#yeah the song is about environmentalism but with the power of imagination if can also be about being torn apart on a daily basis | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

darkestwolfx · 4 years

Text

Fight or Flight - Re-Review #38

The perfect scenery for an episode which is taking it’s title from an old saying relating to the natural instincts of animals and humans - the fight or fight instinct; whether you stay and hold your ground (a little like Kayo), or whether you try and run in fear of your life (I can imagine Gordon having to do this quite often when he is caught pranking his brothers). Oh, but did we mention, it’s actually in the air? Yeah, it took two minutes to get to that point!

So, because this episode darts around all over the place, I’m doing this review (again) in sections according to character and storyline, because I like everything to be all neat and tidy, okay? I’m thinking of all of you here by giving you ease of access to a complicated and jam packed episode - you should be thanking me.

Also, I will apologise in advance now for the fact that this review is mostly picture based - literally I think this section here is the wordiest of all.

So, moving away from the ominous cargo hold, which is no doubt bound to be full of idiots - because let’s face it, that is just the way that things work in TAG - let’s start with the fact that we are opening in space again! Yay, John’s domain. And the scenery is pretty damn right on this one. I love how if you look really carefully you can make out the different shapes of the continents below.

And here we have a space spider - someone call Gordon and Alan, it’s an alien! Oh wait, no, hang up, it’s only Brains. A rather nervous Brains - obviously the ‘flight’ part behind the title of this episode. It’s nice to see him up in (or on) Thunderbird Five again. It happened in TOS in ‘The Cham-Cham’.

“I’m just having a little trouble adjusting to being weightless.”

“It was the same for me when I started. You get used to it.”

But of course, they can’t even manage to do repairs and maintenance without something coming there way!

“Your databases are offline because I started a systems check. It’s ok, I backed everything up onto MAX.”

“Atta boy, MAX.”

Thank goodness for MAX, ey?

And here’s the situation;

“A cargo carrier experienced a missives systems failure. The ship is on a crash course for Anderbad City.”

Anderbad City first appeared in the TOS episode ‘Perils of Penelope’, with Anderbad being a play on Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s surname. It was given notable features such as the Anderbad Tunnel and the Anderbad Express, but it was never shown in full. TAG have added a Flight Control Tower, so we can assume that Anderbad is a big city with travel at the centre.

So, here we go, I thought I’d go back to the cargo hold first which is a little backwards I know, but I’m doing it because... just because okay? Reviewers choice.

Run for your lives! The machinery is striking back!

Scott nearly getting hit and then running back for the flight deck is absolutely hilarious.

“We have a new problem.”

And I won’t deal with that part, I’ll choose to fly the zeppelin, is probably what Scott was thinking. Because, yes, that option seems so much better!

“Looks like we’ll need that back up, Kayo.”

It was probably a good thing that she was ready and waiting in this instance, because Scott couldn’t have done that much multitasking, great though he is.

“How are you guys doing in there?”

“Oh you know, just playing hide and seek with a giant bone crushing claw. You know, no big deal.”

Yeah, you’re right, the bigger deal is that you might die anyway, so playing hide and seek is probably the least of your worries right about now. In fact, that might be preferable depending on your viewpoint. At least that might be marginally more entertaining than sitting and waiting for death to come.

“How does a giant, mechanical loading claw take it’s tea?”

“I don’t know.”

“With a pinch of sugar.”

“That’s the worst joke I’ve ever heard.”

I have to admit, I’m with her on that one. Who even thought that joke up! And who heard that joke and then thought ‘hey, that’s a good one to go in the script!’ I didn’t even laugh, I will be perfectly honest.

“Don’t worry. I’ll get them out.”

“Why would I worry?”

Hmm, maybe because it’s a life threatening situation? Just hazarding a guess here.

Kayo should be happy anyway - she got to show off her bad-guy chasing gymnastic skills, even if it was only against machinery.

“International Rescue. Time to go. Follow me!”

“You’re kidding right?”

“No, I’m pretty serious.”

“We can’t jump and flip around like you just did!”

No, I don’t imagine you can.

“I’ll distract the claw so you can make a run for it.”

Literally the point of this episode, isn’t it? Running for it?

I have a theme song for it - look up ‘Run for It’ by (you won’t regret it).

“Where does that lead?”

“Emergency exit.”

“This definitely qualifies as an emergency.”

Hell yes, I would think it does!

“Kayo, you need to get out.”

“Great idea, Scott, thanks for the suggestion!”

No need to be sarcastic - he’s just looking out for you, remember?

As a side note, look at the robot! I want one... I bet its more environmentally friendly than my car.

“The ship’s loosing altitude faster than my projections. But why?”

“It looks like the liquid hydrogen fuel cells have cracked open.”

“And I’m guessing that’s bad?”

Yes, Scott, that’s bad.

“The tanks keep the fuel isolated. but if an electrical fire starts on impact, you’ll get what we scientists call a big ka-boom. Which is also what my insides feel like.”

“What’s the time frame?”

“John says I’ll feel better once I get used to zero gravity.”

“I think he means before the zeppelin crashes.”

“Oh right. Factoring in altitude, wind speed, ship weight, adjusting for cargo, and letting x equal the rate of fuel loss, we get... oh my!”

“Scott, you’re gonna’ need to move. Fast.”

“FAB. And Brains, that means feel better soon.”

Yeah... that conversation gets me every time. They never said how fast Scott needed to move, but hey, it’s okay, because he listened. Considering the zeppelin appeared seconds later.

“Thunderbird two could nudge the ship and change course that way.”

Of course that is the first suggestion that Scott comes up with. Just shove it out the way and be done with it. Good plan.

“I would strongly caution against that. Those leaking fuel cells could easily rupture.”

Or not.

“Ka-boom, got it. Ok, I’m gonna’ need to get on board. Maybe I can regain some control of this thing.”

Yay, we get to see Scott pilot a zeppelin! That’s a change.

“Hey, Virgil, just taking a little air!”

“I’ve got Thunderbird One slaved to my controls.”

Yeah... because a line like that always means good things are coming. I love how Virgil at least knew what it meant - take Thunderbird One.

“All systems critical. We’re on auxiliary power with almost no altitude control or steering. I can’t risk landing with that fuel leak. I’m gonna’ point her down and bail out. She’ll crash safely into the lake before reaching the city.”

You can’t say something like that without expecting trouble.

“Crash course set, ready to bail out.”

“Hello? Anyone there? We’re stuck! We can’t get out! Trapped!”

“Hello? Can you hear me? John, did you get that? I thought everyone was off this ship?”

“Me too. Hang on. The numbers don’t match. They messed up their count.”

Great! And so we revert to the cargo hold, which I’ve already covered.

“Do we have time to get the crew out before we reach the city?”

“Negative. You’re gonna’ have to fly over the city, and bring it down in the open countryside on the other side.”

“We’ll never make it. We’re still losing height.”

“If you offload 90% of the fuel, there’s a chance you’ll be light enough to make it over the city.”

A chance? I suppose we have to take it because there’s no other option really.

“Ok, I’ll keep flying. Virgil, you start pumping out that fuel.”

Yeah, because that will buy us lots of non-existent time! At least it’s better than nothing.

“Oh, it’s going to be tight.”

“Tight, but we should make it tight? Or John’s space suit tight?”

“I don’t know if I know how to answer that question in a way that’s reassuring.”

“Space suit tight.”

Scott’s doing a really good job of flying under pressure here, I would just like to say.

“I think it should be enough.”

“You think or you know?”

“I think I know.”

Very reassuring Brains. I feel very non-reassured.

“That should do it, Scott.”

“Got to be sure.”

“Now, Scott, get out!”

Listen to John, for goodness sake, Scott.

Fly for your lives! There’s an explosion!

You know, Wolfie definitely understands the reason for this episode title now. They were being really clever - well done Dan Berlinka.

In my opinion, this is one of the closest calls that they’ve showed us, and I really appreciated that. TOS did it a few times in ‘City of Fire’ and ‘Danger at Ocean Deep’ (I’m talking proper close calls here, because I know there are many near misses), and TAG have done it quite often with Gordon, but this one was a really nice show of skill and panic, and absolute expertise at the end of it all.

“Yes! He made it!”

Hooray! We’ve succeeded! Let’s all go home!

After a hug... but maybe remember to not hug John... he looks like he’s feeling a little awkward there, Brains.

“Nice work everyone. We limited the damage at Anderbad city to one billboard.”

That poor billboard. But yes, successful.

And look what’s waiting at home!

I was wondering where Gordon and Alan had got to... “on a supply run”... yeah right, who’s great idea was that. They only have themselves to blame for what the boys bring back. Interestingly, they never said where Scott and Alan were at the end of the last episode (and I was waiting for that), so it was nice to actually see the pair pop up right at the end.

“Hey guys!”

“How was the supply run?”

“Routine. But wait till you see what me and Alan picked up at an antiques store on the way back.”

“It’s the same game John used to play all the time.”

A nice little reference back to ‘Skyhook’ here. Continuity at it’s best.

“You grab prizes with the claw!”

Yes, we do have eyes, thank you, Alan.

“Who wants to go first?”

Cue mass exodus of the lounge... And a tumbleweed to roll through in the wake of it all. (Actually, could some one get me a tumbleweed please? I feel like my cat would appreciate it. Shes called Munchies, by the way.)

“What did I say?”

“We should have brought some prizes.”

This is funny, because Alan probably said that, and Gordon probably ‘ignored’ him.

“Oh, claw machine needs prizes!”

“No wonder they didn’t want to play!”

I don’t think that was quite it, but hey, let’s not disappoint them anymore. Look at Gordon’s face.

P.S. This ended up more wordy and longer than I had expected! I’ve outdone myself for midnight pieces of work (and a very dodgy internet connection).

13 notes · View notes

disregardcanon · 6 years

Text

so..... raven cycle characters in the good place au? featuring pynch and chengsey but not in large doses

contains major spoilers for the good place if anyone hasn’t seen that and would like to go in unspoiled. for real, you don’t want to be spoiled for this show by a textpost version of an au

for those of you that have seen it, this only follows up to the end of s1 but i might continue that later. if that were to happen the chengsey would probably become sarchengsey

THIS IS MORE THAN 5K WHAT THE FORK

a very brief, approximate rundown of character roles

ronan as eleanor shellstrop with some hints of jason mendoza

henry as jason mendoza... in the jianyu way but not the jason way, really

gansey as chidi anagonye

adam parrish as tahani al-jamil

blue sargent as michael

noah czerny as mindy st. claire

“you, ronan lynch, are dead,” blue sargent tells him, “welcome to the good place.”

blue sargent is apparently the architect of the neighborhood and not human (who would name a real human baby blue sargent?) and not actually a tiny human woman with kinky hair and light brown skin and a face that goes from perky, service worker smile to resting bitch face at the drop of a hat. she gives him the rundown of being in the good place. she informs him that he was an avid environmentalist who used his personal fortune to help fund national parks, efforts to save endangered animals, and animal shelters across the country.

this, however, was not ronan lynch’s life... and he definitely isn’t supposed to be here. after his worthwhile life of blowing through his trust fund, spiting his brother for thinking that he’s better than ronan is and trying to control him, doing drugs in the back of kavinsky’s mitsubishi. and then setting off illegal fireworks and setting shit on fire and having angry hate sex with kavinsky and street racing with kavinsky. he died after stealing his brother’s car and wrapping it around a tree, half on purpose. so yeah, there’s no way that he’s supposed to be here in the good place and he knows it.

blue sargent, however, does not need to know that. so ronan lynch does something that he’s never done before, he lies.

“yeah, that was me,” he says. because really? if he’d done good things in his life, saving animals probably would have been one of them. that’s a life he could have led, if he were less of a shitbag. he always liked animals.

sargent brings him to a frozen yogurt place to meet his soulmate, and pretty much everything about that statement seems ridiculous and out there, but he’s in the afterlife, and it sure as fuck ain’t the pearly gates or the fire and brimstone his catholic raised ass was expecting, so he supposes that this is just his new normal.

“some soulmate pairings are romantic,” sargent says, “and some are platonic. yours is platonic. fated to be best friends- closer than brothers”

“great,” ronan says, which is not great at all because he was hoping that maybe there would be some sap on earth who was fated to fall in love with him, and not just be a dude he hated but couldn’t stop having sex with. since they have the wrong history for him, he can’t even complain about declan or talk about how no one would EVER be a better brother than matthew, who was ripped from the world far too young.

he hopes that matthew and his parents are in another neighborhood somewhere, living it up as happy as they could ever be. if anyone deserves to be in the good place, it’s his family, or at least the dead parts of it.

“ronan lynch, this is your soulmate, richard gansey the third” blue says with a wide smile. seeing him makes it even worse, because he’s handsome, but he’s off limits because it’s “platonic” and ronan wants to put his hand through the fucking wall.

“just call me gansey,” he says with a big, wide smile, “that’s what all my students called me.”

“students?”

“i was a professor of moral philosophy,” gansey says, “but i also taught a few courses on welsh mythology and history.”

“what a nerd,” ronan says before he can shut his god damn mouth. gansey smiles

“that’s the other thing that my students called me,” he says. ronan’s not sold yet, but ronan might not totally hate this guy. that would be a first since his family died.

they tour the neighborhood, sargent telling them all about how new and improved this place is over earth even though it just looks like suburbia. at least, somehow, the afterlife is environmentally friendly? that’s what sargent says, at least. ronan doesn’t know how that would even work.

sargent introduces them to another pair of soulmates about halfway through. the first is adam parrish, who was apparently a high powered lawyer back in life who helped like, the environment or some shit (suspiciously close to ronan’s fake backstory, ronan will have to be careful treading around that topic with him), and his soulmate jiyanu, a taiwanese monk who took a vow of silence.

at least ronan got someone who talks. he’d feel bad for parrish, if the dude weren’t so fucking pretentious that it makes him want to puke. parrish is also really attractive and has hands out of ronan’s dreams but like.... that’s not relevant. the point is that he’s a pretentious dick not that he’s an ATTRACTIVE ONE okay? okay.

ronan is probably pricklier than someone who’s actually good place bound would be, but parrish responds with exactly the level of passive aggressive that ronan would expect from a jerk back on earth, so ronan’s probably alright. if this dude deserves to be here, then ronan can at least match his level of passive aggression without people suspecting that he’s not supposed to be here.

no matter how little ronan wants to admit it, though, he always sort of enjoys talking to parrish. it’s nice to have a break from gansey’s overwhelming cheer or sargent’s “benevolent alien anthropologist” act. jiyanu doesn’t talk, so it’s harder to get to know him. or even care about getting to know him. he looks perpetually uncomfortable, though, which is a weird thing to look in paradise. ronan hopes that he doesn’t look that uncomfortable.

but then again, ronan’s a big, muscly guy with a full back tattoo and leather jacket and a shaved head in a neighborhood that looks like suburbia ate candyland and then shat this monstrosity out, so he was probably going to stand out no matter what.

he stands out a whole lot more the next morning when the good place malfunctions in a multitude of ways that tell him that HE’S the cause. so, he decides that he should probably talk to his ethics professor soulmate to figure out htf he’ll get to stay here.

“so, you’re my soulmate. soul friend?”

“best bud,” gansey suggests.

“and you would never do anything to hurt me, right?”

“yes?” and then ronan confesses that he doesn’t belong here and gansey’s like yup i guess this is my life now and it increases his anxiety tenfold but he promises to help if ronan promises to take ethics classes so that he can learn to be the person that deserves to be in the good place and ronan’s like okay, sure, i guess. books are stupid and learning is stupid but being tortured? is probably more stupid so he’ll deal with books and schools to not do that

he finds out that jiyanu doesn’t belong here pretty soon afterwards, after having a fucking heart attack that the guy was going to rat him out. it turns out that jiyanu isn’t even named jianyu. his name is henry cheng and he’s a drug dealing, backpacking dj from vancouver. his mother’s a mob boss. he’s sometimes involved in her business, sometimes not. he’s always a wayfaring stranger, or a hopeless wanderer, or a druggie bum from vancouver, one of those words that means he’s a traveling dude with no life prospects.

“i’m not even taiwanese, dude. i’m forking korean,” henry groans, and ronan feels like he’s found a kindred spirit in all of this shit. this is way easier to deal with than an actual monk knowing his secret. now they just get to be assholes together.

they meet up in henry’s “bud hole” which he definitely doesn’t call a bud hole, because he has some class. he calls it mr roboto because it’s his secret secret he’s got a secret. he actually says this aloud, singing and all, and ronan starts singing the murder squash song and a beautiful friendship is born.

friends. weird. ronan never had a lot of those. or any, if he’s being honest.

“not being able to talk? that’s the worst thing for me,” henry says, “do you know how much i like to talk?”

“i can guess,” ronan says.

“like, words don’t always work right for me, but i still love to talk,” henry reiterates

“yes, cheng, i get it,” ronan says, because he really would like for the silent monk to go back to being silent, please.

“it’s like torture, lynch, absolute torture. like, if i actually were in the bad place, they couldn’t have come up with a better way to torture me than that.” ronan thinks that’s a bit of stretch, when in the bad place they could literally pour lava over you for all of eternity, but the thought sends a bit of a shiver up his spine.

the good place isn’t so good.

he pushes the thought to the back of his mind. it probably means nothing. he and henry might be here and miserable, but they’re not supposed to be here. gansey? parrish? they might be assholes sometimes, but they did do legit good things. gansey was a fucking ethics professor, and it sounds like parrish took a lot of cases for charity and did all kinds of philanthropy. even though ronan and henry aren’t supposed to be here, those two still are.

---------

back on the topic of henry, henry cheng was a backpacker who dealt drugs and was working through a trust fund of his own and working through more romantic and sexual partners than ronan can even imagine. apparently, his mother was a crime lord from vancouver. he was kidnapped for ransom as a child, and his mother barely cared to get him back. the last thing that happened to him was when one of his former, scorned lovers kidnapped him and demanded ransom from his mother, she refused and that’s how henry cheng died. the scorned lover killing him part is a point of pride. the fact that his mother let them? not so much

---------

gansey finds out about henry soon afterwards. he agrees not to rat out henry either in exchange for even more ethics classes.

“gansey, you are a prince among men,” henry says. and gansey does not blush, he DOESN’T but ronan glares at the ground. the universe gave him a soulmate who’s actually into dudes but not into him? what the fuck, universe. what the fuck.

they take ethics classes, and they get better. and better, and better while feeling worse, and worse, and worse. the neighborhood deteriorates. it seems like everyone’s mental state deteriorates too, even the two that are supposed to be here.

sargent tries to find gansey a new hobby after ripping into the book he spent his life writing. parrish snoops around sargent’s office, and finds out that he had the lowest good person score out of anyone in the neighborhood. he tries as hard as he can to up his score, until he realizes that because he’s dead, he can’t. it eats away a little at him to know that he’s even below ronan lynch, even if the guy isn’t quite as bad as he first thought. at least he can TALK to him, unlike his soulmate monk-ey mcsilence

everything seem to be getting worse.

and then, sargent tries to take credit for all of it. the breakdowns- the tremors- all the things that ronan being here has caused, and tells them all that she will basically be brutally murdered for her failures- ronan’s failures. he hates that gansey made him grow a little bit of a conscience. ronan comes clean. he’s pretty sure that gansey’s disappointed face as he stares at henry is the only thing that gets henry to come clean with him.

parrish doesn’t seem delighted that ronan isn’t supposed to be here, but he does seem pleased- almost smug about it.

“all you rich kids had everything handed to you, and i had to work so hard to get where i got. even here, in the good place. you glided in here on a technicality.”

“you want them to send me to the bad place?” ronan asks, “that’s still a possibility, you know.” if parrish wanted him damned, he probably could make it happen. with lawyer powers and social clout combined, he could probably get it done.

“well, no,” parrish says, “i don’t.” and of course, no actual good person would want another person to be tortured to spite them. to be honest, ronan doesn’t really wish that on any other person, not even declan or kavinsky.

“plus, that gives me at least two people i’m better than here,” parrish says. ronan raises his eyebrow.

“points wise,” parrish says, like that explains everything. they have an in depth conversation about when he snuck into sargent’s office and searched through the scores and his existential crisis about how low his numbers were, and ronan can’t help but laugh. perfect parrish was the worst one here?

“hey,” parrish says, “at least i deserved to be here.” it might have been the least out of any of them, but he still got in on his own merits. ronan got here due to a clerical error.

“you probably had like, ten thousand more points than me if that helps,” ronan says. parrish tries to shrug it off, but ronan can tell that it does. gansey’s across the room, looking like he’s coaching henry on how to get through this situation, and ronan wonders if there wasn’t a clerical error with the soulmates too.

if any of them are soulmates, romantically, it certainly isn’t the pairings they’ve been assigned. gansey and henry might be soulmates, really. and well, looking at the way parrish smiles and the way that his hand curl and the way that he’s feeling- god- fuck- ronan thinks that they might have a possibility too.

adam and henry have a Talk which consists of

“sorry for not speaking for six months”

“i don’t really think i like what you have to say, anyways.”

“that’s fair. we’re definitely not soulmates, are we?”

“i’m not sure we’re even friends”

“ouch, parrish, harsh” and then eventually, they kill each other a million times in video games and decide that it’s alright, i guess. kind of. they’re not going to be friends, but they’re not going to hate each other either. not even enough for hate sex, don’t worry, henry checked.

they bring the person that ronan was apparently switched with up from the bad place. he’s a real environmental lawyer who’s also named ronan lynch, a clean cut Black man with a warm smile and no tattoos who seems liked someone who would have walked across hot coals to help a stranger.

by pretending to belong here, ronan condemned him to months of torture. he probably deserved it when people start calling the other one “real ronan” and him “fake ronan”. that doesn’t mean he likes, it, though. they could call them suit ronan and leather jacket ronan or something.

apparently, henry cheng was somehow switched with an actual taiwanese monk named jiaynu because they died at the same time. who knew?

there’s a whole big plot to try to keep ronan and henry here in the good place, spearheaded by parrish’s lawyer brain and gansey’s ethical heart, and maybe a lawyer heart and an ethical brain too. he thinks that both of them possess both organs, at least.

the bad place sends a demon named trevor to pick up him and henry. trevor reminds ronan too much of kavinsky for comfort. much more than any person should, really. it’s uncanny, and it sets off that same unpleasant feeling in his stomach as henry’s comment about not being able to talk did. the same way that he feels whenever sargent pulls gansey off to do something that gives him anxiety attacks.

gansey tries to balance his best friend energies very carefully between the two ronans, as to not play favorites when either one of them could be his soulmate, really? how are we supposed to know hahaha oh isn’t this gREAT. gansey’s anxiety is a fragile thing, always like a bottle of soda that’s been shaken to the point where if you open it, it WILL burst. people were always too difficult, which was why he avoided them most of the time. they were hard to put up with, harder still to please. gansey preferred his own company.

--------

gansey loves learning. that’s kind of always been his thing. he loves school. he loves knowing things. he loves sinking into a good book and trying to piece together what information from it is relevant. people? not so much. people are tricky. people involve interactions constantly, love and affection. he knows that he could, but that involves taking time away from whatever the obsession of the day is, and gansey never met someone who was interesting enough to detract from his obsession of the day back on earth, even his family.

his sister tried to get him to come to his mother’s congressional campaign events, even one. so did his father and his mother.

“yes, i’ll be there,” gansey promised absentmindedly, not really planning to. he did not come. he was reading through phillipa foot’s “moral beliefs”.

“your studies will always come first, won’t they?” his mother

“shit, dick. this is just- this is too much. can’t you do this one thing? fuck you” helen

helen didn’t call again. neither did either of his parents. gansey tried not to think much about the sting. learning was his thing. he was doing it. that’s all that matters.

he tries to grab the first copies of his dissertations and his copy of death and that original welsh manuscript he picked up a while ago and oh god, he can’t forget his laptop that has so much work on it and-

the flimsy remains of the roof collapse on him, and richard gansey iii burns to death in that building, along with his research.

---

gansey’s not decisive, and he’s not a big fan of people, but he cares about ronan and he cares about henry, and he goes to sargent to demand that they remain in the good place. which, for a boy whose indecision killed him, is a pretty big step. sargent is quite impressed, and decides to accept the request and do everything that she can to make it happen.

parrish suggests that they accrue points so that they can stay, which is an admirable suggestion but doesn’t work because they’re already dead. it’s the reason that he couldn’t move any further up the list to begin with. sargent calls in an impartial “undead judge” to hear the case to see if ronan and henry will get to stay in the good place.

ronan decides to say fuck it instead and and he and henry steal the dude’s train and hightail it somewhere no one can touch him. apparently, there’s a medium place where everything kind of sucks but no one gets tortured.

it has exactly one inhabitant, a guy named noah czerny. he was a cokehead skaterbro when he was alive, and the night before he died he came up with an idea to end world hunger and save a ton of kids: the most comprehensive idea for a charity ever, really. his best friend hit him over the head with a skateboard and stole it, but he started up the program that noah thought up. no one could decide whether or not noah should get the points, so they made him a place in the middle.

a sucky, medium place. like cincinnati. or being dead but not dead in the first place. it’s just a sub par house in the desert with warm beer and mediocre movies, but it’s better than eternal damnation.

at least, it would be if they didn’t get a message about a decision to send gansey and parrish to the bad place in their stead if they don’t come back. what the fuck is that? who decided that was fair.

“i guess we need to go back,” henry says sadly.

“yeah,” ronan says. they do need to go back. ronan doesn’t want to, but he knows they need to.

“you don’t if you don’t want to,” noah says, “you’re free to stay here.” but ronan grew a conscience back in the good place, and that conscience’s name is gansey. and gansey doesn’t deserve to go to the bad place, and frankly, neither does parrish. ronan’s not about to say that one out loud, though. just because the dude’s hot doesn’t mean that ronan wants to confess any sort of affection for him.

he’s not an affectionate sort of guy. he loved his dad, and his mom, and his little brother, but all of them are dead. after that, he told exactly two people i love you: stone cold steve austin and a guy in a dark club that he mistook for stone cold steve austin. so yeah, any sort of affection is foreign to him. his only long lasting relationship consisted solely of hate sex.

they get back to the good place, and they go see sargent. it seems that the problem has become worse since they left. or, maybe better. apparently, they aren’t demanding gansey and parrish specifically anymore, or even ronan and cheng. the immortal judge, apparently, doesn’t give a fuck who they decide to give him, as long as they send two people to the bad place.

the other ronan (good ronan, real ronan) offers to go, but that still leaves two spots to fill, one of which he is DEFINITELY taking.

exactly none of this ends well, with a combination of self sacrificing and pure selfishness as they shout at each other, like something out of the lord of the flies or some shit. it finally clicks in ronan’s brain why he’s had that feeling of wrongness.

“gansey and i are going to the bad place,” ronan says firmly.

“i didn’t agree to that,” gansey says.

“what about real ronan?” blue asks.

“nope,” ronan says, “gansey and i have this covered. call the train.”

“actually,” the judge says, “ronan and henry were the ones that were originally bad place bound-”

“nope,” ronan says, “you said any two of us. gansey and i are going.” bambajan bursts into the room with an enormous book open in his arms.

“i found a way to keep all of you in the good place!” bambajan says.

“shut up, bambajan,” ronan says. sargent’s eyes widen for a moment. she knows that he’s caught on to her throne of lies.

“ronan, what’s happening?” gansey asks.

“i just figured out what’s been wrong about this place the whole time. they can’t call us a train to the bad place, because we’re already here. this is the bad place” sargent seems shocked for a moment, but only a moment, before she regains her composure.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she says smoothly.

“bullshirt, sargent,” he says, “i’m right.” gansey laughs, nervously.

“this is a joke, right? please tell me it’s a joke,” he looks down at his hands, “my stomach hurts-”

“of course it is,” sargent says firmly. shit, this can’t be good. if sargent denies it and no one else believes him, then it won’t make any difference that he knows. it will all just go by the same way until she finally gets him to shut up about it.

“no,” henry says, “lynch is right- he’s got to be.” sargent sits down, and puts her head in her hands.

“you’re going to tell them they’re crazy, right?” parrish demands. sargent looks up, and lets out a maniacal laugh.

“five years of planning,” she says between laughs, “five years down the drain because ronan lynch grew a brain.”

“actually, i’d say i grew a heart,” ronan says smoothly.

“that’s a reference to something,” blue says, far too calmly for someone who just admitted to torturing them, “that musical about the green woman who’s in love with the pink one?”

“close enough,” ronan says. gansey looks like he’s going to die of his stomach ache.

“what is going ON?!?!”

“i’ve been torturing you,” blue says, “this is the bad place, do keep up.”

“what do you mean?” parrish asks, “that can’t be. it can’t be.” sure he was ambitious, but he never did anything wrong. maybe he didn’t do as much right as he could have, but he never did anything actively wrong.

he wasn’t corrupt- he was smart. he never did anything that was wrong, really, and he tried to do some good too. he belongs in the good place- he has to.

he worked his way up from nothing, less than nothing really, starting with a loveless, abusive upbringing, then onto a good college and a law degree in record time. he lived the american dream.

when he finished school, he started defending the highest bidder at any cost, in any case. and he took a few charitable cases, stuff that would make him look better.

blue sargent keeps on laughing.

“you rich boys, boys who never did anything to help anyone- the definition of idle wealth. all humans are awful, but the four of you?” blue laughs again, that harsh, strident laugh that cuts through the air directly into his soul, “you’re something else.”

“i wasn’t born rich,” adam says adamantly. he might have gotten there, but he wasn’t born into it like the other three. he had to climb a mountain of lava to get where the rest of them started.

“you weren’t,” blue says, “but did you do anything to help people who were still poor?” adam gets really quiet.

“you know, how ‘bout i just show you how you died. that’ll clear this all up.”

“no-” adam says, because he doesn’t remember how he died, but he doesn’t care to. dying has to be traumatic, right? he’s got enough traumatic memories from his lifetime, thank you. he doesn’t need to add deathtime memories onto the scars that his parents left him. apparently, blue doesn’t care what he wants, though, and he’s pulled into the memory.

---

he’s at a resort, somewhere tropical. he can’t quite remember where he’d decided to go, but it was tropical and set on a cliff side, only about a twenty minute drive from the beach. he always preferred the view from higher up. he could see above the tree tops and the resorts and then the beach and the ocean. swimming in a pool’s simpler than swimming on the beach anyway.

no sand in his toes or his hair or his ears or anywhere else he won’t be able to wash out for months. he’d tried to like the beach, he really had, because it’s supposed to be a rich leisure activity, but he just couldn’t force himself to. he spent enough of his life getting grimy, thank you very much. now he’ll just appreciate the pool and the view. it’s one of the many things that his high profile job can buy.

the job was a way to acquire status, same as smoothing over the accent and befriending celebrities and charity banquets and speeches and whatever else he did for his image.

he’s walking to the pool along a mountain path, beside a small wall separating him from the cliff side and the ocean far below. he’s wearing nothing but a soft t-shirt, a pair of swim trunks, and sandals that cost more than his entire high school wardrobe cost. life is good, at least until he meets up with another guest on the path.

“adam parrish,” the guy says, like it’s a curse word. adam hasn’t heard his name said that way in a long time. he can’t say that he misses it.

“yeah?” adam demands. who the fuck is this guy? what’s his problem? he seems familiar, but adam can’t quite place him. he’s known a lot of people in his life, and a lot of them he’s tried to forget.

“born in 1985 in henrietta virginia,” the guy rattles off, “grew up in a trailer.”

“i did,” adam says in his clipped off fake east coast accent, “i’m not ashamed of it.” he is, actually, that’s why it’s not public knowledge. he’s not about to let this guy know that, though.

“you know what you should be ashamed of? getting a murderer off the hook.”

“alleged,” adam says. there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him in the minds of the jury, so there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him in adam’s mind either. he’s just doing his job.

“yeah, well that “alleged” murderer killed my mother,” the guy spits.

“i’m sorry about your mom,” adam says.

“you aren’t yet,” the kid says, “but you will be.” he takes off his backpack, and then takes out a fucking scrapbook. then he shows it up for adam to see everything he’s ever been embarrassed by staring him back in the face.

every single incriminating to embarrassing thing that has ever happened to him- every case he’s ever taken that might make him look bad, familial information he’s hidden- ex boyfriends he’s buried for the sake of staying ostensibly straight for his career- every single thing he’s never wanted to come out confined to a single blackmail scrapbook. the craftsmanship is actually impressive. the kid’s dug up secrets that adam has forgotten about himself.

“what do you want for it?” adam says, handing the book back to him. he’s a little freaked out that the kid dug up this sort of dirt on him, angry to have it shoved in his face, but he’s mainly impressed. it’s the sort of thing that he could and would do.

“nothing,” the kid says.

“what?”

“you can’t have it. i’m taking it to the press.”

“then why the fuck did you show it to me?” adam says. you don’t pull a play like this without demanding the ransom. you can’t just rip the rug out from under them-

“i wanted to see the look on your face,” the kid says. then, he turns around to stomp off. adam reaches forward to grab him by the shoulder and turns him back around.

“you can’t do that,” adam says.

“yeah,” the boy says, “i can.” he breaks free of adam’s hold, and then grabs his book as he starts to walk away. adam feels rage boiling inside of him. he can’t just- just do that.

adam doesn’t know if this would be a career ender, but it could hurt him badly. badly enough that he can’t deal with it, not now not ever. he runs towards the guy, in between him and the edge, and grabs the book. the kid keeps his grip tight.

“let go,” he growls.

“you let go,” adam demands.

“fuck off,” the guy shouts as he tries to rip it back away from adam. adam’s more determined, though, and he clutches it as tightly as he can, digging his fingernails into the flimsy material. he has a stronger grasp on it, and then he throws his weight to the side- the side with the short wall over the cliff. he flies into the wall, and then he flies over the edge. he plummets directly down to the rocks below.

--------

“holy shirt,” adam says.

“yeah,” blue says, “wonderful, wasn’t it? you all had such entertaining deaths. i’ll need to figure out how to incorporate them better for the next try.”

“next try?” henry asks.

“oh yes,” blue says, “i’m going to clear your memories and then try again. really, this was such a learning experience. next time i’ll work all the bugs out.”

“you can just do this over?” henry asks, sounding horrified.

“of course,” blue says, “you’ll have your memories erased and we’re going to start again. can’t just leave you like this. it’s no fun torturing you this way if you already know what’s going on.” this explains so much about all of their experiences here in the good place. everything makes sense now.

“well, i’m a demon,” blue says, “comes with the territory.”

“a demon,” gansey says, like he still can’t believe what he’s hearing. gansey obviously isn’t present enough to figure out a way out of this mess, and parrish is still reeling from reliving his death. henry’s slightly more put together, but ronan doesn’t think he’s got any ideas for how to stop this either. that means that ronan has to figure out something to save them from this cycle.

blue did say that this happened because he grew a brain. maybe he can write himself a note or get another tattoo or-

“i promise after i fix this, you’ll all have long, unhappy lives,” blue sargent says with her widest service worker smile. she snaps her fingers, and then the world goes white.

bum bum BUMMMMMMMMMMMMM

if anyone’s interested in a continuation of this, i might do season 2. but the most important part of season 2 is the millions of reboots with different soulmates so here are a few examples

“gansey, this is your soulmate, the physical manifestation of henrietta virginia”

“jianyu, this is your soulmate, madonna”

“adam, this is your soulmate, ronan lynch”

“ronan, this is your soulmate, stone cold steve austin”

“this is your soulmate, a raven”

“this is your soulmate, orla,” blue says, gesturing to the woman. female person. not someone that ronan’s sexually attracted to in the least.

“this is the bad place, isn’t it?”

“ah fork it all,” blue curses. then, she snaps her fingers and the world resets.

#trc #trc aus #chengsey #pynch #the gangsey #ronan lynch #adam parrish #henry cheng #noah czerny #blue sargent #tgp #trc tgp au #jill don't look

28 notes · View notes

idiopathicsmile · 7 years

Text

Why You May Already Be A Unitarian Universalist! Or, a short guide to the goofy hippie aunt of the theological world (but the kind of aunt who has been to protests and Seen Some Shit)

Do any of these sound like you:

“I’d like a safe setting to explore my spiritual beliefs, but I’ve got baggage about organized religion!”

“I wish there was a church for atheists!”

“I wish there was a church for people who aren’t sure if they believe in god or not!”

“Over the years I’ve slowly assembled a highly personal grab-bag of spiritual beliefs and practices, but I miss service projects and singing hymns and drinking coffee on Sundays!”

“I need a religious community that supports rights for people of all genders, races, religious beliefs, sexual or affectional orientations, ability statuses, and national origins!”

“I want to raise my kids in a church that offers an extremely comprehensive, LGBTQA-friendly, shame-free sex ed program to all teenagers!”

Or conversely,

“I’ve already found a different personal belief system that feels right for me, but I am intellectually curious about where you’re going with this!” (Perfectly valid!)

If any of the above is true, or if you just feel like killing some time on the internet (also valid), read on!

“So, what do you guys believe?”

Modern Unitarian Universalism is a religion without a creed. That means you can be UU while believing in as many or as few deities as you want (including none or “I don’t know” or even “the very question doesn’t feel that important to me”). There is no consensus within the church on an afterlife (if any), or a holy book (if any), or even which holidays to celebrate, other than presumably, like, the birthdays of your friends and loved ones.

Plenty of UUs identify as agnostic or atheist, but we also have members whose beliefs are informed by Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, earth-centered/Pagan traditions, and/or Humanism, among others.

Asking an individual UU about their beliefs is sort of like asking someone about their taste in music. It’s meaningful to them, it’s shaped by their own history and experiences, and no two people will have exactly the same answer.

“Wait, you guys don’t agree on anything? What even brings you together?”

A DEEP AND EVERLASTING LOVE OF COMMITTEES.

No, sorry, that was a hilarious joke playing off an old Unitarian Universalist stereotype, which is that we are super into discussing things and then voting on them as a group.

Hilarious.

It’s hard to speak for all Unitarian Universalists, and some of them might quibble with the exact wording I’m about to use, but I feel like part of what makes us a bonafide religion is a deep shared conviction that trying your hardest to be kind, fair, and moral is itself sacred.

“If you can’t agree on a religious text, how in the world are you guys on the same page about what it means to be moral?”

I mean, sometimes we’re not? We like a good debate.

But although we don’t have a creed, we do have a common set of principles we try to use as a guide. Here they are, straight from the Unitarian Universalist Association website:

The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;

The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

“Uh, that’s compatible with every world religion and also, like, Captain Planet.”

Listen, nobody in the Unitarian Universalist church is gonna stop you from using a nineties environmentalism cartoon as a holy text. Embrace your truths. As a group of young sages once said, “Saving our planet is the thing to do.”

“I already believe all of those principles. Am I a Unitarian Universalist?”

I mean, if you want to be!

…although the definition of a UU is broad enough these days that we’ve got a quirky (and in retrospect maybe kind of problematic?) habit of retroactively claiming dead historical figures* who demonstrated a belief in the seven principles during their lives. Like, “That person PROBABLY WOULD’VE BEEN Unitarian Universalist, given the chance! One of us! One of us!”

That said, if you’re reading this, you’re probably alive, so at least for the time being it is your call!

*I am now bound by ancient UU law to list to you some dead historical figures who actually self-identified as Unitarian Universalists (or Unitarians or Universalists, since the two didn’t meld together until a series of meetings in the 1960’s):

Olympia Brown (the first fully ordained female minister in the U.S., also an abolitionist and feminist)

President John Quincy Adams

Joseph Priestley (18th century theologian credited with discovering oxygen)

Ralph Waldo Emerson and a number of the early American Transcendentalists

Louisa May Alcott

Elizabeth Gaskell (author of North and South, among others)

Rod Serling (Twilight Zone creator)

Beatrix Potter

Pete flippin’ Seeger, hell yeahhhhhh

“Who runs this show?”

Rife as it would be for comic possibility, there is no Unitarian Pope. There are no cardinals. Authority is for the most part pretty decentralized. Individual congregations govern themselves, through committees and elections. A minister has to be approved by their congregation before it’s official.

Those Seven Principles above came, like I said, from the Unitarian Universalist Association, which is made up of delegates from churches all over the country, and every year they get together and vote on major stuff. But yeah, congregation to congregation, things can vary pretty widely in terms of how they do stuff, or even whether to use the word “church.” (Some instead call themselves a “society,” or a “fellowship.”)

“What the heck does a UU hymn even sound like?”

Oh man, this reminds me of that classic Unitarian Universalist joke, “Why are Unitarians so bad at hymns?”

Answer: “Because they’re too busy reading ahead to make sure they agree with all the lyrics!”

Priceless.

But in reality, some of our songs are, like, transcendentalist poems that have been awkwardly squeezed onto the melody of some older hymn or classical piece. Sometimes you sing John Lennon’s “Imagine,” seemingly without a trace of irony. Sometimes you’ve got old spirituals about justice (like I said, things can tip towards well-intentioned appropriation) or Christian hymns that have been revised to be nondenominational and gender-inclusive. Sometimes you break out the classics, like “This Little Light of Mine.”

Here’s one of my all-time faves, which is based on a translation of a poem by 13th century Persian philosopher and mystic Rumi. You’ve got to wait until the rounds kick in. So good.

“What’s the official stance on rights for the LGBTQ+ community?”

It’s formally recognized by the UUA that our seven principles are totally incompatible with homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, or any other type of bigotry.

Because the power is so decentralized, I can’t say that every congregation has always been enlightened, but as religions go, I think it’s pretty widely accepted that the UU church has long been on the forefront of LGBTQ+ rights. There have been UU ministers performing same-sex marriage ceremonies since at least the seventies, and there’s a long history of activism within the church.

The UUA website has a section detailing our ongoing efforts to be inclusive of all genders and orientations. If you’re a member of the LGBTQ+ community and nervous about visiting a UU church for the first time, you might also want to aim for one of the churches that’s specifically opted into our Welcoming Congregation Program, which requires the congregation to go through special training and to offer gender-neutral bathrooms, among other things. (Most UU churches at this point have opted in. If you’re trying to find the closest location that’s also a Welcoming Congregation, there’s a checkbox you can click on this handy look-up tool.)

“So for decades when American politicians were arguing that same-sex couples couldn’t marry because it ‘went against religion’, it literally went against this particular religion to discriminate against those same couples?”

Yes. Yes, it was. The Bush years were a weird time.

“What’s the official stance on racial justice?”

We’re in favor of it. (Again: if you take those seven principles seriously, there’s no pussyfooting around opposing racism.)

I’m not gonna lie: at least in the suburban midwest UU churches I’ve attended, we are by and large, uh, pretty white. So I can’t really speak to whether or not a person of color would feel comfortable there. I’d imagine it would widely vary by individual and by congregation.

Our track record with Civil Rights is probably on par with any ultra-liberal, service-based American religion. We had a lot of early white abolitionists (given how low the bar was back then, I’m sure many would be considered racist by today’s standards), we had members active in the Civil Rights movement (if you saw Selma, that minister who gets killed by an angry mob was one of ours), and I think there was even a while pre-McCarthyism where we were closely allied with socialism and our members included some people of color who were key activists in confronting racism and supporting unions.

And then the Red Scare happened and our religion barely survived and we leaned away from socialism, and since then we’ve always kinda been predominantly an upper to middle class white liberal thing, with all the blinders that implies.

But a lot of UU churches have expressed solidarity with Black Lives Matter and with the protests at Standing Rock, and there is a growing movement within the church to confront and examine any latent white supremacy in ourselves and in our congregations.

One of the things that endeared me to my current church was when the minister announced that we were all invited to a racial justice protest, which had been organized by a black Christian church in the Chicagoland area. And the minister said, essentially,

“Listen, they are going to use religious wording that may not align with your personal beliefs. And what I need you to do is imagine you’ve got a Universal Translator like in Star Trek. And if they say “the glory of God” and it makes you uncomfortable, think “the glory of human kindness.” If they say “the spirit of the Lord”, you can think “the spirit of Life.” Because these Christians are out there doing the work that fits with our deepest values, and in the end, we have more in common than not. Sometimes we need to get over ourselves, and follow where they lead.”

At our worst, I’d characterize us as well-meaning but clueless (i.e. using the stories or imagery of world religions as a metaphor, in a way that flirts with appropriation). At our best, we’ve got some activists of color on the front lines, doing cool shit.

“This all sounds...so incredibly Politically Correct…”

Yeah, we strive to be accepting of everyone but I should warn you upfront that if P.C. culture upsets you, Unitarian Universalism is probably not gonna be a good fit.

“Did you say something about comprehensive sex ed for teens? In church?”

I certainly did! Through the OWL (Our Whole Lives) program, specially trained adults teach the youths a multi-year curriculum about bodily autonomy, consent, respect, healthy communication, gender identity, sexual orientation, safe sex (including passing around condoms and dental dams), destigmatizing sexuality, and relationships, among other things. Also, you can anonymously submit questions at any point, and your teachers will do some research and provide an answer next week.

When I was young, this was seventh and eighth grade Sunday school. I think since then, they developed the program to include age-appropriate components for younger kids, and to focus more on high schoolers.

“Seriously?”

When my older brother went through an earlier iteration of the program, the curriculum included a slideshow with photos of actual naked people, who were just random UU volunteers from the seventies. By the time it was my turn, these had been replaced by tasteful charcoal drawings.

“So on a scale from one to ten, how warped is your brother?”

He’s doing great! Actually, he’s a member of his local UU church and a volunteer OWL teacher. Though if I had to guess, he’s probably pretty relieved he doesn’t have to contend with those slides.

“Where can I find out more about Unitarian Universalism?”

Here’s the UUA website. Here’s that nearest-church-finding tool I mentioned before. If you don’t know if you’re ready to jump from 0 to physically stepping into a sanctuary, especially if you’ve got a bit of that ol’ social anxiety, here’s the ask that reminded me to post this whole mess in the first place, about how to maybe ease yourself into things a little first.

“Hang on…if you break these words down into their roots, ‘Unitarian’ implies existence of a single god, as opposed to the widely accepted Christian trinity, while ‘Universalism’ surely refers to the notion of universal salvation, meaning that both terms seem to point to a specific concrete (if perhaps somewhat heretical) doctrine based around Christian concepts like God, Jesus, and Heaven—meaning, in short, that the very name of your religion seems to belie the nigh-endless spiritual possibility you’ve been describing in this blog post…what gives?”

Well, you’re not wrong. The name at this point is largely vestigial. But to understand how we ended up where we are today, and how we arrived there with this awkward polysyllabic soup of a name, I’m gonna need to take you through a couple of centuries of heated theological debate.

“Do you NEED to?”

I mean, ‘need’ is relative, but that’s definitely my plan!

Stay tuned for part II, “A (Very Very Very) Informal History of Unitarians, Universalists, and their Unholy (or Possibly Very Holy) Melding”

#not tryin to push my faith but i do think plenty of folks are already secret UUs #and just need a word for it #and in times like these it can be really good to stand in a room of people with your values #who are sad and angry as you are and for the same reasons #and searching out hope and community despite it all

123 notes · View notes

riskeith · 3 years

Note

HIIIIIII!!!!! omg!! it is i feel like i just sent my message minutes ago hehe, i’m so happy!

she is always cute you’re right!! honestly if i had to pick a fave character it would be her i love paimon soo much. her dialogue is always so entertaining. we don’t know anything about her we just saved her from drowning and she devoted her life to us. what a great gal. fun fact, i have the wolf’s gravestone sword on my original acc and all i need is diluc to have the most powerful dps.. can you imagine 😳

OH RIGHT omg.. tiny buzz haired cluna how could i forget. damn i guess you’ll have to take mine then 😔 rip. but i’m not complaining at All. does depop exist in aus? it’s a buy/sell thrift store app that has amazing things. if you don’t have any thrift store or secondhand stores i imagine that depop would work great. aside from being environmentally conscious there’s also a great amount of interesting looking clothes hehe. damn this sounds like a sponsorship hshskshsk. anyway check it out! YOU DID? but dark academia is like... slow songs bass boosted? AND OFC I HAVE and now that you mention it i can see that, those truly were academia vibes. (shskdhsk my school is very posh in that sense so i guess i just applied that to my own personal style)

it must be so annoying, like can you even eat those days after getting it? omg you should!! an ear full of piercings is a look tbh. especially since you have short hair too. I DO HAVE TATTOOS one on each wrist. i’ll show you some day i promise.. heh.. ;) i can give you hints of what they are; there’s a pokémon game called ___ and ____, guess! and yeah hopefully i’m getting one soon, i want to get a quote but i’m not sure what yet. that’s a very valid concern like you get to spend the rest of your life with your tattoos and it should be something you enjoy looking at and feel happy with jdjdkd.

there’s more than the two ruin guards? like i know there’s the guard and the other type i can’t remember... is there more? fuck... and yeah!! or making vines grow to captivate the enemy? or something like that? pretty cool.

BUBBLE TEA IS MY FAVORITE DRINK (even more than tea and coffee) i’m soooo obsessed with it cluna you have no idea. we don’t have a lot, literally one in the whole city, and they don’t make them that well but i’m still obsessed. have you ever tried coconut milk flavor? that’s my favorite aside from the basic tea one. wbu?

oooh! that’s valid! makeup is very time and money consuming to say the least. some brands literally want a limb for a lipstick so. and it’s easy to get obsessed and to want to spend more and more money to get products yikes. and yeah i do wear makeup when i leave the house. i used to have a lot of fun with it when i first started out but now i can’t bother to ‘explore’ anymore. i just do my basic routine and go on with my day. i have considered not using it as much bc i don’t find it fun anymore tbh. :// i just hate being so dependent on it, yk?

(AAAH??!! OK oh my gosh...... will do. god why did my heart just start racing i’m so nervous yet excited eee.)

oh, hopefully i get to hear from you again! biggest mwaaaah from yours truly <3

ikr what is happening today.. we’re just rapid firing back and forth ahaha

wow paimon the real mvp.. YOU HAVE WOLF GRAVESTONE ON YOUR OTHER ACC??? omg your luck.... i can imagine!! manifesting for u hfskjfd

oh it does apparently... but that requires meeting up w people if you don’t wanna pay postage yeah? that shit makes me so mf anxious hhhhhhhhhhhhh. HAAHAHAH could you get me a sponsorship too 🤪 it is slow songs bass boosted???? i thought... im trynna think back now and i cannot remember.. i guess the vibes were too immaculate for me to care hfsdhkjs. i also tried to put in some hp vibes and i would’ve made it a hp au if not for the fact i know nothing about lore and shit.. (i lowkey want bakugou to be in ravenclaw which i know is very not normal sorting hfksjdhfksd. but could you imagine?) ((ooooooh fancy!! must be nice walking around and seeing everyone dressed up ahaha))

AREN’T ALL POKEMON GAMES ___ AND ____ FHSDKJHSKDFJS (i used X and Y as placeholders first and then realised.. isn’t taht literally a game too) but im guessing sword and shield!! wait did you use that just to give a hint or did you actually get it for the pokemon game hfksjdf. oooo a quote! bringing it back to roa AGAIN the author has said people have gotten The quote from the fic tattooed and honestly,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, i get it.

dragonspine has a new one!! idk if you’ve run into it yet? and the other one is called the ruin hunter lolol i. >:( angery at that one

:o!!!!!! rip omg..... never thought that i should be grateful for the 87583459 new boba shops popping up every other week. and ripppp no that sucks! i hope you get to try some real good ones some day!! and i’m sure i have.. i really like coconut! and i do like bubble tea but only the tea and not really the bubble? FDJHFKJSHFKDSJHS like they always put too many pearls for my liking and i can never finish them yikes...

yeah that really sucks :((( the beauty industry is a shithole LMAO (omg lmao beauty influencer youtube... the drama and apology videos fhks). hoping you find a happy balance with it/are able to become more independent from it soon!! <33

(FHJFHDSKJ im so excited too....... !!!!!!!)

hugssssss!!! 🥰🥰🥰

#this will prob be my last response?#i don't want to give you a shitty one in case you reply before i sleep fhsjf #so goodnight as well!! <333 #marriage anon #wowclunaanswers #long post

0 notes

richincolor · 7 years

Photo

#NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women edited by Lisa Charleyboy and MaryBeth Leatherdale is an incredible collection we highly recommend and we're excited to be discussing it here today.

Summary: Whether looking back to a troubled past or welcoming a hopeful future, the powerful voices of Indigenous girls and women across North America resound in this book. In the same visual style as the bestselling Dreaming in Indian, #NotYourPrincess presents an eclectic collection of poems, essays, interviews, and art that combine to express the experience of being a Native woman. Stories of abuse, intergenerational trauma, and stereotyping are countered by the voices of passionate women demanding change and realizing their dreams. Sometimes outraged, often reflective, but always strong, the women in this book will give teen readers insight into the lives of women who, for so long, have had their history hidden and whose modern lives have been virtually invisible.

Crystal's Review

Debbie Reese’s Review

Crystal: #NotYourPrincess is visually stunning. I love the attention to detail throughout the book like the use of borders and the pairings of text and artwork. The essay "The Invisible Indians" by Shelby Lisk (Mohawk) was accompanied by photos that illustrated how the stereotypes people have in their head render the actual people in front of them invisible. It made the text so powerful to have both parts. Do you all have any favorite visual pieces?

Audrey: I agree--this collection did a wonderful job of pairing beautiful artwork with powerful words. When I read, I typically don’t find myself backtracking, but I did more than once with #NotYourPrincess so I could go back and forth between the text and the art it had been paired with. My absolute favorite set is the poem “When I Have a Daughter” by Ntawnis Piapot (Piapot Cree Nation) with the piece Memories by Aura Last (Oneida).

Jessica: It’s so hard to choose a favorite -- they were all incredible in their own way. Two stood out to me in particular. The first was A Conversation with a Massage Therapist by Francine Cunningham -- I saw the picture first and didn’t realize the context until I read the conversation beneath it that portrayed a massage therapist casually throwing around harmful stereotypes during a massage session. The second one was Real NDNZ Re-Take Hollywood by Pamela J. Peters, which recreated classic Hollywood portraits with Native American actors. Both demonstrated how harmful stereotypes were in the different ways they manifested themselves, whether through media and Hollywood, or through everyday conversations.

K. Imani: This collection, the mix of artwork with the amazing poetry, was absolutely beautiful. For me, I can’t choose between the two poems of “The Things We Taught Our Daughters” and “Honor Song”. I found both to be extremely moving as both talked about reclamation of the feminine and and the power that women have inside of them.

Crystal: In “Reclaiming Indigenous Women’s Rights” Nahanni Fontaine (Anishinaabe) writes, “Patriarchy is quite simply the systematic oppression and regulation of women’s bodies, minds, and spirits. Patriarchy sets the markers and outlines the box of what we can and cannot do; say or cannot say; think or cannot think; express or cannot express; live or cannot live.” Fontaine has clearly delineated patriarchy and the colonial legacy. Her essay along with many other pieces here not only explains how we got to where we are, but also marks out oa path for the future. I think this is such a powerful text and I’m excited that young women, and specifically young indigenous women, could have this book available to them.

Audrey: I think that path for the future is one of the most important themes in #NotYourPrincess. The women in these pages are resilient, and several times they address past (and current) violence, pain, and other trials. Yet the collection always circles back to the triumph of survival and hope for the future. Fontaine’s essay really cuts to the heart of #NotYourPrincess. So does the opening text of the book, from Leanne Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg): “I am always trying to escape—from dangerous situations, from racist stereotypes, from environmental destruction in my territory, and from the assault on my freedom as an individual and as part of the Nishnaabeg nation. As an Indigenous person, I have to escape in order to survive, but I don’t just escape. I hold this beautiful, rich Indigenous decolonial space inside and around me. I am escaping into Indigenous freedom. I am escaping into Indigenous land and my Indigenous body.”

Jessica: I loved how everything was connected together in the book. Patriarchy and colonialism and oppression were all tied together, and then a goal was laid out of not just escape, but escape to a space of freedom and equality. And all this is possible through the strength of generations of women. I’m glad I read #NotYourPrincess all in one go, since it allowed me to see all these themes and works of art flowing together.

K. Imani: The theme of fighting the Patriarchy and colonialism throughout the book made me want to stand up and clap for all of these artists. These are women recognizing their power and owning it. Jessica Deer’s essay, “We Are Not A Costume” was so poignant specifically when she simply states “While someone may think they look supercute as an “Indian Princess” or as “Reservation Royalty” for a fun and harmless evening, they have the privilege of removing that costume at the end of the night. Indigenous women and girls do not. We have to deal with ongoing marginalization and the lingering effects of colonization, like a culture that normalizes violence against us.” I can imagine many young girls reading this passage, find their voice, and speak out against in justice towards marginalized peoples.

Crystal: This book shares so many examples of female role models. There are mothers, grandmothers, aunts, cousins and more. I couldn’t help but start to think about the women in my life who taught me what it meant to move through the world as a woman. The book invites such wonderings and offers some awesome role models. I’m eager to see the responses from young indigenous women reading this. I think it could be extremely encouraging.

Audrey: I agree! “What’s There to Take Back?” by Tiffany Midge (Hunkpapa Lakota) was all about her role models of Indigenous womanhood--real role models, not terrible stereotypes like Tiger Lily. Many of the pieces in #NotYourPrincess are about connection with past and future generations and learning from others. I also really enjoyed the piece “Living Their Dreams” with the photo spread of athletes Shoni Schimmel (Umatilla), September Big Crow (Tsuu T’ina Nation), Ashton Locklear (Lumbee), and Brigitte Lacquette (Ojibwe). It’s not often that I see professional athletes held up as role models for young women, so I loved seeing all of them in powerful, confident poses, representing four different sports, and talking about their experiences.

K. Imani: I agree with both of you. “What’s There to Take Back?” was another one of my favorites as well because the examples that Midge gave for true role models were all kick-butt women. I can see so many young girls being inspired by learning about Indigenous women who are out there fighting the good fight and are being awesome. I especially enjoyed the passage titled “Good Medicine” which was an interview with Janet Smylie. I found her story to be inspiring and a wonderful message for young girls who are struggling to know that they can overcome their challenges and achieve.

Crystal: In “Dear Past Self,” Isabella Fillspipe (Oglala Lakota) wrote, “If you have something to say Say it. Life is too short to sit in silence. And stop trying to please other people.” I really wish teen me had heard such things enough times to believe them. This is a message many young women could benefit from.

Audrey: There are so many wonderful lines in #NotYourPrincess, and I hope that this book makes its way into the hands of many girls and women, especially Indigenous girls and women.

Jessica: Yeah, the focus on different generations -- past, present, and future -- Indigenous women was incredible.

Audrey: One of the quotes that stayed with me after I finished was by Tanaya Winder (Duckwater Shosone): “As Indigenous women writers and artists we are continually trying to exist, live, and love in a world that doesn't always show its love for us. This means, part of the artist's call is to turn past traumas on their heads, upside down, inside out, lift it up then put it back down as something changed and transformed so that others can find something beautiful or hopeful in it. For that beauty and hope to exist we as Native American women must dive headfirst into the muck, ugliness, stark darkness of that wreckage. This is what we do--we recast wounds in unending light. And so, light, love, and courage are circles we keep coming back to.” It’s a powerful message, and I find that a lot of creators from other marginalized groups have embraced similar philosophies when writing about their own communities.

#NotYourPrincess #YALit

29 notes · View notes

sagastar-blog · 6 years

Text

MemoToTheMetaverse 2.4 “Gaia Says to Jeff, Let’s Take the Black Keys Car Service!”

Gaia, our hero, the story’s 16-year-old tomboyish female protagonist, walks around in a magnificent green, blue, and white bathrobe. Her long darkreddishbrown hair is dripping wet. Gaia is the planet Earth in human form, and has always been entirely awake, or aware of this fact. She’s recently emerged from the family “scuttlebutt,” a solar-powered steam room of sorts off the side of the family’s entirely ordinary first-floor Highland Park, NJ, apartment. She speaks into a hairbrush:

Gaia: So glad to be here with Dan and Patrick of the Black Keys. Guys! Good morning! What brought you to The Orchard on this leg of the current intergalactic tour?

[Dan Auerbach--the lily-white reformed stoner father / lead singer of the indie blues rock duo from Akron known throughout the universe and beyond as The Black Keys--is a large Bert from Sesame Street doll.]

Dan: Ummmmm. Gee. Let’s see. Well, I guess we figured we were in the neighborhood, you know, New York is kind of a thing...Hey, um, Do you guys have any coffee here? I could also really use a bagel. Like, with cream cheese, yeah? Thanks. Okay, yeah.

Patrick, a narwhal hand puppet and the drummer in the band, wears hipster glasses and grunts somewhat rhythmically: Me too. Please. Thanks. Whatever.

Gaia (turns towards the kitchen and yells): Daddy! Do we have any bagels left?

[Jeff is Gaia’s 39-year-old father, who has sole custody but, as any parent must no, very little immediate control over his daughter. He’s actually a young Bengal tiger in disguise as a human and also the Master Creator/Destroyer of All.

Jeff: Yeah, hold on. Do they want everything like usual?

Patrick the narwhal begins gnawing on the top of Bert’s head while gently spanking it from below with its tail, and grunts: “Sure thing, boss.”

Dan is distracted by Gaia’s proverbial “décolletage.” It must be said that Gaia is a beautiful, buxom, and rather rambunctious young woman, and has been for a few years now something of a man-eater. More problematically, she’s been neglected by her boyfriend/cousin-in-law, Amateratsu, the local mediocre neighborhood son, thanks to the way she’s been done dirty and wrong by life--HER LIFE, yes, but still--in recent times.

Dan: Thanks so much Jeff, that’s great. Gaia’s taking good care of us in here.

Jeff: She’s a fantastic hostess. You should check out her bedroom! It’s kind of a mess...Gaia, do you think you could maybe try sweeping some day?

Gaia (returning to her interview): Dan, Patrick, do you ever wish a great wind would come along and wash away all the beer cans and bottles? I mean, like, take Akron....maybe all the rubber tires and factories and stuff should be...

Dan: Burned?

Patrick the narwhal has heard this story so many times already. He continues drumming on his lap, staring rather obtusely at Gaia’s round ass as she busily picks up last night’s detritus. He doesn’t mind getting interviewed today because he owes his ex-wife so much in arrears for child support that he’s willing to put up with Bert’s narcissism for yet another day.

Gaia: I was thinking, wouldn’t it be nice if Brian Wilson and the rest of the Beach Boys could just bury the hatchet and do, like, a benefit for the environment or something? Like, what is it going to take for some big shot celebrity musicians to actually get involved in American public life?

Dan: What we need, clearly, is the American version of Bono. Otherwise, Africa will become China and then we’re all fucked.

Gaia: Precisely. (prepares her hookah for the day’s first toke....Jeff doesn’t mind that Gaia is going through a phase in which she smokes as much cannabis as she wants when she’s at his house. She’s not always home from school, so he figures it’s a balanced approach to Creation/Destruction.)

Patrick: Do you think we could hit that?

Gaia (eyes smoldering): Butt of course, Monsieur Patrick. Et toi, Dan? Qu’en volez vous?

Dan: Did you just ask me where I’m flying next?

Gaia: EH bien. Si vous voulez faire le countertransference avec moi, ca va couterez...(she lights up)

Jeff (buttering and cream-cheesing the bagels): Gaia, I’m serious! Your room!

Gaia (tucking her Bert and narwhal weiweis into her bed): I suggest we take the Black Keys Car Service to the eco preserve.

Jeff: Gaia, can you please explain to our guests what that will entail?

[Pollux and Castor emerge from the basement, all sparkly. They’re stars from an intergalactic talent competition known as Copernamici. As the head stars in the constellation Gemini, they are Amateratsu’s siblings, relatives of Jeff and Lucius. Pollux is slightly brighter and cheerier in general, whereas Castor has a beautiful, rich baritone voice.]

Castor: I was hoping we’d get to go to the preserve. There’s so little nature here in The Orchard, which is kind of ironic, don’t you think?

Pollux: Yeah, I was just thinking that it’s weird that there are signs all around this town, what is it called here Highland Park, that say things like “Tree City U.S.A.” and “No Hate Here.” They can’t even see us when they look up at night! Where exactly is the eco preserve, Gaia?

Gaia: Sore subject. Which is why I suggest taking the Black Keys Car Service! Daddy, you explain in a longwinded monologue which is not exactly a siloloquy but who cares because Shakespeare was SUCH a bitch...

Jeff (sets down the coffee at the C2 Center for Educational Brainwashing, where he is paid 27 dollars an hour to help privileged children improve their SAT scores): THE BLACK KEYS CAR SERVICE is one of the greatest ideas ever. It is the solution to the problem we face today aboard Spaceship Earth. (speaking into the ship’s PA system microphone) Humans! You have, since the dawn of the industrial revolution, been shitting in your own scuttlebutt! You have been, like cyborgswine, befouling your own trough. Your pollution--Ohio, we’re looking right at you...OH GEEZ, Cuyahoga was a great R.E.M. song about you burning rivers...where are you Michael Stipe when the galaxy needs you?--will no longer be tolerated. I have come here, people of Earth, to save Gaia. Only, the way it works is that Gaia doesn’t need salvation. Gaia, your planet Earth, will outlive all of you. Life will persist on this planet whether you want it to or not...at least for a little longer. The point here is that I am here to protect Gaia from all of you who have been either neglecting and violating her. (Hugs his daughter tightly.) The latter is worse than the former, but there are no innocent people in this world of ours, right Gaia?

Gaia (not a victim..a survivor): Correct.

Jeff (continues): Now. You, humans, will end this farce of an existence. You have serious environmental problems which you are not capable of fixing by yourselves. The first step in solving a problem is admitting that you have a problem. The Black Keys Car Service is the best way for you to admit you have a problem.

Jeff and Gaia step out to their electric car.

We’re not suggesting that you need to trash your entire civilization. No. That’d be impractical. You need to recycle it. You need to throw away a lot of stuff that’s bad.

Amateratsu (offstage): I SUGGEST FEEDING ME!

Jeff: Let’s shoot a bunch of shit into the sun, like old junk that’s bad for Gaia. Let’s figure out a way to use nuclear and other technologies sustainably and responsibly. There are no such thing as “bad nukes,” just as there are no such things as “bad phones.” You have technology and you need to learn how to use it wisely. I say I’m wisdom unemployed. I don’t need to spend my time pretending to teach here at the C2 Center for Educational Polyamorous Cockblocking and Blueballing. It’s not very fun, rewarding, or productive for me. (Imagine that, John Lenin!)

It’s not easy for you to accept that you’re a computer virus and that your existence is a threat to lots (not ALL) other life here on Earth. I get that! We have a suggestion...

Gaia (grabs the mic and screams as loudly as possible): Just send an ordinary unmarked car to Jeff’s house at 35 S. Fifth Avenue in Highland Park, NJ, 08904, U.S.A, Earth, Dimension 1(?)=1 / infinity. (Everyone knows my real address is one over infinity!) But make sure it’s like really smooth and cool...you know, like it should be the kind of car service that Dan and Patrick would use and then try to cash in on by selling out...like El Camino.

But it can’t be an El Camino. It should be like a 2002 Ford or something. Not eco-friendly! It needs to be authentic and real, like Akron but WORSE. If I’m being violated, at least let Jeff on the Lester GangBangBus. You know what I mean? SO the one thing about The Black Keys Car Service is that it’s got to be both legitimate and correct. There will be no “Black Keys” cds or music or anything directly related to the Black Keys in the car, obviously. The music should be a delightful mixture of T. Bone Burnett classics, which is to say stuff that would sell at Starbucks and not offend Jeff. This is how Jeff learns! By doing human anthropology. We don’t hate your culture. We just have taste and need a little bit of respect, so like, no music referencing “niggers,” “bitches,” and other unsavory aspects of your filthy human world. I’m sorry, but there’s a difference between you listening to what you like in public and you exposing me and my Daddy and my friends to your pollution. We need to be protected, like in an eco preserve!

Jeff: What Gaia is trying to say is that I don’t ask for much. You’ve been caught with your hand in the cookie jar. That’s fine by me. I’m used to it. But now that you’ve been caught, you have to admit it. You have to admit what you’ve done and you have to do it soon by sending The Black Keys Car Service, which is recognizing me as someone valuable and worthy of dignity and respect, as well as adoration, of course.

Send me a private car with a driver--let him be exactly like the dude who plays bass and also keyboards for the Shins, if not that guy himself!--who recognizes me as JustJeff and takes me where I want to go. For free (i.e. without charging me money or making me feel awkward). You know who I am, so stop pretending! Allow the driver to speak to me like a normal person. It will be great! And please let there be bagels with cream cheese and coffee in the car. Other than that, there’s nothing else for me to request. If you do that, i’ll know that we’re going somewhere together.

If I’m going to save you, Gaia, it’s going to be on my terms, not theirs. We have a lot of work to do and must take practical steps. The Black Keys Car Service is the best way to get moving in the right direction.

Gaia (fidgeting with her phone): OMJ, I hate this phone! (throws it out the window and turns up the music, which I believe is some Dusty Springfield song, but we can’t be sure...)

#black keys #justjeff #memotothemetaverse #michael stipe #cult gaia #gaiaonline #gaia #astronomy #astrology #amateratsu #sci-fi & fantasy #fan fiction #comicon #comic books #theology #rolling stone magazine

2 notes · View notes

wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 7 years

Text

Michael After Midnight: Captain Planet and the Planeteers

You knew it was coming. No series of reviews of cheesy 90s environmental movies would be complete without the crown jewel of such things, Captain Planet and the Planeteers. This show is legendary for being the cheesiest, corniest bunch of heavy-handed moralizing you could ever hope to see on television, filled with dorky puns and blatantly evil villains… and for that, it is without a doubt one of my favorite cartoons ever. And might I just say it also has one of my favorite end credits songs ever?

So what is this show about? So five multinational kids are selected by Gaea to gain magical rings of power to defend the Earth. The rings correspond to an element – Earth, Wind, Water, Fire, and Heart (which is not technically an element) – and allow the kids to have cool-ass powers. But even better, when all of the kids combine their powers together, they can summon forth the ultimate guardian of Earth, a blue man with a green mullet who spouts puns named CAPTAIN PLANET! Basically it’s like if FernGully and Power Rangers had a baby and said baby was forced to watch nature documentaries 24/7. Anyway, these kids gotta go fight the evil villains and shit and stop them from doing everything from polluting to selling drugs to kids to selling actual nukes to Hitler. Can they make the world a better place? I mean, they sure made my world a better place, this shit is hilarious!

Okay, honesty time: as much as it’s easy to snark at this show for the terrible morals it sometimes espoused (they did two episodes on population control, and the morals there are some of the most botched morals you will ever see), this show did generally speaking have its heart in the right place and it really did deliver some solid messages. For instance, there was an episode centered around AIDS, something that wasn’t really a thing people were educated about at the time the show came out thanks to everyone’s favorite senile moron Ronald Reagan and his mess of an administration. The episode’s moral, that people with the disease are just normal people in need of help and not freaks to be shunned, is frankly an important one, especially for the time period. This isn’t the only tough subject the show tackled; it tackled a lot of gritty issues like this that other animated shows of the time wouldn’t dare go near. There’s episodes on drug dealing, four on gang violence, hell people even actually die in some episodes! And there a re plenty of solid environmental issues along with social ones. For every poorly-handled message, there’s always a couple of really well-done or ballsy messages to make up for it.

The diversity of our heroes is also a nice touch. We got the Eastern European Linka, the Southeast Asian Gi, the African Kwame, the South American Ma-Ti, and the American from New York, Joey Wheeler (No, not that one)… the fact they’re from all around the world really does kinda drive home the series’ point that we all gotta contribute to make the world a better place. They aren’t too shabby as characters, either; sure, they can be corny and cliché, but none of them are too unenjoyable or anything. And then we come to our final hero, Captain Planet himself, and I just gotta say it: I love this fucking doofus. Every line of dialogue is the cheesiest pun you can imagine to suit the situation, his style is so obnoxiously, goofily 90s, and he’s just an absolute blast. It helps he has a really pleasant and heroic voice and that despite his numerous weaknesses and the sheer cheese factor of the character, he is pretty cool.

Now we have the villains! No superhero show is complete without a robust rogues gallery, and boy oh boy do we have a rogues gallery here! Let me just list off some of the villains we have here, along with their celebrity VA: Hoggish Greedly (Ed Asner), a pig-man who is the embodiment of overconsumption of natural resources; Looten Plunder (played by James Coburn, who you’ll likely know as Waternoose from Monsters, Inc.), an evil poacher and corrupt businessman; Sly Sludge (Martin Sheen), a lazy waste disposal specialist who is the living embodiment of careless, thoughtless waste disposal; Verminous Skumm (Uh, Jeff, uh, Jeff Goldblum), an evil rat man who seems to do evil for shits and giggles; Dr. Blight (Meg Ryan), a wicked scientist with an evil computer sidekick named MAL who was played by Tim Curry (Not the first time he’s played a villain who is not eco-friendly as you may recall); Zarm (Sting, of The Police fame), an evil former guardian spirit of Earth who now murders planets; and Duke Nukem (no, not THAT one), a radioactive mutant. It should be noted a lot of these celebs were replaced with more typical VAs in later seasons; for example, Maurice LaMarche took over Skumm and Nukem, Mary Kay Bergman took over Blight, stuff like that. Zarm’s third VA was Malcolm McDowell, which is cool as hell, and Asner stayed the whole series, so it wasn’t all around that things changed, and I believe Tim Curry was actually a replacement VA. So yes, this rogues gallery has great voice actors all around, whether they be big celebs or famous professional voice actors, they’re all hilariously hammy and cheesy, and they all do what needs to be done to impede the Planeteers and drive the plot along. As absolutely stereotypical, cartoonish, and blatantly evil as all these people are in looks and name, you’d be hard pressed not to have picked a favorite after a few episodes.

This is some of the goofiest, dopiest, most anvilicious animation you could ever hope to see, but goddamn if I don’t love every dopey minute of it. Maybe it’s nostalgia, maybe it’s the Earth Day marathons I watched on Boomerang, who knows, but I have a soft spot in my heart for this show that will never die. I’ll be the first to admit this show is cheesy and silly, but you know, it did a lot of things other cartoons didn’t dare do, talked about shit no one else wanted to talk about. Yeah, it fucked up sometimes, but you have to give it credit for trying to be more serious than other cartoons of its kind. Call it a guilty pleasure, call it so bad it’s good, but you can never call Captain Planet unwatchably bad.

THE POWER IS YOURS!

#Michael After Midnight #Review #TV show review #Captain Planet #He's a hero #Gonna bring pollution down to zero #Captain Planet and the Planeteers #Earth #Wind #Water #Fire #Heart #GO PLANET!#environmental message #animation #TV animation #Animated series #cheesy

42 notes · View notes

anothergirlrecovering · 7 years

Text

Lynn 32

I feel like this session absolutely sucked, which sucks considering how great the last one was. And I feel like a lot of it was my fault because I took a Benadryl before hand because of that stupid bug bite bothering me. I was halfway falling asleep in her waiting room and she called me and asked how was doing explained that I was tired because of the Benadryl. She asked me if I wanted coffee or tea or anything to help with being groggy or tired and I said I was fine and would consider for the way home, but I didn’t end up even asking for it.

I caught her up on my Week, explaining the situation that had happened with my coworker and with feeling like I had felt pretty sad about my husband losing his temper and feeling like I don’t know how to help. She asked to see my bug bite and I showed her, and she acted sympathetic and said how she had been stung by a hornet a few years ago and had a over reaction also and that it was awful. We talked briefly about allergies and I said that I am technically allergic to dairy and keep an EpiPen just in case. I explain the scenario with getting the hives and now they hadn’t figured it out. She told me about how her son has a lot of environmental allergies and that it affects the food she eats seasonally. I explained that what she was referencing was because of cross pollination and she said she was surprised by how much I knew about it. I told her that I love doctors offices and I ask 1 million questions. I told her specifically what happened with that coworker and I had told my boss, and I said speaking of self disclosure, because that Therapist had told her client about her own mental health issues, went to Lynn was like yeah that’s not an appropriate self disclosure by any means. I thanked her for having shared with me about her own struggles with PM DD and how it was really helpful because my parents are so crazy about medicine and I’ve always felt like being sick is my own fault. She said she has some clients where she can really tell and will just ask where they're at in their cycle because they will be so different from the week before. She explained that it something really biological and it’s not my fault. I told her about what my acupuncturist said about trying an herb. She said she thought that was a great idea and then if it doesn’t work out I could always try the prozac later on. She said that there were times when she would forget to take it, and it was still fine because it’s more or less almost like taking an Advil but for your moods. She said she feels like women kind of get the shaft want to comes to almonds because like for example with men, if they can’t get an erection, we were all over making sure that there was a pill to fix that. Women with PMS issues, something that has been around forever, we don’t have something ready to go to fix it or corrected and are in the early stages of treating it.

We kind of had this awkward place where neither of us was saying anything, and I told her that I didn’t really know where to begin with working today. She explained that was OK and opened up my folder and talked about figuring out if we need to go back to the original target or work on the spiritual issues that we had talked about last time. She asked if they are connected and I explained that I think they are two separate issues. We looked at my previous targets and she asked what about the last one still bothers me. I said it probably feels like a one or two and then I guess it was because I just couldn’t escape the car when my brother was throwing up. She acted confused and was saying that she’s just trying to figure out what our next steps are, and I apologized for being difficult.

She said let’s just go with that and see what comes up, so we begin EMDR and I said that I guess it just bothered me because I have been trapped in the car and that maybe I felt kind of angry towards my parents for not letting me out even though now I know that wasn’t a safe decision to get out of the car. I explained that maybe it wasn’t anger as much as it was a feeling of betrayal because they had a safety proof the doors and not told me. I explained that maybe I feel really helpless when I look back at that memory because even now as an adult and as a therapist I still don’t know how to help that little kid or my inner child because I still can’t even help myself as an adult. I explained that I wouldn’t really know how to help that kid if it was my kid either and that’s frustrating. I explained that maybe I need to except that maybe this is a chronic issue like diabetes type one and I need to just except that it was going to be there no matter what my parents did, kind of like how my little kid I’m working with now can have his mom hug him and hold him when he’s upset but he is still going to be anxious. Lynn told me that I have really high expectations and basically that she can’t really fix the fact that I was trapped and she can’t really make us that I don’t have to deal with, so maybe I need to lower my expectations. Then things got super shitty, she basically tried to offer simple solutions that I know will not work. I apologize for sounding defensive and argumentative, but that I really didn’t think that having a child would take away my phobia, and neither would becoming OK with myself with the phobia because it won’t take the power out of it. She asked if I could have some compassion for myself and I said for the little kid. She explained that you know with EMD ER, if you can get the compassion for the little kid then the generalizing affect can occur and it will transfer across ages. I explained that I have a hard time knowing how little kid and he would act if I had gotten a compassionate response because I can’t recall a time where I got that kind of a response. I told her about a kid in the cafeteria this morning he had told me a story about how he had choked once before and I validated how scary that was and his face lit up. I explained that it’s hard to imagine giving myself compassion when I don’t know how I would have acted even with it. I explained how my little six-year-old kid even with his intellectual disability is very aware of what’s going on and maybe myself as a little kid was more aware than I realize. I told her about how I stood in front of the Payless mirror when I was six and remembered just wishing that I could turn seven because I thought being six was the worst year of my life and I just wanted it to be over. She pointed out that that was very Ohio logic and reasoning for a little kid, and I explained that my little kids today is aware that his mom doesn’t spend time with him and he wishes he could have more of her attention but that she can’t because she has to watch his artistic sister. I pointed out that even though the and result was that neither of us had a parent to spend any time with them, and his case he knows it’s not because of him, whereas with me my mom didn’t have a reason to not play with me other than she just didn’t want to. I explained how I had been jealous of Michelle spending time with Linda singing Disney songs on their porch and how I'd been confused when she told me her mom wanted me for a kid.

We went back-and-forth talking about my expectations for getting better and I explained that I really just want to feel grossed out like a normal person when someone comments, rather than having a panic attack. I explained that it just feels really hopeless to consider the notion that I may never get over this phobia and would bring it on to my kids one day, and she made the comment about me getting back on the shame spiral train and that she can’t really do anything about that. I think she could tell that I was getting more and more upset and she said that basically she just wants me to cut myself some slack and I said I will try and she said that’s all that she’s asking. She pointed out that my phobia is a little better than it was, and that the memories have gotten down to one or two so there's some hope that it will keep getting better. She said that if I can’t let go of these negative believes, we can keep working to try to figure out the touchdown memory. She asked if I had to work the rest of the day and I said I did, and she said she was sorry and it seems like I really needed to go home and take a nap. Like OK, thanks Lynn. I get that I’m tired from that fucking Benadryl but it just felt like she was probably frustrated with me and that I was being difficult. We scheduled for next week, and I paid and left.

3 notes · View notes

paintinginlife · 6 years

Text

65 Questions You Aren't Used To

Tagged by @supa-green-rabbit to do them all??????

1. Do you ever doubt the existence of others than you?—Sometimes I think people are fragments of my imagination

2. On a scale of 1-5, how afraid of the dark are you?—Eh 1. I feel at home in the dark most often

3. The person you would never want to meet?—A guy named Philip who used to stalk me.

4. What is your favorite word?—Fernweh

5. If you were a type of tree, what would you be?—Maple

6. When you looked in the mirror this morning what was the first thing you thought?—“God I look tired”

7. What shirt are you wearing?—I’m not wearing one at the moment XD

8. What do you label yourself as?—Sexuality: pansexual

Personality: unusual

9. Bright room or dark room?—Bright so I can read

10. What were you doing at midnight last night?—Having and existential crisis

11. Favorite age you’ve been so far?—18

12. Who told you they loved you last?—My dad

13. Your worst enemy?—Time

14. What is your current desktop picture?—It’s of my friend Reeve

15. Do you like someone?—Yes I do have a crush and it’s awful XD

16. The last song you listened to?—Southern Wild by Honeywater

17. You can press a button that will make any one person explode. Who would you blow up?—Trump

18. Who would you punch in the face?—Pence

19. If anyone could be your slave for a day, who would it be and what would they have to do?—Idk XD I’m usually the giver so I would feel bad making someone else to stuff for me. I’d probably have them give me massages and brush my hair and give me food.

20. What is your best physical attribute? (showing said attribute is optional)—I like my body. I work out and I have worked hard to get the body that I have so I rather like it. If you want to see it just look through the tag #me on my blog

21. If you were the opposite sex for one day, what would you look like and what would you do?—I’d look pretty much the same except more masculine features. I’d probably go to a club and dance XD.

22. Do you have a secret talent?—Haha yeah...... I’m good at lap dances but not many people know

23. What is one unique thing you’re afraid of?—Lakes

24. You can only have one kind of sandwich. Every sandwich ingredient known to humankind is at your disposal.—That is too long a list to have on here

25. You just found $100! How are you going to spend it?—Take my friends out to eat

26. You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere in the world, but you have to leave immediately. Where are you going to go?—Austria

27. An angel appears out of Heaven and offers you a lifetime supply of the alcoholic beverage of your choice. “Be brand-specific” it says.—Tequila- Don Julio Real

28. You discover a beautiful island upon which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What is the first rule? —Respect the island. It gives and so you must give back.

29. What is your favorite expletive?—Fuck

30. Your house is on fire, holy shit! You have just enough time to run in there and grab ONE inanimate object. Don’t worry, your loved ones and pets have already made it out safely. What do you grab?—My journal

31. You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?—Haha that’s a little too personal to say XD

32. You got kicked out of the country for being a time-traveling heathen who sleeps with celebrities and has super-powers. You can move anywhere. Where would you go?—Probs to like Europe

33. The Celestial Gates Of Beyond have opened, much to your surprise because you didn’t think such a thing existed. Death appears. As it turns out, Death is actually a pretty cool entity, and happens to be in a fantastic mood. Death offers to return the friend/family-member/person/etc. of your choice to the living world. Who will you bring back?—my dog Maggie

34. What was your last dream about?— I dreamt I was in a cafe drawing

35. Are you a good….[insert anything you’d like here]?—person? Sure

36. Have you ever been admitted to the hospital?— Yeah XD

37. Have you ever built a snowman?—Of course

38. What is the color of your socks?—White

39. What type of music do you like?—Anything from Death metal to Classical music

40. Do you prefer sunrises or sunsets?-sunsets

41. What is your favorite milkshake flavor?—mint chocolate chip

42. What football team do you support? (I will answer in terms of American football as well as soccer)—The USA women’s soccer team

43. Do you have any scars?— Yep XD

44. What do you want to be when you graduate?— Environmental Scientist

45. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?— one of my eyelids droops a little. I’d fix that

46. Are you reliable?—for most things yes

47. If you could ask your future self one question, what would it be?— Did I do okay?

48. Do you hold grudges?— Not unless I have to

49. If you could breed two animals together to defy the laws of nature, what new animal would you create?— horse and a cat. Make a giant cat

50. What is the most unusual conversation you’ve ever had?— Had a conversation about whether a fish is wet if it’s on water

51. Are you a good liar?—yes

52. How long could you go without talking?— a week

53. What has been you worst haircut/style?— parted down the middle and dyed purple

54. Have you ever baked your own cake?— I love baking!!!

55. Can you do any accents other than your own?— cockney English, Irish, French, and southern english

56. What do you like on your toast?—blackberry jam

57. What is the last thing you drew a picture of?—a demon

58. What would be you dream car?—my cube

59. Do you sing in the shower? Or do anything unusual in the shower? Explain.— I sing and dance. I also stretch because the warm water relaxes

60. Do you believe in aliens?— Hell Yeah

61. Do you often read your horoscope?— Nah

62. What is your favorite letter of the alphabet?— X

63. Which is cooler: dinosaurs or dragons?— Dragons

64. What do you think about babies?— I love kids!!!

#ask #tagged #thanks

0 notes

betanyagito · 7 years

Text

Mina gave me the okay so its happening

Long post under the read more because I have a lot of Oso AUs and sadly they are all detailed yes ok lets dive in

Persona AU

The one that’s probably the most detailed heNCE THERE’S EVEN A BLOG FOR IT AND A FIC THAT I UPDATE AT SNAILS PACE

Self explanatory tbh. All the brothers are persona users in a p4-esque setting. Loser Oso is the only one who’s alone in the class, but in turn he gets to be classmates with Totoko and Chibita. The brother’s personas are as follows, in birth order; Kitsune, Icarus, Vodyanoy, Ovinnik, Heracles and Anteros. ESP Kitty is also there and his persona is Sphinx. At the beginning only Oso, Choro and Totty are aware of the TV world, but gradually as their brothers get more popular in the town and get thrown in as a result they all end up exploring the dungeons together. At first Totty is their not at all helpful support, but thankfully ESP Kitty switches him out after They rescue Ichi. They awaken to their personas in this order; Oso, Totty, Choro, Ichi, (ESP Kitty), Kara and Jyushi. I plan to give the side characters roles too, Totoko will watch the Midnight Channel and report to Oso when asked (even though she has no idea what is ACTUALLY going on), Chibita will take in the weird girl they found in the TV world and will sell healing items to the brothers, they will be able to get a lot of info from Atsushi about the people who get thrown in the TV world and don’t get out and the rest I don’t have figured out yet

I put Jyushi as the last one to fall into the TV World because one reason: the Shadow selves. Of course they are here again. Shadow Todo is very insecure and is afraid to break away from his brothers. He knows he has a cold heart and he’s dried up, and he hates he can’t express how he really feels. Shadow Choro is basically Oso, lazy, unmotivated, and doesn’t want to do anything. He finds everything pointless. Shadow Ichi is a very sad sight, he’s lonely, he wants friends, he doesn’t want to be left alone! He just wants to be part of something too! And then come these two...Kara and Jyushi. Shadow Kara is a salty binch. He lashes out, he doesn’t listen, he doesn’t tolerate. But when the anger dies out, all that’s left behind is a pretty hollow person who wants to be something, wants to belong, to actually have the confidence he claims to have. And now I tell you why I put Jyushi last- because his shadow would be strong. Really strong. Whatever part of himself he wants to hide, he guards it well. And when all walls break down, there stands shadow Jyushi. A quiet, serious looking kid who wants to be different. He doesn’t want to be mixed up with his brothers. He’s so tired of trying to make everyone happy. He just wants to rest god damn it.

As for shadow Oso....well you’ll just have to see until the fic gets there. I don’t want to post TOO MANY spoilers, but I can say that Oso is the worst protag you could ever have for a persona-esque series. He kicked a cat. He’s awful

JJBA

Co-op with Jaden, we made JJBA AU one day because, I quote, “No one stopped us”. We got pretty darn deep in it, deep enough that I actually designed Oso’s, Kara’s, Choro’s and Ichi’s stands. Besides stand infos we don’t actually have much here; we have yet to come up with a story. We brought it up a few days ago, and all we managed to discuss is as follows: they have stands so they can beat a certain sharp teethed garbage man up.

So stand details? Gonna get long but thankfully only the first 4 ones are detailed the rest are just stand names and abilities. Do you have any idea how many hours we spent on the stand generator for this? More than whats acceptable

Oso’s stand is My First (Kiss) a short ranged stand. Notice the brackets yes. My First’s ability is Relative Strength Perception. This allows Oso to be as strong as the enemy sees him as. For example; if the foe he faces off thinks he’s super strong, then he WILL be super strong, but if he makes a joke out of himself, his opponent will think he’s a joke too, therefore decreasing his power immensely. The stand’s second ability (Kiss)’s ability is Heart Link, which connects him to all of his brothers. If one dies, they all die (we need to discuss this more tbh). Because of Heart Link, his stand has 5 numbered panels on its arm, from 2 to 6. Whenever a brother is in trouble, the corresponding button will flash and alert him.

Kara’s stand is Brotherswing, which is a very durable and long ranged stand. It’s ability is empathetic light manipulation, meaning that based on his mood, he can, well, manipulate how light reflects off of certain surfaces. Of course this also allows him to make himself glitter whenever the fuck he wants. We never really elaborated on how exactly his mood influences the efficiency of his ability, or if we did I forgot, but what I imagine is that, the happier/stronger he feels the easier and more effectively can he use his ability. His ability mostly comes in handy when they have to hide during combat

Choro’s stand is Echobo which is, once again, a long ranged stand with great speed. It’s ability is sonic wave emission. He can use sound in the form of waves, pulses, blasts etc to damage, paralyze or push back his foes. Which is a really good ability for someone who screams so much anyway. The drawback of Echobo is that Choro’s anxiety can and WILL affect it, and when that happens, the stand can short circuit, and release high pitched screeches until Choro calms down again. Sure to take out the enemy AND teammates too

Stay with me now cause the last detailed one is coming, Ichi’s Meow which is...an always active stand. Yep. He can’t control it. He can’t turn it off which is really bad for everyone because his stand ability is poison breath. He has to wear a specifically made mask at all times if he doesn’t want to murder everyone in his immediate surroundings. His stand has two forms, the ‘inactive-active form’ which is the form it usually takes on, and the ‘active form’ which is the form it takes on during combat. Its constantly releasing toxic fumes, ruining whatever it touches. It’s not a lethal poison, only in excessive amount. A small excessive amount. Please don’t breathe it in

Jyushi’s stand is Juicy Wiggle (heck yeah) is emotion infusion. We need to talk about this more so I can get a hang of it. And last brother, Totty whose stand is Don’t Cha (it’s an Egg. Totty did you lay this egg). He claims his ability is....Secret. He tells everyone its SUPER USEFUL and strong, but in reality, his ability is mind reading, which is. Not the best combat ability for an Egg. But later when the Egg hatches Totty’s ability evolves into technology related powers.

Of course....they aren’t the only one with stands. Totoko’s stand is Mermaid, and her ability is to jump from one electronic platform to another. Chibita’s stand, my personal fave, grants him the ability to turn the season to spring in a specific area, growing flowers everywhere. The Christmas couple has a stand too, the Two of Hearts, with environmental field projection as an ability. HOMURA also has a stand....called Vanilla Twilight....as the name suggests, her ability is to induce- well, not twilight, but night.

Also because of Jaden we might make a blog for this too holy fuck

Ice skater AU

This one was essentially Mina’s idea but I even had a dream about it so Like. Incredible

This one is simple. Kara is an ice skater and his brothers are weirdly supportive of him. This was honestly just an excuse for me to draw him in poses, make him happy and make him wear the most flashy clothing EVER. But its pure. Its really pure and Kara is having a grand time on the ice please support him and his career

But Mina even wrote a fic of it so yes here

J-Pop AU

This one is actually pretty old but it was an AU Dennis and I did one day...I don’t even know WHAT sparked us, but suddenly we were just listening to songs and designing outfits (he even printed some paintings I did) and we got so far that I started writing a small ficlet but I never posted or finished it.

That’s actually all that comes to mind right now/all that I can make a post about. Also since I started playing aa I was thinking of a lawyer AU because that would be Coolio

#wow this is one big mess #soph sush #long post #im sorry mobile users yet again #took my sweet ass time with it tho

4 notes · View notes

gossipnetwork-blog · 7 years

Text

Inside Jesse Paris Smith's Bold New Plan to Fight Trump, Save Planet

New Post has been published on http://gossip.network/inside-jesse-paris-smiths-bold-new-plan-to-fight-trump-save-planet/

Inside Jesse Paris Smith's Bold New Plan to Fight Trump, Save Planet

Jesse Paris Smith remembers the exact day she became a climate activist. Late on a school night, in a Manhattan deli, frantically skimming the New York Times to finish a last-minute homework assignment in 10th grade.

Trump vs. Planet Earth

In pulling out of the Paris climate deal, Trump showed America is a clear and present danger to civilization itself

“I loved nature, so these words like global warming, greenhouse gases, fossil fuels struck me,” Smith, 30, says while sitting in a Midtown Manhattan conference room. Smith is warm and unimposing. She smiles when she speaks so her eyes are like little brown crescents framed by her plum knit cap.

Back at home, Smith continues, she messaged the one still-awake person on AOL Instant Messenger to see if he knew anything of these intriguingly named concepts. “It was terrible,” she said flatly. “It felt like I was dealing with the end of the world and nobody was talking about it.”

That genuine fear she felt as a teenager was also a call to action that she’s developed as an adult. In 2014, Smith founded the nonprofit organization, Pathway to Paris, which hosts inventive events where a hodgepodge of artists, academics, politicians and scientists together on one stage to talk about environmental rights. Smith – daughter of Patti Smith and the late Fred “Sonic” Smith – met her co-organizer, the cellist Rebecca Foon, over Facebook before the People’s Climate March the same year. High-profile artists like Thurston Moore, Michael Stipe and Thom Yorke became regulars, drawn to Pathway’s message and its clubhouse-like vibe. Last summer, for example, Pathway threw a 200th birthday party for Smith’s favorite poet, Henry David Thoreau, in an intimate wine bar. Stipe read the great transcendental work, “My Love Must Be As Free.”

Michael Stipe reads Thoreau at Pathway to Paris event at City Winery

But in the dark aftermath of the 2016 election and President Trump’s abrupt decision to pull the United States out of the global Paris Agreement, Smith and Foon concocted Pathway’s most impactful idea: 1,000 Cities. Starting this year, the new initiative will provide funding and awareness to help cities become completely carbon-neutral by 2040. As part of a new climate-fighting triptych with the United Nations Development Programme and grassroots group 350.org, Smith is energized by the new solution-oriented direction.

On Sunday at Carnegie Hall, Pathway’s Smith, Foon, Stipe and Patti Smith will be joined by a cadre of eclectic names including Joan Baez, 350.org founder Bill McKibbon, Cat Power, Dr. Vandana Shiva, Talib Kweli and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to begin the vital new chapter.

How has the feeling around Pathway to Paris intensified since Trump got elected? It’s still horrible, but if there had to be a silver lining [to Trump’s presidency] it’s that it ignited a whole new wave of action. After the election, everyone who lives in my neighborhood – we all gathered at this same place – and in the morning everyone came in like a zombie. It disturbed me to see how upset and angry and how totally beaten down everyone was. Something snapped in me, where I was like, ‘We can’t sit around – this is more urgent than it was before.’ And, of course, it was already urgent.

And now, without Obama, we’ve got something to lose. Yeah. And it’s good to talk, but we can’t just sit around complaining about how terrible it is. That just normalizes [these issues] into becoming a conversation piece. After Trump it was like, everyone’s sad and everyone’s heartbroken, everyone’s sick and anxious and worried. So how do we fix it? What do we do? That’s what helps me to cope. Even if you don’t know what impact something will have, doing something feels better than sitting at home, being sad.

What was your reaction to the business community and politicians pledging to uphold their emissions targets despite Trump backing out of the Paris Agreement? I felt it was like a whole new wave of citizen uprising; a new voice of citizen activism. The day Trump pulled out of the agreement, you saw people talking who weren’t talking before. They weren’t talking a year or even five years before that.

For example, Pathway to Paris had been going on since 2014, but it was still tough to get people to listen, come to our events and join into the movement. Now it’s easier. Even with my own friends, there was a big spike, and I’m like, ‘Guys, I’ve been here doing this for 10 years!’ [Laughs].

How do you envision a 100 percent renewables-based city? It’s almost a metaphorical idea. Because what that looks like for New York City would be different from how it would be in New Delhi, which would be different from Tokyo. It’s fun to imagine how, as we went into the industrial revolution, we can also go into this new era of renewable energy. It could be a brand new era of our world.

How will you measure the progress of partnering cities as they work on becoming more carbon neutral? One thing we’re using is a free tool called City Insight. It basically inputs all the data of a city – its economy, budget, and so on – and it creates a climate plan to follow in order to go carbon neutral by 2040. That’s what they used with Toronto – a 1,000 Cities partner – and it was successful. Our other hope is to help developing cities get funding. And then the music and the concert aspect of [Pathway to Paris] is there to keep the issue in the culture, where people feel connected and can get involved.

Jesse Paris Smith speaking at the United Nations earlier this year with her mother, Patti Smith.

The individuals you gather for Pathway events are increasingly eclectic – Bill McKibbon to Michael Stipe. Why that approach? Well, one of the first problems [we had to tackle] was that there is no real cultural voice in the climate movement. That’s what people like Bill McKibbon also kept telling me. On the other side, [musicians like] Michael Stipe were excited, too. I really love the mutual admiration of the events. When the [United Nations Development Programme] got involved, they were like ‘Oh, no one wants to here from the speakers, we just need more music.’ And then the musicians were like, ‘We have too much music. Let’s get one more speaker.’

You’re only 30, and in addition to Pathway to Paris, you’ve curated unique music and arts events at places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Rubin Museum and the annual Tibet House fundraiser. Where do you think your desire to curate came from? When I was younger, I’d go on tour with my mom and her band during the summers when I was a teenager, I was more interested in assisting her tour manager. I really liked the behind-the-scenes stuff. Setting up the stage, checking microphones, printing things, calling everyone to tell them what time they’re getting picked up in the morning. Whereas my brother’s a guitar player and he would go and play with her. I wanted to learn how to manage.

And you were like, what, 14? Yes, 14, 15,16 [laughs]. I loved playing music and I wanted to take piano lessons when I was 13, but I always thought of music more as my own private hobby.

When was the first time you performed with your mom onstage? I was 16. We played “Imagine” for John Lennon’s birthday at the Free Library in Philadelphia.

Were you nervous? Terrified [laughs]. You know, I wasn’t a musician and now I’m going onstage with this band that’s been playing together for like 30 years? But I was like, ‘They need me to do this. Just be cool, don’t mess up.’ [Laughs].

It’s like what you were saying about poetry – how it’s a lot easier to get up onstage when you’re reading a poem as opposed to singing a song. That’s how I learned to compose music – writing music for my mom to read poetry to. She would give me a poem or this piece of writing to read at an event or recording. So together, we’d like look at the poem and be like, OK, what’s the feeling of this poem? Is this hopeful, is it sad, is it peaceful? Does it change? We’d go through and diagram what lines or parts sounded intense, solemn, or maybe required something else that was different, interesting.

Bill Mckibben reading Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry

What’s your earliest memory of feeling a connection to nature? Well, I was born in Detroit and grew up in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, which is a little town on the lake on Lake St. Clair. The whole town was called the nautical mile. Behind and in between all the houses were canals. Our backyard was overgrown with beautiful trees; the lake was at the end of this dead end street. And there were tons of kids on the street, so basically [we’d] get home from school and go on an adventure. So growing up there I was just fully immersed in nature.

Did you have a boat? No, but some friends did. We’d go fishing on our deck for – muskies? Yes [laughs] – I think that’s what they’re called. You’d have to ask my brother. Where we lived was filled with shops selling all kinds of lures. There was a bait shop, a marina, a supply store for sailing clothes and souvenir shops selling little sailboats and lighthouses. We moved to Manhattan when I was nine. It was an intense transition. I don’t know if I’d have the same love of nature if I was born in Manhattan.

Why do you think you think climate change had such a strong impact on you? It felt like I was dealing with the end of the world and nobody was talking about it. When I was 15, I said okay, I have to become a climate scientist! And I’m gonna have a science lab and live on the glaciers and study the ice melting! [Laughs].

I started to volunteer for different environmental groups like Greenpeace and the Environmental Defense. When I was a teenager, I was a little shy, a little awkward. I didn’t really know how to find other people who felt the same way as I did. So every night I’d go on my computer and sign petitions, write letters to the mayor for hours by myself.

That’s amazing. I remember there was a section on the Environmental Defense’s global warming campaign website called “Undo It,” where you could download all the materials to start your own local chapter. I downloaded all of the brochures and signup sheets and posters. I went to Kinkos and made copies, I had a filing system, clipboards, pens – I was so excited about starting my own chapter!

But then this fear set in. And I was too afraid to find anyone. I was even afraid to hang up a poster. I went out one day to hang them up and I just remember thinking ‘I can’t do this.’ I still have the box with all of those materials. I didn’t even tell my friends at school about it.

What was holding you back? I was just so solitary and quiet. But being an activist and having a nonprofit is all about bringing people together and collaborating. So in order to do that, I had to change.

What did you do after high school? I was determined to be a climate scientist, even though I wasn’t particularly good at math or science [laughs]. But I was also torn between pursuing science and music. It felt like choosing between what was in my heart and what came more naturally. So I deferred my acceptance to Sarah Lawrence College to figure out how I might do both. I applied to Columbia University – they have this incredible climate program – but got rejected. I was also in my first band at the time and I thought, I’ll forget being a scientist and I’ll work on music instead. But I kept going back and forth.

I took courses at the New School about environmental writing. I also worked in a book bindery on 27th Street. I think I’ve probably bound hundreds of books. And because of those experiences physically making books, I suddenly wanted to write a book. I felt unfocused, but I was just trying to figure it out. And my mom inspired some of that, too.

Because you saw it was possible to do more than one thing? She’s singer, a songwriter, a writer, a poet, a photographer, an artist. You can choose more than one path.

Do you see the 1,000 Cities initiative becoming bigger than Pathway? Definitely. My hope is that Pathway to Paris continues to bring that cultural aspect and becomes a global event, where people in different cities can organize their own Pathway concerts as a way to bring people together around this issue.

To participate or find out more about Pathway to Paris’ 1,000 Cities initiative, sign up here.

Source link

0 notes