So how we feelin' fellas?

The greatest demonstration of love and human goodness in Blatty's faith trilogy isn't Kane killing himself for Cutshaw, nor is it Karras killing himself (twice), it's that bit where Kinderman gets Dyer a penguin plushie. Peace and love on planet earth

EVE BEST as PRINCESS RHAENYS TARGARYEN in HOUSE OF THE DRAGON II DRIFTMARK 1x07

Thinking about how this confirmed Dan Heng and Blade put aside their many many many differences that one time so they could beat up a kid nearly to death. Guys...

i miss being here :((

Revenant is soooo mid which is disappointing because I was looking forward to it due to the actors and writer (this isn’t a flop like Jirisan, which I gave up on after 2–3 episodes, but it’s not really good). BUT. BUT!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m suffering from “poor little meow meow middle-aged man” deficiency and Professor Yeom Haesang suffers so much. I can’t believe I was like “Oh...okay” about his casting because I’m planting my palms against his windows, peering at him in his little cage and being fed because he’s had the worst life ever and it keeps getting worse. HAESANG *____*<3

I gave up and had to google how to find Cazador’s house 🙈

I’ve spent a week doing fuck all around the city and searching the sewers, breaking into every house with a door, and the one building I needed to go to I thought ah there’s nothing in there, I won’t even bother to check

I'm seriously hanging on by a thread right now I might just go drop dead 😭

It's sort of ironic how fans often link the leaf 🍁 to Dan Heng, considering "Feng" means "maple", but it's also so fitting

one thing abt rise that i'm never gonna stop thinking about is how perfect the moment was where raph fell knowing that his brothers would catch him

me when i'm tired and hurting and scared and angry and no one is coming to help me and i don't say that to be negative or guilt anyone who might see this vent i say it as a fact because no one is going to help i have to help myself and i don't want to i don't want to help myself i want to lean on someone for once without being taken advantage of and i want to talk about my anger and express it and get it out in a healthy manner and i want to talk about how scared i am how my health terrifies me and i don't really know what's going on and i know my body to the best extent i can i and i have worked endlessly trying to conserve energy so i can do basic tasks like dishes and bathing myself and i have been working so fucking hard to fight the internalized ableism in me that screams that everything shouldn't be this hard and i should just Be Able to do these things and i don't have anything to actually fight these thoughts! because i don't actually know what's wrong and i have tried for the past three years. three fucking years. to make this one appointment. just one. to talk to a different professional and tell them i need help i and living less than half my life and i can't take it most days i can't take this cycle of deteriorating physical health into deteriorating mental health and round and round. i'm exhausted. i can't do the things i enjoy. i work so hard to try to do them occasionally. and i work hard to try and appreciate and enjoy it. and it's just hard.

i just want to vent tonight. i'm stressed. we've been having small bug problems lately. and then there's the waterlogged part of the carpet where we don't know where the water is coming from. and tonight i saw what might have been a roach and. i grew up between my mom and aunts place, and my aunts was beyond covered with bugs. at night it was horrifying and finding a place to sleep sucked ass. so it just. fucking triggered me, and i'm so tired and hurting but i pulled out appliances and things and sprayed down bugs and spots i've seen them in and. so i sat down and i was already overwhelmed and i couldn't find the remote so i could put something on and relax. and i did find it. but i just had to sit and work on breathing and cry a bit. i'm home all the time and i constantly am thinking about this. i'm so stressed about it. OH and it was made sooooo much worse because for the first time i saw one in our room. and. that nearly sent me into a panic attack. we have been so strict with having no food or anything like that in the bedroom. and it didn't do anything. there was still a bug. where there's one, there's so many more. i am. going to try and fucking relax.

This morning, I finished episode 6 of Once Again thinking about that Alfred Lord Tennyson quote that goes “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never have loved at all” and I wondered: is it true for Shin Jaewoo?

At 10, he had his first crush on Kang Jihoon, an adult who literally saved him, was kind and caring, who was his hero. Then, he spent 15 years (more than half his life!) crushed by the culpability of that man’s murder – murder that happened in front of him as he was being kidnapped again like holy trauma Batman!!

Now he is 25, still carrying that love, and that guilt that is clearly heavily impacting his life and twisting his sense of self (“somewhere you belong and I don’t”? How ready he is to sacrifice himself as a child to not have to live through that pain again???). And then! He gets back to Kang Jihoon, he gets to spend time with him as a fellow adult, finds out that he is also beautiful, and cute, gets to kiss him, to be hugged by him, and he falls in love again, and he is being loved in return. 

But so far all the clues we’ve been given suggest there is no happy ending for them, that Jaewoo is not going to be able to change the past because everything he’s done so far is already part of what happened (he remembers his scary older self talking to him, also the killer taking his knife that looks like the one used to kill Jihoon). Tragedy is coming for them, and Jaewoo is going to lose Jihoon again isn’t he? And then what? How is he going to keep going with the renewed guilt - he couldn’t forgive his child self, how the hell is he going to forgive himself now if he isn't able to save Jihoon? - with the renewed grief? When the pain is going to be exponentially worse than it had been for the past 15 years? 

Is there a point where you go through enough heartbreak that you can’t trust that loving was worth the pain? Where you can’t believe any more that even if it was ripped from you again and again, it was better than never having known love? Is there a way for Jaewoo to not reach that point by the end of his story? I sure hope so but man, that's a very thin hope...

I accidentally fell asleep for about 8 hours which means just as we were maybe getting back into some kind of routine, our sleep schedule has once again been flipped, and by this point I'm fully aware that being diurnal makes us feel like we're just permanently jetlagged and completely fucks up our ability to remember to take our meds even with reminders - 🍬

I'm falling behind on reviews for some of the Buffyverse books I've read! Uh-oh! Going to attempt to try and change that now.

So, "Night of the Living Rerun" is definitely the best season 1 Buffy book, hands-down. It's not even a contest. This book is probably even way better than a number of some of the season 1 episodes. In fact, I kind of wish it was a season 1 episode.

The basic premise of this book is reincarnation, basically? Buffy, Giles, Xander, and one of the villains of the book keep having dreams to the 16th century--the Salem witch trials--where, IIRC, the bad guys had done stuff pertaining to the Master back then (did he have an incarnation back then?), in trying to get him to rise. And wouldn't you know, that it's the same thing again?

Buffy is the reincarnation of a Slayer, and Giles is the reincarnation of a Watcher. But what's really interesting, is that Xander is the reincarnation of a witch (which definitely freaks him out).

And the entire book, you're led to believe that Willow isn't one of the reincarnations. And she's left feeling pretty bummed about that, even though Buffy tries to tell her that she didn't want to be a part of this whole mess.

But at the end of the book, she does dream and realizes that she's the reincarnation of the preacher that the witch was in love with. That the witch used a spell to try and make him love her at first, it's true, but such spells don't last that long and he came to truly love her (and later realized this). And at first, he wanted to dismiss everything about her (and to allow her to burn) like he thought he should do, but in realizing that there must be some darkness in him to love her, he realized he couldn't do it. The witch then comforted him to not feel bad to discover there was darkness in him, as there was darkness in everyone. And they ended up together. And the book ends with the line, "Willow slept happily that night." (Because she's obviously in love with Xander in this point in the story, and her past self and his lived happily ever after, it would seem.)

I can definitely get why some people might think that the book ends in a WillowXander way--or might think that that's kind of soulmate-y with them there--and perhaps it is. But for me, they're not exactly those same people in their next life, and it just explains why they're best friends in their new life. And in their new life, they discover new things about themselves (like Willow with her sexuality)--because they are different--and find people who are even better for them romantically. But they are still linked, and will forever be important to each other as the best of friends.

I feel like it even sort of makes sense why Xander, a witch in a past life, wouldn't do anything with magic in the new one (because one, he isn't exactly that person anymore. And two, because hearing all of this scared him), and why "Willow"--someone opposed to it all at first--would then gravitate to it: because "she" was finally starting to accept the darkness in "herself" and within others in "her" past life.

Also, "Xander" once again used a love spell on someone, in this past life. LOL

And the irony, that in their old life, "Xander" wanted "Willow," and she at first wasn't interested in him, but in the new one, Willow wanted Xander, but he didn't want her at first.

Edit: I could even somewhat see Willow being a strong religious figure in a past life, since she's a somewhat practicing Jew in her current one.

Another thing about this book, is that it has a plot about the news almost finding out the weird stuff happening in Sunnydale and exposing it. And I feel like that's a trope that always happens in series like this, and I'm surprised it didn't happen in the TV show proper, so I did enjoy seeing it here.

That's about it... I feel like I mostly talked about the Willow and Xander past lives thing here (though I probably should have said more about other things), but oh well.

another chapter of dr1 end rewrite fic into the fic backlog.

one chapter left and the epilogue.

...and then the remnants chapters. i'll get to those later. XD

in internet posts it is easy to cut them out of your life. they are hurting you! they aren't listening to you!

they held your hair back. they lent you lipstick. they held your hand at the train station and got you home safe. they rounded on your bully, got loud, said get fucked, spitting-mad in your defense.

they also cut the hair off again. told you that you should really think twice before wearing something like that. took you for granted. took your insecurities and threw them in your face again.

you know logically it should be easy. all the internet advice comments always read it will feel better. like an equation - if a person is rotten, you just remove them. you pull the tooth that's hurting.

but it was never a big flare-up moment. you don't live in a sitcom. they never tried to take your boyfriend or steal from your apartment. they showed up to birthdays and they wrote songs about you and bring you water without you asking. once you found out they carry an emergency inhaler for you, even though you haven't had an asthma attack in years - just in case.

where is the line? people fuck up. sometimes they fuck up badly. sometimes people have raw personalities, like a powerline, and being around them is dangerous. addicting. sometimes they can't help themselves, but you know they're trying. sometimes they are just rough-around-the-edges. sometimes they don't even realize how they sounded when they said that. sometimes it's just - you've both loved each other for so long now, the way this thing hurts goes back to the root.

and that's the fucked up part. you have pushed your fingers against the sweetheart of memory. things these days are electric, tense, harrowing. they didn't used to be. there were a lot of good days in there. sometimes you want to just close your eyes and say can this be over yet? do we still need to be fighting?

doing that would give up any chance you get of getting an apology, but you don't always know that you need an apology, you love them. once they flaked on your birthday party. once they told you to get over it, people are always dying. they also let you crash on their couch for a week after the breakup, handfeeding you when you were so sad you couldn't eat. they are also judgmental about everything, occasionally react to banal statements with an attitude that is weird and fiery. they also love you like a lighthouse sometimes, so strong they cut the storm like lightning.

but the problem is that you might be storm. you might be the thing that needs breaking. what if you are two forces who are desperately, horribly drawn to each other, shaped by the other person's passions, and both good for each other and bad in equal measure.

what if you're both just people, and you're no saint neither.

just cut them off! swallowing the saltwater, you catch yourself in the mirror. you've been shaking more than usual. there's an ache in you that is oblique, loud, impossible to soothe. is this what it looks like? when life is "easier"?

your mouth will always have a hole, is the thing, if you remove the tooth.