#I have dropped into a deep depression. very serious stuff. watching the first got seasons make me sad. this tv show couldve been the best. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

penname-artist · 1 year

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“So, I went beyond...pluuuuuuuus ULTRA” (And other updates)

(Warning: unintentionally long)

Okay, but in all seriousness, I finally feel that I’ve progressed just far enough in the show to state that I got into My Hero Academia. Technically, I’d watched season one and like the first 2-3 episodes of two before, but I didn’t finish it, and now I’m trying to. At the moment I’m about halfway through season 2 and making steady progress. Side note: You SPOIL shit near me and you’re a DEAD MAN! Let me watttttch >:(

Honestly I am fucking loving the series right now, I think aside from Deku, my favorites are definitely Tsu (Froooooggie) and, well, Shoto. You saw that coming, I can understand why he’s an overrated favorite. Feel bad for the kid though, like damn, boi you got some serious daddy issues, would you like a popsicle?

And, having started back up on MHA, I’m getting *cough cough* ideas *cough* for potential AUs and such.

Which actually segues this into another thing, just general life updates.

We had a pretty bad freeze lately, but thank God we didn’t lose our entire state power grid this time around, so it was smooth sailing. Unless you count the fact that we had to go out because I needed to be at work while the roads were slippery as snot. Which, was only one day. So we’re fine.

I also had a fix on the house which has FINALLY deterred the Mystery Creature from showing up at night and disturbing my sleep. After months of restlessness, we found out that it was coming in through a vent outside under my bedroom, and we had it covered. That seemed to do the job, thank goodness.

For mental health and productivity, I can’t really say much on the case; things have been about as steady as they can be, but in that it hasn’t really gone anywhere up, and I’m afraid I might be teetering on top of another depressive slump. Which, at the very least I’m prepared for. I honestly thought it would have been sooner, I had a REALLY bad attack a couple weeks ago and I felt sure it was going to be lasting, but by some miracle, though the attack itself was horrendous, I managed to recover in a record time. The only big downside is that my trauma response seems to have “manifested” (for lack of a better word) into very severe body tremors and shaking. I can control it...somewhat...but it drains a lot out of me. Still, I suppose it’s become more manageable, in a tangible sense. I’m a little less worried about how I react mentally to triggers and more worried about how I react physically. That’s a much easier hurdle to take on, overall.

Though, mental barriers are just as much an issue, if for a slightly different reason, at the moment. I’m honestly really stuck, writing-wise. I have so much I want to work on and so much I try to work on, but just a few paragraphs in I get skeptical because the piece will become jarring and choppy, and hard to maintain. I’ve re-started the same baseline to a Clutch and Tyker fic about four times now.

I’m actually considering doing a deep-clean, throwing out concepts too old and too untouched to really go any further with. I will, of course, keep the important ones, and the pieces that are ongoing, but a lot of the stuff I have in the wings that hasn’t been released is just so fucking dead in the water, I either need to put it in the waiting room or drop it completely. So, not sure where that’s going yet.

Actually, come to think of it, the semi-annual is also coming up.

Been doing this for a few years now but as a re-reminder, I try to take social media times down significantly or else entirely 1-2 times a year, one in the spring and one in the autumn. April and September-October have been my best time frames for these, as they’re not only good distances apart, but they’re in relatively trauma-ey time periods that I need to focus on getting through rather than pushing past. Plus, it’s a great excuse to work on large scale projects and not feel any sort of production-line pressure I put on myself to get them out, because they’re all gonna get stacked in a corner to wait until my return.

So! In recap: I’m probably gonna stick around until April 10th (I wanna at LEAST get to have my 21st birthday in the company of my people) and then probably do a week or two heavily away from things, and then extended time kinda by the seat of my pants as needed. That’s still a ways out, but better prepared sooner than later!

That’s all the updates that I can think of for the time being, for now I’m kinda just trying to Vibe where I can. I want to work on things but my body is giving me a very big “no”, so. Sidelines week it is!

Hopefully you all have a relaxing and/or fun-filled weekend, and until the morrow!

#personal post #Personal Update

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katiebruce · 3 years

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adios, amigo.

Well, 2020. What is there to say that hasn’t already been said, tweeted or Instagram-ed a thousand and two times about you? I’ll save us all the generic stuff—“unprecedented,” “nightmarish,” “absurd”—yes, 2020 was all of those things, but on a deeper, more personal level, there is so much more I have to say that doesn’t fit quite into those clichés.

So, this will be my attempt to document and reflect upon one of the strangest years I’ve encountered in my thirty-one years on this planet. Buckle up, buttercup.

Like many others before me have frequently observed, the way I spend my New Year’s Eve has always set the tone for the year to come, and boy, was this year a picture-perfect example of exactly that. Because I had to work on January first, I spent my New Year’s Eve at home watching a depressing movie with T, quietly kissing on the cold back patio as fireworks went off in the distance. I remember feeling both happy and sad about this evening (a duality that was a major theme for me for the fifty-two weeks to come, if only I had known). I was sad not to be celebrating my favorite holiday and even remember telling T that I didn’t want the year to come to be one I spent not going out, staying home, and becoming reclusive as I finished up the stressful process of finishing my MFA thesis in the course of ten (or, what I thought would be ten) short months.

But on the other hand, being held in T’s arms, I remembered feeling so happy that I could have this little quiet holiday—something that felt so private and personal—so entirely our own. It really set the tone for our relationship for the year, and for the obstacles we not only overcame together but dominated, one right after the next.

January was cold, snowy, and full of flight cancellations, which I remember to be something worth celebration at the time. I stayed home and snuggled my way into Aquarius season, the time for me and my brethren to shine, feeling positive that I had lived my thirtieth year to one of great satisfaction and maximum travels taken. (If only I had known then that that late-January El Paso layover where my crew and I walked across the border into Juarez to eat street tacos and laugh over Mezcal would be one of the only times I would leave the country for the year, well, I might have taken a few shots of tequila and really enjoyed my stay abroad just a bit longer).

February came, and with it, the promise of friends. My darling Kristopher, as always, flew to Chicago on the day of (also the day I completed and passed my eighth recurrent [!]) and, thanks to my other darling baby, Nicole, scored tickets to one of the highly coveted format reunion tour shows happening in March* for me, her, and my momma.

(*It did not, in fact, take place in March).

I turned thirty-one in the way I’ve come accustomed too—surrounded by my favorite people (this year at Dorians—a jazz club to end all jazz clubs) too drunk and too smiley to even coherently remember the evening properly. As much fun as I remember having, I told T that I thought it was my last year to host some sort of birthday gathering, and to hold me to it come next year. (He did very well—a few weeks later, after spotting an ad in a discarded newspaper for the Chicago tour of Moulin Rouge happening on my birthday weekend, we bought tickets and I sat peacefully with the fact that one of my new year (or, new age) resolutions was so quickly and poignantly adapted).

By this time, I was already deep in the throes of my first thesis writing course, meaning that I was pretty stressed out all of the time and surely a misery to be around (sorry to those of you who were). Basically, in three semesters’ time, I was expected to draft, edit, and rewrite a fully formed novel (70,000+ words) and the idea of accomplishing such a feat felt like a ton of bricks being carried on my shoulders. I had at least four mental breakdowns in the beginning of the year (again, we all know what lays ahead for the year, I know—but at the time, this seemed like an unbearable amount of stress for one person to have to carry. The joke is not lost on me).

In the coming weeks, things began to get even weirder. Covid scares began sprouting up in cities all around us, and as the government asked people to stay at home, airline ticket prices became massively reduced, so more people began traveling. I mean, this shit was like spring break on acid—it was hugely stressful, and though the threat of the pandemic had yet to reach Chicago, I felt more and more at risk with each passing day as careless amounts of people cashed in on what they thought was the deal of a lifetime.

By the time March reached its midpoint, I, like so many others, was terrified. We had no PPE at work—literally nothing. No gloves, masks, or even hand wipes. Cleaning the aircraft still wasn’t considered a “no-go” item, as far as regulatory practices go. I remember watching the news on my layovers only to keep myself up at night wondering if the virus was going to take hold of me or anyone around me, and if so, how long until they would recover, or perhaps wouldn’t.

St. Patrick’s Day came, and after fighting about whether or not to go out with friends (we didn’t—and for the record, T and I rarely fight—but this was, after all, his first St. Patrick’s Day as a Chicagoan—so his resentment was more than justified) we saw a matinee movie (Onward) and while in the theater, read about how Chicago restaurants, as a precaution, were shutting down the next day due to rising concerns about the spread of the virus. We reacted by grabbing drinks & lunch at one of our favorite neighborhood eateries and tipping the waitstaff more heavily than I think I’ve ever tipped anyone in my life (not mentioning this to brag, or whatever—just remembering what it was like to feel utterly helpless and unsure of what to do or what was to come—we had to find our positivity in some way, and on that day, this was how we saw fit, and it helped).

Then it all sort of happened at once—Lauren’s store was closed with no impending reopening date. The grocery stores (and I swear to god, I will never forget this) became a madhouse—people taking things out of other people’s carts when they weren’t looking. I remember going into Mariano’s with T and insisiting we tie bandanas around our faces for safety, feeling like a goddamn bank robber about to make a heist. But there was nothing left to even take. Frantically, we got what we could and got out of there, and I went home to have a full-fledged panic attack about the state of the world we were currently living in and what we were going to do if things didn’t turn around quickly.

As if overnight, everyone cancelled their airline tickets. It was for the better, and though it put my job in serious jeopardy, I was in massive support of it but still felt an eerie sadness looming around the countless empty airports, airplanes, hotels and city streets. There were times when my crew and I were the only guests in a place—times when I had zero passengers on a revenue flight. And then came the mass flight cancellations—and I mean mass. Everyday became a battle of anxiety as to what was going to happen to my job in the next twenty-four hours, and then cooing my stressed-out thoughts to sleep, only to relive the anxiety with every phone buzz waiting to find out if I had lost my job overnight. By mid-spring, I was hugely considering dropping out for a period of time, just due to the stress of it all, but thanks to support from my friends, family and T, I chose to stick it out and roll with as many punches as I could until I was finally knocked-out.

Quarantines were happening all around me, and without the ability to travel or the (former) grueling expectations of maintaining a social life, I started to reconnect with myself in ways that felt both organic and new, yet much like returning home after a long time away. Lauren taught me to knit, and we celebrated her birthday on the floor of our apartment in an Indian-food induced daze renting Emma and making thousands of tiny knots onto needles that would eventually become blankets. We took walks, did puzzles, and Lauren drove me to and from the airport on the rare occasion that I actually had a flight to work, as the CTA had, unfortunately, become a cesspool of targeted attacks on flight crew members (seriously) because they were often the only person in any given train car.

A rare glimpse of optimism then presented itself via two different opportunities: a chance to take a ninety-day leave from work, and a job offer in the form of editing a book for publication. I said yes to both and hoped that I would be able to take a step back and deal with the crumbling world around me easier with both of these opportunities now on my horizon.

This period of the year (May-July) started off swimmingly. Knitting, reading, and even smoking weed for the first time in nearly a decade (I took two hits and spent the rest of the evening sinking into the couch painfully aware of how bad I am at breathing and worrying that I might stop at any given moment). I fell in love with yoga and felt myself loosening up parts of my body and my mind that had been twisted into a series of knots for god only knows how long. I spent days reading in the sun, baking bread like everyone else in the world, and learning to make my own pies. Things were going really well, and I was even ahead in school, now on track to graduate in August—when things started getting heated.

I’m not going to go on a rant about race, although I very much could, but I will say this—the fact that we are still in a race war in this country in the year 2020 (and even now, a few days into 2021) makes me so sick to my stomach I don’t know what to do. Every injustice that passes by us, overshadowed by the next untimely death or wrongdoing makes me angry in ways that I cannot even fathom putting into words. It burns the color red that is so hot and so vibrant that I can see it soaking through my eyelids even when I squeeze them shut. This country lost a lot of love from me this year, and even more respect. There are not only things we can do better—there are things we must change. And honestly, most days, I don’t think most of the country is ready to not only admit that but to also work for. And that not only sickens me, but depresses the living hell out of me. I feel so stunted all of the time when I picture a world so at peace with its own injustice. It’s just so unfair.

I watched as the world was (rightfully, although woefully) destroyed around me. My neighborhood turned into a desolate, looted shadow of itself—one where Lauren and I could sit on our back patio safely until dusk, when the crime and gunfire became so rabid that on occasions, we sat in the living room in total darkness, listening only to the radio, afraid to let anybody at street level see that we were, indeed, at home. The opportunists that took advantage of the message of this movement made me numb to such a large demographic of the population, and I found myself crying myself to sleep enough times that I thought it might be time to leave the warzone that had become Chicago for a little while as escape down to Florida. So, we packed our bags and left. It is not lost on me that so many did not have this option, and for so many minorities, just simply existing during this time was enough to cause assault. I know I am fortunate—I carry it like lead in my pockets every day.

While in Florida, the first retailers began to reopen and I found myself waiting in an hour-long line to buy soaps and hand sanitizers, and to get a glimpse of what this “new normal” might look like when things started picking back up again. Like many, it was jarring to see empty tables, capacity limits on items, cashiers behind plexiglass sheets shouting to be heard over both the physical barrier and the cloth one strung across their faces.

By the time T & I arrived home, Lauren was already making plans to reopen her store “safely” and I felt sorry for her. How could anything be safe when nothing had changed? Why were companies acting as if business could go on like before—even though nothing had gotten better?

My final months of my MFA were just ahead of me, and I had one month remaining free from work to finish my first full-length novel, and I all I really remember is stress stress stress.

And then Andrew, being Andrew, offered a glimmer of hope, in the form of a drive-in concert celebrating fifteen years of Everything in Transit in southern California, a mere matter of hours from where Nicole had been working. It took a matter of two or maybe three text messages to confirm that we would be attending, and once the ticket was purchased I practically packed my bags and headed off to visit her and try and make light of my heart.

As suspected, the trip was magical. Being around Nicole, per usual, was magical. My heart felt so fully aligned seeing a little piece of her story and getting to experience her way of life once more—drunken hot springs and all their glory. There truly are few things in my life I love more than sitting in the passenger’s seat as Nicole drives us all over the country, and experiencing it again felt so right and so perfect that I honestly thought it was one of the happiest experiences of my life. Because I had requested so, she drove me all the way to Venice Beach the day of the concert so we could see where the infamous album cover was taken. We ate cbd gummies and listened to jack’s and ate in-n-out burger like our lives depended on it. When the concert began, it was eerie, yet hopeful to see all the new protocols of something that had become so familiar to me in my former life. Drinks were ordered through an app and delivered, as was merch, and clapping was replaced by the exuberant honking of car horns. We streamed the sound through the radio and laid the in the back of Nicole’s converted SUV as we cried and sang along to the songs that made everything, even just for one night, feel like it was all going to be okay again. We ended the evening marking ourselves with our first stick and poke tattoos—hers a sun to my moon, positioned to kiss one another when we stand next to each other on our preferred selfie side (lol). I left worried about how long it might be before I could feel her warm embrace again, the embrace of one of the truest friends I’ll ever know, but also recognizing that we were lucky to have had such an experience at all during such an insane year and feeling eternally grateful for its memory.

The last weeks of what I referred to as my Rumspringa were ahead of me, and one sunny afternoon I wrote the final pages of my novel. In a mad rush to edit, revise and complete my portfolio for official review, I never really sat with myself and what I had accomplished or congratulated myself; I wrote a book in seven months’ time, and even though I am unhappy with it (more on that later) there’s no denying that I actually did it. I did it, and nobody can ever take that away from me; it’s an accomplishment I will forever have, and it’s all my own. And I need to remind myself of that. I need to let myself feel proud.

I was back to work in September and taking a huge pay cut, though working the same hours. It was stressful, but once I found out my portfolio had been accepted and I, indeed, would be receiving my MFA I felt a bit at peace for a while. I had let my hair grow long all summer, and all but stopped wearing make-up (mascara makes me feel entirely dolled up now). I felt in an odd way free—almost bare.

The fall came and went fairly quickly—the weekends alone at home and grocery-store-only outings feeling more and more like normalcy. It had been such a tough, trying year, that it suddenly felt nice to just stand still for a bit. So, I did.

In a brief amount of time, I watched (safely) as friends got married, got sick, got older and fell in love. I watched, with great anxiety, as our country voted in the most important election of our lives so far and took the deepest breath I’d ever taken as I watched that man face defeat—although he’s yet to swallow it. I watched as ex-lovers had babies, got engaged and never really stopped to think twice about any of it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the safety (and not in a lame, “safety-net” sort of way) of having T in my life has turned me into someone who not only craves quiet time at home, but really also sort of fell right damn into it very easily, though unexpectedly. I’ve heard the saying so many times before, but you really don’t realize everything is different once you find the right fit because that place feels like it’s always been home. I am grateful to not only have that now and moving forward, but most certainly throughout the trying, unstable times of 2020. In fact, I don’t know how I would have survived without it.

The holidays always creep up on me, and after being dealt a shitty hand from work (don’t even get me started, I’m still fuming) they came that much quicker. T & I were lucky enough to spend the holidays back home in the swamp, visiting my parents and his Dad. The time went by fast but was relaxing, fun, and reenergizing. We spent New Year’s Eve playing giant Jenga and yard Yahtzee with my parents in the cool, tropical winter of Florida. It was nice. We got tired right around 11, so we laid in bed until midnight talking, staying awake just long enough to share our new year’s kiss. It felt right—a proper send off to such a strange and unusual year. I was exctly where I needed to be—wrapped up in a blanket of T’s embrace, comfy in a bed in my childhood bedroom.

So now, here it is: 2021—the supposed upgrade to 2020, or so everybody secretly hopes. So now, as I sit here, drinking a warm, soy-chai latte (homemade!) I find myself having great difficulty setting an intention for the days ahead of me. I feel so beaten and bruised and physically fatigued for no reason but the experiences of 2020 and the courses they ran all over my life. I’m feeling reflective of having finished yet another year of my life (and my Saturn return! Halleluj!) and finding it hard to be anything but fatigued. I guess it’s from the year that’s just finished—more so than any other year it physically pained me at times to be alive at times. I’m missing so many of my friends who I haven’t been able to see for extended months at a time now. I am craving a sense of normalcy, of safety, so that I can feel better about making plans, but as for right now I just don’t have it. I am quietly trying to make subtle changes within myself and how I react to the world around me, but just like the start of this new year, that process is a slow one.

One of my resolutions (though I’m growing to hate that word more and more with each passing year) is to get back to writing. I had a good, albeit stressful, thing going while still in school, and after finishing my novel and receiving feedback, I couldn’t shake the feeling of absolute failure. It’s still there—it’s really hard to try and celebrate an accomplishment when you don’t feel like your work was good enough to warrant anything at all—especially not a fine arts degree. I never said I was a fiction writer—I just wanted to get better at writing fiction—so I need to remember that and allow myself to veer away from that for a while, to work on something new. Something I’ve been saying I’m not ready to write for many years now, something that when I now say that is just a plain old lie: My memoir. I’m ready to close the chapter in my life where I am a flight attendant, so the timing feels more than perfect.

I learned so much about what I want to do within my career and what sort of boundaries I don’t want to place on myself—and I’m trying, I really am. T gifted me with my own pottery wheel for Christmas and we are going to set it up this weekend and I am so excited to get my hands muddy and start creating. Until this year, I didn’t realize how much I needed a creative outlet other than writing—I had been depending on it for too long, my little cup felt bone dry. So, I’m excited to see where this new hobby takes me and how it influences my ability to return to the blank page—quite literally.

I know this year will not be the quick fix that so many are hopeful for—I think quite the opposite, actually. But here are some things I know for sure will happen: I will move out of my apartment and in with T. We will then, immediately get a dog and a new apartment. This, alone, feels like enough to fill the pages of the blank year ahead of us. I will go long periods of time without seeing my loved ones, and without traveling (bleak as this lifestyle may be). I will write, even when it’s hard to. I will publish something—I’m at work submitting pieces as we speak, and though the process is slow, I can tell this is my opportunity—I am ready t fight for it. I will turn 32, and the numerology of my life will seem more aligned. I will spend my birthday at home, alone, because of course Moulin Rouge has now been cancelled (I’m fine with it). I will learn more about myself the more I use my hands to create, to plant, to sculpt, to mold. I will love with fervor. I will smile more, because it’s actually healthier for you, even though my black heart hates to admit it. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get to attend a live concert, though I realize this might be wishful thinking at this point. I will do mushrooms and giggle with the colors. I will cry. I will hurt and I will cause harm. But through it all, I will persevere. Because if 2020 taught me anything, it’s that I am capable of regenerating into new versions of myself that I didn’t even have the time to dream up. I can adapt to whatever is thrown at me, though it will often times feel impossible. I can, and will, create. I can be reborn (as many times as I’d like to, too).

So, thanks, 2020, for teaching me more about myself than any other period of five years has ever taught me. I definitely feel like I’ve been through the ringer a couple of times, yet I find myself still standing day after day. It must be the way a domino feels, standing up, time after time, knowing that something right in front of you is about to knock you down. But instead of thinking about what I’m bringing down with me, I’m thinking of the entire collective as a whole—we are all experiencing this together. And maybe, just maybe, on the other side, there’s a kid with a smile waiting to do it all over again. And that’s perhaps where the beauty lays: we have to tear everything down in order to do better, be better, make change. Nobody likes to catch fire, but everyone loves rising from the ashes. We’ll all get to where we’re headed, one way or another. And eventually, I hope, we’ll see that the other side is better than we could have ever dreamt of.

I hope that 2021 is a bridge that brings us from destruction to creation. I hope the journey is long, so we all appreciate the outcome.

I love you all and wish you warmth and wellness into this year and beyond.

Happy new year—honor the circumstances you have around you and let them help you grow.

#me #personal

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wheremytwinwatches · 4 years

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[Where My Twin Watches]: Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood Episode 31

Last time: Roy gave Riza his number, war was hell, and there could only be one Doc. Onwards!

Envy is not happy to change jobs from Doc Marcoh’s waiter to Scar’s maid, cleaning up his latest mess of brain matter. And so much for the guard dog. Or dogs? There’s an empty collar… Riza’s seeing Ed out after tea, when Ed worries about her new job as a hostage she waves it off as a better chance to kill him in his sleep. That’s one way to look at it, I suppose. One message to pass on about Scar being back, and thanks for talking about Ishval, and Ed’s off. Quick, go save your brother from his new admirer! Episode 31 - “The 520 Cens Promise“ Cens? Is that like an Amestris version of a penny, or what? Ed catches up with Al at a clock-fountain, you can tell how much hearing about Ishval got to him when he calls himself “practically a kid”. And it definitely casts a light on Roy’s drive to become the Fuhrer, if it’s really just setting himself up for Mob Justice. Speaking of the future, they talk about their plans after they regain their bodies. Food for Al, of course, he should still be carrying around that “Stuff to Eat” book. Ed claims that he’s been so busy just trying to get his limbs back he hasn’t thought about what comes next. Maybe some courtesy calls NO NO NO NO Leto-damn it, boys! “Let Granny and Teacher know we’re all right”? “They’ve both helped us out so much”? “They’ll be smiling when they see us”?!?! Stop it, you’re signing their death warrants! Oh my Leto stop with the optimism, you are painting great big targets on yourselves for the Irony Gods. Moving on, moving on! Ed talks about his plan to get around Uncle’s Anti-Alchemy Field with Alkahestry, I’m a little concerned about that seeing as Uncle changed his method to counter Scar’s mixed style, but it’s still a starting point. Time to get lessons from a little girl! A little girl who has skipped town, apparently! Doc says she left his house/hospital that morning. Wow, I get that you’re upset Ed, but there’s no need to just hang up on the Doc like that. And people wonder why he’s snippy all the time. Now, how to track down the little princess? It’s not like she has a unique identifier like a foreign animal companion OH WAIT Elsewhere in Central, Havoc gets visited by Breda and a gift of dumbbells, a farewell gift before he gets shipped off to the West. Fuery and Falman catch up as well as the latter goes to drop off a chess board, Falman griping about the cold of the north. I feel ya buddy. Up in Roy’s office Riza stops by as well, to get a few things she forgot but also to tell him about Scar being back and tell him to take care of himself. Then it’s just Roy, on his own in a big empty room. No pawn (what, just because Fuery’s short he gets the pawn?), no bishop (always serious Falman), no rook (stocky Breda), no knight (poor Havoc), and no queen (CAN’T STOP THE SHIP). But don’t count out the wannabe-king just yet! He’s still in play. And so is the Conspiracy, hidden message in the king! Go Falman!

Hey, Ed? You might wanna work on your drawing skills, or at least don’t inflict your own Angry Gremlin art style on a poor panda. At least Al’s there to show people what it actually looks like, but the day goes by and they haven’t gotten anything. Suddenly the Colonel drives by and offers them a ride, as well as any leads on May he finds. Anyways, about that- Leto, watch where you’re driving man! Anyways, about that money that Ed borrowed to panic-call Winry? [Ed]: “You remembered?! C’mon, how much did I borrow, 500 cens?” [Irate!Roy]: “It was 520 cens!” Titledrop! Ha, nice. “I’ll pay you back when you become Fuhrer.” Now he has even more reason to wait why is the music menacing? Seriously, Roy? You’re asking how Ed learned of your ambition to become Fuhrer? It’s not like you’ve kept it a secret. A bit of snarking about paying back pocket change after each time Roy improves the country, seriously though the music is making what I would normally be chuckling at depressing as heck. Stop it. Alright, back to their ro- Person in the room, look out! Wait, who. Oh jeez, it’s Ling’s other bodyguard, uh… *rifles through past posts*. Fu, right! Last we saw he was escorting Ross to Xing. Yeah, so while you were gone a couple of things happened… Really, Roy? One day without your Conspiracy, and you go drinking. I am- [Roy]: “Hey.” [Bar full of ladies]: *turns* [Who dis?]: “It’s Roy! Well I’ll be damned. Long time!” What. Who are you and why are you hugging Roy. What is going on. Riza, Riza I need you to get over here now. Uh anyway, we have a new character in the owner of this ‘establishment’, Madame Christmas. *Sigh* Come on Roy, I know that you and Riza aren’t official, but you just called her your queen! Show some- Oh. OH! The epic plotting music has started up, Roy’s passed a note to the Madame asking for something special. Secret informant group, go! One that has a direct line to General Grumman, no less!

Mid-episode pictures of Roy scowling at his King, and That Ass Kimblee strutting around in his white suit from the intro. Uh oh. Fu is not happy with the bodyguard he left to watch his liege. Lost her arm, Ling got Goth’d, and now moping in a dingy basement. Look dude, with all the foes WHOA nope! No hitting the lady! I get that you’re upset, but she did the best she could! Then it finally sinks in that Lan Fan lost her arm. Wait, what? [Lan Fan]: “Please forgive me, Grandfather.” He’s your grandpa? I thought it was just a teacher/student job, but they’re family? Ouch. Still very upset with you for hitting your granddaughter, dude, not letting you off the hook. But yikes, this has got to cut deep. You leave for half a season, and come back to this. Alright, time for a roadtrip! Lan Fan needs to meet up with Winry in Rush Valley to get her new arm. Or not? Come on gramps, this it not the time for foolish national pride, you can’t just- Oh. Ok yeah, the Goths have seen Lan Fan’s face now and have already threatened harm to Winry unless Ed toes the line. If she patches up one of their foes? It sucks, but they have to find another way. Fu thanks Doc for saving Lan Fan’s life, and I’m sorry this is a touching scene and all but I can’t get over the magically floating cigarette whenever Doc talks. Sweet scene of him blustering and trying to act grumpy and all, but really. That cigarette. Later, ninjas. Gather your strength, save your young lord, and give that old fart back in Xing immortality (again, ruining any chance of Ling advancing, but whatever). Greed? You just take care of Ling’s body until we can kick you out. The Doc’s resting on his couch, now that he can actually use it, thinking about… um. Thinking about a basement operating table with corpses strewn around the room. Um. Whatever THAT was, it’s compared to May and Lan Fan thanking him for his treatment, which he scoffs at. Yikes. His grumpy attitude and self-dismissal make a lot more sense now. Knock at the door, Doc goes to answer- “Uh, g-good evening Dad. Good to see you.” “It’s been awhile, how are you?” This is his family? His ex and son who were in the area and decided to stop by? And for the son to say he plans to become a doctor? To the tune of tinkly music? Yeah, no. I call bullshit. This is some Goth nonsense right here, I’d say a trick of Envy except there are two people so I don’t know how. But no way this is happening, especially after the giant middle finger to the Irony Gods earlier in the episode. Bracing for awfulness! Dude is crying as he gets some cups for coffee, asking God for a break. Just asking to enjoy some time with his family.

Next day in Central, looks like a cell with OH FOR LETO’S SAKE NO. How does Kimblee have that Stone? Wow, really officers? You gave this Blood Knight the most powerful MacGuffin in your setting, and after he did your dirty work you expected him to just hand it over and file a report on the power he once wielded? How have you survived this long? So it seems Kimblee got arrested for their murders, but no one else knew he swallowed the stone so he’s had it since. But if that’s true, why the heck has he just been sitting around in a cell all these years, not even escaping when Mr. Freeze tried to recruit him? He’s being released? Wrath, what are you up to? I can only assume that you knew he at least had a Stone because the Goths spearheaded the whole process, so why keep Kimblee locked up all this time only to release him now? How does this help you? Could be a distraction for the Protagonists, I suppose. Oh! I see it now, it’s for Scar! Throw the murderer of his people and family at him so he stays away from you. Kimblee’s walked out by a grumpy Warden who might as well be talking about his retirement party in three days. Death flags everywhere for this fool. Kimblee’s outside at an open gate, turns around to shake the man’s hand- and Transmute a bomb to his wrist. Leto, that’s- a baby chick? Wow, ok. Strapping a fake bomb to the man, just to see his freakout? You’re an ass. So now that the jerk’s free, he gets waved into a car by a MP who yup is Envy in disguise, here to give Kimblee a job. Marcoh’s gone. Or maybe not? Oh yeah, that missing guard chimera. If Marcoh could transmute living tissue to make a fake body, ala the Ross Deception, then he could have escaped with Scar. So the job’s to kill Scar and retrieve Marcoh, and then wipe a- A town?! Holy Leto, they’re gonna target Resembool! Scar, kill this ass! Ugh, and then in addition to his hidden Stone Kimblee gets a fresh one from Father, made from the assistants of Marcoh that first time. Makes sense in a jerk way, I guess. If you have to kill off the witnesses, why not grab those souls they aren’t using any more? Scar and Marcoh are hiding out in an alley, Scar explaining that Marcoh’s more useful alive to provide info on Kimblee and info about his brother’s research. Right, there’s that whole thing about Amestris’ alchemy being strange, and not just in that it’s different from alkahestry. Oh, and May’s caught up! She’s curious about their new companion, Scar’s quick to shut that idea down. He’s just the guy who made the Philosopher’s Stones-

Bleh. May hears “immortality” and jumps on it, she’s tugging on Marcoh’s sleeve and begging him to teach her how to make a Stone. Little one, stop. You have no idea what the true cost of a Philosopher’s Stone is. You can’t- Ah. I can see Scar’s logic here: better to remove the temptation now. I guess Marcoh is… still alive after that HoD? Oh yeah, the doctor is kinda recognizable, needs a new face. But wow dude, dick move to just grab him without any warning. Now, time to go and get his brother’s notes… In the north. Looks like everyone’s going to Drachma! Time to break out the winter outfits!

#wmtw #where my twin watches #full metal alchemist #full metal alchemist brotherhood #fmab #fmab 31

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longeyelashedtragedy · 4 years

Text

this has been the most wild fuckin year so let’s do a Year in Review shall we

in terms of internet and fandom life, that is. my real life has been atrociously boring but who cares about real life amirite folx

january probably the only calm month of the year. i spent the first day of the month watching the brazilian inauguration in burgos, spain with one headphone in, while ordering for my family in a restaurant where nobody spoke english (my sister speaks decent spanish, but my whole family has like 8194814 food restrictions so it kind of went past her level of ability). translating between spanish and english with portuguese in one year was kind of awesome. i watched bodyguard and it was amazing! what else...in january i briefly owned the issue of spanish GQ with Luka on the cover which i then forgot about until november. other than that...? nada. the calm before the storm. (fav music)

february was so long ago that i keep forgetting how insane its 28 days were. probably the wildest month of the year really. i got involved in an absolutely batshit and exclusive group chat with a famous person’s family member (which must remain confidential). it was all sunshine and rainbows for a week and a half and it then devolved into the most absolutely insane Lord of the Flies situation ever--it turned into 1 main chat and then 1 chat that was less puritanical than the main chat, and that chat spawned another chat that didn’t trust the previous chat, and then that chat had a massive argument and a like 6-person bitchy chat modded by a gay guy who does voodoo (shoutout to ALCIDES) spawned from that one. i made it into every level of group chat and was asked by the tiny bitchy chat to spy on the other bitchy chat (i did not lol). i was a member of the tiny bitchy chat until i got a new phone and was logged out of whatsapp for like a month. these words can’t even convey what this chat was like--oh and did i mention it was all conducted in only my 3rd-best language? it’s no wonder my weird ass survived middle school almost entirely unscathed. as this was winding down, on the very last day of the month, I found out about Justin’s involvement in the SNC-Lavalin scandal and decided to go public about my years-long boner for him; Lavscam definitely changed the course of the rest year ~ Oh, also i began helping to repair a friendship that had had some Drama go down so that was p cool ~ (fav music)

march was a Time. The insanity of lavscam helped me finally finish the macdeau I started writing the previous December when a bunch of tungelr people called me disgusting for writing it. i wrote my first straight-up serious explicit porn in years which has wound up being the third-longest thing i’ve ever published on ao3. Also, Hozier released Wasteland, Baby! which made a huge impact on me as well. i spent like half of march staying up till 3:30 am writing said Long Fic, and i was firmly in the closet about stanning manu. also justin almost got a vote of no confidence or something and he got busted for eating a chocolate bar during a parliamentary all-nighter. (fav music)

in april i wrote a ton of fanfic thanks to declining mental health(tm). i think this is when i started my emmanuyell insta account and became really into making weird edits (which i still love doing just...don’t anymore.) i started meeting some cool people thanks to macdeau. what else happened in april? i feel like it wasn’t actually too eventful other than writing a lot of fanfic and being Annoyed about manu. feel free to jog my memory lol. oh i think i wrote “Okay so who from the French national team are we gonna ship Manu with” on twitter after seeing photos of manu + antoine griezmann at the World Cup but nothing came of that...at that time... (fav music)

may saw me having to deal with my shit mental health and up my meds but that seems to have had a good effect because i seem to not be too depressed to write in the winter/fall anymore! it was the 2nd anniversary of manu’s election and at the Christchurch Call in paris, macdeau took that amazing fairytale princess photo together that was completely unrivalled in Gay Shippy Feels moments until ivan went out of his way to kiss luka during the el clásico gameplay last wednesday. someone wrote ao3′s first griezmanu drabble and at the end manu gets down on his knees in front of antoine, takes off his shoes for him, and sucks his dick, and i achieved another state of being entirely. my sister graduated from grad school and when we went down to DC for the weekend i went to eat at this restaurant manu famously ate at while there and ordered the same stuff he did and i have no idea how he consumed all that grease. i learned about the song O Come, O Come, Emmanuel *snort*. i feel like other things happened in may too? OH YES--i got the idea for my magnum opus, Trophy Boyfriend, and started to write it. the first scene i wrote was justin blowing manu in the hallway. then the same day i wrote the scene at the airport (which was the ending for a solid month and half till i realized it shouldn’t be), and the saddest scene in the fic--but we’ll stop to open presents. oh! and i stumbled across the macronists discord chat which is such a delightful little community *weepy sniffles* (fav music)

june was Eventful. a french neonazi on tumblr told me to go let manu fuck me in the ass because i was a fucking degenerate. what a start! then came the ceremony in which manu awarded everyone on the french national team the legion of honor medal and the way he and antoine looked at each other was truly...Wait it was the 3rd Gay Shippy Feels moment of the year. as soon as the ceremony was over i wrote a fic about it and haven’t looked back. between this + watching almost every 2018 World Cup game and the women’s world cup (during which I cried during argentina’s last game because of that miraculous penalty) i finally achieved my years-long goal of getting into Futbol(TM). Antoine dropped his spotify playlist and my crush on him turned into Intense Love (TM) and also he introduced me to some legit awesome artists. which led to (fav music)

july, in which i wrote “ça c’est ma dope” which is definitely the best thing i’ve written since i wrote “modernity towering in front of the sky” almost exactly 10 years before. got embroiled in Soccer Transfer Drama and learned its pain for the first time (unfortunately, since i wound up attaching my heart-wagon to barça’s Suddenly Least Favorite Player, the transfer drama pain has...never ended) became a full-fledged culé, O the joy O the honor. i wanted to ship antoine with someone on the team, which in their current chemistry-less season is a real challenge, but after seeing a few photos i decided it would be fun to casually ship antoine + ivan rakitic (partially because, ever since i went from Enemies to Lovers with the croatia NT during the World Cup, he was one of the only players i knew anything about other than messi, suárez, and piqué lmao). while looking on ao3 to see what kind of headcanons people had about him--and the fic is definitely in general better than what’s out there about antoine, which is perplexing because antoine is much easier to write than ivan--i found That Amazing Rakidric Fic and thought “oh wait that ship makes a lot of sense” and started also shipping ivan and luka with the fire of a thousand suns. oh and my air conditioner was broken for like 3 weeks. i worked on more fics, seriously outlining the path of Trophy Boyfriend, and my music taste was killer. (fav music)

in august i finished Trophy Boyfriend in my neighborhood Starbucks after writing the scene that was giving me the most trouble (the scene at the beginning where they’re organizing their book collection). the fic has made multiple people cry and people disagree on whether justin’s choice at the end was the right one and god i’m so proud of it. Instantly went on to write ‘i might not mind,’ a lively lighthearted Friends to Lovers ivantoine~ romp which was definitely going to be a one-off and i was definitely not going to get an extra celeb crush out of it,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, (fav music)

in september ivantoine became A Thing in my mind and it’s a whole ongoing slow-burn character-arcy series that has taken a very different turn than i had expected. i’m not saying it’s like, the most deep writing of all time, but it’s gone to some interesting places emotionally. honestly, ships and boners aside, the concept of a person who made some really stupid homophobia 101 comments many years ago slowly realizing over and over again that they have gay feelings for a man who seems rather comfortable with gayness is a fascinating one and one that’s really cool to explore in writing. Or at least, i think so. in many ways ivan is my most unreliable narrator because of the many layers of Discomfort, Emotion and Repression at play in the fic while he’s interacting with this pretty cheery and uncomplicated seeming-dude who’s still perceptive enough to sort of know what’s going on (and that’s not even adding in the star player/falling from grace former rockstar dynamic!!!) i know in the current climate it’s Not Allowed to write about someone who said a bad, but luckily i’m too old to give a Fuck. ivantoine is hard to write but it’s my bff’s favorite ship of mine and has a few other excited fans on ao3 which tbh is kind of an accomplishment considering i made it up out of thin air and it’s not something you’d ever think would be a thing. instantly also developed ‘getting called out about ivan by a child on the internet’ as a goal. and...i achieved my dream of leading high holiday services!!! (fav music)

october had more high holiday services and i worked a lot on certain fics (including d*janfic which would be fun to finish). i came up with the idea of a Very Long Rakidric Fic based on the translation of a gorgeous croatian folk song i sang in college (Janko fell asleep under the poplar/My dear and beloved/My beautiful dark eyes/Look at me/Under the poplar's golden branch/My dear and beloved/My beautiful dark eyes/Look at me/I tore off the golden branch/My dear and beloved/My beautiful dark eyes/Look at me--in which the golden branch is a reference to a way to get into the underworld). decided to start quarter-assedly learning croatian for fun. Fun...ha. other than fangirling a lot and watching the croatian NT play, october was pretty uneventful? i think? Justin got reelected and mauricio didn’t ;( (fav music)

in november i finally achieved my dream of having a literal child on the internet call me out about being attracted to a homophobe. (they were a madridista even!) accidentally started writing some more rakidric and now i’m seriously hooked. also accidentally came out of the closet about the secret crush i’d been harboring on luka modric and then one fateful day in the ihop on 14th st i realized i’d had this crush already and repressed it from my memory. Don’t do that kids! now it’s Hurting Really Bad. Ivan dropped the most pathetic and candid interview like...ever and i hope “¿Cómo puede disfrutar uno? Jugando al fútbol. ¿Cómo se siente mi hija pequeña cuando le quitan un juguete? Triste. Yo me siento igual. Me han quitado la pelota, me siento triste” goes down in the history of most epic futbol quotes of all time. (still haven’t actually been able to watch this because no one has uploaded it anywhere) What else...............Am i forgetting anything? i celebrated my birthday with @tender-vittles in epic fashion after two years of Not doing that, and turned 32 going on 15. enjoyed my first-ever “x reader” fic (zlatko dalic x reader LOL) and finished “drive your plow over the bones of the dead” which was real fucking good. i saw hozier live and it was a religious experience and i unexpectedly cried during nina cried power and then called myself “Luka B” when ordering at the classy taco bell across the street after getting a glimpse of alexxx ryan in the flesh. (fav music)

now it’s december and my seasonal depression is a little worse than it’s been the past few years but i’m managing. still shipping and writing and i just got called out about ivan again last week. i’m 2 for 2 here! el clásico was boring but also it was gay and my heart my heart my heart ! Anything could happen in the last 10 days of this year and honestly...I’m pretty sure I’m ready.

Most importantly this year, despite it being not that great in a lot of ways, I developed a lot more self confidence, made many important realizations, and became a lot more peaceful (despite how this post makes me sound) and wiser and less bitter and pessimistic. And i became outspoken enough about antisemitism on the left to lose friends over it...3 for 3. i can’t say i’m displeased with these developments.

Hasta 2020! <3

#about me #originals #GPOY #2k19 you were...wow #17 #there are def awkward omitted words here i apologize

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dead-inside-mcgee · 5 years

Text

Static Part 1

Summary: “I know, but I think there’s a difference between bad guys and bad guys.”

Warnings: Blood, kidnapping

Word count cause I’m doing that now: 1632

Relationships: Chase brody x Henrik von Schneeplestein but give it time

While Chase couldn’t see much of the room he was in, he could hear, feel, and smell a lot of things. First was the thick smell of chemicals and burning that almost clogged his nose. There was also the uncomfortable feeling of having his arm unattached. His metal one, thankfully.

There was also the sizzle of electricity and the sound static coming from seemingly everywhere. It would be eerie and he should be very afraid right now but for some reason he wasn't. Maybe it was the hope that Jackie would come and save him.

Right now he was on his back, strapped to a table like he was Frankenstein's monster. As soon as that thought crossed his mind the door opened, filling the room with light, and in stepped Frankenstein himself, or some guy wearing a labcoat that gave off Frankenstein vibes.

While it was still hard to see, he could make out a few distinct features. First off, an eyepatch over his right eye and a wild hairdo. He had deep bags under his eyes and looked like he’d rather be anywhere but here.

The man shut the door and flipped a light switch, illuminating the room. It wasn’t as big or as extravagant as he thought it’d be. It was actually pretty band, and that’s an understatement.

The walls were a depressing gray and made out of cold metal, which was a serious health risk in the colder seasons. There was nothing in the room besides the bed chase was strapped to and a metal desk. There wasn’t even a swivel chair or a house plant.

On the desk was a chemistry set, which was probably where the smell was coming from, and Chase’s prosthetic arm. The man was holding a long metal pole, which he propped up against the wall.

He was also holding a clipboard which he placed on the desk and went over some papers.

“Chase Brody. That is your name right?” His voice was monotoned, and squeaky, like he wasn’t used to talking at all. He also had an accent, German maybe?

“Who wants to know?” He said with a smirk, having always wanted to use that line.

The man sighs and sits himself on the desk, the clipboard on his knees. “Please don’t make this difficult for me.”

He raises an eyebrow at him. “Maybe if you give me back my arm I’ll comply.”

He sighed again. “I’d love to, but my b-” He stopped suddenly, and tenses up, slapping his hand over his eyepatch.

“You good over there?” Chase asks, noticing the odd shift in behavior.

The man stands up, turns around and hunches over the desk. “Please stop asking questions and answer mine.”

“Fine, fine. Yeah I’m Chase, I still wanna know why you wanna know.”

He doesn’t respond. Just kinda staring at the desk.

“Henry.”

“Wh-what?” Now he responds, turning to look at him.

“That’s your name right? Henry?”

He freezes, his eyes darting around the plane room. “It’s Henrik. How’d you know that?”

Chase shrugs. “I thought I heard someone call someone by that name while I was being dragged in here. I was curious as to who that was.”

Henrik was trembling slightly which worried him, even if he was just a stranger who's kidnapped him.

He turns back around, looking back over the papers.

“Ya know, it seems I’m gonna be here a bit, why don’t we get to know each other.” He didn’t respond so Chase kept going. “I know, I'll tell you something about me and you tell me something about you.”

“Why would I tell you anything about myself,” Henrik said sternly.

“Because you wanna know stuff about me? So we can be friends.” He smiled childishly.

“And why do you want to be friends with me? Why are you even talking to me?” His voice was shaking slightly.

“Because, I’m holding onto the small hope that you may not be as bad you seem and you’re actually a good guy in a bad situation.”

“How- I don’t understand.” He put his head in his hands. “I already know everything there is to know about you anyway.”

“Really like what?” He should honestly feel creeped out that someone might have been monitoring him and knew his life story. All in all, he shouldn’t be so nonchalant right now.

“I know you lost your arm in a wreck when you were sixteen and your father built you a prosthetic limb that you spent the rest of your teen years showing off to everyone.”

“Wow.” He had nothing to respond to that. “Did you know that I became obsessed with mechanics and I started making my own prosthetics in college which won me quite a few prizes.”

“You made this?” Henrik asked, picking up the limb still sitting on the table. “It’s very well crafted.”

“My father's design! Of course the programming and lifelikeness were my doing. See you don’t know everything about me.”

“Interesting.” He continued to examine the limb. “Tell me about the pro-” Like before, he stopped, tensed, and dropped the arm onto the table.

“Hey! Be careful!”

Henrik whimpered softly, trembling like he was in serious pain.

“Shit, are you okay?” He wanted to go up to him and hug him or something, but he was still strapped to a table.

“Shut up!” It didn’t seem like he was talking to him.

Chase tugged on the restraints, which broke easily. He was almost about to flaunt his strength before he realized the restraints were duct tape.

He was about to step up to him and Henrik acted fast. Grabbing the pole and spinning around, holding it up in defense. There was blood leaking from his eyepatch.

“Don’t touch me!”

He raised his arms- er arm in defense. “Hey, hey, chill! I’m just going to grab my arm.” He inched toward the table, Henrik didn’t even try to stop him, still holding the pole up.

Slowly he grabbed it and reattached it to his nub. “There, I’m not gonna harm you, just put the pole down.”

He lowered it slightly, stilling having it at the ready.

“Now. I’m just going to slowly back towards the door.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t let you do that.” He stood in front of the door and flipped an unnoticeable switch on the metal pole. It was now Chase realized he was wearing rubber gloves.

The pole emitted an electric sound and Chase had a feeling it would hurt a whole hell of a lot if that thing even touched him.

“Why not.”

“I just can’t.” His eye was bleeding harder.

“What’s going on with your-” He pointed to his eye.

“Nothing, please just sit back down.” His voice shook and he looked like he was being forced to do something he really didn’t want to do.

Chase took a deep breath. Henrik was pretty frail, he could take him in hand to hand combat, but the electric pole. Luckily he had something for every situation.

“I bet you also didn’t know that my arm is pretty hollow. Making it fairly light and giving me a bit of storage space.”

He glanced down at it, watching in intrigue as Chase pulled out two gardeners gloves and put them on. “I’d even bet you didn’t know I was trained in hand to hand combat.”

It wasn’t even a fair fight, he was able to pull the pole right out of his hand, push him to the ground, and handcuff him to the table that seemed to be screwed in the ground, in a matter of seconds.

He almost felt bad, but he was too busy running out the doors to really care. This place wasn’t as twisty curvy as he’d thought it’d be. Once he was out of the depressing office the front door what right there.

***

How Chase got home, he couldn’t tell you. It was like the walk from that lair he escaped from his little workshop/home, was completely erased from his mind. Whatever happened, he was home now and trying to make up on lost hours by working late.

The bell above the door rang and he stood up from behind the desk, where he was working on the blueprints for some project.

Jackie smiled at him. “Chase, how are you?”

“I’m doing good! Can I help you with something?”

“That’s not what I’m here for.” His expression changed to something more serious.

“Oh, it one of those meetings.” He glances around the mostly empty workshop and into the back storage room, aka his bedroom.

Jackie closed the door behind him and sat on a box. “You get kidnapped by one of the most dangerous villains I’ve ever met, somehow escape them unharmed, and don’t bother to tell me!”

“Okay, I know I should’ve at least texted you to tell you I’m fine. I’m surprised that didn’t occur to me.”

He sighed, putting his face into his hands. “What happened? What did he do to you?”

“Nothing.” Jackie gave him a disbelieving look. “I’m serious, I didn't even see the guy. I met his henchman though.”

“What’d his henchman do?”

“Nothing, I was actually a bit concerned for him.”

“Concerned? How so?” Now he seemed curious.

“He seemed like he didn’t want to be there, like he was just following orders.”

“Of course he was following orders. Any weakness or whatever you thought you saw was probably just a trick to make you feel sympathy for the bad guy,” Jackie said, standing up.

“I know, but I think there’s a difference between bad guys and bad guys.”

Jackie shook his head and made his way out. “Get some rest, I’ll close everything up for you.”

“Whatever you say.” Chase yawned, lying down and passing out instantly.

#my fic #Dr Schneeplestein #henrik von schneeplestein #chase brody #chase bro average #jackie boyman #static #antisepticeye #jacksepticeye #schneeplebro

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years

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I was wondering if you could pls describe (or show me some tags if its easier) the traits of some writers of spn..? I usually hear "X writer usually writes more sam" or "this strucutre is usual in X's episodes" but I've never been able to pick on those; the only ones I've been able to pick up are bucklmming and its beacuse they are somehow instantly bad :/ ps. u dont have to like explain EVERY single writer or anything, just general things that you know or notice in their respective episodes

Hiya :D

Yeah, it’s a thing that’s really, like, aside from Buckleming being bad and coming with a warning notice that we’re all helpless, please don’t burn the fandom down after their episodes, it’s not really more than nerdy interest that means anything about knowing who the writers are, so in that sense you have the toolkit you need to function :P

Buuut from my very very deeply nerdy and writery observations through what is now more than a decade (eep) of watching this bloody thing…

The show starts with a Generic Tone, and most of the original writers have this tone. This is in NO WAY a bad thing, but of all the writers, you have to really delve to connect common themes in their episodes, and for many of the writers who didn’t endure out of seasons 1-5, we don’t really have a clear profile on their habits, for reasons I’ll get to.

We can see Sera Gamble’s fingerprints a bit more because we get 2 seasons of her as a showrunner, but by and large as one of the original writers, she really sets the tone so her writing IS Supernatural, as much as Kripke or John Shiban or Raelle Tucker or Cathryn Humphries and whoever else wrote multiple episodes seasons 1-5. They have things they might like but dropping into a random early episode doesn’t give much away because they had a much tighter playbook.

1x13 shows this because despite serious, painful hindsight of all the things they do wrong that we recognise NOW from seasons of their nonsense, Buckleming wrote far more to the brief than they ever do these days; the difference in style has to be almost entirely attributed to being a first season and close creative control and enforced use of a playbook that disguised a ton of their worst habits which go unchecked these days, and @justanotheridijiton has dug up evidence of them cheerfully commenting on writing in such a way into deep history >.> Despite it being technically their best episode, they were fired and given a 6 year writing ban until Kripke left. So I’m guessing it was fairly obvious they had these problems regardless.

Of all these writers in the early seasons, Edlund pops up in season 2, and he is a wild card with a personality, and he does not write ~generic SPN~ and never did: it’s always Edlund SPN and it gels perfectly with the slightly less technicolour SPN, frequently breaking the format and creating the modern version of SPN… If he does comic it’s Bad Day at Black Rock and if he does deep it’s On The Head Of A Pin, and if you look at what he wrote, very very few of his episodes are duds, because he has a brain swirling deep with interesting and bizarre nonsense. He’s also the biggest Cas stan ever.

Jeremy Carver pre-Carver era helped, which I think is why he gets to be part of Carver Edlund - we have 3 and a half years of his showrunning to know what fascinated him, so I’ll just say, in his very first episode in season 3, he alludes to Cain and Abel for the first time. He’s very big on narrative structure being used in fascinating ways, and his episodes are all very technically accomplished, but the downfall was that by the end he was writing narrative symbolism as a sort of withered husk of his former self with no emotion whatsoever, just hitting storytelling marks. 11x01 is the single most depressing episode to me in terms of “this is the man who wrote Mystery Spot and Changing Channels”

Fortunately, and I’m skipping over a ton of writers to tell this story, but could go back and talk about more of the interesting ones in between, if you watch 11x01 and 11x02 back to back, they work perfectly as a single episode and it’s like after the break all the life and emotion and intrigue is breathed back into the show in a rush of colour and character. Now, Dabb is one of the OG writers in my standards, in the sense that he and Loflin showed up in season 4, and to this day Dabb’s writing to me still shows a touch of writing within the original SPN playbook as a writer who CAN write alongside Kripke, Gamble, etc, and chameleon into the background as not writing Dabbnatural, but writing Supernatural. To me this is a part of his strength when it comes to story and why he and originally Loflin shot up the ranks in Gamble era to the point where they wrote 7x23, and from there Dabb always wrote the second, middle and last episode in a second-in-command writer role, which, now we hit season 14, means that’s half the length of the show he’s been clearly estimated as one of the powerhouses.

Because he had a co-writer for 4 years, originally you might think that it’s hard to tell what he is and isn’t writing, but he and Loflin split up, I hope just to ease empty seats in the writer room, and we get 2 Loflin episodes which betray a few of his weaknesses when it comes to story/structure/pace, but reveal he was the quippier, funnier, more manic one of the two. Like, I’d say Plucky’s (my no joke favourite episode) is probably something where he would have steered it more than Dabb :P But Dabb meanwhile, writing alone, writes 8x08 which is also funny but in a very sublime way based on situation and framing etc which makes us laugh without breaking up the story for quips so much as coming from character, such as “it’s a shortened version of my name”, “stop smelling the dead guy, Cas,” and ALL the uses of cartoon effects as part of the embedded storytelling. It’s like his resume for considering what he can do as a solo writer and he blows it out of the water.

Dabb is very good at characters who might have brief one off appearances, like, even within a scene, but still have a bunch of unique personality, as well as excellent handling of the main characters, and he can write some killer speeches and emotional pleas and stuff. He’s also absolutely filled with callbacks and repeats and narrative loops, and he started this on a smaller level, either to his own episodes, or dutifully doing his job to foreshadow and build the mytharc, but in Dabb era, this has turned into absolutely exploding the show’s callbacks into a weird fractal of meanings, which I think works wonderfully for supporting a 14 year old show on its own legs, because each callback and loop goes in a different, often wild direction, but still at the same time has an emotional continuity and truth to the story based on the story predecessors. The fact he writes like this is of no surprise to meta writers who’ve been keeping tabs on him far longer than I have. In fact, a combination of all Dabb’s strengths put to work versus his One Weakness, his kryptonite, is a terrible story of Lizzy’s hubris of not paying attention to the show and a hard learned lesson :P

After 10x21 I was utterly bereft and hated the show for what it had done, but I was gonna keep watching, as sarcastically and eye-rollingly as I could, and 10x22 started to deliver in spades. Dean drove ALL THE WAY down south and back, somehow missing Cas tailing him (without a car, we later learned) and all while Sam was on an urgent timeline to get things done before Dean got back… driving an hour back and forth in the immediate vicinity of the Bunker. The last times we see Sam are Urgent Driving Montages to get there in time while he’s basically coming from up the street, and meanwhile, Dean and Cas have logged like 20 hours of driving plus farting around murdering people, and I was GLEEFULLY tearing this episode to SHREDS for its car continuity, like, HOWLING with laughter.

Anyway I took a break to get some tea and came back ready to eye-roll through the end of the episode, hit play, and walked smack into the DeanCas confrontation and dramatic speeches about everyone you love could be dead, except me, and accidentally got so tense and enraptured that I spilled an entire mug of scalding tea down my front when Dean attacked Cas and I jumped out of my skin and screamed and then yelled again because OH YEAH I WAS HOLDING TEA, and from that day on I have A: loathed Dabb for his car continuity and B: always kept my eye on that fucker and when it’s his episode and what he’s up to… Once burned etc…

Dabb’s squad are awesome though. Obviously excluding buckleming, and I think with all the bingos and complaining you know what to look for in their episodes :D

Berens has been around since season 9, which makes him a veteran in remaining writers terms, just because Carver era had an en masse leaving when contracts were up (no hard feelings, just bad timing and Berens had been newer than all of them at one point :P) Berens is another writer I think can occasionally dip into pretending to be generic SPN on some mytharc episodes but he’s just obviously not been around in ye olde days, and joined in the time when, through Gamble era and then Carver in spades, the MotW writers in particular really fell into a new style of writing the show that I absolutely adore, which is where the individual episodes rather than mytharc stuff were increasingly left to the writers to do whatever they wanted with, and become more and more writing style and structure etc as standalone canvasses for your own skills, personality, etc. Because you CAN’T keep writing the same SPN episode over and over and over, and if one of the season 1 writers came back and wrote a season of season 1 style episodes, they’d be stiflingly boring, in tone and range, compared to what we have now. To keep people interested after so long, quirkiness and the ideas that an individual writer brings to the table as THEMSELVES, becomes increasingly the only way forward to keep the show fresh. Season 4 onwards began to have more of this, and Edlund had been doing it since his first episode anyway, but to me season 6 has very specific feeling tones for the episodes, while season 7 and Robbie Thompson’s arrival in particular start to set the tone for allowing the writers to be adventurous, and to me season 7 is the shift to the style of season we had from then onwards.

I think Berens episodes feel quite muted and cleverly restrained, but really really intelligent behind that. He’s written some incredible episodes that turn the season on the head while being standalones, and his run of 14th episode being where things were knocked out of the park but on a small stage, like, conflicts in a storage unit, barn, submarine, the BMoL hq and an abandoned hotel, all have devastating and dramatic emotional consequences while still somehow seeming understated and natural, quiet, almost, in the sense of what they turn on - looks and small agreements and emotional revelations etc. He doesn’t do fun and loud and flashy very often, and he delves very serious themes of suicide and depression, so I read his episodes and quiet, powerful, and very very pointed and driven and well-constructed to get to that point. His back and forth between scenes for dramatic irony is one of the biggest features I enjoy and identify, and that was an overall theme in season 13, on a much bigger level. 13x21 and Sam’s death, and, well, the whole thing really, was a wonderful example of the tension he can hold you in this way. Also: proof he CAN have fun but only when it’s super gay :P

I think Meredith Glynn gels really well with his writing, to the point where they co-wrote an episode within her first year on the show and then she took over the 14th episode slot for the first time since Berens got to the show and wrote an excellent episode that you could have told me was one of his and I’d have believed you, since it was structurally very very similar to any of his episode 14s which I have legit started seeing as a subgenre of the show in my own weird brain sorting way :P She has a great deal more fun though. She accidentally made the Worst Timed Episode Ever In The History Of Anything with 12x05 and I think got off on the wrong foot with fandom, but since then every episode has been an improvement on the last, and she’s had some absolutely wild rides, with 13x08 being I think her masterpiece overall, though Gog and Magog are funnier as an individual set piece :P

Her writing is playful and fun and shows a deep care for the character histories and how they affect them - 12x11 is hard to believe is someone’s 2nd episode if you don’t think the new writers did their homework, because she absolutely guts Dean, and throws in a Rowena backstory freebie along with, AND handles Sam handling Dean with perfect ups and downs and brotherly affection and horror etc. I also think her Gabriel episode is the best Gabriel episode ever, for him as a character, and in terms of fun, the unholy combination of her writing and Speight directing and acting and also acting was utterly unbelievable. 10/10 would use as the episode to drag friends back to the show if they only saw seasons 1-5... It’s not even comparable with her other episodes, because she seriously levelled up as a writer while doing it. I can’t wait to see what she is up to next season :D

Davy Perez is like the dark side of the coin of Glynn, where he is fun but dark as fuck, and 13x11 has the best example of that with his cheery music-playing serial killers, but it’s an attitude he’s had all along. He does his best with Buckleming characters they do their worst with, so he singlehandedly made me think things for Crowley weren’t going to be as bad as they were in season 12 with 12x12/15 and he absolutely was the only person to give Ketch and Asmodeus anything resembling an interesting dynamic in 13x17. 12x12 was an absolute masterpiece of non-linear writing, which requires a good brain to do and then he made it funny AND all while ripping off tarantino but in SPN and not making it corny and writing Cas and Crowley’s most dramatic love confessions… 12x04 was my personal reassurance that Dabb era was going to care about Sam again after Carver neglected to deal with his shit for 4 years while dumping on him in the narrative, and Davy betrays the old Gamble sam girl traits of doing stuff like tying him up and telling us in the same breath his heart is worth 100x its weight in gold :P

His episodes are wacky and fun in a way that draws blood and makes you seriously fear for the characters, even ones you think are fine and can’t possibly die in that episode, and his darkness frequently takes what looks like it could have been a Buckleming brief and makes you care about the characters they’ve been mauling all season in their own mis-applied love of writing the villains. You NEED someone who loves writing the villains, and Davy has a real relish to it that doesn’t woobify or jerk off to their evilness, it just makes them raw and scary to the point where you might actually believe Asmodeus is threatening for half a second, or that Crowley could win season 12, or to sell us on Ketch having a glimmer of a soul.

As for Yockey… I don’t know where Dabb found him but thank GOODNESS he did because sometimes you just need to take a random gay playwright with minimal TV experience, throw them into your writers room, and say, here, go nuts. Yockey has written like half a SPN episode and multiple literal excellent stage plays that are somehow on screen with our characters, which got to the point where in 13x19 I wrote like 40k episode notes while openly weeping because my Literature degree was being yanked so hard :P His nonsense often has multiple amazing side characters, like, sometimes a LOT of amazing side characters, and he knows how to make them all work. He literally has rude mechanicals like in 13x19 and the poor drunk angel. Shakespearean tropes. If you’re ever watching a SPN episode and it’s like why is this person writing for us and not a world famous literary darling? then it’s probably a Yockey episode. I am still struggling with how to handle it, and describe what’s going on, and all I can think is of 12x10 where an article about it literally was like, here is every single episode Cas has ever been in, and how this episode pulled on it and turned it into magic gold. Like, now 4x16 and 6x20 are the straw that Yockey turns to gold. I am too emotionally compromised to write something coherent and non-fangirlish about Yockey because he’s like, #writergoals in a totally bananas set the bar as high as the moon kind of way. He’s got that rare once in a generation talent and dammit I think he counts as my generation, so there goes my chance to be that person :P

And he’s writing for fucking Supernatural.

#Asks

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hedonssippingseagrams · 6 years

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Fic Rec List

I am BIGLY procrastinating so I thought I’d spend some time compiling a fic rec list. Not comprehensive, or in any order. These are just the ones that I re-read or have made me lose my shit. Most of them are ones we’ve all read, but hey... You never know. If you don’t see one that you love on here, send me it! I may have missed some great things.

Barn Burner by campholmes - Hockey butches who hate each other turned girlfriends. There is something magic about this story for me. Maybe it’s the way it’s from Katya’s pov but I can clearly see each of Trixie’s thoughts because I’ve had them before and it’s like watching myself but through the eyes of someone who just wanted to eat Trixie’s ass this whole time.

They Don’t Make Em like They Do in the Coutry by yekaterina - Look, let’s just pause and say that half of this list is going to be yekaterina and campholmes but I’m not going to apologize for that. This one features a big age difference with the youngest of them being 30 (I, for one, am tired of reading about 20 somethings falling in love, she says as she fully has a fic about that) and a buzzed headed Trixie who inherited her daddy’s bee farm. Katya works at public radio and is written like a muggle version of Prof Trelawney and I’d quit my job to follow her anywhere.

Vegasboud and Down by yekaterina - Look, I’m showing some serious self control to only have this third on the list. I love this fic so much that it’s actually embarrassing. (No, really. My no drag knowledge friend got me a chocolate semi truck because when I got drunk at her house all I talked about was Big T. In my defense, chapter 2 had just dropped.) This fic features a nasty big dumb truck driver, a broken yet tough and witty erotic dancer, and an adorable rat pup. I can’t even talk about it because while I may be procrastinating, we’d be here all night.

Sandpaper by UNHhhh - Het sex? In my fic list? Yep. This shit is the hottest thing I’ve ever read. But besides that, it’s so well written, the descriptions are refreshing and vivid and sometimes I get lost in my re-reads because I’m fascinated by the small details the author has included.

Double Lines by UNHhhh - domestic pregnant trixie really gets me going. This fic gives me baby fever and I hate it for that but otherwise it’s sooo good. The little nickname in there thrills me. It all thrills me. The relationship is so strong and their fight they have in the middle just... it’s so good. I’m knocked out of words thinking about it.

We’ll take a pause from the holy trinity of authors and explore my other recommendations, but if you haven’t read every single work by those three authors then you’re wrong.

Honey and Yarrow by katyazeroni - First, A+ for that author name. Second, this is so adorable and cute but also manages to be raunchy and realistic when you’d almost least expect it. If every tumblr post about wanting a lesbian girlfriend got compiled into one fluffy little present featuring cacti, it’d be this. I love it.

I found a fox, caught by dogs by whenyourhairisalsoahood - This fic has actually changed me as person, no hyperbole. You’ve got yoga teacher katya (but she’s so much more than that in this story) dating a lighting tech Trixie. You’ve got accurate portrayals of past addictions, you’ve got cunty with a heart of gold Violet, you’ve got fisting. This fic has helped me find things within myself that are strong and good, it’s opened my mind to gender roles and where I’d like to ideally fall in them, it’s given me a new kink. It’s so wonderful and I cannot recommend it enough.

Powdermill Lane by silvervelour - I’m a slut for any fic that takes place in the 90s and opens to a beach bonfire. This toys around with lost love that’s never truly lost and the idea that a small town doesn’t have to be a prison. It’s so much NOT a cliche that it’s jarring at first. I’ll admit, I read it slowly because it always went where I least expected. And I loved that. It’s beautiful and it feels like the type of fic to read while laying on the couch on a Sunday afternoon.

Take Off Your Pink Cowboy Boots by silvervelour - There are some authors that you can tell what they’ve experienced (or not) by how they write their fics. And I can tell you that silvervelour has been in a life changing kind of love. Their fics about Sashea are equally beautiful and soft and slow and calm, so go read those as well. This one is about famous Trixie and back up dancer Katya and for once it’s Katya taking care of Trixie, which is so sweet and kind. I love it, I love love.

For All The Honest World to Feel by daremebyday - First, I don’t like non-aus very much, but this one is beyond. Second, I’m not sure I’m caught up on this because I had to stop reading because Trixie’s depression was hitting too close to home. But it’s smart and beautiful and cuts deep and I respect daremebyday so much for writing this.

Two Roads Diverged by artificiallale - 13 Going on 30 meets Trixie Mattel. This one in particular has consumed many a text message thread. It’s only 2 chapters in, but it’s one to keep your eye on.

Little Plastic Castle by artificiallale - Let’s do a little lale streak, eh? This one’s cute and sweet and can be read in a quick sitting. I’m a sucker for bakery aus and this little surprise about Katya’s identity was adorable to watch unfold.

A Ticket to Anywhere by artificiallale - This is the good shit. I love an unreliable narrator and Katya is a plain dumbass in this. Plus there’s a subplot that really makes it worth the read.

Girls Like Dollies and Wingwomen by artificiallale - If you like high school fics, here, drink your juice. If not, no biggie. I’ve stopped reading them, but I liked these when I first got into the fandom. GLD is cute because I love me a good “but I can’t be gay!” story line and WW is cute because it feels like Glee fanfic and I’m trash.

LoveShack by mallstars - Bitch. This is it. This is my shit. Amber and I will text all damn day about these idiots. Remember that one house at college that was the party house of your crew and it sometimes feels like a liminal space when you think back on it? Welcome to this fic. (Shout out to Billy and Ryan’s house on West End and special shout out to the bathroom across from Alex’s room where I gave my first oral.)

A Patch of Heaven by miss_squid - Katya in a suit and Trixie in an ugly bridesmaids dress spend a weekend together. This is cotton candy cute.

When the Sun Comes Up by planecrashdreams - I wish this had finished, but I’m putting it in because it’s good stuff. Urequited (well, requited yet not acted on. Well, acted on but never mentioned again) love. It’s non-au, but I love me a good heart break every now and then.

There’s Beauty in a Work in Progress by acactusandalily - I’ll admit, I’m not sure about this one yet. I’m intrigued as hell and I love Trixie so much in it, but Katya has me a little worried, as do the tags. Guarding my heart with this until it develops, but I trust this author to give me a happy ending.

Hello? by chantiemaya - GUYS. What was I doing putting this so low?!? A cheating fic DONE CORRECTLY?!? What. I love infidelity fics because I love seeking validation for my past mistakes but this one is great. It also consumed many a text message between Amber and I as we wondered what Joe was going to do.

Every Other Freckle by missbinch - This reminds me of a favorite fic I read in another fandom. Trixie is Katya’s assistant, Katya is unhappily married to a senator. It’s well written and sweet and gives me butterflies. Currently on hiatus/unfinished.

Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now by trixyaas - You may be thinking to yourself, this is a lot of lesbian fic with zero historical or period pieces. You’re welcome. This is a 1915 fresh off the boat Katya working at Trixie, I’m sorry Beatrice’s daddy’s mansion. She’s about to be promoted to Trixie’s personal maid and spoiler alert Trixie is also a lesbian. What sort of hijinks could ensue?

Five Foot Three by thesemovingparts - Another college fic, this time featuring But I Can’t Be Gay Trixie Mattell, now with Added Trauma. The big part of this that makes me fall in love is that it features my girlfriend Chicago. My friend (the same one who bought the semi truck) has read this because she went to Columbia College and we both love it a lot.

Troika by spoky - abandoned but so worth reading the first few chapters for the laugh. Guys, Trixie... and Alaska... are dating. And ask... Katya... to top. I’m wheezin.

Weak by knox - And now we’re fully delving in to non-trixya territory. This one is violet/katya/trixie poly relationship and I’m pretty sure if you chant that phrase three times into a mirror, I appear. It’s damn good.

To the Sickle and Back by aphistas - Soulmate au, violet/katya. Takes place during season 7 filming. This fic shook me to my core and I love it to pieces.

Strawberry Moon by vrginsacrifice - You know those movies that are so so so good until the end and you get so mad and you rewatch them to see if anything could have told you that it’d end so bad and you go online to see if there’s an alternate ending or a director’s cut? Anyway, read Strawberry Moon. Violet and Trixie compete for Katya’s love, but Katya is maybe to selfish to deserve either of them.

Something Borrowed by artificialjazz and Missbianca - THIS FIC IS MY LIFE. My life and my blood and my oxygen. Spoiled little courtney comes home to find a new wife to be Willam in her house. They end up fucking. They end up in love. The wedding is still on.

Strawberry Daquiri by missbianca - I love witney and I especially love witney in Willam’s pov. I especially love witney in Willam’s pov when they get the voice right for him. This is perfect and sweet and sad but then happy!

More Than I’m Supposed To by missbianca - one more witney because i fucking love witney okay someone needs to write more please

Possibly, Maybe by pichitinha - Coffee Shop AU with the sweetest little plot I’ve ever seen in my life. Cavities. This has suspense and drama and everything is exactly right for a fluff piece. I’m currently really behind in the thing I’m procrastinating on and even skimming this made my anxiety disappear for a minute. It’s good.

Sk8er Girl by Squeaky Pink - Look, I hate reccing things on AQ because it’s impossible to find anything, but this is adorable and I miss this author. HS au, bad girl Katya, good girl Trixie. What more could you want?

Unlikely and Set Up by Spoky - This is Alaska/Kim Chi fic and that’s really all you need to know to get you to click. Adorable and short.

Art and Anatomy by Pink Shrooms - an oldie but a goodie. College roommates, trans Katya, pee kink, seriously good love. I can’t recall much about it as my list gets further and further, but I know it deserves to be here.

Dina’s Fun Aunt by Ellen Thwoorp - Look, this was one of the first fics I read and it still holds up to this day. It’s adorable kindergarten teacher trixie with eccentric russian katya. Trixie’s closeted, Katya is a woman in love.

Willam Fixes Everything by Mistress - Oh, yall wanted a twist? Willam/Trixie with some eventual Trixya. Short and sweet, could read in less time than it’d take Willam to make 200 dollars, and it’ll leave you smiling.

Welcome to the Dollhouse by fryshook - This whole thing reads like I’m high and I love it. Violet and Trixie have a weirdly tumultuous past and are hanging out when Katya sends them a video of him jerking off? I don’t know man but this thing brings me so much joy. It’s one-liner after one-liner.

Alright, back to the good stuff.

Busted Saddles by UNHhhh - Do you ever find yourself liking the aesthetics of brokeback moutain but you want lesbians? You’re in luck! There’s a moment where trixie rides a bike in yellow pedal pushers for a several miles just to bring katya a pie (and then she rides katya and eats her pie, yaknowwhatimean) (I’m getting delirious why did I take this task on.) But yeah this is a great fic I love it I love cowgirl Katya I love any fic that has a pick up truck because I’m southern trash.

Women’s Liberation is a Lesbian Plot by campholmes - Did you see Milk once in college? You’ll probably like this. All jokes aside, this is a lovely and beautiful story. You can tell the author has done her research (which can be said about everything she writes) and it’s really easy to visualize the girls and their personalities.

The Right Allocations by campholmes - Yeeeeaaahhhh. I don’t even know. I love this song, I love this idea, I love this fic. Fucking Katya in shoulderpads borrowing a pen from Brian Firkus’s gay ass who then proceeds to have the best day of his life. How does the baseline from the song play in your head the whole time you’re reading? That’s good writing.

A Philosophical Anthology of Fucking by campholmes - First, im not just listing all of her fics here, but I am choosing my favorites to discuss. Let me live. Second, Trixie as a needy little bartender to Katya’s Judith Butler gig? It’s all I want. This phrase: “Katya is certain she’s complimented almost constantly, and she’s glad for it. She deserves it.” tells you everything you need to know and it’s such a good story.

Are You Good? by campholmes - You knew it was coming. It’s so good though! Sugar mama fic at it’s finest, with a really good fight in there at the end. Plus, some of the smut in here is insane.

Rose Soap by campholmes - 70s lesbians. Weed. Bell bottoms. Falling in love. This list making has made me realize that I love fics with giant fights in them that bring them closer together. After I read this I bought rose scented lotion so I could smell Trixie. Hey, im gay whats up .

Glasnost by campholmes - Okay. But this one is too good. It shouldn’t even be on this list. This should be in a museum. Two Russians fall in love in the worst time in Russia, but Katya is too stubborn and selfish to be an active participant in their love. Huge fight. Yuge. I remember when it came out, I was texting up a storm about it. We took sides. (I think Trixie was right, no doubt.) I am patiently waiting for the last installment to see how the girls settle it all. Do not read with vodka or you’ll die trying to keep up with Katya.

Belle Femme by campholmes - This was one of the first fics I read in the fandom and I am so happy that it was. The first few paragraphs hit home in a way that was and still is so jarring that I had to screen shot them and send them to fellow teacher friends.

Cactus and Lily by campholmes - remember that time Two Birds came out and we all fell debilitatingly in love with trixie? Campholmes wrote a fic about it.

Perestroika by campholmes - It’s too late in this to include reaction gifs but the blinking guy belongs here. So you’ve got little baby drags Trixie, still tight with Trannika and Kim, still pudgy and hasnt buzzed his head yet. Then you’ve got baby drags Katya who suddenly has to host Trixie in her apartment and Trixie falls in love with her HArD and then suddenly when your heart is so full you’re only at the end of chapter one?? And you get to see Trixie go to the Race and Katya transition and they like become adults with lives and each other and its all just magic.

*cracks knuckles* These next four are all just one chapter each but please listen when I tell you that it is all worth it. Just read them, subscribe to them, and when beatricemattel wants to grace us with their gifts, you’ll be rewarded.

Dinner’s Ready by yekaterina - hahaha so this was a concept that used to get mentioned right when I started following beatricemattel but I was never sure if I’d see it. Boy howdy. This is... unsatisfied housewife katya who drinks too much wine and loathes her life meets pink prim proper avon (mary kay?) lady trixie and somehow i swear to god you can look at the words, there’s no written tension but you FEEL IT because ao3 user yekaterina is not a real person who speaks and writes english like the rest of us, they are a messiah that has been granted to us

Pretty in Pink by yekaterina - You know that fuzzy pink sweater of trixie’s? This idiot wrote an entire fic about it. That’s it, really. I have the biggest heart eyes for this fic and soft sweaters and sticky little children who hide in libraries.

Here Comes Your Man by yekaterina - DILF brian. Daddy Brian with his daughter Jolene and his pink ass pants show up to a Valentines day party to meet this frumpy yet gorgeous woman and she realizes that he’s a D she’d L to F. dilf daddy brian. I can’t stop saying those words because they feel so right.

In Deep Trouble by yekaterina - Here’s a fun fact about me. I had my first wet dream after watching Whip It with ellen page. This fic is a roller derby fic. Katya seems intimidated by Trixie which is just my type of shit.

Well, that’s all folks. It’s 1:44 am here, my alarm goes off at 5:30 and I haven’t done any of the shit I need to do before work tomorrow! Punch me in the motherfucking face, am I right?

But I hope you find something new in this list to bring you joy. Send me things you think I’d like that aren’t on here. (Friendly Fire is on my list to read, I promise!)

#this was a labor of love

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spinjitzu-comics · 7 years

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Lloyd Garmadon Headcanons

My headcanons for The Child™ Lloyd, as requested by that anon who asked who my favorite Ninjago character was.

Bear with me on some of these because I’ve only watched up to the end of S5 (they don’t have anything past that on Netflix) and I dunno much about the later seasons past Hands of Time involving some serious timeline bullshit of Homestuckian proportions.

Sometimes he has nightmares where his dad is accusing him of betraying him and yelling at him for sending him to the Cursed Realm. He wakes up sobbing and usually with a lightbulb blown because his powers surged while he was dreaming.

The first time he ever kills someone, he doesn’t think much of it at the time. But when the reality of what he did sets in after the adrenaline fades, he locks himself in his room for a week and refuses to talk to anyone. He’s never really the same afterwards.

He hates it when people treat him like a child, but he also hates being given too much adult responsibility.

“Kai I don’t care if I was 10 when I met you I’m mentally a teenager dammit don’t treat me like I’m little.”

“SENSEI I AM LITERALLY LIKE 12 WHY ARE YOU ACTING LIKE I’M AN ADULT I CAN’T EVEN DO CALCULUS AND REMEMBER TO FEED THE FISH LET ALONE TAKE CARE OF THIS PLACE BY MYSELF FOR A WEEK”

When he’s depressed, he’s extremely self-destructive in one way or another. Sometimes it’s actual self harm, others it’s self neglect like not eating or sleeping.

He’s less likely to cut himself than he is to purposely give himself bruises.

His least self-destructive tendency is working out excessively, until he strains his body so much that he can’t move for about 15 minutes.

He color codes his clothes most of the time, but sometimes he just can’t can’t be bothered to or he doesn’t feel like wearing green so he’ll wear dark jeans and a black jacket or hoodie.

Sometimes he thinks about Morro and wonders if he would have ended up the way he was if Wu had warned him that there was a chance he wasn’t really the Green Ninja.

He also thinks about all the things that Wu doesn’t tell any of them until its too late and it makes him really mad.

He cries every time he thinks about his dad for more than 5 consecutive minutes.

Kai is his best friend in the whole world but sometimes he really resents him and he can’t figure out why.

He looks up to Zane and/or Nya as sort of pseudo-mother figures when his own mom isn’t around.

He’s really good at drawing and painting but he prefers not to because he thinks people will take him less seriously if they find out.

His preference is nature drawings, namely vines and flowers because he can repeat patterns and such and he finds it calming.

He prefers to paint when he does do anything artsy, and usually uses watercolors.

When he draws/paints anything other than flowers/vines, he tends to do portraits of people in oil pastels. So far he’s got portraits of his mom, dad, Kai, Zane, and Cole... He’s planning on drawing Wu, Jay, and Nya at some point too.

He holds grudges like a boss... But only against people who deserve it.

That said, he can be incredibly petty if he wants to be and there are a few boys from Darkley’s that he has grudges against for things like “he looked at me funny”.

He was kicked out of Darkley’s for “lacking the motivation to be a villain” (canon), but in reality he didn’t really want to be evil, he just wanted to be able to make his dad proud of him, which is why he kept trying even after he was expelled. If he had really wanted to be evil, he probably could have taken over Ninjago in half the time it took his dad to attempt it.

No matter how old he is or what universe he’s in, he always has a sweet tooth. Always. He just learns how to control himself after a while.

In same-age AUs, his friendship with Kai has the very real possibility of turning into something else due to how close they are and how compatible their personalities are.

It’s still possible in the main/canon timeline, but it’s less likely because even if he liked Kai, Kai would probably be incredibly hesitant due to Lloyd really being so much younger than he is and Lloyd wouldn’t want to make him uncomfortable.

He lowkey thinks that Cole and Jay are secretly gay for each other.

He also thinks they both might be a little gay for Zane.

Loud noises and big crowds make him uncomfortable, but absolute silence and total loneliness terrify him. He has a hard time finding a proper balance of sound/silence and the right amount of people.

When in a situation where he has to sit still for long periods of time, he spends the majority of it bouncing his knees, drumming his fingers on stuff, and chewing on the insides of his cheeks and on his bottom lip.

In modern/real world AUs, fidget cubes are his best friends.

In the High School AU, Lloyd is outwardly sarcastic and sassy to everyone around him, but below that salty exterior he’s actually a really sad and vulnerable kid.

He’s super sensitive, too, but he’s trained himself to hold in his emotions until he’s alone.

Any time he’s criticized or yelled at, he cries.

If someone calls him out on how he acts, he gets hurt deep down but externally tells them something that rhymes with “Duck Glue”.

When he finally reaches his “rebellious teenage phase” he ends up with a really foul mouth for a couple months but grows out of it. He still drops the occasional F-Bomb from time to time but mostly he manages not to curse.

When the day finally comes that Sensei Wu dies, all the ninja are utterly devastated. Lloyd is the only one who doesn’t collapse into emotional turmoil, remaining, for the most part, outwardly calm.

Kai takes it entirely the wrong way and explodes on him about it, saying a lot of things that he later regrets very much. (”You don’t even care, do you?” “I guess I should have expected something like this from Garmadon’s son.”)

Lloyd locks himself in his room afterwards and doesn’t come out until Cole talks him into coming out to eat something because he’s hungry. He spends a few weeks being entirely apathetic to Kai but eventually their relationship recovers and they go back to being bros.

When he gets frustrated he spars with Cole to take out some of his aggression. It works pretty well for both of them because they can both fight almost at their peak without having to worry too much about hurting each other.

Somehow, some way, he still has a little bit of his Golden Power locked up somewhere. He knows it’s there but refuses to try and use it because the longer he leaves it alone the more it starts to replenish itself. He kind of hopes that one day he’ll have it all back, but even if he did he’d only use it in extreme situations.

Some of the Devourer’s venom did get passed on to him, but his Golden Power and status as the Green Ninja kind of quash down the “evil” aspect of it, making it surface mostly in small ways.

When he gets really, really, really mad, his eyes turn red.

He has little fangs and whenever he’s so mad his eyes turn red, they get bigger and sharper.

He’s a really good liar because hey you know snakes are deceivers.

Also his whole grudge-holding thing? That’s another thing caused by the venom.

Movie Lloyd (Luh-loyd) has some severe depression, anxiety, and abandonment issues that are constantly perpetuated by Garmadon being an huge deadbeat.

Every time Bad Blood played in the trailer it was because Luh-loyd was thinking it because he’s secretly a meme lord.

If Lloyd and Luh-loyd ever met, Luh-loyd would probably resent the fact that Lloyd’s dad actually knew his name and cared about him, but then would immediately feel bad about it when he finds out that Garmadon is Garmadead.

Okay seriously I have more but I think this is more than enough for one post.

#Ninjago #Spinjitzu-Comics #Al's headcanons #Lloyd Garmadon #Lloyd Headcanons #Luh-loyd #Luh-loyd headcanons

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eqtmonline03-blog · 6 years

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Did We Underestimate Trump?

Time will prove that the US eventually makes a fool of itself. - People's Daily, official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party

POITOU, FRANCE - We've made two bold, perhaps reckless, predictions.

As to one of them, we're beginning to have doubts

Peculiar Rates

Our first prediction was that the Fed will never normalize interest rates. It claims to have begun the normalization process more than three years ago, in June 2015, taking tiny steps toward higher rates - increasing them by 25 basis points each quarter.

But consumer price inflation is walking faster... and now - 10 years after its emergency rate cuts - the Fed's key lending rate is only 2%, nearly 100 basis points below the rate of inflation.

In other words, the Fed is still lending money at a very abnormal rate.

The Fed will never normalize its rates because it has created an economy that depends on peculiar ones. Normal rates, discovered by cooperating parties in a free market, would now sink both the economy and the stock market.

Most likely, stocks will fall and the economy will go into a vicious recession long before the Fed gets anywhere close to normal.

Then, it will repeat Mistake #3, dropping rates again in a panic. We have high confidence that that is what will happen - especially with the self-described "king of debt," Donald J. Trump, egging it on.

It's our second prediction that we're beginning to wonder about. We predicted that the president would back off from his trade war. But after his latest tweets, we're not so sure.

Local Update

Let us get to that in a moment. First, a local update:

Europe has been suffering from a heat wave - a canicule, as they call it here in France. Lawns dry up. Retirees drop dead. The young and old stay indoors during the heat of the day.

Few people have air conditioning. It is rarely needed. And even today, with temperatures in the 90s, it isn't as uncomfortable as you might think. Humidity is low.

The old houses - with their thick, stone walls - never heat up completely. Windows are thrown open at night to cool the houses down. In the morning, outside shutters, windows, indoor shutters, and curtains are closed to keep the heat out.

And in the evening, we enjoy a long, slow dinner outside... as the light and heat fade away.

Oh... and we have a new project!

Big doors - 14 feet high - are meant to block the passageway to the inner farmyard. Alas, they have been falling down ever since we got here 23 years ago.

Now, it's time to do something about them. But what? How?

Stay tuned.

Bill's newest project: A set of old doors at his home in the French countryside

Buck Stops

Meanwhile, we leave the real world of real things, real problems, and real solutions... and return to the make-believe world of Donald J. Trump.

Not that we have anything against America's chief executive... But he sits at the desk where the buck stops and bravely takes responsibility for all that happens during his watch. And he seems like the perfect person for the job.

Thrown up by malicious fate... carefully chosen by the mischievous gods... and groomed for catastrophe, like Custer for the Battle of the Little Bighorn... or Edward John Smith for the Titanic...

...Mr. Trump is a phenomenon; generations will sing his praises or curse his name, depending on how it turns out.

How it will turn out is, of course, beyond our ken. We can only try to understand what is going on and guess about how it ought to turn out.

And our guess is that China's People's Daily is right... The U.S. will make a fool of itself.

Mr. Trump has nothing to be ashamed of. At least, insofar as macroeconomics is concerned; Barack Obama didn't know anything about it, either. It's not a job requirement.

And few politicians have the time or motivation to think very deeply about it. Instead, they bring on advisors who inevitably come with their own bad ideas and hidden agendas.

Readers remind us that Donald Trump is a rich guy - a seasoned businessman who was trained at Wharton, the prestigious business school of the University of Pennsylvania.

But this only makes us suspicious of Wharton; what do they teach there?

Do they mention that, as a general rule, as trade expands, people grow richer? More trade means more transactions, more competition, more choices, more learning, and more specialization.

That's how an economy moves ahead. It's also why some groups are rich and others are poor. A poor economy is one in which everyone has about the same knowledge.

It's a bit like the life we see up in the mountains of Argentina. All the locals know the same things - how to plant corn, how to cure hides, how to protect the sheep from the pumas, and how to build mud roofs.

In a rich society, people know very different things. One knows how to program a computer... another knows how to fix the toilet... and still another knows how to bake bread.

The rich guy is not the jack-of-all-trades, but the one who figures out one metier better than others. Then, this dispersed, specialized knowledge is brought together through trade.

Usually, the larger the free-trade area, the richer the people in it. As the trade zone shrinks, so does its wealth.

Fight to the End

But along comes the Wharton graduate, Donald J. Trump, building walls with razor wire on top... between the U.S. and China, Europe, Iran, Mexico, and Canada.

The press reports that some Canadians have begun boycotting U.S. products.

According to People's Daily, China vows it will "never surrender to blackmail." Instead, it will "fight to the end." China also stepped up its purchases of Iranian oil... in defiance of Trump's new sanctions.

Europe passed a law making it illegal to comply with Trump's sanctions against Iran.

And that's just today's news!

As the walls go up, Mr. Trump thinks he is "winning" because China's stock market is down.

POTUS tweeted:

Tariffs are working big time. Every country on earth wants to take wealth out of the U.S., always to our detriment. I say, as they come,Tax them. If they don’t want to be taxed, let them make or build the product in the U.S. In either event, it means jobs and great wealth.....

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So if you have faith in Mr. Trump, getting rich is a piece of cake. Just buy stocks. The market will go up "dramatically," he says, as he puts the world economy in order.

If you lack faith, on the other hand, you may want to sell short. Walls surely increase the risk of a crash on Wall Street and a global depression.

Which brings us back to our second prediction: Since the Deep State depends on the survival of the present, EZ-money financial regime, and since the system heavily depends on China to provide low-priced goods (keeping inflation at bay in the U.S.) and to recycle its Main Street earnings into Wall Street assets (mostly U.S. Treasuries), we forecast that The Donald would never follow through on his trade threats... especially with China.

The Deep State itself would be the biggest loser.

We assumed that someone would explain the risk... and he would back down.

But as of last weekend, it still appeared that he had slept through his key Wharton classes and wasn't taking calls from Deep State insiders.

Instead, he may be serious about disrupting the world economy and stifling world trade. If foreigners want to do business in the U.S., he says, they can damned well pay a tax... or make stuff in the USA.

Presidents say dumb things all the time. Most mumble and hedge... on this hand, this... on that hand, that...

One of Mr. Trump's charms is that he says what he thinks and does what he wants, no matter how ignorant, mendacious, or moronic.

The walls go up... and the ground beneath them trembles.

Regards,

Bill Bonner, Bonner & Partners Vivek Kaul's Diary

PS: When the markets nosedive, that's the best time to put wealth building in motion. Small caps are crashing - that only means there is more opportunity than ever to buy them up - get our market-beating small caps recommendations here.

Bill Bonner is the President & Founder of Agora Inc, an international publisher of financial and special interest books and newsletters.

Disclaimer: The views mentioned above are of the author only. Data and charts, if used, in the article have been sourced from available information and have not been authenticated by any statutory authority. The author and Equitymaster do not claim it to be accurate nor accept any responsibility for the same. The views constitute only the opinions and do not constitute any guidelines or recommendation on any course of action to be followed by the reader. Please read the detailed Terms of Use of the web site.

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