionable humor).

Lesson 4: Embrace the weird, the wonderful, and the downright bizarre. And remember, even the worst dates can offer valuable lessons (and maybe a good laugh).

So, keep swiping, keep hoping, and keep your sense of humor close. There's always a story to tell, a lesson to learn, and a plate of garlic bread to console you. Laughter is the best accessory, and remember, you're not stuck with someone who thinks Never Have I Ever is an appropriate icebreaker. Cheers to surviving the swipe right wars, one awkward encounter at a time!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a date with a warm baguette and a box of Kraft mac and cheese.

/ Winging it, but still making it.

P.S. To Mr. Never Have I Ever, if you happen to stumble upon this and recognize yourself, know that your garlic bread price criticisms will forever be etched in my memory, along with the questionable stains on your car seat.

Overnight

Summary: It may have been a mistake to get off the highway, your car breaking down on an abandoned back road. But just in time a tow truck appears, and the mechanics garage isn't far away... but when you find out the parts will be delivered overnight, you storm off towards town... and somehow find yourself where you least expect.

Pairing: AU Mechanic Chris Evans x Female Reader

Warnings: NSFW, 18+, Dubious Consent, AU, Greasy Mechanic Chris, Backroads Fic, Unprotected Sex, Thunderstorms, Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Anal Sex, unprotected anal sex, Sloppy Seconds, Kitchen Sex, Dark Chris, Slightly Creepy Fic

A/N: This is a slightly twisted story, i wouldn’t say it was ‘dark’, but it does have a slightly sinister undertone. I’m also tagging it as dub-con (dubious consent) as although reader never says no, she is never asked either. This is very much a work of fiction, and i urge the reader to take responsibility for their online consumption, so ensure you read the warnings before reading and then only proceed once you have accepted what this story may contain. It is not a light and fluffy fic.

I do not operate a tag list, but you can follow @angryschnauzerwrites​ and put that blog onto notifications, as every time i post a story i will reblog there. I have too many stories to do a masterlist, but you can find my entire back catalgoue on AO3 through THIS LINK.

A while back i also wrote a Seb AU Mechanic fic, and here is the link for that: Caught In The Storm

Overnight

You should NOT have turned off the interstate. Sure, you would be stuck in bumper to bumper tailbacks in the searing heat, but surely it would have been better than this. The further you’d driven, the worse your car had sounded, the metallic clanking sound getting louder and louder the further you drove. Something made a loud THUD and you felt the power steering go, and glancing in your rear-view mirror a large oil patch was appearing behind your car as it slowly started to cough and splutter, before coasting to a halt on the side of the cracked road. As the engine died you thumped the steering wheel, cursing and screaming at the broken piece of junk, before with heavy limbs you pulled yourself from the car. 

 Standing on the rough gravel at the side of the road, your hands on your hips, you glowered at the car, a faint hiss of steam coming from beneath the hood. The sun beat down and you could feel the heat of the day sinking into your bones, gnats and midges trying to gnaw at your skin as you slapped them angrily away. Dark clouds grew on the horizon but did little to obscure the beating sun high above you. 

 Checking your cell phone you weren’t surprised to see the no service icon, you were in the middle of nowhere, more likely to be dragged into the surrounding swamp and eaten by god knows what than to be able to call anyone. Just as you were lamenting your woes, the sound of an old diesel engine came rumbling to yours ears, and glancing down the road you saw an ancient tow truck coming into view. Standing in the road you waved your arms to flag the vehicle down; even if it couldn’t help then maybe it could take you to a working phone.

 The truck came to a stop in front of your car, and as the engine cut off and the driver’s door opened, you felt your body go tight. The man that climbed down from the cab looked like sin on a Sunday, long denim clad legs striding towards you, ball cap on backwards doing little to shade his face from the pounding sunshine, and a t-shirt that seemed to be painted onto his broad chest and wide shoulders;

 “In a spot of trouble there darlin’?”

 You let out a huff, you weren’t about to let some back roads hick try and charm his way into your panties… though said panties were suddenly becoming damper by every second he stood close to you. Shaking your head, you stood tall and puffed your chest out;

 “My car has died. If I could borrow your phone to call Triple A, I haven’t got any signal on mine…”

 The guy looked you up and down, his gaze resting on your chest as a bead of perspiration ran down your neck and between your breasts, his tongue darting out to wet his lips;

 “AAA don’t come out here, its subcontracted out to us locals. I’m on my way back to the garage now if you want a tow Sweetheart?”

 Letting out a deep sigh you nodded, returning to your car to grab your purse as the man started to unreel the towing line and called out to you;

 “Hop up into the cab Princess, this won’t take a moment”

 Rolling your eyes at the pet names you bit your tongue; the guy was after all helping you out. Gripping the handle of the tow trucks door you looked down at the old worn paintwork ‘Evans Autos’. You quickly fished your phone out of your bag and snapped a shot, setting it to upload to the iCloud once you got in range of any signal… at least that way if this greasy backroads mechanic chopped you into little pieces you had left a trail of evidence. 

 Pulling the door open you let out a small yelp when you came face to face with a big brown dog sitting on the passenger seat;

 “Scoot!”

 The dog looked at you with utter disdain, and firmly remained sat on the seat. Waving your hands a little you frowned at it;

 “C’mon, scoot over!”

 Over the sound of the towing winch whining at it pulled your car up onto the truck, you heard the mechanic call out;

 “You’ll have to climb over Dodge… he likes the window seat”

 Turning back to the big mutt you could have sworn it had a smug ‘so there’ look on its face, and as you climbed up and around the dog, you sat in the middle of the wide bench seat. Looking around you couldn’t find any seatbelts, so just sat with your hands firmly clasped in your lap. The sounds of lockers being shut hit your ears before the driver’s door opened and the mechanic climbed into the seat next to you and grinned;

 “Best hold on Babe, it’s a bumpy ride to the garage”

 “I’ll be fine, thanks” you muttered as he gunned the engine and pulled away.

 -

 He hadn’t been lying; the roads were atrocious. With each bump and pothole you were bounced closer to him, the dog the other side of you seemingly able to spread out across not only his seat but part of yours. You could have sworn the mechanic was aiming for every single bump possible just to be able to watch your breasts bounce as the truck hit each stone. 

 With each jolt and jiggle your thigh was pressed closer and closer against his, and when the truck hit a huge hole in the road you felt yourself almost  lifted from the seat, suddenly pinned back by his strong arm quickly thrown across your torso to hold you down and from slipping from the seat. The skin of his tattooed bicep was pressed against the exposed neckline and chest, his scent invading your senses; a warm spicy aftershave and motor oil and gasoline. You could feel your panties getting wetter as your legs parted so you could plant your feet on the dusty floor of the truck but it did little to alleviate the aching between your thighs. 

 Finally he slowed the truck and turned the wheel into a sharp left-hand turn, the truck bouncing along a gravel driveway until an old wooden auto shop came into view. Pulling the truck to a stop he climbed out, holding his hand out for you;

 “Dodge likes to sleep in the cab…”

 Rolling your eyes you took his hand and climbed out as gracefully as you could, your short sundress sticking to the seat before you yanked it down to retain what was left of your dignity;

 “So Babycakes, there’s a coupla’ chairs round the side if you want to take a seat whilst I look at your car, and an icebox on the counter just inside the shop, help yourself to a water”

 “Umm, thanks”

 -

 You glanced at the time on your phone. You’d been waiting three hours; the sound of your car being taken to pieces by the mechanic was all you’d heard for most of that time. The only thing that seemed to have changed in those three hours was the humidity rising and the storm clouds coming closer. Rising to your feet you stretched your limbs and turned the corner of the auto shop, glancing at the mechanic as he lay on the floor below your sorry looking car as it was raised on the hydraulic lift;

 “Sir?”

 “Chris”

 “What?”

 “It’s Chris, not Sir…”

 “Ok, Chris. Do you know how much longer it’ll be?”

 Chris pulled himself out from beneath your car, wiping his hands on a rag that was hanging from the back pocket of his jeans;

 “For today, I’ll probably be done in an hour…”

 “Great!”

 “... but I need to overnight the parts I need, so it won’t be ready until tomorrow”

 “What? When were you going to tell me that?”

 “I’ve just ordered the parts Honey”

 You let out a grunt of frustration;

 “Fine. I’ll be back tomorrow… you could have told me sooner”

 You turned on your heel and started to walk away;

 “Where ya’ goin’?”

 “To find a motel, or a guesthouse, or somewhere to stay at!”

 “On foot?!”

 “YES!”

 -

 You had stormed off, anger driving your feet as your white sneakers slowly got covered in brown dust that puffed up from the gravel driveway with every step you took towards the road. Finally you reached the cracked asphalt, taking a sharp right-hand turn and you started along the road. By now the humidity was hanging in the air and it felt like you were walking through soup. Even the midges had given up, their tiny wings not strong enough to cut through the cloying stillness. The sun was now obscured by dark clouds, but you continued on. Finally a crossroads came into view, and you willed your heat-tired muscles to push on, coming to the sign and stopping. The shortest distance was to take a right, so scrambling over the accumulated gravel you continued your journey. 

 -

 An hour later your legs were weary. Your dress clung to your skin as sweat beaded across your brow, down your chest and back. You held your arms out as you walked, hoping just by moving they would cool your skin, but having little affect.

 Finally a small house came into view, further buildings behind it mostly hidden by trees. The hair on your arms stood on end with Goosebumps and you could smell petrichor on the air, you knew the storm was about to break. Quickening your step you found the energy to trot down the rest of the way, past the worn mailbox with most of the letters worn away, the last three just spelling out ‘van’, but you were oblivious, the first raindrop hitting your skin and you sprinted towards the house. 

 By the time you reached the porch the parts of your dress that weren’t stuck to your skin due to sweat were doing so thanks to the rain. A crack of thunder boomed as a flash of lightning lit the sky, and as you cowered under the porch you heard a bark and a very wet brown dog suddenly ran for cover, shivering on the doorstep. Another crack of thunder made you jump, and the dog cowered against you, you crouching down to wrap your arms around the scared creature. Looking at the name tag that hung from its collar you read it; ‘Dodger’, and your heart plummeted to your stomach. Before you could even fathom what had happened, a familiar voice was behind you;

 “You were walking over an hour and you still manage to find your way back here?”

 Turning you looked out to the lawn where Chris stood, the rain pouring over him, his t-shirt stuck to every curve of his body and his jeans hanging low on his narrow hips. Slowly striding towards you he wiped the rain from his face as he stepped under the porch, reaching around you and opening the door to the small cabin;

 “You took a right and another right, didn’t ya?”

 “How did you…?”

 “Well, if you hadn’t stormed off in a huff, I woulda told you to turn left at the end of the driveway. Instead walked a giant triangle and found yourself back here”

 You let out a strangled noise, not quite a cry, not quite a scream, before your body sagged;

 “Can you… can you give me a ride into town?”

 “Nope”

 “No?!”

 “The town is tiny. All we got is a church, a market, and a drug store. Nearest motel ain’t for thirty miles, and you wouldn’t wanna stay there… unless you like cockroaches”

 You could feel your bottom lip quiver, trying to hold back the tears before Chris’s voice softened;

 “I got a couch you can stay on, no funny business, no obligations…”

 He was close, so close. You could feel the heat radiating from his body, and you found your mouth moving before your brain could stop it;

 “What if I wanted funny business?”

 There was no more preamble, no more hesitating, he stepped forwards, one hand cupping the back of your neck, the other on your waist as he pulled your body flush against his own, his lips meeting yours.

 The kiss was fierce, your mouth willingly opening as his tongue pushed against your own, dancing together as you tasted one another. His hand on your hip pulled at your dress, curling it up in his fingers until your skin was there to touch, his large hand gripping the soft cheek of your ass. He pushed you back, the hardness of the wooden clapperboards of his cabin rough against your skin, but you were blissfully unaware of it. He pressed one leg between yours and you ground your hips against the firm denim clad muscle of his thigh, in turn the thick hardness that was growing between your bodies he rubbed against your hip, moaning into your mouth as the friction helped release some of the tension that had built during the day. 

 Snaking a hand between your bodies, your dress had already ridden up so he was easily able to slide a hand into your panties, leaving streaks of motor oil across the pale fabric as he sought out your clit. Pushing two wide fingers down he found your soaked entrance and gathered some of your wetness, before bringing his fingers back and rubbing firm circles against your sensitive bud. His lips parted from yours, resting his forehead to your own for a moment you panted into his mouth, the air between you hot and thick, before those kiss plump lips make their way to your neck, sucking and licking at your jugular as his beard scratched against your skin. 

 Your head lolled back and rested against the wooden side of the building, the storm raging around you as you felt your orgasm starting to build. Your hands clung to Chris’s strong arms, his skin patterned with tattoos that you yearned to run your fingertips over tenderly. Your body started to shake, your orgasm growing closer as that coil in the pit of your stomach wound ever tighter, your hand finding its way to the firm bulge that was pressing against your hip, and as you squeezed the hot muscle through the denim you started to come, Chris’s mouth finding your own against as he swallowed your cries of passion. 

 He stilled his fingers as you trembled against him, quickly unfastening the buttons of his fly and pushing the garment down just enough to free his thick cock, taking hold of your thighs as he lifted you.  With strong hands he gripped at your panties before ripping them from your body, the ruined pieces of cotton falling to the floor at your feet. You felt the wide tip press against your still trembling entrance and with a grunt he thrust into you, filling you completely as you screamed out his name.

 You clung to him as he started to fuck you roughly against the wall, the wet sounds of your bodies meeting being drowned out by the storm now wild overhead. With each thrust your body was sent to heavy, the thick stretch of him inside you making your legs tremble as he held one leg over his hip, letting you try and keep the other held up as he pawed at your breasts, pulling your dress and bra down until you spilled out, your tits bouncing with each of his powerful thrusts. 

 No words were spoken, your moans the only thing that could leave your lips as Chris fucked you so hard you were sure you’d never be able to close your legs again and made roadkill of your pelvis with his powerful thrusts. You were trembling around him and you were getting closer and closer to coming again. His lips were on your neck again and muttering the dirtiest things in your ear;

 “Are you gonna cum on my cock babe? Make me fill you with my cum until its dripping down your legs… you’re squeezing me so damn tight, gonna pump you full then take you inside, make you sit on my face, would you like that? Wanna feel my tongue on your cunt?”

 “Oh fuck… Chris, yes… fuck, keep going…”

 He laughed quietly before picking up speed, the slapping sound of his heavy sac against your ass filling your ears as the wide root of his cock rubbed and dragged against your clit. With a grind of his hips you were coming, your fingernails clinging to his back as you shook with pleasure, triggering his own orgasm as he pumped hot ropes of creamy seed deep within your womb.

 Holding you against the wall, he kissed you, his tongue working against your own before he slowly pulled out of you, letting your feet fall to the floor. Your head swam from the pleasure surging through your body, only partially aware of Chris pulling his jeans up enough to keep them on his hips before he wrapped his arms around your waist and threw you over his shoulder, carrying you inside.

 Moments later you were being dropped onto a large bed, the covers messy from when the previous occupant had simply gotten up and dressed that morning, and you watched as Chris stripped his soaked clothes from his body before crawling onto the bed, his gaze feral as he pressed a line of kisses up your sternum before his lips found yours again. His fingers worked deftly against the ties of your wrap summer dress, pulling it open and helping you to wriggle out of it; all whilst his lips never left yours. 

 Finally he pulled away, his strong arms bulging as he flipped you over and pulled your hips up until you were resting on your knees. His wide tongue pulled a thick stripe through your cum soaked folds, from clit to asshole, before grinding his face against your crotch. His tongue was everywhere, sucking on your clit before moving to your well fucked entrance, then moving up and pressing against the tight ring of muscle between your asscheeks. With more insistence he pushed his tongue against your back door and you sighed into the old sheets below you, your fingers curling in the cotton as he slid two thick fingers into your soaked channel whilst his tongue worked against your asshole. When his thumb found your clit a shockwave bolted through you, your scream into the mattress from sheer pleasure as you unashamedly ground back against him, moaning his name as your legs shook. He pulled his mouth away and spat on your asshole, working a finger in up to the knuckle and you started to cum, his fingers in your cunt rubbing against that spongy spot whilst his thumb worked figure eights over your clit, and you found yourself squirting your release as you screamed with pleasure.

 You were aware of Chris pulling away, your body trembling and fluid in the prone position. You heard the quiet click of the cap of a bottle before a cool viscous liquid was slowly spread over your ass. The touch of Chris’s fingers exploring your most hidden of places had you pushing back against his touch, relaxing as he slid two oiled fingers slowly into your ass, massaging you, stretching you. By now you were drooling, your tongue working against the cotton sheet as you bore down as he pushed a third finger into your ass, the quiet squirt of more oil being applied directly inside you had you knowing what was coming, and humming a low moan as you felt his fingers pull away only to be replaced with the well-oiled fat crown of his cock. 

 Turning your head you watched as he pushed the wide mushroom into your tight ring of muscle, groaning as your secret walls gripped him so hard. His large hands pulled your cheeks apart and he spat on his dick as he started to push into you, filling you, parting your walls with his meaty girth. You could feel every vein and ridge as he pushed harder, reaching around and rubbing at your clit whilst he rocked his hips back and forth before he was finally balls deep in your ass. 

 “So fuckin’ good, feel so tight around my dick Baby, taking me so well... “

 His mouth was as dirty as you had hoped, praising you for taking his dick in your ass as he started to fuck you, pushing his legs open to widen your own and allow him in even deeper. Your hands scrambled at the covers trying to find something to grip onto, some sort of purchase, before he was suddenly pulling your arms behind your back and gripping your wrists with his massive hands. Folding your arms across your sweat drenched back he used them to anchor himself as he fucked your ass even harder, pulling orgasm after orgasm out of you as your empty cunt ached to be filled. As if reading your thoughts - or you could even have said it aloud, who knows you were so high on pleasure - he grasped your arms in one large hand before curling the other arm beneath you, pushing three fingers into your soaked pussy as he fucked your ass so hard you doubted you’d be able to sit down for a week without feeling it.

 “Fuck… gonna cum Baby, gonna fill this ass with cum so deep…”

 “Yes... Chris, FUCK, fuck my ass, I want your cum…”

 “My fucking gorgeous anal cum slut, your cunt is gorgeous, but I’m gonna fuck this ass from now on… never had an ass this good, this tight… gonna have you gaping by the time I’ve finished with you… my cum dripping down your legs, gonna make sure you never wear panties again, need you ready for me to bend you over and push my dick up this tight ass to fill you with another load…”

 Your orgasm took over, gripping Chris’s dick and fingers so hard it set his orgasm off, a second wave of your orgasm so intense that as you felt your body milking Chris, the room went dark and you blacked out.

 -

 The room was dark, the sound of rain outside soothing to your ears as you tried to figure out where you were, then snippets of your memory came back; your car, the garage, Chris… the storm… fucking him… Turning you saw him quietly asleep beside you, you winced as your muscles protested against moving, but the need for water and the bathroom was too much as you quickly slipped out of the room. 

 Having found the bathroom, you attempted to clean yourself up a little before walking through the small cabin to the kitchen, taking a glass from the counter before filling it and drinking the whole thing at the sink and filling it again. Two warm hands wrapped themselves around your naked body from behind, warm lips and a rough beard found your neck and Chris started to kiss along your shoulders, his hands finding your naked breasts as he cupped them whilst grinding his hard dick into the crease of your ass. Setting the glass down you spread your legs a little wider, and a warm hum of appreciation reverberated through Chris’s chest as he dipped his hips whilst pushing you forwards over the old porcelain sink, the smooth crown of his dick pushing against your used asshole, and you felt the pop as he sank into your cum soaked walls.

 Groaning as you leaned forwards and gripped the cool porcelain, you opened yourself up for him as he ploughed into your murky depths, his thick thighs pushing your legs wide apart before he lifted one of your knees until it was resting on the countertop, your other foot only just reaching the floor as you were stood on your toes, Chris fucking your ass harder this time, gripping your hips as he filled you again and again. His hands moved to your breasts and he pinched your nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, rolling the hardened teats until they were painfully hard. Snaking his hands up your front he wrapped his fingers over your shoulders so he could pull you back onto him harder, his thrusts increasing in speed. Your cunt was leaking juices down your inner thighs, and with each thrust his heavy sac would slap against it, reminding you of its emptiness, and you found yourself begging;

 “Chris please… fill my pussy…”

 Chuckling he pulled one hand down and spat on it before pushing three fingers into you, all whilst continuing to fill your ass with his fat cock;

 “You like that? You like having all your holes stuffed? You’re just begging to be filled, used, fucked…”

 “Oh fuck… harder… fuck me harder…”

 With a grunt he increased the speed of his thrusts, the front of your thighs pushing painfully against the sink, your leg muscles screaming at the way you were stretched wide open, but the pleasure was too intense to stop, you needed it, you needed the release.

 You came again and Chris fucked you straight through it, somehow finding the skill to fuck you even harder, sliding a fourth finger into your slick channel as he stretched you so wide. Your head swam, the sound of the storm outside closing the world in around you, and as you came again so did he, filling your ass with another load of his cum.

 Afterwards he carried you to his bed, wrapping his hard body around yours as you fell into a dreamless sleep, the reality of the world far far away.

 -

 Handing over the keys you smiled at Chris as you took them from him. Your body ached and was sore beyond belief, but it was certainly a night to remember. You had slept in until well past midday, only waking when your stomach had growled from not eating anything. Picking at some leftovers in Chris’s fridge, you’d found your soaked sundress draped over the back of a kitchen chair, pulling it on you shivered at the damp touch of the fabric before you’d stepped out of the cabin and found Chris fitting the parts he’d had on overnight delivery to your car. The bill had been more than you had expected - the parts costing more than you had in your purse - so when Chris had smirked at you and suggested an alternative payment, you had sighed with pleasure as he’d fucked you bent over the hood of your car, his dick filling your cunt as he had three fingers stretching your ass. You’d cum so hard you were left shaking, and he had pulled out just before he came only to push an inch into your ass and fill you with another load of his cum.

 With your keys in hand you kissed him, your tongues sloppy before you pulled away just as the sound of tyres could be heard on the rough gravel of his driveway, another tow truck pulling up alongside Chris’s. 

 Sitting in your car you gave him a wave as you pulled away, watching the garage disappear into the distance before you turned your attention onto the road ahead, pulling out onto the dry again asphalt, another summer storm starting to gather on the horizon.

 -

 Not thirty minutes later you were standing at the side of the road, kicking the flat tyre before screaming out at the sky in frustration. You checked your cell phone, groaning when you saw the out of service sign, before stashing it back in your purse. 

 The sound of an old diesel engine could be heard in the distance, and you looked up to the sky before closing your eyes;

 “No… it can’t be…”

 Taking a deep breath with your eyes still closed, you heard the engine get closer until it came to an idle beside you, and familiar voice greeting you;

 “Baby… you need a ride?”

 Chris hopped out of the cab, slipping his hand beneath your dress and giving your ass a squeeze;

 “Gotta watch out for that sharp gravel, it’ll blow tyres out real bad…”

 -

 Sitting in the cab you watched as Chris hooked your car back onto the tow truck, before ducking back inside the truck, this time just the two of you;

 “Where’s Dodger?”

 “Sleeping on the porch… Now, we’re gonna have to order you a new tyre Baby…”

“Let me guess, it’ll be delivered overnight?”

 He leant back and started to unbutton his jeans;

 “You never got to taste my dick last night… how about you try it now whilst I finger that ass ready for the next round? Huh Baby?”

 Settling onto your knees on the wide seat, you took him into your mouth, sucking him as he started the truck, unaware of the rusty nail that he dropped into the pocket of the door, a small piece of tyre rubber still attached to it… he’d found you, and he wasn’t about to let you drive off into the sunset...

J/B Exchange Recs Round 1!

I have not been around Tumblr much lately because I was so preoccupied with stuff for @jaime-brienne-fic-exchange, but I am trying to get back into the swing of things, and I figured what better place to start than with some recs?

These are currently skewed a bit toward my amaaaazing gift fic and the amaaaaazing ones I beta-ed, since I am way behind on my reading, but there will be more to come!

Backpfeifengesicht by @samirant - I am so unbelievably grateful that I had both amazing prompts/amazing recipient for the fic I wrote, and such a fabulous gift fic too. I was still working on my own fic and very sleep-deprived and flagging when I read this for the first time and I think I may have actually left my body on a wave of sheer euphoria. IT IS ALL THE GOOD THINGS. So many of my favorite vacation/road trip tropes--drunken shenanigans! Intimate late-night conversations while everyone else is sleeping/elsewhere! Friends being too involved in your relationship! Unexpected forced proximity! And the banter is glorious, and the secondary characters are so well thought out and add such depth and vibrance to the story, and the Sansa/Margaery subplot was DELIGHTFUL, and I love the way this structured Brienne's relationship to Tyrion and then to Jaime as an extension of that, and the resolution was handled with an absolutely perfect balance of hilarity and heat. (There was also the stuff throughout that was very targeted to me specifically WHICH I APPRECIATED, so thanks to both Sami and @forbiddenfantasies1 for that). About 20% of the way into the story, I was deeply convinced it was Sami, and in the best possible way--it had the hallmarks I love about her writing: her sense of humor, her gift for banter, her clear affection for the characters, the richness of all the relationships. It was like showing up to a party and unexpectedly finding a friend there, and it was the loveliest feeling. I am thrilled that so many people have read and loved this story but I want everyone in the world to read and love it, so. Please check it out if you haven't! And also check out Sami's hilarious tale of woe regarding her writing process, which is amazing. THANK YOU AGAIN FOR SUCH A PHENOMENAL GIFT SAMI.  ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

A favorite line: On any other day, Brienne would have left him - a relative stranger - to his wallowing, but an untold amount of imbibed Pentoshi Slammers stirred up a noble benevolence within her, a little voice that said they had something in common and what good were her broad shoulders if they weren’t offered as a place to rest a weary, heartbroken brow? SO GOOD.

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Lay Your Heartbreak and the sequel You could make me feel so good by @ajoblotofjunk / sdwolfpup - LISTEN. SDW sent me an early chunk of this and I was immediately OBSESSED and I have not stopped being obsessed since. Obviously worldbuilding is a huge strength of SDW's and her creativity with that is a constant astonishment to me. But pop culture is full of examples of people who can create amazing worlds and then utterly fail to populate them with interesting or dynamic characters, whereas SDW's ability to fill in those wonderfully creative spaces with her love for the characters and their love for each other that is just magic. And these fics are the perfect examples of that. The setup is not only fascinating but makes for such fantastically INTENSE feelings, omg, everything just feels like it's crackling off the page; even before Jaime and Brienne and Addam are admitting anything to each other, it's not so much simmering under the surface as boiling. The balance between the three of them is gorgeous, there are two incredibly hot fencing scenes as well as a very hot swimming scene (in addition to the sequel being just one big tangle of brain-scorching hotness), there's a perfect amount of sweetness and softness to play off all the blazing heat, and overall this is one that's going to stick with me for a long time. I know J/A/B isn't everyone's cup of tea, but if you aren't actively opposed to the idea of them, then I highly highly encourage you to check this out. 

A favorite line: That night she dreams of golden skin, hot and soft against her palm – yes, someone moans, yes – the rough scrape of callouses over the arch of her ribs, the scratch of red stubble between her thighs – like this? Yes, more, please more – legs sliding together and between each other, and two mouths touching her all over. Hnnnnngh.

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The Limit Does Not Exist by @agirlnamedkeith / sameboots - Fics with a power imbalance are something I approach with a lot of caution but I LOVED the way that sameboots handled it here. The fact that this fic includes her signature extremely hot feelings-forward porn as well as a thoughtful exploration of what it can mean to be a woman in STEM is like a beautiful multi-course meal; I cared a LOT about whether they were gonna do it and I was also equally invested in how Brienne’s thesis was going to turn out and where she would go from there. I love Brienne’s stubbornness and determination and even though she’s finding her way here (as you would be, as a grad student), those elements are VERY much on display and they spark fantastically against an initially guarded and caustic but eventually deeply admiring Jaime. And while I don’t want to spoil anything, I will say that I feel like the end is a perfect illustration of one of the major themes of the fic, and I love it so much for that. Watching this one take shape and watching sameboots geek out over her math research was a delight, and the result is excellent (and did I mention, extremely hot). Definitely worth all her work!

A favorite line: “Has anyone ever told you that you’re the worst liar?” (KIDDING HANNAH ILU HERE’S THE REAL ONE:)  The problem with smoothies was that it was hard to make them aggressively., Angrily pushing a button didn’t have the same release as whaling on a punching bag. Brienne didn’t have a punching bag, though, and she desperately needed to do something, and she was hungry. ANGRY SMOOTHING-MAKING. I LOVE IT.

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Right Off the Bat by @hillaryschu - A You’ve Got Mail AU where Jaime and Brienne are rival Little League coaches who unknowingly bond over Twitter is SUCH a great idea, and Hillary committed to it right down to the delightful rom-com-trailer summary. She also put an enormous amount of care into the details of the story--she had references for outfits, buildings, even Jaime’s cologne--and it shows in all the lush descriptions throughout. The banter is sparky, watching their two relationships gradually unfold is a lot of fun, there’s a particular tipsy (on Brienne’s part) Twitter DM exchange that I still get flustered thinking about, and there’s a batting cage scene that will be haunting my brain for a while. Especially given that Hillary had never written a story anywhere near this long before, I’m so impressed that she pulled it off (and fixed some of the most problematic elements of the movie, too). Congratulations to her on rising to the challenge!

A favorite line: But as they part from each other, Brienne lifts the hem of her tee to wipe the dirt and sweat from her face. Her exposed stomach is pale and toned, with softly defined muscles that gleam with perspiration. Jaime trips over home plate. SAME JAIME. SAME.

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X Marks the Spot (where I’ll find you again) by @pretty--thief - PIRATES. I WAS SO EXCITED WHEN I HEARD ABOUT THE PIRATES. And this fic is such a fantastic blend of snappy, exciting swashbuckling (and hilarious use of parrots) and a very poignant backstory that underlays the adventure with all this yeeeeeearning and it’s SO GOOD. The action scenes are thrilling, the descriptions are gorgeous, there is STARGAZING and BATTLE COUPLE, the Jaime snark is chefkiss, Brienne is so brave and committed and quietly full of feelings, there’s a really lovely discussion of the ethics of being in the military, and also Pod and Addam and Arya and PIRATES FOR JUSTICE. SO HERE FOR THAT. And did I mention the yeeeeeearning (which is paid off wonderfully--the penultimate chapter lived rent-free in my mind for about a week after I first read it)? Ugh SO GOOD.

A favorite line: When he had exited his quarters, Brienne had looked at him with so much concern in her eyes it threatened to swallow Jaime whole. He’d felt something similar when he was around Cersei, when they were fucking or fighting; a fire he had once thought he could never tire of, would never want to put out. But Brienne had reached out her hand, as if on reflex, and smoothed her thumb across his tired brow. The ship had continued to sway beneath them, and Jaime didn’t feel fire. He didn’t feel like he would be turned to ash at any moment. He felt a breeze, the wind in his hair and salty air in his lungs. as;lfkja;sldjgas;lfjas;lf 

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Federation Fliers by @elizadunc /Ladybugbear2 - A short and very sweet one! I adore the world that Megs created in this and would happily read many many more words in it, but this is a lovely glimpse in and of itself, and made me so happy. Established relationship (which I love), one of my favorite Jaime nicknames for Brienne, a wonderfully badass Brienne and a wonderfully besotted Jaime, all against a fascinating backdrop. So good!

A favorite line: She belonged in the sky. She had a grace to her movements on the ground, but in the sky she was ethereal. HEART-EYES

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And now for a few that I just read after they were posted like a normal person:

Wine Down by @slipsthrufingers - SOME MILD SPOILERS HEREIN FYI. Okay first of all, the summary of this fic is deliciously evil and I think we all need to appreciate that. Also, it starts out with Jaime and Brienne having lunch together and these glorious descriptions of food and he has taken note of the specific food she likes and is making sure it’s provided for her and that is SO VERY MUCH MY LOVE LANGUAGE YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW. I FLAILED. And then things go, shall we say, a bit downhill, but in the most achingly beautiful way--Jaime sacrificing himself for Brienne and Brienne determined to tether him to life through sheer force of will and steadfast devotion. Slips puts us right into Brienne’s headspace/heartspace while she’s worrying for Jaime and trying to negotiate the fucked-up Lannister family dynamics (and the observations on said dynamics are wonderful too), and this hits such an excellent balance of Brienne’s rigidly controlled surface and everything that’s roiling away underneath. I’m always fascinated by the idea of what could have happened during the time that Brienne was in King’s Landing and this is such a brilliant exploration of how things could have gone, and Brienne’s interactions with the rest of the Lannisters (and Sansa) give the world that much more depth as well. The descriptions throughout are beautiful, there are so many lovely turns of phrase, the intimacy between Jaime and Brienne is just devastating, and it all comes back around to an immensely satisfying conclusion. SO GOOD. 

A favorite line: The gods had seen fit to give her an unwomanly body, so she had taken up the sword. They had given her an ugly face, so she had perfected her manners and courtesies so they could never be frowned upon. But they had given her a maiden’s heart, and try as she might she had never found the right weapon to protect it. MY PRECIOUS GIRL.

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A Matter of Honor by @nire-the-mithridatist - I shrieked at nire in DMs basically the whole time I was reading this story, it made me experience like 90% of the range of human emotions in one night and I’m still mad about it. This features a fascinatingly flipped script where Brienne is the wealthy one and Jaime the supplicant, and an arrogant-ass supplicant he is. Brienne is an angy baby nineteen-year-old who is furious at the entire world and I fucking adore her for it, and watching all the events unfold through the lens of her (generally well-founded) suspicions was a delicious sort of torture where I trusted NO ONE and genuinely did not know exactly what was going to happen next. Nire turns a lot of marriage fic tropes on their head in this and it’s all done brilliantly, and there is EXTREMELY SEXY SWORD-FIGHTING (and as a sexy bonus, Brienne’s perspective on it feels so perfect for someone who is truly an accomplished swordswoman), and nire uses some common elements throughout to just pack in these layers and layers of meaning and significance, and there are many turns of phrase so perfect that they hurt, and then she’s like “hey would you like to re-feel all the feelings in this story again in a very concentrated burst” and it’s SO MUCH, and the conclusion pays everything off amazingly. And even though it’s very swoony and romantic (and HOT. I SHOULD MENTION VERY HOT), there’s a hint of melancholy to it too, reckoning with what it means to be a woman--even a wealthy one--in Brienne’s world, and it’s just the perfect crunch of salt on top of all the sweetness. LOVE. 

A favorite line: He brought her knuckles to his lips. As sweet as honeyed nettles, he declared, “Lady Brienne. You have made me the happiest of men.” As the crowd roared in approval, she felt the sting of his kiss. STING OF HIS KISS ARE YOU KIDDING ME. Also I’m including this for purely thirsty reasons but NO SHAME: He stood from the sofa and went to help his wife undress, and if she noticed his averted eyes and his trembling hands—oh gods, the laces went on endlessly down her back, and with each pull, a little more of her figure was revealed, barely veiled by her gauzy shift—she said nothing. I DIED. I ALSO SAID NOTHING BECAUSE I WAS DEAD. Fuck, man.

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The Riverlands Gang Go to the Zoo by @naomignome - Another shorter and very delightful one with Naomi’s typical brand of chaotic humor that I adore. It’s Hyle POV, for one thing, which is good times, and the structure of this is so clever--the way each section of the zoo is used to progress the story is so seamless and happy-making, and there are tons of little jokes and Easter eggs packed in along with a very sweet, snarky emotional storyline wherein Hyle is definitely doomed. Plus another EXCELLENT Brienne nickname in here. LOVELY. 

A favorite line: “Pixel!” he said laughingly, “You know if you fell in the bear pit, I would jump after you without a second thought.” “You need to have a first thought in order to have a second one.” Brienne said dryly. SUCH A GOOD BURN.

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all these people think love’s for show (but i would die for you in secret) by @naomignome - This is SUCH A FLEX because not only did Naomi write TWO fics for her recipient but they are WILDLY DIFFERENT and I’m so impressed with her for doing it! This one is SPIEEEEESSSS and Naomi packs so much tension into 5K, I was on the edge of my seat through the whole thing. Canon events are woven in astonishingly well, and it’s a delicious enemies-to-partners-to-lovers situation that involves some excellent hurt/comfort and excellent use of RAIN to moody/sexy effect and it’s just all very thrilling. YUM.

A favorite line: He lets off a single bullet and it grazes the inside of her thigh, enough to make her wince and draw blood, but not enough to stop her from tackling him to the ground and wrestling him into submission. She’s got both of his wrists pinned above his head and her knee is drawn up and pressed against his torso. Jaime’s chest is heaving under her knee. Her chest is heaving in tandem. From above him, Brienne can see the green of his eyes darken, and even in submission, he’s annoyingly beautiful. Her blood is rushing, and it’s not all adrenaline. WHEW. SAME.

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as stars once a year brush the earth by @ylizam / mazily - Another wonderfully bite-sized one (good job actually taking the minimum word count as a guideline, people who did that, unlike the rest of us dumbasses!) that packs a lot into a small space. A canon-ish soulmates AU that’s so understated and dreamy, but with the echo of all the turmoil they’ve gone through to get to this place that brings everything in sharp relief. It’s also funny and sexy and romantic as fuck, and there are gorgeous poetic descriptions, and they spar by a WATERFALL, and just. So much happens in just over 1600 words! IMPRESSIVE.

A favorite line: Her right hand goes numb, unfeeling; back in their rooms Jaime is waking up, and she knows the phantom ache of his missing hand is bothering him. Jaime is waking, and yawning, the bed linens pooling around his waist and highlighting his summer tanned skin. She misses him, suddenly, as wide as the endless sea in front of her. BEAUTIFUL.

OKAY THIS WAS A LONG POST. That’s all I’ve got for now--more to come as I continue my reading!!

Status Quo Woes: Pre52 vs New52, New vs Old, Gains and Loses

I’ve always been interested in Superman and Wonder Woman but never really got into their comic stories. The first story I ever read was Kingdom Come which made me a fan of the Superman and Wonder Woman pairing.

When DC rebooted with new52, seeing the characters younger and basically, starting at a clean slate (or so we thought), it was a great jumping on point to invest in these version and gave the opportunity to grow with them as fans of Pre52 (Post-Crisis) and Pre-Crisis had the opportunity to do in their time.

However new52 became a controversial nightmare. Older fans and creators feeling like new, younger kids are stepping on their lawns. Lots of confusion and miscommunication storytelling wise of what starts as an actual clean slate(Superman and Wonder Woman specifically) and what can stay (Batman and Green Lantern keeping some Pre52 history).

But here’s the thing, new52 was still a much needed financial success and did bring in new fans to become invested in DC. By admittance of Dan Didio, the mistake of new52 was that it seemed rushed and unorganized but what was needed was more time and slowing down to develop the new52 concepts.

Superman and Wonder Woman becoming a couple was indeed a huge phenomenon! Some love it, some just like it, some hate it. But it still obtained interest, curiosity and fan discussions, civilized or civil (ship) war. Talk is talk.

Many detractors want to force the idea that not only new52 as whole but Superman/Wonder Woman was a failure. That’s not true. New52 was a financial success and brought new fans balancing out the loss of some older fans. It has been stated multiple times by the initial writer of their joint book, Charles Soule, sales were just fine. Tony Daniel even confirmed debut issue broke 100k and were lots of reorders. If there is a need for even more evidence, there the constant licensed merchandise. Superman/Wonder Woman has been a concept of potential interest for decades.

When the second creative team came starting with rewriting Superman and Wonder Woman’s first meeting just to create unnecessary conflict, that was a red flag, nothing good would come of that. Yet the book maintained. Fans still supported in hopes things would turn around. Then DCYou/Convergence came about, THAT is when sales started to tumble into the dumpster.

And here comes Rebirth. Rebirth was said to be not only a nostalgia trip but an “apology” to older “true” fans and deeming new52 as a whole as a big mistake. It was suppose to rejuvenate comics. It was a lot of cherry picking and revisionist history and contrived storytelling. The initial creative teams of Rebirth even seemed to enjoy being petty, throwing jabs at new52. Even using specifically Wonder Woman as a mouthpiece to force acceptance of the Rebirth status quo. This also happened within Animation, producers recently admitting using Wonder Woman to justify the abrupt change of status quo and to like a certain character that’s being force in to be “lead” now while Wonder Woman is forced on the sidelines. The producer also stated Superman and Wonder Woman together is for younger fans. Well no shit, wouldn’t you want the new, younger fans??

With all the spiteful praise of rebirth, the actual effect of it wasn’t as good as it seemed and full of smoke, empty promises.

Below, sales of Superman/Wonder Woman compared to Rebirth Trinity, the book that was supposed to be its better replacement. Worth pointing out that Trinity's sales benefited from the earlier boost provided by the line wide relaunch of Rebirth while Superman/Wonder Woman came out 2+ years after the new52 reboot and sold on its own merit. Superman L&C Convergence spin off was promoted as an highly anticipated book, the return of the “true”, “real” Superman and the slight of taking the marquee of “Original Power Couple”

Bonus tea: Superman/Wonder Woman also had less sales drop compared to both New52 and Rebirth Batman/Superman runs.

“What happens is, we get to 'Rebirth,' we reinstitute some of the things we felt were missing, but what also happens is, you put in things that made you want to revamp the line in the first place, and things get stagnant again. Everybody says ‘don’t change them anymore’ but the whole purpose of storytelling is change and evolution." - Dan Didio

Going back to the “old” status quo of Pre52 is WHY there was a reboot in the first place. Superman and Wonder Woman are still struggling in regards to sales and bringing new fans although, their stagnant “comfort zone” status quo was suppose to be satisfying to older fans. Rebirth has also caused even more of a convoluted continuity mess and character dynamics are empty.

Now DC is stuck with not only pissed of older fans that didn’t get exactly what they thought they wanted with Rebirth, but also alienated new fans.

FICTIONAL CHARACTER ASK: ROMEO MONTAGUE

TAGGED BY: @princesssarisa​

@ardenrosegarden​ @giuliettaluce​ @gravedangerahead​

Favorite thing about them: Oh my sweet boy, he is a sensitive poet that only wants to distance himself of violence and to share his love (for Juliet and for love itself) with the world.

Least favorite thing about them: That fact that when Tybalt kills Mercucio, he blames Juliet for “turning him affeminate” (weak) and decides to kill Tybalt in relation, believing this will prove that he is “man enough”. This obviously is the biggest mistake he ever commited.

Three things i have in common with them:

-His melancholy.

-I also can sometimes find dificult to communicate my true feelings to friends and relatives.

-I also love Juliet Capulet.

Three things i don’t have in common with them:

-Nobility status.

-Training to fight with a sword.

-I can’t improvise poetic dialogue the way he can. And i don’t have his french.

Favorite line:

“I fear, too early: for my mind misgives Some consequence yet hanging in the stars Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this night's revels and expire the term Of a despised life closed in my breast By some vile forfeit of untimely death”.

 “What lady is that, which doth enrich the hand Of yonder knight?

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear; Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear! So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows, As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows. The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand, And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand. Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night”.

“ If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this: My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss”. 

“But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, Who is already sick and pale with grief, That thou her maid art far more fair than she: Be not her maid, since she is envious; Her vestal livery is but sick and green And none but fools do wear it; cast it off. It is my lady, O, it is my love! O, that she knew she were! She speaks yet she says nothing: what of that? Her eye discourses; I will answer it. I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks: Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, Having some business, do entreat her eyes To twinkle in their spheres till they return. What if her eyes were there, they in her head? The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars, As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven Would through the airy region stream so bright That birds would sing and think it were not night. See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand! O, that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek”!

 “She speaks: O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art As glorious to this night, being o'er my head As is a winged messenger of heaven Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds And sails upon the bosom of the air”.

“ Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this”?

 “Amen, amen! but come what sorrow can, It cannot countervail the exchange of joy That one short minute gives me in her sight: Do thou but close our hands with holy words, Then love-devouring death do what he dare; It is enough I may but call her mine”.

“Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy Be heap'd like mine and that thy skill be more To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath This neighbour air, and let rich music's tongue Unfold the imagined happiness that both Receive in either by this dear encounter”.

“This gentleman, the prince's near ally, My very friend, hath got his mortal hurt In my behalf; my reputation stain'd With Tybalt's slander,—Tybalt, that an hour Hath been my kinsman! O sweet Juliet, Thy beauty hath made me effeminate And in my temper soften'd valour's steel”!

“ This day's black fate on more days doth depend; This but begins the woe, others must end”.

“Alive, in triumph! and Mercutio slain! Away to heaven, respective lenity, And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now”!

“O, I am fortune's fool”!

“Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel: Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love, An hour but married, Tybalt murdered, Doting like me and like me banished, Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair, And fall upon the ground, as I do now, Taking the measure of an unmade grave”.

“ It was the lark, the herald of the morn, No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east: Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops. I must be gone and live, or stay and die”.

“ Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death; I am content, so thou wilt have it so. I'll say yon grey is not the morning's eye, 'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow; Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat The vaulty heaven so high above our heads: I have more care to stay than will to go: Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so. How is't, my soul? let's talk; it is not day”.

 “Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor: Hold, there is forty ducats: let me have A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear As will disperse itself through all the veins That the life-weary taker may fall dead And that the trunk may be discharged of breath As violently as hasty powder fired Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb”.

“Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness, And fear'st to die? famine is in thy cheeks, Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes, Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back; The world is not thy friend nor the world's law; The world affords no law to make thee rich; Then be not poor, but break it, and take this”.

“I pay thy poverty, and not thy will”.

“There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls, Doing more murders in this loathsome world, Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell. I sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none. Farewell: buy food, and get thyself in flesh. Come, cordial and not poison, go with me To Juliet's grave; for there must I use thee”.

“How oft when men are at the point of death Have they been merry! which their keepers call A lightning before death: O, how may I Call this a lightning? O my love! my wife! Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty: Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet3040 Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, And death's pale flag is not advanced there. Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet? O, what more favour can I do to thee, Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain To sunder his that was thine enemy? Forgive me, cousin! Ah, dear Juliet, Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe That unsubstantial death is amorous, And that the lean abhorred monster keeps Thee here in dark to be his paramour? For fear of that, I still will stay with thee; And never from this palace of dim night Depart again: here, here will I remain With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death! Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark! Here's to my love”!

“O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die”.    

brOTP: With Mercucio and Benvolio.

OTP: With Juliet.

nOTP: With Rosaline, Benvolio, Mercucio and Tybalt.

Random Headcanon:

-His favorite colors are: blue, green, white and silver.

-His favorite fairy tale is Rapunzel.

-His favorite greek myth is the love story of Orpheus and Euridice.

-In a Modern Day Everybody Lives AU i made in collab with @giuliettaluce​, he becomes an English Lit and Poetry professor. To know more about it, read it here:

https://giuliettaluce.tumblr.com/post/617050378210590720/modern-headcanon-romeo-and-juliet

Unpopular Opinion: Yes, Leonard Whiting is a good actor and he was a very good casting choice for the role of Romeo in the 1968 movie. But the cuts of many of his lines, like the one where he thinks that killing Tybalt as a regaining of honor and his dialogue with the apotecary, tones the characters actual complexity and intelligence way, way down, and is the cause of the popular misconception that Romeo is an impulsive bratty teenager.

Song i associate with them: 

Flor, Minha Flor (Grupo Galpão), wich is the theme of Grupo Galpão’s montage of Romeo and Juliet: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koIO15cI-8Y

Favorite picture of them:

Sir Ian Holm, 1967

Dolhai Attila, 2001

Adetomiwa Edun, 2010 

Eduardo Moreira, 2012/13

Lucien Laviscount in the Still Star-Crossed series, 2017

When taking Lutrudis as a concept into account, it could be argued that the decision to have her live in a big, fairytale-like castle would be an unwise idea, maybe even counterintuitive, since a place so extravagant might undermine her intended loneliness and yearning for a more fulfilling life, adventure, and all that jazz before Sonic and company entered the picture. The last thing I’d want with Trudy would be to remind people of Chris “woe is me” Thorndyke and his rich kid mansion lifestyle. Not to mention that since some of the townspeople in Lime Shores can act rather ignorant (and in some cases, antagonistic) towards her, a lavish castle might also undermine the underdog nature of that particular setup.

Despite these concerns however, I felt confident with my plan, and I figured that as long as I knew what I was doing, readers would understand what I had in mind. I’ve explained in the past that a castle would better accommodate someone with her EDS, so right off the bat, you already have a practical justification for it. It also helps that whereas the accursed Thorndyke had his parents, friends, grandad, butler, etc etc etc etc... Trudy genuinely had no one to turn to before the heroes arrived for their intended vacation. So with that said, let’s examine this particular building for a bit, complete with pics for comparison’s sake, as well as a certain cavern full of Ethereal goodness that happens to be nearby...

Creating the Residence: Trudy’s Castle

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: The outside environment is not too subtly inspired by Autumn Plains from Spyro 2, better known to non-Spyro fans as my blog background.

A serene yet lonely autumnal forest backdrop, with a big stone castle smack dab in the center. It’s not one-to-one the same of course - instead of a pool, the front area boasts a lovely garden full of different flowers, and there’s also a lake nearby - but the mood is more or less what you see here.

However, this partly serves to contrast with what’s behind closed doors. As acknowledged in Beyond the Stars proper, the interior of the castle instead goes for a different and grander, yet equally inviting atmosphere when you take that first step inside. Instead of stone, you see marble and wood, and instead of grey and green, you have reds, creams, maroons, and golds (with a few complimentary blues and purples thanks to the flags hovering above).

As the lady herself mentions, Trudy discovered that the interior was in a state of disarray when she obtained it, and she was of the belief that a castle as beautiful and rich in history as this one deserved better than to be forgotten and wither away in the coming generations. The least she felt she could do was give it a modern, yet respectful redecoration, and give the old building a second, loving life in the process.

Yes, that means every spot of detail inside this castle was done single-handedly. Entirely on her lonesome. It took ages to complete, especially when taking her EDS into account, but she was determined to give the place its due, and lo and behold, the effort more than paid off. (You know, such levels of determination bring a blue hedgehog to mind...)

And that’s just the intended vision for the main hallway! We haven’t touched the other rooms yet! (Since a castle would have quite a lot of rooms, it goes without saying that for the sake of keeping this post from going even longer, we won’t be covering literally every single room... just the most important and/or most noteworthy ones. :o)

The bathroom can be described as a mix between the two examples below, combining the semi-medieval build of the former with the sky blue palette and general relaxing style of the latter.

Though that said, while the bath remains there for any guests to use, Trudy personally uses a shower since it’s more convenient for someone with her condition.

The kitchen (or as Sonic likes to call it, “the palace of chili dog magic”) mostly comes in cool browns and blacks, and its intended appearance is probably one of the more obvious combinations of old-timey and modern. It also has a slightly country aesthetic compared to the other rooms, because ha ha, horses, geddit.

The greenhouse at the back brings back the heavy amounts of green (well duh, the clue’s in the name, isn’t it?), while also providing contrast with the whiteness of the structure and architecture. Complete with giant arched windows, because of course.

And the segue point between the greenhouse and the rest of the castle looks something along these lines, at least with the way the building itself connects.

Even the chambers underneath the castle manage to look classy and clean. And just as well, since it’s where Tails parks the Tornado for the remainder of his time in Viridonia, once he FINALLY remembers to get it off the Lime Shore beach...

You know another benefit of such a spacious area? You get to turn it into a makeshift workshop for all your gadget needs, Tornado-related or otherwise. I’m sure that won’t come in handy at some point...

The guest bedroom is one of the most curious rooms of the lot, because even though it’s as nice and tidy as you’d expect, it’s also rather... muted compared to everywhere else. Perhaps Trudy felt no need to modify it further in any specific way, since no one had ever bothered to stop by anyway... until you-know-who and the gang.

And we can’t forget to mention our fair equine’s OWN bedroom now, can we? Her bedroom opts for darker colours, yet no less therapeutic, which includes the canopy bed that she rests in. You can actually see the general idea with the bedroom (and the outside of the castle for that matter) for yourself, in the Dame of the Daisy mini-comic, courtesy of my awesome friend @benignmilitancy​.

Likewise, although this shot is currently incomplete (don’t worry, Benign is fine with me using it :P), meaning some details haven’t been added yet, you can also get a basic idea of how the balcony is supposed to look here, along with the complimentary view of Viridonia’s oceans.

So what kind of music would befit Trudy’s castle, you may ask? Well, taking every detail into account, we would need something that goes for that perfect mix of adventure, wonder, warmth... and a faint hint of sadness lurking beneath. Something that gets all four across, but not in a generic, run-of-the-mill orchestra sort of way. Something a little more ambient and down-to-earth, with a more unique and specific kind of intimacy. Something like...

This would apply for when you’re inside, mind you. Outside the castle, the surrounding forest would have a theme of its own, though it would share that similar combination of melancholic friendliness. So for the outside, we would go with something more like...

Overall, the idea behind Trudy’s castle - aside from being her residence and looking enviously pretty - is to add to Trudy’s own character. It’s said that one’s home can say a lot about a person, and I made sure that every room shared a consistent narrative when reading between the lines. They may differ in shape, and they may even differ in colour, but the story is kept consistent at all times. We know that our girl is elegant, we know that our girl has slightly antiquated tastes... and we know that until the arrival of Sonic and Co, our girl was extremely lonely, and isolated by her peers, to the point of staving off said loneliness and isolation by making the place as lavishly detailed as it is in the first place. And just as the stony exterior hides the more fanciful interior, so too is there more to Trudy herself than at first glance.

Besides, not counting Eggman’s endless list of tributes to himself, we don’t often see the characters’ homes in the games, do we? We’ve seen Angel Island for Knuckles, the Space Colony A.R.K. for Shadow, that shack belonging to the Chaotix in Heroes, a few pads of varying consistency depending on the game (Tails’ workship in SA1 VS his house in Battle)... but not much more than that. And what better contrast to Sonic being something of a nomad, than by Trudy living a place like this?

But we’re not done just yet. Last but not least, we can’t forget that mysterious cave hiding down below, where countless amounts of Ethereal Crystals can be found undisturbed... You can bet that such a place would be suitably attention grabbing.

Since the crystals themselves come in practically every shade of the rainbow and then some, the resulting combination - specifically their reflecting shine - ends up painting the cavern walls with just as much colour.

It may feel a tad surreal and almost alien, to the point of being a little intimidating for some, arguably. But you know in your heart of hearts that as long as Eggman isn’t in the equation, there is no need to be fearful. After all, Trudy knows it better than anyone else, and although the crystals and their properties may hail from unknown, possibly uncomfortable origins, the horse herself continues to use them for wholly benevolent purposes.

Such a cavern would deserve a theme of its own, no? We’ll need something that drives home the point that the power within has no inherent morality, and can only be as good or as evil as the person using them. So although Trudy’s own intentions are firmly on the side of good, we’ll also need an added touch of minor eeriness lingering in the background, to represent the overarching threat and subsequent implications of Eggman dipping his own hands into the metaphorical Ethereal well, on top of its already unexplained otherworldliness...

So yes, it’s quite a pleasant castle that Trudy has, eh?

But this isn’t the only castle that can be found in Viridonia...

Well, it used to be the only one of its kind on the island... until a certain doctor stopped by, decided to beat the horse at her own game, and create his own, darker counterpart in response... But we’ll get to that when we get to that, ho ho ho.

It’s not a “gate” - The hair/salon thing

I’ve addressed the salon thing in a couple of asks, but I wanted to take a moment to just go through the whole thing separate of those because what this saga has highlighted is a complete failure of journalists to do their work, and the undercurrent of misogyny that perpetuates both journalistic discourse, and how women must present themselves, especially if a public figure.

(This is long, so to spare your dashboards it’s under a cut)

Let’s start with the facts. Nancy’s usual stylist wasn’t available for Monday, so she/he recommended someone else. Nancy’s office contacted him last weekend (Nancy only returned to SF some time on Friday), and asked if it was possible to do her hair. The thing to note at this moment is that the rules governing salons in California started to change from last Friday. The governor had announced limited indoor openings, but to confuse matters some localities were still imposing tighter restrictions. Nancy’s office checked with the stylist, who told them that the rules permitted one person in at a time. He then asked the salon owner who he rented a chair from if he could go into the premises and do the appointment on Monday. The owner agreed to his request on the Saturday. Fast forward to Monday afternoon - Nancy gets her hair done before doing a television interview on MSNBC, and then on Tuesday the owner cries “outrage!!!” to Fox News, bringing along with her a seconds long bit of footage that shows Nancy with her mask around her neck. Naturally the whole thing explodes on Twitter and then across other media (several versions of the story made the top ten shared links on Facebook).

What followed was a failure of journalism to ask follow up questions about the clearly odd parts of the salon owner’s account as relayed by Fox News (a red flag in of itself). In her interview with Fox she admitted she had known about the appointment in advance, but no one thought to ask why she let the appointment go ahead if it so offended and outraged her - she did own the place afterall, it’s not like Nancy had keys or barged in. Likewise, no one thought to ask where the rest of the salon footage was. Why only release seconds worth which rather conveniently showed Nancy with her mask down, and partially hidden under her chin? Could it be that she had worn the mask the rest of the time. No one in the media thought to ask this. It seemed fairly clear to most sensible people on Tuesday night that something with off with the salon owner’s tale of outrage, but the media pretty much took the Fox News version of events at verbatim. Only USA Today raised the points I just did, but alas, they buried them in their write up.

Wednesday saw Nancy fight back, acknowledging that she took responsibilty for trusting the salon (when perhaps she should have had someone else verify what they had been told), but ask yourselves this, would you have verified it elsewhere? She had been to this salon before with a stylist, they were local, she trusted them, and in a situation in which the law was changing, it makes perfect and reasonable sense to ask the professionals in that industry what their status is. On this point there have been plenty of indignant people and bots on Twitter up in arms that Nancy didn’t apparently know the regulations in SF, but a) she didn’t make those regulations (as some seem to think), b) she spends just as much if not more time in D.C., and c) she has about 100 other things on her plate in any given hour, that salon regulations in SF are probably somewhere near 120 on her list after deal with Covid-19, Trump, win the election, save the USPS, try to get a stimulus bill, deal with the federal budget which will need a CR to prevent a shutdown (minutes after I hit publish on this it was announced she had reached a deal with Mnuchin to avoid a shutdown), restore in-person inteligence briefings, file an appeal in the McGahn case (again), Bill sodding Barr,, Russian bounties on US soldiers and so on. She has an insanely stressful job at the moment, her staff too, and it seems more than reasonable for staff/her to ask a professional in the industry about the regulations on salons, when such regulations were pretty confusing to most people last weekend anyway. Nancy’s only apparent “crime” in this instance was to trust the word of the industry pro.

Then of course we have the “she’s not wearing a mask” portion of this debacle. Not one journalist has asked where the rest of the footage is. We see Nancy walk from the bowl to another room, wet hair, phone in hand, and the mask around her neck (slightly hidden by her chin), but we never got the footage of her walking to the bowl, or any other footage from what was definitely more than a 4 second long appointment. Could it possibly be that she had indeed been wearing a mask the rest of the time - that she wasn’t just wearing it around her neck as some sort of foulard meets choker fashion statement. People have asked, “Why did she pull it down?”, and to that I will say, probably any one of three or four reasons. She uses a clip at the back of her neck to secure her masks rather than the ear loops. Maybe it was in the way and the stylist asked her to pull it down. Maybe she had trouble breathing with her face covered and head back. Maybe she didn’t want to get it wet. The point here is that it was around her neck, suggesting that she had been compliant until that fateful video captured moment. The media again though have run with the Fox News narrative that she had no mask. For one, it’s actually visible in the footage, and two, they are blatantly disregarding what they themselves know to be true - that Nancy has been wearing a mask for the last five months. We have the footage and photographs to prove it, not to mention the press also know that she takes down her mask to talk at her pressers etc. The press are playing stupid on this point to satisfy some both sides need in an election that so far has Joe Biden with a good lead. Their wilful obtusity is purely to inject some drama into things on the Dem side for clicks because nothing at present is sticking to Biden. All this leads to me to the misogyny.

I caught part of a radio interview yesterday in which two male hosts had to have it explained to them as to why a woman in the public eye might need a hair stylist more than once a week. One of the men had been perplexed as to why if Nancy needed her hair done she hadn’t just got it taken care of in D.C. were salons are open. It never entered his brain that no amount of hair spray is going to keep a hairstyle in place for at least 3 days (when Nancy was last in D.C.), or that she might need to lie down to sleep, or that hair does actually need washed. Likewise, it never occured to either of them that Nancy turning up to an television interview with anything other than styled hair would be a news story in itself, because here’s the rub, women are damned for makeup and hairstyling and thought vain and shallow, and they’re damned if they don’t put makeup on and get their hair done, especially for television (we all remember the “omg” reactions when Hillary turned up to an event days after the election in 2016 with a bare face). The last couple of days have been full of this crap, with men (looking at you Don Lemon and the SF Chronicle editorial board) especially saying Nancy should apologise for the salon episode. Why should she? She did what any reasonable person would do and asked about the rules. Her error was to take the salon at their word, but by today’s logic the salon’s lie is Nancy’s fault. I have seen more than one man on Twitter admit the facts of the case and still say “she should take the hit”. Would they say this of a man who had been lied to, framed, and the footage sold to a hostile media company? I think not.

And then of course there is the salon owner herself. The stylist released a statement last night backing Nancy’s side of events up. He also revealed that the owner, so “outraged” by Nancy’s appointment, had in fact been opening up illegally since April, had been forgoing masks, and been forcing stylists to work. What also emerged is that the owner had let her licence lapse on the premises back in May (so Nancy had not ended her business as she claimed), and was in the middle of relocating to Fresno -- something the press have gilbly ignored as they report how she has been hounded out of town because of Nancy, and forced to move. Let me say this, not even the IRA at the peak of The Troubles could get people to move that quick, and they had guns. And then there’s the gofundme - which popped up less than 24hrs after she handed the tape to Fox. Naturally the blurb is a sorry tale of woe, of a supposedly single mother forced to move because of the evil Speaker of the House. No mention that she owns three salons, that she’d let the licence lapse on one anyway, is opening one in Fresno, loves her guns (and those ain’t cheap) and took a PPP loan of $12,000 wihilst operating illegally. By the way, at the time of writing this, the gofundme has raised over $80k for her -- which shows you how Trumpers will buy into any bullshit, and how Nancy is a fundraising powerhouse regardless of your party affliation lol.

I appreciate this has been a rather long read, and if you made it this far, thanks! Nancy didn’t do anything wrong other than take the word of a salon in good faith. Should she have known the regulations herself? Maybe, but she has the kind of crazy and stressful life most of us can’t even begin to imagine, and unlike the Presidency, the Office of Speaker doesn’t come with personal maid services thrown in, or a whole West Wing of staff. End of the day, once out of that office, Nancy has to do all that normal life stuff that the rest of us do - shop, go to the post office, buy clothes etc., and now in the Covid era get ready for tv interviews herself rather than a studio stylist do it. Her mistake was to trust someone who has it turns out saw a chance to have a moment of fame, stick one to the woman she ignorantly blamed for the lockdown, and make some money from gullible Trumpers. I don’t know how this story will play out in the coming days. Ice cream lasted a week, spurred on by the far-left and then the far-right. This may have more staying power as Trump desperately seeks some kind of mud to stick to Dems, and with nothing sticking to Biden at present, his 2016 playbook (and the even older GOP one) of blame a woman (in this case Nancy) has been deployed. The problem of course is that Trump isn’t running against Nancy -- but as the press have so depressingly showed, that fact hasn’t stopped them from elevating one trip to a salon above 180k+ dead, Melania using a prvate email server (!!!, I mean come the fuck onnnnnnn, this after 2016!!!?!?!?), or Trump telling people to committ a felony and vote twice.

Story Time: Weird Old Men Who Hit On Me Edition. (Aka I am so done with men over 40.*)

So one of my colleagues said that the first few times he heard the song "Truth Hurts" he thought the line was "White men great til they gotta be great" and I almost immediately fired back with a "white men are great? Most of the ones I know definitely aren't."

Case and point: as a 25 year old woman with a great personality, I have lost track of the number of men over the age of 40 who have flirted me/asked me out. Now I know that their choices are their own, but the fact is that I do not try to be flirtatious. I try to be polite and funny in my interactions with most people because everyone needs to laugh and it's easier to be funny than truly express negative emotions. I have had 3 different men flirt with/ask me out/send me links to fetish porn all from the same social organization I am part of.

Recently, one 40+ man who recently added me on Facebook messaged me one of those viral posts that "all girls/women need to read" about how women shouldn't hold out for guys who don't put forth effort or text them first or take them out or whatever. Which is true. So I acknowledged it, and he sends this gif:

Red flag shot all the way up at this point.

Last night, he sends a "Howdy girl" gif of Woody from Toy Story. Then he goes ahead and starts using Spanish. At this point I decide to he That Person because not only do I speak Spanish, I have a degree in it. Does he know that? Unlikely.

Him: como estás

Me: Bastante bien. Y usted?

Him: sobre lo mismo

Me: (realizing he is using some kind of online translator) no sabía que ud habla español

Him: aburrido y solitario en un mundo frio

Me, irl:

Me: (ignoring the obvious ploy) ¿Dónde lo aprendió? ¿O es ud un autodidacto?

Him: (sends a link to a profile of someone I know mostly through ballroom dance but just found out I is part of the same social organization as myself and this 40 something who is trying to hard.) Did you read my other comment? I can keep typing Spanish but English is faster

Me: (Person) y su esposa bailan en el mismo club que yo. ¿Él le enseño?

Him: That didn't translate how I think you ment it. English please

Me: (Person) and his wife dance in the same club as I do. Did he teach you?

So we continue in English and I continue deliberately ignoring his "did you understand my comment" until he finally translates it. Now when he originally made the comment I almost joked that I was icing my knee and ankle so I understand it being a cold world. But that ship sailed. And I am not one to indulge a pity party with friends, let alone a guy I barely know. There is a reason the superlatives I win are "most blunt" and "most likely to take over the world." I don't do pity parties.

So I say a simple "Indeed it was." Because despite listening to a lot of My Favorite Murder I'm still not quite at a full on "F*** politeness" mentality. So he goes on to say "You didn't respond so I didn't know. How did you learn Spanish?"

At that point I tell him that I majored in it. So I bet he felt like a dolt then. He asks if I'm ready for Thanksgiving, I say pretty much and ask if he is, and he tries AGAIN with the pity party bs by saying he'll be bored and lonely.

I can't even. A bit more chatting happened. I stayed pretty dry and aloof. He probably has interpreted it as being hard to get. Today I decided to share an opportunity for him to not be alone on Thanksgiving at a place I won't be. He probably won't take it.

If he comes at me again tonight with more boohoo woe is me crap, I'm going to let That Witch out and level with him.

I am so done with this behavior.

*And before you come at me with that "Not all men" crap, let me tell you. I know. There are plenty of men over 40 I adore. My dad. The men I ballroom dance with. Men who don't try to flirt or ask me out. My landlord. And if you put any of that whiny bullcrap in my notes, I will delete your comment and block you. Don't @ me.

So this  isnt for anything other than just to say what happened just so I feel heard and I can explain why I cant be as energetic and socially active on here. Its not a callout post or to be reblogged/shared by people. Its not to get anyone in trouble or to cause any reaction. It’s just for me to let it out and reclaim this space again. Its been a year since it happened and I guess I’m just still noticing how badly it has impacted my PTSD. How much its changed me as a person both online and off, and this isnt a woe as me thing either this is just me feeling a need to be heard and explain my own behavior over the year and also to make one simple request of you guys: no matter what you do, always treat your rp partners as people first and writers second.

Because I feel myself becoming bitter and that isnt who I am and I dont want to be someone like that. Or like this. I want to be me again

The person who did this wont be named mainly because they dont deserve it and yall dont need to know. Their behavior when I confronted them more than cements the impression that they dont see any harm in what they said and how they reacted. And again this isnt about them though In A Way I suppose it is? it takes two to tango but it takes one to encourage someone to kill themselves.

This is going to be long because I need to inform on the activity that lead up to this  because it didnt just happen over night- though in a way it did. But you need a better picture of this person because apparently they present a really great face that only a few of us see the manipulative and toxic side of.

This person was always very judgemental and hyper critical. I witnessed a lot of very negative and toxic behavior from them but I was naive and just hoped they would mature as they grew older and gained more independence. I thought it was just a toxic friend group and that perhaps she would recognize her self destructive and immature behavior and grow from it. 

My first red flag should have been when they accused me of being their ex girlfriend SOLELY because I was living in PA. I hate to break it to yall, but PA is a big ass state and has a lot of comic book loving ladies. Thankfully I have never met this person IRL and I hope I never do.

They tried to pull me into making fun of other muns on discord, including mocking sensitive pictures from a mun’s personal blog. I blatantly said it wasnt okay and made me uncomfortable and she continued laughing and making jokes about it with her friend group on discord. She kept trying to pull me into it no matter how often I tried to change the subject.

Her group of friends also did this thing where one of them would go interact with a mun an they would take screenshots of the convo and share it with the group and mock the mun they were interacting with. Whether it be their presentation of character/grahics/writing style/ etc.

The other red flags I ignored? How much she complained and mocked other muns and compared them to me; if anyone did anything or said anything she disagreed with it was an instant blow up. She took EVERYTHING personally including other people writing the same characters she did, having differing headcanons, not knowng obscure details about canon, etc.

She once tried to make fun of a new writing partner I had who was writing the same character, and I had to break it to her that this new person could write in her first language if she wanted to; im being very vague but let me just say if you and your character have the same first language and you want to write in it then its completely WRONG for a white mun to try and make fun of you for it.

She once suggested I had stolen pictures off her pinterest when she sent me a moodboard request for my character. Jokes on her I didnt even know she HAD a pinterest and I had gotten all my pictures from the ‘green aesthetic’ tag on tumblr. Which I told her but she kept pushing the idea on me I had stolen them. I of course dismissed this and put it on the back burner despite the alarm bells going off.

This hyper critical and paranoid behavior continues with everything from other canon blogs making similar head canons/ vaguely similar graphics/ to fanfiction authors having similar head canons/plot ideas.

My penname Citrus? I didnt want one. I didnt want it. She demanded I have a pen name and if not she was going to call me Cat. Now as yall know I dont like being enmeshed with my muse so I keep myself separate from them. I didnt like being called Cat and I told her that explicitly. She kept doing it. So I had to make a pen name because she refused to respect my boundaries.

When the Deadpool movie came out she DEMANDED I change my FC to reflect the movie Despite Not Changing Hers to reflect her own characters new look - which might i add is fat erasure. It was clear then that the rules and standards she held other people to didnt apply to herself. I was labeled problematic for not giving into her demands to change FCs (which I have a literal logical reason for not changing and im not explaining that here)

So I shouldve left. Long story short I didnt because every friendship I’d been in until around this time had been abusive and toxic. I thought this was all normal behavior for people to have and I was convinced I was just being critical of someone elses opinions/ insensitive etc. Thanks to my colleagues in graduate school and to several of you on here I learned that ‘hey dumbass friends dont treat your ass like this’.

Im leaving a lot out about the shit she did/said to me but those snippets give you an idea of things.

Leading up she decided to leave fandom and asked we didnt talk about marvel I said cool okay and didnt talk about marvel with her. If I did I would ask first if she was okay if we talked about one small aspect I thought might excite her/ she would like to know about but it wasnt often that happened because she began ghosting me. Hard. She stopped replying to me at all over discord when I would try and talk to her how we used to about our lives. She didnt answer any asks for munday or character development, in fact she blatantly ignored me.

I checked in a couple times with her to make sure I hadnt done anything to make her uncomfortable and she said no. May I emphasize she said no here. Im emphasizing it right now. She said no. She said everything was fine. So when I was like hey dude this is super triggering for me can you send me like a hi every once in awhile just so I can know we’re okay because its super triggering for me. Yall know what she did? She ‘lmao’-ed. she thought that was hecka funny. Yeah triggering ‘Citrus’ is hilarious isnt it? No it isnt and I shouldve cut her ass off right then and there.

Heres where shit gets confusing: she kept fucking talking about marvel to me. Id get messages at random times about marvel and then silence for weeks. I vividly remember during this period I was cleaning the museum vault and she kept messaging me about her marvel fc’s and how she wouldnt get a plotline and how characters were wrong etc.

I remember being REALLY confused because she had said NO MARVEL. But here she was bitching at me about marvel. In fact thats all she did when she did talk to me. Which was only like three or four times during the ghosting time period. She’d bitch about marvel and then vanish.

Shed make claims about not watching her dash and thats why she never responded to me/ interacted with me. She’d say she wasnt talkng to anyone while I see her on the dash TALKING TO PEOPLE and Id like to point out Ive told her I would be fine ending anything as long as she let me know.

but she followed me on every blog and throughout this time period she made and followed me on numerous ones. She kept reaching out sporadically to bitch about her fcs/how horrible marvel was/ and thats it. 

It was extremely confusing because if someone doesnt want to talk to me I assume they will; 1. unfollow 2. block 3. say goodbye 4. ghost and stay ghosted.

Not cycle through behavior rapidly. I asked her a few times if we were good and that I was confused and I got another ‘lmao’ reaction so I assumed we were good. At this point I still have no idea what was going on/ what message I was supposed to be receiving other than confusion.

So following this is heavily suicide tw and I encourage you not to read this part and to scroll down until the suicide tw is over which is highlighted in bold- if you’re triggered by that because I care about those who follow my blog.

So thats when this shit happened. I had tried reaching out to her on a different fandom platform to try and maintain the friendship. Because she said numerous times that we were friends. So like I reached out thinking maybe she just didnt want a marvel blog period.  It wasnt too long after that that she suicide baited me.

I was in a really bad place and had been for awhile and when I posted about how the only thing holding me on was the new comic coming out and specifically said “im seriously suicidal and this comic is the only thing giving me hope #idk what to do anymore ”. I was surprised when she liked the post.

I was three steps into a four step plan. I had everything but the method planned out and was just waffling along with that. Because yknow its complicated and you do it you make it count amiright. Right. I was in a fucked up place. I had just realized I was gay, I was horrendously depressed, I was in considerable physical pain, I was working 70 hours a week, my OCD was at an all time high and the only thing that kept me on this earth was a fucking comic book. You hold onto what you need to yknow?

WELL APPARENTLY NOT

Because this person who doesnt read her dash? This person who doesnt want to talk about anything? Liked that post where I specifically stated I was suicidal and sent me a discord message saying “dont have hope”.

Thats all it said “dont have hope”

Now I know what youre thinking but hold on because it gets worse.

I said something about being confused I dont really remember because I was pretty out of it. I do remember she kept going on about how horrible the comic would be and that it would be a piece of trash. I remember telling her I was really numb and in a bad place and couldnt feel anything. I remember her sending me screencaps and continuing to go ON AND ON about how it wasn’t worth reading.

I remember with gross intensity how someone who said they were my friend was taking away the only thing that was keeping me alive.

I dont remember how the conversation ends. I called out of work for the next three days. I was catatonically depressed and unable to really move. I didnt eat either. I went to internship, work, and school in a state of dissociation.

 I took screencaps of everything and set them aside for later. IDK what I was going to use them for but I set them in a folder on my desktop, looking back I regret what I did next; because I deleted them. I deleted them because I thought maybe she had been manic or drunk and hadn’t realized the scope of what was happening. I wanted to talk to her about it and clear things up because I believed in her. I believed there was no way she would be so callous as to do that on purpose. No way would someone try and get someone they called a friend to kill themselves. So I deleted the screencaps and my post on tumblr. I deleted all evidence to protect her and I encourage you all never to fucking do that even if you think that person misunderstood the gravity of your situation. Because if you’re wrong no ones going to believe you.

I remember shifting between intense depression and total denial.

I spent the rest of that month in and out of intense dissociative states when I wasnt in class or working with my clients.  During the middle of October my sister sent me pictures of a litter of puppies and I was like ‘well, i really need to either kill myself or make sure i dont’. I spent a few days continuing to waffle with that decision but then i remembered my mom cosigned my loans and I cant leave her with that debt because fuck we cant even afford my funeral to begin with. So I adopted a dog, I named him Julio to remind me to keep living and he finally came to me on halloween.

He was the only reason I left bed on my days off. I tried not to think about it but I did.  

I continued to spiral with heavier dissociative episodes and vivid nightmares about it.

SUICIDE TW OVER

I waited until Christmas to ask her to clarify the situation and let her know I no longer felt comfortable writing with her. I reminded her what happened and told her to check her discord if she wanted to see for herself etc.

She sent two long asks of combative, emotionally abusive, and gaslighting accusations. The first thing she did was say I needed to provide evidence if I went around making accusations like that. Then she cascaded into how I always talked about marvel *points up to where i explained what happened earlier*.  She tried gaslighting me like a champion and tried turning me into a horrible person the only problem is everything she was accusing me of doing was the shit she was doing to me. Everything. 

Even if I was bad at any time I had given her numerous chances to tell me I was overstepping a boundary- she always said no. I gave her numerous times to unfollow me if she wasnt interested in interacting with me- she never did. In fact I had unfollowed her that month because of her behavior towards me and she hadnt even noticed.

I let her know I could tell she was angry,  and that I didnt take receipts of private conversations because I believed in settling things like adults, and that if she ever wanted any proof it was all in her discord anyway. I let her know she could contact me to apologize but otherwise I didnt want her on any of my blogs and I told her the first thing she should have done wasnt demand receipts but she should have asked if I was okay. Its a real reflection of where her priorities were when she demands evidence rather than checks to see if a writing partner is okay.

Even if I did something horrible it doesnt warrant someone trying to get me to end my life. 

I was notified she put a post on her blog apologizing to her followers for being a bad friend and that she was a horrible person and ofc everyone was like ‘noooo youre perfect’ and its like ya thats not for me who hasnt followed her in months- thats to save face.

Her friends blogs kept visiting my profile and going through the month where this happened.

Everything she did and said was to save face. Her blog and her reputation are the only thing she cared about. She has never approached me to apologize or anything of the sort and I doubt she ever will. I would hope she would never do this again and I hope she has grown as a person since. That her life is better and her mother is okay, that shes happy and learning. 

 I know by posting this I will never receive an apology- then again i never expected one to begin with. I could go through all the trouble of restoring the deleted files but to be honest it isnt worth it because theres no room in my life for that type of toxicity.

Since this happened I:

I have stronger episodes of depression and dissociation since.

My PTSD has increased and I have week long spikes in anxiety attacks, depression and decreased self worth if I even see her around the rpc despite being blocked, blacklisted on xkit etc.

Have more difficulty completing basic self care tasks due to an increase in depression and a decrease in self worth.

I have nightmares about this event and her to this day a year later.

I cannot interact with the RPC how I once did as I fear seeing her on my dash or any sort of information getting back to her about me.

It took me half a year to see the character she wrote as as safe again and for awhile I couldnt even look at him without experiencing an anxiety attack.

I keep having nightmares. Its been a year and I still have nightmares about this.

I find myself having more difficulties connecting with people online especially on this blog. I’m constantly on edge when interacting with people and I feel spikes of anxiety at the merest thought of someone talking about me to her.

I find myself unable to have confidence as a writer or creator online because I have been reminder of the cement wall between oc characters and their canon counterparts.

I cannot go out and just follow anyone and be friendly and trusting with them anymore, even with people I already know. In the back of my mind is a constant reminder of how she and her friends used to check up on people and pretend to write with them/ interact with them just to take screenshots of conversations to share with the group. I have become a paranoid little bitch in the past year is what Im saying. like theres 0 need for that shit.

I blocked most of the people she interacted with simply to save myself from being triggered by her blogs/ mentions of her and that isnt fair to those people.

I remember the photo incident and how people derived such joy from mocking someones body. I can think of so many incidents of them making fun of others and I remember how that could be happening about me rn, and I wonder if anyone would stick up for me like I did for the other mun.

 I hope by posting this I can try and return to the person I was before this happened. I can try and not be so bitter and reach out again to others. That somehow I can continue working on making tumblr a safe place for me again and not a PTSD laced minefield.

I would like to remind this isnt a callout and I request if you know who this is about you dont say anything to them. This isnt for them. They have NEVER reached out to apologize for their actions. They have NEVER checked to see if I was okay after that. They have NEVER shown any remorse for encouraging me to kill myself and while I hope they’ve grown from the situation and will never do it again I doubt I will ever get closure from such an event. But i DO hope by writing this I can take this place back.

Consider this my first step towards bringing this up to a therapist.

 Consider this another step to me taking this blog back and feeling safer here; and maybe just maybe Ill make up a cool pen name for myself and own that shit.

If you’ve read this far thank you for your patience with me, and I request you always treat your writing partners like the people that they are. 

This post is not intended or written to leave this blog and therefore I request you not reblog it or share segments of it with ANYONE. If I find you have shared anything on here without my explicit permission I will block you.

‘Citrus’

Ice-dance pair Tessa Virtue, Scott Moir named Postmedia's Team of the Year

December 28, 2018

Twenty-one years ago, Carol Moir made the Canadian sporting match of the century.

The coach at the Ilderton Skating Club asked her nephew Scott to hold Tessa Virtue’s hand because she figured it might be a strong team for ice dance competitions.

Scott, back in his more bashful days, knew the drill. He grew up steps from his hometown rink in a family that discussed figure skating around the supper table — in the hour or so before the puck dropped for the Maple Leafs game on Hockey Night in Canada

The Virtue clan, from nearby big-city London, were athletes. They had sport in their blood.

Tessa, who loved ballet, impressed her first teachers with the uncanny ability to replicate movement almost immediately on first sight.

When she and Scott took the ice together, the talent was evident.

“We weren’t skating to win the Olympics when we were skating (then),” Moir, now 31-years-old, said. “Pretty much, we were worried if we could go up and get ice cream afterward.”

They quickly outgrew their home rink, moving first to Kitchener-Waterloo and then to Canton, Mich., for pro-style training. Mike Slipchuk, then a coach and now Skate Canada’s director of high performance, first saw them skate on the other side of the world — at a junior Grand Prix event in Harbin, China, in 2004.

“It was one of those things where I was well aware,” he said. “As they were young and moving up, there was always a lot of talk about them. It’s neat to see where they started and where they end up in their careers.

“It’s been an incredible journey to watch.”

How many star athletes have risen to the top of their field, then got knocked off their pedestal, took a couple of years to regroup, then returned to dominate their event like no one has ever done before?

That list is short.

Michael Jordan, probably, after he came back to the NBA from his self-imposed hiatus to try professional baseball.

Muhammad Ali, for sure, when he reclaimed boxing’s heavyweight title.

That’s what Virtue and Moir accomplished these past two seasons. That makes them the perfect pick for Postmedia’s Team of the Year.

When they became the first North American duo to win Olympic ice dance gold in 2010 on home ice at Vancouver, they were only four years into their maddeningly platonic partnership on the senior circuit.

They still produced the performance of a lifetime, but it was understandably pushed into the national sub-conscious during a massive two-week Canadian gold rush capped by Sidney Crosby’s famous goal against the United States in the men’s hockey final.

Four years later in Sochi, Virtue and Moir were bested in figure skating’s most riveting rivalry. They finished second to training mates Meryl Davis and Charlie White, who used their post-Olympic Dancing With the Stars platform to become TV celebrities.

The Canadians retreated from the competitive realm for two years before creating their legendary bounce-back. This time, they moved to Montreal and constructed a familiar training pattern.

They were at the same club as the reigning world champs and their top competitors — Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France.

“They never shied away from training with the best,” Slipchuk said. “When you’re in that environment, there are no days off. It’s something they always did in their career, and with (coaches) Marie-France (Dubreuil) and Patrice (Lauzon), they recreated their skating and passion.

“The last two years was the best I’ve ever seen them. They went undefeated (in 2016-17) and then went out and won the Olympics again.”

The volume of their careers, which started with whispers and a growing buzz, developed into a deafening roar.

Virtue and Moir were Canada’s hopeful faces at the start of the 2018 Olympics in South Korea. They carried the flag into the opening ceremonies of a Winter Games without NHL players.

Then they delivered a transcendent skate that brought their discipline to its highest level.

They have become as revered as Kurt Browning, Brian Orser, Elvis Stojko, Liz Manley and Sale-Pelletier are in the country and figure skating world.

“The one thing that will always stick out to me is they wanted every piece of information to make them the best,” Slipchuk said. “Here’s the best dance team we’ve ever seen and they were always open and wanting advice any time we brought in officials, judges or technical people. They were so respectful of everyone there to help them. They’re professionals and perfect ambassadors for their sport.”

The 29-year-old Virtue was selected by ESPN as one of the most-recognizable female athletes in the world. People worldwide continue to be stumped by how her relationship with Moir isn’t romantic.

They’re flattered by it, but that’s not what makes them tick.

“If we can inspire young people to follow their dreams and believe in themselves, how fortunate are we that we can have that connection,” Virtue said.

Every so often, we get a glimpse of tremendous chemistry — from the way the Golden State Warriors move a basketball to John Tavares and Mitch Marner creating a goal. But those partnerships won’t last two decades.

This one did.

VIRTUE VERY TRENDY

When the Olympics rolled around in February, Canadians took to the Internet to search for the answers to their most pressing questions.

They wanted to know why NHL players weren’t participating this time, how come so many Russian athletes were banned and a lot of us just needed a refresher on the rules of curling.

But the most sought-after information in Canadian sports this year revolved around the relationship status of two beloved champion athletes.

Are Tessa and Scott dating?

“It’s not a surprise to anyone this was the No. 1 question on everybody’s mind,” Google Trends expert Nicole Bell said. “Coming of their very emotional performance in Pyeongchang where they won the gold medal for ice dancing to that sexy Moulin Rouge song, people were like, ‘Omigoodness, is it possible this is ‘The Notebook’ for real?’

“We want this to be real-life love — but sadly, it’s not true.”

Google is able to chart the rise in interest in personalities from year-to-year. Justin Bieber and Donald Trump, for instance, aren’t found on the list because online searches for their names didn’t move the needle much above their 2017 levels.

In this country, Tessa Virtue ranked first among Canadians and athletes in general in 2018. Hoopster Tristan Thompson is second among Canadians and new Raptor Kawhi Leonard is runner-up for athletes behind the figure-skating star.

Though the anxiety over William Nylander’s eventual signing with the Leafs and John Tavares’ Toronto homecoming checked in highly, the level of curiosity around Virtue and Moir, especially during and after the Winter Games, was the biggest story.

“It’s kind of interesting because they have been on the scene for a long time as a pair, but that (dating) questions hasn’t been a burning topic in the Canadian mind until this year’s performance,” Bell said, “and Tessa did a lot of beauty campaigns (for Dove and Nivea), along with being involved in fashion, and those activities produced additional interest in her beyond the skating world.”

Virtue finished fourth on Canadian searches for people around the world, behind Demi Lovato, Khloe Kardashian and Hailey Baldwin.

“Demi Lovato had a bit of a dramatic year with an overdose, Khloe Kardashian made the news for (a stormy relationship with) Tristan Thompson and Hailey Baldwin married Justin Bieber. Tessa is there with no scandal — just someone whose athletic feats and talent was so incredible.

“She’s somebody Canadians are incredibly proud of and she’s a role model. If you had a vote for Canada’s sweetheart right now, she would win, hands down.”

THEIR GREATEST HITS

2017-18 Moulin Rouge free dance

They put their own twist on a tried-and-true figure skating theme and it proved the final step to another Olympic gold medal. Though it was deemed second-best on the big night to the runner-up French, it still scored 122.40 points, enough for the win. The program is still burned into everyone’s brain — including theirs — and that’s why it will remain a favourite on tour for years to come.

2012-13: Carmen free dance

The final scores say it was only good enough for second at their hometown worlds behind Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White, but the boundary-pushing dance highlighted the athleticism and chemistry of the Canadian duo. Moir has stated he wished they would have kept the program the following year for the Sochi Olympics, believing a polished version of it with nothing held back (and some less dodgy judging) could have put them over the top.

2009-10: Symphony No. 5 (Mahler) free dance

Then-coach Marina Zoueva described it as a marriage proposal and it was the launching point for Virtue and Moir as “Canada’s Sweethearts.” The program delivered their first Olympic gold in Vancouver and first senior world title in Turin, consistently scoring 110-plus points. It included their signature Goose Lift. And don’t forget, Virtue could barely walk from the immense pain in her legs due to her compartment syndrome woes along the way.

—Toronto Sun

Pride Month Picks

If you don’t already know, June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month, which means it’s time to celebrate and support our community. Businesses across the Puget Sound area are flying rainbow flags, and Island Books is not missing out! To mark the month, we are going to giveaway two awesome rainbow Lokai bracelets (read to the bottom for more details).

It is also an excuse to call attention to queer books, an overarching category for any book that features a LGBTQ+ main character, focuses on queer issues, or is written by a queer author. This is one of my favorite genres because literature about queer people normalizes their existence, in the same way it does with racial or religious minorities.

I have to admit that I told Lillian, our children’s buyer, last summer that I had one rule when I read queer books: No one can die.

This may sound like a silly requirement, but until recently, I felt like all of the books about LGBTQ+ characters were depressing. While trying to portray real world examples of these characters’ situations, the books I saw also squashed hope for a better future. The only queer book I knew about in high school was Blue is the Warmest Color, and it is not the happiest. It seems that queerness in literature equaled heartbreak, and that wasn’t the world I wanted to exist in. (I probably should have gone to a bookstore and asked a salesperson, but I was introverted fifteen year old who wasn’t quite confident enough in her own identity.)

I pulled as many books as I could think of from the teen section that featured queer characters!

I have been so excited over the past year or so to rediscover queer literature, especially for young adults. One of my favorite books of the past year has been Hot Dog Girl by Jennifer Dugan, an adorable book about two best friends mourning the closure of the town theme park, and consequently their childhood. Through their hijinks to save the park, the girls realize that the most important thing they have is their relationship and that they’ve fallen in love. And it’s so sweet! Over the past almost-decade since my rejection of queer books, authors have made a point to write books that show positive role models for queer relationships, highlighting complexity, intersectionality, and humor in fantastic ways.

Consequently, there are now stories about queer characters in almost every genre now, from picture books to literary adult fiction. As there are too many books to showcase in this blog post alone, I’ll start with some of favorite summer reads, which all happen to feature gay relationships.

Camille Perri’s When Katie Met Cassidy is a spin on romantic comedy. Katie is a Kentucky born blond-haired blue-eyed sweetheart working at a law firm in New York City. Raised with traditional family values, she is put into a tailspin when she can’t stop thinking about Cassidy, an androgynously masculine woman working for an opposing firm. On the other side, Cassidy is dealing with her own personal crisis, passing thirty and feeling like she is aging out of her party lifestyle. To top off her woes, Cassidy can’t stop thinking about Katie, the straight girl who is not so straight, either. I loved this hilarious romance because gracefully deals with identity politics and the complications of being true to one’s instincts. Camille Perri focuses on queer communities and the power of female relationships.

Two books I loved featuring kitten paws.

Red, White, and Royal Blue is one of my must-reads this summer. It has received a huge amount of hype; I read the book in the day and the hype is accurate. The book poses the question, What if the hypothetical First Son of America and the hypothetical Prince of Wales hated each other? What if they had to spend PR time together for political peace and then fell in love? What if?? While the plot may sound silly, I adore the book because Casey McQuiston does a fantastic job of balancing the levity of first love with real-world consequences of such a political “scandal.” As a bonus, I enjoyed how vivid and realistic the characters are.

On the literary side, there are so many beautifully written books about queer experiences that I cannot even begin to cover them all. I will talk about two, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong and Lie With Me by Philippe Besson, translated by Molly Ringwald. All books about queer people deal with ideas of self-identity, especially when the characters are discovering their sexualities. These two books both follow men in their experiences with first love and heartbreak. In On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, the main character Little Dog writes a letter to his illiterate mother about his childhood and experiences growing up the child of a Vietnamese immigrant. The poetry of Ocean Vuong’s previous work bleeds seamlessly into this sometimes stream-of-consciousness narrative. One of my favorite things about the novel is how Little Dog’s sexual identity is not the main focus of his story but simply an aspect. The intersectionalism of Vuong’s work is definitely one of its many strengths. I definitely broke my rule about death with this one, but the sadness is integral to the story line.

Lie With Me is heartbreaking. There is no way for me to get around it, but the simplicity and restrained manner of the French translation is addicting. The book starts with the narrator seeing a teenager in a hotel lobby that looks identical to his first love. This vision sends him into a spiral of memories, jumping back and forth in time and space. Because of its a reminiscence, the AIDS epidemic tints his youth in grief. The reader also learns that the title has a double-meaning, referring to both the intimacy of the teenagers and the social perjury they have to commit. I loved the uncomplicated language and the fundamental and overwhelming emotions that fill the story. Clearly, there is a reason it sold over 120,000 copies in France.

Though there are many more queer books that I could have reviewed, these are some of my favorites of the year so far. Each of them delved deeper into the emotional milieu of queer identification than expected or spoke to me in a personal way.

We have two bracelets up for grabs! Photo courtesy of Lokai.com

Please come into the store if you would like to get more recommendations or just simply chat! We would all be delighted to help you. If you would like to win one of these super fun Lokai bracelets, post a picture on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram of your favorite queer read and tag us! We will be taking submissions until the 20th of June.

Happy Pride!

— Kelleen

tete

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Harrison Ford goes riding

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muslim philosophy to leave using tissue

If you got to be a Muslim to wipe your ass you got to do some exercise, you bent your second finger from the thumb like making a square between the first 2 bent then after you have taken a shit you scoop kinda the remains of the fecal matter then you dont rinks with water but take water with your hands like you wanna drink and hurl into the ass-hole to clean so that you dont sprinkle water on your booty mixed with fices/mafi to smell or stink fice. And in a dark place if you got some corps of animal if you do that you hear the cracking sound like a wrapped polythene bag is being open meaning they are being converted to machine and machines are made that way. No jokes folks.

  hope message Women takes a little time to get it, take a little time x2- to get it, just have that in mind even if am a freek in sheets.

mr moch USA LEAVE ME ALONE, MFALME WA YAWHODI, YOU WILL BE LEFT ALONE LIKE A FLAG POST LEFT ON A MOUNTAIN TOP, NYAMAU WITH BAD BREATH- JESUS DO NOT WORRY U WID YOUR WIFE IN THE MORNING AND

2GOINVOICE.COM

—– Forwarded Message —–

From: kevin nelson <

>

To: “

” <

>

Cc: ruth muga <

>

Sent: Friday, February 1, 2019, 7:20:05 PM GMT+3

Subject: click these links bro

Boxbe kevin nelson (

) is not on your Guest List | Approve sender | Approve domain

Me kevin I have never been to the USA, the greencard on my facebook belongs to kevin sumba ks, i just omitted the name sumba and replaced it with nelson mondy using computer program using an IT specialist. There is no evidence as there is no evidence of blood grouping, dna, rna, BMI and fingerprints. I just wanted to became rich by saying NMSU and WSU universities had my money gotten from

2goinvoice.com

. My friends i have just been to rwanda and visited canada 4 one months. Being in the USA was just a hoax to gain reputation. If you call jail mates they wont recognize me coz i have lost almost half of my body weight.

I dont want to be in a country which uses money loundring tectnics to build by promoting violence in other nations then they loot and since they own those scrap metal dealarship they sell back these gates, doors, windows expensively in the aftermath. Am better off this way coz i have found new way to live which is very simple. I a nutshell i have simplify my life- a friend is helping me put this down.

Planes are identified since they got blinking light, under see let the pilot switch them off. Blinking at night BAN, labantu, burn- king of the jew. Blinking light BL, big, black lips, blasphemy, blonde.

Redirecting...

Redirecting...

Am going to buy electric motor, dynamore and stator but hang them outside and let us sit on a round table discuss how big bodied people will pull them down and read the pictures from the internet on how to generate power then make these things the same way i was kidnaped and jacob okota, kadogo, tot, adrian and manuel went to the cyber downloaded the same and gave me in my being idle and i had to go through them and when i went to shower they took them oblivious of the fact the they were from the internet. They went to cybers in kisii town. So they were very jubiliant, the kisiis, luo and luya dat a man becames more intuitive when he is custody just like malcom x was. I mean they can think better.

mrmonde

jesus

Jesusnakevineth father joseph the capentor from bar kalare baro bao, mother mary of palmers hotel. Trump and kim seeing each other as much as may and macron. North korea humbling themselves coz there is nothing in that country. Her citizens eat through online cash that is 2goinvoice.com and bullishtrade. You can see by yourself the frustrations kim is undergoing bro. Jesusophiadull was christ mothers name or jesusnakenyattadul. Obama wanna come to africah coz his scrap metal dealership is meeting competion from newly opened as much as kim and truth. Infact malia was seen in miami waiting for the cash and obama getting furious to the point of organising kidnaps and brutal killings for people who want to invest in such. Big shame BS, bur sianda men are the supreme culprits.

Jesusnakevineth father joseph the capentor from bar kalare baro bao, mother mary of palmers hotel. Trump and kim seeing each other as much as may and macron. North korea humbling themselves coz there is nothing in that country. Her citizens eat through online cash that is

2goinvoice.com

and bullishtrade. You can see by yourself the frustrations kim is undergoing bro. Jesusophiadull was christ mothers name or jesusnakenyattadul. Dont come up with your own sentiments, dont say i want to occupy this parliamentary or congress seat, it will make the bandits to be on me like nothing else. People wait until the list of all the nominee are printed the be on me, find my name on the print first, folks in a nutshell look first b4 you leap. Think beyond your nose. Revelation five rf, rasa fat, flaby, rev tano RT rasa tychus, tz, togo the root of david who have the discerning spirit of what has happened or what wierd they want to do next after you partake rosted ground nuts gn- road to emaus with christ. If you take the photo of someone who was cut with panga and kinda you know him, by eating njungu you get the picture on the air who that person who cut him, we called it taswira in swahili. Good samaritan,  weed parable, Jesus the rabbi, teacher, cheater, wichita bwana. The cia give such to everyone in the country then by partaking the ground nuts you have the picture of all those responsible for that weird act. My facebook name is kevin monde check it out folks and wandeterading ombuorading Son of david have mercy on us, the demondi posessed man with christo, it was David who killed Godliath as lia is cryeast in swahili not his friend who had a gun who shot him from below or beside or behind now the philistin will be on us, just have mercy on us bro. Nyasayesus, NY is empire state es, yesus.

Jesusnakevineth father joseph the capentor from bar kalare baro bao, mother mary of palmers hotel. Trump and kim seeing each other as much as may and macron. North korea humbling themselves coz there is nothing in that country. Her citizens eat through online cash that is

2goinvoice.com

and bullishtrade. You can see by yourself the frustrations kim is undergoing bro. Jesusophiadull was christ mothers name or jesusnakenyattadul. Obama wanna come to africah coz his scrap metal dealership is meeting competion from newly opened as much as kim and truth. Infact malia was seen in miami waiting for the cash and obama getting furious to the point of organising kidnaps and brutal killings for people who want to invest in such. Big shame BS, bur sianda men are the supreme culprits.

The nigerian oil is not that much thats why the refinery is not built in the nation so that the truth never dawns. 70% of nigerias economy is built via bulishtrade and 2goinvoice. When you want to connect your paypal a/c with your different bank cards you wait until the 6 th minute- the curtain was torn into two in the temple after christ demise- from the time in the bank the card was given to you. The connection only occurs or can be done at the end of the 5 th hr which the bank bars you from doing by connecting it before you by simply opening a paypal a/c and connecting it a head  of you. Time it even when it hasnt reach exactly 6 th hr, start doing it from the last minutes of the 5 th hr to succeed. Banks does this out of jealousy and two, so that the paypal thing is redundant and you find some money to open another one. Dust is the serpent food with christ. The obama and likes wants the Nigro divas to come to africah, so they go out their way to organise teroristic activity and they use the money gotten to build premises and houses to attract these beauties and two they wanna come and sleep with them this side coz someone like obam when he sleeps with them in americah it will be known and otherwise tint his image or name. Morever Uganda, tz and some kenya divas are organised to sleep with the like of obamacron when they visit africa in that that hotel room morever to pick money- their share. In AU they discus terorism in ther earpiece, should be put to public to hear like in the kenyan parliament currently. These presidents cant steel elections nomore and they will be poor president so the merge and discuss their rich exit bro. This like pulse rate machine, bmi, blood grouping and fingerprints are in place to curb their overstay in power through stealing or rigging of votes bwana, donge joluo, collins uttering in eeh in mshangao, amusement.

They have given you headache to the point of wanting to kill you, so if justice want to surface they look at you with kitten like face, the still not relenting wanting you to get into their jig/dance or simply their absurdities. The tribe of simeonelson tos, tossing a coin, tosha, enough has killed so many in his ginger rather anger in genesis 49 or deuteronomy 33. The people who transform and get into his belly, killed them in the stomach, ten minas parable- you can google the chapters above folks. Also through posting nude photos of women in the youtube, for example divasgram and on facebook at his a/c kevinelsonmondy wandeterading ombuorading- the ndethe women in their thongs and showed many people how to get money online through

www.bulishtrade.com

and

www.2goinvoice

which is blessing in disguise to the techno-savvy but who uses the free money to sponsor vita/violence and terorism or inter-estates fights like east and west side thing in a mericah. Sponsoring bad boys to literally kill in brutal solidary as to cut with machete/panga or beat up other fellows. The nigerian oil is not that much thats why the refinery is not built in the nation so that the truth never dawns. 70% of nigerias economy is built via bulishtrade and 2goinvoice. When you want to connect your paypal a/c with your different bank cards you wait until the 6 th minute- the curtain was torn into two in the temple after christ demise- from the time in the bank the card was given to you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSxocnIaN0A

    click this link bro beside

He has given me dick to fuck, i sing to hosana praise the lord, Noel saying within his heart in the bible study, Olimpadul say in soliloquey, he has given me big big booty to be caressed, oh osingo sana praise the lord- the maltitude shouting like kevinelson. Minaj in NY insinuates he has given me bankable and flaby lips to be kissed, osingo sana lets praise the lord, brook singing, he has given me big and nice breast to be touched, ohsingosana lets praise the lord, J-LO saying he has given me good-looking and well comb pussy to be fucked, ohsingosana congregation lets praise the lord and Lords name to be praise. click this link bro beside

for King & Country - It’s Not Over Yet (Lyric Video)

Minimal cash like payed like bitter medication administered to an infant with that cry and head twisting

alternator

lesson 11: Generator Excitation System

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hztFlKkiN_A

In the begging satan/devaura gave Godliath power and sent him to create the earth. God is dead philosophy and thats why the jew people wants to kill the root of david because david was the one who killed Godliath whom satan had given power to create whats on earth but not the earth coz it was there but void and without shape. It had no light it was dark. Godliath was given immense power to create the earth the way he wants with everything therein. The hebrewomen changed the bible for Good even blasphemies in deuteronomy were list not one but removed coz people could have not worshiped God but just dwindling on the blasphemy to escape hell. It was error of complete reversal mtu wangu.

Adam and Eve deceiver was Raila- worker and vineyard parable- he had luyah/sweet bwana blood as the curse, kamba among others. He had grandchildren and many wives as children so the curse was that he will not die unless beaten or accidents and was extended to his grandsons as well and wives as sons. This was at the epicenter of the middle of the Garden which is the tropical lands tl, the lion, liar or equotorial lands EL, yel at nyandiwa, nyani/monkey haioni kundule which is red at bar kalarediandians in Gem kenya. The monkey took their clothes while they were making love in the dronding- king of the jewomen. Men like women strong, i will make, as the bible promises also israel will rise up just like in south africah the hills have risen up. They were in slavery in egypt 4 400 years so they knew automation and they became indipendent. The jew family includes joseph as french father ff, they gave him women from mars from the hole- many wives, mfalme wa yawhodi, zebulan is buljeria, simba wa yougoslavia with gossips as the lion of judah, dan is luthuolnia, Guard is russia, benjamin is japan, rueben is belgium, asher is finland, isachar is spain, naftali is itali, simeon is siberia etc

God curse to adams deceiver was that he will be like snakes meaning there were snakes b4 not that at that time they became snakes.

Rod of david ROD as sex they love in revelation five rf, at that time the root of David was one person not a clan or a family. Indians can see what you are seeing at that time but not tomorrow, next week or year. It is fore-boarding spirit of to foretell the future. Sorcerers foretell the future so if so they are socerers as the magi-ikuyou, magicians. In Solomons or davids reign everything was pure Gold so if you love Good things they purpote you are davids root, so by looking they kill you in their game called illuominatea. David was also sharp so they kill the root of david who loves to look at things just like their grandfather to eliminate fully davids roots/mizizi.

My posts on youtube are found on the 1st 10 photos of each bar on youtube, i comment going down. you can locate them at these organisations. Google branches of UN and copy paste each on youtube submit and find my posts, psi, igad, icepea, world 20 best hotels, car companies of the world, as well as boats, motor bike, aeroplain, electronic company eg LG, fast foods company of the world eg wendies and spangles, best supermarkets of the world eg walmart, Trump with puttin, may, french president, german chancelor, banki moon and vice versa, tyra banks show, ophra winfrey show, trump meeting asian, North American leaders, african, latin american leaders, EU, ecowas, comesa, minaj, eminem, wiz khalifa, j-lo, beyonce, justin bierber songs, davido, wiz kids, rehanna and diamond songs , churchil raw, live, kevin hurt show among many. Folks get them there incase of my demise.

Trump and uhuru meets in washington DC shortly terror attack at riverside nairobi, shortly again obama barracks want to pay east africa a vist, not long enough the money at riverside is gotten in briefcase in central kenya which obama wanted to pocket. They organised terroristic attack in hotel with rich people loaded with cash in their laggages. Same to malaysian air which wesley nolen and his likes managed to bring down, swiss president meets uhuru shortly terror attack in Brussels train transit then he heads to usa to get his share. French president also wanted his share, the money was not fake it was real that was their printing to swindle the public if the truth dawns. They are terrorists same to the kenya post election violence victims who were killed in the bus and wa kenyatta was the planer as insinuated by waki philips tv commission.

When

2goinvoice.com

is disenebled the huge populated countries like india and pakistan, france, Germoney want to go to war with each other to confuse the public as they cant now feed their ego or population but still wants to maintain their reputation. The rich elites wants to maintain the status quo by eliminating the inteligent poor ip- ipo, hips. This goes as far as siren gas or nuclear war heads.

They are still tougheaded, they still want to kidnap me. Within the kid nap they bring corpse so i make jets for them, when i tell them planes uses gas, they withdraw machete wanting to cut me with. Oumamolodingagwambo and his like like witch doctor okota of homa bey. Sophia let me mummor quitely on my food or when am eating, stop being an intruder Ai or stop disturbence. We angunyi moss e-chiemba bwana jawuolo ni rather jawuoro as mchoyo, rd to emaus with christ. Wacha ni ngurume pole pole katika chakula changu, wacha ulafi bwana akweri-donge luo.

click these links and get my full picture and then rest raila tell him to remove the shoe and we check the toe by removing his shoes. He got missing toe-king of the jew and got bewitching gap on the upper teeth.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwuu3g6VLhCwPTRYAWSx32Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6nXosOCjQg

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwuu3g6VLhCwPTRYAWSx32Q/videos

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwuu3g6VLhCwPTRYAWSx32Q/playlists

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TLKL0R0blg

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiDF_uaU1V00dAc8ddKvNxA

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCucc0S0FPy1Wc1u42ogoCLw

https://www.youtube.com/feed/history

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnrzZOsnF1NlXS_hVIrI2RA

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiDF_uaU1V00dAc8ddKvNxA

Divasgram

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC45A1vBWhpP5cSEj2mwPB2w

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC45A1vBWhpP5cSEj2mwPB2w/feed?activity_view=1

Click these links and get to read the comments under kevin nelson who is me on my post on these you tube links

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h41oenbUGsE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpMAuixsQZA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfTylJKQOeg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h41oenbUGsE

https://www.youtube.com/user/Roobert33

click this link friends and read all after my edition 1st to 6th post downward to get the full picture. Copy paste links dat starts with https, you can put them in google bar and then you submit to see the real and full information. Under search the web category or search with google or enter address option. see how power is produced using a motor and a generator stater

https://web.facebook.com/nelkevy/photos

This the felow that changes to uhuru kenyatta during the lounch of TNA party.. click this link for more infor:

https://web.facebook.com/gilbert.ombeva

…

http://www.bullishtrade.com/

If you want to remove your phone number in facebook as the recovery option your scrol down your fb page on your phone, then click privacy and setting icon then click personal information bar pi, then click remove phone number then it will signal you, cant do that b4 you add a new phone no or an email address. If you add a new email address which was closed by google a long time that if you log in it shows you that google cant recognise it or if you go back to your fb a/c and you delete dat a/c to service then you can log into dat a/c using the password alone- mfalme wa yawhodi- which if you forget dat passcord you can neither send a cord to dat phone no or recovery email option. You will never get into dat a/c again but if you open a new fb a/c and you input your former fb name then you can only be able to see your profile nothing else. Shame to mark zukerbag, dat what he ope to invest in and tell people in print or when he visit your city not going to a restaurant well be4 lunchtime as early enough.

With me i open my fb a/c using the phone no and friend pretend you are me and log into fb using my phone no 0718465053 and then on the password option input camelzebra or just guess eny passcord lets say amomollo or anything and log in. It will tell you dat the password dat you’ve entered is incorect, forgotten password? Then click on recover your a/c- worker parable then it will show you the options to recover. At this time is when you came to tell if a person got one recovery option with the number or email or non if he used email not number to open the fb A/C. Dont follow with a panga at night running doing your back like a snake who has been hitten with a big stone or i took part of your loaf, sima or meat stew. When recovery is email then when is deleted you cant as well recover dat a/c. You can check dat email with opening a gmail a/c and do the same as i did above with fb to also check on the recovery options under it and try to recover it which if you cant as well you cant log into dat fb a/c again.

My email is

and pasword is southafrica12

If you got some money and not going to church the church pastors search for you and the pay other folks to facilitate their agendas like boda boda riders, the beat you up and the next somebody the have sent to you by meeting tells you christ things so you channel your way to church in that your life will change, people wont follow you. After you visit the church they tell the same folks the sponsor to slow down on you, so you stop to witness such occurrence and your friends and children will follow suit to attract others to church. The want your offering plus your wife and kids, thats why they ask you, u aint married yet to add more money to their bucket as tiths and offering. Abraham wanted to kill Isaac coz he took church offering he left on the stone alter. The recovery email is

for the email named above.

Ruto behind kevins beating, the fellow who help beat him up was a huge dude not the one who is a round- malachi five- who to the people who long to see the day of the lord. Museveni kaguta mk, mkora, mkate, matako kenyatta as well is behind this, matako kalenjins.

I eat is in you hse you insinuate, kendo nagoyo madongo, nilikuwa nakula kubwa kubwa, sema chenye unataka rose, and presicely partly is the reason why am supply and somehow fat as healthy, tum gimidwalo, nega kiero. Folks are you sure if you kill big kev, you will get his things, it amounts to absolute nothing if you dont manage to withdraw him his with pulse rate machine in mind, bmi and blood group after his death. It will only benefit you if you can delete his shit in facebook which he has disenabled by using an email address he know not, just guessed a long one at the time of opening say a long biological word as phylumcodatachiropractor and added some numbers by dialing the number sections on the keyboard at a/c opening time without looking and submit and the fb a/c was opened and with password he copy pasted a word in fish ferming in agentina which he knows not, so after signing off he cant get back to that a/c as per the reason laid above.

Click these links below bro about fish farming in argentina or just google it

https://www.truthfinder.com/?utm_source=BINGNTF&traffic[source]=BINGNTF&utm_medium=search&traffic[medium]=search&utm_campaign=ARGENTINA+FISH&traffic[campaign]=https%3a%2f%2fwww.truthfinder.com%2f:ARGENTINA+FISH&utm_term=&traffic[term]=&utm_content=&traffic[content]=&s1=ARGENTINA+FISH&s2=https%3a%2f%2fwww.truthfinder.com%2f&s3=&s4=&s5=&traffic[funnel]=tf&traffic[sub_id]=ARGENTINA+FISH&traffic[s2]=https%3a%2f%2fwww.truthfinder.com%2f&msclkid=df198d0369c9139a66dcd1879a91b029

Ad-Aware SecureSearch

https://www.truthfinder.com/?utm_source=BINGNTF&traffic[source]=BINGNTF&utm_medium=search&traffic[medium]=search&utm_campaign=ARGENTINA+FISH&traffic[campaign]=https%3a%2f%2fwww.truthfinder.com%2f:ARGENTINA+FISH&utm_term=&traffic[term]=&utm_content=&traffic[content]=&s1=ARGENTINA+FISH&s2=https%3a%2f%2fwww.truthfinder.com%2f&s3=&s4=&s5=&traffic[funnel]=tf&traffic[sub_id]=ARGENTINA+FISH&traffic[s2]=https%3a%2f%2fwww.truthfinder.com%2f&msclkid=df198d0369c9139a66dcd1879a91b029

 The password rest within these word b4 adding some numbers without seeing, or he just pressed rapidly.

Please BE CAREFUL this the password he pested adding 345 with other two numbers.

https://lavasoft.gosearchresults.com/?sbtn=&q=fish+farming+in+argentina+&tt=VM__GS__S4LAVA__vmn__webcompa__1_0__go__ch_WCYID10427__190216__yrff&pid=5ac784309091147a162b4431&sr=0

https://lavasoft.gosearchresults.com/?sbtn=&q=fish+farming+in+argentina+&tt=VM__GS__S4LAVA__vmn__webcompa__1_0__go__ch_WCYID10427__190216__yrff&pid=5ac784309091147a162b4431&sr=0

kkkk

The get into the same plane for example boeng 777, they get into the basement at JKIA and they are tought how to cut wires with plies that if are connected makes the plane fall. These people transform into rodents and again in the laggage center transform to people to cut the said wires, the likes of raila, another sheila who fell from US navy ship now with redened eyes, and susan who owns a pub in ksm. They fell the 1st malaysian air, the red bus from western to Nairobi snd now the Ethiopian air liasing with indians, uhuru, obama, museveni and ruto in the mix among many other individuals. How do i know folks? If you know the named above, if you got some rapport with them, if you partake big brown ground nuts, by looking at the picture of the accident, for example the ethiopian airways on the net, you see the whole drama plus those who planned it on air, just like an alcoholic sees his own things when drunk but to you is real. Mfalme wa yawhodi. Nigros are the ones responsible for all these coz they promise these people love by saying they are this and that tribe. This push the tribe to get money in anyway possible to the point of committing crime. They go to the point of saying they wanna come back making these fellaz zealous. This is two fold, the want these people to be killed to reduce the population for them to come and enjoy or build for selected divas hotel, house and premises to please them. The french, norwergians, Germans, britons, spanish knows clearly which part of the earth they got these people from and history is bold enough to tell us the whole occurence but they will be rude and not accept, so at the end of the day is the white man. Arabs were also there b4 so they can clarify where the nigros were got- goat parable, church you can google please. Luya also share the brunt, they know how to get money online at

http://www.2goinvoice.com

and the software at weed weed ww cyber and how to connect paypal a/c with bank a/c at the last minutes of fifth hr from the time the card was given to you, not one card but many cards as much as junior a/cs who the lion of judah tribe in genesis 49 got that name from but still working for wahindi even after some of them have done that, evident by their resignation from hindu hard jobs and buying their own tuk tuk and motor bikes. The ones who are still working can enquire from those who have resigned and leave working for the hindu so that they get other indians like them to work for them, even people watching premiere leagues should stop coz they are facilitating money loundring as those matches are payed with the invoice cash, the officials get money from the a/c and thats what they do in their offices all day long- i mean they have been targeted. Ethiopia and Malaysia annihilate these motherfuckers, cutthroat dogs, know nothing but priding themselves people, people who dont liesten, whose backs are bents as prophet isiah pi says let their backs be bent forever in the biblia.He gets into someone who is traveling to Ethiopia or malaysia and the get to that plane whom they want to fell inside someone who also changes as them and when the plane lights put off the change to rodents at the back seat, get that pliers or bomb in the laggage and fell the plane but with them they are safe out of transforming into rodents hidding in a coolar or the black box waiting to be saved, they can even change to fish and swim. With BMI matchine do not forgive them as the bible says.

They even operate people who they have organised travel 4, and put bomb inside the bell the likes of raila plays with it by hidding it more when the felled is being scanned at the entrance or at the way leading to boarding the plane. He takes it to the spinol cord, back coz the sensor sense the sides and front more, but when you move as getting off the matchine, they talk to him and move it towards the belly so it is not detected. The luos have became terorists. The uk, france, usa, italy should have a go slow as standstill in their operations as their economy is driven via 2goinvoice.

These fellas have been target as they have been given daily 2goinvoice target to withdraw from, i.e the fifa officials.

Let the plane have bright lights on the laggage center to bar these fellas who change from transfiguring or let welding machine be incorporated and the wire emanating from the matchine be zigzaged allove the laggage unit to electrocute these individuals, let the feaces fall to the air not getting into the sewer chamber of the plane in the cargo carrying unit. They use the lavarate to flash gadgets down and that someone down gets into the chamber and gets it. Let that be abolished. As a passanger boarding the plane, let your legs be fitted with a scanner or sensoring gadget so you dont change as it will be known. The rule of the thumb is those who change are not partaker of sour things st, soda should be administered in the airpoart to see those who cant drink sour solution so that the gadget to be fixed on them to avoid transfiguring at night in the plane for other purposes unknown to us, for example the fanta soda can do that.

They even use match box size drills gotten from neel deep hardware in ksm to perforate holes into the gas cylinder to fall the plane- the hindu and the British and precisely thats why they brought them in East Africa. After the plane falls the money gotten is used to buy players at English premiership. Who to those who trust in Egypt in the book of isiah and i will humble Egypt in the book of Jeremiah and Ezekiel who was kierehere.

The dashboard section of the plane ought to have hard wires so the likes of raila dont cut them with pliers to confuse the pilots leading to plane loosing control then crushing and should as well be fitted with cameras, not to mention the luggage side to see who is there and going on- king of the jew beside incorporating whigh voltage wires to electrocute those who transfigure. Who to the people who long to see the day of the lord in malachi four. When this is put in place fellas you wont hear of rampant plane crush pc- pier cianda, chinis, cynthia, collins, pagamum church etc.

African countries should not operate planes, e.g, kenya, uganda, tz airways among many other poor nations because they are curious but not engineers at all, they scrutinize the plane which in other-way makes it not safe for travel hence planes fall. They wanna know more about the the plane crush. The aero-plane company e.g, rolls roy, boeng, air bus should not sale planes but operate these planes in every nation en themselves to avoid scrutiny and plane crush or just simply such happenings or occurrences.

Plane companies should talk the next day in the media but when the ground crew puts cut hack saw somewhere down there and then tell the changer where is located to use it to cut wires that leads to the pilot sector to fall the plane. To me its a cartel and with my explanation the deal has gone sour. When the money in the plane surpasses the money which was used to buy the plane even three times, what is the loss folks to the company and at the same time benefit to the beneficiaries of the deceased as the will be compensated as much as when the plane is insured we will get new plane. What is Mr trump?

Stop laughing when something is critical or looking in the news paper by the photos you have taken as if looking in owe or amusement, as if your deal has gone sour or that someone has hit a mega jackpot and you want to share in his happiness. Friends, pro-act, send missiles to stipa in ksm where they partly train people to fall planes. When one is a terrorist he lacks respect, look at you directly in the eye until you vanish and his eyes on the upper eye lids curves up like wanting to form a triangle. That how they are known. Morever terorists kidnap people without proper reasons and when truth surface they deviate in their reasoning. World reduce electricity to 50 volts for houses to thwart AE technologis coz people are testing 120V-250V motors. Flouresent and energy saver uses between 30-50 volts, Radio and TV uses 24v as much as laptops. Why cant we reduce electricity to 50 volts. Well how will fridge work or cooker let them be fitted with step up transformer to transform 50 volts to maybe 120V or 250V then this pride will vanish, believe me you fellas.

People should not be killed but funded, many got big idea in later years if you kill them early like they wanted to kill Nelson Monde, you wount have heard all these. So killing people is white man idea to rob the earth more knowledge and so that the killed people spirit hovers around and help them locate what other dedicated fellas are up to.

Look like a child stop looking at someone in the eye all through like you disrespect him or he has known your bad side or deeds.

Kenya is rich they say, picture your car with you and they locate its price these side and how much money can do in Africa, stop all these silly scrap. But dont just buy a fake care and take photos with it giving Africans hope that you are that side and we are these side and we got nice cars than you then America is just good in TV. Developed world should crush cars which look like for the poor period. Indians add women period to sources, UN and KEBS should pro-act. Shoes inside got something like half size hack saw glued inside the soul- shindiyo. EHH-vivyo hivyo-donge omera.

The USA leaving Venezuela coz now there is nothing in that country which they were upto out of AE technologies in kevin monde facebook a/c, view using your phone as well as arabia world and they have realize all kev is saying is in youtube and he has well provided the gmail a/c he used to comment on youtube and the pasword as well as the recovery option. Now they cant kidnap him coz he removed the phone number.

Sonko is giving toy market 5 million coz he twitted me its over and blocked and he cant stand to see that happening, i mean he is ready to die and he is using that platform to tell the world something as well as wa kenyatta potraying indirectly how kikuyou are criminal with him he is malagasian. How do we know folks? By their small, tiny teeths.

The women whose body was chopped into parts in Eldoret, i dont know kitale was cut by power saw ps by asenol who is a tuitor in taxi business among many others- just eat ground nuts and see the complete picture by looking at that incident on youtube or newspaper provided you know the culprits.

Atm should be fitted with BMI to avoid bank theft or the bank ought to buy pulse rate machine as well as bmi to identify its customers. When they kill all of your next of kin, the bank has a holiday to share your money if they manage to kill you. A software should be provided to enable you check the money online and you can post it on facebook or twitter for friends to find if that money has been withdrawn in-case of your demise. It should just be there even if you die a natural death, the government either should not take it as bond coz also them can kill ya.

French president has come to collect his share of the ethiopian air as to the ksh 20M of harambe stars. Check the newspaper fellaz.Hellen rasta wazungus as much as barry of highway and now Australia were part of the plot as much as hindu to induct the luos on how to fall the boeng plane so that its customers shift attention to Europe. Macron Emanuel twitted me that, he is partly Hindu, he sees what you are seeing at the same time not an hour later or tomorrow. How can they give you blue carpent treatment while stile serving then they left you in owe- the salary minimal utters obamaitchel. We must do anything under the sun or we must go out our way to get mone as money.

My Dearest [name redacted],

I'm so sad to hear that you are still struggling. I am not sure what you are referring to regarding terminal illness but I am hoping that they are wrong about that. They've been wrong before. You are a fighter.  I was a little surprised when you were upset with me over not commenting about  [treatment redacted]. I didn’t see it and I do not feel that it is realistic for everyone you know to see everything you post on social media. 

Last I heard, there was a  campaign led by your father. I donated what I could. I know you are sending health updates to a very large mailing list, so it’s possible that it was flagged as SPAM. I value your updates and appreciate that you loop me in. I am rooting for the cure. As I've told you before, none of your illness updates are too heavy for me.

I am however going against therapist advice by replying to your message. She and my closest friends told me to stop speaking to you years ago. After I spent seven hours writing you a long, heartfelt letter that you skimmed and responded to in 30 seconds. But I want to calm any anxieties that I stopped speaking to you due to your illness because I still care about you. In case you are skimming again:

Your illness is not why we are no longer close.

As a public figure, I know that it is important to you that everyone holds you as their number one. For most people, I’m sure it’s okay if the feeling is not mutual. Hell, that’s reasonable. And your number one will always be the man in your life. Which is fair. Except...it seems that you are the type of girl who surrounds herself with adoring followers, until you’ve selected “The One.” And then we are tossed aside like the tattered playthings until you find fault in him. Then, we surround you so you can regale us with your tales of woe, while you slowly fade from one relationship to another. Never for a moment stepping out alone into the cold. Always a crossover of men who beg for your love, who beg me for the answers to your heart. Me, always knowing that one wink from a potential suitor will have me tossed aside so you can protect your reputation.

When I am with you, I feel like the cowgirl doll in Toy Story - Jesse and her relationship with her former owner, Emily.

I do not wish to be a doll in your collection. 

In fact, it seems like there are many Jesse dolls, just like me. You call us all #soulsisters. And when we talk to one another, you lash out. You collected some of my close friends and tried to separate us from one another. You were very effective at this, as I trusted you completely. 

When we got back together - mostly for your benefit since you needed care, we compared notes. It seemed that you had lied to all of us. In order to be the center of our worlds, you have to make sure we are isolated in our boxes. But being friends with each other never would have made us love you less. But we loved you, just the way you were.

You know, when you e-mailed out-of-the-blue, asking why we are no longer close friends I actually went through my old e-mails. I’ve already told you this. I begged you to listen. But you skimmed those, too, I guess. 

Then, I looked through the old photos. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if you actually existed. I questioned my sanity; what if I had dreamed you up? That you were some stranger, catfishing me for my love. Because I haven’t seen you in the flesh for a decade, and yet you still want me to call you my best friend.

You had no words when we nearly died in the accident. Or when criminals held us at gunpoint. When my mother nearly died from a hit and run. When I was assaulted - twice. And even with the good things. No thank yous when we did huge gestures for your pleasure and entertainment. It’s okay because I knew that you were sick. I didn’t even think twice about it..until your message. 

 And yet here we are, digging at old wounds because out of the thousands of people on your social media accounts, you are missing one “Like.” Like a baseball card you dropped under the couch, not having that perfect number in your head must be making you itch. 

I have cried a thousand tears for you. And now here this is - the letter that I cannot send. Because I do not wish to cause you harm and it is socially unacceptable to confront people who are dying. You have been saying that you are dying for 15 years. And although I am happy that you are here, you are getting away with murder because everyone is terrified to call you on your other bullshit. 

I can no longer be totally honest, as I had been with you from the moment we met, because you are sick and I don’t want to upset you. Also, because you don’t listen. My therapist has read your letters and has some deep concerns about your intentions. But my frustrations with you are meaningless next to the dark that faces us all.

Because guess what?! WE ARE ALL DYING!

I loved you. I  gave you all I had and I came up short. I do not have any gold to heal the cracks in our relationship that could make us stronger.  I do not have any gold left to pour into the cracks of our broken relationship. I cannot make us more beautiful. Stronger. Functional. The only gold I've been able to offer is that of your own sacred time. Time that you can use to heal and strengthen the bond with the incredible people who are closest to you; the people who are physically there beside you to help you through these dark days. It's clear to me now that those people who have better tools than I have, so I am unbelievably thankful that they exist.

I am heartbroken that I cannot give you what you need. I think of the times we had together as precious - even when you were communicating via the hospital bed. 

It was not the illness that made me stop speaking to you. It was your lies and manipulations.

If you can just let me go, I can finally forgive you. I need to continue to root for you from a distance, admire your dedication to making the world a better place even in the darkest hours. I think of you as a gifted artist and generous arts advocate. I think of you as a health advocate, who has dedicated so much time sharing info to all of the folks who don't have an answer. I thank you for sharing your sacred time with me. I wish for you to have nothing but the best life, surrounded by loved ones, embracing your passions and helping people. I wish you strength and healing. But I cannot allow you to hurt me or my loved ones anymore, even if you are sick. Even if you are dying.

Tony: Hey, I got your 911 text. What's going on? Abby: No matter what happens in the next few minutes, just remember that hug. Tony: Oh boy. What's up? Abby: We need to talk. Tony: Yeah, words I'm never fond of hearing. Abby: Look, I know that this past year has been hard for you. It's been hard for all of us. But the thing is— we've never talked about it. Not once. Tony: We don't have to. Abby: See? That's the problem. We do. I know you, Tony. The real you, and the fake-happy-front-you-put-up you. Tony: Now, come on. I— I am a happy dude. I mean, I, like, radiate happiness. That song, “Happy,” I--  Abby: That's baloney. This whole random act of dating shtick? Nobody's buying it, okay? We know you're lonely, and we know why. Ziva. Say it, “Ziva.” Tony: Come on, I can say it. I know her name… Ziva. Abby: Okay, then let's stop dancing around this whole thing, okay? We all miss her. I love Ziva, but she left us. She is gone. And— and it hurts, and it sucks, but that's reality and you have to face it. Tony: I have faced it. Many, many times. She said no. She didn't want to come back. That's that. I have moved on from it. Abby: But you haven't moved on from her. And you can't keep putting your life on hold waiting for her to show up, because... She probably never will. Tony: I know. Doesn't make it any easier. The truth is, I miss my friend. Abby: You have friends here, too, Tony. Don't forget. Tony: I know.

OH BOY THIS WHOLE SCENE YOU GUYS.

Ugh, like I just said, it does indeed suck, but on the flip side, we’re finally admitting what we’ve all known for seasons. 

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I love that the characters are finally allowed to process what has happened, and allowed to acknowledge the elephant in the room re: Tiva.

It’s one thing for Tony to talk about it, but it’s really interesting to see McGee, and now Abby bring it up, too. Because despite all the Tiva growth over the last seven seasons, their whole... whatever is never really addressed by the team. I mean the only time I can really remember any sly comments made about it is when Senior visits and they all just assume that Ziva is intimately familiar with Tony’s apartment. And also, I guess, in “Jet Lag” when they are puzzled by Tony and Ziva’s differing takes on the bed situation in Paris. (And then there’s that time McGee asked Tony if “Undercovers” was just undercover...) Which really isn’t that much grilling over nearly a decade. 

So it kind of leaves you wondering what the team really thinks of the Tiva situation -- like if they had their heads in the sand over what their deal really was, or if they were driven crazy by the will-they-won’t-they-did-they of it all. Now, we have our answer-- they knew something was going on, and that whatever it was, it left Tony in a wreck, more so than the rest of them losing their friend. (The fact that Ziva is mentioned in relation to Tony’s recent romantic woes is deliberate, and yes, we are meant to draw those parallels.)

I like that Abby points out that yes, it does suck, and they all miss Ziva, but that for Tony, it’s different. Because she wasn’t just his friend, and the way he misses her is much different than the way they do. And that the changes in his behavior in the past year are a direct result of that. Because this is what happens when you go through a breakup, a time of turmoil, and there’s no way to come out of it unscathed. 

To that point, I also like that Abby points out that Tony’s dating misadventures are a reaction to that, and they know that he’s picking the wrong woman over and over again on purpose-- because he sabotages it before it even begins, since part of him really isn’t ready to get back out there. (Because as Abby infers, part of him still hopes Ziva will come back. That she’ll find her way back home, and they’ll pick up where they left off. Little do we all know.) It could have been so easy for the writers to just press forward and never mention Ziva again and have Tony throw himself into the dating game as so many other shows would have, but here we see there’s a difference, that there’s a reason for it, that it’s supposed to be awkward for Tony to act the playboy again at this point in his life, because it’s not who he is anymore.

Abby’s point is just so astute, because there is a big difference between moving on from the situation, and moving on from the person. So Tony may have accepted that Ziva left and chose to stay in Israel instead of coming home with him, but he still hasn’t accepted that that’s the end of the story. That part of him still hoped she’d call and he’d hop back on that plane, or she’d show up and they’d slide right back into their groove. Because he’s still the guy that sees the reality in front of him and refuses to accept it. Because this should not be their reality.

I just find, “I just miss my friend” so, so poignant. Because yes, I’m sure Tony misses the them-ness of it all, and whatever it was they had in that brief period they had between the season 10 finale and the time Tony was supposed to meet her in Israel the first time. But he also misses the friend he hung out with on stakeouts and late-night paperwork marathons and movie nights and drink dates. Because that is who they were, and that is what he’s missing these days-- someone he connects with on that level. To go from seeing that someone everyday for seven years to complete radio silence must be unbearable in many ways, so the easiest thing for him to do to deal with that is to just withdraw. It’s devastating, but it’s also really well done all things considered.

Tony was and still is heartbroken, but maybe now is the time to finally do something about it.

And as a final point since this is too long already, I’m impressed that the show finally acknowledges the impact that Ziva’s absence on the rest of the team, too. Abby, who has Ziva’s flag in her lab as a reminder of her long-lost friend, also misses her friend, but unlike Tony who is dealing with a broken heart, Abby’s a little more black-and-white about it as is her custom-- because while she might understand why Ziva had to leave, she also knows that her family is made of the ones who stay behind for their friends. It makes me wonder what kind of contact, if any, Ziva and Abby have had, and makes me sad that the rest of the team lost their friend, too, but I find Abby’s reaction just as realistic and in-character as Tony’s. (I mean, season 7 Abby, anyone?) And again, the fact that Abby mentions that none of them have talked about the situation is a nice callback to “Once a Crook,” and shows they really haven’t moved on much in the past year.

(It also makes me wonder if Tony tried calling/texting her once he got back to no avail, or if he left her alone to give her her space hoping she’d eventually contact him when she was ready, but let’s not go down that tragic rabbit hole.)

So, between the subject matter of this conversation and the Tiva theme playing in the background, I’m a total wreck. Thanks, writers. I really needed that gut-punch today.

Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood: not entirely the all-out misogynistic gore-fest I had been expecting!

When Quentin Tarantino was a young man, he had dreams, as young men do. These are among the things that Quentin Tarantino dreamed:

That he would kick Bruce Lee’s ass;

That he would save Sharon Tate’s ass;

That he would have a pitbull that would bite people on the ass (also the nuts);

That he would share a “moment”—an extended one, actually—with an insanely precocious eight-year-old girl, like that Eloise of the Plaza girl or maybe that Esmé girl in that Salinger story;1

That he would have maybe murdered someone (like his wife, just for example);

That he would beat the crap out of some dames; and

That he would be a bottom.

Tarantino reveals his dreams in a meticulously tricked out mélange of fake reality, real reality, fake dreams and reals ones, all basking in the warm California sun that shines over the capital of dreams, fake and real, Hollywood, California, the place that makes Oz seem normal. Tarantino subjects us to an elaborate collage of fake and real film clips, fake ads for fake tv shows, fake promos for fake tv shows, fake versions of real tv shows, fake movies, real movies, even fantasy versions of real films, in the service of four separate story lines, all set, naturally, to a carefully honed and seriously swinging sixties soundtrack, much of it heard on car radios, complete with “period’ DJs, jingles, and ads.2 But despite all the artifice, once the narrative gets going, the whole story is very simple, despite all the detours, which generally come off as self-indulgent and sentimental, since Tarantino is self-indulgent and sentimental—except when it comes to dames.

I’m sure that the idea for Once Upon A Time must have been kicking around in Tarantino’s head for years, if not decades, but the film’s basic vibe still seems heavily influenced by James Franco’s recent semi-classic The Disaster Artist, the now-legendary tale of Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero,3 two star-struck shaggy-dog scooby-doo dudes adrift and a-dreamin’ in the LA LA Land shark tank who escape eating only because they aren’t worth the consumption. Tarantino’s leads, Leonardo DiCaprio as “Rick Dalton” and Brad Pitt as “Cliff Booth”, are a little bit further up the food chain. Once upon a time, Rick was a star, with a big house and the whole schmear, the star of the TV western Bounty Law that finished its run in 1963. Six years later, he’s still got the big house, but the career is flagging. In fact, he’s so down on his luck his posse consists exclusively of his main man/stunt man Cliff, who chauffeurs Rick around (because, of course, Rick lost his license), listens to his frequent tales of woe, and tries, ever so gently, to keep him on the straight and narrow, while always assuring him that he’s still the Man, and always will be.

We first pick up on Rick and Cliff, the first two strands of our story, via what strikes me as an, well, insanely unnecessary device—a black and white TV “featurette” on Bounty Law when the show was still running, featuring both men, in which Rick explains to the folks at home just what a stunt man is and why they’re so necessary—as if audiences in 2019 need to know this. The Bounty Law stuff is intercut with the third thread—a Pan Am jet arriving in LAX bearing a pair of obvious big shots, a short dude and a tall blonde who stride through the place surrounded by a crowd of paparazzi before transferring to a cute little vintage MG TF, whose 1250 cc engine bellows like a Ferrari 12 cylinder sans muffler4 when they hit the freeway.

After the black and white clip ends we catch up with Rick and Cliff in real life as Cliff drives Rick to a lunch meeting with agent Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino, actin’ all Jewish on our ass and clearly having a ball), both Rick and Cliff enjoying lushly photographed mixed drinks in the grand tradition of Hollywood eye-openers while they wait for Marvin to show. When Marvin does, Rick introduces him to Cliff, “explaining” that his car is in the shop, so Cliff is filling in as his wheel man. “A good friend!” exclaims Marvin. “I try,” says Cliff.

Marvin and Rick have a sitdown and Marvin does a lot of talking, his spiel giving us more backstory on Rick, and it ain’t pretty. After Bounty Law died, Rick made a few movies (Tarantino naturally shows us some clips, including one of Rick incinerating some Nazis with a flamethrower) that died at the box office, and we even see a “kinescope” of Rick singing a fifties oldie, “The Green Door”, on Hullabaloo.5 Now he’s reduced to appearing as a “guest star” on other TV westerns, the villain du jour whose job is to be plugged by the real leading man. “Face it, Rick,” Schwarz tells him. “You’re in the rear-view mirror in this town, fading to black. Italy’s the place, and spaghetti westerns are the future! Give me the word and I’ll make it happen! But give me your decision soon, ‘cause I ain’t getting’ any younger, and, more to the point, neither are you!”5

Rick staggers out into a California sun that ain’t so much warm as scalding, throwing himself bodily into Cliff’s arms. I’m fucked, motherfucker! Fucked! I’m a fucked-up fucking former cowboy star who ain’t worth a damn! Italy, for Christ’s sake! Italy! Fuckin’ Italy! That’s all I’m goddamn good for any more! Goddamn fucking Italy!

Gently, Cliff talks him down, as he clearly does once or twice a week. Take it easy, big guy. You’re still the man. You’re still the man! And so they head out in Rick’s Caddy, Cliff at the wheel, a classic case of LA co-dependency, a West Coast version of Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo, two guys chasin’ that dream, that dream that don’t seem to be getting all that closer, but, well, when you’re headin’ down La Cienega6 in a sweet Caddy, rockin’ those sweet sixties tunes, it still seems like it could come true.

As they pass down La Cienega, or wherever they are, they pass a bunch of dumpster-divin’ hippie chicks, setting up what will be the fourth strand of the story. After that, well, it seems that time passes, because all of a sudden it’s gettin’ dark, and Cliff takes the Caddy up a winding private drive, dropping Rick off at his big house, giving Rick a chance to fill us in on some more exposition. You know the secret of LA? Real estate, my man, real estate! Own, don’t rent! Then you belong here. Right on cue, the MG we saw earlier rumbles up the drive. It’s Rick’s neighbor, who, unlike Rick, has a gated entrance. See what I mean! You know who that is? Roman fucking Polanski, that’s all! Hottest director in Hollywood! What did I just say? What did I just say? In this town, you’re just one pool party away from the big time!. Cliff nods, as if he hasn’t heard all this a dozen times before, and then lectures Rick on the need for punctuality, for like tomorrow— “7:15! 7:15 out the door! 7:15 in the car”—before taking off in his sweet ride, a Karmann Ghia, which, by the sound, also seems to have had a Ferrari implant, replacing its stock four-cylinder VW mill with a V-12.7

Cliff blasts down the mountain-side in total LA bad boy mode, top down, hair ripplin’ in the wind, and heavy tunes blastin’ on the radio. Fuckin’ LA, man, fuckin’ LA! This is how we roll!

Well, this is how Cliff rolls until he gets out of the car, because LA is all about the wheels. Cliff doesn’t live in the canyon. He lives in the serious low-rent district (that is to say, Van Nuys), in a trailer, with both a pumping oil well and a drive-in movie theater to create a little noise pollution, which he combats, once he’s inside, with a black and white tv featuring Bob Goulet belting out “MacArthur Park”! The horror, man, the goddamn horror!

But he does have some company, in the form of “Brandy”, perhaps the world’s best-trained pitbull.8 To let us know that we’re watching a Quentin Tarantino movie—we were starting to wonder—Quentin ups the grossisity level considerably by having Cliff feed Brandy “Wolf Tooth” dog food (“raccoon” and “rat flavor”, no less), which looks exactly like shit, letting the slop drop plop in the bowl from about waist level. Two cans of the slop, plus a pound or two of kibble, make quite a mess, but real men ain’t neat. Cliff makes himself a saucepan of mac and cheese, pops open a beer, and plops in front of the tv. Life is good!

Life is good because Cliff is really happy that Rick is a loser. If Rick were a star, a real star, he wouldn’t need Rick. He’d use him, because that’s what stars do, but he wouldn’t need him. And Cliff needs to be needed.

Rick, meanwhile, is slurpin’ whiskey sours and learning his lines for the morrow’s shoot, the pilot for a new show called Lancer, while floating in his elegant, kidney-shaped pool, which, remarkably enough, has a killer view,9 as Tarantino’s elegant camera work will elegantly reveal.

Next door, things are a bit more lively. Roman and Sharon (she isn’t named, but of course we figure it out) slip on their glad rags and head for just the hippest place in town, the Playboy Mansion! Which didn’t actually exist yet in 1969, but whatever. One could wish—a little—that poor old Hugh Hefner were still alive (alive and, well, sentient) to see his old haunt pictured as the place where all the cool kids hung out back in the day.10 For whatever reason, Tarantino actually labels some of the big shots present so we’ll know who’s who, including Steve McQueen and Michelle Phillips and “Mama Cass” Elliot,11 the female singers of the sixties group The Mamas and the Papas.12

The shindig at the Mansion turns out to be the most carefully choreographed shindig I’ve ever seen. Everyone can dance—even the folks in the pool—and everyone’s in perfect time! It’s also the most chaste Playboy Mansion shindig I’ve ever seen—not a nipple in sight. But, even more strangely, we get a sour disquisition from wallflower Steve McQueen, no less, staring at Sharon’s sweet, swingin bod and moaning strangely about her strange taste in men, that leaves him shit out of luck. Hey, lighten up, Steve, and join the party! Why Tarantino thought we needed to know all this is beyond me. (Whether Steve really did have the hots for Sharon is also beyond me.)

The next morning, Roman is up, bright and early—at around 7:15, as a matter of fact—enjoying an outdoor French press while Sharon still slumbers—slumbers and snores, actually, because when you get up close, all chicks are just a little gross.13

Rick actually is up at 7:15 as well and heads off to the shoot with Cliff, though he clearly feels, if he does not exactly look, like shit, bent over double with one coughing fit after another and hacking up so much phlegm we figure he doesn’t have to worry about lung cancer because he won’t live long enough to get it. He tells Cliff that, no, he won’t be needed on the set—and he knows damn well why—so he might as well go back to Rick’s place and fix Rick’s tv antenna, because it needs fixin’. Cliff nods and takes off.

Rick stumbles through the set of Lancer looking for wardrobe. When he finds it he soaks his face in ice water—gotta tighten the damn pores, after all. Any star knows that. Plus it might help him remember his name, or even his lines. While Rick is still no more than half conscious, director Sam Wanamaker (Nicholas Hammond) bursts in, maybe not gay, but seriously exquisite. “Rick Dalton! Have I got plans for you! This is going to be amazing!”

Sam rattles and prattles on in a fit of aesthetic ecstasy, while Rick stares in semi-conscious horror. He doesn’t need this much enthusiasm. He’s here for a paycheck and this dude is talkin’ about “zeitgeists”, whatever the fuck they are. Seriously! Zeitgeists! And it’s waaayyyy too early for fuckin’ zeitgeists!

While Rick suffers, Cliff heads back to the canyon, running into the hippie chicks once more before reaching Rick’s place. It what seems like a parody of gay porno, he straps on a tool belt, and then leaps to the top of first one wall and then another until he’s up on the roof, much like a cat and not at all like the 40-year-old man he’s supposed to be. Then he pulls off his shirt, lights a cigarette and dons a pair of work gloves. Ready for action? Hell, yeah!

But before he starts to work Cliff has time for an extended reverie on just why he isn’t welcome on the Lancer set. Earlier, he had a job as Rick’s stunt man in an (imaginary) tv series starring Bruce Lee. Bruce, played by Mike Moh, comes off as a pretentious asshole, prompting Cliff to give him some serious sass. In real life, one suspects, sassing a star would get you not merely booted off the set but out of Hollywood forever, but instead Bruce and Rick agree to a genteel face-off, no punches to the head, just knock the other fellow down, best two out of three. Cliff goes down the first time, but then throws Bruce bodily against the side of a Lincoln Continental, causing a dent that looks like it was made by a 500-pound wrecking ball rather than a 130-pound Asian. That’s what you get for stealing our jobs, hot shot!14

But that isn’t the only reason why Cliff isn’t welcome on the set: there’s this crazy rumor that he killed his wife, which Tarantino encourages us to believe is true by showing us a flashback—whether Cliff “remembering” or Tarantino showing us “the truth” isn’t clear—of Cliff in skin diver gear on a boat listening to his bikini-clad wife bitching her head off about what a loser he is and Cliff maybe pointing his spear gun at her. Uh, so what is the point of all this? It has no payoff in the rest of the movie, leaving us to feel that Tarantino sort of wishes that people, especially women, would be afraid of him. You know that guy, Quentin Tarantino? Oh, yeah, he looks harmless, but I hear he killed his wife! Seriously!

Once Cliff finishes his reverie, he has a glimpse of the future instead of the past: a weird, hippie-lookin’ dude at the Polanski place asking about the previous tenant. We aren’t clued in, but if you know your back story you know this is Charles Manson.

While all this is going on in and out of Cliff’s head, Rick is having multiple adventures on the Lancer set. The whole Lancer episode is a curious mish-mash of fact and fancy. The “real” Sam Wanamaker did direct the pilot of Lancer. Whether Sam was as exquisite as portrayed seems a pretty open question. The actual Lancer series was a short-lived rip-off of Bonanza, which Tarantino sort of follows and sort of not, and sometimes it seems that Rick’s character “Caleb” is the good guy and the Lancers are the bad guys, and sometimes the other way around. We see several large chunks of the show, presented to us as the audience would see them—no crew or equipment visible—and in fact what we see is not at all what a sixties tv series would look like but rather a sort of ideal spaghetti western that Tarantino probably dreamed of making back in the day.

Before we even get there, however, Rick, dressed in character as “Caleb” has several “pregnant” conversations, the first with the stunningly precocious (and precociously PC) “actor” “Trudi Fraser” (Julia Butters), already in character as “Maribella”. Rick can’t eat lunch because of his makeup and “Maribella” likes to stay lean and hungry before a shoot. “We aim for 100% efficiency. We never achieve it, of course. But it’s the pursuit that counts.”

Rick, conveniently hocking up another loogie, looks like there’s nothing he’d like to pursue other than a whiskey sour or two and maybe a nap, but he takes a seat next to her to read his paperback western—a little surprising since I never saw him as having much appetite for print. Maribella, after correcting Rick’s pronunciation of his character’s last name (it’s not “Dakota”) and generally playing the eight-year-old dominatrix to a tee (though, as an “actor”, she would object to the feminine suffix), asks him what his book is about, and Rick launches into an extended précis: see, there’s this guy, he used to be just the coolest, toughest bronco buster around, but now, well, he’s getting’ old, his back ain’t so good no more, and every day he gets up knowin’ that, every day, he’s less of a man.

Rick tears up/chokes up as he’s delivering this thumbnail—because it’s his fucking story, get it? Maribella, as conveniently obtuse now as she was prescient before, misses the subtext. “It sounds like a really good story!” she exclaims, thinking he’s moved purely by the power of art. “In 15 years you’ll be livin’ it!” Rick gasps, and fortunately she doesn’t get this one either. And so she comforts him, not knowing just how very much he needs her solace. It’s sort of ironic when you think about it. But, you know, touching!

Somewhere about this time we cut to Sharon, who’s finally in motion in a spiffy new Porsche, heading to, where else, a book store! To get a first edition of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles as a gift for Roman!15 Which may be true, or may be the biggest whopper in the movie. Anyway, who would figure Tarantino for a “reader”? Not me!

Once Sharon gets her book, she spots a movie theater showing The Wrecking Crew, one of the “Matt Helms” sixties flicks ripping off James Bond, starring the very tongue in cheek, and semi-over-the-hill Dean Martin, but co-starring, yes, Sharon Tate!16 When she’s inside we see clips of the real film featuring Sharon, first a meet cute with Matt/Dean that features clumsy Sharon falling on her ass and showing us her panties, and later a fight scene between good Sharon and evil Nancy Kwan, with Nancy falling on her ass and showing us her panties! Take that, Asian bitch!

Well, it’s always good to see chicks’ panties, but Sharon’s repeated piano key smiles as the audience conveniently laughs and cheers her on get a little self-congratulatory for my ass. Sharon is clearly depicted as the “new Marilyn,” speaking in the same breathy, little girl voice, utterly stunning and cool, yet innocent and sweet, a combination not often found in the real world.

Rick, meanwhile, is having his second serious sitdown, this time with the budding star of Lancer, Timothy Olyphant as “James Stacy” as gunfighter “Johnny Madrid”, Since James Stacy is supposed to be the new kid on the way up, he might be expected to look younger than Rick, and thus intimidating. In fact, Olyphant is six years older than Leo and pretty much looks it, and Stacy treats Rick with surprising respect. (Surprising to me, at least. Aren’t young actors supposed to be assholes?) But the real point of this is for Jim to ask Rick if it’s true that he was once up for Steve McQueen’s role in The Great Escape, the film that made Steve a star?17

Rick modestly denies the story, or at least strongly soft-pedals it. Me in Steve’s big part? No, not really. Brief possibility, that’s all. Very brief. But then we see, more or less, “Rick’s dream”—clips from the real Great Escape with Leo/Rick visually dubbed in to replace Steve. It could have been him. He could have had Steve’s career. Bullitt? The Thomas Crown Affair? It could have been him. It could have been him. He coulda had class. He coulda been a contendah.18

The thing is, Rick has never been presented to us this way. He’s been the big, strong, good-looking boy with the big, strong shoulders, who could get on and off a horse without falling on his ass, and that’s it. Rick is the kind of pretty boy who cruises through life as long as everything comes easy and then crashes in middle age, like Erik Estrada, not the relentless egomaniacal striver who never takes no for an answer no matter how many times he gets it, like William Shatner.

In the meantime, finally, Cliff makes actual contact with one of the hippie chicks, the cute ‘n wanton Pussycat (Margaret Qualley), swinging her tight little butt around like she owns the world. The thing is, she probably does.19 He agrees to give her a lift, but won’t let her give him a blowjob, “explaining” that he doesn’t want to go to jail, although we can tell that the real reason is that he’s a gentlemen. Cliff has the definite vibe of the old-fashioned B-movie cowboy hero that I grew up watching on tv, utterly chaste and emotionally devoted only to his horse (Cliff has Brandy, of course), too complete in himself to even consider sharing his essence with anything as, well, as common, as a woman.

Cliff gets a jolt when he learns that Pussycat is living at the “Spahn movie ranch”, where Cliff and Rick used to film Bounty Law. He explains to her that he used to be a stunt man there, allowing her to explain to us that stunt men are the real heroes, because what they do is real, they aren’t phonies like actors. Just in case we couldn’t figure that part out for ourselves.

Well, back to Rick now, I think, and get to see an actual chunk of Lancer, filmed far more extravagantly, and elegantly, than any tv western would have been, yet with a pretty much standard script, though with some pretty spectacular behind the back shooting from Johnny Madrid, putting an uppity “businessman” in his place. Better stick to your ledgers, pencilneck!

The bit rumbles on, with plenty of moody, “intense” attitude from Rick, a seen it all, done it all, existential cowpoke who might remind some us of another Rick, the one who ran Rick's Café Américain down Casablanca way. But midway through the scene he starts blowing his lines and ends up stalking back to his trailer (but would he really have one?) to explode at himself in a predicable yet enjoyable scene. You goddamned asshole! You’re going to quit drinking, you hear me, you goddamned alcoholic! God damn it!

Well, back to Cliff, I think, in what is easily the most impressive section of the film, the visit to the Spahn ranch to see Charlie’s angels. The girls are beautifully creepy, staring at the intruder like so many marmosets, Dakota Fanning particularly memorable as ruthless boss lady Squeaky Fromme, who in real life was not involved directly in any of the murders but became notorious as the “spokeswoman” for the Manson family during his trial, and more notorious several years later when she tried to assassinate President Ford.

Squeaky sends a girl to fetch “Tex”, Charles Watson, played by Austin Butler, who played the lead role in the Sharon Tate murders, to check out the new guy. Tex arrives on horseback, suitably enough, and, in some serious dick measuring, Cliff reminisces about his visit to Houston, where he spent two weeks on a chain gang. “That was the last time I broke a policeman’s jaw, I can tell you that!” Although I expect that if you broke a policeman’s jaw in Houston, Texas back in the fifties you probably wouldn’t live to talk about it.

Pussycat really digs guys who break cops’ jaws, and it must sound good to Tex as well, so he rides off, getting back to his job as guide for dudes who want to visit the mountains. But once he’s gone, Cliff starts to get a little pushy. Is old George Spahn still around? Sure would like to visit old George and see how he’s doing. The girls all tell him no, clearly infuriated by his decision to penetrate beneath the surface of their groupthink. Word gets back to Squeaky, holed up in what Cliff knows is George’s old house, so she sends all the girls away and tries to face down Cliff, but he faces her down instead and finally has a thoroughly creepy conversation with old George (Bruce Dern), blind and helpless and utterly dependent on the girls.

Cliff, utterly frustrated by George’s utter dependence—he can’t be “saved” because he doesn’t want to be—strides out to meet the glaring, feral eyes of the assembled family. As he passes, Pussycat leaps onto the hood of a car and screams “George isn’t blind! You’re the one who’s blind!”

Cliff keeps on walking, only to find out that Rick’s Caddy has a flat, thanks to a giggly, half-naked Jesus clone with hillbilly teeth. Definitely time to kick some goddamn hippie ass! Something Tarantino clearly digs almost as much as smelling chick’s feet.

Cliff grabs the punk by the hair and pummels him half to death. That’ll teach you! Now fix the goddamn flat! “Gypsy” (Lena Dunham) sends one of the girls off on a horse to get Tex—something she might have thought of earlier—and Tex comes riding up in an excellent display of horsemanship, that is as gratuitous as the beatdown Cliff gives the Jesus dude,20 because by the time he gets back Cliff is gone.

Finally (I guess), we cut back to Rick, headed back on the set for one last shot at redemption. Spaghetti western “bullfighter/showdown” music blares operatically on the soundtrack, as Rick walks through the soundstage for the final showdown, the one between Rick Dalton and ... Rick Dalton! Can he cut it, or is he history?

In Rick’s big scene, he’s kidnapped Maribella, holding her on his lap with his six-shooter pointed at her head while he holds forth in a swaggering conversation with “Scott Lancer” (Luke Perry in his last role, as the actor Wayne Maunder). Since Rick/Caleb clearly has the upper hand, fancy-pants Scott (he apparently went to Harvard) can do nothing other than listen to Caleb’s trash talk, which Caleb concludes by throwing Maribella violently to the floor in a display of his ruthlessness. Cut! Cut! Rick made it all the way through the scene! In flying colors!

“I didn’t hurt you, did I, darlin’?” Rick asks.

“I’m fine,” Maribella reassures him, popping up to show him her arm. “See, I have padding!”

Sam Wanamaker (Sam the director) rushes up.

“Rick, you were fabulous! Exactly what I wanted! Evil, sexy Hamlet!”

Rick sits there, a little stunned by the outpouring of passion he’s achieved.

“Rick, Rick, your adlibs were amazing! ‘Beaner bronco-buster’?21 Why, that’s triple alliteration! And throwing the little girl on the floor! Beautiful!”

Yeah, but, uh, if the toss was an adlib, why was Maribella wearing padding?22 Anyway, tossing an eight-year-old around like a ping-pong ball as an adlib sounds a little dubious to me. Good thing her parents weren’t around!

But Tarantino isn’t done gilding the lily. Trudi/Maribella, whose dedication to her craft makes Stanislavski look like a slacker, tells him “that’s the best acting I’ve ever seen!”

Which is all a little silly, because no one, but no one has ever suggested that he had any real talent as an actor, and he’s never expressed any interest in his “craft”, other than not looking like an asshole and not losing his paycheck. But Tarantino somehow can’t resist violating Rick’s real character in order to make him look heroic, a goddamn Laurence Olivier in chaps!

After all this, we have a grotesquely awkward “transition”, narrated by Kurt Russell, about Rick and Cliff’s excellent Italian adventure, which one can very easily believe was originally intended to take up a good chunk of the film, probably extending its running time to something close to three and half hours, but, for whatever reason, that doesn’t happen. Instead, we get a few cutesy movie posters, and a few little anti-PC snickers directed at American Indians, who seem to rub Quentin the wrong way for whatever reason, and also Rick gets married to this Italian broad, who snores a lot, just like Sharon. As for “acting”—evil, sexy Hamlet and all that—well, Quentin seems to have forgotten all about it, and Rick is back in character as the self-indulgent bad boy who loafs through life, traveling first class thanks to his broad shoulders and pretty face, while devoted Cliff sits in coach and chugs Bloody Marys, because, it seems, Rick’s cutting him loose. Can’t afford a wife and a bottom at the same time!

Once Rick and “Francesca” (Lorenza Izzo) are installed in Rick’s old place, Russell continues his tiresome narration, setting up that fateful night when all four story lines will coincide. Rick and Cliff head out for one last celebratory drunk and then head back, Russell constantly stressing to us, for some reason, that Rick and Cliff are like totally blind, stinking drunk, even though they don’t really act that way. Francesca’s already in bed (she stayed home, naturally), Rick’s mixing margheritas, and Cliff’s taking Brandy for a walk. S/He’s there, for some reason (really, of course, for plot reasons). Cliff decides he’ll smoke this LSD-soaked cigarette that Pussycat sold him, even though, the web informs me, “smoking” LSD destroys its hallucinogenic power (because the heat causes it to break down chemically).

While Cliff’s gone, Tex and three of the Manson girls—Susan Atkins (Mikey Madison), Patricia Krenwinkle (Madisen Beaty), and Linda Kasabian (Maya Hawke)—arrive to do the Polanski household in, pulling up in a noisy, busted muffler car. Rick stumbles out with his carafe full of margheritas to tell those goddamn hippies to get off his goddamn private drive and smoke their goddamn pot someplace else. Tex, apparently not wanting to have to kill this guy, backs the car down the drive, while Rick takes his margheritas out to one of his favorite retreats, the chair floating in his kidney-shaped pool.

The hippies reconnoiter. “You know who that was? Rick Dalton!” “Rick Dalton? Rick fucking Dalton?” “Rick Fucking Dalton!” “Fuck! You know what? Guys like that, they taught us to murder. I say, let’s murder the murderers!”

As it turns out, Kasabian bails, driving away in the car,23 but Tex, with a six-shooter shoved in his pants, and Patricia and Susan, armed with knives, head up the drive.

Cliff, by this time, is back inside the house, fixing Brandy dinner when the kids show up. After some cutesy, high on LSD antics, the action finally starts, Tex pointing his six-shooter at Cliff’s head. Brandy, flying through the air, disarms him and then fixes her teeth in his balls while Cliff brains Atkins with a can of Wolf’s Tooth. Krenwinkle stabs Cliff in the thigh, causing him to grab her by the hair and smash her face into a variety of unyielding surfaces, which starts to look a little sadistic on Tarantino’s part after the third or fourth smash. Somewhere along the line Brandy switches from Tex to Atkins, dragging her around the room like the shark in the beginning of Jaws. Tex stumbles to his feet and tries to stab Cliff, but gets stabbed instead, then gets knocked down and then (I think) Cliff breaks his neck. But then Atkins gets hold of Tex’s gun and shoots Cliff, causing him to fall over as though he were dead. The girl staggers to her feet, her face covered in blood and screaming like a maniac, and stumbles out to the pool, waving Tex’s gun and firing off a round or two, finally catching Rick’s attention. Guess what, headphones!

Atkins crashes into the pool, still firing the gun. Rick sobers up quickly and, finding his trusty flamethrower—you didn’t see that coming? Amateur!—roasts the bitch.

The police arrive to figure things out. Guess what? Cliff ain’t dead! Sounding awfully coherent for a guy who’s drunk, high on LSD, stabbed in the thigh, and shot, he tells Rick not to come to the hospital with him but tend to his lady. Because greater love hath no bottom than to give up his life, not for his top, but for his top’s lady!

“You’re a good friend, Cliff,” Rick tells him.

“I try,” says Cliff.

Hey! Didn’t we hear that line before?

But the good news isn’t over yet! Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch), one of Sharon’s houseguests, hears the commotion and asks Rick what’s happening. Rick fills him in and, one way or another, Sharon hears their conversation and calls down on the intercom to invite Rick up for a drink. And so the gates to the magic kingdom—the magic kingdom of A-listers and Playboy Mansion attenders—open for Rick. Let the pool parties begin!

Afterwords I Movie Violence

When I first heard that Tarantino was making a movie about “old” Hollywood starring Leo and Brad I was intrigued. When I learned that Leo would be living next door to Sharon Tate, not so much. I hated Tarantino’s chef d'œuvre Pulp Fiction, and I detested Kill Bill Volume I, and one thing I did not want to see was Tarantino’s take on the Tate/Manson murders. When I learned that Quentin was rewriting history—in tune, really, with my own squeamish predilections—I thought I would take a chance. In any event, there are lots of violent films that I do like, including Bonnie & Clyde and Terminator 2. What’s the difference between “good violence” and “bad violence” other than the eye of the beholder?

Well, not much, obviously. The “sword blade through the milk carton and the mouth and out the back of the head” shot from Terminator 2 is “classic”,24 but you wouldn’t like it if someone did that to you, would you?

Much of the violence in Once Upon A Time is gratuitous in that it’s clearly wish fulfillment on Tarantino’s part, but there’s little that I found outright sadistic, which is what I really object to. It’s notably less sadistic than the coming features that I saw advertised with the film—It Chapter 2, Hide and Seek, and Joker. Obviously, audiences like sadistic.

Afterwords II Helter Skelter Despite the “massive” sixties soundtrack, in one sense the silence is deafening, because there is, unsurprisingly, nothing from the “White Album”. Like several million other people, Charles Manson thought the Beatles recorded this famous double album just for him, and that every song had a particular meaning. “Helter Skelter” (in Great Britain, an amusement park ride) was for Manson the signal for the start of a race war in America, which would some how allow him to seize power, in some manner. The Tate murders were intended, more or less, to provoke that war because the police were intended to believe that black revolutionaries had committed them. Vincent Bugliosi, the district attorney who prosecuted Manson and the others, wrote a book, with Curt Gentry, Helter Skelter, about the case, which was later turned into a television mini-series.

Esmé was thirteen. Making “Trudi Fraser” eight seems really a stretch to me. ↩︎

Did Tarantino invent “fake” sixties tunes as well? Not impossible, but it seems unlikely. ↩︎

Word can spell “Sestero” but not “Wiseau”? Tommy won’t like that! Greg’s book, The Disaster Artist, which he co-wrote with Tom Bissell, revealed to the world the bizarre backstory behind Wiseau’s cult classic di tutti cult classics, The Room, and is definitely superior to Franco’s film, which derives half its considerable charm by simply recreating classic scenes from Wiseau’s ineffable creation. ↩︎

Dunno if Tarantino just wanted the car to sound cool or if he was parodying this frequent device as used by other directors. Anyone who knows anything about cars knows that tiny, underpowered English sports cars do not sound like this. As dubious car enthusiast Mort Sahl put it, “MGs are great if you don’t mind being blown off by housewives in Plymouth station wagons.” Jews are into cars? ↩︎

Marvin says “kinescope” rather than “tape” because consumer videotape machines didn’t exist in 1969. The networks used tape, but Marvin would have needed a film version, a “kinescope”, which is what the networks used before the development of videotape, to view using a projector. *Once Upon A Time” is filled with anachronisms, but film buff Tarantino gets this one right. However, the “Hullabaloo” clip is filmed in wide-screen, which of course is totally inaccurate. Leo’s performance looks as though it were based on the persona of fifties super-square Pat Boone. ↩︎ ↩︎

I have no grasp of LA geography, so I have no idea of where Rick and Cliff are. ↩︎

The Karmann Ghia was simply an Italian-bodied Volkswagen bug. If Cliff had the “big” engine (presumably, he did), he could hit 90. If not, 75 was probably the top. ↩︎

Brad addresses Brandy as “man” in this scene even though the actual dog, "Sayuri", is a female and is referred to as such in the final scenes. ↩︎

A place like Rick’s would of course require constant upkeep to avoid turning into a mess, but, as is so often the case in film, the place somehow cleans itself. ↩︎

Jay Leno described his one Mansion visit as “a lot of middle-aged men hitting on a lot of young women.” ↩︎

Cass Elliot grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, which is next to Falls Church, where I grew up. On the M&Ps’ cover of the Martha and the Vandellas hit “Dancin’ in the Street”, the M&Ps fade out the song with the list of the cities where they’re, you know, dancing in the street—“Baltimore and DC now”—with the following barely audible dialogue: “Alexandria?” “In Virginia, Virginia.” “Falls Church?” “Never heard of it.” Both are suburbs of Washington, DC. Falls Church is supposedly the setting for at least two tv shows, JAG and The Americans. ↩︎

Three of their songs are heard on the soundtrack, though they only sing one of them—“Twelve Thirty”. Both “Twelve Thirty” and “Straight Shooter” are explicitly about heroin addiction, while the third and most famous, “California Dreamin’”, strongly hints at it. The sheet music for “Straight Shooter” was found on a piano at the scene of the actual Manson/Tate murders. ↩︎

“Stella shits!” exclaimed Jonathan Swift regarding Esther Johnson, his life-long obsessive love, whom he first met when she was eight. Quentin seems to hate women yet want to smell their feet. ↩︎

In an interview, Tarantino has “explained” that in “real life” Cliff would kick Bruce Lee’s ass because war hero Cliff was a Green Beret. Since Cliff, like Rick, is supposed to be pushing 40, he would have to have been a “war hero” in Korea. Combat operations in Korea ended with the 1954 armistice. Special forces troops never wore the green beret until 1955, and it was almost immediately discontinued until revived in 1961. They received enormous publicity in the sixties. I don’t know why they’ve been supplanted by the Seals as the ultimate bad asses. ↩︎

Anyone who likes books likes first editions, but I very much dislike the use of first editions as a way to make books expensive status symbols. Go Kindle! (And, in any event, if I had a copy of a 90-year-old first edition, I wouldn’t carry it unprotected in my sweaty little hand, as Sharon does.) ↩︎

I rented one of Matt’s/Dean’s films for some purpose—I can’t remember why—and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t The Wrecking Crew, but it was so slow-paced and boring that I couldn’t watch it, il Dino wandering around like he’d had more whiskey sours than Rick Dalton. ↩︎

McQueen started out in tv as the star of Wanted Dead or Alive, the very obvious “inspiration” for Bounty Law. McQueen, a very big star in 1969, thanks to Bullit and Crown Affair, which were in fact his only two films to be remembered, was supposedly “targeted” by Manson as part of his plan to cause the U.S. to erupt in a race war. Which may be why he’s such a presence in this film. Or not. ↩︎

“Instead of a bum, which is what I am”—Marlon Brando’s lines from On the Waterfront, once among the most quoted in American film, bitterly complaining to his brother, played by Rod Steiger, that his career as a boxer was ruined when he was forced, by his brother, to throw a fight. ↩︎

Qualley, who has had extensive ballet training, is probably the best dancer in the whole film. ↩︎

It would also likely leave the horse exhausted for the rest of the day. Horse races only last a mile or so because horses can’t gallop for much longer than that. ↩︎

Not exactly that, probably, anyway, three “b’s”. ↩︎

Also, the camera backs up to keep Maribella in the shot, which it wouldn’t have done if Cliff’s action had been an adlib. ↩︎

In “real life”, Kasabian did not drive away but remained behind as a lookout. Kasabian was involved—always as a bystander, she claimed—in many of the murders committed by Manson and his followers, but was able to avoid prison time by serving as the key witness against the others. ↩︎

“God damn it! How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t drink out of the carton?” It’s “nice” that the T-1000 stays in character as the past her limit housewife as “she” pulls her blade/hand from the dumb shit’s head. ↩︎