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shirtlesssammy · 3 years

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4x17: It's a Terrible Life

How have we not recapped this yet? Man, this one holds a special place in Boris’s heart -- even if it’s a Cas-less episode. (Natasha: I LITERALLY said the same thing.)

Then:

This is just gratuitous

Now:

Okay, by this point we know the premise of this episode. I’m just going to list all the Well Respected Man things Dean Smith does.

He wakes up at 6:00am to an iPod.

He steams his rice milk.

He wears suspenders and cufflinks.

He drives a Prius.

He turns off the hard rock for NPR.

Dean Smith is the Director of Sales and Marketing at Sandover Bridge and Iron.

He types memos in Word.

He uses a headset to talk on the phone.

He plays office mini-golf while schmoozing on said headset.

He watches Project Runway (Ok, Dean Winchester totally watches that too, lbr.)

HE EATS SALAD.

He says the word ‘vis-a-vis’.

His boss Mr. Adler is very impressed with him. Good stuff!

He works late.

He is thinking of doing the Master Cleanse.

He leaves at 5:30 (or really a couple minutes before, rebel!)

On the elevator ride out of the building, another passenger asks if he knows Dean. Dean, focused on his Blackberry, does not recognize the dude. The other dude won’t let it go and Dean tells him to “save it for the health club” before leaving.

Sam Wesson works in the Tech Support section of Sandover. He mainly tells people to turn it off and back on again. Works every time! Sam and another buddy, Ian, head for coffee. They ask Paul, another worker, if he wants to join them. He’s busy working! Okay, okay, wait one moment. Paul got caught surfing porn on company computers and he still has a job!? WOW.

Ian grabs some office pencils in the break room. (And we get a nice little intro shot from within the microwave….very nice easter egg for us second (and beyond) viewers.) He then asks Sam about the dreams he’s been having. Sam tells Ian that he dreamed that he saved a grim reaper named Tessa from demons. Ian finds that HILARIOUS.

At his clown car sized cubicle later, Sam drifts off, only to have vivid visions of murder and monsters --and Dean’s in them. He bolts awake, and looks around disconcerted.

Sam takes a walk and ends up in the same elevator as Dean again. They eye each other warily. Sam asks Dean what he thinks of ghosts. TOTALLY NORMAL ELEVATOR TALK. Dean hasn’t really given them much thought. Vampires either. Sam decides now is a good time to corner a perfect stranger and tell him about his CRAZY dreams. That’s what a journal is for, Sam! Dean dismisses this crazy man and exits the elevator.

Sam starts researching (AW BABY) the monsters he’s been dreaming about. Ian interrupts him and tells him that he got an email telling him to report to HR. He’s not too worried as he heads off to his fate. Sam then hears Paul freaking out because he just lost a whole day’s work.

Paul stays way past closing time trying to find his lost files to no avail. His breath puffs. They must turn the temp down after hours at Sandover. He heads to the breakroom, sticks a plastic fork in the door of the microwave and sticks his head in the microwave, and hits cook. GOOD STUFF.

The next day, as Paul’s body gets carted away, the entire office looks on, including Sam Wesson and Dean Smith. Dean thinks there’s something weird going on. He looks up Paul’s personnel file (um, like whoa, how did he get access to that?) and learns that he was set to retire in two weeks. Curious.

Sam is curious as well, but Ian is too busy working to engage. Dean calls Ian up to his office. Dean points out that there were just a few errors in a form he filled out yesterday. Ian is very remorseful. Dean doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal. He just wants him to fix the errors. Very un-Ian-like, Ian starts freaking out over his mistakes. Ian runs to the bathroom and Dean follows. He finds Ian staring at himself in the mirror. His breath frosts just before all the water and soap turn on. He insists Ian leave with him. Ian turns to look at Dean, and stabs himself with a pencil. GUH. Dean sees the reflection of an old man in the bathroom stall door as Ian dies. Dean calls for help.

Dean is relaying the events to the authorities when he sees Sam looking on. Later, he calls Sam to his office.

For Thirst Science:

Sam and Dean learn that they both started working at Sandover three weeks prior. (Dean! You picked a hell of a week to start the Master Cleanse!) Sam asks Dean if he saw something when Ian died. Dean doesn’t quite admit it but he saw a ghost! Sam wonders about the suicides. “What if these suicides aren't suicides? I mean, what if they're something not natural?”

Sam brings up his dreams again. “So you're telling me that your dreams are special visions and you're some kind of psychic?” Lololololol. No, OF COURSE NOT. Sam shows Dean emails that Ian and Paul got that sent them to HR on the 14th floor --the HR office is on the 7th floor. Hmm. They decide to head to the 14th floor and room 1444.

Mr. Blandface McBlanderson heads there first. It’s an old storage room. The air gets frosty, electronics buzz on. Sam and Dean rush down the hallway after hearing the man’s cries. The door is locked but Sam Fucking Wesson just busts it open. Dean is duly impressed. Sam is too.

The ghost old man attacks Sam and Dean but Dean smashes him away with a wrench (an IRON wrench).

Decompressing back at Dean’s place, Sam longs for beer. “I’m on a cleanse,” Dean explains as he gets him a water. “I got rid of all the carbs in the house.” Oh DEAN.

At the end of this cleanse you chalk a pentagram on the floor, light a black candle, and barter your soul to get rid of those last five pounds

They compliment each other on their ghost fighting prowess. Sam “Boy Wonder” Wesson briefly tells Dean about how he feels out of place in his life. That’s SO MUCH oversharing, Sam! They decide to hit the research track. Dean finds………..the GHOSTFACERS.

We montage our way through Smith & Wesson’s research, interspersed with Ghostfacer tips. A guy named Sandover turns out to be the ghost - a workaholic who lived for his company. Turns out he’ll kill for it too. They trace a number of historical deaths to Sandover employees. It turns out that the room with the ghost attack was Sandover’s office.

The Ghostfacers continue to educate Sam and Dean on the finer points of ghost hunting: SALT. IRON. GUN.

Dean absorbs this, then wonders where one might even purchase a gun. Isn’t there a waiting period? Oh, sweet summer child. This here is the United States of America and it’s far too easy to get a gun. The Ghostfacers lesson continues...

Ed: The aforementioned super-annoying Winchester douchenozzles also taught us this one other thing. You have to burn the remains.

Harry: Okay, this next part gets a little gross. Sometimes you might have to dig up the body. Sorry.

Ed: It's illegal in some states.

Harry: All states.

Ed: Possibly all states.

Smith and Wesson return to the office to search for pieces of non-cremated Sandover. Sam gets cornered by a baby-faced security guard, leaving Dean alone to continue the hunt. In Sam’s elevator, electronics start to glitch. It’s probably nothing! The guard pries open the elevator door and crawls out onto the next floor.

The elevator slips and the guard falls victim to the blood cannon. Sam adds this incident to his list of Terrible Things That Happen in Elevators.

Sam and Dean reconnect by a historical display which includes Sandover’s gloves. Those gloves seem like likely candidates for remnant DNA...and in short order the ghost proves them right. Old Man Sandover zaps in as they break the glass. They fight!

Sandover looks like he’s got the upper hand, lowering his brain-zapping fingers to Dean, when Sam lights the gloves on fire. Sandover goes up like a torch.

Smith and Wesson are amped up after the fight! Sam wants to hunt ghosts full time. Dean scoffs at this. “How would we get by? Stolen credit cards, eating diner food drenched in saturated fats, sharing a crap motel room every night...You don’t want to go fighting ghosts without any health insurance!” Wise words.

For Look at this Well-Prepared Sunshine Science:

Sam confesses that his hunting dreams featured Dean as well. “What if that’s who we really are?” Sam wonders.

Dean defends the reality of his life. HE WENT TO STANFORD. His father’s name is Bob, his mother’s name is Ellen, and his sister is Jo. Excuse me. I’m just going to….stand outside my door and HOWL MOURNFULLY about this with the local coyotes.

“We’re supposed to be someone else.” Sam tells Dean that he started at Sandover because he broke up with Madison - but now her number leads to an animal hospital. (I swear to god, I’m gonna chew off my own arm at this show.) Sam says that Dean’s more than just a corporate suit. Dean shoos Sam from his office.

The next morning, Sam’s back at the daily grind. He steps back from his phone and then swings a crowbar at it, Office Space style.

Upstairs, Zachariah smarms his way into Dean’s office and clucks that he looks tired. He’s heard good things about Dean and offers him a generous bonus.

Zachariah hints that a big promotion could happen in 8-10 short years of constant work and sacrifice. The joy in Dean’s eyes fades. Dean turns it down and tells Zachariah that he plans to quit. “I have some other work I have to do,” Dean tells him. “This - it’s not who I’m supposed to be.” Zachariah smiles and zaps Dean’s brain. The camera desaturates.

“My god am I hungry,” a confused Dean observes as Zachariah chuckles. (Stop reading Goop, Dean! Get off that cleanse!) Zachariah explains that he’s Castiel’s boss, and he’s on Earth to ensure that the Winchesters fulfill their destiny - as hunters!

“You’re a hunter,” Zachariah explains. It’s in Dean’s blood. (I hiss at this.) And if Dean works hard enough, he’ll do everything he’s “destined to do. All of it.” GUH. Zachariah urges Dean to embrace his life. It could be worse, after all!

Semi-quote Kinda Life, Baby:

Good stuff

Did you try turning it off and then on?

Look, man, I don't know you, okay? But I'm gonna do a public service and let you know that you overshare

How the hell did you know that ghosts are scared of wrenches?

I don’t believe in destiny. I believe in dealing with what’s right in front of us

Most folks live and die without moving anything more than the dirt it takes to bury them. You get to change things

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

#spn recap #dean winchester #sam winchester #spn 4x17 #It's A Terrible Life #zachariah #supernatural season 4

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docholligay · 3 years

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Divided by Four: Thirty-Six

I AM DONE WITH THIS YOU ARE FREE OF HAVING TO SEE IT

Lena Oxton would never have another birthday, and this was an odd thing to think about.

It was one thing, for Tracer, to know that she was dying--she had known that for what seemed like an age now--but quite another for her to know that there were some things she would never do again. The early ones, she hadn’t known, really. The last time she would get on her motorcycle. When she would last trust herself to fly. That final walk down the hall without help from anyone or anything. These lasts had come without announcing themselves, and so Tracer had not gotten the chance to savor them appropriately. It was a mistake she was trying not to repeat, as she felt the sand slip through the hourglass now.

So it was comforting, in a way, to know that this would be her last birthday, even if it felt strange to admit. Tracer had resolved to drink in every instant of it.

She’d told everyone that it was silly and a little wasteful to bring her gifts, given the reality of the situation, and really all she wanted was to be around her people and drink a beer or two, have a few laughs, and for no one to get too misty-eyed. There were a number of things about dying that Tracer didn’t particularly care for, but one topping the list was the way people mourned her before she was gone, when all she wanted to do was enjoy whatever she had left without sadness. There was no point, so she thought, in being so sad over the last bits of something lovely that you ruined it for yourself. It was rather like a child whimpering while eating the last squares of a chocolate bar. So the only gift she had asked for, was for no one to cry in her view, and on that they had delivered.

But also, people had brought gifts. Nothing fancy, really, mostly soft pajamas and blankets, a nice lotion, a particularly plush backrest pillow she was already making use of, things that spoke to both the reality of the situation and the inability of the people who loved her to let it pass by without making the most of it. Her uncle had made her a coconut strawberry cream cake, and she’d even managed to eat some of it. Pharah had made sure to tell her she had better live long enough to use the thick flannel pajamas she’d bought, as she’d had her father send them from Canada.

“Or you’ll do what, exactly?” Tracer had grinned as she said it, “Piss on me grave? Well, I’m being cremated, so even that’ll feel a bit ‘ollow, now won’t it?”

Everyone had laughed, even Winston, who seemed to taking the whole thing rather hard, however much Tracer joked that he’d been taking care of her for the last ten years and really should enjoy his retirement. But mostly, it had been a good day for her, and if she was feeling a little misty herself, it was nothing but the idea that she was so deeply loved, and that not everyone got to experience that in their lives.

She was born under a lucky star, and the last year or so was only a bump in that road near the end of it, a bit like the jar before you leave the pavement. And even that was only her health, wasn’t it?

Moira could take her life--and as happy as she was knowing Moira died never knowing how badly she had hurt Tracer, it did sting a bit to know that was how it would go down in the books--but Moira had never managed to take anything more dear to her. Her family. Her friends. The general sense that she was loved and cared for. Even her mind was sharp and busy as ever, which admittedly made her body’s disobedience a bit more annoying, but she was grateful to have her wits. People would remember her as herself. That was important.

If anything, the relative frustration and pain of the last few months had made her feel all the more loved. Had showed that it must be true.

So nothing was all bad, really.

Night had fallen over London, and as tired as she was, Tracer still could not bring herself to go to bed. Winston had asked gently if she was ready, and she had just shook her head and told him she wanted to stay up awhile. It was nice, this deck she and Winston had put together on the roof of the place. He’d doubted her, when she’d suggested the project, and wondered how he would ever possibly use it, and told her there was no need to put the work in. Sometimes Winston had to be talked into having nice things for himself. He probably would have approved the project so much earlier if he’d known how much time Tracer would spend up here.

The smell of London filled her lungs. She should be more afraid of death, she supposed, but she could never quite let go of the idea that even when she was gone, she wouldn’t be. Not that she believed in an afterlife, really, but she also didn’t not believe in an afterlife, and she’d seen London built on its own ashes so many times, that she had to imagine that even when she was gone, the bombed out wall of what was left of her would be built around, become part of a Pret or a pub or even just a ruin where the pigeons nested.

What was tough was knowing when the building needed to come down, which she hadn’t yet quite figured out for herself. It was one thing to be gone in an instant, a bomb dropped, a moment and then just the rubble. It was another to sway into disrepair, to try and pinpoint the day you had to tell those who had lived in your heart that there were homes elsewhere, and it was time to seek them. When the little joys of being were outweighed by the reality of decay.

“Lena?”

The lightness she felt at hearing her name in that soft brogue was enough to tell her that day had not yet come, and she would keep on for awhile yet. Tracer thought she might live one hundred years, and never tire of hearing Emily’s voice. It was impossible.

“It’s grown late. You’ll tire yourself.” A kiss on the top of her head, and then Emily sat down on the edge of the daybed where Tracer found herself spending much of her time lately.

Tracer chuckled. “Too late. Doesn’t take much anymore, it’s just,” she shook her head, “a bit aggravating, right? There’s so much I’d like to do in a day, not that I can do much of it anyway, but I’d like to at least imagine it. I get frustrated so--”

Emily nodded kindly as she rubbed Tracer’s shoulder, tight with the constancy of spasms that ran through it, but as Tracer’s eyes flicked upwards, she saw the tears on the edge of Emily’s eyes. Not the time to talk about it. Never seemed to be.

Emily would miss her, and there was no real getting around that, no matter how she tried. Tracer had already spent plenty of time writing and rewriting a letter to be published when she was gone, Pharah sitting alongside her on her small laptop, to try and let Emily know in the most public way that she’d like her to move on, and wasn’t only saying it, that she meant it, nagging over the words until Pharah had offered to remove the burden of waiting for death from her.

Pharah joked like that, more than most, because Pharah was kind, in her way, and knew Tracer needed someone to be able to joke with. It was a favor to her. When Tracer had told her, she had asked to be treated the same as ever, and to Pharah’s eternal credit, she came very close.

“Never mind me.” she grinned “Tired and rambling, right? It was a wonderful birthday, Em. Marvelous, really. Been thinking back on me birthdays---I’ve been so lucky. I am so lucky. Thank you, for everything you’ve done, for it.”

She was tired, and her body jerked and shook, but she was still, in this moment, the master of a failing plane, and managed to but her hand on Emily’s leg. Emily curled up next to her and rested her head on Tracer’s shoulder, letting out a little sniffle as she drew her arm around her.

“It’s not fair for you.”

“Me?” Tracer kissed her forehead “Oh, none of that now. Not for me. What’s fair, any’ow? Should ‘ave been killed a thousand times over, love, but I wasn’t, Was I? Plenty were,” she muttered, half to herself, “And I noone in whole of me life ‘as ever wanted to ‘ear it but I’ve ‘ad the sense for years that I wasn’t precisely meant to get me pension. Call it a self-fulfilling prophecy if you like but I--really, who it isn’t fair to is you. Life’s been more than fair to me.”

Emily said nothing, but wiped her eyes and took Tracer’s hand in hers.

“I mean really, think about it. Not a bad life at all, on balance. Pilot. Top Flight Instructor. Commander. Bloody ‘ero of London. I lived more in thirty-six years than most people would if they ‘ad twice the time. So it’s all right. I made it all count. Course I want more, but, I do tend to rush through things, don’t I? Just me way, don’t stop to admire the view much. Some people are like that, like fireworks, or, oh I don’t know, a stick of gum. And,and at the fag end of it all, I get to be in London, taken care of instead of sent away, when by rights I should have been shot down, or shot through, or lost forever. To be sitting on a London roof in a pile of pillows? Not precisely the gulag, love, and I won’t be greedy. Em, look at me, please.”

Emily sat up and looked at her, and Tracer squeezed her hand.

“I lived long enough to find you, and to love you.That’s all that matters. I ‘ave led a bloody charmed life. I ‘ave. Truly. I could not possibly ask for more.” she grinned, “That’s a lie actually, would ‘ave loved to get all the way through to the King so as I could watch his bloody face when I refused the knighthood publicly, but,” she chuckled, “We can’t ‘ave everything.”

Emily gave a little chuckle and shook her head. “You’re awful, Lena. Happy Birthday. My prince charming.”

“And it really was, Em. It is! What do you say,” she winced as she tried to sit up a little, her body jerking her back against the back of the daybed, until Emily balanced her, “What do you say, we ‘ave Win come up with that last bottle of champagne? Toast to ourselves till midnight? Just the three of us?”

Emily nodded, the teeth poking thought on her smile.

“That’s what I’d like to see, tonight. Thank you love. Just us three, and your smile.”

The clouds and fog and too much light of London parted for a moment, just a few stars peeking through the grey and haze. They sparkled down on Tracer, who sparkled back a bit, the diamonds of the natural world. Bright against the night.

Bit of light in everything.

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dizexplainstheuniverse · 3 years

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Give up hope.

If the past 2 years have taught me anything, it’s the art of giving up hope.

It’s about a human as it gets to dream, to wish, to imagine, to long for, to crave, to seek after something or someone to fulfil our wants, needs and desires.

Now, I fully believe in following the path of desire. I have absolutely no interest in sitting here and telling you I’m a desire-less puritan – quite the opposite. I’m full of unmet needs and aching yearnings.

However, I am going to try and communicate with you the importance of giving up hope...

Giving up hope doesn’t mean becoming hopeless, or admitting defeat, or becoming a lost cause.

Not at all.

What I’m talking about is giving up hope as an act of surrender.

So long as we hope, we project outwards onto the world, onto others, and unknowingly give our power away to ideas, concepts, and people. We make them, the other, something or someone outside of ourselves and outside of our control responsible for our individual happiness...

Let’s take a look at one very relatable example:

So, like many of us, I spent much of my time at the beginning of 2020 ‘hoping’ that the pandemic would all be over in a few weeks. I begged and bargained with the powers that be to make my lockdown misery end and clung desperately to hope. We all know this story too well…

Did it end?

Did it fuck.

Every few weeks ‘they’ would announce yet another indeterminable amount of time stuck in the prisons we called home.

My dreams of freedom were crushed, over and over again, until eventually – I gave up hope.

I remember thinking, “alright, I get it, screw this, I give up…” and I surrendered to the now. I stopped trying to fight reality with the idea of freedom I had constructed inside my mind in order to try and cope with the current situation.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done this in my relationships (I’m the fucking Queen of projection - such a powerful imagination… ).

I was either too busy clinging to a version of a person I was hoping they’d turn out to be – or clinging to a situation, scenario or concept of what I hoped relationships could be like – to see what was right in front of me all along.

The grass was ALWAYS greener, or at least I hoped it would be…

The trouble with perpetual un-fulfilment, AKA addiction, AKA the human condition, is that we’re so damn distracted looking for the cure to our pain, hoping it’ll be in the next dopamine hit, that we are literally blind to the abundant nature of reality screaming out for our attention.

There’s a saying, right: “you wouldn’t know it, even if it hit you the face…”

When it comes to love, this has certainly been true for me.

Not only are we blinded by our past conditioning and traumas, but even when we begin to see the love, joy, pleasure, freedom, safety or belonging that’s right in front of us, we’re so fucking terrified to receive it and let it in that we subconsciously sabotage, resist, deny, reject and continue to fulfil the age-old narrative that “we’re just not good enough” or “we don’t deserve it” … or, if you’ve got an extra sneaky-smart psyche “it’s just not good enough for me!” … and off we go again, demanding more, more, more…

Of all the things, situations, and people, I’ve hoped for in my life, the moment I gave up hope and surrendered to the pain of my reality, that’s where true liberation was found.

The trouble is, we aren’t all well equipped or ready to fully feel the depths of the pain that giving up hope brings. It’s scary AF. Especially if we can’t yet see what’s right in front of us. So instead, we fight, we run, we freeze, we appease. We spend every waking moment of our lives looking for the next get-out of feeling the pain from our past.

There’s that other saying: “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” - classic. I bet you can relate to that one as well.

It was painful for me to give up on my hopes in relationships. So painful, that I’ve often stayed in alternatively slightly less painful relationships, substituting one pain for another, because facing the pain underneath of the thing I was masking was deeply terrifying – like, chilled-me-to-the-core kind of terrifying. So much so, my mind had created all sorts of elaborate tales about my unworthiness and lack of deservingness to protect me from experiencing that kind of pain ever again. And the masochist in me was indeed thriving.

It was too painful to give up hope, I needed it. I dug my claws in and I refused to let go. Because giving up hope, surrendering to what is real and present right now, meant having to acknowledge and grieve what I was never given but rightfully deserved. We’re talking, of course, about childhood wounds. The pain of that betrayal, the loss of love, care and nurturing from the adults in my life that were ‘supposed’ to care about me was truly heart breaking. Not only this, I felt just as terrified to receive it. I could not trust it that it would not come at a cost of more pain and suffering – just in another form – so why risk it?

I didn’t want to be alone - I couldn’t bare re-experiencing the pain of my loneliness and isolation. I didn’t want to be close - I couldn’t bare re-experiencing the pain of risking abandonment, rejection and neglect.

Oh, my sweet, agonising, disorganised attachment injury. Forever caught in a double-bind. “Can’t live with it, can’t live without it” – there’s another one for ya.

Truly, the only invitation I have for you here if you relate at all to these experiences, is please – give up hope.

Gently, slowly, with compassion and acceptance, feel your pain.

Hold yourself tenderly, allow your heart to break open. Soften your breath, your body, feel your feet on the ground. Release your tears, cry, scream, wail, rage, punch, roar – drop deep into the depths of your pain with such loving awareness for the universal experience of how painful it is to be a human being on this tortured planet.

You are not alone.

For I assure you, what awaits the other side is a freedom, a bliss, an ecstasy more real than any hope.

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Craft: How a Teenage Weirdo Based on a Real Person Became an Icon

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“We Are The Weirdos, Mister.” A phrase you’ll find printed over t-shirts, pin badges, mugs, earrings, tote bags, necklaces, and more all over the internet. It’s the most iconic line from The Craft, a film released 25 years ago that still has a rabid following today. For anyone unfamiliar with The Craft, it’s a line spoken by Fairuza Balk’s Nancy, an inferno in black lippy and sunglasses, the de facto leader of a homemade coven made up of outsiders who have taken the raw deal the world has given them and rejected it by learning to harness the power of nature. This line is everything. We are no longer going to be victims, it says. We will no longer be afraid. We reclaim our space, our power. That we are four teenaged girls will no longer mean we have to watch out for ‘weirdos’ – because it is us who are the weirdos. Mister.

“Nancy is the one everybody wants to be,” says Peter Filardi, the man who created Nancy, Rochelle, Bonnie, and Sarah all those years ago, chatting to Den of Geek from his home, an original poster for The Craft peaking out from behind him on the wall. Next to it is a poster for Chapelwaite, the series Filardi is currently showrunning with his brother Jason, based on Stephen King’s short story, “Jerusalem’s Lot,” a prequel to Salem’s Lot.

“Nancy is the one who is particularly put upon and who finds the power to get revenge or get justice and is going to do that with no apologies. I think it’s how we all envision ourselves or would want to see ourselves, I guess. Here we are 25 years later. Why do you think we’re still talking about it?”

It’s an interesting question because we very much still are talking about The Craft. With Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, A Discovery of Witches, His Dark Materials, and of course last year’s remake of The Craft, we appear to very much still be in the season of the witch, but none is quite as resonant and impactful as the original The Craft. Watching it back 25 years after its release, it’s still just as relevant.

The very first script that Filardi sold was Flatliners, the story of arrogant, hot-shot medical students who plan to discover what happens after you die by “flatlining” for increasing lengths of time. Filardi’s script prompted a bidding war and the movie became a big hit, starring Hollywood’s hottest: Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, and William Baldwin.

After Flatliners, Filardi had been working on a script about real life teenage Satanist Ricky Kasso, (“He was one of the first to really put the hallucinogenics together with the music and the theology and then sort of brew them all up into this really volatile cocktail,” Filardi explains), so when producer Doug Wick approached him about another supernatural project, Filardi was game.

“He said he would like to either do a haunted house story or something to do with teenage witches. And because I happened to be working on what I was working on I was pretty well-schooled in earth magic and natural magic and Satanism and all sorts of stuff. And we just started talking, and we hit it off, and we decided to develop and create The Craft together,” Filardi recalls.

At the time Wick had just two full producer credits to his name – for Working Girl and Wolf – but he would go on to produce swathes of heavy hitters including Hollow Man, Jarhead, The Great Gatsby, and win the best picture Oscar for Gladiator. Meanwhile, Andrew Fleming, director of The Craft and co-writer of the screenplay, had made horror thriller Bad Dreams and comedy Threesome, and would go on to make several comedy movies as well as many hit TV shows – he’s currently working on season two of Netflix’s popular Emily in Paris.

Filardi’s story was always going to be about women, and it was always going to be about outsiders, the memories of high school still fresh enough for him to remember the pain. “I’m sure it’s like this for every kid. You have memories from those high school years of horrible things that happened to people around you, or were said or done and just the petty cruelties,” he says. “I’m glad I’m an old man now!” (He’s not, he’s 59).

Rewatching and it’s certainly striking how much empathy you feel for the girls. Sarah (Robin Tunney), who is the audience’s way in to the movie, lost her mother during childbirth and has battled mental health problems, even attempting suicide. Recently moved to a new neighborhood with her dad and step mother, she is instantly the outsider at her new school, and is immediately treated abhorrently by popular boy Chris (a pre-Scream Skeet Ulrich), who dates her and then spreads rumors that they slept together. Rochelle (Rachel True) is a keen diver, subjected to overt racist bullying by a girl on the swim team, while Bonnie (Neve Campbell) hides away because of extreme scarring she has all over her body. Before Sarah arrives, the three dabble in magic and protect themselves as best they can from the horrors of high school by telling people they are witches and keeping them at arm’s length. It’s the arrival of Sarah, though, a “natural” witch with some serious power, that turns things around.

“I think that maybe traditionally Hollywood would have done a version where the women were witches like Lost Boys,” Filardi says. “The women were witches, and they had this power, and they’re the dark overlords of their school or something like that. And that’s exactly the opposite of what worked for me and how I thought magic works in general.

“Magic has always historically been a weapon of the underclass, for poor people… Think of England. People of the heath, who lived out in the country… The heathens, they didn’t have a king or an army or the church even behind them. They would turn to magic. And that’s kind of what I saw for our girls. For real magic to work, you have the three cornerstones of need and emotion and knowledge. And I hate magic movies where somebody has a power and they just do this and the magic happens. I think it’s much more interesting if the magic comes from an emotional need, a situation that really riles up the power within.”

These witches aren’t evil and they aren’t even anti-heroes. Instead, this is pure wish fulfilment for anyone who’s ever been bullied, or overlooked, or been dealt a particularly tough hand, and this level of empathy comes across hard in the film. Watching now and so many of the themes are so current with reference to issues of racism and the emergence of the #MeToo movement.

“I did not write it as a feminist piece per se,” says Filardi. “I really just wrote it as an empathetic human being, I think.”

There’s extreme empathy dripping throughout the script, but don’t mistake that for pity. The Craft deals in female empowerment and just plain fun. It’s here that one of The Craft’s enduring conflicts arises. Are you Team Sarah or are you Team Nancy?

The correct answer of course, is Team Nancy…

“It’s always harder to be the good guy or the good girl,” laughs Filardi.

After all, before Sarah shows up, the other three are doing fine – surviving, doing minor spells, and looking out for each other. The influx of power Sarah brings allows the group to up their game and together they each ask for a gift from “Manon,” the (fictional) deity who represents all of nature that they worship in the film. Bonnie wants to heal her scars, Rochelle wants the racism to stop, Nancy wants the power of Manon, but Sarah casts a love spell on Chris. Sarah is either taking revenge on Chris, or she’s forging a relationship without consent, and it’s a move which eventually leads to Chris’s death.

Meanwhile, Nancy is someone who just refuses to be a victim, despite the fact that of the four she’s clearly had the toughest life, living in a trailer with her mum and her abusive stepdad. Nancy won’t allow the audience to pity her. Nancy doesn’t let things happen to her, she makes her own choices, whether they are good ones or not. When newly empowered Nancy is running red lights, with Rochelle and Bonnie whooping in the back, and Sarah telling her it’s all gone a bit far, “Oh shut up, Sarah” feels like the right response. While Sarah might be technically correct, we are rooting for these girls to be allowed the pure joy of something they have created between them.

Nancy is an amazing creation, and Filardi says he couldn’t have anticipated how much the character would resonate.

“I did not envision the great look that Andy Fleming brought to her,” he smiles. “But Nancy was inspired by a real girl, whose older brother lived in a trailer in their backyard, and just had a hard go of it. She’s true to the one I wrote. She always embodied the earth element of fire. Each of the girls is their own earth element. There’s earth, wind, water, fire. And you can pretty much guess who’s who…”

We could speculate but it’s perhaps more fun to let the audience decide for themselves.

“Nancy in the beginning was always the constructive aspect of that element. She’s the light in the fire in the dark woods that draws the girls together,” he explains. “When she’s all passion and raw nerve, she’s very much like fire, but then when she crosses Sarah and gets overwhelmed with the power of her new abilities, she becomes the destructive side of that same element and burns the whole thing up. But she’s a fantastic character. I think that Fairuza Balk just elevated Nancy to a whole other level. I guess that’s what happens when you’re blessed with the right actor for the right part.”

Exactly who the true protagonist of The Craft is is something Filardi still contemplates. What is notable is that though, yes, Nancy, Bonnie, and Rochelle do at one point try to, um, kill Sarah and make it look like suicide, which isn’t a very sisterly thing to do, they never really become true villains. By the end, the only fatalities are sex pest Chris and Nancy’s abusive step father, and both deaths could reasonably be considered accidental. While Bonnie and Rochelle are stripped of their powers, they aren’t further punished, it’s only Nancy who gets a raw deal. Driven to distraction by her surfeit of power, we find her ranting in a mental hospital strapped to a bed.

Filardi’s ending was different, though he won’t be drawn on details.

“The original ending was different. I’ve never really gone into the detail of what the original ending was. Well, the original ending was just different…” he says, mulling over what he might say. “So, let’s see. Well, Chris always died… and it was just very different,” he hesitates. “I don’t really get into it because there’s no real sense. It is what it is. I always like in a movie… Having two different children and you love them both for different reasons, but I would have never wanted to be hard on the girls in the final analysis in any way thematically.”

One element of the script that saw slight changes was the motivation of Rochelle, after the casting of Rachel True.

“To be honest, I think she was the exact same character. She was picked on by the swimmers. There was an added element that she had an eating disorder. She used to vomit into a mayonnaise jar and hide it on the top shelf of a bedroom closet. But other than that, she was really the same character,” he says. “Andy Fleming and Doug Wick, I don’t know who came up with the idea, but they cast Rachel and she added this whole other element to it, the racial element, which I think it was great and I think totally appropriate.”

Though Filardi didn’t work on the remake and hasn’t actually seen it, he’s able to see for himself, first hand, how well the film has aged and how it continues to endure for young women – he has teenage daughters of his own.

“I see them going through all the same stuff that I watched girlfriends going through. And it hasn’t changed all that much,” he says ruefully.

“It’s funny. For years, they had no idea what I did for a living. I think they just thought I hung around in the basement. And one daughter was like… She was going to school with somebody whose father was in a rock band or something, ‘Nobody in this house does anything interesting. Everything’s boring.’ And it was around Halloween and they were showing The Craft at the Hollywood Forever cemetery. I took them to the cemetery and it was great. There were boys dressed in Catholic high school uniforms and women all in black and with blankets and candles and wine and snacks. Amidst the tombstones, they set up a huge screen and showed the film. So, that’s when they first saw it. And it was really fun. A really nice thing to share with my daughters.”

Things don’t change that much. High school is still horrible. Magic is still tantalizing. The outfits are still fabulous. And Nancy is still a stone cold legend. The Craft is an enduring celebration of outsider culture that we’ll probably still be talking about in 25 years to come. After all, most of us, at one time or another, feel like the weirdos.

“I think of it as the story about the power of adolescent pain and self-empowerment. I think of beautiful young people who are just picked upon or put in positions they shouldn’t be or don’t deserve to be, and having the ability to fight back and weather it and survive,” says Filardi when we ask him what he’s most proud of.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

“I’m also proud of all the great contributions that the other talented people brought to the script. All I did was a script, but you have actors and directors and producers and art directors and production designers who just… Everybody seems to me to have brought their A-game. I didn’t come up with Nancy’s great look. Other people get all that credit. Like you said, you see her on t-shirts. So, so many people just brought so many things. I guess I’m just proudest to think that a bunch of strangers come together and connect to the message of the piece, and together just make something memorable all these 25 years later.”

The post The Craft: How a Teenage Weirdo Based on a Real Person Became an Icon appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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ericsonclan · 3 years

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A Visit to the Library

Summary: It's a quiet day at the library for Santiago, the librarian mothman, when a surprise visitor comes a'knocking.

Word Count: 1664

Read on AO3:

It was a quiet day in the library. Usually each period had at least a few students using their study hall to cram for a test or research their latest project, but the post-break blues must be hitting everyone pretty hard since there hadn’t been anyone except the occasional student dropping off overdue books and it was almost noon. Santiago eyed the clock suspiciously, wondering if that was really the time. He’d reset the clocks himself come daylight savings, but still… checking his phone though, he confirmed that it was indeed almost lunchtime.

Absentmindedly munching on his sleeve, the librarian wondered to himself how much of that bag of flour was left in the break room. He’d heard it was up for grabs and it was sure to make a tasty snack. Pausing mid-munch, Santiago looked down at his sweater in horror, realizing he’d nibbled yet another hole into his sweater. Tutting to himself, his antennae twitching in annoyance, Santiago tried his best to stretch the fabric around the hole to hide it better. There was a pretty significant chunk missing; it was no use. Sighing, Santi let his chin fall into his hands. This was his favorite sweater. He really didn’t want to eat it beyond the point of recognition.

A turning doorknob had Santiago’s antenna thrumming at the sound, the hairs on his wrists standing up as he looked over curiously to see what student had come begging a late fee be waived this time. Instead it was not a student at all, but an adult. Santiago adjusted his glasses, squinting with interest at the fine specimen in front of him. He’d seen this man at faculty meetings before but their paths hadn’t crossed yet. He was the PE teacher and also the coach of one of the school teams, Santi couldn’t remember which.

The man glanced round the library, looking lost, then his eyes met Santiago’s. “Oh, hi there. You’re the librarian right, Mr. Gutierrez? I noticed a bunch of books on top of the lockers in the boys changing room and figured I would return them,”

“Thoughtful of you, but you shouldn’t have,” Santiago came out from behind the desk to help the man with the books. “Usually I just let those books sit up there till the end of the school year then when the students clean out their lockers and are forced to finally return them I really hit them with the late fees,”

“How passive aggressive of you,” the coach replied with a wry smile.

Santi shrugged. “It’s the little things in life that bring the most joy. Besides, late fees go toward the budget for new books. Thank you regardless for the gesture, Mr…”

“Garcia. You can call me Javi though,” Javi offered his hand, shaking Santi’s firmly.

“Santi,”

“Nice to officially meet you. I never really see you outside the library,”

“What need is there for other pursuits when I have books?” Santiago shrugged, a sardonic smile upon his face. He looked down at the titles of the returned books. “Hmmm, some of these have been gone for quite some time. I remember getting them down for the students too. They belong up on the shelves in the back,”

“I could get them up there if you need help. I have pretty long arms,” Javi offered.

Santiago gave him a quick once over. “Indeed. Well, I’m certainly not one to turn down help. To the forbidden recesses of the library we go!” With that he turned on his heel, leading the way. He called it this section “the forbidden recesses” whenever someone needed something back there simply to spice things up. Truthfully, this section didn’t look that much different from all the others, neat and tidy and well dusted. Santi was a fastidious duster when it came to the shelves even though the dust brought out his allergies. Stopping in front of the appropriate bookcase, he pointed to the top shelf. “The first volume goes right there,”

“Right. Uhhh…” Javi looked upwards, thinking through his options. Grabbing a chair, he stepped on top of it and stretched to his full height, trying to get the book in place. Santiago leaned back against the bookshelf across from him, admiring Javi’s determination. And the view. When Javi successfully tipped the book into place his tail began to wag in glee.

Santi bit his lip. So cute.

“I did it!” Javi declared, smiling proudly. “Where does the next book go?”

“Two bookcases over, second shelf from the top. Though in the name of complete transparency, I must admit that there actually is a ladder for the top shelves,” Santiago pointed over to the ladder itself, tucked snugly between two bookshelves.

“Oh. That makes sense. Shoulda known there was something round here to stand on besides chairs,” Javi scratched the back of his neck in embarrassment.

“The fault is mine. I was having my fun seeing what you would do without one, but I don’t want you finding out about the “secret” of the ladder later and hating me for it,”

Javi jumped down from the chair. “I don’t think you have to worry about that. You pranked me, that just means I’ll have to get you back later,” His grin caused Santiago’s wings to flutter open slightly before the mothman closed them again sharply, clearing his throat with an awkward cough. “I look forward to seeing what you’ll try. I have fairly keen senses, you know. My antennae have never led me wrong,”

“Neither has my nose,” Javi took a step forward. Santiago wondered if he was going to try something but instead the werewolf merely picked up the book he had been reaching for. “Two bookcases over, second shelf from the top, right?”

Santiago blinked in confusion. “Yes, but now that I’ve revealed the ladder I’ve shown myself perfectly capable of putting these away on my own,”

“Eh, I don’t mind helping out. I have a free period,”

Seeing the carefree smile on Javi’s face, Santi couldn’t help but return it in kind. “Alright. We’ll make it a team effort then,”

---

There were about a dozen books that Javi had brought in from the locker room. One by one the pair made their way through the library, Javi carrying the ladder and climbing it to place each book in its proper place while Santi carried the stack of books and directed Javi on where each one should go. It didn’t take them long before each book was safely tucked away and Santiago found himself searching for a reason to get Javi to stay just a bit longer.

“Have you ever perused the shelves of our fine library yourself?” he asked, looking up at Javi as he made his way down the ladder one final time.

“Can’t say I have. I’ve never been a big reader though I did used to read at the senior center on Saturdays way back in my high school days,”

“May I be so bold as to offer a reading suggestion?”

“Be my guest,”

“Come with me then,” Santiago guided Javi to the fantasy section. There he pulled out a worn-down copy of Alice in Wonderland. “This is a personal favorite of mine. I’m sure you’ve seen the film so you should be able to follow the general gist of the story, but experiencing the original prose itself is another experience entirely,”

“Oh yeah! I did see the cartoon a couple times. It’s pretty fun,”

“I gave you one of our older copies too, so you don’t need to worry about damaging it,”

Javi chuckled. “Is it that obvious how clumsy I am? Seriously though, that’s really thoughtful of you,”

“Do you have a library card?”

“Oh, right. Guess the one for my community library won’t work, huh?” Javi flashed Santi a charismatic smile.

“Tragically, no. I’ll get you signed up,” Santiago headed back over to the main desk to pull up the forms for a new library card. His ploy hadn’t bought him much time, only a few minutes really, but he enjoyed them nonetheless. It had been quite a while since he’d last met a man who made his wings flutter the way Javi did. Even if it was only light flirting, it was nice to shake off the metaphorical cobwebs of his social life if only for a moment. “And with that,” Santi said, stamping the library card before handing it to Javi, “You’re all set,”

“Thanks! Also, just in case it comes up…” Javi continued, fiddled with the corner of his newly-borrowed book, “Is there a number I should call in case of emergency?”

“…Excuse me?”

“Y’know, like if I lose the book or leave it by my stove and accidentally set it on fire… so I can pay for a new book of course!”

“Well if the book’s on fire you should probably call the fire department, but if it just gets lost, you can call the main school number and they’ll redirect you to the library,”

“Oh, ok,” The wolf ears on Javi’s head deflated just a little.

Santi looked over at Javi curiously. He hadn’t meant… had he? “And just in case of an extra serious emergency…” he grabbed a sticky note and scribbled upon it, “Here is my personal cell number. Call me any time, night or day, and I’ll make sure all your needs are fulfilled. Book needs,” Yeah, Santi. Real subtle.

Javi’s face lit up as he received the number, his tail wagging at a slightly faster pace. “Awesome! Then I’ll call you sometime- about books! Or I’ll see you when I drop this one off after finishing it,”

“I’m always here, never anywhere else,” Way to sell yourself, Santi.

“Alright, see you then… bye!” with a final wave Javi was off, walking through the library doors with his tail wagging excitedly behind him.

Santiago watched him go, finally letting his wings spread and flutter with excitement. Had he just landed a date?

#twdg #twdg javi #twdg santiago #twdg javiago #fanfic #we are monsters we are proud au

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catholicartistsnyc · 4 years

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Meet Theresa Ambat

THERESA AMBAT is a music composer, producer, and sound designer based in Seattle, WA. [website]

From Theresa:

I have my own personal music on Spotify and Apple Music and I just started doing freelance music production for film and video games. I also sometimes compose music using a programming language called SuperCollider.

CATHOLIC ARTIST CONNECTION (CAC): Where are you from originally, and what brought you to Seattle?

THERESA AMBAT (TA): I was born in Japan and moved to Washington as a baby (dad was in the Navy). Lived in a small town for most of my life, then moved to Seattle to study Computer Music at the University of Washington. I now work for a parish in the greater-Seattle area!

CAC: How do understand your vocation as a Catholic artist? Do you call yourself a Catholic artist?

TA: I'd say that I'm a Catholic who is an artist. My vocation is to be a follower of Christ, and creating music is a major way for me to do that. I'm not a praise & worship artist and my work isn't always explicitly Christian, but my work is built on the foundation that is my faith and relationship with the Lord. Everything I create is for Jesus.

All I desire is to share truth, beauty, and goodness through my art. If someone can encounter Christ through my work -- whether that be by feelings of peace and solidarity, or something as incredible as conversion of the heart -- that brings me so much joy.

CAC: Where in Seattle do you regularly find spiritual fulfillment?

TA: I was a part of a really wonderful Catholic community called the Prince of Peace Catholic Newman Center when I was in college. If you're a college student or young adult in the Seattle area, I'd highly recommend getting involved there! They've got Dominicans, tons of young people looking to explore their faith, awesome events, just overall an A+++ community. That place played a serious role in my relationship with Christ -- I don't know where I'd be without it.

CAC: What is your daily spiritual practice?

TA: I've been struggling a little bit with daily prayer habits since starting full-time work--I guess I'm still trying to figure out a good routine. But since I work at a church I have the opportunity to do a holy hour and go to mass once a week which is great. Usually when I get home I pray a rosary with my family. I've also been reading "The Mystical Journey to Divine Union" by John Paul Thomas which is about St. John of the Cross.

I found my spiritual director Fr. Marcin during my senior year of college. At the time I was making a pretty big life decision about my future: to accept a position as a FOCUS missionary or stay in Washington to further my music career. Fr. Marcin was actually the person who kept telling me I needed to find a spiritual director, haha. We already had a good friendship by then so I just asked him! In the end, I discerned that the Lord was calling me to stay in Washington to live out mission in my job/music.

CAC: Describe a recent day in which you were most completely living out your vocation as an artist.

TA: When in-person shows were still a thing, I performed for a SoFar Seattle show in January. It was my first paid gig ever and like, 20 of my friends (who are also Catholic) came. I think they filled up almost a third of the venue.

What's cool about SoFar shows is that the audience remains completely silent during your performances. No phones, no talking, people have to stay for the ENTIRE show, giving you the artist full-freedom to share your work without the fear of people not paying attention.

Before performing I talked about how I was Catholic, the ways the Lord was working in my life at the time, and how they related to my music. Being in secular Seattle, it was absolutely terrifying! But wow, I was received so well. After the show people started sharing with me how my story/music resonated with their own stories. If they were Catholic or not, I have no idea!

The Lord was SERIOUSLY present that night. All of my friends who came are incredible witnesses of Christ and it was just so cool to even see them interact with other people at the show and share Christ -- not by bible thumping or swinging around rosaries -- but simply by their presence and the joy that bleeds out of them.

Thinking back, yeah, I really wanted to share Christ with others through my music that night. But I'm now realizing how much of an impact my friends had on the show. Just imagine walking into a venue where THAT many people are striving for sainthood. The environment changes. I really felt like I was a part of the body of Christ that night.

CAC: How do you financially support yourself as an artist?

TA: I currently have a full-time job at a really wonderful parish which is my main source of income. I only started freelancing maybe 2.5 months ago but to my surprise it's been flourishing well! Creating a personal website and demo reel made it really easy to share my work with others and I've found most of my gigs through the Catholic Creatives facebook group as well as Instagram.

The biggest piece of advice I have for finding work is to use social media as a tool. Document your process on instagram, create a demo reel and put it on the front page of your website, post on the Catholic Creatives facebook group!

[Editor’s Note: Remember, you can also post in the Catholic Artist Connection Facebook group and send and find notices in the newsletter!]

I know we all cringe at the idea of "networking" but if you think about it in the lens of evangelization, it's actually quite beautiful. No, I'm not saying that you need to "convert" people in your tweets and insta posts. But just remember that very interaction you have with a person is sacred and is an opportunity to love. Even in the digital world. When people see your joy and desire to serve, they can tell you're serious about your art and will want to work with you.

In the future (maybe 5ish years from now) I'd love to make freelance music production a full-time career. I still have quite a ways to go but I know the Lord is asking me to be patient and invest in the season that I'm in now. Transitioning out of college it's very easy to focus so heavily on the far future that we miss out on what's happening right in front of us. I'm really grateful for the opportunities the Lord has given me to serve now.

CAC: What are your top 3 pieces of advice for Catholic artists post-graduation?

TA: 1. Post-graduation is REALLY hard. Especially during this COVID-19 pandemic. You're going to be told a lot of lies by Satan, but just remember that that's all he is. A liar.

Jesus? He is truth. So in response to each of those lies you might hear, just remember a truth that Jesus is telling you.

2. Invite God into your creative process! Make your work a prayer, write something in the adoration chapel, ask God what he thinks about your work, etc. I recorded my first album in front of the tabernacle and the Lord has blessed that piece of work in so many ways.

3. DO IT! Just do it. That thing you've been wanting to make for 72589247329 years, just start. It's never too late to just start. Stop letting your expectations for yourself get in the way. Stop waiting to get that "one piece of gear" that will make/break your project. God gave you a gift for a reason--to bring glory to his kingdom. Use it!

Let's be saints, together!

#Theresa Ambat #Seattle #japan #catholic #catholic artist #catholic artist connection #west coast #musician #music #sofar #sofar sounds #sofar seattle #catholic music #university of washington #newman center #FOCUS #mystical journey to divine union #st. john of the cross

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forestwater87 · 4 years

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201X in Review: A journey of cringe and regrets

Realizing 2020 is really close and wanted to look back at the second (full) decade I’ve actually been alive for. I feel like either a huge amount of stuff has happened, or basically nothing’s happened, but there’s no middle ground.

2010:

Cringy 2010 photo: High school prom (in middle, dark green dress and...a face)

Junior in high school.

Had my first-ever Real Boyfriend(TM). (Pictured in above cringy photo.)

Had just ended an extremely toxic 12-year relationship and was still figuring out how to have friends.

Chemistry fucking SUUUUUCKED and I don’t miss it.

Had a super intense love for Megamind. I saw it minimum of 4 times in theaters and had a major crush on that blue lil nerd. (Began a personal grudge against both Tangled and Despicable Me for taking away its deserved spotlight, a resentment I have not yet gotten past 10 years later.)

Most regrettable 2010 memory: Getting way too intense about a new boyfriend and lowkey abandoning my friends. Not cool.

Most awesome 2010 memory: I have friends from back then I still love and keep in touch with (despite my abandoning them for a bit there). That’s pretty dang awesome.

2011:

Cringy 2011 photo: High school graduation with one of the most beautiful women in existence. (We’re still friends, and she’s still gorgeous.)

Graduated high school! (Gym fucking SUUUUUCKED and I don’t miss it.)

Fell in love with the college that was supposed to be a “safety school” and didn’t apply anywhere else, which means I can brag about having been accepted into 100% of the colleges I applied to.

Started at Ithaca College -- don’t say “it’s gorges,” it gets so old so fast -- and had a miserable first semester and an incredible second.

Started getting . . . uncomfortably involved in religious groups. (I mean, I’d been doing that since I was a kid, but it got kicked up to 11 in college.)

Most regrettable 2011 memory: Dressed as a “g***y” for Halloween. Fucking yikes.

Most awesome 2011 memory: Figuring out what I want to be when I grow up.

2012:

Cringy 2012 photo: Modeling first successfully completed knitting project. With bamboo needles because Ithaca is a hippie paradise.

Learned how to knit, entirely out of boredom in long lectures.

Technically started my tumblr experience, though it was only for a few months while I worked through some Shit by being in love with Loki from the Avengers (and THiddleston in general). Stayed on here just long enough to discover Achievement Hunter and Rooster Teeth, and never went back.

Broke up with first-ever Real Boyfriend(TM) and handled it so well I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety disorder.

Got very deep in a religious group at IC, which was . . . not very healthy and could perhaps not inaccurately be described as “cultlike.” (I owe a major apology to everyone who knew me back then; I was very much a major bitch.)

Despite the previous two bullet points, this was the best year of my life up until that point. I lived next door to my two best friends in college, loved my major, and pretty much was confident that I had everything figured out.

Most regrettable 2012 memory: Writing a fan letter to Tom Hiddleston, which included a photo of me and my phone number. I was convinced my charm and wit would totally make him fall in love with me.

Most awesome 2012 memory: Pretty sure this is the year my love affair with RiffTrax began, too. I had a posse and we’d go see live shows together.

2013-2014:

Cringy 2013 photo: A blanket that I made and sent to Jennamarlbes for her dogs, because it was too small for people. Pretty sure it showed up in a video at one point.

Cringy 2014 photo: My awesome college roommates and I dressed up to give out candy to people’s dorms on Halloween. Reverse trick-or-treating: very fun, always recommended.

HA. So much for having anything figured out.

I don’t actually remember much of this period in my life, because I was navel-deep in a major religious crisis that would continue until . . . a couple months ago, basically? There was a lot of freaking out and trying to reconcile culty fundamentalism with the freewheeling pinko that lived deep inside and was trying to break free.

Lots of therapy, though. And med adjustments. Eventually figured out something that worked. Free campus counseling was the bomb though.

I do remember living in an apartment and cooking for myself for the first time, and also playing a lot of tabletop games with my roommates. (Also drinking. Lots of drinking.)

Oh shit, was this when I started that Drunk Librarian blog? I was trying really hard to be The Nostalgia Critic for books (ew), but I remember having a lot of fun with that. That was when my lifelong vendetta against John Green began.

Most regrettable 2013-2014 memory: Did I mention that the blanket I sent to Jenna included a letter? Did I mention that letter included some bible verses I thought she would appreciate????

Most awesome 2013-14 memory: Started a knitting club. It was just like 4 people hanging out and not knitting.

2015:

Cringy 2015 photo: Me being emaciated, makeup-smeared, and proudly showing off a collarbone piercing. That piercing has since rejected, but was in fact cute af.

Graduated college! Summa cum laude, bitches. (And an unfinished minor because I didn’t feel like taking the one (1) class I needed to graduate.)

Started library school and moved back home with parents. That was . . . an adjustment.

Changed library school “majors” halfway through my first year, after a lot of soul searching and panic attacks.

Had a short but catastrophic relationship with a man 9 years older than me (who was my pastor. Awkward). Religious crisis continued.

Got really skinny and hot because I was too miserable to eat. Dyed my hair red for the first time and looked basically like Ariel.

Discovered Party Hard and got really good at killing people.

Remembered how much I fucking love my parents’ dog:

Most regrettable 2015 memory: Being that person who “thought I could change him.”

Most awesome 2015 memory: Did you see how cute that dog is? His name is Oscar, after Oscar the Grouch.

2016:

Cringy 2016 photo: I had this huge thing for 1950s dresses for a while, complete with petticoats.

Grad school continued.

Religious crisis continued.

Therapy happens to deal with Things, is quickly dropped due to money and lack of shrink-chemistry.

Discovered a dumb little web cartoon with a teensy fanbase and no love for my favorite ship. Began work on a fanfic to correct this.

Finished a long-form fanfic for the first time in my entire life.

Virtually abandoned every other fandom to hyperfixate on this for the rest of my life.

Got super political, then super depressed. Quit Facebook because I realized I hate everyone I’m FB friends with.

Discovered Stardew Valley and never got anything done ever again.

Found Tumblr again (needed it to keep in touch with my first-ever beta reader, @raenbowsofficial) and turned into fandom and politics trash.

Most regrettable 2016 memory: Man, was I cocky about that Hillary Clinton winning the election. Oops.

Most awesome 2016 memory: I mean, CAMP CAMP. Obviously.

2017:

Cringy 2017 photo: My first day of work as a very bisexual-in-denial librarian.

Finished grad school and became a certified librarian (in NYS anyway)!

Got a job at a local college, including my own office!

Shaved half my head!

Moved into my own apartment and adopted a cat, fulfilling a goal over 7 years in the making!

Became friends with two of the most important people I’ve ever met. Visited one of them on a semi-impromptu 9-hour drive to Virginia and met IRL for the first time. First ever all-night solo trip, one of the best days of my life.

This might’ve been the year I got the VFD eye tattooed on my ankle, though I can’t swear to that.

Was part of my first long-form tabletop RPG with friends from college (and friends-of-friends). Was very emotional and also quite gay.

Rediscovered Megamind thanks to excellent fanfiction. That shit is still great.

Currently the best year I’ve ever had.

Most regrettable 2017 memory: I should’ve attended my graduation from library school instead of deciding it didn’t matter. It mattered a lot.

Most awesome 2017 memory: Seeing the-artist-formerly-known-as-ciphernetics in person.

2018:

Cringy 2018 photo: Um, apparently we don’t get one, because there’s an image limit to these posts. Lame.

Was laid off and took 6 months to find another full-time job. Spent most of that time depression-napping.

Said full-time job lasted 4 months before I ran like my shoes were on fire, because it was morally . . . suspicious and left me borderline suicidal.

Got very fat because I was too miserable to stop eating.

Had to cut my hair so I would look “professional.” Looked like my ex-boyfriend. My mom said I “looked like a Trump supporter.” To-date the meanest thing anyone’s ever said to me.

Moved back in with my parents due to not-having-job-ness (got to bring the cat, though).

Lost parents’ health insurance and had to pay for my own. Discovered health insurance is ridiculously expensive.

Became super left-leaning thanks to the power of Tumblr and Youtube (and possibly that super expensive health insurance thing).

Writing came to a virtual standstill, though I managed to organize and actually finish participating in all of Gwenvid Week (for the first time).

Two weeks after quitting the job from hell and three weeks after moving back in with the parents, I was offered my old position back. Accepted. Was once again a college librarian.

Most regrettable 2018 memory: Knowing I didn’t want the nightmare job and accepting it anyway. Might’ve been the only choice, but it caused a lot of unhappiness.

Most awesome 2018 memory: The day I was laid off, I hopped on a plane and went to fucking Disney World. Because why not?

2019:

Started work again. Finally (mostly) stopped having panic attacks about being fired/laid off out of the middle of nowhere around 8 months into new job.

Fewer paper cuts than expected.

Accidentally became associated with dinosaurs at work, despite not having any sort of special affinity for dinosaurs.

Did develop a deep and abiding affinity for octopus. Also elephants.

Took cat to doctor. Cat didn’t enjoy doctor. Cat is now 8 lbs. and 14 oz. She is big girl.

Rediscovered the joy of reading again. Newly discovered that mysteries actually can be pretty awesome, and read barely anything else all year. (Personal recommendations: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton and Waisted by Randy Susan Meyers.)

So. Many. Youtube. Video. Essays.

Discovered Stardew Valley mods and eventually broke 3k hours of playtime.

Napped frequently. Panicked less frequently. It’s a step in the right direction.

Most regrettable 2019 memory: This post sure is long and over-share-y, isn’t it? Didn’t even include a cut so you could more easily scroll past my face. Inconsiderate, is what that is.

Most awesome 2019 memory: This one is pretty good. Right now.

2020:

???

Profit.

#all right the 2010s were weird #random forest ramblings about my life i guess #here you go

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illuminatingcomics · 5 years

Photo

We’re approaching the end of Secret Empire (Thank you sweet baby Jesus our lord and savior) and with it, the end of my career as a professional shitposter.

Illuminating Comics brings laughter to a large, varied group of people (or so I think it does), but it’s been a while now since I’ve stopped getting the enjoyment of old times from it. Reading bad comics and making fun of them was enjoyable when I didn’t have precise projects in my head, but it’s a bit of an hindrance right now. Add that to the fact that it’s been quite a while since the last time I actually sat down and followed one of the Big 2 ongoing series, and you have a recipe for nihilistic disinterest.

I much rather focus on my own works, my oc donut steels, my comics, that bring me much joy and fulfilment. But I can’t really let Illuminating Comics go. As I’m writing this, this page has 2243 followers. Now, I can’t tell how many of those are russian bots, how many of them are abandoned blogs left behind with the porn purge, how many of them actually read this stuff (and my best pages got about a 120+ notes at best), but it’s still the largest number of followers I have across every single platform I post on.

So, once SE ends, I’m still gonna post here. Of the social media platforms I’m using, tumblr would be the best suited for long form posts, walls of text, and stuff like that. I want to keep you guys aware of what I’m doing, and the projects I develop. And I hope you will continue to be interested in them.

Because if it’s true I’m tired of doing parody comics, I cannot deny those helped me get here. Through something as stupid as that, I’ve had the luck of meeting nice people, building connections, chatting with followers that considers themselves fans of my work, and I now see as essential support. Because if it wasn’t for you laughing at my jokes, I would’ve never found the strength to post my stuff online. I would still be the guy drawing comics for himself, sending them out willy nilly hoping for someone else other than me to recognize some value in them.

So thank you for your support, I hope you will still gift it to me, as I move forward to the next step.

Cheers,

Illuminated

Twitter - Instagram - Mad Magic

#milestone #comics #illuminating comics

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kujyouhikari · 5 years

Text

Sasazuka Monologue

An excerpt of my translation for the Collar x Malice Unlimited project by @otogetranslations

This has been proofread by the wonderful crow and lunar in the group.

This is Sasazuka’s monologue that is unlocked as bonus content after his route is completed in the game, so please be prepared for spoilers.

Takeru’s route is fully translated at the moment, and the project is progressing well, so please buy the game and use the patch according to instructions when the patch is released!

I worked on most of Sasasazuka’s route in the translations, so this gives you a taste of what is to come, lol.

Please do not repost without permission. I would be very depressed, become a ghost, and try to haunt you forever.

——I often think about how well she complements me.

"Sasazukaaa-saaan, you're drinking, right?"

"I am. You're the one drinking too much."

"I still haven't drunk that much today. The night is still young!"

"I'll leave you behind if you get wasted."

"Meanie...Even though you say that, you'll never leave me behind..."

"Shut up, you drunkard."

On a normal day, on her way from work, Ichika texted me, [Today, I'm in the mood for a drink.]

And thus, I came along as her companion.

Drinking at home is fine, but she drinks more when we go out because she's not distracted with making side dishes or worrying about it affecting her at work the next day.

(...Did she mess up at work or something?)

...Everyone have times where they just want to get drunk.

I suppose, in times like this, it's my role as her boyfriend to chase away her unpleasant thoughts. It's my exclusive right.

I don't dislike listening to the petty squabbles of drunks.

The atmosphere here boosts one's willingness to get drunk.

I hate people with no sense of moderation though.

"Well, you don't really choose ones with high alcohol content, so drink to your heart's content today. No vomiting."

"Yaaay! I'm fine, I'm fine. I'm still only a little dizzy so I can drink until it really hits me."

"That's a pretty unreliable gauge..."

"Speaking of, Sasazuka-san, do you remember? A while ago...How, when we were chasing the X-Day incidents, you harassed me with alcohol."

"I didn't."

"Didn't you half-threaten me into drinking with you to help take your mind off things?"

"...It was probably because I knew you could drink pretty well."

"Haha, but you know, now that I think back on it, that was you being too shy to say what you actually thought while sober, wasn't it?"

"..."

She grins from ear to ear with a besotted expression.

I'm a little irritated, but I can't dispute the truth.

In retaliation, I took an edamame into my hand and silently stuffed it into Ichika's mouth.

"Mmph...Ah, I remember this too. You stuffed my mouth when it became too much for you."

"That memory of yours is better used elsewhere, you idiot."

"You know, I was really scared silly. To think that I did something so extreme in the heat of the moment!"

"You remember that too? You know, you really did something quite daring."

"What? That's...Are you referring to when I grabbed onto your chest while crying?"

"Nope. Something even more daring."

"T-That's...a lie! I haven't done anything like..."

"Hmm, I see. You don't remember, do you? So I was played by you all along."

"...! H-Haha, good try! Back then, it was still in the middle of the X-Day incidents... And we weren't even in a relationship..."

I laugh at how she brushes off my teasing, and think back on when we hadn't gotten together yet.

——I'm certain that at that point, I was already quite into her.

Starting a sexual relationship with her would have been easy, but just as she says, the reason I didn't, is because I had too many other things on my plate.

Also, because she was so wholesome and diligent, some part of me wanted to be sincere towards her.

To put it simply...I think I wanted to cherish her.

(Of course, I won't admit it, or else she'll get cocky.)

"...But I remember this, too. Back then...How you gently patted my head gently when I was crying and sniffling."

"...Of course I'd have to comfort someone who was crying until their face was messed up like that."

"Back then, did you already think that you didn't want to make me cry again?"

"...Who knows."

Once again, I stuffed her mouth to stop her from saying any more inconvenient things.

It's fun to make her inebriated, but it's not fun when I'm the one being teased.

I suppose I'll have to spur her into soberness, then.

I pulled Ichika's arm towards me, leaning forward with my lips next to her ears.

"You know, if you show me that kind of vulnerable face..."

"Yes?"

"I'll pounce on you."

"...!"

Satisfied by her sudden intake of breath, I start to release her, but Ichika's hand stops me.

And, as her eyes approached mine——

"Then, pounce on me please."

This time, she's the one whispering in my ear.

"...You drunktard."

I was the one who started it, wanting to see her panicking face, but I'm the one who's mortified by her reply.

The me of the past would have never even imagined that I would be at the mercy of this woman, to this extent.

"Understood, let's head back."

"Nope, not yet."

"Hey, you're the one who tempted me."

"I won't go back until Sasazuka-san drinks one more."

As she says that, Ichika orders a Cassis Orange from the menu on her own accord.

"I've already had a just right amount."

"But...A drunk Sasazuka-san is a very cute Sasazuka-san."

"I'm always cute."

"Haha, judging from that reply, you're already a little drunk."

...I suppose I do have room for more alchohol, but drinking too much would make it difficult to have sex thoroughly... which I refrained from saying in this public place.

If I drink one more, I'm probably going to go from just feeling fuzzy to feeling hazy at this rate.

——While I was thinking about that, the drink arrived.

In the end, I have no options left other than to become an idiot together with her.

"Haaah...ah...It's so warm..."

"Don't crash down half-way through."

"Urgh, Sasazuka-san, you idiot!"

"Huh? You're the idiot, idiot."

"Sasazuka's call of 'idiot' means 'I love you', right? ...That's how I hear it."

"...Go get your ears checked out."

"Hehehe... W-W-W...wait please...Let's do this properly on the bed..."

The moment we returned, we started messing around like puppies.

While being appalled at how low my IQ has gotten, I kiss her messily under the influence of my intoxication.

"Haaaah...Thanks to you I've become an idiot."

"Please don't say that you want to break up because you don't want to be an idiot."

"What if I did?"

"...I'll cry."

"Then I won't."

"Hehe."

"...Damn it. You're the only one that can threaten me with that, you know."

"Of course. Even if you see another girl crying... Cheating is not allowed, okay?"

"Hah...! Then, make me so into you that I don't even want to cheat."

"...Okay. I'll try my best."

——After we ended up in this relationship...

No. It was from the moment I decided that I would not let her go for the rest of my life, and proposed to her.

There was something I have been thinking.

Rather than looking down on others, or pushing people away, there's something that's more fulfilling.

To pamper her and to make her happy.

I still don't care about anyone besides those important to me, but it seems that the ones I treasure have become a place for me to come home to, rather than something tying me down.

The woman in front of me is the one who made me realize I felt that way, even though I dislike being swayed by emotions.

"Ah...Speaking of which, Kazuki sa-...!"

"Don't bring out another man's name during this."

"No, it's not...like that...mn..! ...Come ooooon, just pause for one seco-..."

"I'll hear it later. Thanks to that one extra drink, I can't really restrain myself..."

I thought that my passion for her was only a phase, and would calm down a little after a while, but she matches me so well that there seems to be no limit.

...Not just in body, but also, in other parts, too.

Is it her that changed, adapting to me, or was I the one who changed?

Most likely it's both, but being with her is so comfortable that I can't even think of anyone else. It feels just right.

Someone who doesn't get in the way of my life, who even makes it more fulfilling.

(Once I've known this happiness...There's no way I can let go.)

Though I was the one who intended to make her fall for me, I'm the one who became more enraptured.

To feel happy even about that fact, I must be off the deep end.

"...What are you thinking about?"

Perhaps because I was distracted by my thoughts, when I look back down, Ichika is staring at me and pouting, with flushed cheeks.

As she gently tugs my cheeks, the corner of my lips lifts.

"About you."

Giving her a smile as I said that, I bit down hard on her white nape, leaving behind a red scar.

"...Takeru-san..."

"Hm?"

"Say you love me."

"Idiot."

"Not that way of 'I love you'."

Even though I snapped at her on reflex, she understood. Seeing that, I felt joy and chagrin mingling together in my chest.

"...I love you."

"...One more time."

——And then, I lose count of how many times I feverishly repeat those words of intimacy.

You, and the me that is changed by you.

Right now, I can admit in my mind that I really like them both.

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seenashwrite · 6 years

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Changes for Nash

I'm going to be pulling back the time I spend on here in various ways, and if you'd like to know in what ways you can find the basic scoop below the cut.

To new followers - I hate that you've arrived just in time to see this, but I must hit “pause” and look after myself. Story-wise (and otherwise!) there's quite a bit of original content to peruse, so I hope this will satisfy you for the time being.

To all of the Nashooligans - please understand this does not mean I won't still post things and queue things. I've got a ton of stuff in drafts (thank you notes, replies, feedback, etc.) that will get posted in due time. I'm not disappearing. I'm not dropping the friendships I've made and the chats we have/the things we share/etc., nor a couple of challenges I agreed to and the side-blog projects I’ve committed to work on with others.

For those of you who don't read further, I'll close for you with a heartfelt...

Much lurve - Nash.

What’s changing / stopping:

I've been doing some purging offline, and now have starting doing some purging online. As there are many of you I consider friends and as I have a good chunk of devoted readers/participants in my shenanigans around here, I feel I owed you the scoop on what's changing (at least for now).

The TL;DR is that “major” original content (things that require great time investment) are not going to be making an appearance for the near future.

So, here are the things related to how I am choosing to spend my time in the context of my activity in the world of fanfic/SPN for the future/near future:

* Some projects are indefinitely on hold and some projects are cancelled altogether (see freshly updated Works In Progress post); I will fulfill my remaining challenge commitments as promised, and while perhaps it will be more abbreviated than normal, I will do my best not to kick out anything less than what y’all expect from me creativity-wise

* I've pulled everything from FF.net - the user end is too cumbersome, I'm tired of wasting time on it. I've left everything up on AO3, no plans to take it down from there. I've actually been going through the works there and editing formatting that slipped through the cracks. One thing I am doing is ceasing with adding cute images to stuff, simply not willing to spend the time on it; I may or may not remove the things for which images are necessary to understanding references in a story; we'll see

* Speaking of images - and videos and gifs and whatnots - no more any time soon; I promised one to someone and that’s already done, it’ll be stuck in the Q

* The Nail is on indefinite hold, very possibly will no longer happen; I may whip up an abbreviated version with the fics I had prepped for the next edition, or I'll individually reblog them - priority going to those with less than 100 notes - with brief versions of my usual in depth commentary as time permits; we'll see

* CASPN has been a commitment of mine each week > 1 year, minus the 3 weeks or so absence in the fall due to an injury that resulted in an unexpected hospital stay; I know this is a favorite weekly "break" for a good handful of you; I think I just need my own break. I know for sure I'm no longer able/willing to work on the decks, it is likely more of a time-suck than people realize to comb scripts, get the format for workable Qs and As right, maintain the whole shebang, etc.; bottom line: I just don't know. Like I say, I think I need a hiatus. Maybe until the season premiere. I'll keep thinking about it, let you know on Thursday where I'm at.

* The couple of side blog endeavors I’m pleased to be part of will still keep happening, I committed to it and I’m not gonna leave y’all in a lurch. Plus, that stuff’s fun, and not being in charge of ‘em means less stress and less time consumption

* Having said that, I won't be finishing up the substantial behind-the-scenes work I’ve already done on the SPN Theft Watch blog that is still in construction mode; I'm not deleting it, I'm just not willing to invest time in it right now. I still have several outstanding issues to deal with regarding the personal theft that came over to Tumblr and the reblogs that still have not been deleted. There are a few I still need to give a second notice to; the ones who have now ignored me after 2x, I'm reporting

* I won't be taking on "Dear Nash" things that ask for writing advice, offering up the "Dear Nash: Script Doctor Edition" option, re-blogging any of my writing tips; to the Nonners who asked for a complete master post of such, and the Nonners who asked for a post on how to give and accept critique, I'm putting those on the back burner as well; I also won't be passing along writing tips from professionals; basically nothing under the umbrella of “advice” [ETA: I have done this once since this post (months later) and it went okay. Will consider doing again]

ETA - Neglected to mention that I’ve had an idea for a gift for y’all when/if I hit 1K followers - the “materials” have been accumulating in a bookmark folder - and it’s unlike anything/any concept I’ve seen during my tenure in the fandom. It may take awhile, but I do still plan on doing it.

And if you care to know more scoop about the why... well, the “why” of the tipping point(s) that made me seriously ponder on what I’ve been feeling for awhile now... that’s on a page I made here.

(Spoiler alert: I’m not angry, there’s no hurt fee-fees, it’s just realization about what I choose to spend my time on and what I get out of those things, how much joy it would bring me and how that’s shifted.)

#Nash Alerts The Populous #The Nashooligans #Nash Ponders #Nash Makes Changes #time management #life balance #perspective #priorities #Queueby Dooby Doo #Dad's on a blog post and #he hasn't been queued in a few days

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ladyvialana · 3 years

Text

Fic: Comedown

Supernatural fic. Dean/Castiel.

Summary: Life, post-Chuck, was both strange and comforting for Dean. Not every day is a good one though.

Notes: post-canon fix-it, spoilers for15x18, light angst

Also on Ao3

The thing about peace was that it wasn’t very conducive to a busy lifestyle as a hunter. Which was good — of course it was good — it was just a little more boring than Dean had expected. Sure, there were still regular hunts and quite a few more salt and burns after the mess Chuck made of the Veil and tearing open Hell, but it was all pretty stock standard. Nothing requiring more than an afternoon of research and a few questions for the locals if needed.

It was nice, at first. Easy. Still risky enough to get the blood pumping, but nothing of an apocalyptic level threat where someone was almost guaranteed to die facing it.

That part was a relief. And Dean wasn’t saying he missed that — absolutely he would take regular boring haunted houses over more death and jerking around from destiny — but it kind of became routine after a while. They had more downtime. And Dean … well, Dean had to find something to fill that extra time with.

Hobbies weren’t something Dean had much time for before. He had them, he just hadn’t had time over the last decade or so to get too involved with them. So, he eased back into some of them.

He picked up guitar again — finding a nice old acoustic at a Lebanon pawn shop one day and making an impulse purchase. He had to restring it, and it took a few tries to tune it properly — the pegs a little loose from disuse — before his first G-chord rang true and clear. He started putting aside a few evenings a week when they were at the bunker to go through the old scales and chords he remembered before moving on to tunes he learned years ago that still stuck in his muscle memory. The calluses on his fingers — built up from triggers and hilts and violence — shifted to accommodate to the pressure of steel strings against a fretboard. Not softening — he doubted they’d ever go away now — but allowing for more memories than that of knives and matches and graveyard dirt. He learned new songs — old favourites and new — and sometimes, when he was certain he was alone enough not to be heard, he even sang along.

Sam had decided to continue cataloguing the library and archives in his spare time (and if he spent a little extra time learning a few more languages as he went or pulling aside some interesting spell books to investigate later then it was all the better for him to keep his mind sharp). Dean wasn’t surprised to find a stack of old cookbooks from the 40’s and 50’s left for him on the library table one day and Sam wasn’t shocked when the very next meal was an almost perfect replication of the unhealthiest recipe Dean could find in the stack. Neither spoke of it, but more modern books appeared on the small shelf in the kitchen by the spice rack over time.

Dean looked after Baby and took her out for nice long drives, but he didn’t always have a destination with every drive. Sometimes he’d just cruise through the back roads of Kansas and watch the scenery, stopping for gas and finding little curiosities and cosy shops he otherwise might have passed by if he were on a hunt. He had time now to actually enjoy travelling.

Speaking of sleep: was there anything more luxurious in life than having the time and ease to spend a day in bed just sleeping in freshly laundered sheets and letting what little worries he now had just fade away? Dean couldn’t think of anything. Maybe the same situation but after having the slow satiating kind of sex that left you warm and boneless and blissful before you slept. Yeah, maybe sleeping after amazing sex. Or a really good meal.

So yeah, things weren’t exactly exciting these days after Chuck, but they were fulfilling. Dean listened to and played music, cooked food he’d always wanted to eat, teased his brother about his cataloguing system, drove his Baby around, caught up on his favourite shows, and slept soundlessly between the few hunts he and Sam took these days.

People visited. Jody and the girls. Donna. Charlie and Stevie. Garth and his family one time on a trip. Bobby. Other hunters. Sometimes to chat, sometimes on their way to or from a hunt. Sometimes to get some help with research or rare ingredients.

Sam tended to look after the more professional calls. He and Eileen hunted together almost as much as he and Dean nowadays. And the library and archives were his project. Sure, Dean helped a little and knew where everything was, but it was Sam’s idea and Sam’s comfort zone, and Dean just enjoyed watching his little brother taking charge and looking happy and confident in his element.

Dean didn’t feel guilty taking a bit of a step back. It should have shocked him, but he was content — Sam was content — with his life now. There was nothing hanging over their heads anymore. No more destiny, no more apocalypses. They could take a break and just breathe and live.

And Dean wanted to live. He did. There was so much he wanted to do now — and he could, even if half of his list was a bit of a joke just to have Sam make his hilarious exasperated face when Dean mentioned a few of the weirder ones that Dean would probably hate. So, he made plans, took impulse trips, tried new things (and started a new list of things never to try again). He cooked, and sang, and hunted, and lived.

So, of course, on one of his far less interesting days — when Sam was out with Eileen, no one was visiting, and Jack had wandered into town to visit the kids there — Dean decided to start on the deep clean he’d been planning for the bunker for weeks, only to be derailed an hour in — barely having started.

He found the jacket scrunched up under his bed, tucked right up against the wall, behind a bunch of other crap he’d been meaning to get around to dealing with when he could be bothered to start his cleaning binge.

At first, he frowned, not sure why a perfectly serviceable jacket had been thrown under his bed without being cleaned. Then he saw the stain — a perfectly rendered handprint of blood on the shoulder.

He slumped down on the floor, bones heavy and breath tight, as the memory of grief hit him.

It felt like he was living it all over again. He could smell the ozone of the portal mixed with Cas’s blood and the mildew stuffiness of the dungeon. He pressed his hand to his shoulder — like Cas had done that day — and felt the sharp pain of that seemingly final goodbye rip through his inside again.

Dean didn’t realise he was crying until he took a heaving breath through his mouth and tasted salt. He tried to hold it back, but the pain had come on so unexpectedly and with such intensity that he had to wrap his arms around himself to try and contain the shuddering.

“Dean?”

Dean tried to wipe at the tears and pretend he wasn’t just about to start on a complete breakdown.

It didn’t fool Cas, who hurried into the room — probably having knocked and opened the door to check on Dean when he didn’t respond, all without Dean noticing. Cas knelt next to him, hesitating to put his hand on Dean’s shoulder in comfort when he realised what Dean was holding.

Dean tried to shove it away, but Cas tugged gently on the jacket and pulled it closer to see the handprint.

“I didn’t realise you kept this.”

Dean shrugged. “It’s a good jacket.” The flippant remark came out hoarse. He didn’t look over at Cas, not yet, but he could feel the plea for honesty. And even though he knew Cas wouldn’t push — that Cas understood when something was too much for Dean to talk about right then — Dean sighed and let his shoulders slump. “I shoved it away and didn’t think about it — or I tried to. And then, after I got you back, I stopped thinking about it at all.”

Cas stroked his thumb over the handprint. “I wish I could wash it all away.”

Dean looked over at Cas then, with the hint of a smile threatening to break through his pained expression. “I don’t want to forget. Yeah, it hurts, but pain fades over time. And I got so much more in my life than pain and regrets now.”

Cas smiled. “Yes, you do.” He cleared his throat and pulled back from his comforting closeness to try and bring some levity to the discussion. “For one, you have the delicious lunch I just made waiting for you in the kitchen.”

Dean tried to look suspicious, but the threatened smile emerged and he just appeared fond. “Delicious? You?”

Cas feigned insult. “I’ll have you know that some may consider my sandwiches gourmet.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Jack, for one, loves my PB&J.”

“Oh, well, if Jack says so, then it’s clearly true. I wouldn’t want to miss that.”

Dean was grinning, his earlier grief now just a hum in the background almost drowned out by his delight. Cas stood up and offered him a hand. The slide of their palms against each other still thrilled Dean and he let his touch linger, fingers reaching out to wrap gently around Cas’s wrist as he stood up.

“Give me a minute?” he asked.

Cas turned his arm in Dean’s grip so that his fingers could trace against Dean’s pulse point. “Of course.” Their hands fell apart naturally, but the echo of the touch remained and warmed Dean even after Cas left the room.

He looked down at the jacket, still stained and badly crumpled, and set it on his bed covers. It really was a good jacket, even if the stain wouldn't fade for a long time.

Dean let the grief settle into him again, now a dull ache softened by Cas’ words and presence. It would always be with him — like all his scars — but that was part of life. Grief and joy, boredom, excitement, anger, affection. Peace. Love.

He traced the edge of the handprint once more before leaving his room and going to find Cas, and his dubiously delicious sandwiches.

Yeah, peace wasn’t always happiness, but Dean wouldn’t trade his life right now for anything.

#fanfic #spn #destiel #dean winchester #castiel #post-canon #mild angst #vialana's fic

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krnaturalphoto · 4 years

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Defeating Anxiety in 2020

In many ways 2019 was a really good year. 2019 was also a year I faced some significant struggles. I am sure this is the same for many of you. The good is always mixed with the bad or so it seems. I spent the year struggling to find balance in a lot of ways. I set PRs and accomplished huge goals I never dreamed of in some arenas, but struggled with actual physical pain like never before as well that held me back in a lot of ways. The pain and challenges I was experiencing cascaded and I am sure impacted my mental health in some negative ways.

So, I am going to take some time here to talk about my mental health. In a lot of ways I have been very fortunate. I have been relatively healthy both physically and mentally. I have seen others go through much worse than I ever have. And I think that is part of what makes mental health a difficult topic for me to talk about. I have not suffered through what I know so many others have, so some times it feels like to complain would be to do a disservice to everything they have experienced.

I have always been a person that I guess one would describe as anxious, shy, self-conscious, and easily embarrassed. For me my anxiety is most present in social situations and interactions especially where there are no well-defined rules of engagement. Anything that risks embarrassment or looking foolish is very hard for me to approach. I spent much of my adult life studying psychology and even while studying psychology I actively avoided any course that would require me to speak in front of others. I even dropped a class after it started when I learned to my surprise that we would be required to regularly speak in front of others. I have always rationalized that as being pretty normal. No one really likes to speak in front of others so I never really took that as a sign of anything significant. But then there are more mundane things like making a simple phone call to order pizza, or more importantly for work that would start my palms sweating and anxiety building. If I needed to make a call for work it would preoccupy my mind and I would plan excessively around how to approach the phone call and I would feel like I was suffering the entire time until I finally made the call. Despite me knowing that most calls go fine this is something that I cannot shake. I almost never make phone calls. I prefer to do all my communication by email and even that is becoming difficult.

As someone who has studied psychology I am equipped with knowledge that one might think would help me in this situation. But instead I harnessed my knowledge to convince myself everything was fine instead of convincing myself to get help. In clinical psychology to be diagnosed with a psychological disorder one needs to display symptoms that are disruptive to one’s life. So, for me I have always told myself that I am still getting along with life pretty well despite the issues I struggle with. I have never had anything really stop me from maintaining a relatively “normal” life. I can still carry on most activities of life freely. I have been able to complete an education, sustain jobs, pursue leisure time activities, and pursue creative endeavors. Why should I need any help right?

Another aspect of my anxiety that has impacted me has been difficulty meeting new people. I am just completely uncomfortable with that idea to the point I have pretty much avoided it most of my life. For a long time as an adult I didn’t really have any friends. It took me literally making a new year’s resolution that I would join a running club to meet new people for that to happen and boy did that resolution come through for me in a big way. The other half of that resolution was to reconnect with old friends that I lost touch with, but I was never able to get comfortable enough with that idea to make it happen.

This year, specifically the last quarter of the year probably, my anxiety has gotten worse. Ever since I started writing in a public way online and to try to publish my work writing has been cathartic for me. It has been a release. It is something that I truly enjoy doing. I wrote 43 posts for my website this year. But near the end of the year I began to feel more stress and anxiety about writing and the simple act of writing and putting my photography together, the thing that used to bring me the most joy was creating anxiety for me. It took longer and longer for me to complete posts for my website. I had to gather the strength to push through each project. There were things I wanted to write about but just couldn’t get started on. There were articles I would write but then couldn’t summon the strength to work on the accompanying photography. There were photographs I would select for an article but then I could not manage the writing of the article. The struggle itself was exhausting. It kept me from being as productive as I would have liked to for my website, despite all the ideas and aspirations I had. As I write this there are two posts sitting unfinished. One I started writing, but couldn’t get focused on enough to finish and add photographs to and one that I have all the photography ready to go for if I could just summon the will to write the article for which the idea is already fully formed in my head. I just have to do the work. And that very thought of doing the work is just overwhelming and I don’t know why. Why should it be? It hasn’t been before. Or maybe it has been and I have ignored it.

This year I ran a 10 mile race and it was amazing and being finished with the training for that race was a relief, but one thing it also did was unmoor me from my structure. I still function ok if there is structure. Getting up for work and going to work I can manage, but a weekend where there is nothing going on and I am free to work on anything that I like is almost like a nightmare. Previously I knew what I had to do every weekend because I had a training plan and a project I was working on, but now I was free to work on anything I wanted to. Take on any idea that I had in mind and that was completely overwhelming. There was so much that I wanted to do, but I never felt like I could actually accomplish any of it. There were many days on weekends where I would lie awake in bed in the morning simply unable to take on the challenge of taking on the day. I would lie there in bed staring at the ceiling or literally hiding under the blankets having this internal dialogue with myself trying to convince myself to get out of bed and that everything would be ok. This new level of anxiety that made it so I couldn’t even get out of bed was scary to me. It was nothing I had ever experienced. So after suffering through this for a time I was finally convinced that it was ok to admit to myself that I was having mental health issues that needed to be addressed. It is going to sound completely corny but I was able to finally get to this place when I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Safety Third, where they were talking about mental health issues in the outdoor community. It struck chord with me. Unfortunately, it was a long time before I shared this feeling with anyone else. After weeks I told my wife that I thought I needed to seek professional mental health help. Then I eventually told my best friend. As of now I still have not contacted a mental health professional. That is part of what makes my anxiety so challenging. Recognizing what needs to be done mentally is the easy part. Actually taking the action is hardest, especially when it comes to reaching out to contact a stranger, especially if that contact will need to be done by phone. But I am in the process o trying to get the help I need and take this on in 2020.

I think a huge part of this anxiety and feeling of overwhelm that has hit me this year is because I have been dreaming about and pursuing a career where I feel I have value and meaning. I went to college and studied and wrote and learned for years because I wanted to have a career and a life that I found fulfilling and satisfying. Over the years I have found that what I want is a career as a creative and I have actually had some level of success at it. Enough success that the possibility of actually achieving it scares the crap out of me. It scares me because it would mean leaving behind the structure of everything I have known in work behind. It scares me because it means if I fail it is on me. There is no boss to blame. It scares me because I would be free to do the things I truly want to do and if I still fail to do them it is my own fault.

I have been so overwhelmed with fear and anxiety that there have been many days where I have thought I should just quit doing all of the creative work that I am doing. It is too hard. It is making me too anxious. I will never be able to make it. I should just give it up and enjoy a simple life of going to work and coming home and sitting on the couch watching TV. What would be so wrong with that? The answer is that there is nothing wrong with that. But for me everything is wrong with that. It is not the life I have envisioned for myself or that I have been working for my entire life. It would not make me feel fulfilled. I would not be happy. At best I would be comfortably numb. At worst I would be miserable.

This whole post and life situation is like a giant sad irony to me. I have spent a large part of my life studying mental health. I have been an advocate of talking about mental health. I try to do all the things a good mental health advocate would do. Except that I haven’t taken care of my own mental health and I haven’t been able to share my struggles with anyone. That ends today.

I wrote this post 12/31/19 and didn’t find the strength to post it until 1/12/20.

from Defeating Anxiety in 2020

#Defeating Anxiety in 2020

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awesomebrazilianprincess · 7 years

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THE MAN WHO WILL BE KING

Neymar is rested and ready for his next challenge … being the best player in the world.

The first thing Neymar Jr. does is change the music.

I will say in our defense that we had not chosen Shakira on purpose.

It’s Los Angeles, late afternoon, the buttery precipice of summer—Neymar’s first summer off since 2010. He was at the NBA finals yesterday (“It was very nice, incredible!”) and today is beginning a Nike press blitz whose rough theme is: Here is a Very Amazing Person, a Major Inspiration, and say, don’t you need a nice technical layer? Some new cleats?

We have been waiting for seven hours. We have spent them in a state of productive anxiety. We have rewritten our questions, placed and calibrated flash equipment, sketched and listed shots, and finally, unsure of Neymar’s musical taste, settled on a playlist: Latin hits, on Pandora. We are part of a conspiracy to make Neymar as comfortable as possible.

And here, suddenly, is Neymar: not quite tall and not quite covered in tattoos, brown eyes igniting to gold, in a Michael Jordan Birmingham Barons jersey—No. 45 and where did he find it—over at least two pairs of black Nike technical bottoms. Let me emphasize again that we did not specifically choose Shakira, nor did we choose “Waka Waka,” anthem of the 2010 World Cup, from which Neymar was controversially omitted. He arrived on short notice, and it is what happened to be playing.

Neymar comes in from studio right. He makes a quick survey of the various flash apparatuses, and tells a joke in soft Portuguese to his friends, and then he’s gone.

There are some very spiky moments as we consider our possible mistakes and wonder whether he’s coming back.

And then: 30 seconds of “Waka Waka” later, Neymar returns. Two of the entourage proceed to the iMac serving as a DJ booth and, on YouTube, find Yo Gotti’s “Down in the DM.” Neymar moves to the middle of the studio’s blindingly white cyclorama and starts doing a series of jumping shots for Roger Neve’s camera—seems pretty into it, actually—and the DJ designates move on to “DNA” and “Humble” from the new Kendrick Lamar, and Neymar starts pointing joyously at random comrades and mouthing “Be hum-bow.” By now he’s been given the football he’ll handle throughout the shoot in an extremely familiar, even intimate way, and time smooths out and softens, and it seems we’ve gotten away with it.

You are familiar with one Neymar: Call him the Neymar of appearances. This Neymar—distant and delightful and often on-demand—is a little clot of pixels out on the wild margin of your screen, embarrassing the others. He wears yellow or blaugrana and is loved in a way that goes beyond the goals. Why this might be so—that there is something in him that repairs us, that he has remained a fantasist in a period when Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have both become geometers, that his fantasies require from us a kind of indefatigable imagination, a right-there-with-him awareness that yes this could be the moment, and that this awareness is crucial for emotional survival in the dumpsterfire.gif period of history—is not the focus of this essay. Just look around. We are in a white studio in actual Hollywood. There is no goal and no defenders. Instead there are models in the hallway playing turgid games of Ping-Pong as they wait to be rejected by Moschino. This is a different genre: This is celebrity journalism.

Celebrity journalism is an odd, two-hearted project. It is half faith and half distrust. The distrust applies to appearances. Things that have happened in time have made us feel a certain way—but all we know is pixels, pictures, and stories. Perhaps something important has not been communicated. So we will see with our own eyes. There is a real, physical Neymar who is different from the goals and the statistics, and we will seek to find him and to illuminate the ways in which he’s different. We expect that the appearances have told us something other than the whole story; in this way it is a project of skepticism.

Still, it is partnered with a crucial faith. We believe that if we fly to Los Angeles to spend 90 minutes with the real, physical Neymar, something important will be revealed to us. We will see the year of his birth tattooed on his shins and the fleshy surgical divot on the back of his right iliac crest, and if we have anticipated well enough—if we play the right songs and ask the right questions and shoot the right photos—we might capture something we didn’t know before. Something in the Neymar of flesh and gesture will help us understand the apparent goal-scoring Neymar. In the end, time will tell us truths. As it turns out, the truths we are approaching will have to do mostly with time itself, and with Neymar’s unusual presence in it.

It is a moment in the game—and in the world—when we’ve become suspicious of time: It seems to be making things worse. The World Cup belongs to Qatari slavery and Russian influence operations, the clubs to Jorge Mendes and Mino Raiola, and the Champions League to Florentino Perez, personally. We have lost Francesco Totti and we are losing Gianluigi Buffon, and we will get Gianluigi Donnarumma to replace them. This is all without even mentioning the politics. But Neymar still believes in time. To him time promises only a smooth, continuous improvement. “I’m always trying new things when I’m playing, you know, and this is gonna raise the bar, you know?” he says. “I’m gonna train everything to get better in the next season.” Time will pass, and Neymar will get better. It’s the way of things.

Not without effort, though: The time must be spent well. There is one player he is always learning from, one who is always surprising him: Messi. “Even before I went to Barcelona I was always watching him to see how I could improve my game.” Others, too, he’s learned from—“a long list of players, Ronaldinho, Robinho, Romário, you know—I admire them a lot.” He is adamant on the topic of training—understandably, since talent has never been a limiting factor for him. “Talent is good, but it’s not enough,” he says. “You need to keep working on your craft so you can get better. So both are essential. I knew a lot of great talented players who didn’t make it as professionals—they stopped in the middle of the way. I think you have to keep improving your game, practicing practicing practicing, even though you are talented.” Speaking of wasted talent, he aims a canny finger at one of his friends and says in English, “Like him.” Everybody laughs.

On this goes. It’s easy to fall into a rhythm, talking to Neymar. These are prompt and open answers, all honestly offered. In Neymar there is much joy and little menace—time has been kind, and he has kindness to offer in return. It is a calm summer, and he feels he has matured. He is close to his father and his son. Neymar Sr. is a frequent, ecstatic presence on Neymar Jr.’s Instagram—in addition to his agent. “I do what my father did for me. I try to be very close to my son, teach him everything.” But he does not think little Davi Lucca will play football. “He doesn’t like it!” Neymar says with a laugh. Whatever time brings.

Ever since 1992—when Neymar da Silva Santos Jr. was born in Mogi das Cruzes, people have been expecting him to make their dreams come true. His father, a physical right winger who lacked his son’s technique, agreed with his wife to name their son Mateus and then decided en route to registering the name that it simply must be Neymar Jr.—then embroidered the son’s natural talent with close attention from his friends in Brazil’s sprawling youth football industry. At 13, Neymar signed for Pelé’s old club Santos—a perennial contender haunted by perennial financial problems. Paired with Ganso and briefly with Robinho, he started winning campeonatos. Real Madrid came for him at 15, Chelsea at 18. Santos showed him an empty chair and muttered about Senna and national sport deification. He stayed until 2013, then mo ved on: to a Barcelona still grappling with post–Pep Guardiola ennui, and simultaneously into the spotlight of the national team.

The astounding thing is that he has fulfilled almost every expectation. For Santos he won a Libertadores and three league titles; for Barcelona a Champions League, two La Liga titles, and numerous smaller cups; and for Brazil a Confederations Cup and an Olympic gold. The only real disappointment is the 2014 World Cup, when he totally blew it by allowing Juan Camilo Zúñiga of Columbia to break his back in the quarterfinal and by being so emotionally central to the seleção that they came out for the semifinal in Força Neymar caps and then quivered their way through a 1-7 defeat to Germany. After 25 years like this you could forgive a little jadedness, a little angst in the compliance. You could even imagine some impatience—with his role on the wing, or with playing at Barcelona alongside one of the only two players in the world who could be more central to a team. Instead, he seems mainly happy to do what his teams need. “I like to play on the left side,” he says, “but there’s no problem—if the coach asks me to go play on the other side, that’s fine—anywhere, anyplace, you know?” And when prodded about FIFA and FA-level bad actions, he seems genuinely stricken. “I feel sad, you know, because this happened in my country—I feel sad but there’s nothing I can do. But in the future I hope things can be better.”

In fact, the greatest regret of his career seems to be an occasion when he was too assertive with his club. “I’ve had some sad days, but the worst day happened when I had a little argument with the coach when I was playing for Santos.” This was late in the Santos period, when he was very nearly bigger than the club—he was not allowed to take a penalty kick and he threw a kind of tantrum, and when the coach and board disagreed over how long he ought to be suspended, the coach was fired. “It was the heat of the moment,” Neymar says. “I learned after that experience, you know?”

What he learned seems to have been a kind of serene accommodation. “If it’s something that I can help improve not only my club, my teammates … I’m gonna raise my hand and I’m gonna talk and express myself,” he says—but not so dramatically as before. The serenity seems to be something like his natural state. Asked about his famous seven minutes against PSG in this year’s Champions League, when he scored two and made the necessary third to come back from a 4-0 first-leg deficit, he is simple and humble: “I have confidence in all the games, but something different happened—I think it is a miracle.” Has his confidence ever not worked out? “Yes, yes, I lost several games in soccer, you know?”

This “you know?” is common with Neymar—it ends many of his answers, and it seems heartfelt. He really does think that you know. He believes that the things he’s learned, the plain right thoughts about confidence and becoming, are things everyone knows. In this way he is generous. He believes you are fundamentally like him, that you have access to the same bright world that he does.

Toward the end of the shoot the photographer gaggle goes off to conspire, and Neymar is left idle. He is in the middle of the studio, shirtless, holding the football, and he begins a little game: he kicks the ball once or twice against the wall, then kicks it hard and juggles it once between strikes, then turns the juggle into a soft, curtsying, right-footed rabona. For three verses it looks almost impossibly simple, and then on the fourth the ball drifts to the left and can’t be saved except with a desperate en pointe left toe, which hooks the ball up onto the high wall of the cyclorama and back in the direction of a large and fragile-looking flash umbrella. It seems that property is about to be damaged. Now I want you to stop reading and remind yourself of that Neymar of appearances. Go and find the Puskas goal, scored at 18 against Flamengo, or this year’s seven-minute argumentum against PSG. Consider the joys he offers. Consider that he is a Kendrick Lamar fan and close to his parents, and that his transfer brought down an entire regime at Barcelona. But consider also that he is sometimes late for interviews and has shown a capacity for tantrums, and that he is serene and certain of some uncomplicated truths.

Consider that he swears he does everything to take his mind off football in the offseason. “I relax, and try to stay away from soccer and do other things.” Does he find this difficult? “Yes,” he says. “É difícil. I try to do other things, things I can’t do when I’m playing, things like play basketball, you know.” But consider this too: Allowed three idle minutes with a football, off-season or not, he finds a way to push himself so far he fails. He finds the limit of Neymar. Here is a story about time: What most of us learn, growing older, is a craft of distance. We learn that the levers of our happiness often lie far from our bodies; we learn to plan and to regret, to fly away into our thoughts and our iPhones. We learn to be absent, to hollow out each moment in favor of another.

But watch Neymar in the flesh, in a photographer’s studio, as the ball sails toward the flash umbrella. In many ways the fate of a flash umbrella is beneath him. But look at his face. See the pure, agonized concern there, and then—as the ball drifts overhead and then bounces into the hamstring of an assistant—the child’s performance of relief: a turn away, a little hop, a short soprano cry of presence. This is what Neymar knows, perhaps more than anyone I’ve met: how to be right here, in this vast and open now, and nowhere else.

And wonder also: what would you be like, wherever you were, if you were entirely there? You might be seven hours late. You might insist on different songs. You might throw tantrums now and then. But you might also learn an enormous amount just from watching the life a ball took on when your foot touched it. You might—out there on the wing—see one or two things that are hidden to the right back. You might be Neymar—or you might not. But you might be a little closer.

#neymar #jr #ney #neymarjr #8by8

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existdissolve · 5 years

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Serendipity in Openness

For most of my life I’ve been a closed door. If you had met me even six months ago (maybe even sooner!), you wouldn’t have met me: you would have met a shadow, a facade, an image. I didn’t project this to deceive or mislead; it was just in my DNA. Or so I told myself.

You’re an introvert. No one is that interested. Make this short and sweet and GET OUT OF THERE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

This was my modus operandi for interactions with pretty-much-everyone. Not too deep, not too personal, just enough to be pleasant and civil and perhaps even friendly. But that’s where the line is drawn.

Not surprisingly, this kind of approach to relationships and general interactions with the other humans doesn’t lead to a whole lot in the way of fulfilling relationships or meaningful friendships. It’s safe. And boring. Just like I felt myself to be. And so the cycle plays...

But then a funny thing happened. I went to Iceland. While there, I decided to take a 4-day trek in the highlands.

I originally wanted to do the trek completely by myself (please refer to paragraph #1 for a refresher of why). But as I researched it, the time of year I was going turns out to be a pretty good time of year to get yourself dead if you don’t know what you’re doing or where you’re going. So then, I opted for the “guided” version of the trek.

Among others, a major implication of participating in a guided tour is that there are other people who are probably interested in doing the same thing. As it turns out, 15 other people happened to make the same plans that I did. When I found this out, I admit I was a bit hesitant. The thought of hiking, eating, and sleeping with 15 strangers in constant close quarters was not appealing. My mind immediately went to its defaults, trying to come up with strategies to cope for four days of deflection, self-deprecation, and finding ways to be as close to a ghost as possible.

But then something changed.

I’m not entirely sure what inspired the change. Maybe it was the thrill of fulfilling my dream (finally!!!) of going to Iceland, or the excitement of my very first international trip, or quantum something...whatever the reason, a hitherto unknown person inside of me decided to try something radical, something crazy: I would actually try interacting with people!

I know, I know. It’s a very NOVEL idea. But for me, it was scary and intimidating and intriguing and eventually something I committed to do, even though every instinct screamed bloody murder.

I have many blog entries to write about my experiences with the group of people I met and came to befriend. Someday I will get to it. But I don’t exaggerate when I say that the time we shared and the lessons I learned by being open to companionship, to friendship, to the unknown brought about real change within me.

It was such a transformative experience that I brought the experience home with me, and I’m trying very hard every day to put the same principles into practice in all that I do. I’ve found, as the title of this post indicates, that it can lead to serendipity in the big and small moments of life, if only one is only and simply open to it.

A New Pair of Shoes

About a year ago, I desperately needed a new pair of shoes, as the bits of canvas and leather that had valiantly tried to retain their form had recently given up their ghost to the unrelenting ravages of entropy.

Not being one who has ever been accused of having any sense of fashion, I made my semi-annual pilgrimage to the shoe seller to find something of good quality, sensible utility, and (of course) reasonable pricing. I browsed the aisles and aisles of complicated choices, trying to find the one that would check all the boxes.

And then I saw them. This pair of shoes seemed to call out to me. I picked them up, measured their weight, felt the stitchings.

Hmm. This is a NICE pair of shoes. Really nice!

Then I looked at the price.

Oof. Well, I guess not these.

I continued on, searching and searching. Nothing stood out to me, nothing seemed of any particularly good value, and I kept thinking about those damn shoes.

Ok, maybe I’ll just try them on. They’re probably quite uncomfortable.

Wrong. Dead wrong. These shoes were AMAZING. They seemed to cradle my feet perfectly, and the inside lining was soft enough to provide comfort without being stuffy and hot. And when I started actually walking around in them, my fate was sealed.

These are just right. I really like these shoes!

Ah, but the price... They were definitely well above what I wanted to pay for a pair of shoes. I argued with myself for a few minutes, trying to justify and rationalize why I should or shouldn’t buy them.

In this eternal war between head and heart, my heart won one of its rare battles. I bought the shoes. I stopped justifying the purchase to myself. They brought me joy and were something that I liked, even if no one else ever noticed.

That was enough.

On With the Story!

If you’re following along, I have new shoes and a new found commitment to being open to experiences, relationships and whatever else the universe is cooking up. Caught up? Good.

The finale of this story brings me to the present day. In my quest to continue decluttering and de-possessing myself of things, I cleared out two full boxes of clothes. Unlike my books, I had no trouble with this purge; the decisions were easy, not only because none of the clothes I own are of any particular value, but even more because of sheer necessity: fitting all my “daily use” possessions into a small office closet, as opposed to half of an entire walk-in closet :)

I decided to take my newly-boxed clothes to Goodwill. My day at work had been hectic, so I didn’t arrive until nearly closing time. I was afraid that drop-offs had been closed up already, but I rang the bell anyway.

I waited a minute, and then someone emerged from the receiving bay and waved at me.

Ok. Here we go. A chance to be open. To be friendly. To care and see what happens if I do.

The person who greeted me was an incredibly nice guy, probably 15 years younger than me. He smiled, said hello. I returned the smile, and the greeting...and then I just started talking. It wasn’t anything deep and personal; I didn’t say or ask anything profound. I just showed interest, trying to explore the notion of being open to the now.

We didn’t talk for long. A few minutes, maybe. It was enjoyable, just letting the moments happen, not walling off, just seeing what will be. And then something quite strange and remarkable and unexpected happened.

Completely out of the blue, without any contextual provocation, he said something:

Hey...I really dig your shoes.

I looked down at my feet.

Of course. I’m wearing those shoes.

Serendipity

I was surprised. I was shocked, actually. I couldn’t figure out what to say. The old demons in me that tend toward self-deflection and self-deprecation rose up fiercely, sensing danger or risk or whatever in that moment, beseeching me to fly away.

But an even more powerful energy was at work as well. I felt...gratified! Not being someone who gives much thought to fashion or appearance, it hadn’t actually ever occurred to me that receiving such a compliment could be such a validating experience. In that instant, a line was drawn connecting this moment with the silly struggle I had picking out a pair of shoes, and the compliment was a rewarding validation of the personal value I had imbued in my selection.

Ok, look, I understand: this isn’t life-transformative stuff. It’s just a compliment about a pair of shoes. But for me, in that moment, it was revelatory of a deeper principle and truth. If I had gone to defaults, if I had walled off, if I had just kept my head down and completed the logistics of the transaction, I would have missed something. That something wasn’t monumental, but it was life-giving in its own small way.

I am learning that this openness, this willingness to be present, this active seeking out of opportunities to connect...it carries with it an energy and power that is difficult to pin down or articulate, but is nevertheless impossible to deny. As I (imperfectly) seek to pursue this stance, I am daily finding moments of serendipity and happiness that would have otherwise been out of reach. And the best part is that these moments of surprise emerge organically; I don’t have to work myself to death trying to manufacture them. The energy of openness paves the way, smoothes the path, and swings wide the doors to vistas of possibilities that would otherwise be inaccessible.

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themoral-dilemma-blog · 7 years

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I Want To Know What Love Is|| Marley and Katherine (Chatzy)(POTW)

Katherine held onto Lysander’s hand until their distance compelled the bond to break. Wistfully, she watched him trek up the grassy slope, still wet and muddy from the recent snowfall. The weather had warmed up considerably and they’d been able to lay a heavy blanket on a dry area of rock by the pond. It was picturesque. She’d never been the romantic type--to take a half day and simply relax. She wasn’t geared that way. She worked, and when she was finished work, she trained or more recently, spent a considerable amount of time training her niece. But also she’d never met a man quite like this one. She bit down on a strawberry, lounging back onto the blanket when she heard the soft crunch of earth from behind her. “Did you forget something?” She grinned wide, glancing behind her. Instead of the love of her life, there stood Marley. Her shoulders slumped in disappointment. “Following me now, are you?” She spat bitterly, the sour turn of their recent conversation still fresh in her mind.

Marley had found herself taking a trek through the woods considerably more here than she ever had back in Ashford. Perhaps it was the gravitating wanderlust her feet had seemed to pick up ever since being thrust into this dimension, longing for a place to belong, longing to go home-- but finding it gone and occupied each time she walked the place. She belonged nowhere here, especially not in the place she'd wedged herself into. Into her other self's life. But things couldn't really be that bad. She had a purpose here. Still, her wandering mind and her restless legs often found her out into the skirts of the town. Today, they found her upon a most interesting scene. Katherine, who had unjustly blocked her when she'd questioned her sudden love, and the retreating figure of who she assumed to be the recipient of said "sudden affection". Marley put her hands up in an innocent, stop motion. "As interesting as this all is to me, I did not follow you," she said shaking off the bitter tone in Katherine's voice. She found herself caring less and less about things these days, as if her purpose was slipping through her fingers. As if her vengeance no longer fulfilled her. So it was the little things that she found joy in, and the fact that Katherine was most likely under a love spell was going to be one of those things. "You know, I'm hurt that you blocked me. I was just trying to understand your undying love for this supposedly wonderful man," she swooned, hands still up in a defensive manner as she gave an apathetic shrug.

Katherine had zero intentions on apologizing. She made that clear, glancing back towards the water, picking another strawberry from the bin. “You just missed him,” she nodded towards where he’d gone off to grab more wine for the two of them. She wondered briefly why she didn’t drink wine like this as she used to either. “And he is wonderful.” He was smart, handsome and funny. Her face hurt from smiling so much--she hadn’t felt this way… well, ever. He’d been gone all of two minutes and she already missed him. “And if you hadn’t been so negative, I wouldn’t have blocked you.” She turned back to her, tossing the green part of the strawberry into the pond. “If we’re such good friends, you should be supporting me. Not doubting my emotions.”

"Okay, first of all," Marley started, then stopped. Probably not a good idea to tell Katherine they weren't friends-- she didn't do friends. She kept people close if they had use to her, and that was it. Sometimes the use was arbitrary, sometimes it was important-- but friends weren't on her To Do list. But Katherine didn't need to know that, especially now. What was it Josephine had always told her about fitting in? Be what they want you to be. Marley lowered her hands. "You're right-- I shouldn't have doubted you. It was just...sudden, I guess?" another shrug. God, Caplan, put more emotion behind it. She sounded like a drone. Cleared her throat. "I had a bad experience with something like this myself, and I guess I was just projecting. I'm--" clenched her jaw, but forced a smile. It would be worth it in the end, if only to tease Katherine endlessly once this wore off-- "happy for you."

Katherine was ready to go right back at her when the First of all, part of that sentence began. Her eyes narrowed in her direction as she started to give way to some sort of acceptance to her new situation, though her words were of very little comfort. “You don’t sound it,” she answered sharply. She wasn’t a body language expert but it didn’t take a genius to see the hesitation in the way she uttered those last few words. She sat up on her elbow, quiet for a moment. “You had a bad experience?” She asked. Very little doubt, if any, seeped into the thought of her own relationship, but she was curious about that part of what she said. “You’ve fallen madly in love and lived happily ever after?” She raised a brow, a small smirk teasing at the corner of her lips.

Great, Katherine, Marley thought, let's focus on the one part of the sentence that wasn't about you. She resister the urge to roll her eyes and repocketed her hands deep into her coat. "Happily ever after is a joke," she muttered. And technically, for her, it was neither. She'd never been in love, nor would she ever be. She'd come to terms with that a long time ago, and was okay with it. It was just the way she was. Still, she often felt a little bitter when people talked about romantic love and how it was the ultimate goal, the be all end all. And even though Katherine was clearly under the influence of something, it still bothered her. Perhaps more for Katherine's sake than her own, but it was still there. "I don't wanna ruin our good mood with my sappy story, anyway. I just want you to tell me how happy you are--" so she could record it and play it over and over again for Katherine to hear later-- "because I do want to be happy for you. You can at least trust that, right?" A grin, more genuine this time. It took practice, and remembering everything she'd learned on how to act normal and genuine. Body language, tone, and eye contact said a lot.

“I used to think so too,” Katherine said, hearing the mutter. Even as reluctant as it may have been, Marley seemed to be finally give in to reality. A more genuine smile crossed her face and she moved over on the blanket a little, patting the spot beside her to motion for Marley to sit. “I am happy,” she said, every part of her confident about that statement. “And I know it’s sudden, which probably makes it seem ridiculous. But if you could see the way he treats me…” she shook her head, laying back on the blanket. “It’s as if we were made for one another. Like maybe I was meant to come to this crummy little town for something beyond my work. Something for me.” She could picture it -- her, Lysander, Darcy. A small happy little family. “Believe me, I know how I sound, and if you’d have told me even a week ago I would ever feel like this, I’d laugh right in your face.”

It sounded more than ridiculous, but Marley kept that bit to herself as she sat down on the blanket next to Katherine. As awkward and untrue as Katherine's feelings might have been, the way she talked about it made it seem real. Warm. There was no anger here, no pain or sorrow. Marley hadn't felt something like this in a long time, and it left a weird taste in her mouth. She fed off of chaos and vengeance, so feeling what was supposedly the exact opposite of that made her inside squirm a little. "Personally, I don't think any two people are ever made specifically for each other . Soulmates and that crap is just hocus pocus, but...I get how someone could make you feel that way." That vampire had certainly been able to make her counterpart feel that way, Marley could still remember how warm the memory felt in her stomach. If she'd have been capable to, she'd almost have felt a bit bad for Katherine. Being put under the influence of something to unbecome so much of oneself-- she wondered what that would feel like. She'd have to try it out sometime. "And you don't feel weird about this at all?"

It was getting easier to weed out the negative parts of Marley’s commentary. If she had any idea about how full her chest felt at that moment, there would be no argument. Katherine glanced up, shaking her head, she realizing she pitied her a bit. More than a bit, actually. She didn’t have this. She couldn’t feel what she felt. Whoever had left her this way had did quite the number. “The whole thing is weird. Love is weird,” she smiled, reaching over, patting Marley’s knee gently as if she was consoling her. “I have no doubt that you’ll find something like this again. One broken heart shouldn’t mean you should close it forever. Everyone deserves to feel like this, even if you don’t believe it yourself.” She plucked a chocolate from the box, bringing it to her lips. “If I can find love, a bitter spinster set in her ways... anyone can.”

"Love is a chemical reaction, technically," Marley explained, but realized it was pointless to say these sorts of things to someone under a love spell, or potion, or whatever. She should probably do something about that, maybe help Katherine, since she was an asset to Marley-- but she'd let this run it's course a bit more. Besides, it wasn't like it was hurting anyone, right? And they'd all get a good kick out of it in the end. "Not everyone is wired to feel it," she mumbled, leaning back on her hands. She remembered the jar of jealousy she had stashed back in the house. It would have been useful in a time like this, but she wasn't going to waste it on something as puny as love. "Don't give me that pitiful look, either. I'm fine with it. Just...remember this chat in a week or so."

Katherine wasn’t completely sold on Marley’s assurances. Maybe some people weren’t wired for it, sure, but she pitied them as well. That light, warm feeling, the near-euphoria--why would anyone willingly miss out on these? She wondered why she’d let so many years pass without allowing herself this simple pleasure. To love and be loved. “Why, are you going to tell me about your lost love?” She asked, though as she looked just past Marley, she saw Lysander coming down the path again. There it was, that skipping in her heart. He gave a wave in the distance, a smile as big as her own, before Katherine was unable to contain it. She jumped up quickly from the blanket, dashing across the muddy grass. His arms opened and she lept into them, squeezing him for all she was worth, their laughter ringing out in hearty echoes into the air.

Marley just watched as Katherine leapt up and sprinted over to man of her affection. Or...curse, she supposed. Katherine would certainly think this a curse once it was over. She'd start looking into it tomorrow, but for now....might as well let her be happy. She probably deserved it. Rolling her eyes, Marley stood up from the blanket, grabbing a handful of strawberries. "She wasn't mine, anyway," she mumbled, before making a gagging noise and turning to head off. Popped a strawberry in her mouth, glancing once over her shoulder to watch as Katherine and her fake boyfriend resumed their picnic as if Marley was never there. She looked so happy. Too bad it was fake, just like everything else in this town.

#chatzy #touchofchatzy #i want to know what love is #chatzy: katherine #katherine #potw #aka marley almost voms b/c katherine is so gushy #and there's lots of introspection

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