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destinationtoast · 3 years

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Before I tell you how it feels when there are huge, out-of-control, catastrophic fires burning to the north, south, and east of us, and the Air Quality Index is listed as “hazardous” for days on end, and my friends with asthma are stuck inside their houses, windows sealed, air filters humming, and those of us who do venture outside feel the stifling air burn our throats and sting our eyes, and there’s a thin coating of ash over everything, and the Oakland hills are swathed in a gray-white shawl of smoky haze — before I tell you all of that, I want to tell you about falling in love with California.

I think it happened on my first hike in Redwood Park.... That day up in the hills, the sky was the richest shade of blue I had ever seen — a delicious, tender, saturated blue; a blue you could fall into and keep falling, happily, forever. The sun really was golden, and the sun-seeking branches of the bay laurel stretched over our path like a canopy. We walked among huge redwoods and eucalyptus trees shedding their bark in curly, pink-tinged ivory scrolls that littered the ground at our feet. The air was perfumed with eucalyptus and other scents I did not recognize but would come to know over time: sage and lavender and the sweet aroma of what a friend calls the “pancakes and syrup tree” — all the intoxicating, pungent smells of a semiarid climate. Each turn of the trail brought us new views of the sparkling bay. Hawks and turkey vultures planed and drifted on the warm thermals. I felt a lightness in my chest, an expansive sense of possibility. It mostly had to do with the sky, I think: that incredible blue with just a few feathery mare’s-tail clouds that didn’t forebode anything but seemed only to promise more freedom and joy....

Denial is a funny thing. Even if the catastrophe is happening right next to you — or ten short miles away — you can still engage in magical thinking, telling yourself it’s only other people whose lives will be upended. Even though we all breathed the smoke from the destruction of the town of Paradise in 2018 — breathed in their burning cars, homes, animals, and bodies — it was still happening “over there” to “other people....”

It’s the same with climate change. We’re living with it — and yet, and yet. As long as my little house is safe, as long as my street is not on fire, as long as my garden continues to produce tomatoes and peaches and sunflowers, things still seem relatively OK. I’m writing this in mid-October. About a month ago — Was it only a month? I check the date. Yes, September 9, 2020 — we woke to eerie dark-orange skies. It looked like the end of days. The sun never broke through the intense cloud of smoke and ash that covered us. Streetlights were on all day. Cars crawled down avenues with their headlights on at noon. The color was garish, an otherworldly hellscape. The next day the sky was less orange, but clouds of ash still covered the sun, which appeared only as a pale-tangerine disk in a gray-white haze: a nuclear-winter kind of day. It was awful. It was sobering. And then it passed.

- Alison Luterman, describing life in Northern California beautifully. Read the whole essay for reflections on why humans make choices to stay where we are in spite of risk, and how we all keep going in spite of ever-present threats.

(Big thanks to @msavocadophdwtfomgbbq for the gift of The Sun magazine. <333 It's full of essays, memoirs, fiction, poetry, interviews... And always lots to think about. Check it out, if that sounds like it might be your jam.)

#the sun #alison luterman #california #california wildfires #essay #ms. avocado #toasty recs

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wickedlehane · 4 years

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@righteoussoldier {Angel}

Apres moi, le deluge.

It was the coldest Faith had been since moving to California from the East Coast. Hell, she didn’t even know it could rain in this desert hellscape. She felt small, hollow, soaked to the bone as she held her arms tightly around herself, dripping on the floor of Angel’s apartment elevator. Leather pants and water didn’t exactly mix, but then again, nothing about Faith Lehane was ever quite the right fit, never comfortable.

She breathed softly, imperceptibly, because anything else threatened to throw open the floodgates of emotion once again. But now, Faith wasn’t sure she had anything left to give.

Here she was, standing alive at the end of the longest day she’d had after eight months of perpetual death. A tolerable darkness that wasn’t quite living, except in the waking world of prophetic Slayer dreams. Nightmares, as she was chased down by Buffy slowly taking everything from her. But Buffy already had it all. And after this latest meltdown, Faith knew there wasn’t a single thing left to call a life except for the clinical definition of that unfortunate human condition.

All she had asked was for Angel to kill her, and he couldn’t even do that. Not even after everything she’d done, all the literal and metaphorical fires she’d set in her wake, would he stoop to giving her that final mercy. She’d done far less terrible things with greater consequence, so what was different this time? Why toy with her this way? She was evil, and it was wrong.

Faith resented him. No, she hated him. She hated every single one of these people who couldn’t let her have peace; Angel, Buffy, Wesley, all of them. She didn’t deserve this. She deserved...

Well, Faith didn’t exactly know what she deserved now, as the metal grate on the elevator was pushed aside for her by the vampire with a soul. But whatever she truly had coming her way, it wasn’t going to be pretty.

#righteoussoldier angel #righteoussoldier angel 01 #v: seeking sanctuary #//i hope this works!!!#//its a lot of sad girl introspection so u dont have to match length haha #//me: uses a french reference that i damn well know faith wouldn't understand #//idec it's pretty thematic

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halfblood-fiend · 5 years

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Fictober 2019 - Day 14

Fictober 2019 - Day 21

From The Fictober 2019 event <3

Prompt 14 : “I can’t come back.”

Fandom : Star Trek: Voyager (technically, but more focused on the Modern!OC)

Words : 957

Warnings : death and rape mention and cursing

Previous (Dragon Age: 2) | Next (Star Trek: Voyager)

Day 14- “I can’t come back.”

Everything was getting to be all too much. My surroundings swirled all around me making me dizzy and sick. I saw the familiar house. I heard the familiar voices. I knew these familiar people and yet—

Oh, please don't let it be true!

"Well? What do you have to say for yourself?!" Amber demanded in a high-pitched voice. It grated on my eardrums and made my heart beat faster.

What did I have to say for myself? Good god, nothing she wanted to hear, I was sure.

But my thoughts tumbled out of my mouth anyway. "This can't be happening..."

"Excuse me?!" My sister jumped up from the leather couch in our father’s house in the year 2019. She was angry and violent, her dark eyes clouded by all the pain I knew I had caused. The pain I knew I was more than willing to cause again.

My other sister and my brother watched us both silently. I turned away from them all.

"This can't be happening," I said again. "I can't be here!"

"So, what?" Amber demanded, "You're just gonna leave again?"

Hours ago, I had been so far away. Seventy-Thousand lightyears across time and space, to be exact. And I couldn’t remember how I had come to be back in the past, not when I had been in the one place I had wanted to escape to for so long. All the times I’d dreamed of living out Star Trek. And then I had somehow. I had integrated myself there. I had friends, a husband... I may have missed my family for months and months and the ache of their absence still dragged the air from my lungs on some days, but I had moved on. I had found a purpose onboard the Voyager...

It can't just... be over. That was impossible. It was madness and I just couldn't bear to believe…

To never laugh with Harry or hang out with Megan and Jenny again. God. To never see Vorik again.

The possibility was too much. It was too painful. It almost immediately sent me into a panic. My heart squeezed at the mere thought. It couldn't be possible. It wouldn't be.

"I'M TALKING TO YOU!" Amber screamed, grabbing my arm. She dug her fingernails into my skin and spun me around to look at her.

"Yes!" I shouted back at her. "Yes, I'm leaving. I HAVE to!"

"’Have to?’ And what about your family, what about us??"

Her eyes welled up as I shook my head. I could feel my own hot tears streaming down my cheeks. It broke my heart, it did, but this was the lesser of two evils. It had to be. I couldn't even consider going on without Vorik. Just the hour I had spent with my mind so horribly blank, without his sure presence there... It was something of a nightmare. I had to find a way back.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

Amber shook. She stared at me with hard disdain, the corner of her lips curling. Cecilia finally got up and tried to put a restraining hand on our littlest sister’s shoulder, but Amber shook her off.

"You're...’sorry’?" she echoed in a dangerously low voice. I wanted to shrink. I wanted to look away. But I owed it to her to be brave. It felt very important that I not look away. "’Sorry...’ When you disappeared... I was flown back out to California. I was told to look at corpses, Giana. CORPSES. Each time I was brought a new dead body I was praying it wasn't you. But after so many... I started wishing they were. I had to look for my big sister in the PIECES OF PEOPLE that each detective brought me, just so that they would stop! But I never did see you. And eventually, they did stop, just not because we ever found you. No, you were just another lost woman. Some cautionary tale to tell young girls. To teach us to be afraid. They told us to make peace with the idea that you were probably raped and murdered and never to be found. We buried an empty casket next to grandma and grandpa and had to call it good enough. And now you just show up on our doorstep, out of nowhere, and try to act like nothing happened, raving about a fucking tv show universe and some crazy shit, and now you’re just announcing that you're gonna leave again? You sound like you belong at a hospital but we're supposed to just LET YOU?"

"Yes! Because what I'm saying is true," I pleaded with her. "I don't know how it happened, and I don't know how I ended up here, but—POR DÍOS—I can't stay! I've lived in space. I've seen a starship and aliens and a better life! I have friends. I’m married. I can't just..." I trailed off. I couldn't possibly get enough air. I kept gulping like a dying fish, but none of it reached my lungs.

"I can't come back," I finally said in a quivering voice. "I have seen a better place and lived a better life. I have my soulmate. I've seen a world without money or suffering or pain. You expect me to just forget about all of that? You think I could ever just come back and live here again? What am I supposed to do, Amber? Just waltz back into my old fuckin’ job that I hate with bosses that grope me? Just go back to working my whole fucking life away in this capitalist HELLSCAPE after having seen the other side? I can never go back... never. Not..." I gulped and summoned all my courage. "Not even for you."

#fictober19 #Giana Moreno #Amber Moreno #Cecilia Moreno #Modern!OC #OTP: Two Worlds Collided #oof #it's an angsty night boys #sorry

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ohforficsakelibrary · 6 years

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L’appel du Vide

Chapter 1

Title: L’appel du Vide

Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4

Pairing: Michael Langdon X OC

Rating: M overall, T this part, for language.

Warnings: Language, eventual smut, a bit of blood, and a fair deal of blasphemy.

Language: English

Chapter Length: 2.5K words

Summary: After learning who Michael really is, Cordelia appeals to an ancient figure for help. Slow-burn seduction ensues. Contains spoilers for AHS: Apocalypse.

Author’s Note: Still working on a direction for this, but I figured I’d put it out there just to see what echoes. Unbeta’d but hopefully clean. Happy to get feedback, asks are open. OC is an interpretation of a figure borrowed from religious mythology. If that’s not your cup of tea, best to turn back now. Begins right after the events of Could It Be...Satan?

~Northwestern Vermont~

Something acrid hung in the air. Metallic and tinged with ozone.

The smell of change.

Red-backed heels clicked on marble steps. Three, four, five.

The lady of the house is home.

A flick of her wrist and the hearth is ablaze.

A leather-clad hand plucks the fresh martini from a proffered tray. White gloves help her out of her coat.

Lush vines of Madagascar jasmine tumble down from their pots on the double staircase. She brushed a few as she walked by, reviving a few dead flowers and breathing in a lifetime of memory. A lynx sidled up to her, brushing its cheek lovingly against her leg. It gently dropped its offering—a live mouse. She bent to scoop the gift up from the floorboards, holding it loosely in her palm before reaching out to a hungry owl waiting patiently on its perch. The mouse is dead before it reaches the owl’s beak.

“Your supper is ready, Madam,” her steward gestured toward the dining room. A crystal decanter sat gently steaming near the head of the table, beside it a small cordial glass.

“How many times have I told you,” a grin spread across her full lips as she took his gloved hand in hers, “that the formal uniform isn’t a requirement, Jacques?”

The man smiled and looks bashfully at the ground. “You’ll have to tell me at least a million more, Madam.”

“Join me?”

“I’ve already set my meal out in the kitchen. I wouldn’t want to inconvenience…”

As quickly as he spoke, another place setting appeared opposite the first. Jacques’ own dinner of salmon, roasted potatoes, and asparagus sat atop the mat. On the good china, nonetheless. She’d even included a glass of wine. He smiled. She was always kind. And she paid well. Very well. Two things that so rarely went hand-in-hand in his line of work. He’d stay as long as she’d have him.

“It’s never any trouble.” She unfurled her silk scarf from around her neck and took her place at the table. The steward again offered a little smile, moving to pour the hot liquid into the woman’s glass. She only let him because his thoughts betrayed that he wanted to be of useful to her.

She liked that about him. Liked the fact that he was committed to his job. That he wasn’t—susceptible.

She had met few mortals in her time who weren’t vulnerable to her particular brand of charm. Not due to their sexuality—that never seemed to matter—but rather some quirk of their genetic code. Jacques was one such man. He was never anything but loyal in his six years of service. She’d keep him for as long as he wished to stay.

The steward took his seat and raised his glass to her, and she did the same before they each took a sip.

“How is your dinner, Madam?”

“It’s lovely, thank you Jacques. A twenty-year-old vintage. From,” she paused, inhaling the red liquid’s scent. “Maine?”

“Brava, Madam. I have to say, the university blood drive was a great success.”

She took another sip of blood from her glass, savoring the velvety, coppery taste. It felt like heaven as it slipped down her throat, sending a warm glow radiating through her veins.

“Happy to hear. Thank you for your work in organizing it.”

“It was my pleasure.”

“So,” she took another sip from her glass, “tell me more about your day.”

And so they fell into easy conversation, occasional peals of laughter ringing out through the house.

Sometime later she ran a comb through wet, waist-length hair. Cut-glass bottles of perfume and plush creams littered the vanity before her.

She had no real need for them. But that doesn’t mean a girl doesn’t want to feel pampered every now and then.

Her hand froze mid-stroke. A result of a shift of power in the air.

“Jacques?” She called out to the steward, who appeared in the bathroom doorway moments later. “We have company.”

“Shall I let them in, Madam?”

“No. Thank you. I’ll greet them myself.” She rose and strode to her wardrobe, the black silk of her robe trailing behind her. “Could you please bring up a bottle of wine from the cellar though? Something New World. Old.”

“Right away, Madam.”

Moments later she stood on the front steps in floor-length lace Alexander McQueen. The occasion called for something designer.

“My sisters,” the woman called out as the final witch slammed the Suburban’s door shut. “Welcome.”

“Your home is beautiful,” Cordelia complemented as the woman escorted them through a hallway densely planted with foliage and flowers. Some of which Cordelia had never seen before. The woman led Queenie, Madison, Myrtle, and The Supreme under the double staircase and down two steps into a large living room. Exposed beams of dark wood arched across the ceiling and a grand fire roared against the back wall, flanked by floor-to-ceiling windows. Through the glass, moonlight illuminated the lake and mountains beyond.

“Thank you, Sister. Please, have a seat,” she gestured to a large, modern velvet sofa adorned with lush fur blankets. “You must all be chilled to the bone. Something to drink?” She offered as Jacques appeared with a tray bearing five full glasses of wine. “I don’t get many visitors these days.” She spoke slowly, but firmly. A woman with conviction. “What brings the Supreme, of all people, to my humble home?”

“We need your help.” Myrtle was never one for mincing words. Cordelia’s eyes never left the woman as she took a seat in the high-backed chair nearest the fire.

“And why would the Supreme need my help.” It wasn’t a question. But the witches were surprised to find no malice in her tone. The lynx sidled up to her and rubbed its cheek against her leg. She reached a languid hand down, running her fingers through its fur.

Madison’s eyes widened, noting for the first time that the woman wore golden filigree jewelry on her left hand. Each ring ended in a sharp, jeweled claw.

“Four days ago we were called to the Hawthorne School for Exceptional Young Men in an emergency meeting of the Counsel,” Cordelia began.

“This wine is exquisite,” Myrtle interrupted.

“Seventeen seventy.” Madison’s eyes bulged the woman spoke. “One of the first bottles to come out of California after Mexico introduced winemaking as an industry. Cork had recently been presented as a method of closure and it has aged in the bottle ever since.” The woman picked up her own glass, tilting it so that the burgundy liquid caught the light from the fire. “The eighteenth century was a time of innovation and revolution. Jacques picked a fitting bottle for the occasion,” she raised her glass in the steward’s direction. A gesture of thanks and satisfaction. “Please Cordelia, continue.”

“The wizards called us there because of a boy who had just come under their care. His powers were so great that they demanded we administer the test of the Seven Wonders.”

She locked eyes with Cordelia, giving definition to the concept of a pointed stare.

“I refused to administer the test.”

“And?”

“The boy acted on his own to resurrect two of our sisters. Madison and Queenie.” Cordelia looked to each girl as she spoke, the woman’s gaze following her as she did, bearing a still yet unimpressed expression.

“Queenie died in the Hotel Cortez.” Cordelia noticed the flash in the woman’s eyes as she spoke. “I had tried myself to resurrect her, to no avail.”

The woman’s eyes lingered on Queenie, who sat uncomfortably under the weight of her stare. The witch looked down at her wine, trying to search for diversion in her glass.

“Queenie,” the woman spoke again in slow, measured tones. “What did this man tell you?”

“He…he said he would do for me what my Supreme couldn’t. He said he needed Madison and I to prove a point.”

Her eyes shifted to the young, blonde witch as Queenie spoke. “Where did he find you, Madison?”

“In hell.” Madison surprised even herself with the conviction in her tone.

Sharp, grey eyes shifted back to Cordelia.

“He’s a mere boy,” The Supreme continued. “He can’t be more than eighteen years old. He had been at the school for a month at most. I’m surprised that he could have mastered such power so quickly.”

“He hasn’t mastered it.” The woman stood to face the fire, hands clasped behind her back. “It’s being fed to him.”

“By who?” Queenie chimed in.

“I won’t speak that name here.” The woman whispered as she turned to face them. “And, I think you already know,” this directed at Cordelia.

“Whoever he is,” Madison pulled out her cigarette case, lighting one, “he was hot.” The wine seeming to have given her voice again.

“I apologize for her,” Cordelia began. “Madison, you can’t smoke in here.”

“No need. Women needn’t apologize for their sexuality. Not in my presence.” The woman sat again. Madison cast a pointed look at Queenie, who opted to take another sip of her wine. “And she can. I may even join you.” Jacques offered a silver tray bearing a golden cigarette case. The woman took it, holding one cigarette to her lips. The tip set itself ablaze as she inhaled. “Please offer one to Ms. Snow as well.”

“Why have you come to me, Cordelia?” Tendrils of smoke drifted up from the burning paper clasped between her fingers.

“Look, if you’re such hot shit as to make Cordelia come all the way out to the hellscape that is Vermont, can’t you connect the dots yourself?” Madison blurted out.

The woman’s eyes landed on her with a weight that sent fear shooting up her spine. The young witch’s cigarette extinguished itself—half smoked.

“I could have read your thoughts ten miles off, Madison. The only reason I’ve granted you an audience is out of respect for your Supreme,” grey eyes again landed on Cordelia as the Madison struggled in vain to re-light her cigarette.

“Because I know who we’re dealing with. And we need your help.” Delia was locked in and ready to close her proposal. “We need his blood.”

“And what makes you think he’d be stupid enough to give me that?”

“Because you’re a…” Myrtle began before finding the next word lost in her throat. She struggled to speak, only to find her mouth flapping uselessly in suddenly chilled air.

“Do not call me that name.”

All the while, Cordelia sat, composed. Impassive. Sure of her pending request.

“If there’s anyone who can get close to him, it’s you.”

The woman rose and smoothed her dress. “Jacques, perhaps you could take our guests on a tour of the house? I’d like to speak to Cordelia alone.”

The steward obliged and the three witches stood, much to their own surprise. He led them off to the wine cellars as the woman turned, studying the Supreme.

When they were out of earshot, Cordelia continued in a low, hurried voice.

“I doubt even he knows what he is at this point, but we have to be sure. If there’s anyone among us who can discern that, it’s you.”

“I think he’s given you enough proof, Cordelia. Even I can’t extract the souls of the dead from the Hotel Cortez.”

“If he’s who we think, then you know what’s on the horizon.”

“And why should I care about that.”

“Because deep down, I know you care. About humanity. About the fate of this world. Think of everything you were put here to protect.”

“Why should I care about this?” She spat the word as the fire blazed behind her, pulsing in tune with her anger. “This world relegated me to a life of eternal exile.”

“I know you don’t believe that.”

“I suppose next you’ll tell me to do it for our sisters.”

“No.” Cordelia paused, placing her wineglass on the table in front of her. “I’m telling to do it for yourself. You, above all others are the most defiant of beings.”

“I get no retribution from this.”

“No. But I think given enough time you’d inquire anyway. You can’t tell me you’re not the least bit curious about him. He will rise to power whether we like it or not…”

“And you’re implying that I’m a mere moth to the flame.”

“I think you’re yearning to have a taste of that again. To be close to something like yourself. And our kind needs you. We can’t get ahead of him if we can’t discern his next steps. You have the power to give us foresight we wouldn’t otherwise have.”

“You’re bold coming here to ask for that, Cordelia,” she inhaled deeply from her cigarette before letting the smoke drift out through her teeth. “You’re just as ruthless as your mother.”

The comment took Cordelia by surprise. Before she could protest, the woman continued.

“You’re asking me to use the Devil’s own tricks against his only son. Have you any idea how dangerous that is?”

“Yes.” Cordelia pleaded with her deep brown eyes “But if there’s anyone who can, it’s you.”

The woman stared hard at the Supreme, as if searching her very soul for answers before standing.

“Bad timing, Jacques,” the woman dashed out her cigarette and moved to meet the group making their way down the foyer stairs.

“My apologies, Madam.”

“No need, our guests were just on their way out. Be sure their car is ready, would you?” She watched the witches file out of the front door before Cordelia paused in front of her.

“I’m proud of you, Cordelia. Not many Supremes would have had the gall to come here.”

“That means a lot coming from you. Truly.”

The woman stood in the entryway. “It’s blood you need?”

“Yes.”

“How soon?”

“I’m not sure how much time we have.”

“The longer you wait, the more power it will hold.”

“Then I’ll leave that to your discretion.”

The woman extended her hand, gesturing towards the waiting car. “I’ll find you.”

“Thank you,” Delia whispered as the Suburban’s engine roared to life in the driveway.

“Oh, and Cordelia?”

The Supreme turned to look back at the doorway, blonde hair swinging over her shoulder as she did.

“There’s a house in Los Angeles. Not unlike the Hotel Cortez. I can’t say I’d recommend it for a social call, but if you’re looking for next steps…” she wrapped her arms around herself, less to protect from the chill than the memory. “I’d start there.”

Jacques and the woman stood on the front steps as the last witch piled into the waiting car.

“Who the fuck is she?” Madison quipped, fastening her seatbelt.

“Not here,” Myrtle murmured as the car pulled away across the gravel drive and onto the waiting road.

Not here. Cordelia echoed in her mind before a smile spread across her lips.

For now, they had her on their side.

~The Hawthorne School~

Michael felt her long before seeing her. A presence hung in the air, making the hair on his arms stand on end. Something more than witches and warlocks. Something supernatural.

And somehow, the supernatural feels more like home.

He smells her in the air. Tuberose. Night-blooming jasmine. Tobacco. Warm honey, straight from the hive.

He felt her next, invisible tendrils of power stroking his wet chest, making their way up his neck before brushing across his lips. They feel solid. Intoxicating. Something unseen brushes his hair aside, wet ends swiping trails of chill across his cheek.

“You look just like your father,” a voice whispers in his ear.

He turns slowly to look over his shoulder, only to find nothing but empty air. When he looks forward again he finds a woman seated in the bathroom’s wooden-backed chair. Wild black curls frame a face set with a full mouth and large grey eyes. Her skin, shades darker than his own, all but glows in the dim candlelight. A lit cigarette lays balanced between fingers adorned with golden filigree claws.

“Hello, Michael.” It’s a new voice, and yet somehow it resonates with ancient familiarity down to his bones. An angel? No. There are no tendrils of preternatural fear prickling at the base of his spine.

But, curiosity? Curiosity is coursing through his blood and suddenly the bathwater has gone cold against flushed skin. He glanced around for his towel, suddenly aware of his vulnerability.

“Your modesty is appreciated, but, unnecessary.” She raised the cigarette to her lips again. “Still, I can get you the towel if you’d prefer.”

He swallows, blue eyes wider than perhaps he had intended.

She rose and dashed her cigarette out in a glass ashtray that he could have sworn wasn’t there a minute ago. The moment she grabs his towel from a hook on the back of the door makes him think she must be some kind of witch. There are two other identical ones hanging on the rack but she holds his out to him. And yet somehow the title doesn’t fit.

“I won’t look. Promise.” She shakes him from his thoughts.

True to her word, she turns her back as he stands in the tub.

“You probably shouldn’t be here,” his voice lets her know it’s okay to meet his gaze again. “The other boys…”

“Won’t be bothering us.”

“Who are you?” Michael’s mouth betrays him.

She only moves to extend a hand, as if to help him from the tub. The moment his fingers find hers, bits of the past bombard his vision. The verdant green of a forest and the crystalline shimmer of a river. A flash of angel’s wings. He swears he can feel the sun’s warmth on his skin before suddenly everything goes cold. There’s screaming. The frigid rush of the sea. Blood. Lifetimes of it. His hand springs back as if burned.

Blue eyes fly wide as he whispers her name.

“Lilith.”

Chapter 2

#american horror story fanfiction #michael langdon fanfiction #michael langdon #ahs apocalypse fanfiction #american horror story apocalypse #american horror story

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sundaywhiskey · 5 years

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on abortion

The Sunday Blunt is a 2020 election survival effort of researched, brief-ish, minimally edited rants on America’s hellish political hellscape and related hell.

I haven’t had an abortion but I can’t think of a time in my life when, if faced with pregnancy, I wouldn’t have gotten one.

I took emergency contraceptive once. Alone in a Rite-Aid parking lot, I flipped the box over in my hands and had two distinctive thoughts—The first was gratitude for access to this true medical miracle. When the condom broke, there was no question I’d take Plan B: that alone was forty dollars I couldn’t spare. The average cost of childcare in California was 45% of my salary, and I’d yet to see the pro-birth stans heading Congress propose socializing that shit. I didn’t even have a savings account.

But more importantly, or more personally, I didn’t want to be pregnant: not then, maybe not ever. My panic disorder thrived on sensitivities and discomfort within my body, and I worried without medication I’d become housebound with anxiety all nine months. I’d lose my job, and thus my health insurance, along with everything else. I’d be without partner: three dates later, the could’ve-been father would leave when he discovered I’m neither competitive nor super into movies. How are those dealbreakers? I do not know. Anyway. I was grateful. A child would have irreparably upended my life.

So it goes whenever personhood is threatened, too many brave humans have shared stories to social media about their abortions: the woman whose teenage boyfriend tried to lock her down by poking a hole in the condom, the young girl who wasn’t ready to be a mother. It’s wild, truly, that we demand each other publicly perform emotional labor when science draws the same conclusion: Society conclusively benefits from access to safe, legal abortion.

The Turnaway Study followed for five years two groups of women who’d sought abortions—one group had received the procedure, while the second was turned away because their pregnancy was, according to laws, too far along to terminate—and discovered that women who received abortions were not at greater risk for negative mental health side effects; in fact, 95% of those women were happy with their decision. A second, Finnish paper studying teenagers over seven years yielded similar results. Both studies reported the women who did not receive abortions were less likely to be employed full-time, more likely to receive public assistance, and more likely to live in poverty. The women who received abortions were more likely to pursue higher education.

While it’s nearly impossible to estimate how many illegal abortions were performed prior to Roe v. Wade, calculations of the 1950s and ‘60s suggest the number ranges from anywhere between 200,000 and 1.2 million procedures annually. By procedures I mean with bleach, with knitting needles, with scissors and wire hangers. I mean with staircases. Antibiotics significantly reduced the amount of associated deaths, but abortion still accounted for 200 deaths per year or one-sixth of all pregnancy-related deaths, according to the official reports. Doctors estimate the number was much higher. In El Salvador, where all abortions are outlawed, 11 percent of illegal abortions result in death. That’s 2,000 people per year.

—My second thought was quieter, more confounding: “Am I killing a baby?”

I was raised Catholic with an asterisk: my father had abandoned the shtick when his second grade nun-teacher slapped him with a ruler, and my mother enforced only CCD classes and Christmas Eve mass. Our household was liberal, pro-choice—Mom had lost a friend to a coat hanger abortion. But I grew up around a church and I have relatives who dig the church and I once dated a man who spent our four-year relationship disappointed I wasn’t “pure for him,” so I caught the drift: My womb was an incubator. With this pill, I robbed the world of a human. There was shame in my decision.

It’s unlikely I would’ve gotten pregnant. The sex in question had occurred on the seventeenth day of my menstrual cycle; if the sex happened one day earlier, the chances were exponentially higher. One day later: impossible. It’s curious, the way my reproductive system works: almost as though it’s designed to prevent unplanned pregnancy. Where do things go so wrong?

With sperm.

Obviously I wasn’t killing a baby. In the twelve hours since intercourse, if anything happened at all, we’d made a zygote, which is a mischievously adorable word but not a baby. I don’t know when a baby becomes a baby. I don’t think anyone does. When my sister and her partner wanted a child, the two pink lines on a drugstore pregnancy test was a baby. Two days later, when my sister told me about her sweet litto embryo: no question, that was my nephew.

But I imagine us reversed, and those two pink lines are a crisis, a financial and emotional grave. To my sister, the embryo is the reason she searches last minute cross-country flights we both know she can’t afford, books the appointment when I’m too ashamed and afraid, triple-checks I asked someone to drive me. The reason she saves my life.

There’s another asterisk to my Catholic roots: Big, lifetime *Golden Rule* fan. My father wasn’t one for, like, parenting, besides half-jokingly forbidding me from tackle football and motorcycles, and once bending at the hip and looking into my child-eyes and saying this: “I won’t be mad or disappointed about anything you do as long as you treat others the way you want to be treated.”

So I think about that.

I think, what if I hadn’t learned immediately the condom broke. if an unlikely pregnancy occurred. if the morning sickness throbbed against my throat for weeks so I couldn’t leave the house: for the illness and the fear thereof. for the panic attacks. for the unmedicated depression. what if I had to do it alone, if the loneliness rocked my bones like the ocean at shore break. How would I want to be treated if I was scared and alone and faced with a difficult decision?

And then I treat people that way.

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nursefei · 2 years

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Not everyone can say they’ve been to the Big Apple, but [ FEI DAVENPORT ], a [ 29 ] year-old [ CIS FEMALE ] has lived in [ THE UPPER WEST SIDE ] for [ 3 MONTHS ]. This is the city of dreams and [ SHE ] knows it, because they came to NYC to be a [ SCHOOL NURSE ]. Living in the city means they meet all kinds of people, but everyone always seems to think they look like [ MALESE JOW ]. They even got away with free cab fare once because of it!

hey kids, it’s em again with yet another idiot child! i’ll link her full bio here once it’s up, but for now here’s all you need to know:

original intro:

she became a school nurse because she hated everything about health classes and sex education that had been taught to her. none of it prepared kids for the changes their bodies would go through, what was normal and what wasn’t, how to know when something is wrong… so she decided to just do the damn thing herself

she moved to from her hometown of Monterrey, California to San Francisco at 18 to study nursing, eventually getting a Masters, and certification to be an RN as well as teaching credentials, and bounced around a few schools in places in and around San Francisco that were… varying levels of satisfactory.

she didn’t hate the last place she’d worked. the kids were annoying, the food was bad, the teachers were useless, but… it was probably her favorite job she’d ever had. because she’d met her best friend Lachlan there.

this is where it gets complicated. this is where i could write six novels. but let me try to be brief about it.

Fei and Lach have always been in love with each other, and have also always been fucking idiots about it. they pretended to be Just Friends, dating other people and pretending it was fine. until Lach had a family crisis and decided to move back to New York. then, realizing they’d fucked up and ran out of time, they finally slept together. Lachlan moved across the country the next morning, and totally ghosted Fei.

he probably thought it was the right thing to do, though, considering Fei had a goddamn boyfriend at the time.

she is still, for some reason, with said boyfriend, whose name is Nick. they are literally always fighting about absolutely anything and everything, and nobody has a clue why they’re still together.

Nick coincidentally got a job offer in New York earlier this year. he asked Fei to move with him, and her dumb ass did, so here she is. she’s got a job at a high school near their new apartment, and it’s looking like a fresh start for everybody

it’s a big city, so she probably won’t run into Lachlan for years, if at all... probably... right?

august 2022 update: (tw for domestic abuse)

Fei ran into Lachlan almost immediately upon moving to the city, because he inexplicably worked at the same high school where she got her job. the stars aligned, except not really, because she was still with Nick and Lachlan was suddenly dating a supermodel

Lachlan’s dating Rylan Pratt for publicity (on her part, money on his part), but Fei, along with the rest of America, thinks it’s real.

to no one’s surprise, Nick has continued to be a douchebag in New York, getting into fights in bars and pushing Fei around

he tells Fei where she can and can’t go, who she can and can’t see, what she can and can’t wear... he’s even put up security cameras in almost every room of their shared townhouse, solely to keep tabs on her.

the one bright spot in this hellscape is her new proximity to her childhood friend Blake Madden - even if Nick has done his best to keep the women apart.

she desperately wants out of this relationship, but Nick has made sure that Fei’s still pretty much alone in this strange city, so it’s going to be harder than she thought.

message me here or on Discord, or just like this post if you want to plot!! love y’all.

#enyc.intro #updated august 2022

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news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 5 years

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These senior citizen YouTubers are better than anyone else on this hellscape internet

The typical YouTuber is young, obnoxious, and speaks at an above-average decibel level. They love pranks. They love covertly selling you *products.* Even though they're your age or vastly younger, they have more money in their bank account than you ever will.

Thankfully, not all YouTubers like that. This Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for the dedicated community of senior citizen YouTubers, here to make homemade pasta, deconstruct mechanical toys, play lullabies on their guitars, knit, apply make-up, and show you how to properly take a dip in the public pool.

SEE ALSO: Logan Paul isn't the only problem. YouTube is broken — here's how to fix it.

If you're going to be an influencer, at least use your power to show Xennials like me how to make proper tagliatelle.

For all their wisdom and *actual content knowledge,* senior citizen YouTube celebrities are nonetheless a rarity. The demographic data tells the story: 96% of youth aged 13 to 17 have used YouTube, compared to just 51% of those 75 and older. Just 67% of seniors aged 65 and over use the internet, and only 4 in 10 own smartphones.

So we shouldn't be shocked that of the biggest names in YouTube — Fernanfloo, PewDewPie, Germán Garmendia, Rubén Doblas Gundersen i.e. El RubiosOMG, VanossGaming, and so on — all are male, and none, absolutely none, are above the age of 30.

That doesn't mean senior citizens are absent from the platform, or that younger generations don't love to watch older folks on screen. I know that I, for one, am not alone in not wanting to hear this guy opine about suicide prevention:

You just have to look a little harder to find the elders of the community, which we kindly did for you. Here are some of the leading senior personalities on the platform:

1. Tricia Cusden, Look Fabulous for Older Women

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70-year-old Tricia Cusden formally kicked off her YouTube account and her personal make-up business, Look Fabulous Forever, five years ago. Cusden specializes in make-up made specifically for older women.

Cusden remembers when her manufacturer told her to put videos of her products on Twitter:

"I thought, that's a really stupid idea," Cusden told Mashable. "Millions of videos are uploaded to YouTube, people just won't see them."

Pretty quickly, however, Cusden's videos started picking up real traffic: 1,000 views one day, 1,500 views on another. It was clear that Cusden had tapped into a real need — and that older women were (gulp!) using YouTube.

Cusden believes she was able to access this demographic because her product line was written up in print publications, which have older followers. These women presumably then followed her to YouTube.

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In comparison to other brands that market token "anti-aging skincare" to older women, Cusden hopes to create a positive, stigma-free YouTube space:

"The beauty industry disdains and marginalizes this age group ... [but] we won't disparage you here," Cusden says. "We won't be negative."

Cusden's channel currently has 28,340 subscribers.

2. Judy Graham, Knitting Tips by Judy

In recent years, knitting has had something of a comeback among the millennial Etsy set. But why learn from some dumb book when you can learn from *THE* Judy Graham?

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Graham is a knitting legend. She's now in her 80s, and she's still producing videos nearly every week. In 2015, Graham complained to her son that it was a myth that all seniors hated technology.

"Seniors do know about tech, and they do use it," Graham told her son, who later published her comments in USA Today.

Not everyone who watches "Knitting Tips by Judy" is older. She has plenty of younger fans (points at self).

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If there's anything that Judy proves, it's that you don't have to be a young, terrible California bro in order to be successful on this nightmare platform.

3. Tim Rowett, Grand Illusions

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For all the optical illusion and unusual toy fans out there (I'm assuming that's everyone on this list), Tim Rowett is your man.

Rowett's YouTube channel, Grand Illusions, collects and reviews dozens of random toys. It's whimsical and strange and exceedingly, unexpectedly popular: The channel currently has over 881,000 subscribers.

In 2015, the Telegraph named Rowett one of the best YouTubers over 50 years old.

The award was well-deserved. Is there anything more soothing than hearing a handsome older British gentleman with a BBC accent examine the mechanics of a bubble blower?

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4. Pasta Grannies

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There's no such thing as a dream job, except for Vicky Bennison's. Bennison is the founder of Pasta Grannies, a YouTube channel featuring Italian grandmas making their best homemade pasta.

Bennison, who is 60, literally travels all around Italy hunting for the country's most talented grandmas. Every episode, she highlights a particular grandma and their specialty pasta.

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Pasta and Italian grandmas are universally beloved, which is why Bennison's show has such a diverse, cross-generational audience. These women aren't trained chefs, but they're exceptionally talented and they know what a good pasta serving size is: one gallon per person.

"What you see on television requires armies of food stylists ... These are things all people can do," Bennison told Mashable. "[It's why] I do have a broad audience ... My demographics for Pasta Grannies is 25 to 65 years old."

Some of these grannies are in their late 90s. Yet with more 341,913 subscribers, Bennison has nonetheless been able to build a digital fan base for these women.

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Pasta Grannies, you are welcome in my home anytime.

5. Bossa Nakane

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Though he probably wouldn't classify it this way, Bossa Nakane makes lullabies for stressed-out adults. This man is a nightingale. His music is delightfully tender: Think Nick Drake, but sung by a human robin.

Why would you ever sing "Happy Birthday" yourself when you can have the Bossa Nakane version instead? He's better.

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He currently only has 3,174 subscribers. Everyone, please follow now.

6. ElderGym

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ElderGym is the only YouTube fitness series on the web I'm capable of completing. A 4-minute session on how to get off the floor? This I can do. March in place for 1 minute? Hell freaking yeah. ElderGym isn't just for seniors, it's for everyone.

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Squeeze your shoulders for 1 minute. Congratulations! You've exercised.

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7. Grandma Shirley

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Anyone who's anyone in the senior YouTuber world knows Grandma Shirley, an 82-year-old gamer who records herself playing games for YouTube, among other places. She's best known for playing Skyrim and currently has over 410,000 subscribers.

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I've never understood the appeal of watching other people play games (why watch strangers play Grand Theft Auto when you can watch ... anything else) but if I'm going to watch anyone, it will be Grandma Shirley.

8. Grandpa Kitchen

Grandpa Kitchen operates a YouTube channel where he cooks enormous amounts of Indian food and feeds if to local orphans. The channel currently operates a Patreon page in order to fund their operations; however, I was unable to independently verify how that money is spent.

That being said, Grandpa Kitchen runs an excellent show. Look at all those potatoes. How can they not make you happy?

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9. Gramma and Ginga

Gramma and Ginga are two sisters, one 104 years old, the other 99. They live a few blocks from one another in Clarksburg, West Virginia. If you're the type of person who loves to see two charming older women bicker non-stop about nothing, this is for you.

Think Seinfeld, but with Grandmas.

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Imagine a comedy podcast but the podcast were ... actually funny. That's Gramma and Ginga.

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These women currently have 325,684 subscribers. In 2016, they made it to Jimmy Kimmel Live.

10. Kevin and Lill

I tend to be skeptical of anyone on YouTube who has more than 500,000 subscribers and says they create "comedy." Historically, YouTube comedy is an art form lower than improv.

Kevin and his objectively charismatic grandma Lill are an exception to the rule. We talk a lot about YouTube personalities but Grandma Lill actually has one.

As the kids say, she destroys me.

Look at her make chocolate chip brownies with her grandson Kevin, then try to pick yourself up off the floor.

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Perhaps my favorite part of the series is when she introduces the episode, saying, "Hi fellas and girls."

Just listen to it instead of reading my far inferior copy.

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Grandma Lill says she didn't really know much about YouTube before her grandson turned on his camera one day in the car:

"I was surprised, but I said, 'Hey that's good!'" Lill told Mashable.

You'd think that Grandma Lill would be an inspiration to her friends, many of whom are in the same age bracket.

Grandma Lill doesn't think so.

"My girlfriends if they don’t have grandchildren [with access to technology] — they could care less about what I do! They don't care where I'm going. They don't have YouTube, Instagram."

She also doesn't particularly care how they feel. If there's someone out there she can inspire — even if it's not her best girlfriends, even if it's just herself — she's happy these videos exist.

"It keeps me younger," Lill told Mashable. "I feel like 65 instead of 88 now. Nobody can believe I'm 88 ... We're just so good."

A heartfelt thanks to *65*-year-old Grandma Lill and all the YouTubers like her.

WATCH: 3Doodler Create Plus is the perfect pen for creative techies — Power Up

#_uuid:37dff8ed-df14-32fc-abcb-63eefe1d0ec5 #_author:Heather Dockray #_category:yct:001000002 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000DTrEpEAL #_revsp:news.mashable

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gutterdreams · 6 years

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32 from the 90 prompts list with billy?

“I want to make sure everything is good.” / Requests are closed/I don’t own the GIF used below.

Whateverwas the opposite of a blaze of glory was how you and Billy endedthings. It was an explosion of churlishness.After being together for practically all of Senior year, you assumedthat his plans to take off for California before Independence Daywould have changed. You just figured that you two would have a placein the world together after graduation. As soon as it became obviousthat Billy was still getting the Hell out of Hawkins in his clean asa whistle Camaro, things turned instantly sour like milk left out ofthe fridge for a day.

Hewas rolling his blue eyes around arrogantly as if you were out ofline for being hurt and you were throwing your arms around like youwanted a job in a used car lot. Through the windows of the cornerstore, other students you went to school with were watching withengaged eyes and laughing smirks. Max looked on with her friends fromthe other side of the parking lot, on her way to buy candy beforegoing to Mike's to play board games. If Billy hadn't started to climbbehind the wheel of his car around the second time you called him an'asshole', he would have watched you break down in tears without anyregard for the spectators. Instead, he drove you away with a lastwave at you and you never saw him again. He left for California a fewdays later while you waited in your bedroom with a stubborn pout andcrossed arms over a hopeful heart.

Ina women's magazine your mom subscribed to you had read that itapparently took half of the time of the relationship to move on fromit. It meant that you had to survive four and a half months of dullaches in your chest, anger that struck at you like a claw hammer fromthe inside, and lonely Sunday nights in bed by 8 PM instead of racingaround cold evenings in his Camaro with his hand gripping at yournearest thigh.

“[Y/N],the phone is for you!” From the kitchen, your mother screamed foryou. She didn't know where you were in the house and with a pot ofpasta boiling over on the stove, she was not about to go searchingthe place for you.

Herattention was on the bubbles coming out of the silver dish as shehanded you the phone from behind her. Right away, you pulled at theantenna and took off to the living room where she could cuddle upagainst the corner of the couch comfortably. You assumed that it wasjust Janet trying to switch a shift at the Sambo's you both worked ator Mallory ready to dish about another bad date with Lucas LaRiviere.

“Hello?”Comfortable with your feet tucked under a cushion and your knees toyour chin, you chimed into the phone. This was a good day. You wereat the three month mark and thoughts of Billy Hargrove didn't takecenter stage in your mind any longer.

“Hey.”Gruff from smoking a pack a day and pretending to be cool from dawnto dusk, Billy's voice sounded like sandpaper on the other end of thephone. It was an unmistakable sound that squeezed without forgivenessaround your heart. He sounded just like he did first thing in themorning, waking up in your bed after sneaking in because he justneeded to 'one more taste'. Without meaning to, you pictured his eyeshazy with morning dew in the corners. “I just...” He started,knowing you would be reluctant to have a conversation with him. “Iwanted to make sure everything is good.” Just like you, Billy couldhold a grudge. He had been successful at convincing himself you wereanother crazy chick for two whole months, but lately, he had startedto feel the creeping guilt that told him all the ways he mishandledthings with you. He could no longer deny the itch under his skin that cared if you loathed him. “I was just thinking of you - “ He said in placeof an apology.

Youdebated blurting out that you had not been thinking of him, butinstead you let out a sigh that rushed through the phone to him andprompted him to make the same sound.

“Areyou happy now? You're back home and out of the hellscape that wasHawkins...”

“Idon't know.” It occurred to Billy then and there that he might notever be happy. Everything about his upbringing had told him that hewasn't supposed to be and there was a sea of adults who made him feellike he did not deserve to be. Billy leaned against the wall that wasconnected to the phone he was on, looking out the window at theparking lot of the run down place he rented with three of his highschool buddies, pretending you were one of the many far away peoplehe could make out the shape of on the busy streets. “Maybe Hawkinswasn't so bad...” Of course, he insulted your hometown on a dailybasis when he had been there, but now Billy missed little parts ofit, the little parts that he identified as special to you. “I'mgoing to have to come in for Thanksgiving.” It was Neil's ordersand, even though he was eighteen now, Billy still was submissive tothem like a dog to the cruel calls of it's unfit owner. “Want tomake some time for me?”

Withone hand on your heart and the other wrapped around the phone like itwas trying to keep him there, hold him close, you went back to beingsilent and tried to think of what you should do. Your head wasscreaming at you to tell him 'no' and hang up, but your heart wasracing just at the sound of his exhausted voice.

“Idon't know.” It was all that came out of your mouth, leaving bothof you feeling just as confused and apologetic as the other.

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televisedbirdwatching · 6 years

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Avoiding the Corbusian Hellscape

The first few nights in my new Portland house, I hadn’t unpacked much of my kitchen stuff, let alone most of my clothes. Needing a fast and cheap dinner option, I asked my new roommates. As it turns out, walking just a few blocks in either direction gets you to your choice of food truck. I chose Korean, a place called Kim Jong Grillin, and walked down the street.

Kim Jong Grillin consists of a semi permanent trailer and a tuff shed for seating.

Portland seems to have too many food trucks. The “Food Truck Scene” in Portland took off in the early 2010’s, as food trucks captured the food zeitgeist of small-scale, farm-to-table, obsessive newness, and cultural fusion in a way brick and mortar restaurants didn’t. But since that time, food trucks have come into their own in a different way. There’s research to show that food trucks bring street-level vitality to neighborhoods across a variety of densities, and can help revitalize urban brownfields. Food trucks also provide a relatively easy avenue for people trying to own their own business.

For the past week I’ve been reading Radical Cities by Justin McGuirk, a book about a new group of activist architects in Latin American cities. In the 1960’s, socialist regimes sought to solve the emerging urban housing crisis through the construction of megastructures, like Nonoalco-Tlatelolco in Mexico City, which was designed to house 100,000 people. It was also designed as the first of four or five other Tlatelolco’s.

Mexico City’s Nonoalco-Tlatelolco, designed by Mario Pani, completed 1964.

We now know that social housing megastructures are terrible ideas. The motivating ideology at the time was an excitement to implement the ideals of early urban planners like Ebenezer Howard and Le Corbusier, who believed that you could plan and design your way to utopian societies.

Le Corbusier designed some great chairs and houses. As an urban planner, however, his designs feel more like “brutalist hellscape” than utopia

In actuality, we know that social housing constructions like Chicago’s Cabrini-Green, St. Louis’ Pruitt-Igoe, and, of course, Nonoalco-Tlatelolco were far from utopias. The psychological effects of living in superblock housing have been well documented elsewhere: Jane Jacobs writes about how in Brooklyn, playgrounds ostensibly meant for children became dangerous and lawless places. In the early 80’s, Chicago mayor Jane Byrd and her husband moved into a unit in Cabrini-Green as a publicity stunt. They only lasted three weeks despite being surrounded by armed bodyguards at all times.

Chicago’s Cabrini-Green. The dark black part of the facade was chain link fence. Whoever thought chain link would be an appropriate facade shouldn’t have been allowed to design anything, ever.

Justin McGuirk’s book focuses on a new school of activist architects who are delivering solutions that bring real change to their cities. These architects are obsessively pragmatic. They employ a DIY, ground-up spirit, simultaneously taking advantage of and working in spite of their governments. What’s also impressive is their ability to implement ideas that change lives now- not waiting until some ideal condition can be brought about.

Quinta Monroy, designed by ELEMENTAL (A.Aravena), photos Archdaily.

For example, in Chile, architect Alejandro Aravena built 93 half-houses. Aravena’s team came across a challenge with some seemingly unworkable math: they had just $7,500 per family to buy land and build homes in the town of Iquique. So, they built each family “half of a good house, the half they wouldn’t be able to do on their own: namely, the concrete structure, the roof, and the kitchen and bathroom.” Over time, families would fill the gaps between the concrete pods, organizing the rooms as needed for the size of their families.

In Venezuela, architects at Urban-Think Tank (UTT) wanted to deliver sanitation improvements to the barrios of Caracas. In 2003 they began installing composting toilets, since the slums are self-constructed and without sewage systems. McGuirk notes that the ideal scenario, of course, would have been to lobby for the installation of proper infrastructure- but according to UTT, “considering ideal conditions is a waste of time- the point is to avoid catastrophe.”

In many places, urban renewal money is used for more conspicuous projects like aerial tramways, instead of clean water and sewer retrofits.

Architecture projects like these ask us some tough philosophical questions, but at the same time, clear answers emerge when we bring them to the ground level. Is it OK to build people half-houses, where an entire extended family has only 30 square meters within a concrete cube? Probably not, but the reality of the situation is that the alternatives are slum-clearance evictions at gunpoint versus years of lobbying for more money, with no change on the ground.

In America, I think we are easily hung up at the philosophical level. It took us a long time and a sort of cultural perfect storm to accept restaurants that operate out of vehicles. When I grew up in California, they were known as “Roach Coaches,” a far cry from artisanal PB&J sandwiches (you can’t make this stuff up, folks). As it turns out, not only do we accept food trucks, we have learned to embrace it; and in doing so have seen how food trucks can perform a sort of “urban acupuncture” and revitalize dead spaces like parking lots (to borrow McGuirk’s phrase).

DPZ coDesign’s plan to house their “Bento Cabins” in a parking lot.

I wonder what the housing equivalent of food trucks will look like. Would we be OK with temporary mobile home parks in the parking lots of closed-down big box stores? I’d argue this isn’t a distant future for the Wal-Mart parking lot in Boulder, which I wrote about a few months ago. In McGuirk’s book, he has another example where architects were able to revolutionize a favela in Brazil just by using marking paint to mark out city blocks among the sprawl (the re-introduction of streets created visible, safer public spaces). What if we do the same to the parking lot in Boulder- mark out plots of land and give people living in their vehicles some (admittedly bare-bones,) structure?

In the past, the city of Seattle experimented with regulating tent cities. Photo Seattle Times.

I know, because I have the same gut reaction: this is America. Living in a DIY-trailer park in an abandoned mega parking lot shouldn’t be the reality of life for a family. And yet, it’s probably better than living in one of the underpass tent cities all too common in Portland. It’s also probably better than living in the parking lot where doing so is illegal. In 10 minutes I found a 5th wheel trailer on Craigslist for $8000: this is housing a family could rent-to-own instead of trying to win the nightly homeless shelter lottery. What are we going to tell the 12,500 houseless people currently building their own tent cities in Seattle, that we should wait until we can provide them with higher-quality housing? At some point, isn’t something better than nothing? Is it more disrespectful to provide someone with sub-standard housing, or to continue to allow them to exist without any housing at all?

#writing

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callmenateybird · 6 years

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Depression Never Drove Me To Attempt Suicide; Being Bullied While Depressed Did

I don’t wanna relive my bullying hellscape today but I can’t shake the feeling that people still just continue to blame the brains of suicidal people for any and all suicidal acts.

I’ve experienced depression for a long time. I was lucky that depression alone never led me to a suicide attempt. Being bullied along with being depressed, however, did. I need to use my own experience as an example to get through to people about this today.

Spring 2016: I dated a person I met on The List App (just what it sounds like - a list-making app created by BJ Novak). I went out to CA to be with her for 2 months. She felt it was moving too fast, but didn’t tell me for awhile. Eventually she did, we broke up, I was crushed, I went back to OH to be with family. I whined, I pitied myself, I spoke about the breakup on List.

Eventually, friends of my ex decided this was too much & brought my ex & others into a FB group chat, where they shit talked & mused that I had been manipulative & that I’d threatened self harm.

This was the first in two instances now of upping the ante of false accusation. First, from whining & taking a breakup hard -> manipulation & threats of self harm, then, a year ago right around this time, upping the ante again to “abuser.” More on that in a bit.

Back to 2016 — August, as the group chat began. I had been listing about the upcoming 2 year anniversary of my dad’s passing — Aug 10. On the night of the 9th, my ex’s close friend did what I guess was an accidental like of an old list of mine. At the time, it seemed odd because she wasn’t following me and we’d had conflict with each other on Twitter about a week before.

The next day, it made sense why she’d been far back in my old lists. As I listed about the anniversary of my dad’s passing, parody accounts began to go public.

The first was called Predator. My screen shots here were taken later (I was too upset to screenshot anything the day it all happened) after the name was changed to “Chris, Kay?” to target one List guy these people hated. The original name on the account was “Chrislie K. Veshester” — a mashup of the names of 3 of us from List.

In the second and third screenshots, you’ll see parts of a list. This list has direct excerpts from lists the 3 of us guys had previously posted (gathering lines from old lists the night before…yes, bullies go to great efforts to bully). The writing and recording line, the bravery line, the baggage line, the body is your friend line, the quote of Coyote Hours (an album about the death of my father) — all from me & gleefully twisted into being somehow creepy or wrong.

The line “I try to get others to take care of me” didn’t seem to come from any of us, but seems more to be a line from my ex’s friend’s imagination that reflects how those people saw me in the wake of that breakup.

Also launched that day, in tandem, was the Flounce account (to flounce means to announce that you’re leaving a community, which I had done the night before my dad anniversary, because of what I was going through at the time). I later was told this was created by Jack Waz, an employee of List. The first few followers on the account — my bullies, “Jo-Ann Fabrics” (another parody account by Jack), & even List creator BJ Novak.

Also popping up that day was this dormant “imacreep” account where luckily no new vitriol was added — but you can see, based on the few lists that account had “liked,” that it came from the same group of people.

You can also see, from the few likes on the predator account, that it came from the same group of people.

On Aug 10, I had a nervous breakdown after seeing all of this. The passing of a parent is a deep trauma and, only 2 years out, was obviously very fresh for me. It is an event that is almost sacred in a way, & part of the unhealable scarring of my bullying experience is that this sacred date was snatched away from me, and tainted by this awful social media experience. I now forever associate the day my dad died with being bullied.

On September 1st, an older guy from the group chat sent me an unsolicited harassing email, after being given my contact info by my ex. I had just called her to ask if she would be completing some album artwork she’d promised to do for me around the time of our breakup. I hadn’t heard from her in ages (this was before I knew she was involved in the group chat), so I took one last chance at reaching out about it. In the email from this guy, I was summarily smacked down for “not respecting her boundaries” and told very cruelly by him that she didn’t want to do my art, or hear from me ever again.

In mid September 2016, a former friend told me everything about the group chat. She had been brought into it and pressured/intimidated (by, among others, men in their late 30s — she was in her early 20s, as were a few other women in the group chat) to “provide receipts” of me talking about my breakup. She was forced to “denounce” me and swear she’d never talk to me again.

She named names to me in September and let me know who was involved. I learned that my ex — who had been silent through all the stuff in August — was in the group chat, participated, and watched it all go down. A couple days later, I began a suicide attempt.

The ordeal led to both myself and my mom being hospitalized (she has a heart condition). Thankfully, we both came out of the ordeal ok.

Plenty more vitriol was unleashed on List after August 10th. I was lucky that much of it didn’t involve me (another guy from List got it worse than I did). One older guy from the group chat did a particularly nasty “sublist” and a few other remarks came out here and there, but it seemed to be dying down finally.

Through the fall, I began to find balance again. I returned to List with a new account, and took small steps in standing up for myself.

In November, I confronted my ex about what I knew, in an attempt to make peace. She expressed some regret, but never really apologized in a way that felt adequate to me, nor would she concede that her friends had bullied me and that she had condoned it.

In December, I returned to CA to resume the life I’d begun building when I was dating my ex. I had been dreaming of living in Southern California since the trip to scatter my dad’s ashes there in fall of 2014, and I was using the last chunk of inheritance money I’d gotten to get myself re-established in Orange County.

In January of 2017, I finally realized that my ex was never going to apologize to me for everything, so I launched a text tirade of criticisms her way and stopped speaking to her.

But in the next few months, I faltered in that commitment and sent her three harassing emails. Since the previous fall, I had begun an agonizing habit of digital cutting (creeping on social media that you know is bad for your mental health) and snooped on her accounts, plus those of her friends and family. It is a habit that I have yet to fully shake, even all this time later. The three emails I sent all involved seeing things she’d liked on social media and being angry or jealous about them. I finally stooped to the level of the people who harassed me, and I harassed her. After the final of those three emails, in April of 2017, she wrote back and said she’d file a harassment order if I contacted her again, and I never contacted her again.

But I continued to grow more and more emboldened in standing up for myself publicly, and over the course of 2017 it became a huge part of my social media (especially on Twitter) to speak openly about my experience being bullied, harassed, and ganged up on.

In June of 2017, I was walking in a park in my ex’s town and saw her. A few days later, many of the ladies from List were tagged in a massive Twitter thread. For some reason, a few of us guys from the app were tagged as well. Later that day, my ex’s friend from the group chat - the one who had made the “Predator” account - subtweeted that these List ladies in the mass tagging had “an abuser among [them].” The ante of false accusation had been upped again, from whining and self pity and taking a breakup hard -> manipulation and threats of self harm -> abuse.

This subtweet alone, which I’d only discovered because of my continuing struggle with digital cutting (creeping online), sent me reeling on the verge of another breakdown. I knew that things were heating up culturally, that the imperative to believe women was more important than ever. And now, for the first time, I had to face that dissenting argument from the trolls who don’t like the prioritization of believing women no matter what — “what if somebody falsely accuses someone just to fuck up their life?” But even then, I brought myself back from the brink (with much help from my therapy sessions, my support system of family and friends, my writing, and the good-for-the-soul environment of southern California).

I even had a phone call later that summer with the friend who’d told me about the group chat, where I explained to her that I still acknowledged the importance of believing women, even if I was experiencing a false accusation. I told her that I was trying to hold onto the understanding that the cultural prioritization of listening to and believing women was bigger than me, more important than me.

But I also continued to speak openly about being bullied, and now included the mention of being implied to be an emotional abuser, all through 2017 until finally standing up for myself on social media impacted my real life once more. A few days before Christmas, after a really good period of no digital cutting for the entire month of December so far, I had a weak moment one evening and looked at the social media of my ex and her family. On her mom’s Instagram, I saw a repost from my ex’s private account where she’d said she had gone to the police station to file a report about “a year and a half of harassment, stalking, and general creepiness.” (A year and a half would be going back to right when we broke up - we were still on good terms then - and six months before our friendly if flawed semi-clearing of the air in late 2016). In her mom’s repost, she said “if we see this guy in our neighborhood again, we are coming after him!” I saw this — and hope you will understand my seeing it this way — as a threat of physical harm. If “our neighborhood” meant seeing me on their street, well that was never going to happen. But if it meant seeing me in their whole entire town — like I’d seen her in a park last June — well, what was I supposed to do about being seen in an entire town??

I was terrified, and made a hasty decision two days later (Christmas Eve) to leave my Orange County long term Airbnb about two months before the end of my lease. I struggled for about a month to stay afloat in LA, looking for a new space. But my savings was too low to handle the temporary added expenses of new Airbnbs and hotels, and by early February of 2018 I decided I had to throw in the towel and go back to Ohio to regroup with family until I could afford to be out west again.

And that is my ordeal, to date.

I took a breakup badly, and cried and cried and said “I can’t take it anymore” (the closest I came to “threats of self harm,” as were the initial accusations from the group chat). And all because of taking a breakup badly —

I was ganged up on, parodied, mocked, and bullied on the two year anniversary of the death of my father.

The actual creators/employees of the app where I was bullied - including BJ Novak himself - celebrated and *participated in* bullying me.

I suffered a nervous breakdown.

I attempted suicide.

My mom was sent into the hospital with a heart scare, from watching what I was going through and reacting emotionally as most mothers would.

I drained thousands of dollars from my savings for additional therapy, spiritual counseling, and cross country travel (twice).

I literally left my home because I felt unwelcome and physically unsafe in Orange County, after being threatened with violence by my ex’s mother.

And now I exist in this particular moment on social media, where the valiant and important efforts of the #metoo movement are still sometimes misrepresented by cold statements like “don’t ever fucking tell me that a false accusation ruins a man’s life.”

Even if you set aside my experience of being ganged up on and bullied, of being called a creep for being friends with women who were younger than me in a social media community, of being accused of manipulation and emotional abuse, it should be understandable as a general isolated statement — When we talk about someone’s life being ruined, we have to look at more than just their external life. We have to also look at their internal life.

And rest assured — beyond all the external stuff I just listed, my internal life has been forever impacted by being bullied and by being called “abuser.”

I can no longer say I have never attempted suicide. After years of living with depression and being proud of myself for never giving into the darkest of places, I now have experienced a suicide attempt. I now have experienced being called an abuser. And who knows what else I may experience as repercussions for posting this essay with screenshots and names, since the past two years of interacting with bullies has shown me very clearly that bullies always — ALWAYS — win.

We now live in an age where bullies are empowered by important cultural movements. They sneak in through weak spots, they use amped up language and terms that they know will attract attention. They are stronger than ever.

But the part of the narrative that my bullies and threateners will always leave out of their callouts - their own screenshot exposés of past and possibly future - is the part where they bullied and harassed first. My own instances of email harassment of my ex, my own flawed and self destructive habit of creeping online — these are personal flaws that arose AFTER being bullied. That part of their narrative will always be conveniently scrapped from the record. Bullying proves the age old saying — hurt people hurt people.

And so now, two years after my ordeal began, I try to be mindful that angry statements can verge on harassment, I do less and less digital cutting, I try to be a good person and to value the people who value me.

But when famous people are lost to suicide, and the conversation zeroes in squarely on mental illness and mental health, I just cannot abide the ignoring of so many other cultural factors that lead people to no longer want to live on this planet.

Whether the factors are due to marginalization, systemic oppression, economic hopelessness, ageism, a broken health care system, disease and physical pain, or a bullying ordeal like mine — there are an endless number of external environmental forces that drive people to suicide besides their own pure brain chemistry. And remember, environmental doesn’t just mean places and things — it means people. Many of those external forces that drive people to suicide involve how the people are treated by the others in their environment.

I have experienced depression for much of my life. But it was only being bullied that finally pushed me to the brink. This screenshot below shows the folks from the group chat. Some of them were silent bystanders, but they all watched it go down and did nothing to stop it. They are all complicit.

These are my bullies.

And if I have to live forever with being bullied the day my dad died, with having attempted suicide, with watching my mom go into the hospital, with being called an abuser and whatever else I’ll be called between two years ago and the end of my life, then they will have to live with being called bullies. And even if this post is removed, even if this account is suspended or deleted, I will continue to speak up and speak out when I am bullied or when I see others being bullied. I will not stand for it ever again.

Because all the things those people took away from me left a gaping hole inside me. And, so far, I have only found a couple things with which to sufficiently fill that hole — the understanding of my very loving and supportive family and friends, and love and respect for myself. Standing up for myself is just one of the ways I have learned to love and respect myself, ever since the ordeal that scarred my life forever.

June 12: I decided to add an afterword to this essay, a sort of “FAQ” to address a question I’ve been asked a few times in one form or another.

The question: Do you talk about your bullying experience so much because you want your bullies to feel bullied?

No.

First, "bullying bullies" isn't a thing much like how reverse racism isn't a thing. To be a broken record - to continually expose the bullying act & “Scarlet Letter” the perpetrators - is the only power a bullying victim has, since the act of bullying unfortunately isn't treated like a punishable crime, especially when it’s done online (even though being bullied has robbed me financially and wounded me - and my family - both physically and emotionally).

Second, I talk about this as much as I do because I want the people who bullied me to feel haunted by the consequences of their actions (and inactions, in the case of those who watched and condoned) - actions they probably felt, at the time, were not a big deal. To have spoken about it publicly for almost three years is an effort at making them feel so haunted by their behavior that they not only never bully another person again, but that they *themselves* become dedicated anti-bullying crusaders. It sounds almost laughable - and certainly would to them, as cynical as they are - but I am trying to make a difference in these few peoples’ lives. You can label it crudely as “badgering,” which I feel does a disservice to me by downplaying the severity of what happened to me, but whatever you call my continued persistence in talking about this experience - it is persistence that aims to make a few people more decent and mindful of their past and future behavior.

#bullying #anti bullying #cyber bullying #callout culture #social media

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thewasteland-rp · 6 years

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❝ a kind warmth drew others to her and made her a magnet for the children she once taught and then guarded. but with the loss of the children she promised she’d protect, she’s struggling against the violence in her mind and to hold onto that which made her good. some days she’s tempted to give up the internal battle altogether and other days she knows the fight inside her is just beginning. ❞

░ THE JUNO ░ Katelyn “Kate” Hamilton

age: 31 pronouns: she/her class: afflicted faceclaim: deborah ann woll

▻ THEN

Katelyn Hamilton was born into the type of family one might expect from the Upper East Side. Her father– Andrew Hamilton, was a New York Supreme Court Justice and her mother, Victoria Hamilton, was a society wife who, though she loved her daughter, could never really truly be bothered to care for her. So to the nannies Kate went. She knew her parents cared about her but, like most parents in her privileged circle, they cared in a distant removed fashion– a constant presence over her but never anywhere she could see or feel.

It didn’t bother Kate though because her outlook on the world was about as optimistic as could be. She was a child with bright eyes an easy laugh and hands that were always open. It was this upbringing that made the young Hamilton aware of what true nurture could do for a child. All her nannies had shown her a love and care she’d have otherwise lacked from her parents and Kate never took that for granted. They encouraged her love of music and her wild imagination, always saying that she could be anything she wished if she had the will to get there.

And, much to her parents’ dismay, Kate did just that. She decided early on in high school that education would be her desired path in college and once she spent semesters with elementary aged children, she knew that’s what she wanted to be. Kate possessed a gentleness and patience that, when combined with her charisma and laid back approach to life, made her one of the most beloved teachers at the prestigious Manhattan preparatory school she’d once attended herself. She was the type of teacher who’d go out of her way to make sure every student felt cared for and nurtured.

It became her life for several years until she entered her first serious relationship with someone introduced to her by a mutual friend. It wasn’t hard for others to see that Christian was more interested in her father’s position and the connections he could garner from Mr. Hamilton than he was in Kate herself. And though she was fully invested in the relationship, always open with herself even if she shouldn’t have been, Kate eventually broke it off when it was clear that her feelings for him went far deeper than his for her. She deserved better.

This break up, like most, was difficult but only so much in the fact that Kate felt stupid for being so open and honest with someone who showed little care for herself. After, she threw herself back into her job and focused on doing that better than wallowing in self-pity or regret. And she enjoyed it, truth be told, she loved her job and felt good doing it and she was good at it. That’s what mattered. But, just like her relationship, and like most things in life, it couldn’t last.

▻ NOW

When the world ended little more than half a year later, Kate found herself taking on a new role beyond teacher. She became a protector. A guardian. A mother, even. When the world ended she was in the midst of story time with her 15 students and the next thing she knew she was waking up to a new chaotic reality. They were no more than eight years old, some even younger and most perished that first day. It was horrifying and what was more, Kate didn’t know what was happening– she didn’t have answers they looked to her for. All she had were black marks maring porcelain skin and new abilities she couldn’t explain.

There were seven children when she woke and she was determined to keep them alive. The school was in disarray and, as far as she could tell, they were the only survivors. It became clear a week into their post-apocalyptic trek through the city that this wasn’t going to be easy. But Kate’s mind and heart was set on protecting the children who now clung to her like a lifeline. They tried to find parents, anyone who could help but it soon became evident that she was going to be the only one who could help them and as much as she wished she could have trusted the help of strangers– their strange marks and abilities made her too wary to put her life and the children’s lives in their hands.

The first months were the hardest and that’s when the small band of ragtag children and their teacher lost three of their young friends to the violence and sickness the new world unleashed on them. Kate felt something inside her shift slowly, edging towards something and she could never put her finger on what but it would come out when she least expected, a moment of intense anger she willed herself to direct elsewhere, a realization that she was far stronger than she’d ever been and a fear that she enjoyed protecting the children only because it allowed her to let loose and explore a violent side of her she’d never known existed. Maybe one that hadn’t existed until life itself had imploded into the hellscape that was New York.

While they kept away from most people and Kate did her best to make sure she and the remaining four children were sufficient, it paid to talk to other strangers sometimes–– families mostly, those with children who were trying to survive same as Kate and her own. She learned things about the state of the city– the world, and the changes people were facing. She’d encountered monsters before but not many– not enough to know what they were or how to face them for sure– just enough to know she could. To know that instinct would take over in a way it hadn’t before.

She still didn’t understand the growing marks on her skin, the black ink that seemed to trace from her heart outward to increasingly calloused and bloodstained hands. But the never the heart. Kate was in a constant state of turmoil at night, during the hours the children were busy with the lessons she still gave them when they had a moment, during the times they napped– a way to pass the time until the next day they had to face. In those instances, Kate would try to recenter herself– refocus on the good. On protecting the children and making sure they survived.

But the year would be hard. And it would test her more than she could’ve predicted. She stayed in the city as long as possible, probably close to nine months when she lost another two children to monsters that lay in hiding– that she couldn’t fight off on her own without risking the lives of the others. After that, Kate couldn’t justify staying in a city that had claimed the lives of so many, not just her own wards but millions of others who’d survived the end only to be consumed by the aftermath. So they set off, she’d heard whispers of safety in the west and with their prospects looking dismal in the city, that’s where she decided to take her remaining two kids– it was their safest bet and as time went on, it seemed like it was their only choice.

She tried so hard to keep them alive. She tried so hard to fight against whatever was eating her up inside, the blind anger and bouts of rage she felt. Kate tried so hard to make sure those little kids made it and she failed. She lost her sixth child in January to the unforgiving winter. And she lost her seventh just over a week ago to a vampire attack. Kate’s currently reeling from the losses and, in their wake, she’s felt something change even more– a twisted thought that their deaths meant she was free before shoving it away. An anger she felt whenever she thought of each one of the seven falling to one cruelty or another– an anger that resulted in split knuckles and screaming into the empty night. An anger at the world and at herself and the the children for being so weak. For not being able to stay alive. For leaving her alone.

Because she was alone now. A protector without anyone to protect. A teacher without anyone to teach.

California was still on her mind and Kate decided to head there– or, at least, try. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t give up on herself, just like she couldn’t give up on her kids and so that became her next goal. She’s uncertain of whether it matters if she makes it or not but she’s determined to try.

▻ CONNECTIONS

tbd

▻ PLOT POINTS

currently nomadic

#deborah ann woll fc #oc rp #skeleton rp #rpg #apocalypse rp #taken #takenf #f #afflicted #the juno

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laconservancy · 6 years

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Forty Years of Membership: An Interview with Two Conservancy Members

The Los Angeles Conservancy has been a member-based organization since our founding in 1978. As part of our fortieth-anniversary celebration, we wanted to share some perspectives on Conservancy membership from long-time and new members. We spoke with Marjorie Wong Mishkin, a member since our founding, and Samantha La Rocco, who joined the Conservancy this year.

Marjorie Wong Mishkin

Q: You’ve been a member of the Conservancy since our founding. Why did you join in the first place?

A: John Welborne and other neighborhood friends joined at the same time. That’s how I heard about the Conservancy. I was born at St. Vincent’s Hospital. I grew up in L.A. and my children did, too. I went to Marlborough School. My parents took us to Wilshire Country Club and the Coliseum and LACMA when it was built, and downtown even before there was a Music Center. We went to all the Rams games when I was growing up. I love the buildings, but more than the buildings I love the people.

I had a strong attachment to Olvera Street, the Mission, and downtown LA. My father (a Chinese doctor and graduate of the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco) spent a lot of time offering volunteer health care services at the Mission. We all learned Spanish. He never billed his pro bono patients or whomever he considered a friend. However, we did eat well!

Q: Even though you’re not in Los Angeles full time now, why do you think it’s important to remain a member of the Conservancy?

A: I want Los Angeles to remain important; a lot of the buildings are very important. Michael Graves (the architect) built the building where I now live in Miami. He always said the space around the building is more important than the building itself. I agree completely.

Q: Where did your interest in historic preservation come from?

A: Probably my friends and my family. When my kids were in school, we moved to June Street. And as a child, I lived in the mid-Wilshire area, when Bullocks Wilshire was actually Bullocks Wilshire.

Q: What is your favorite historic building in Los Angeles?

A: The First Congregational Church on Commonwealth Avenue and Sixth Street. My parents donated a chapel there called Wong Chapel. The altar tablet was conceived and painted by a Danish artist named Kay Nielsen, and the original stained-glass windows are still there today. I started going there when I was about four years old and was married there. Even though the [pinnacles] were damaged by an earthquake, the church has done a good job at preservation. [Editor’s note: The project to replace the pinnacles and restore other elements of the tower earned a 2012 Conservancy Preservation Award.]

Q: What do you think are the biggest issues or challenges facing preservation in Los Angeles moving forward?

A: I hate tearing down buildings and putting up boxes. We’re looking forward to the Olympics; they’re going to update the Coliseum. I want Los Angeles to be livable – it doesn’t have to be as it was before, but it should be livable and it should be historic.

Samantha La Rocco

Q: You say that Los Angeles is the only place that’s ever felt like home to you. Why is that?

A: I grew up in suburban south Florida, which I experienced as a flat, punishingly humid, mosquito-ridden suburban hellscape.

The wildlife was the most interesting thing for me. The most “exciting” thing to happen near me was Anna Nicole Smith’s untimely death. It never felt like the place I was “meant” to be. I moved to L.A. to go to USC, but it had been a place I’d felt drawn to since I was a lonely imaginative child.

For me, as it has for people for over a century, it represented opportunity, where I could find an artistic family and write my own narrative, and an enticing element of risk, if I’m being honest. As a performer, which I fully recognize is a cliché, I embraced being in a place where so many other people who felt like they didn’t belong elsewhere made a home – creatively, geographically, and emotionally. And of course, what teenager wouldn’t love [the book] Hollywood Babylon?

Los Angeles is diverse in every single way imaginable: you get mountains, you get beaches, you get old, new, weird, chic, delightfully garish...there’s so many different cultural veins running through it, it’s like a million cities in one.

I love driving around and being able to identify when a building was built, the style it was built in, who might have lived there. And having grown up in a place that was essentially two dimensional, I’ll never stop being amazed by how hilly it is! There are CLIFFS here!

There’s Victorian architecture! Made out of WOOD! Do you know what happens to wood homes in Florida? There’s buildings shaped like barrels! There are signs in non-Indo European languages! There’s a twenty-four-hour restaurant in a dining car that looks like it belongs in a David Lynch movie!

At USC, I took a course about the history of this city, which included walking tours. At the time, I didn’t appreciate it as much as I do now. It really sowed a seed of historical curiosity and passion that’s grown since I graduated. I love being able to spout fascinating trivia about buildings I drive past.

Q: How did you find out about the L.A. Conservancy, and why did you decide to join?

A: For me, it was the aggressive developer greed eroding what I see as the unique character of this city, with giant behemoths of buildings that all look like one another, far too big for their lots, standing out like consumerist tumors, pushing out people and communities that have been here far longer. For example, near where I live, Du-par’s, a diner that has been around since the ’30s, has been torn down for a Sephora. (We really need another Sephora?)

Cities in Europe seem to value their older buildings, their history, in a way that the powers that be in Los Angeles do not. I’m tempted to go on a political rant but I’ll spare you! For me, ultimately, the threat to the history and character of this city felt intensely personal.

I found out about the Conservancy after seeing something circulated on Facebook about a much beloved historical building being torn down for something like a Whole Foods or expensive apartments. I went to your website and looked at all the amazing buildings in danger, and all of the ones that had been lost, and I wanted to cry.

Q: Why do you think it’s important to be a member?

A: I think conservation is incredibly important and beneficial – it has the power to create jobs, enhance the reputation and ultimately tourist revenue of a city, and promote historical curiosity and a sense of community.

I’m admittedly not normally someone who thinks I can make a difference individually, but the slow erasure of Los Angeles is so close to home, so immediate, that I really felt like it’s a cause I have to fight for.

Q: Where did your interest in historic preservation come from?

A: I’ve been a history nerd since I could read. I collect antiques. I truly believe an understanding and appreciation for the past enriches the present. Coming from some place rife with creepily cookie cutter housing developments like tiny Stepford cities, slowly encroaching on ecologically invaluable swampland, I really appreciate the home I chose here and its history. It’s really just heartbreaking to see it disappear.

Q: What is your favorite historic building in Los Angeles?

A: That’s like asking me to tell you which of my dogs is my favorite! I’m a sucker for whimsy. The first thing that comes to mind for me is the Magic Castle in Hollywood. It’s a turn-of-the-century mansion with a piano that takes requests and secret passages. Sold. There’s also a little cluster of storybook-style apartments on Formosa Avenue in West Hollywood that I’ve always loved. Apparently Charlie Chaplin lived there at one point. I’m sure I’m going to lie awake in bed tonight and think of all the other buildings I could have said.

Q: What do you think are the biggest issues or challenges facing preservation in Los Angeles moving forward? What would you like to see the Conservancy focus on in the next forty years? How can the Conservancy stay relevant as the city grows and changes?

A: I think the decentralized nature of Los Angeles tends to work against conservation efforts, even if just from a logistical perspective. I’d definitely love to see the Conservancy increase its visibility. I’d love for there to be more limits on demolition and development – I think that’s massively important. I think enough coordinated efforts from the Conservancy and presence at town halls could achieve that. As with most things, relevancy lies in recruiting a younger generation. I’m so glad the Conservancy is offering youth and school programs, which I think are invaluable, to both the students and the cause.

Show you support for preservation by becoming a Conservancy member today >

#40 years #40th anniversary #lac40 #Q&A #q and a #Q & A #membership

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