#nothing more depressing than going through a still living relative's stuff with the intention of paring it down bc they're going to die | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

loopy777 · 3 years

Note

RE: WIPs game: so, haru-tylee. that's one of my favorite crackships right there. what's that doing in your WIPs folder?

Ah, yes, that one. This is the piece that taught that I'm completely incapable of writing an in-character Haru.

I know, it's a weird character to stumble over, but it's true. He's just so bland in personality that there's nothing for me to grip onto. I have to write an exaggerated comedic personality for him in some way, or else the words just stop flowing from my fingers. Writing this small piece was like trying to lift concrete. I can write Azula in the midst of a depressed breakdown more easily than I can write Haru just being a nice dude.

As for why I made the attempt, it was for an exchange. One of the specified pairings was Haru/TyLee, and my only experience with it was that moment in the Chibi short. I figured it would be something fun to try, with a dash of some Romeo&Juliet tension, and would let me write more Ty Lee.

Fortunately, after I recovered from having my soul sucked out of my body, I was able to use one of the recipient's other pairings and meet the deadline (Long Feng/Song, and it resulted in a piece I'm still rather fond of).

Looking back at what I've written, it's not anything bad (except the part where Haru is given the assignment; woof, that's some first-draft writing), but it feels like it's missing some of the SNAP that I like to think exists in my better works. I dunno, maybe if I'd stuck with it, I'd have been able to revise it into something pretty good. Some of my best stuff lacked the SNAP until a little editing found it.

Once again, since this is a relatively short thing that I'll never finish, I might as well post everything I have:

Haru wasn't comfortable with the situation from the start.

When he and his father set out to help liberate all the conquered villages in the entire province, sure, he had been completely on board. It was difficult leaving Mom, but she wasn't a fighter, and Haru couldn't stay behind while Dad went on to help free all the other villages. The other Earthbenders had lent their aid to Haru's home, and it was only right to put his own skills to task returning the favor. That was good work. Not only was Haru living his dream of finally fighting back against the oppressors, he was doing it with his Dad, and together they were continuing their Earthbending training.

However, it seemed that there was more to a war than just saving people and fighting bad guys. An actual General in the Earth Kingdom military contacted their rebel group. This general, Fong, was maintaining a base right near the coast, and doing everything he could to keep his mountainous territory from being overrun by the Fire Nation. The messenger explained that Fong had heard of the rebel group's actions, and applauded them, and wished to direct their attention to an even more insidious threat than Fire Nation conquerors.

The Fire Nation was also trying to destroy the Earht Kingdom's culture. There was a traveling group, it was explained, devoted to showcasing Fire Culture in a manner designed to appeal to the common people. Fong couldn't spare the resources to track the group down and "discourage" its members, but perhaps a small network of Earthbender rebels could find the time? Such a favor would also be proof of the rebels' reliability.

That's how Haru and his Dad wound up attacking a circus, of all things, and taking all its members captive after a small skirmish that barely qualified as a brawl. Most had been caught in their tents and carts, and seized without a fight. Some of the Firebenders had tried resisting, but they turned out to be mere showmen, and were easily taken by the experienced Earthbender fighters.

Then, the rebels had to figure out what to do with their new prisoners of war. That's where the trouble began.

The noise that night was unbearable. By midnight, the circus animals still hadn't settled down, and no knew what, exactly, to do with them. "We can't just open their cages and set them free," Dad -- Tyro the Indomitable, as most of the rebels called him now -- said to the assembled leadership. "I don't even recognize half these creatures, let alone know if they can survive in this forest."

Haru stepped closer to his dad. "Also, some of them might wander back, and either attack or lead enemies right to us," he said. Around the fire, some of the other rebel leaders nodded in agreement, and Haru had to suppress a smile. He didn't want to give the impression of having a childish need for validation, but after living powerlessly for so long, it was fulfilling to be treated as a man, with respect, by other people that he in turn respected. He had taken to wearing a mustache not to look more adult, but because it felt right.

Back towards the main tent, the screech of what sounded like a Sky Bison-sized bird tore through the night. Everyone around the fire winced. "Well, we have to do something to quiet them," someone said.

One gray-haired woman, part of the original group that had escaped from the same prison rig as Haru and his father, looked at the younger Earthbender. "You're a smart young man. Why don't you pick one of the prisoners and get them to help. Find someone docile who knows what to do with those dusty creatures, and keep an eye on them. You're young and bold, so you can handle it if they try to give you trouble. Maybe one of the captives will be more interested in helping the creatures than escaping."

Haru blinked. He had fought beside all these people, but he wasn't expecting to be handed responsibility for a personal prisoner. That seemed like a job for someone more... ruthless. "How will I know who to pick?"

His dad chuckled. "Look at their eyes. People can hide their intentions, but not their spirit."

Haru nodded, unsure- but ready to accept everyone's faith in him.

All of the prisoners were being held in one of the larger tents, seated on the dirt floor.

Haru hadn't picked the ringmaster, because the man wouldn't stop talking, blustering simultaneously about the troupe's innocence and the coming vengeance of the Fire Nation. He didn't pick the man who professed to be the animal tender, because he was a Firebender who had demonstrated some fine control of his element before he had been dogpiled by a team of Earthbenders in the initial attack; besides, the man had an oily quality that Haru didn't like. He didn't pick the strongman because -- seriously -- the guy was huge!

In the end, it was the trapeze artist who Haru thought was the best bet. She had friendly eyes, seemed well liked by the other prisoners, and didn't seem to quite realize that she was a captive of desperate rebels. Plus, she was just the high-wire act, not even a Bender, so it's not like she could cause much trouble. What could go wrong?

"You," he said, pointing at the girl. "You're coming with me."

She blinked innocently, her gray eyes wide. "Me?" She tilted her head to the side, and the ponytail hanging down her back shifted. She alone in all the circus folk wasn't wearing a straight shade of red; her two-piece tunic used tones of pink, and it somehow made her seem less like an enemy and more like a girl.

Of course, that kind of thinking could lead to trouble. Haru might be a teenage boy, but that didn't mean he had to let his own hormones goose-pigeonhole him as some kind of sap. Dad and the others were counting on him, here. "Yes, you, miss. The animals need to be fed. Do you know how?"

Her face positively lit up with a smile that included her eyes. "Oh! Yes, I know all the animals here! You wouldn't believe how many we have, from all over the world! The bear even knows how to walk the tightrope, just like me!"

Haru frowned. "Bear? What kind of bear?"

She winked. "A platypus-bear, silly. What kind of bear did you think?"

Haru ran his fingers through his mustache. At times like this, he found himself not quite used to the feel of it. "Let's... let's just get going."

"And this is Mister Screechy Feathers! He likes cabbages!" Ty Lee frowned. "Actually, now that I think about it, all these animals like cabbages. Well, except for the meat-eaters. I guess cabbage is the universal animal food? Or maybe we just get cabbage at a discount? I wonder who we buy it from..."

Haru decided that it was a good time to interrupt the acrobat and get her back on task.

Again.

"Well, wherever you get it," he said, "let's give some to him and move on. How many heads does he get?"

"Four. I think. Or maybe that was the platypus-bear. Oh well, we have plenty. We'll let him decide." With a giggle, Ty Lee trotted over to the wagon and began piling heads of cabbage under her arms.

Haru watched her carefully, maintaining a chi-connection with the Earth below his bare feet. She seemed harmless enough, but he was ready in case she decided to dash away. Of course, watching her body and her movements so closely, he was acutely aware of what a pleasant image she projected. She was a very pretty girl, and she didn't act like she was a prisoner. Dust, she didn't even act like she was Fire Nation. She was happy, and friendly. She was lighthearted in a way that Haru had forgotten could exist, in any nation.

Was this really the kind of person who could be trying to erase the Earth Kingdom's culture?

Then Haru realized he was staring, and that Ty Lee had noticed. "So, uh, what kind of animal is... Mister... Screechy Feathers?"

"A vulture-griffon," she cooed. "Isn't he cute?"

Haru looked over at the creature -- with a body like a jungle cat, the wings and gangly head of a buzzard -- then back at Ty Lee. He looked over again at the vulture-griffon, then back at Ty Lee. Vulture-griffon. Ty Lee. Griffon. Ty Lee. "Um, I can think of cuter things in this tent, right now," he found himself saying.

"Oh? Like what?" She leaned forward, and gazed right into his eyes.

Haru suddenly had trouble remembering what spoken language was.

That's when she threw a tight fist out at him and punched him hard near his shoulder.

Haru stumbled back, biting back a cry of pain, and tried to raise his hands into a defensive stance. Only one of his arms actually obeyed, and to Haru's growing horror, that came to a quick stop when Ty Lee leaned over and struck again. He stumbled back, more from his continuing state of shock than the pain, but the acrobat stayed with him, swept a leg to catch his own, and pushed at his chest.

Haru fell, and then reality suddenly went away.

Ty Lee felt just awful about the way Haru hit his head. She hadn't meant for him to step backwards and fall like that. Weren't Earthbenders supposed to especially stable, or something? Ty Lee thought she remembered learning something like that, but even if her recollection was correct, who knew if it was actually true? Lots of things Ty Lee had learned at the Academy turned out to be mistaken.

Still, she was nothing if not adaptable! As long as Haru was unconscious anyway, she might as well drag him off where no one could find him. That was part of her original plan, anyway, and she so rarely made plans that she might as well stick with this one.

Of course, her original plan also said she was supposed to tie Haru up and then go tappity-tap all the other Earthbenders by herself, so maybe she could make some changes as she went along. Princess Azula had said many times that it was okay. In fact, Ty Lee was pretty sure Azula said that the best plans were the ones that changed and got better.

Maybe. Or Azula said that her brother, Zuko, was a moron because he always changed his plans as they were happening. One of the two. Maybe both. Actually, this was pretty confusing.

Focus. Ty Lee carefully hoisted Haru up over her shoulders, and quietly carried him over to the back of the tent, where the hay-bales were piled up to make a kind of isolated shelter.

"Rrrrawk!" said Mister Screechy Feathers.

"Shhhhh," Ty Lee hissed. Honestly, that vulture-griffon could be so cranky sometimes. Although, Muzan was a pretty cranky Firewhipper himself, so maybe that rubbed off on all the animals he was in charge of training and feeding.

She got Haru over to her hiding place easily enough, and laid him down on a bed of loose hay. Now, her plan said she was supposed to restrain and leave him, but what if he had a concussion? She didn't want him hurt. Or dead! That would be awful! He was nice enough, for an enemy, and she could tell from his aura that he had a strong sense of family and honesty.

So Ty Lee sat down beside him, and hoped he would wake up soon.

Haru couldn't tell how much time had passed, when he came to. He had a tough time telling that he was conscious at all, actually.

#haru #ty lee #tylee #fanfic

3 notes · View notes

surveys-at-your-service · 3 years

Text

Survey #357

“your magic white rabbit has left its writing on the wall / we follow like alice, and just keep diving down the hole”

Are you better at telling stories or writing them? Writing, by a long shot. What’s one song you hate, but know every word to? i'm a barbie girl in a fckn barbie woooooorld What’s your favorite magazine? I don’t read magazines. If you could be an animal for one day, which animal would you choose? Probably a house cat. Be indoors and safe, able to just nap... lol. But I'd want another cat as a friend, too! Do you prefer outdoor or indoor concerts/events? Indoors, by a mile. I get hot outside way too easily. Do you know if you were a planned child? I don't know. What’s your favorite gem? Dragon's breath opal. As an adult, do you want to live in an apartment or a house? I'd like to live in a house, especially with the pets I want. I doubt many apartment complexes would allow multiple reptiles and inverts. Do you like the stem or leafy part of the broccoli? It doesn't matter much to me, but I prefer the stem. The texture is more likeable to me. Do bats frighten you? No, I adore bats! Does Paris appeal to you? Yeah, it's a pretty place. Are you a KPOP fan? No, I've never really checked it out. How long was your longest relationship? Over three and a half years. First time you kissed the last person you kissed? We were outside roasting marshmallows one night. Do you have to really know someone to kiss them? Absolutely. I don't dish 'em out for nothing. Were you anyone’s first kiss? No. If you had to be named after one of the 50 states of America, what state would you WANT to be named after? I actually think "Nevada" would be kinda pretty as a name? Do you think morals are universal or relative to the beliefs, traditions, or practices of individuals or groups? I've wondered this for a long while, really. I lean towards it being a mix, maybe? But more towards universal, I think... with some exceptions. This answer is all over the place, I honestly don't know. Is torture ever a good option? If no, why not? If yes, when? No? I think the "why not" is obvious... You just don't. What do you think is one one of the most undervalued professions right now? Teachers, garbagemen, retail and food workers... There's a lot. Have you ever seen anyone have a heart attack? Thank Christ no. Have you personalized your answering machine/voicemail? No. Have you ever had Fiji brand water? I actually don't believe I have, though it's always looked appealing to me, haha. What’s your favorite horror movie? The Crazies and the first Silent Hill, as well as both Blair Witch Projects. What was the worst thing a friend has either done or said to you? I'd rather not even think about things the bitch said to me. Are you biracial? No. When was the last time you got mad and broke something? I've never broken something when mad. What color dress did you wear to prom? My first was maroon, second one was black. Who is the cutest baby you know? My friend has a daughter named Scarlett who is absolutely gorgeous. Have you ever thrown a rock at a window? No, because I respect people's fucking property. Has anyone ever thrown a rock at your window? No. Does your hair react well to dye, or does it damage it? It likes to not take dye at all. >.> I have only had one instance where a friend dyed it red and it stuck for months and months, but we kept it in for a couple hours, I think. My normal hairdresser says it's because my hair is really healthy and I guess rejects it. What kind of pet do you wish you had? I ramble plenty about how I want tarantulas and more reptiles, haha. I also DESPERATELY want to rescue or foster an opossum. When was the last time you were diagnosed with something? Are you concerned about anything regarding your physical or mental health at the moment? I haven't been diagnosed with anything in quite some time, I believe, but as I'm going through the process of being approved for TMS therapy for my depression, my bipolar diagnosis is being questioned, which is... strange to me. It's been acknowledged by many a doctor that I have bipolar 2, but if insurance recognizes my primary diagnosis as bipolar, they won't cover TMS because it can massively excite the mania portion of bipolarity, and therefore I can't do it because we can't manually afford it. I'm willing to take the risk by far, as I've never had issues with mania, but I can't without insurance. I'm just waiting to hear back from them... What is one blanket judgment you tend to make about people (like, you judge all people who live at home, all people who drink, etc)? Does this judgment come from a particular personal experience? I really don't know. How do you react to other people yelling or slamming doors? Is this something you ever do too? I get very scared if it's a man. I don't like anyone doing it, and my anxiety will spike regardless, I'm just terrified of angry men. Have you ever lost your cool at work or somewhere else important? What happened as a result? No. Who has the power to break you? Jason still might. I don't know. Is anyone in your family blind? My sister is legally blind in one eye. Do you believe in evolution? Yeah. I do find the concept odd, that ALL LIFE originated from one thing, but I sure ain't got a better explanation, so. What job do you think people should be paid the most for? Surgeons, maybe? I dunno, that's a big question. Were you ever held back a year in school? Did you ever skip a grade? No. Have you ever been given a hickey? Have you given one? Yeah to both. What is your least favourite thing about your full name? I have the most basic white bitch middle name in the world, lol. Do you like the age you are? Eh, I don't mind it much, but I think it'd be better to be in my early 20s versus mid 20s. I'm just always so tired now. I can't believe I used to refuse to go to sleep before 10:30. What’s your favourite kind of poptart? The chocolate sundae one. If you had to eat one type (Chinese, etc.) of food which would it be? American bc I'm not very adventurous with food at all. When did your family immigrate to wherever you live now? *shrug* Are your fingers long, or short? Long. Mom's always said I have "piano fingers." Do you play Pokemon Go? If so, what level are you and who’s your buddy? Yeah, I love it, but don't play it nearly as much as I want because I don't exactly go anywhere, lol. My bud's Charmeleon, and I'm probably like five EXP from level 28. Do you ever sit indoors and wear sunglasses or a hat? I don't own either, so. Do you know how to read animals’ behavior? I honestly think I'm very good at it. Do you like playing video games? If so, what do you usually play? Yes, but not as much as I used to. All I really play nowadays is World of Warcraft. The only working console I have is a PS2, and I haven't bought a new game in probably a couple years, but there are definitely ones I want to play, mainly on PS4. Just can't afford it right now. Have you ever viewed the moon through a telescope? No. Do you know how to properly eat food with chopsticks? No. There's no way I could, given my tremors. Do you prefer reading books, comic books, manga/graphic novels, magazines, or the newspaper? Books. When is the last time you ate donuts? It's been months, man. I've seriously been craving a glazed one, though. Krispy Kreme sounds amaaaaaziiiiiing. Has anyone ever called you sexy? Somehow. Do you like raisins? NO NO NO NO NO. Have you ever overheard a conversation you weren’t supposed to? More than once. Do you like ants? They're genuinely extremely fascinating animals, but they're seriously annoying nevertheless. Did you like the movie Antz? I loved it as a kid. What was your favorite ice cream flavor when you were little? Chocolate. Is it still your favorite? Eh, depends on the day. By the way, what is your name? Brittany. What time zone do you live in? EST. Do you like cats? I love cats. What’s the most creepy experience you’ve ever had? One night when my mom and sister were at the beach for a dance competition, I was having trouble sleeping, and it only got worse when my dog Teddy started freaking the fuck out, barking loudly and staring intently at the foot of the bed. I was so scared that I tried to force his head to lie down, but he fought against me. I was terrified, but got up out of the bed and went into the living room to call my mom at like 3 in the damn morning, and she had to have our neighbor come over to sleep in the house with me (I was in a different room that night). You can't convince me that there wasn't paranormal shit going on. I think the house was haunted honestly, for multiple reasons. What’s the most boring game to exist? Why do you dislike it so much? Hm, I dunno. What’s the coolest place that you've ever been to? What’d you do there? Disney World was very memorable as a kid. We just went around collecting signatures, going on rides, all that fun stuff. I'll never forget fireworks at the castle. If you’re interested in having a long-term relationship with someone, do you think that waiting a certain amount of time before you first have sex is a good idea? Or does it not matter? I think it's a good idea, personally, mostly for the sake of reducing the spread of STDs. Just because you think you'll be long-term, doesn't mean you will be. Besides that, isn't there a science that sex and feelings of love are connected? Like, sex is impossible without at least some underlying emotions? I might be entirely wrong, in which case forgive me for spreading misinformation, but if that's so and things don't go as planned, you've gotten emotionally invested in someone too early and wind up getting hurt. You do you, I just don't think it's smart. Have you ever discovered something big by looking through someone’s phone, Facebook, email, etc.? No. Have you kept anything from your past relationships? (Things they left at your house, gifts, notes, etc) Do you think that’s a big deal for future relationships or not? Yeah, like plushies and little stuff like that. When it's tiny things like I just mentioned, I really don't think it matters. I think some things might be questionable to keep, but at the same time, I don't think it's really wrong to keep memories of a happy time, if the thing still brings you joy and has been emotionally disconnected from the ex? Idk. Do you have any financial regrets? Either way, what’s an example of a GOOD financial decision you’ve made? Going to and dropping out of college three fucking times. I don't know about a good financial decision seeing as I'm not even in charge of my own finances, nor really have any to begin with. Are you a believer in “signs” from the Universe about things in your life? If you are, can you think of a particular example? No. Name some things that one or both of your parents are really good at or really interested in. Mom LOVES medical stuff, like watching surgeries and stuff like that. She is also absolutely incredible with children. Dad likes sports a lot, hockey and football especially. Think of a good friend of the opposite sex (currently or in the past). Have you ever had any sort of “more than a friend” or sexual thoughts about them? If not, can you explain why? Well, we dated briefly, so... It was awkward to, but I let myself imagine sexual situations a few times to help myself understand if I really did like-like him, or if he was truly just a brother to me. Turns out, he's a bro. If someone told you that you would never achieve something and you ended up doing it, would you have any interest in finding that person and showing them? I'ma be honest, yes. I wouldn't actively seek them out, but rather just hope they somehow find out or I run into them or something. What is the most jealousy-induced thing you’ve ever done? Apparently, be the girl Juan liked instead of this girl that literally threatened to deck me. Guess what? We're friends now lmaoooo.

#survey #surveys #questions #lyrics: ''white rabbit'' by egypt central

2 notes · View notes

jayz4dayz · 3 years

Note

OK BUT... I just want a short description on why you like both 👀

Oh, my dear sweet anon... you have made a grave mistake by asking me to give you a SHORT description. However, I will gladly give you an answer! :)

On the one hand, Yumeko and Mary have a bond unlike any other characters in the show. Chemistry wise, I would almost be shocked to not see them end up together (I'll explain the almost part shortly). They both are very close to each other and understand each other's thinking process. I think that's very important in a relationship when both partners understand each other almost to the point of knowing them better than themselves. It is highly hinted in the show that Mary did/does have an attraction to Yumeko both platonically and romantically and there is nothing I love more than a best friends to lovers trope. I can't really say the two were even ever enemies to begin with since that was kind of one-sided on Mary's part, but you could see how hard Mary tried to stay away from Yumeko but she physically couldn't. Their friendship is clearly shown that they understand each other and care about each other. Their personalities are practically opposites from each other, but hey, opposites attract, no?

However, my biggest issue with the ship is how addicted to gambling Yumeko is. She has shown on more than one occasion that she is willing to give up her own life (both socially and in the retrospect of dying) and in turn, would also likely gamble her relationship with Mary if put in that situation. That point of obsession is extremely unhealthy and one could even argue psychotic. Heck, the show is called Kakegurui or "Compulsive gambler" which is the very definition and essence of who Yumeko is. In a relationship, Mary would be very aware of Yumeko's addiction and it wouldn't be unlikely that Yumeko's addiction to gambling would get to the point where it interferes in their relationship and I could see Mary pull a "Choose me or your addiction" kind of thing and sadly I believe Yumeko would choose her gambling over Mary. With that being said, it also wouldn't surprise me if Yumeko does come to her senses and realize that there's more to life than just gambling and realize just how important Mary was to her which could be the reason for her giving up gambling completely so she could live a healthy and happy life with the one she loves. Yumeko may have an obsessive and toxic addiction, but she's still human and it is possible to get over addictions. But the ship overall as a whole? Absolutely adorable, minus all the fan-service stuff canon wise. I give it an 8.5/10.

Now as for the show itself, I'm sure we're all aware that it is heavily queer coded and hints that Mary could be Yumeko's love interest. However, then Ryota comes into play which is why I said I would ALMOST be shocked if Mary and Yumeko didn't get together. I've seen shows pull the crap of queer-bating and I'd be less surprised if Yumeko ended up with Ryota over Mary at all. I'd hate to see that since I do think Mary and Yumeko's relationship as a romantic one could blossom into something truly beautiful, but I'm still very skeptical that the creators will have the two get together.

Now for Ririka and Mary. These two are such a fascinating combination to me. Ririka, as we know, is constantly hidden behind that mask and Mary was the only person to ever try to break her free from it. In a lot of ways, I think Ririka's mask is not just there to mask her face since she is basically a duplicate of Kirari, but it's there to mask her emotions as well. When Mary breaks her free from that mask, you can just see the expression on Ririka's face for the first time. She's in shock and very much flustered by Mary's action. Now at first, I honestly didn't see their dynamic as anything more than Ririka obsessing over her for a hidden intention not revealed to us. Mary was clearly annoyed by her constant presence and lowkey stalking and even made it clear to her at one point in the manga to quit following her around, but I soon found out Ririka needed to gain Ririka’s trust and that’s when I started rooting for them. I honestly believe Mary is Ririka's first true friend and of course Ririka wouldn't want to risk losing her at all. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mary is Ririka’s first love either (It’s okay, Riri. Even the best of us simp for Saotome. She has so many fucking girls simping for her ngl). She wanted to be around Mary constantly and eventually, Mary didn't mind her company too much either and she even outright says that they were friends (with a ton of blushing on Mary’s part as she says this might I add). Not to mention all of the confidence Mary built up in Ririka and helped show her that she was her own person, not some pawn in the Momobami clan. It was a nice slow buildup in my opinion. I believe it is much more explicitly shown that Ririka eventually develops feelings for Mary (especially in the manga with that one scene were Ryota asks about what Yumeko's relationship is to Mary and you can just tell Ririka is wondering and fearing the answer). If done correctly, this could build up into one of the best slow burns we would have the opportunity to see. As a relationship, they would be near perfect for each other. I honestly believe their personalities balance each other even better than Yumeko and Mary even if Ririka isn’t as close to Mary as Yumeko is. Ririka's personality is much shyer than Mary's somewhat outgoing and hot-headed personality. I really think they are one of the few relatively sane people in the series as well which only adds on to why they would be amazing with each other. Of course, both have their own problems, but they could definitely get through them together. I can see both are the kind of people who once they get into a relationship. They don't want to be second in the life of their partner.

And of course, there is one con I have with this ship. Although I believe the two would be absolutely great for each other in all ways, there comes the point in which the two struggle both as individuals and in their relationship. Mary is incredible when it comes to uplifting people and boosting confidence, but I don't see Ririka having those kinds of strengths. If Mary were to ever hit her lowest point when she was with Ririka, I don't doubt Ririka would do everything in her power to help Mary, but it may not be enough and cause both of them a great amount of grief. Not to mention if something were to happen to Mary (I.e. death or entering a coma for some reason), I don't deny it wouldn't surprise me to see Ririka shutting down or doing something detrimental to her own life. Other than that, I don't have many complaints about this ship. Like I said for my defense on Yumeko and Mary, I highly doubt Mary will actually end up with Ririka in the end. I have a feeling something is going to happen which will prevent the two from entering a relationship, have the creators expose that it's more of a one-sided relationship or one-sided feelings (which would honestly be so depressing) or just another case of creators queer-bating with a perfectly compatible ship. Other than that, I give this ship a solid 10/10 and that’s saying something considering I NEVER give a 10/10 for anything. (Seriously, ask around. I really don’t.)

So would I love to see either ship become canon? Absolutely. Would I not be surprised if neither become canon? Absolutely. (Me and my bitter feelings towards heteronormativity smh.)

I hope that thoroughly answered your question, anon! ^-^

8 notes · View notes

x--daughters-of-darkness--x · 3 years

Text

Will the real Taylor Momsen please stand up?

Think you know Taylor Momsen? Think again. After years of personal turmoil and soul-searching, The Pretty Reckless singer is back with a new album and a brand new outlook on life

On the cover of The Pretty Reckless’ upcoming album Death By Rock And Roll, lead singer Taylor Momsen lies naked on a grave. White hair flowing beneath her, gone are the eyeliner-rimmed raccoon eyes. Instead, it’s a stripped back image, one that radiates vulnerability rather than her usual defiance.

Shot by Danny Hastings, who was also responsible for 2013 album Going To Hell's more provocative cover, Momsen is proud of what it communicates. “It’s an untouched photograph," she tells Louder over the phone from her home in Maine.

"That was my intent, trying to show complete purity and baring myself. I wanted to express that you come into this world with nothing but your soul and that’s all you leave with, too.” She pauses. “I’m pretty proud of it, if I’m being honest.”

That vulnerability seems to be something Momsen is starting to feel comfortable with after a lifetime in the spotlight. Now just 27, she started a modelling career aged just two. She later became known as Jenny Humphrey, the Gossip Girl character audiences loved to hate, before leaving to focus on her music career, forming The Pretty Reckless and releasing their first album in 2010. She must be exhausted, we motion. “I don’t know if I feel older or younger," she replies. "I have experienced a lot. I feel like I have lived a billion lives. Some days I feel like I’m two years old and sometimes I’m 107. It depends on the day."

Speaking carefully but freely, Momsen’s answers are peppered with small, shy laughs. She’s spent the last several months locked down, leaving only briefly to film a music video for recent single 25. “I feel like I’ve been handling it relatively well, but I’ve certainly had my moments. I think everyone has their breaking point. It’s a lot! It’s a really fucked up year!” She pauses, before finding her way to a bright side. “I think this is a really humanising time.

"Everyone’s lifestyle is different, and where you come from and how you’re handling the situation is different, but we are still all in essentially the same space and point in time together.”

The peace in Momsen’s voice is hard won after a painful couple of years for her and her band. The first blow came in 2017, when The Pretty Reckless landed a spot supporting childhood hero Chris Cornell. He died by suicide on the tour, shaking Momsen to the core: “After we were on that Soundgarden tour and we played the last show – when I woke up to the news the next morning I was beyond devastated. I still don’t have words to express how crushing that was. I couldn’t handle it. I wasn’t in a good place to be public. I removed myself from the public eye. I cancelled everything. I needed to go home and reflect on what had happened.”

She fell into a deep hole, spiralling and cancelling any upcoming shows. In 2018, feeling ready to rebuild her life, the band started speaking to their friend and longtime producer Kato about the next step. Just as they had pulled themselves together, they got another tragic phonecall: “He’d died in a motorcycle accident. That was the fucking nail in the coffin I guess, for lack of a better term."

“I just went so, so down into this hole of depression and substance abuse. I was a train-wreck and I didn’t know how to get out of it, I didn’t know if I would get out of it. I didn’t care. I had kinda given up on everything. I was like, I don’t even know if I want to do anything ever again.”

Eventually, Momsen had to make a decision: “It was either death or move forward. Luckily I chose to move forward, but it was tough there for a while.” She’s candid about how much she struggled: “I was not well. I returned to music because it was the only thing I knew how to do. It’s the only thing in my entire life that’s always been there and supported me. I started listening to records that I love and started from the beginning again.” She sat down to write, finding that it took no effort – Death By Rock And Roll poured out of her, in part inspired by Kato.

The album is named for a song, the first single, that Kato suggested ten years ago: “He said “write a song called ‘Death By Rock and Roll,’” and we started it and never finished it and nothing came of it. When he passed it became very relevant again, and so we finished it.”

The song starts with his footsteps walking down the hall. She’s insistent that it isn’t morbid, but an homage and an optimistic battlecry: “I have one life and I’ll live it the way I want.” The band wondered whether they could even work without Kato – “the hole and loss was so grand”. They chose to, eventually finding a kindred spirit in the producer Jonathan Wyman. “He is the sweetest, kindest soul on the planet, a great engineer and producer, an amazing friend. We called him up and made the record in Maine,” she says, adding that it was the first album she and bandmate Ben co-produced. “He allowed us to be the train-wrecks that we were at the time and let us go through all the range of all the emotions and was so supportive throughout the entire thing. He really helped us to accomplish something.”

The album itself is classic Pretty Reckless: big guitars, old school rock'n'roll influences, with touches of jukebox Americana. But there’s something different, too, and maybe it’s the feeling of “complete rebirth” that she wanted to imbue it with. Around the middle there’s a turning point, with more vulnerable, personal touches. On 25, Momsen breathily sings of her disbelief that she made it this far: 'and all through my teens, I screamed that I may not live much past 21, 22, 23, 24.'

It’s an honest declaration: “We recorded it right as I turned 25. It’s very much just an autobiographical song of me at my lowest reflecting on my life and trying to put that into music somehow. I’m really proud of that song. I’m proud of the whole record, but I think that song was a shift in my writing.” She calls 25 the first “stepping stone towards that light.”

Those moments of tenderness and reflection are wrapped up, of course, in the in-your-face rock and roll that Taylor Momsen has always loved. Cynics and critics have questioned her authenticity, and that of The Pretty Reckless. But ten years into her music career, it’s pretty clear rock runs through her veins. She’s dorky and obsessive, running through rock'n'roll history from the 60s through the 90s, sheepishly apologising when she hasn’t heard of a newer artist I mention. “I don’t pay attention to new stuff. It’s bad, I should,” she laughs. She references music with an ease that only comes to a true nerd, gushing about rock: “It’s ballsy and cooler than everything else. If you’re not afraid of it, you find the freeing aspect of it. Nothing beats it.” True to its word, Death By Rock And Roll is full of heavy guitars and snarling vocals. A true catharsis.

In the last two years, Momsen feels like she’s aged ten. “They were extraordinarily hard. To the point where I wasn’t sure I was going to make it through them. I think there’s no way to go through that tragedy and trauma and not come out, if you make it through, not as a different person but with a new perspective,” she tells me. Her fight with her mental health is ongoing, but she’s learned to manage it: “If you don’t, it’s very easy to take a wrong turn and that can be hard to come back from.”

She’s found that music has been her one grounding stone, holding her down to earth: “I can listen to music and it brings me back, almost like meditation. It brings me to reality and completely takes me away, too.”

Momsen is reflective, reckoning with thoughts she had long held. Starting her music career as a 17-year-old girl, she was often indignant about the idea that misogyny impacted her possibilities. With time, though, she’s reconsidered: “I was so in denial for so long about sexism, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve realised it exists. Misogyny is a real thing, and it’s unfortunate that it is, but it is. There are a lot of shitty things in life but we have to deal with them, and hopefully we progress as a society and this becomes a topic we don’t ever have to discuss again,” she laughs.

“I’ve recognised it more as I’ve gotten older that there is a boys’ club when it comes to rock'n'roll and it is a struggle to break into that and be accepted and treated with the same respect as if you were a man.”

Recently, Momsen appeared on Evanescence’s Use My Voice, a song Amy Lee wrote when inspired by assault victim Chanel Miller. Momsen is open in her adoration of Lee, who took The Pretty Reckless’ on their first big tour, telling me that Amy’s perspective on misogyny in rock is far “more developed” than hers. “I love Amy, she’s just the kindest person and so talented. We really learned a lot from that experience in so many ways. I have the utmost respect for her, I love her.” She adds that she was impacted by seeing Evanescence when she was nine: “It was very cool to have that be our first proper tour, suddenly I was opening for a band that I had gone to see with my dad. It was very full circle.”

Understandably, after a lifetime of scrutiny, Momsen is at times reticent to answer certain questions, aware of how things can get twisted. She avoids the internet, finding that, “maybe it’s because of how I grew up, but it can get very toxic very quickly.” But she indulges more annoying questions with patience and grace. I ask her, is the 'Jenny died by suicide' line in Death By Rock and Roll a sly reference to her Gossip Girl character Jenny Humphrey? She laughs: “I’ll leave that to the listener’s interpretation.”

She’s willing to explain, however, in far greater depth, why she feels that way: “I think it’s unfair to the listener when the artist explains things directly, I think it takes away from the magic.”

“Once you put the music out into the world, it’s so exciting, but on the other hand it’s almost sad. The body of work you’ve been slaving over is so precious and it’s so yours and so intimate, and suddenly it doesn’t belong to you anymore. It belongs to everyone else,” she pauses, “I think that’s the beauty of music but it’s a strange thing because it doesn’t matter what the song means to me, it matters how it connects to you and whatever you relate to it." She says that hearing Roger Waters elaborate on Pink Floyd lyrics that meant a lot to her once spoiled the magic: “Since then I’ve been very cautious to not over-explain. I really do think that it’s unfair to the listener. It’s not about me, it’s about you, it’s about the audience.”

Death By Rock and Roll is, conversely, a commitment to life. After a year relaxing at home and three years attempting to recover from a constant succession of blows, Momsen is aching to get back out on the road and see her fans again. “I get to go on stage every night in front of an audience who care and connect to music that I slaved over and worked over and hypothetically move them and give them the experience of a lifetime,” she laughs, calling it the “greatest job on the planet.”

“I really miss it. There’s nothing else like it, that high that you get from playing a show, that adrenaline, that feeling. It’s the best drug on the planet. I feel like an addict and I’m going through withdrawal.”

The last few years have taken it out of Momsen, but she has come out of the other side with peace and an enriched perspective. That growth is audible as she speaks, and it’s woven into the fabric of Death By Rock And Roll.

“You can’t beat that feeling of complete rebirth,” she tells me. Maybe for once, she doesn’t seem either two years old or 107, but a very wise 27.

#Taylor Momsen #the pretty reckless #2020 interviews

6 notes · View notes

halorocks1214 · 4 years

Text

the law of attraction

AO3 Link

Word Count: 5464

Summary: The Law of Attraction demonstrates how we create the things, events, and people that come into our lives. Our thoughts, feelings, words, and actions produce energies which, in turn, attract like energies. Negative energies attract negative energies and positive energies attract positive energies

Previous Parts (in order): Alan | You are here!

holy shit i need to stop telling myself to keep my fics short cuz thats what always makes them three times longer than i originally planned. anYWAYS, i know the point of fabfivefeb is kinda to focus on one bro a week specifically, buuuut my brain grabbed my face, yelled an idea into it and now this is going to be a full series i guess. i hope this still counts! also, just as a warning, the first few fics are going to be chronologically out of order-- gordons pov fic, aka this one, comes like, almost last in the line of fics i have planned-- but im hoping that just adds to the aesthetic im giving this series

thanks again to @gumnut-logic for the wonderful prompt ideas. i used “How did you do that?” and iridescent

--------

If you asked just-turned-10-years-old Gordon what he thought of his kid brother, you would probably be horrified at the things he could and did say.

Nowadays the 22-year-old felt bad about it-- like, exponentially so-- but back then he couldn’t help it. It was a Tracy rite-of-passage to not want a younger sibling when they came-- yes, even Scott, who Gordon secretly believed it was his fault for John being so nerdy. You should have wanted a nice pair of tennis shoes in his place, Scotty, not a chemistry kit.

Gordon, for all intents purposes, managed to be the worst-case out of four. Virgil wondered if his fiery temper rubbed off on Alan growing up, and the more Gordon caught wind of how Alan could be when angry, the more Gordon thought his immediate older brother was right.

Regardless, everyone in the family managed to at least get the OG Tracy baby to play nice when Alan was born. Gordon’s involvement could be described as nothing: he never did anything to actively harm Alan (he was raised better than that, c’mon), but whenever Gordon could get away from the tiny tot, he did. A couple of years went by, the world adjusted to five Tracy sons, and so did the Tracy family. Even Gordon was starting to see the merit in being an older brother.

Then, tragedy struck.

The avalanche that ripped apart their entire world came crashing down in more ways than one. Hoo boy, the tabloids had a field day with it. They always wanted to know every little detail, and when the family refused to give them anything, they came up with their own stories. The only details they got were from cheating, as a nosy reporter managed to grab a picture of 3-year-old Alan fighting for his life in the hospital, and the internet ran with it.

It was very quickly found out that their mother had died in the disaster as well, and along with the little snake’s photo of Alan, accusations were thrown around as if they were nothing more than plush baseballs, not full-blown knives digging into the Tracy men’s skin. Where was Jeff Tracy? Did he leave his wife and youngest to perish without a thought? The man did have four older sons, maybe he considered them to be more valuable? The last child wasn’t a planned addition in the first place, so it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to assume so!

What they would never know, Gordon thought bitterly and spitefully, was how Alan wasn’t the only Tracy kid that played in the snow that day. Alan easily got sick as a child for undetermined reasons, and lo and behold, the tiny blonde started running a low-grade fever during their vacation. Lucy offered to stay with Alan at the cabin while Jeff went to find an on-sight doctor. Virgil, who was starting to get into that kind of stuff, went with him.

John saw… something in the gift shop he wanted to grab (none of the brothers could really tell you that much about that day anymore), and since it was relatively close to where Jeff needed to ask for a doctor, the parents felt it would be okay for the red-head to explore the shop by himself, especially since John was easily the most well-behaved out of the children. Gordon was going to go with them to-- what did you expect-- get away from Alan. That’s when smother-hen-in-the-making Scott suggested Gordon stay back with Alan so he could get to know the baby of the family more.

The only reason Gordon agreed to stay was that Scott was staying as well. Gordon hadn’t had that much time recently to hang out with his oldest bro, so he thought it was worth dealing with the little tyke in the room as well. Besides, mom was there too. She could watch him.

Gordon couldn’t for the life of him remember who was where when the literal tons of snow came to say hi. They all got knocked out relatively quick, but from Dad’s recollection of Scott’s eye-witness account, Scott and mom woke up at some point. Scott then went on to carry his youngest siblings out and away from the danger zone, only to re-pass out a good distance away from the buried cabin.

There were many details left out by Scott, and even more were left out by their father, who wanted to give his eldest some sense of security despite all the chaos. Gordon would only learn a little bit more (and by golly was it enough) when he was 16 and grounded by Scott himself. We know Dad is gone! Stop trying to replace him! Gordon shamefully admits that he was purposefully trying back then to be as difficult as possible. Sure, it was due to grief over losing their last living parent, but that didn’t mean he had to take out his rage like he was less than half his age.

People always credited Alan as being the angry baby, but Gordon could be a right bastard when he wanted.

Virgil shut up him right up with a tiny admission that Gordon would never let Scott know he knew. It was the least the swimmer could do after everything their oldest brother gave up.

“You know he promised her, right?”

Teenaged Gordon hissed as Virgil readjusted his piggyback, jostling Gordon’s broken leg in the process. Sneaking out didn’t really seem all that thrilling anymore. He still managed to squeak out through gritted teeth, “W-What?”

Virgil kept his face straight, a weird kind of stoic covering all of his emotions burning within, “Scott promised mom he would keep you two safe. It was the only thing he could do for her.”

That gut-punch didn’t help Gordon’s bruised ribs, and Virgil should have just broken his leg more next. Would have been a nicer follow up than the metaphorical groin kick Gordon received.

“Dad wondered if she was even aware-- or maybe even alive-- enough to hear him.”

Gordon had a lot of time in the hospital to think about those words, even more so when he watched his brunette brother sleep by his bedside. 22-year-old Scott should have been furious, should have ripped him a new one for being such a prick, but the only thing Gordon witnessed him do that night was run into the room as soon as he got the news that Gordon was okay and gently collapse onto his younger brother to collect the blonde into his arms while he tried desperately not to break down-- tried to be strong. Gordon was so caught off guard that he could only wrap his arms back around Scott in a weak attempt to reassure the new head of the Tracy Clan.

Later in the week when Gordon wasn’t so dead on his feet, Scott finally found the reprimand he wanted to give and tore into Gordon. Of course, Gordon snapped back too. They had the typical ‘What were you thinking?!’ ‘I wanted to have fun!’ kind of argument, but it was… softer, in a way, especially on Gordon’s part.

During that same night, after the argument, Gordon would hear 10-year-old Alan sneak into his room with a box full of familiar lights, abruptly reminding Gordon of a feeling he felt a long time ago, back during the ‘recovery’ part of the aftermath of the avalanche. One he couldn’t entirely explain until right then, thanks to Scott’s reactions throughout that entire week.

See, Scott’s plan of Gordon getting along with Alan backfired pretty horribly as Gordon, in all of his trauma and denial, managed to loop his tiny mind around into thinking Alan was at least partially responsible. If he wasn’t sick… if he wasn’t there… if he hadn’t been born--

Yeah, he was 8 at the time, but Gordon still feels sick for even coming up with that thought way back when.

Well, what’s done is done, and for the majority of the first two years, after their wonderful mom left the Earth, Gordon could only describe it like a daze of sorts. Dad was drowning himself in his work, Scott had seen horrors not even adults should’ve had to have seen, Gordon was stuck in the nice world of childhood depression, Virgil and John were caught in the middle like they always were and sometimes still are, and Alan? They really weren’t sure what he was going through due to one simple problem.

Because that was the joke of the day, the ironic twist so to speak. Believe it or not, Alan tended to be a quiet kid.

Many who knew their family would retort with yeah, anyone is quiet standing next to you, Gordon! or they would at least point out the constant babbling that tended to come from the youngest Tracy in the first place. First, Gordon would snort and admit, okay, that’s fair, and then explain how Alan was quiet when it really mattered.

And how it sucked.

The kid could go on and on about what video game he played recently or how stupid his homework was, but when you got down to it you couldn’t get Alan to talk enough.

Back when Alan still did school on the mainland, his older brothers didn’t even know he was being bullied until the bruises started showing up on parts that weren’t covered by clothes (the ones that were, though, damn). It didn’t even occur to the older brothers that Alan was getting more and more quiet each day. After getting the perpetrators expelled and rightfully ripped a new one, Scott and John asked Alan why on earth he didn’t tell them. He just shrugged his tiny kid shoulders and said, “It didn’t seem like that big of a deal.”

Virgil’s 18th birthday was a night to remember, not just because it was a blast, but because they spent half the night in the waiting room at the hospital. They were hanging out in the cities, which was probably already a bad idea. In the first half of the day, the five of them had to cross a crosswalk. Simple enough, right? However, with the torrent of adults much larger than him, 12-year-old Alan lost his grip on John’s hand and toppled over with his arm out in front of him, leaving the limb out on a silver platter to be squashed by a rather large boot.

The man that did it felt really bad, actually, which was a breath of fresh air. He insisted that he would pay for any medical bills that came from the accident. The only reason they never went to any medical facility (immediately, at least) was that, after calming down, Alan insisted his arm felt fine. His reaction time in his fingers was still okay as well, so they left it alone. The four of them probably should have questioned why Alan was so quiet for the rest of the party, but they were too into the euphoria of Virgil’s big day to realize so. A little bit more into the celebration and Alan went missing. It was a miracle that they got Scott to not run off to the nearest police officer immediately. In hindsight, they probably should have, but panic makes the mind go woo woo.

After an hour of searching, they found Alan silently crying his eyes out in a corner. Gordon suspected Virgil never really got over the guilt. None of them have, probably. They really should have insisted they got it checked out right away. Sure, the reason they mainly assumed it was okay was that they’ve been hit with worse and only walked away with bruises-- John walked home from school one day with dirt and mud in his hair, scrapes littering his arms, and when asked what happened the ginger silently commented, “I got hit by a car,” as if it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Not only did Jeff feel the number of years dwindle until his inevitable heart attack, but he also got to watch his eldest gain his first grey hairs with many more to come.

While getting a piggyback from yours truly, John calmly asked Alan why he didn’t say anything (again). The youngest just shrugged and buried his face into Gordon’s neck, “I didn’t want to be a problem. It’s Virge’s day…”

It would be a reoccurring problem for Alan to be hush-hush about physical and emotional strains put on him for years to come. It wasn’t a big problem out on the field (yet), but they were always extra sure to drill into the freckled boy if it seemed like he wasn’t talking as much as he usually did. They were pretty sure it came from the fact that Alan was originally, well, not planned, as all those wonderful journalists pointed out.

They never actively kept it a secret. The age gaps, as well as the press, made it real hard to do so in the first place. Plus, keeping things like that a secret did more damage than not. But the idea was there, and the idea of being a ‘burden’ on anyone was a damaging thought that always seemed to ring in the back of Alan’s subconscious, so he made sure to only speak when he felt he absolutely could or if it wasn’t too much of a task he was asking of them (which they all hated, Scott especially).

The rest of them hoped to pick up what Lucy left behind, which was her efforts to make her newest son feel wanted and loved despite not being apart of the original quota. Gordon worried his older brothers felt a little too guilty about not being able to fully wash it away. It was part of the reason they let him act a little bit childishly on missions: if he feels comfortable enough to do so, then they can’t take it away from him out of fear that they’ll never get it back. It was also why he was just so excited to go on a mission: he could prove himself to be just as good as his older brothers.

Speaking of their mother (man, Gordon loved to ramble tonight, didn’t he), the whole reason any of this was a thing in the first place was Alan’s reaction to the avalanche. That’s when his whole ‘silent act’ issue became apparent. Because the kid became quiet. Period. He stopped talking for two years. Young Gordon wouldn’t even realize this until Virgil started to teach him ASL in their free time. Alan was still an energetic kid, he just… could not get his voice box to work.

The doctors insisted there was no physical damage, either, so they just had to wait and learn ways around it.

Gordon just could not wrap his young, tiny mind around why his loud and obnoxious and annoying younger bro just shut up. Intrigued at the idea of Alan actually being quiet, Gordon started to hang out with him more, especially since Gordon craved the general sense of peace during that time in his life. Yep, crazy, energy-lover Gordon needed the space to just sit and think, and where better than to rant about how crappy life was then at your great-listener-because-he-didn’t-want-to-talk brother.

As time went on in the second half of those two years, the youngest two grew close. Closer than any of the older brothers thought possible. Scott thinks they created their own hand language just for themselves during that time. Gordon was slowly becoming more and more himself, and Alan, well, still didn’t talk, but his energetic-ness was getting bigger and bigger each passing day. Unfortunately, so did their eagerness to be the biggest piece of shits in the world.

Baby Alan stumbled across a can of whip cream that the family forgot to put away. Toddling over to Gordon, the little one shook the can around as a way to say, ‘What could we do with this?’

Gordon’s first idea was to put a huge, glopping pile right on Scott’s pillow where his head directly laid. The sputtering and anger Scott responded with, as well as Virgil’s and John’s snickers at the whole thing, filled Gordon’s head with a million ways to continue his meticulous schemes. Alan got roped in the second the general idea of being able to make his family happy came to fruition.

April 16th was the day The Terrible Two officially started. Virgil was pretty sure he saw John’s calendar with this day marked specifically as a way to remind him not to come down. Virgil just wished he could ask his immediate older brother to let him up on ‘Five that day too.

Their pranks became more and more intense as they came up with each new one, and on the anniversary of their mother’s passing, they disappeared the entire morning. Due to grief, and the fact none of the remaining three sons wanted to deal with tar and feathers or their coffee mug shocking them again, they didn’t think too much of it. Honestly, after the last prank of filling their pillows with jello, they found the quietness to be a blessing. Then the sun started to set without the two of them home yet and they saw it as less of a blessing and more of a curse.

They couldn’t lose them, not on that day.

The house security cams showed the two of them heading into the woods behind their house with some kind of box, and that was all Scott, John, and Virgil needed to go sprinting out of the house. At this point, Dad was getting better about not drowning in work, but he still needed a little more counseling before he would be fully back. That left the three eldest brothers to go on a wild goose chase.

After searching for what Scott remembered feeling like a thousand years, they stumbled upon the two blondes giggling in an opening in the trees. Bursting through the bushes without a second thought, Scott and Virgil (with John behind them) not only saw their brothers unharmed and having a blast in the middle of the opening, all around them in the trees hung big and bright lights. It was as if they were standing in a pocket of stars. Stars they made from their own will and determination.

It was iridescent enough to make the three older brothers gasp just once before remembering why they were out in the dark and cold woods in the first place. Scott trudged over a little more forcefully than he probably realized. Right as he stood over his two youngest brothers, Alan’s tiny, freckled face looked up into his eyes obliviously and pointed at the set of lights.

“Look! Gordz made it pretty!”

Scott and Virgil wrapped their younger brother in the biggest bear hug ever, anger and fear forgotten. It was quiet, whispered and somewhat broken from two years of non-use, but damn, it was Alan. The light at the end of the tunnel seemed even closer. The two of them might have stained the back of Alan’s shirt with tears. Alan didn’t need to know.

Meanwhile, John, flabbergasted and slowly entering a state of shock due to his adrenaline drop followed by even more adrenaline after hearing Alan again, walked over to where Gordon was and simply asked, “How did you do… that?”

It was a question for more than one thing: how did you get Alan to start talking? How did you hang up the lights with no serious injury? How did the two of you grow up so quickly and closely without us even realizing?

All Gordon did was shrug, bring his hands behind his head with his elbows above it, and cheekily grinned, “There are just some secrets two brothers need to keep!”

When the two blondes shared a room that night, tangled with one another like the cords in the lights, Gordon felt something in his chest. It was something warm and fuzzy, and he would only feel it again for years to come when it was towards his only younger brother.

The 10-year-old didn’t know what it was, but he knew that when he figured it out, he would try to be better at it than Scott ever was. Heh, nowadays, he realized that probably wasn’t possible, but that was also okay.

Alan only needed one Scooter.

Right now, however, he needed his one and only Gordz.

---

Brains and other therapists suggested the reason Alan got quiet after going through a traumatic event was simply that it was easier to block things out if you were quiet.

All the brain energy that went to his mouth could be used to not think about the awful things he heard or witnessed. It was perfect. It left the rest of his brain to still be used for all of the other things he liked to do: he could hang out with his brothers and sister, play video games, and (unfortunately) work on homework without cause of concern.

Alan thought it was simple. His family thought it was torture. After all, he wouldn’t tell them what was wrong, and if he didn’t tell them they couldn’t fix it. It was everything their ‘am big person, protect the small’ inner programming hated and they felt like screaming. It was the avalanche again. It was Alan’s bullies again. It was the broken arm again. It was Dad’s disappearance again. Man, they never thought Alan would come back after that one.

But dammit, Gordon thought, their dad isn’t gone anymore, and it was because their stupid, selfless little brother was willing to go through hell and back to get him for them. The least Gordon could do was show Alan how much it was appreciated. How much he was appreciated.

But at this point, Gordon was on the verge of calling it a night.

It was a simple fucking question: do you remember where those stringed lights were?

Sure, it’s been God knows how many years since anyone has pulled them out, and Grandma did pack away a lot of stuff in rather secluded places that she deemed unimportant or, well, too traumatizing. But they could at least give him a general direction on where to go! Everyone knew the basic details of the layout of their storage compartments, come on!

Gordon was sitting in the kitchen, groaning into his hands when he heard someone clearing their throat from the doorway. Snapping his face away from his palms, he looked up into the eyes of none other than his father. The older man had eye bags for days, and his eyes were a little wearier than Gordon liked, but the small grin made Gordon feel like everything was alright.

Or maybe it was the box with the familiar lights in his arms. Mostly that.

Gordon stood up and blinked, “D-Dad--”

Jeff walked into the kitchen in a way that spoke, ‘let me say this first,’ “Scott mentioned you were driving your family crazy searching for this. I may not know how you boys set up the island after I left, but I do know your grandmother is stubborn as a bull. The only place she would have put this was in the decorations closet, where it wasn’t, which I’m sure you figured out, hence the constant nagging, so that means some kind of outside force moved it to a place least expected.”

Gordon was lost, “Where was it?”

Jeff let out a slight huff of air, “The back of Alan’s closet.”

Damn. Dammit dammit damn. Why wasn’t that obvious?

With a grip gentler than Gordon remembered he had, he took the box from Jeff. As he was examining the contents, he was able to smile at his father, “Thanks, Dad, this is exactly what I wanted.”

Jeff laid a hand on his son’s shoulder, squeezing softly, “I’ve left this family to take care of itself twice in my lifetime, it was the least I could do. May I ask why you need them?”

The least I could do: goddamn was this family a hive mind sometimes. That didn’t stop Gordon from asking his burning question, “How quickly can we make these waterproof?”

It took all of half a second for Jeff to raise his eyebrows in confusion, followed by one of his trademark grins.

Oh yeah, the Tracy family was coming back

---

“Shhh Allie, keep it on.”

Alan rolled his eyes. Whenever Gordon blindfolded him it always ended poorly. Whether the ultimate bad ending would come to Alan or Gordon completely depended on how previously well-thought-out Gordon planned this to be. Regardless, Alan needed to do something other than chores and college applications since there was none of it left for today. He was getting so good it was kind of bad. In fact, one of the first things he did was drown himself in his work to the point that everything he missed in his captivity was done within the first three days of being back.

And here the public thought Alan and his father had nothing in common.

Alan felt Gordon’s hands on his shoulders the entire time they walked together. Eventually, they paused as Gordon needed to open the door to the outside, which was a great sign, by the way. Alan’s ears were picking up every little noise, including each of the thunks their feet made down the stairs, as well as the whistling of the wind blowing through their hair. Alan didn’t need to take off the blindfold to know it was night. The last thing Alan was looking at before Gordon scared the shit out of him with the blindfold from nowhere was the clock, 10:04 PM.

The thunks suddenly became less hollow, signaling they were on solid ground. It took Alan a couple of seconds longer than he would’ve liked to realize that Gordo was walking them straight towards the pool. Alan, remembering all the times he’d been shoved in it, started to fight back. Only minorly, though, like a baby wolf trying to overtake the Alpha of the pack. In the end, it didn’t matter, as Gordon stopped both of them with a slight push downward on Alan’s shoulders, signaling he didn’t need to walk anymore.

Gordon took his hands away and started speaking when he saw Alan wasn’t going anywhere. He walked around to the front of his brother, “So… this might be a long shot, but you remember those ‘starry lights’ we played with all the time?”

Alan blinked a few times behind the blindfold. Yeah, he did remember them. It was a huge staple between them. The days it got hard, or cold, or when it seemed like nothing would get better, they would pull those lights out and forget everything else. It felt like they were surrounded by a blanket of hope.

Gordon first wanted to do it in some random room at their old house two years after their mother passed, but quiet Alan suggested they go out to the woods. He flapped his tiny hands, and to paraphrase what he said, We’ll have more room! Plus, the real stars will make it even cooler!

From then on, it was just another thing between the two of them. They pulled the lights out when one of them was sad and the other wanted to cheer them up. After their mother’s death, after failing a test at school, after Dad’s disappearance, after Gordon’s hydrofoil crash…

Gordon will forever be grateful for Alan’s ability to be a little piece of shit. He’ll never know how the kid snuck the box into the hospital and he hoped he never found out. The hospital staff wasn’t as thrilled by the lights hung up around the room. Gordon was pretty sure he saw the pic up on ‘Five at one point, though, so at least someone appreciated their talents.

Right, the important matter at hand. Gordon needed to work on his rambling-when-stressed problem, “Well, Allie Allie Allie, guess what I found?”

Before Alan could tilt his head, the blindfold was untied from his head by Gordon. It fell off his face to reveal said older brother standing directly in front of him with a grin on his face that said, ‘you’re not going to believe this.’ Once Gordon saw Alan’s attention was completely on him, he stepped out of the way quickly so Alan’s line of focus could stay on what was in front of him and not just on his brother.

Alan’s breath caught in his throat.

Gordon smirked at his brother’s flabbergasted look, “You know how they say how the ocean isn’t that much different than deep space? Well, I think I found a way to make them even closer.”

Alan held his hand out in front of him only slightly. He was worried if he moved anything that the beautiful sight in front of him would go away. Those wonderful, amazing lights were all submerged in the pool in various spots near the bottom, the refractions making it look like there were twice as many. The pool looked like it had a weird, unique case of the chickenpox. It was breathtaking.

Little puffs of Alan’s breath were condensing into the familiar white clouds in front of his face due to the chill, but he didn’t care. The sight in front of him was much more important. Before he could sign a thank you, or maybe even just cry (which he would hate, thank God for interruptions), Gordon slung an arm around Alan’s shoulders, catching the freckled boy’s attention again.

Gordon waited for those wide, blue eyes to look at him directly before beginning, “I can’t even begin to imagine what happened up there. Part of me wants to be selfish and never come up with thoughts even close to that kind of shit, but… it’s not fair to you.”

Alan blinked and was suddenly turned 90 degrees to be standing front-to-front with Gordon. The older brother continued speaking when he put his hands on Alan’s shoulders, stretching his arms out to their full length, “You don’t… you don’t have to talk about everything, I know that first hand, but… don’t shut us out. You’re not a burden, you’re not a problem, I know that’s a thought of yours that’s been made worse by that bastard but the last thing I want is to--”

Gordon choked off his words due to a mixture of rage and pure sadness bubbling within. Suddenly, he couldn’t look Alan in the eyes anymore, “I just don’t want to fail you any more than I already have.”

Gordon looked down at their feet to watch some of his tears fall to the ground and splish-splash on the concrete. Dammit, he promised a lot of things (mainly himself) that he would be strong for this, but he supposes he was never the best at taking things seriously.

Gordon’s breath hitched at the feeling of two small hands on his cheeks. Those same hands brought his face back up to look at Alan sadly grinning, his own tears starting to form in his blue eyes. Before Gordon could curse himself out for failing this plan so spectacularly, his heart stopped in a good way at a tiny admission, a verbal one.

“Please… don’t make… me cry, too…”

Holy shit. Part of Gordon’s brain thought, ‘sweet, it only took a few weeks, a new record!’ but the other part, the big brother one day I’ll be better than Scott! part leaped a hundred feet in the air out of pure joy. With a laugh, Gordon yanked Alan into his arms and squeezed tight. Alan simply returned the gesture, albeit his arms were around Gordon’s waist, nor was his grip as strong. They did both have tear tracks on their cheeks, however.

Alan was still there. He was still their selfless, annoying, little bro, and he might not be fully back, but it was enough to know that not even the fucking Hood could take him away from them.

It would take a while to get back to normal. Scott would still pass out due to exhaustion from time to time until he fully realized it was all over, John, while not physically up on ‘Five, would take a while to fully come back down to Earth, Virgil was going to be found at that damn piano bench more than in his own room, and God only knew how Kayo or even Dad was going to react as the days went forward.

But they would get there. The Terrible Two were going to make sure of it, one prank at a time.

#fabfivefeb #fabfivefeb2020 #gordon tracy #alan tracy #jeff tracy #scott tracy #thunderbirds #thunderbirds are go #fanfiction #fanfic #my post #my fic #series: rules of alchemy

22 notes · View notes

lengiesofrps · 4 years

Note

Dorito

who uses their words to fight people and who uses their fists

Neither one of them use their fists to fight people and they aren’t really good about using their words either. They’re both pretty non-confrontational and do their best not to make waves, but when it comes down to it, Mari is more likely to stand up to people. It just comes with the territory of having four siblings and too many first cousins to count.

who’s more likely to hog the blankets

Kiley. Mari has had to share beds on and off again with relatives for her whole life and is used to the idea of having to share a blanket. Kiley is an only child and the concept is entirely new to her. Mari often wakes up to find that Kiley has stolen all of the blankets and made herself a blanket cocoon.

who bakes and who cooks

Mari is definitely the cook in the relationship; if left to her own devices, Kiley tries to feed Mari frozen or freeze dried meals. Mari loves cooking and runs a food blog, so she is constantly trying new dishes. Baking is more of an activity that they do together. They have to be in the mood for the precision that baking requires, but when they are in the mood, they’ll spend the whole day baking bread and pastries. They get especially crazy during the holidays, since Mari’s family goes all out, so they spend a lot of time in December baking for her many, many relatives.

who’s a sucker for matching couple things

Both of them. Not as an every day occurrence, but for special occasions they do have some couple-y clothes that they’ll break out. One of their favorites while they’re in California is wearing couple’s shirts to Disney. They have a set that says “Too Infinity” and “And Beyond,” as well as a set that features Mickey & Minnie leaning in for a kiss between the two shirts. The shirts are super corny, but they both love it.

who’s more likely to give the silent treatment when they’re upset

Kiley, but it’s not out of ill intention. Things tend to bother her more and her depression makes her doubt herself more, leading her to being quiet while she tries to sort her emotions out. Mari always gives her space to work through stuff on her own before they talk things out, which isn’t in her natural order, but she doesn’t want to put more pressure on Kiley.

who picks the obnoxious tracks (rainbow road) on mario kart

Mari allows Kiley to pick the tracks more often than not. Sometimes Kiley needs more relaxed courses and other times she’s okay with throwing the difficult tracks into the mix. Mari never wants to pick something that Kiley isn’t feeling up to that day and she’s fine letting Kiley take the wheel. That doesn’t mean she’s going to take it easy after the tracks are selected though; she’s playing to win.

who’s more likely to go on a health food kick

Both of them have their tendencies, depending on what’s going on in their lives. For Mari, it’s more an instance of discovering some type of healthy cuisine that she loves and eating nothing but that type of food for a month until she gets tired of it. For Kiley, it’s usually after she’s had a bout of depression and is trying to make up for all of the pre-packaged food that she had while she wasn’t feeling up to making anything else. She’s also vegetarian so, in general, her food tends to be healthier than what Mari eats on a regular basis.

who has better “puppy dog eyes”

Kiley does an excellent puppy dog eye. Mari’s is always way overdramatic and she winds up looking slightly ridiculous ( not that Kiley still doesn’t give in). Kiley has the move perfected though; just the right amount of pout, the perfect tilt to her head. Honestly, it reminds Mari of when Puss in Boots gives his patented kitty eyes in Shrek. It works every time.

who’s better at being a functional adult

They’re both good at being functioning adults. Both of them are prepared enough going to college and they both know how to work hard for what they want. That’s one of the things that drew them together, since they shared the dream of going to the same university and they know how hard it is to get into the school. They might not have everything figured out, but they’re good at working through their problems and they have each other to lean on when times get rough.

who’s more introverted and who’s more extroverted

Kiley is more introverted. She doesn’t like going to sporting events or parties or anything where there’s a really large gathering of people. Mari is pretty much the opposite; she’s always going out with her friends to places and was raised in a really loud family, so gatherings always feel like coming home to her. They are pretty good at compromising though; Kiley will go to smaller parties or events with Mari and Mari will choose nights to stay at home with Kiley so that they can cuddle and watch tv. They don’t have to do everything together, so there are also nights when they do their own things and then get to be happy when they reunite at the end of the evening.

#ship: dorito #ravenswoodofrp #answered

2 notes · View notes

lanamemories2 · 4 years

Text

clip clops in on horseback wearing a pointy little dunces hat n sipping frm a rly long crazy straw tht says ‘goblin’ w all of the swirls. Hlo. i’m nai n it’s rly nice to meet u all!!! 23 n she/ha pronouns. i’m one of the three admins here (cleo lazuli on the main) n i’m literally So Excited to get started i cld honestly beat my chest like caesar the ape over it. more abt lana under the cut!!! also like this or hmu if u wna plot n her pinterest is here ��🌚

『KRISTINE FROSETH ❙ CIS-FEMALE』 ⟿ looks like LANA JAMESON is here for HER JUNIOR year as a DANCE student. SHE is 21 years old & known to be VIVACIOUS, ALLURING, CHILDISH & IMPULSIVE. They’re living in NOLAND, so if you’re there, watch out for them. ⬳ NAI. 23. GMT. SHE/HER.

AESTHETICS:

scalding your fingers in shower water until they glow like rudolph’s nose, cherry red gym socks tugged high and nothing else, stepping out into a cold breeze in just spaghetti strapped silk, a red lightening stripe painted over your eye like a new take on the scarlet letter, crowning each finger with a miniature raspberry, hugging a knee close to lick a stripe of fruit juice off the bruised cap, doodling penises in condensation instead of sitting still, a water pistol topped with rum and covered in glittery pin-up stickers, believable smiles that feel more like baring teeth, playing where’s waldo with your lipstick in the crowd of a party and finding red on at least six people’s mouths, a bumper sticker on the back of a convertible cadillac that says ‘SCRAPPY DOO IS A FILTHY SLUT’, prancing around in your underwear to a vinyl record with the curtains open.

HISTORY:

lana grew up in a big house in albany, NY. i picture it w dark oak floors n lots of light furniture. albums framed on walls. mayb some rolling stone covers too frm way bk when of the bands her dad’s label signed. kind of like… a rock star palace w no evidence of children at all. i think i described it best in one of lana’s self paras once when i said the garden ws “as big as it was unloved”

lana’s mum victoria (vic) ws a music journalist w a pretty fruitful career ahead of her when she met lana’s dad richard (rich). his record label ws jst starting out, founded on the coattails of his rich best friend’s (jensen peters) investment w his other best friend (who he jst calls knoxville). it rocketed to success when they signed poppy injects, a rock band w an electric stage presence, n victoria ws drawn to the glitz n glamour of a man tht ws at the helm of his aspiring industry. their love ws very impulsive, all or nothing right frm the start, n it ws almost like she ws mre in love w his accomplishments n what he represented than him. jst a leetle bit Fractured in its intentions.

anyway so jameson records repped a few big rock bands bk in the eighties, altho poppy injects r who they’re mostly known fr, namely bc of hw brightly they crashed n burned. they were a big chart success bt the lead singer hd quite an intense struggle w heroin (wsnt rly subtle abt it either while he ws in the public eye as u cn probably imagine frm such an on-the-nose band name) n he ws always in n out of the papers. it eventually brought down his career n it ws a big publicity nightmare

lana pretty much… grew up around figures like this throughout childhood. rly troubled characters who wld kind of… b extremely volatile n destructive abt their troubles. the jameson house was kind of an open one as welcoming clients went n a lot of parties took place there. a lot of the time musicians wld b snorting lines in the kitchen when she wnted to grab a bowl of cereal fr breakfast n it was just. a very strange environment fr a child to grow up in

her parents always kind of jst… didn’t like her much. her older brother caleb ws unplanned bt they sort of welcomed the surprise more bt… quickly realised they weren’t cut out fr parenthood n then when lana came as another surprise 3 yrs later they didn’t even try to hide their resentment abt the situation. her mum ws actually booked in to have an abortion bt cldnt go through with it at the last minute. once when lana asked her why shes so cold towards her she jst turned her head frm her dresser, looked at her, told her abt this n said “idk why i didn’t go”. lana didn’t kno wht to say to tht so she jst left her room n closed the door

(dissociation tw) bc of this growing up lana adopted this weird like…. she didn’t rly kno what it ws bt it ws a delusion of sorts where she thought she ws a ghost. she’d jst sort of… drift around the halls w noone acknowledging her n sometimes she ws jst convinced she wsnt actually there or they cldnt see her n she ws jst haunting the house frm a previous family

the one saving grace tho tht sort of?? gt her thru this n made her feel Seen ws caleb. lana quite genuinely hs always thought the sun shines out of her older brothers ass like she jst thinks. hes the best person in the entire world. wld b rly bewildered if anyone questioned tht. he wld always look out for her in the zoo they called a home n cut the crusts off her sandwiches (he’d cook fr them most of the time bc their parents were too busy/didn’t care to) n sometimes wld even sleep at the bottom of her bed curled up like a guard dog. it ws always lana n caleb n his best friend tommy against the world in tht house (tommy lived next door n was always over bc he had very strict parents including a military father tht he found suffocating)

SO when caleb n tommy announced tht they’d signed up to the army lana ws understandably…….. completely blindsided. she ws rly upset tht they were leaving bt she tried not to b mad at them n made them promise theyd b safe n back as soon as possible. she even asked if they cld somehow take her w them n they were jst like :/ it doesn’t work that way luv x

(death tw, ptsd tw, grief tw, trauma tw, hospitalisation tw, drugs tw) anyway caleb ended up getting discharged under grounds of severe ptsd when he witnessed tommy die in an explosion tht took place in a shock raid. caleb returned home sans tommy bt he was never the same after tht. he’s been in and out of hospital twice nw n he’s currently dipped off the radar after starting to use. lana kind of felt like two of her brothers died out there in a way n jst like tht it wasn’t them vs the world any mre, it was jst her. she doesn’t talk abt this tho. when she feels the urge to cry she usually jst smiles

ANYWAY whew tht rly…. took a dark turn there….. chuckles nervously at hw sad lana’s life is bt it’s fine it’s all fINE!!!!!!! ok. so on a mre lighthearted note the jameson family r pretty well off n bc of her relation to such a big music industry figure she’s hung out w a fair few relatively high rep ppl thru her teens. mostly kids of celebrities n stuff like tht. she amassed kind of an instagram following mainly fr her style (v penny lane-esque in some aspects aka lots of fur cuff trimmed jackets bt then also jst…. a wild combination of everything honestly. pastel faux fur coats, seventies style platforms, flame red cowboy boots, pink fishnet tights n glitter used like highlight Everywhere) n bc she’s undeniably Very Pretty

(trauma tw) after caleb got back he was rly withdrawn n depressed. he shut lana out n was kind of harsh to her a lot of the time, always telling her to leave him alone or pushing her away. it didnt help either tht lana had a rly traumatic experience w some of her dad’s colleagues at the label when she ws 16 n he was away n she cldnt even tell him abt it once he was bk bc of his own traumas. she kind of jst shut it all in n kept it to herself

(hypersexuality tw) this obviously?? made her spiral a lot. she was already a girl tht loved sex (she’d only rly done foreplay before tho) but since her trauma it got…. completely out of hand. it got to a point where she couldnt rly go 2 days without it, probably not even 1. her lowest point has probably been scrolling thru craiglist for anonymous encounters n meeting up w strangers on there fr a quick fuck jst for the thrill even tho it’s insanely dangerous n she cld wind up getting herself killed. it’s v clear at this point tht she has a sex addiction whether she’s ever admitted it or not. it kind of… almost mingled w tht same feeling she used to get when she ws younger of being a ghost?? like she jst. only rly feels Real when she’s being touched

(violence tw) a mre recent point of history is her involvement w danny nielsen (an evil npc of mine who is possibly the antichrist??? pending investigation). he attended radcliffe n lived in a house w a group of guys near campus. it wsn’t a registered frat bt he essentially…ran it like one it ws kind of a weird set-up where he ws the King Of The Roost. essentially he found out tht lana n a guy called zeke slept together n he ended up beating him to near death in front of her bc his pride ws rly bruised since they were meant to be dating (if u can call it tht bc danny’s idea of dating is very Warped). ANYWAY he ws found guilty n sent to jail so it ws like Intense n a gd example of the kinds of disastrous relationships she gets herself into. perks of being a wallflower voice: We Accept The Love We Think We Deserve.

PERSONALITY:

always smells vaguely of wild cherries or strawberry starburst or jst the candy aisle in general. if she ws a vinyl record she’d b this one n she’d only play good vibrations by the beach boys, dancing on my own by robyn, play that funky music by wild cherry, femme fatale by the velvet underground n (i can’t get no) satisfaction by the rolling stones

deliberately puts on tht kind of Magnetic Alluring Act tht femme fatales wear in movies w most ppl. kind of…. is always playing A Role of the person tht she wants to b seen as. chameleons to situations. feels like she’s performed as the vivacious n fun loving Lana Jameson fr so long tht she doesn’t rly kno who she is beneath tht bt she isn’t too keen to find out

she’s always been rly spontaneous n adventurous. always doing something weird n wild every weekend. she has ten thousand ridiculously absurd n chaotic stories

always dapples her fingers thru the breeze when she’s driving in a car w the window down. she almost always has some sort of sweet on her, whether it’s sour haribo cherries or strawberry lollipops.

she adores david bowie n prince n madonna n anyone tht’s a vintage style icon w little care fr what ppl think.

daisies n poppies r her fav flowers bc daisies r wild n overlooked n poppies r the first thing u look at in a green field. she’s had like 8472493874 ‘relationships’ n none of them hav lasted beyond a month / hav been terrible / hav seen her being treated badly / she’s cheated on them. i dnt think she’s actually ever been w anyone she hasn’t cheated on in some form or another

PLOTS:

exes tht lana’s fucked over hideously. she’d probably cheat a lot and it’d be a whole…mess.

mayb someone tht flipped the switch and cheated on her?

a cousin plot cld b fun too. a friend tht lana fel out w bc she slept w their significant other.

a fake dating plot cld b fun honestly

someone tht’s getting lana into drugs?? she’s kind of impressionable/down for anything so tht’s a likely scenario she’d get into tbh

an unrequited crush!! (either way is cool)

someone tht is just hanging out w her/using her bc she has a lot of instagram followers or they want to b signed to her dad’s label

someone in a band!! she’d probably make like penny lane n b their groupie/sleep w them all fgjkshgkh

umm a good influence too mayb?

oh and a past summer romance/fling tht cld either have meant a lot or not have meant anything at all. bonus points if both of them hav a diff viewpoint on it.

honestly?? anything is fine i cld ramble for days. mayb even one of the high profile kids she grew up hangin w idk. world’s our oyster fellas!

#radintro #hypersexuality tw #trauma tw #hospitalisation tw #violence tw #death tw #grief tw #ptsd tw #dissociation tw #drugs tw #ok this is literally insatiably beefy bt. feel free to jst skip right to personality n plots #anyway shrieks in glee n hits post

13 notes · View notes

digitalhovel · 4 years

Text

A review of “Juno Steel,” a hilarious and emotionally-driven queer space opera

I recently began work as a DoorDash driver, and you know what that means: living in fear because you have to constantly expose yourself to shitheads who aren’t wearing masks? Yes. And also, lots of time in the car with nothing to do but listen to stuff. Which means I decided to go back and binge the first two seasons of one of my favorite podcasts, The Penumbra Podcast’s “Juno Steel” series. “Juno Steel” is an enjoyable, enthralling story about home, mental illness, and what it means to be good.

The Penumbra Podcast, created by Sophie Takagi Kaner and Kevin Vibert, is an anthology series that focuses on telling interesting stories while representing marginalized sexual, romantic, and gender identities. It began with a Twilight Zone-esque series of narratives, each with a different setting and characters, but they now run two main storylines: “The Second Citadel” (a fantasy setting examining prejudice and relationships) and “Juno Steel” (a dystopian space noir set in Hyperion City, Mars). The Penumbra Podcast is one of the first podcasts I ever listened to, and it’s still going strong.

The following contains spoilers for “Juno Steel” season one. If you want to give them a listen, try the remake of “Juno Steel and the Murderous Mask.” Episodes are 30-60 minutes, but the commitment is well worth it in the end.

The characterization in “Juno Steel” is one of the series’ strongest points. Juno Steel is a classic noir detective: determined, depressed, and damn stubborn. The first season of Juno Steel follows him as he uncovers a plot to harvest ancient Martian tech in order to kill the citizens of Hyperion City. Along the way, he develops a complicated relationship with a thief, Peter Nureyev, and their lives become inextricably linked. Juno is an ex-cop and struggles with several issues: trusting someone whose expertise is being untrustworthy, and also trusting literally anyone else. (Note: there is a brief, problematic moment between Juno Steel and a woman PI named Alessandra. I’ll explain at the bottom if you want a warning before listening.)

Juno Steel is blunt and focused on good, on solving the problem, on doing his best even if it kills him. He struggles to take into consideration the wants and cares of others, and he often jeopardizes his relationships by jumping to conclusions and acting before thinking. Peter Nureyev is suave, collected, and always has a plan. Their dynamic is incredibly fun to listen to because

1. The acting by Joshua Ilon (Juno) and Noah Simes (Nureyev), is incredible (as is the work of everyone in the cast), and the writing carries their chemistry incredibly well

2. They are forced into situations where each must give up their expertise and authority to help the other

This challenges their pre-conceived notions of the world, and it gives their characters places to develop and grow throughout the season. It also provides rife opportunities for comedy. Juno is sardonic and blunt, and Nureyev is witty and concise. Every character has a distinct voice, a distinct sense of excitement, and a distinct humor that makes each episode worth listening to as the creators tackle various tropes in the genre and spin an exciting mystery. While Juno often has a low speaking tempo, his secretary Rita gives monologues in seconds. These small moments of contrast build a broad and unique cast that make every interaction dramatic, and often hilarious. These character beats continue to influence the characters in season two, as Juno has to begin grappling with his own senses of responsibility, his past, and his guilt as he continues trying to do good in the world.

This idea of ‘good’ pervades the message of both seasons of Juno Steel. The Juno of season one is obsessed with self-sacrifice and self-destruction. The creators have never been shy about Juno having mental illness, namely, depression. In his case, he lashes out at people who disagree with him and can’t see consequences of actions that aren’t his. Somehow, it’s always his fault. But the rest of the characters disagree with that philosophy. The Penumbra Pod presents a great deal of viewpoints on coping with feelings of grief, responsibility and guilt, from self-destruction to bottling it up and moving on to just trying to live every day to forget about the one before. No one is right, but the diversity of opinions provokes genuine thought in the listener. The show deals with heavy themes but the characters are grounded and deal with their grief, guilt, and fear in realistic and dynamic ways, letting the audience learn alongside Juno as his perspective slowly opens up.

The following contain serious spoilers for “Juno Steel,” season two.

It’s a testament to the writing that Juno learns from these lessons. In season two, he’s less self-destructive, but still driven to making the world a better place, fueled by his guilt and his past. Season two of Juno Steel features and more nuanced villain, Ramses O’Flaherty (heavily influenced by Walt Disney). Ramses wants to create a good world, plain and simple. The issue is, he thinks his version of good is universal, and he has the power and resources to try to enforce it with impunity. It’s a tense narrative that forces Juno to examine his own motivations for doing his job and perspectives regarding the place he calls home. He struggles between idealism and defeatism, even deciding whether violence is needed or useful in his line of work. But again, the core message of the series is simple: we can never make those changes alone. Only by working willingly with others and listening to them can Juno begin to decide what he considers to be good. While the political situation of “Juno Steel” season two doesn’t mimic our own (I wish our public leaders had only good intentions [they don’t]), it is an inspirational story about the value of trying to grow as a person and begin accepting help from others and trusting them when it’s needed. Because goodness is based in how we affect the world and the people around us. These days, found family can be more real than blood relations, and solidarity is the greatest path towards building a better world.

In short, The Penumbra Podcast is great. They’re telling interesting, unique, entertaining, queer, gender-diverse stories through personal and diverse lenses, and they’re doing a great job of it. “Juno Steel” has been influential in my life, both as validation for my emotional and psychological experiences, and my changing perspective as I try to learn about myself and do better all the time. Because Juno isn’t perfect. He makes mistakes; we all do. But we get to watch him learn, and in the process, maybe learn something about ourselves.

If you do listen to them and enjoy it, here’s a link to their website, where they host episodes (you can also find them on most podcast-listening mediums), and their Patreon.

*The creators of The Penumbra Podcast have addressed this, but in “Juno Steel and the Prince of Mars, part 1,” Juno non-consensually kisses Alessandra Strong. The writers have said they wish they hadn’t done it or could redo it because it’s a problematic noir trope, and they wrote it in to confirm that Juno is canonically bisexual. The incident does not come up again, and in future discussions, Juno and Alessandra have a relatively healthy working relationship. Some other concerns have been raised with their presentation of other relations on TPP, and the creators have acknowledged that they are also growing and trying to do the best to present their stories in a positive way, but they also can’t be made into pillars of the queer community. They have individual perspectives and are trying to reflect that. I, for one, believe them, and I hope you’ll still give their podcast a try.

#Juno steel #TPP #TPP spoilers #the penumbra podcast #review #gay #queer #podcast #hovelreviews #thedigitalhovel

2 notes · View notes

real-jaune-isms · 5 years

Text

White Rose Week Day 2: Role Reversal/Body Swap

The Rose Dust Company held the monopoly on energy propellant and combat use elemental Dust. A fact that it’s CEO Taiyang Rose took very seriously. He married Summer Rose for this very reason afterall, he wanted nothing more than to make a name for himself... though he would be lying if he said he didn’t also love his wife. But their marriage came with baggage, as Taiyang Xiao Long was already a divorcée with a young daughter at the time.

Summer loved her new step daughter, she really did. But she wanted a child of her own, and little Yang would never fit the bill to be the heiress to the company. So Ruby Rose was born of their rocky marriage, and raised with the firm intention of being a proper lady who could inherit the massive company her father was doing his best to run smoothly. And he did so rather well.

Whereas some might have resorted to cheap cruel employment of the marginalized Faunus population, he offered anyone and everyone a fair and safe employment. It was still a dangerous job working the mines, that came with the territory. But working smarter was the best way to get where the company ultimately should be, he thought. The Faunus were still the majority of those who took the jobs, there was such a great need for employment that they couldn’t be picky. But Taiyang made sure to spare very little expense in housing them in relative comfort and making the work safe. And so the empire grew, its reputation mild but formidable for how quickly it took over the industry.

The company’s was not the only reputation that grew, as the daughters of its CEO made names for themselves as time went by. Yang understood that her parentage prevented her from taking up the family business, so she threw herself headlong into the second biggest industry in Remnant, being a Huntress and enrolling at Beacon Academy. Many wondered why she chose Beacon over Atlas, though her fiery personality and flashy manner of dressing discouraged all but the brave from approaching her to ask. Her name and status was able to afford her some luxuries however, such as entry to any nightclub she wished and the money to develop her own huntress weapons. She went with something a bit barbaric for what people would have expected however, guns built into a pair of gauntlets. Still, it got the job done just fine and she became quite the brawler.

Meanwhile the Rose heiress grew into a fine young lady in her own right. Her singing voice wasn’t selling out concert halls, but what did was her years of training with the violin. It was a great activity to keep her hands busy and her mind focused on a single action. And if it could entertain the masses, then why not put on shows? She had had pretty bad stage fright at first, but soon overcame it. But in the back of her mind, there had always been a passion to do more. Her mother would tell her bedtime stories about her own younger days as a huntress, before she had needed to settle down and run the company alongside her husband. But what adventures she had been on made for the best tales of danger and thrills, and Ruby very much wanted to see such sights and do more for the public than she could locked up in private studies or practicing her instrument. She wanted to spend her few young years of freedom from responsibility doing something to help everyone. She wanted to be a Huntress too. And it might have helped that she was so inspired by her half sister’s own exploits and their close bond. Ruby looked up to her sister just as much as her own mom, and she wanted to be just like them.

So she began enthusiastically and rigorously training on the side to wield a weapon and kill the creatures of Grimm. And she wanted to do it using her family’s Dust, so she used her natural technical know how and the mechanical training she had been given to help make sure she knew how the factory machines worked to make her own weapon, a giant mechanical scythe that shot Dust infused sniper bullets. Her training was a great success and her parents were very supportive of her pursuit. She made such great strides in fact that she was able to pass the admissions test to all 4 huntsman academies at the age of 15. She had her pick of schools... but she chose Beacon so she could fight alongside her sister and show the world what the Rose family was made of. Of course... growing up in this kind of family, with such privilege and expectation to be the best would make anyone a bit full of themself...

Meanwhile, the Schnee family lived in the small island of Patch off the coast of Vale. Their patriarch was only barely so, a bitter jaded man who lost his wife to alcoholism a decade ago and took his frustrations out on his two daughters and his son. They had been a happy family once, yes. But after young Whitley was born, the postpartum depression hit Willow Schnee rather hard and she drowned herself in the bottle, so to speak. Jacques Schnee resented that his children were by no fault of their own responsible for the loss of their mother, so he avoided them far more than he should in favor of his job as a teacher and when they were all in the same place he very rarely spoke kindly of them. If they were going to keep existing in this world, they had better make something useful of their lives. Winter, the eldest, had a decade of fond memories of her mother and tried her best to act as a parental figure in her stead. She was kind and strict in equal measures when the situation called for it. Weiss had a few good memories to hold onto, mostly bedtime stories of fairy tale princesses who found handsome princes and fell in love and went of to live in fancy castles instead of little houses in the middle of nowhere. She quite liked the idea of that, but sometimes she wondered why it had to be a prince. Why not two princesses?

The youngest, poor little Whitley, knew very little about his mom but learned all that she had imparted on his big sisters. The three were all perfectly fine and happy children, but they were all certainly realists about how harsh the world could be. Winter enlisted in the Atlesian army as soon as she was able, claiming she wanted to make the world that much safer for her family and the population at large. Weiss likewise wanted to get out of the house and away from her father asap, but didn’t want to go too far for the sake of keeping an eye on Whitely should he need anything. So Beacon Academy was the best choice. Willow had apparently been something of a craftsman in her younger days, and had made two lovely swords that she left to her daughters. Myrtenaster was a rapier with the capability to use Dust in the blade, though there were certainly limited funds to buy enough different types at a consistent rate. But the three pooled their money, earned through hard work at various community odd jobs, to send Weiss off with enough Dust to fill the weapon for the time being. So off she went, to make a name for herself and give some measure of honor to the Schnee name. If only she had been watching where she was going as she arrived at the impressive castle-like structure of Beacon...

*CRASH* went the cart full of suitcases as Weiss tumbled into it and fell to the ground. “Ouch...” she muttered, before hearing a shrill yell. “Careful with that, you dolt! There’s enough dust in there to be worth triple what you’ll make in a lifetime!” Weiss looked up to see a girl in a rather formal looking red combat outfit, complete with a combat skirt much like her own. “I’m sorry, I was just taking in the view...” “Sorry wouldn’t mean anything if you blew up and cost my family thousands! Just trying to warn you, okay?” Ruby responded, being aware enough to see this girl was truly sorry and had no ill will, but still wanting to keep her property safe. “Well you could be a bit nicer about it, Princess...” Weiss grumbled as she wiped the dirt off her clothes and stood up, trying to help load the bags back on the cart. “This really is a lot of Dust though.. where did you get all of it?” “From the family mines of course. I AM Ruby Rose of the Rose Dust company of course~”

That got Weiss’ attention very quickly, and she spun back around to look at the quasi-celebrity. “Wow, I’ve heard a lot about your company! How you’ve revolutionized the market and all manner of technology for mining and using Dust! It’s so nice to meet you, I’m Weiss Schnee!” She stuck out a hand, and Ruby smiled at the praise she was getting and shook it. “Good to meet you too, Weiss. Sorry for the snappiness, just really don’t want any accidents with this stuff...” “I understand, I researched this stuff a lot in preparation for coming here. Why are you here though? I mean, a prodigy huntress and heiress to the largest company in the world, why go to school in Vale?” “Mostly? My mom.” Ruby replied with a shrug, neither girl realizing they were still holding hands. They soon did though, and let go with a blush. “Well... same here.” Weiss said with a bit of melancholy to her voice. “She’s... no longer with us and her dream was to make weapons that professional huntresses would use to protect the world. So my sister and I enlisted at academies and use our mom’s swords to do just that.”

Ruby smiled at that. “A noble ambition. My mom was a huntress before she got married, and my big sister wants to be one too. So I figured why not spend some time in the family business before I have to settle into... the other family business?” Weiss nodded. “Makes sense to me. So, should we go to the main hall for orientation?” “I think we should. I also think this is the start of a great friendship...” And indeed it was, though it would end up being so much more.

#white rose week #white rose #ruby rose #weiss schnee #white rose week 2019 #white rose week day 2 #day 2: role reversal/body swap #taiyang xiao long #summer rose #yang xiao long #jacques schnee #willow schnee #winter schnee #whitley schnee

83 notes · View notes

lanamemories · 4 years

Text

crash lands a giant animatronic john travolta (wild hogs era complete w a receding hairline n leather jacket) onto the dash n dismounts frm his back without any explanation as to my vehicle...... helo........ nw tht i’ve made the world’s most unsettling entrance i wil? introduce myself. i’m nai n i’m 23 n live in Manchestoh (typed w a fitting n blood curdlingly british accent). my pronouns r she/her n i currently want a pet baby yoda i can feed strawberries to n tuck into a tiny baby yoda sized bed. anyway. lana’s pinterest can b found HERE n more abt her is under the cut!!

KRISTINE FROSETH / CIS-FEMALE — don’t look now, but is that lana jameson i see? the 21 year old dance student is in their sophomore year and she is a rochester alum. i hear they can be exuberant, alluring, childish and impulsive, so maybe keep that in mind. i bet she will make a name for themselves living in murphy’s beach homes. ( nai. 23. gmt. she/her. )

aesthetics: scalding your fingers in shower water until they glow like rudolph’s nose, cherry red gym socks tugged high and nothing else, stepping out into a cold breeze in just spaghetti strapped silk, a red lightening stripe painted over your eye like a new take on the scarlet letter, crowning each finger with a miniature raspberry, hugging a knee close to lick a stripe of fruit juice off the bruised cap, doodling penises in condensation instead of sitting still, a water pistol topped with rum and covered in glittery pin-up stickers, believable smiles that feel more like baring teeth, playing where’s waldo with your lipstick in the crowd of a party and finding red smudges on at least six people’s mouths, a bumper sticker on the back of a convertible cadillac that says ‘SCRAPPY DOO IS A FILTHY SLUT’, prancing around in your underwear to a vinyl record with the curtains open.

BACKGROUND:

this obviously?? made her spiral a lot. she was already a girl tht loved sex (she’d only rly done foreplay before tho) but since her trauma it got…. completely out of hand. it got to a point where she couldnt rly go 2 days without it, probably not even 1. her lowest point has probably been scrolling thru craiglist for anonymous encounters n meeting up w strangers on there fr a quick fuck jst for the thrill even tho it’s insanely dangerous n she cld wind up getting herself killed. it’s v clear at this point tht she has a sex addiction whether she’s ever admitted it or not. it kind of… almost mingled w tht same feeling she used to get when she ws younger of being a ghost?? like she jst. only rly feels Real when she’s being touched

(violence tw) a mre recent point of history is her involvement w danny nielsen (an evil npc of mine who is possibly the antichrist??? pending investigation). he attended lockwood n lived in a house w a group of other guys. it wsn’t a registered frat bt he essentially…ran it like one it ws kind of a weird set-up where he ws the King Of The Roost. essentially he found out tht lana n zeke van doren (full name it’s official business Babey) slept together n he ended up beating him to near death in front of her bc his pride ws rly bruised since they were meant to be dating (if u can call it tht bc danny’s idea of dating is very Warped). ANYWAY he ws found guilty n sent dwn bt the trial ws only recent so. it was just intense all around. crosses my fingers across my chest to ward off his Evil

PERSONALITY:

growing up lana was always a huge social butterfly. knew everyone n everyone knew her. she ws one of those girls tht ws kind of impossible to ignore or forget. very animated, always made u feel like u were the centre of the universe whenever she spoke to u, always made it feel like u were best friends even if ud only spoken to her once. she has this magnetic way abt her tht is kind of hard to find in real life. it’s something ud only rly expect out of a movie character n she like. deliberately puts tht on sort of. kind of…. is always playing A Role of the person tht she wants to b seen as. chameleons to situations. feels like she’s performed as the vivacious n fun loving Lana Jameson fr so long tht she doesn’t rly kno who she is beneath tht bt she isn’t too keen to find out

she’s always been rly spontaneous n adventurous. always doing something weird n wild every weekend. she has ten thousand stories tht always earn a laugh or a gasp over how ridiculously absurd they r

uncontrollably flirty. boundlessly confident. cld make a joke out a paper bag n her comedy is sometimes surreal / absurd. she tends to laugh when she feels like crying n has a smile brighter than a ray of texas sunshine. always dapples her fingers thru the breeze when she’s driving in a car w the window down. she almost always has some sort of sweet on her, whether it’s sour haribo cherries or strawberry lollipops. she adores david bowie n prince n madonna n anyone tht’s a vintage style icon w little care fr what ppl think. daisies n poppies r her fav flowers bc daisies r wild n overlooked n poppies r the first thing u look at in a green field. she’s had like 8472493874 ‘relationships’ n none of them hav lasted beyond a month / hav been terrible / hav seen her being treated badly / she’s cheated on them. i dnt think she’s actually been w anyone she hasn’t cheated on in some form or another

PLOTS:

exes tht lana’s fucked over hideously. she’d probably cheat a lot and it’d be a whole…mess. mayb someone tht flipped the switch and cheated on her? a cousin plot cld b fun too. a friend tht lana fel out w bc she slept w their significant other. someone tht’s getting lana into drugs?? she’s kind of impressionable/down for anything so tht’s a likely scenario she’d get into tbh. an unrequited crush!! (either way is cool). someone tht is just hanging out w her/using her bc she has a lot of instagram followers or they want to b signed to her dad’s label. someone in a band!! she’d probably make like penny lane n b their groupie/sleep w them all fgjkshgkh. umm a good influence too mayb? oh and a past summer romance/fling tht cld either have meant a lot or not have meant anything at all. bonus points if both of them hav a diff viewpoint on it. honestly?? anything is fine i cld ramble for days. mayb even one of the high profile kids she grew up hangin w idk. worlds our oyster fellas!

#huntingtonintro #trauma tw #hospitalisation tw #hypersexuality tw #ptsd tw #death tw #grief tw #drugs tw #dissociation tw #this is. kind of beefy honestly bt feel free to jst skip to her personality section bc that's all u rly need to kno unless ur Curious!!

8 notes · View notes

leekiings · 5 years

Text

dumb thing i saw on twitter but i wanted to do it

dear ex - thanks for everything. i know you were going through some stuff when we were together, and anxiety got the best of me. i didn't want to be associated with the things you were doing. obviously things have changed since, and you've gotten a lot better since freshman and sophmore. you've gotten a lot smarter, i know that's super cheesy or whatever but in high school, we make dumb decisions, so. i'm happy we didn't at least end on a bad note and that we still talk and still appreciate each other. i wish we talked a little more though. we used to be so involved into each other's lives, it's crazy.

dear self - you've come a long way since probably 2017. you're mental health has gotten a lot better, and even though you still have those pretty bad days, you've been able to over come every one of them. i'm glad you finally had the opportunity to go on T; i know it's something you really wanted. i hope we both found a place to feel at home though, soon. that's the next step in this journey of life. keep going. no matter how times you think people don't care about you, they do. you're gonna be okay. your anxiety and your depression and all the other mental stuff going through your head, it doesn't define you. you're a handsome young man with a lot of potential. you're gonna do so much in life and you're going to accomplish so much. you're gonna be happy and radiating with light. be what no one thought you could be.

dear mom and dad - first of all, i'm your son, not your fucking daughter. being the oldest put a lot of emotional and physical baggage on me. it's why i have so much anxiety and depression. you didn't know how to raise a kid, and i had to take the fall for it so my siblings didn't have to have literal ptsd symptoms. you never cared about my well being, only my grades in school. i never got to live my life as a kid because you kept me in the house 24/7, and i find it unfair how my brother got to leave at 3am when he was 16. i never got to have friends. you're why i'm scared of everything. i have never thought of you as my parents. fuck you both.

dear crush - thanks for being there for me. i really appreciate all the video chats and the phone calls and the 3am texts, even if we can't do it often cause you're usually busy. you're the sweetest person, and you're the only few i've really ever felt a connection to. i want the best for you, and i really hope we're friends for a long time. there's something that makes you stand out of the rest, and i can't explain it, but i really do love you. i hope you're doing okay.

dear past me - i'm so sorry you had to go through so much. i wish i could say they've made you stronger as a person, but i know you just end up getting more vunerable and hurt more easily. i wish you had friends or even anybody growing up so you didn't feel so alone. i'm sorry all of this cause you to have depression. i'm sorry you wanted to end your life, and almost did. please keep your head up. it's gonna get better soon. you're gonna live as the man you wanted to always be surrounded by people who love and care for you. also, your art does get better.

dear first love - 5th grade was a time. thanks for supporting me in my art all these years. thanks for dealing with shenangians and holding my hand in the hallways like we actually meant something at the time. but we were little. i'm glad we're still friends, you're probably the first person who i considered my best friend at such a young age, along with izzy.

dear future me - am i alive, did we make it? please tell me you're still doing art and that the art business is booming. do we have top surgery yet? do i have an actual beard now? are we still hanging out with theo and patrica, how are they doing? i just hope you're in a better place. i hope somehow things changed for the better.

dear best friend - thank you for everything. you've supported me through out my entire transition. i appreciate you dragging me out of my house, and all the late phone calls and texts when i'm feeling down, it really does mean a lot. you mean so much to me, and i want to see you grow into a wonderful man you were meant to live as. your girlfriend means just as much to me, but i'll be honest, your relationship makes me jealous sometimes! i love how you're able to speak your mind about anything without hesitation, it's something i admire in you. you've been through so much, but i'm so proud of you for overcoming all of it. you're such a fighter. i love you. i hope we get top surgery together. you're like my brother.

dear future child - if you exist, i don't know who's raising you with me, if it all. but i hope you know every time you call me "dad" or "daddy" or whatever will mean a lot to me. i'm going to raise you than my parents. i want for you to be able to talk to me, i don't want you to be scared of me. i want the best for you, truly, from the bottom of my heart. i'm gonna try and be for you for whatever, big or small. i want to make a strong connection with you. i want to be able to trust me. i want to able to see every important moment in your life. i swear i'll love you with all i have. i'll do whatever it takes. i'll make a million mistakes, but i want to show my parents there's a better to raise a child. i'm gonna try my best, for you, kiddo.

dear person i love - i wish i could tell you i love you, but there are certain situations that can't be changed. just know i want you to be happy. i'll always love you with every fiber in my body. i'll support you through anything and everything. i wish i could see you more. you mean so much to me and i try to express that in so many ways.

dear person i hate - hate is a strong word. we used to be so close. we used to be like brothers. everything stopped so fast, and everything hurt so bad. i feel like an idiot for contacting you twice after our downfall. but you had the worst patience in the world. i have a very intense bitterness for you, but even then, because i'm still a relatively nice person, i still hope you're okay because i get nostalgic sometimes, and i hate it. i know i'll never be fix the damage i gave you, but when you said i haven't changed, that fucking hurt. i have changed for the better, you just were never around to see it. i have nothing to prove to you, but i'm going to make it in life even if you doubt you. i don't know. i have mixed feelings for you cause we have so many good memories, but you're an asshole.

dear ex best friend - you gave me a lot of emotional distraught. all you did was talk about yourself. i was tired of being your vent friend. i only kept you around because i no one else, selfishly. you probably had good intentions, but i couldn't handle everything and your "encouraging pep talks" for depression was annoying. i'm sorry i was never honest with you, but you acted like a complete child sometimes. you kind of still do. you're always telling people to grow up when you haven't even done it yourself. you make a lot of stupid decisions, and i wish you would've taken my advice for a lot of things. please stop thinking you're a bad bitch, you're not. you're not as special as you think you are.

dear boyfriend/girlfriend - i don't have one as i'm typing, so i'm writing it for my (hypothetical) future partner, if we've gotten this far, i'm glad. i'm glad you trust me enough to have a relationship with me, that you saw something different in me that made you want to be with more than a usual person would. i'm sure you're giving me a lot of reassurance, but just know i'll put my heart into the relationship. will we have future together? i hope i bring joy in your life.

dear people who hate me - i try to be as respectful to people as possible, but you if you hate me, that's fine. just don't go out of your way to make my life worse or say it in my face or something, cause i don't care. your words and actions might hurt, but i got shit i need to do and i got places i need to be. i don't have time to waste on people who don't like me. i'm busy focusing on people who actually want to see me flourish in life. but anyways, i don't know why you'd hate me, or if you're just being petty lol.

1 note · View note

teacherintransition · 3 years

Text

A Heartbreaking Loss... How Are They to be Remembered?

When a loved one leaves us, it never a simple process; emotionally or pragmatically... it’s always bittersweet.

Memories or stuff? A balanced healing usually involves both.

Recently, my wife has endured the tragic loss of her mother. Annie was the 92 year old, always smiling, brilliant ray of sunshine matriarch of a family that stretched from the Gulf Coast, to the Red River border and was firmly settled here is East Texas. She was the last of a family of twelve brothers and sisters and raised many of their children with her own as well. Her immediate family included two daughters, a son, their spouses, seven grandchildren and six great grandchildren. Her health had been relatively good considering her age and she still lived alone in a little house in Lufkin. The fact that she was 92 escaped no one, but her loving demeanor and country wit was still a constant; so we knew the inevitable was coming, someday, but she was still ol’ Annie. The inevitable came in June, in her sleep, in her bed in her little house in Lufkin ... where she wanted to be.

I’ve lost both parents and a sister as well as two close friends who were brothers to me. In truth, my family didn’t have the close, loving reliance that Annie’s did ... I’d venture to say that few do... Nancy, Frank and Kim deeply loved and looked to their mother. It puzzled me how shocked and in disbelief they appeared when the time finally came, but then again my family relationships weren’t as sweet as was based more on logic than emotion. The immediate events following her passing kind of took care of themselves: funeral home, viewing, service, burial. One hurdle had been passed, but the little house in Lufkin sat quietly, filled with a lifetime of photos, cards, letters, Knick knacks and other “stuff.” I wrote stuff in quotation marks as stuff seems a shallow word when referring to a lifetime of memories and accumulated items.

Annie grew up country and she grew up poor of this our families had similar stories. Both Annie and my father’s family had nothing. Dad’s family sharecropped and lived in a hard scrabbled cabin part of which had been hollowed out of the mountain. Annie grew up in the Pollock area to a farming family in a home that lacked running water or electricity. She was born two years before the Great Depression, so the ensuing calamity was not overwhelming... when you have nothing ...you can’t lose nothing. As a consequence, Annie grew up holding onto everything, not even close to a miserly mindset, she held on to memories in any form. Stories, songs, photos, birthday cards, Christmas cards, newspaper clippings, funeral announcements, anything and everything that shared an event that meant something to her. In front of my wife and her siblings stood the daunting task of going through a lifetime of collecting. Nothing was overlooked and a story followed almost every item. The three of them would stop through mid organizing and engage in a twenty minute stroll down memory lane when they would come across a picture and a query started. “Who is that with Annie and Uncle Marvin?” .... then it was on... talk, tears and laughter. The material things were easy: couches, freezers, refrigerators, tables ...those things weren’t the treasure; it was the stuff in frames, on walls and put away in old shoe boxes that merited the attention. My mind works differently as our family was different. It could be frustrating to watch them go through the items, but in a way I was jealous that they could share so intimately and vividly as they worked their way through the life of Annie Laverne Hall.

Now the crux of this writing: how are people best remembered? I’m an historian and I know that our lives are fleeting instants through a constant flow of an infinitude of instants. The answers to the question of how we should/want to be remembered are as numerous as the stars and are likely to be free of any right or wrong, but most of us will be faced with this dilemma more than once. There is no implication to be made that Annie was a hoarder at all. She lived with the images of her life in close reach. She also didn’t turn away from adventure to account for her holding on to items of her life; her children gave her a wonderful life of travel for a country girl from Pollock. She lived in West Texas and East Texas, visited the gulf coast, traveled to Miami, Branson, the Grand Ol Opry, took cruises to Mexico, ate at fine restaurants in Houston and Dallas. Annie got around and it is a great source of pride to her children that they could do this for her.

There is a philosophical change afoot here in America and worldwide that stands in contrast to the mad accumulation of wealth and things from the 80’s. Much of this change stems from the fact economically the disparity between the haves and have nots has grown strikingly. Still, we live, we want happiness, we want joyous memories... thus the philosophical move towards, “accumulating experiences instead of things ... stuff.” My wife and I for the last ten years have approached life with this intent on our mind. We travel as much as we can and bring back fewer and fewer souvenirs, instead, we come back with stories shared with friends over a bottle of wine. I was once one of the many of legions of guys who would bring out the slide projector with slides of our last vacation to entertain guests. Thankfully, the internet and digitalization has made this practice a rarity. Through much study, I’ve reached the personal conclusion that orally sharing stories with friends and family harkens back to the ancient ways of sharing memories over a fire and a sharing of strong drink. Trinkets were part of the process and provided much insight into the lives of the people. We’re not playing archeologists here, just discussing how best to preserve the experiences we gather along a lifetime.

I have a couple of friends who took another approach: a concerted paring down of any material items. There are a number of reasons why one might take this approach: the previously mentioned experiences over things, a move away from mindless consumerism, a practice to be more environmentally sensitive all of which are sound reasons to “minimize” the tangible evidence of one’s existence. It need not be an extreme paring down on “stuff” most cultures live smaller and less ostentatiously focusing less on “keeping up with Jones’s.” There is an extreme to this path as negative as massive consumerism as I see took place with one of my friends mentioned previously. Without going into too much detail as this friend could create volumes of stories much like Annie. There was a feeling among many of this gentleman’s friends that it appeared as if he were removing himself from existence. His circle of friends became smaller and smaller, contact with family more and more rare. When he left this world, there was little left to prove he was here and fewer people who socialized with him on a regular basis. His choice... as I stated, the ways of being remembered are as countless as the stars. This approach, as valid as most others, I think comes from a place of hurt. As the saying goes, “no man is an island” and there obligations that many feel we have to stay a part of the lives of our families and true friends. There is always someone who needs us and they will remember if you were there or away.

Truth be told, the idea of remembering or being remembered can be a futile exercise in practicality and arrogance if pushed too far. All our hurts, worries, tears, adventures, laughter, loves all individually get washed away in what William Cullen Bryant called, “The Flood of Years.” Yet, that flood exists only with the countless droplets of living that we do daily. So, what then is the healthiest approach to take when sharing memories and memorials of our lives and loved ones? I strongly believe that it is a combination of both ... a path down the middle done in moderation. Pictures and knickknacks mean nothing if personal reflection doesn’t accompany them. A life not shared, stories not told with friends and family is often a self centered path where one thinks their existence is above others or not worth recounting... both of which are sad commentaries.

Annie didn’t concern herself with such high fa lootin’ thoughts. She was too busy loving and sharing and caring and spending time with her people and in this she will be remembered for what she gave each of us. We forge our own paths and thus lay the bricks for our own monuments... not necessarily to be seen but to be felt in the heart... and that is as close to eternity as I imagine one can get.

https://internetpoem.com/william-cullen-bryant/the-flood-of-years-poem/

http://labibliotecacoffee.com/

1 note · View note

wonderwonderhowido · 6 years

Text

Year-end meme time! I have been answering these questions once a year without fail since 2006. Maybe one of these years I’ll stop, but not for 2017.

Was 2017 a good year for you?

Yes! In February I decided I wanted to quit my job and go to Brazil for 3 months. I quit my job and moved away from NC in July, left for Brazil in August. I had a short-lived but intense romantic relationship from April-July. We drove across the country together. Brazil was really challenging but overall amazing. With the exception of a couple periods when life was too hectic, I kept up with my yoga habit. I think I made it a full 8 months without skipping a whole week actually? Maybe it was 6 months, I forget now, I just know that it was an important milestone for me at the time because I have never managed to keep up an exercise routine that long before. I spent more time at the ocean and by the pool than I have in most other years of my life. I lost some weight. I stayed relatively on top of my shit (bullet journaling really helped, when I was doing that), and stayed sane. I read a fuck ton of Harry/Draco and BTS fic. I took a lot of chances with people I had only just barely met. It has honestly been a pretty stellar year for me personally, the mounting sense of despair over the external world aside.

What was your favorite moment of the year?

Being in the ocean with kids climbing on top of me, demanding to be tossed into the waves.

What was your least favorite moment of the year?

Nothing actually stands out. I had some pretty low moments of crying over certain things in my life, but nothing I can talk about on the online, and besides since none of them were reacting to specific things they all sort of blend together in my memory anyway. I did cry whole buckets while leaving my goodbye party in NC and continued to cry when I got to my ex-BF’s house and then cried myself to sleep, but it feels sort of not right to call that a least favorite moment, just cathartic.

Where were you when 2017 began?

At the same new years’ party I was at when 2014, 2015, and 2016 began. That night was kind of a mixed bag for me, although I did get a new years’ kiss, which I will probably not be getting this year.

Where will you be when 2017 ends?

One of my oldest friends in SLC is hosting a “polar plunge” at her house, so I’m going to do that. I probably will not be taking any kind of plunge myself but I can provide emotional support to those who shall.

Who will you be with when 2017 ends?

My friend Jennica and her husband. I have no idea who else, I don’t think I know most of their friends these days.

Did you keep your new years resolution of 2017?

Looking at the half-assed resoluations I made…. Lmao, no I didn’t, but then my goals for the year changed rather drastically in February when I decided to upend everything, and I feel pretty good about how I followed through with all that stuff.

Do you have a new years resolution for 2018?

Have another list of resolution-ish intentions I have, I still would not call this list whole-assed but hey:

-complete a 30 day yoga challenge (I am on day 7 already, actually, so if I keep up with it I'll knock this one out before the end of January)

-don't let more than 4 days go by without going to yoga (other than when I'm traveling)

-don't let more than 2 days go by without writing (other than when I'm traveling)

-write original fiction at least three times a week, even if it's just like, scribbling down 100 words of a writing exercise (again, other than when traveling)

-read at least 25 books

-read at least 20 short stories

What was your relationship status? Did you break up with anyone?

I was in a relationship from roughly April-July, we broke it off before I left for Brazil. I dated other people in there, although no one for as long as I dated him.

How many one-night stands?

I think four? Idk depends on what you consider a one-night stand. And I made out with lots of different people, which was fun.

Did you make any new friends in 2017?

I made a lot of new friends in Brazil! I’ve made some new friends and reconnected with old friends through kpop. I seem to have made some new friends in SLC, which has been really nice.

What was your favorite month of 2017?

Probably September. April really ranks up there, too.

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 30!!! I think on the day of I went to work, got taken out to lunch by my boyfriend, swam in my apartment’s pool, and started watching Boku No Hero Academia, also with the boyfriend. I had a small party for myself over the weekend, if memory serves. It was really nice, low key and happy, I really enjoyed turning 30 and have been very much enjoying my thirties since. I remember thinking that I was going to feel angsty and panicked about turning this number but that never really hit. It was mostly just good.

How many different places did you travel to in 2017?

Ashland, OR; Wilmington, NC; Charlotte, NC; from Carrboro, NC to SLC, with stops along the way in Birmingham, New Orleans, a town in Texas that I have forgotten the name of; in Brazil: Fortaleza, Taiba, Manaus, Tefe, Mamiraua Reserve, Monte Alegre do Sul, and Sao Paulo.

Did anybody close to you die in 2017?

No.

Did anybody close to you give birth?

Yes, K and E.

Did you miss anybody in the past year?

I missed my NC friends a lot after I moved away. I missed Brazil and my people there.

Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Other than public figures, no, not really.

What were your favorite movies that you saw in 2017?

Loving Vincent, Thor: Ragnarok and The Last Jedi.

What was your favorite song from 2017?

I have not done a great job of keeping track of which songs I’ve listened to the most this year, but: Silver Spoon/Baepsae by BTS; Nights by Frank Ocean; Soldados by Legiao Urbana; Don’t Take The Money by Bleachers; The Louvre by Lorde; Ultralight Beam by Kanye West; Young by The Chainsmokers.

Did you have a favorite concert in 2017?

Bleachers and MUNA in Charlotte! Also Chance The Rapper.

Did you drink a lot of alcohol in 2017?

I feel like yes but I think I did less getting super drunk than in previous years.

Did you do a lot of drugs in 2017?

Not ‘a lot’ but I was not expecting this to be the year that recreational drugs came back into my life. So ‘a lot’ by my usual standards, I guess.

What kept you sane?

Yoga, walking, and journaling. This is a very boring and literal answer, sorry, but it’s true. I’m sorry to be one of Those People but exercise and mindfulness are the reasons I’m able to be off anti-depressants.

What did you do in 2017 that you’d never done before?

Traveled to a foreign country by myself. Tried cocaine. Wrote fanfiction commissions. Taught english classes. Learned how to samba. Used a bullet journal. Did goat yoga. Interviewed a creator I admired. Went to a club by myself.

What dates from 2017 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

-August 21, the day of the eclipse and the day I flew to Brazil.

-July 28-29, my last days in NC, the night one of my cats spent in the bathtub of a friend’s apartment, and the days I spent frantically moving out of my apartment.

-The Women’s March. Both because it was one of the very few times this year I felt politically empowered, and because that night I had a really fantastic tinder date with a woman who had also been at the march. This was only a couple days after I’d been dumped by the girl I was seeing, so I felt very spitefully pleased about the timing of it all.

-April 22. At my old job, we opened up a new public preserve, an event everyone in the org had been working to make happen for years. The event itself went extremely well and was super gratifying, and then that night was one of the early and really great dates with the guy I was dating.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Quitting my job in a way I feel good about. Making Brazil happen. Moving out of my apartment. Sticking with yoga. Finishing my otayuri Spy AU. Writing all the fic that people commissioned me for, even though it took me forever and a day. Paying off my credit card post-brazil.

What was your biggest failure?

I am disappointed in myself for not trying harder to write and publish more nonfiction, even though I felt all this momentum in that direction after the McElroy piece I wrote in May. I am also disappointed in myself for losing steam on the novel I started in 2016. There are some conversations I wish I had had with important people in my life, that I always chickend out on having. There are some feelings I wish I had been able to leave behind, but couldn’t.

What was the best thing you bought?

Other than plane tickets, probably my chromebook. It does not feel real at all that I bought that in 2017, though. This year has been five years in one.

Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) happier or sadder? happier

b) thinner or fatter? thinner

c) richer or poorer? poorer

How did you spend Christmas?

With my family in SLC, like I almost always do. We opened presents, my dad and I went to yoga, I read a lot of kpop fic, in the evening we went to a dinner party at my parents’ friends house and I ate a lot of really good food.

What was the best book you read?

If I manage to finish The Female Man today, I will have read 23 books this year, not counting the 6 Animorphs books I reread and the gazillions of BNHA manga chapters. That’s actually more than I thought I had read, and maybe I should make my books goal for 2018 a larger number, hm.

But anyway I think the best book of those was probably The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler or Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. I also loved Swing Time by Zadie Smith but I read that at the beginning of the year so it sort of feels like a lifetime ago.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2017?

Well for half of it I’ve been either living out of a backpack or in my pajamas almost 24/7. Also I got rid of most of my wardrobe. So I guess minimal?

What would you like to have in 2018 that you lacked in 2017?

A new Carly Rae Jepsen album!!! And greater financial security, a home in a city I’m happy about living in.

What do you wish you’d done more of?

Writing original fiction and freelance writing. Exercising more discipline in my writing life, in general. Mindfulness exercises when I was upset. Taking photos of people I wanted to remember.

What do you wish you’d done less of?

Sweet jesus do I wish I had spent less time mindlessly refreshing apps on my phone, particularly twitter. Also pointless angsting about personal relationships. Gone on less Tinder dates that I knew weren’t going anywhere.

What are your plans for 2018?

Going to Japan in May with @corvidyouths and @globsavethequeen!!! And getting a job in New York or LA or DC or, who knows, somewhere else that I haven’t though of yet.

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

Well, I don’t know how much of my year this actually sums up, but these lines have been rattling around my head more than anything else. From Nights by Frank Ocean:

I ain't trying to keep you Can't keep up a conversation Can't nobody reach you Why your eyes well up Did you call me from a seance You are from a past life

#annual navel gazing #personal

9 notes · View notes

warriorgays · 7 years

Note

I'm going to ask the most broad and annoying question so forgive me, but what happened to everyone after Through the Gay Days ended? I have never been more invested in a group of characters in my life and I desperately want them all to be happy, whatever form that takes, in the end. Also! what other sources did you draw from besides Coming Out Under Fire? I was so impressed with how well researched everything was. 💖

OH MAN I didn’t expect to actually get a question, lol!! And that’s one I’m happy to answer, because I did think a lot about it. idk if I’m ever going to actually write a follow up, because my WIP list is soooo long and, tbh, the 50s are SO DEPRESSING in terms of LGBT stuff.

IT TOOK ME AN HOUR TO WRITE THIS UP. I APOLOGIZE. UNDER A CUT BECAUSE HOLY FUCK. I apologize for any typos but I’m just publishing instead of proofreading because what the fuck.

In terms of sources... I really think Coming Out Under Fire was the main “intentional” one. I have a BA in history and I’m getting my MA right now, so I’ve READ a lot of history and probably unconsciously drew on a lot. the other one I can definitely think of is Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, by Lillian Faderman, which covers lesbian U.S. history from the early 1900s to the 1980s. she draws on COUF for her 40s chapter (which is kind of a bummer because I was hoping for more WWII lesbian-specific content lol), but she’s good at covering some of the broad-strokes history of sexuality and LGBTQ identity. Becoming Visible by Molly McGarry is a really cool illustrated history, too, I’ve read that a few times over the years.

SO, for post-war lives, I’m going to warn you real quick it does get depressing for everybody for a little bit because uhhh the 50s fucking sucked? Faderman talks about this a lot, and actually Stephanie Coontz is a good source too--she has this book titled The Way We Never Were, which basically debunks the idea of “the ~traditional~ family” and looks at the ways our perceptions of society’s values have changed. and one thing she points out is that the 1950s are really the first time when society looks at single men--all single men--and thinks “there must be something WRONG with them.” before that, people were willing to accept that some dudes just didn’t want to get married, for plenty of reasons that had nothing to do with homosexuality, but in the 50s everyone was so gungho about The Family that anyone not into it was looked at with suspicion. add that to the whole “homosexuals are susceptible to Communist blackmail, better fire them all” and things fucking sucked.

I PROMISE HAPPY ENDINGS, THOUGH, because the whole “LGBTQ people lived depressing lives until these Enlightened Times” trope is my least favorite trope ever.

SO, for Gene Roe, my first thought for his post-war life was this Gaslight Anthem lyric that @antiquecompass prompted me for a Snafu/Roe fic foreverrrrrr again: “I’m in love with the way you’re in love with the night.” so I imagine that Snafu comes home, and they try to just settle into things as usual, but Snafu starts really pushing Gene’s buttons. being more snide, being disrespectfully obvious about being nonmonogamous (like it’s one thing to go cruising and another to bring dudes home to the apartment you’re sharing with your boyfriend, COME ON MAN), trying to pick fights. and of course the impetus for all this is Snafu struggling with PTSD and thinking that Gene is too good for him but not being able to end it himself. of course Gene doesn’t put up with this bs, so one day Snafu finally admits he’s doing this because he’s afraid the war turned him into kind of a fucked up asshole, and Gene’s like “you were always a fucked up asshole? what’s your point? I love you?”

so then things kinda simmer down. Gene’s not Officially a doctor anymore, but he and Snafu live in an apartment building in the poorer part of the city with a lot of ~ethnic~ folk nearby some black neighborhoods, so he does some informal community doctoring around those buildings, and that earns him enough goodwill that he and Snafu don’t really have to worry about getting caught out. it’s the kind of neighborhood where a lot of people have to... bend the law a bit to get by, to be happy, whatever, so people trade food and skills as needed and there’s always an alert if the cops are coming by. it’s a good place for them. they’re happy. I’ve only really thought ahead like ~ten years, but I can imagine them eventually moving on when the community moves on, you know, whether to another city or somewhere a little more rural, depending, and that being okay. and I think, with Gene’s influence, and seeing how strong the ties are between the Pansies with Parachutes(TM), Snafu is able to reach out to Sledge and Burgie and the rest more than irl/show canon.

Babe and Spina are the other two that totally make it, soulmates, heartbreakingly cute. but I promised a little heartbreaking, so basically my idea is that they actually move in together a little while after the war, but at some point Babe’s mom realizes what’s up and... does not take it well. gives him an ultimatum, break up with Ralph or she won’t let him near the family, which Babe finds agonizing because he’s really close with his family but Ralph doesn’t have very many relatives, at least not close by (in this verse at least), and even if he could bring himself to break up with Ralph, at this point he doesn’t think his mom will ever treat him the same anyway.

in my head there’s a really sweet scene when Ralph finds out what happens and a lot of hugging and comforting. but yeah. that briefly sucks. what DOESN’T suck is when Babe decides, after a few months, that he has to tell Bill (because Bill has gotten so close to the Heffrons that of course he notices when Babe suddenly isn’t speaking to them), and Bill proves himself to be a total Bro who decides that, well, the typical idea of a homosexual CLEARLY doesn’t fit Babe and Spina so... it’s all good? like c’mon they went through a war together, that’s worth something, right?

I think eventually Babe and Spina move, too. not super far, just maybe to, idk, New York, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, somewhere they can visit everyone but maybe far enough to put some distance between them and bad memories, and also because South Philly is small when your family isn’t speaking to you, you know? possibly they end up in the same city as Luz and Tipper (see next), I’m not 100% sure but I’m vaguely attracted to the idea of everybody ending up on a commune, lol.

so I think I’m probably meanest to Luz, because I imagine him getting arrested at some point. sorry, boo. his reaction is to pay the fine and slink out, and get out of dodge for a while to avoid his family getting any blowback, and he ends up visiting Tipper, who’s really frustrated (which I alluded to a bit at the end of Through the Gay Days) because he just doesn’t click with his old friends as much and he hasn’t had a lot of luck romantically. and again I have this clear scene in my head of Tipper helping Luz dress in drag for the first time, lots of giggling and teasing, but Tipper doesn’t really do drag anymore because he can’t keep his balance in heels, and they end up talking about their frustrations and venting and whatnot. and eventually Luz is like “you know what? fuck it! run away with me!”

and Tipper’s like “fuck it, let’s do it!” so they just kind of live a semi-nomadic life? idk, maybe not really nomadic, but they get jobs that let them move/travel, so they don’t have the pressure of expectations. I’m on the fence about whether they do this as lovers... I would say not, like, REALLY. like possibly a friends with benefits thing (and I’ll point out that Luz is one of the only other named characters who interacts with Tipper, other than Liebgott, because Tipper’s in charge of the map during the Major Horton scene, so that chemistry could totally work). because they’re, like, the two from the fic whose relationships don’t end up going anywhere, and I don’t want them to pine after the Joes forever, and they don’t, but sometimes people just don’t find their soulmates, it happens, and they can at least make each other happy.

this is one of those verses where I’ve decided Liebgott gets to keep his wife-and-kids dream. I do think he’s gay in this verse, and when he gets engaged he writes a letter to Tipper basically seeking closure, admitting he dealt with things in kind of a shitty way and admitting it might be nice to have a Gay Posse, but he also takes his marriage seriously even if it’s not a love match, and doesn’t seek romantic or sexual encounters with men. idk if Joe Toye actually gets married in this verse, but I don’t see him as gay. if we were to retroactively apply the Kinsey scale, I’d say he’d be a 1 or a 2, in which the situational aspect of war kind of pushed him towards interactions that he may have subconsciously desired, but definitely wouldn’t acknowledge in a normal time and place.

as for Chuck! I kind of like the future I give Chuck, partly because he conveniently is from the LA area. so for him, I imagine that at some point Ron Speirs just kind of shows up on his doorstep one day and they become, like, an actual Thing. and it’s good for a couple of years, but Ron seems... restless. and eventually Chuck sits him down and flat-out says “look, I really don’t think you’re cut out for this settled-down long-term-relationship kind of thing. we had a good run, we can part on good terms, but you can travel and have adventures and do all the stuff you want to do.” and then, correctly, points out that one of the reasons Speirs is so reluctant to do that is because he feels guilty for Chuck getting shot, which doesn’t really make any sense. Chuck’s only request is that Ron NOT GO BACK INTO THE ARMY, because fuck Korea, have you heard how many gay soldiers are getting kicked out of the military nowadays? Speirs agrees and they break up amicably.

(is Chuck still in love with him? yes. does it hurt like a motherfucker? yes.)

ANYWAY. the L.A. is where the Mattachine Society, the first official homosexual organization in the country, was founded in 1948... or maybe 49. I forget. the founder started asking around a while before he found people who were actually willing to join up. I figure Chuck eventually joins up and is the first of the Pansies with Parachutes(TM) to really develop a political gay identity. and through that org he eventually meets Beth, a lesbian who’s just broken up with her gf and is kind of panicking because now she might have to leave her apartment and go back to her parents in Nebraska, and they become fast friends and fuck it, why not get married? it’s good cover, and I could have also gotten a chance to talk about the working class lesbian bar scene in the 1950s, which is a cool topic.

if this were a formal fic, I would end it with 1952, when the entire group reunites in honor of the 10-year anniversary of them meeting at Toccoa. since it’s not, suffice to say they do have all-group reunions, and they also visit each other and call and write letters and stay friends 5ever. at some point Babe and Spina have a not-wedding (there’s a picture of a wedding in the 50s with two grooms in flower crowns in Becoming Visible, I love that picture) and they all come and celebrate. OH and at some point between Luz getting arrested and meeting with Tipper, he definitely visits Gene in Louisiana and they make out a bit. because, tbh, I caught a bit of UST in Through the Gay Days--I don’t know if it’s a ship I’d ship in any other verse, lol, but in this verse I feel like they need to make out.

anyway. eventually the 50s end. I want to say that by the time Stonewall happens, either Tipper&Luz or Babe/Spina (both??) are living in NYC and for three days everyone is frantically calling each other going “DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS???” and Chuck becomes totally into the California gay scene, and Babe’s nieces and nephews eventually reach out to him, Tipper and Luz either... idk, become real boyfriends or get hot younger boyfriends and become Wise Gay Dads to the younger crowd. Snafu and Gene grow old together, as hard as it is to imagine old Snafu.

EVERYBODY IS HAPPY AND FRIENDS AND GAY, THE END.

#onlythenuns

9 notes · View notes

uksugarbabyxxx · 7 years

Text

A Belated Update (The Good, The Bad, The Ugly of Being a Sugar Baby)

I’ll start off with a quick update, I’m now happily engaged to a great guy I met through friends, we’re living together in a beautiful home and we’ve just found out we’re expecting our first child together, our hearts are overflowing with joy and we cannot wait to meet him/her❤️

**I say the following in hopes of enlightening other ladies who want to / are practicing the sugar baby lifestyle. This is my story and I intend to tell the good and the bad, it’s quite personal, too, might I add.

It all started when I was 18, my mother whom I was living with at the time, was struggling financially, thus resulting in what I believe to be depression though she never got clinically diagnosed. I watched my own mother, a woman who I thought couldn’t be shaken by anything, brought to her knees by financial hardship, I witnessed her crumble and it was the scariest most unsettling thing. I can’t remember EXACTLY how I found out about the Sugar Baby lifestyle but anyway, i signed myself up to SA with the excitement that I’d be able to make easy money to give to my mother which would in turn mend her situation and, in a way, fix her.

My first meet was a black guy; skinny looking with glasses, very unattractive but promised me £500 just to meet. Of course I said yes. We met a few miles from my home in a restaurant and I was immediately uncomfortable, he began to touch my arms/legs/hair. This guy had no concept of social skills or personal space whatsoever. This being my first meet I had no idea If this was normal behaviour or not, anyway when I told him I couldn’t stay the night with him, he got angry and only gave me half of the promised money. Which I then spent £60 of in a taxi home and gave the rest to my mother. The experience unsettled me but I decided to continue.

My first actual arrangement and second meet was a half cast guy; small, kind of chubby, polite. However, he was extremely cheap. I was given £200 per meet to stay over at his and we had to have sex more than twice otherwise I wouldn’t get the money. I was basically his personal prostitute now I look back, but at the time I just assumed that that was how this thing worked. I felt disgusting each time, each time I’d think of a happy place or a film I enjoyed to try and take my mind off of what was going on. Despite this, I lived a nice life, I would meet him 3-4 times a week, give some money to my mother and then shop with the rest, although I could never get over how dirty I felt. The arrangement eventually ended when he moved back to London due to his career.

After this I didn’t really have a long lasting arrangement, a few guys who’d bought me nice gifts, given me cash, holidays etc. As I got more experienced, I learned my worth and how to talk more money and gifts out of men. But I could never escape the loneliness, I had copious amounts of money but no love, I had lost sight of why I started doing it in the first place. I have made 3k in a day before and done nothing more than a hand job, I think I was good at this lifestyle because I ‘sold’ friendship, somebody intelligent to chat with, a confidant as well as being pretty to look at. I’ve been gifted iPhone’s, holidays, amazing experiences, handbags, clothing, shoes but the buzz of a material item doesn’t last long. Sooner or later the buzz would wear off and I’d be back to feeling lonely, that’s not to say I didn’t appreciate the gifts btw.

Anyway to cut the story short, The cherry on top of the cake was earlier in 2016, a guy I met on SA but nothing ever came off as we ended up being good friends, often discussing economics and politics as they’re favourites of ours, invited me on a holiday with him and his friend to Monaco. It took me some persuading but I eventually agreed. He sold it to me as being ‘5 days full of interesting conversation, good food and good company’. After a while it actually started to seem as though it’d be enjoyable, a little while away whilst I could eat (my fave thing to do btw, surprised I’m 8st 5 still), converse, and get some sun. Upon arrival I instantly felt uneasy, a feeling I knew all too well as a result of my first ever meet. Unfortunately, at that point I couldn’t pin point what was up with me and so just put it down to excitement (? Weird, I know). Fast forward 2 days, its night time, we’re walking back from a restaurant after a lovely supper and a chat. The route back goes along a beach, I told them I needed the toilet and they said it’d be fine to walk along the beach and go there (disgusting? Yes. Did drunk me care? No), so I did and as I began walking back, in near pitch darkness might I add, the guy who invited me, whom I’ll call Captain Dickhead for privacy reasons of course, jumps on top of me, no joke, I hit the floor, he begins kissing me, his full weight on top of me I’m unable to move or speak due to his tongue being in my mouth. I’m frozen in shock, fear and a What the fuck is going on kind of thing, he pulls away and I instantly say 'I think I’ve dropped my phone can you help me find it a second’ I don’t know why I said that but clever Me as it made him get off me and begin looking for the phone that was still in my skirt pocket. Still shocked and freaked out, I walked back to my room to get into bed and think about what the fuck was going on because he clearly thought I was here to fuck him. The next morning I’m reluctant to come out of my room, think I was still a little shell shocked and scared, I’m alone in a foreign country with only $500 on me with this man and my flight home isn’t for another few days. When I finally emerged it was as if nothing had happened, I assumed maybe he had just had too much to drink and he was embarrassed by it as I was, so I didn’t mention it and got on with the day as I had been the past few days. I walked around the town, face timed a few friends, didn’t tell them about what had happened of course in case they worried, over dinner that night we had a great chat about the economy and poverty, I thought all was going well. I got showered in my room, climbed into bed when I got a knock on my door. I opened it to see him, with a clear hard on, at my door, I’m like oh fuck here we go again with the weird stuff, but again I’m frozen. He barges in and begins kissing my neck and groping me, so I don’t have to get into the horrible details long story short I told him no, he had a hissy fit and continued to have his way kinda thing, then got up and went back to his own room, I was well don’t even have words for how I felt afterwards. I cried, texted my friends about it and they told me to leave right away. I was in absolute hysterics, confusion and shock. I left the next morning. As I was leaving, he chased me down the corridor and handed me £3500 i looked at him like ??? WOT is this, he noticed my questioning expression and said 'isn’t that why you’re here? You know the site we met off?’ I was even more confused at this point, granted we did meet on that site but at no point had anything sexual or arrangement type ever been discussed, not even when we first began texting after exchanging numbers.. this experience will stick with me forever. Absolutely mind numbing. After this I closed down my profile and have never returned to the lifestyle. You never truly know someone’s intentions with you, as in this case.

Epilogue(?) to the story: I met my fiancé through friends and we instantly clicked. Same taste in almost everything, same sense of humour etc. I fell in love almost instantly, the feeling of love after enduring years of feeling lonely in the name of money was empowering, like a warm hug kind of or when you’re really sleepy and finally fall into bed and nap. Although it may be seen as a bad attribute, he is quite feminine in the way he is loving and caring. A thing I haven’t seen before in a man, it was refreshing. We are now engaged, living in a beautiful home together with our French bulldog, Sus (named by me of course💅🏽) and expecting our first child together. I couldn’t be happier with how my life is, I’m truly content. He is not rich for any of you that may be wondering, nor is he poor. We live comfortably and fairly luxurious I would say. Although I earn more than him. Our baby is due September the 10th 2017. Overall, I’m thankful for the experience of being a Sugar Baby, it has made me grow in ways leading a normal life could not, it has made me cry and laugh and smile and a whole load of other things. However, I look back on the reason I started it and I pray that my children don’t have to go through what I went through just to try and help me. I pray they’re never disrespected or 'priced up’ by dirty old men who get a kick out of fucking young girls. I pray my children never force themselves to do anything they do not wish to do just for the promise of money. I pray my children NEVER do what I did or anything of the sort.

I want to wish my followers and anyone who see’s this good luck. please remember to know your worth and then add 10. Please remember to never allow yourself to be disrespected or humiliated. Please remember to never let yourself get too deep and forget about what really matters in life. Please never get to a point where you feel numb. Please please please never force yourself to have sex or do anything you, are not comfortable with; there are ways of extracting money from men that don’t involve sex and are relatively easy. Please remember to look after yourself mentally.

This will be my last post off this account. I wish everyone the best of luck and safety throughout their Sugar Baby journey. May you never feel alone or unhappy❤️I know this story has been wild with a lot of twists and turns but I’ve told it as it was and tried to include every detail I could, everything that made me happy and everything that made me not so happy.

#sugarbaby #sugardaddy #sugarbabylife #sugarbabyadvice #sugarbowl #seekingarrangement #sugarbabyhelp #sugarbabypost #personal #pot #blogpost #storytime

35 notes · View notes