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tcm · 3 years

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A Conversation with Patty McCormack on Growing Up on Screen By Kim Luperi

Not many child stars go on to enjoy long, successful careers in show business – and fewer still have earned a prestigious Academy Award nomination before they turned 18. Patty McCormack has achieved both. The actress, who made her first film appearance in 1951 and went on to star in THE BAD SEED (’56, for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress as the murderous Rhoda at age 11); THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN (’60) and THE YOUNG RUNAWAYS (’68), continues to work in Hollywood and shows no indication of slowing down.

I had the pleasure of speaking with McCormack recently about some of these titles and more, including the delightful film KATHY O’ ('58) in which she plays a famous child star – an apt springboard for a discussion about growing up on screen and transitioning into more mature roles over her incredibly long, accomplished career.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

I was watching KATHY O’ last night, and I really enjoyed it. In that movie they talk about your blonde pigtail braids as a trademark, and I realized it kind of was; you had that hairstyle in THE BAD SEED and ALL MINE TO GIVE (’57), too. Do you know how that style came about, or was it something you did that caught on?

Patty McCormack: It seems to be! I believe I even had them early on in Mama, which was an old live TV show that was a weekly event. I don't know how that [trademark] happened. I think it just happened because of THE BAD SEED – I think it was the hairdo that I went in with or they just decided on. When you see the original artwork on William March’s book, there’s a very long face drawing of Rhoda, his Rhoda, and there were braids in it. I don't know if they were looped or what, but that could have been it – or I honestly don't remember if it was chosen by my mom because it was easy, but it stuck!

I loved KATHY O’ because I got to live the dream. I loved the notion of them cutting my hair off – except it was a wig that they cut. After a while it felt like I didn't want to look like an older person with braids – you have to get rid of them eventually. As soon as I could, I wanted hair that was like, in that era, a page boy or something like that, where it landed on your shoulder. But I carried that long hair for a long time. And then you know how you revert back to certain hairdos years later?

They come back in style.

PM: Yes, they come back, but now I have shortish hair, and I'm growing it one length. So I got over the braids – just in the nick of time!

Circling back to Rhoda, you originated the role on Broadway before the film version, so you obviously had a lot of practice and familiarity with the part before you took it to the screen. Since she's such a chilling character, how did you get into that mindset at age nine, especially when you had to play the part multiple times a week?

PM: I always go back to the source, and the source was the director, Reginald Denham. He was so good with directing me. He made it fun, because I learned when I'd get an audience reaction on a face I’d make or something, I'd look forward to doing that again – you know, that kind of joy.

He made it so clear and simple, and his point of view was that Rhoda was always right. I know I've said this before, but it's the truth. No matter what anybody says, Rhoda is correct, and anything she wants, she feels entitled to – not using that word ‘entitled’ – but I really wasn't thinking of myself as a bad person, or especially not a murderer. I just thought it was their fault, which is classic, I guess. I had to kill him [the little boy] because he was so mean. So I think that was how I learned to be that character. I was aware of the murders – people were dead because of me, that I knew – but somehow it wasn't disturbing to my mind. If you take a look at it knowing that, you see it. I'm not coming from some sort of evil place, I don't think.

You were nominated for an Oscar for THE BAD SEED, which is amazing; it's a true testament to your talents, of course, but it’s also such a big accolade to have at such a young age. Do you remember there being any pressure on you for your next role?

PM: Well, the role was so odd for a kid to be so noticed, in that era anyway. I can't think of any jobs I didn't get after that that somebody else got, you know? What happened, though, was that each year I grew, and so I just experienced the typical kid actor dilemma which is going from category to category and establishing yourself in that category and learning how to be in that category. I did do something on Playhouse 90 – I did a few PLAYHOUSE 90s back then – and I did a lot of television –

You played Helen Keller [in the original 1957 Playhouse 90 teleplay “The Miracle Worker”].

PM: That's what I was going to say! That was after THE BAD SEED. But mostly, as far as movies went, there was KATHY O’ and a few here and there and at different levels of development. I was always aware that it had been a while since I worked, that I felt, but I didn't think business, like “What will I follow up that with?” I didn't have that kind of mentality, and I really don't think my mother did either, so it just sort of went the way it went.

As you mentioned too, you were still growing up. So, you’re a child, then a teenager, then young adult. You probably wouldn’t be thinking about the business part of it.

PM: No, it's so strange. It's not an easy transition, and as you know famous people go through really hard things. You don't get to sit and relax in a certain mode for too long because before you know it you're in the next one. And then you go through your ‘ugly period’ in front of everybody, which is horrible.

The movie that you mentioned TCM is going to air, THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, when I see the headshots from that I just think, “Aw, I looked uncomfortable!” I could see it even in my body. I felt like I was at the awkward time – you know, part of me was getting bigger, developing – and that hairdo they gave me didn't help; it was still the braids but wrapped up.

I want to ask you about that transition. Did you find anything difficult or surprising about navigating Hollywood and growing up on screen?

PM: The most difficult part, honestly, as a person growing up – I think at the time I always say Sandra Dee was the person we all looked to. She was just so beautiful, and no one else looked like that – maybe Carol Lynley a little bit – but the bar was set very high. With that, you’re insecure anyways because you’re at that age, and more than anything you don't want to be different. I think that's true for a lot of kids. So the maturing, that part of development, was difficult when I look back. You don't have the confidence that you had as a little kid when you don't think about anything. You become all self-conscious about how you look, if you're thin enough, if you’re pretty enough, if your hair looks nice. It's a little bit of an adjustment to get through all that and go back to what you like to do, which is to pretend, and take the focus off what you look like or who you look like or any of that stuff. I don't know if other kid actors had the same experience, but usually people grow out of a look that made them known – most of us anyway, not all of us.

I know when you left Hollywood you went back to Brooklyn and finished high school there. What was that experience like for you?

PM: Well, I took my real name back, and I was going to the high school that my mother and older sister went to, so I was really excited. This is going to sound so weird, but it was almost like playing a part – I was playing the part of a high school student. My real name is Russo, so I was Patty Russo. The experience was really kind of shocking, because I think they expected me to be very conceited, and so I had to hide in the cafeteria in the early days, because it was Brooklyn and they were pretty tough – they were on me! But I made a best friend who helped me navigate through it, and it turned into a nice experience finally. I was glad to have had that.

Then I came back out here [Los Angeles], and I stayed with a friend of my mother's family for a while. I wound up leaving Utrecht [her Brooklyn high school] – it’s a long story – but I did a soap opera in between while I was going to Utrecht, and that was kind of tricky because they weren't flexible like California was. In California they were used to kid actors, and in New York at that time, they really weren't. Then when I came out here, I went back to finish high school at Hollywood Professional and got my diploma that way. But I'm so glad I got to go back to Brooklyn. I'm pleased about that.

It sounds like you had a pretty grounded childhood, especially in attending a regular high school. Do you think that helped how you adjusted when you returned to the film industry?

PM: It was a little bit too grounded, I think! I came from a really good family. I never thought that I was a big deal, and they [her mom and dad] made sure of that. So, coming back to the industry after, I really didn't know the ropes. People handled all that before – the only thing I knew was what I did, and so some things maybe didn't get handled so well, but I learned on my feet when I came back out here. Then I married my childhood boyfriend and we had our children, and I kept working.

Yes, you’ve worked steadily since then.

PM: I did work a lot! It’s true. Nothing on the level of nominations, but I was a journeyman, I like to say.

You've spent six decades in the industry, which is really astounding, especially since you started as a child. I read an interview from 1974 that featured a humorous quote from you that I’d like to share. You said that you lamented that you never got the guy in movies and just once you wanted to “kiss the guys instead of kill them.”

PM: That is funny!

But throughout your career, you played Helen Keller, you played a career woman in THE BEST OF EVERYTHING (’70), you played Pat Nixon more recently in FROST/NIXON (’08), so you've had a lot of experience with different characters. Was there any genre or any type of character that you wish you could explore further?

PM: Well, I'll tell you the truth, it's actually seven decades from when I started, although if you want to make me younger, I don't mind! At this point in time, I'm so grateful when I work, because there could be nothing now, you know? I do enjoy what comes along. The only thing I never got to do, which I would have loved, was to have been in a habit – I would have loved to have played a nun in a habit.

That’s interesting.

PM: Isn’t it? It’s the Catholic school thing.

We’ll have to find you a role like that!

PM: I know, wouldn't that be fun? And it would be a nice way, in your later years, to go from a killer to a nun, you know? I think it would be a good idea.

Going in the right direction!

PM: Yes! But anyways, little things change here and there, and I sometimes do voiceovers, and I did something recently that I had never done, which was so much fun. Did you notice on Netflix a show called ARSENE LUPIN [working title for LUPIN]?

I haven’t heard of it, but I know there’s an old movie with the same name.

PM: Yes, this is a remake. It's in French, and I dubbed a French woman into English, and it was so much fun to do, to have someone else's face up there. I know some people watch foreign movies and they say, “Oh it's so unfair to dub the other actors,” and I probably wouldn't love it if somebody dubbed me either, but I had such a ball doing it. So, if you catch that show, you'll see somewhere in there I'm speaking English for a French woman.

I wanted to talk about two of your more recent roles. I know you starred in MOMMY in the 1990s, kind of a grown-up Rhoda, and you played a psychiatrist in the Lifetime remake of THE BAD SEED in 2018. This story has been filmed a few times; what do you think resonates with people, and how did it feel going back to that character and story but from different perspectives?

PM: Right. Well, to be honest, the Rob Lowe production [for Lifetime] was really a totally different story. There was no mom – he was the mom character – so the writing was really different.

There were two MOMMY movies: MOMMY (’95) and MOMMY’S DAY (’97). Those were written by a writer who lives in Muscatine, Iowa: Max Allan Collins. This is a long time ago now, but it was fun to grow her up, you know, physically. I talked to you about how that is the strange thing about transitioning, and it was so enjoyable to do that. It really was a journey for me internally.

There was also something about shaking hands with that, because in my day, it was never a good thing to have something so long ago be talked about all the time. I got that impression by other people's opinions, not my own, and as time went on, the world changed and people started knowing actors’ work from 20 years ago. So, the appreciation for that old work came back, and I learned to feel good about it through other people's feelings about it. I do have such a different perspective on it now, and it's a character that was so special. That really changed my ability as to how I could hold it [the role].

It’s nice to be able to do that.

PM: Yes, it is.

I have one more question for you. I know we’re in a pandemic and many productions are halted, but do you have any upcoming appearances that I can share with fans to look out for?

PM: Aw, I wish! It's funny, I did some Hallmark Christmas movies. Well, I did one, and then last year I was supposed to do another one, and they cut our parts because of COVID. So, I'm rooting for [the next one], and I have a good feeling, you know, when we have our vaccinations. Also, a downside was that they shoot in Canada, and they have to bring you up there, and at that time you had to stay in 14 days.

A lot of rules!

PM: Yes, a lot of rules. So hopefully there will be a new one. I can't honestly say, but there's no reason there shouldn't be!

My dad loves the Hallmark Christmas movies, and I watch a lot of them because of him, so I'll be rooting for you and looking out for you!

PM: I know, there's so many. People have blankets and all these things! There are real hard-core fans – it's amazing.

#patty mccormack #child actors #TCM #Turner Classic Movies #The bad seed #kim luperi #growing up on screen #acting #actor

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lebrookestore · 3 years

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I'm glad I was of help, I can completely relate to getting hyper fixated on something related to school (which sometimes has been just having to go back to school after a 2 day holiday) and feeling like my life will be forever ruined when I have to finally face the school related situation but nothing actually ends up happening

In my case I don't really cry but I end up feeling pretty uncomfy and sick(sometimes puke) with all the anxiety, and similar stuff is the case for a lot of my friends which is just really sad :(, it's just a mixture of asshole parents/relatives that we will forever end up defending because it's just ingrained in our mind to defend adults and people who'll say school performance doesn't matter when we panic but then get inredibly upset when something goes slightly wrong (ie passive aggresive bitches :cough: teachers :cough: parents) what makes me feel grounded these days though is my brother who's a decade older than me and he seems to be living pretty satisfactorily despite being not being the best at school and recieving the same shitty remarks from my mom as I do, he has good friends, enjoys video games like he did when he was my age but still is also a responsible adult which makes me realise how insignificant all of this is and I'm more than capable of getting through it, all of us are

these set of exams I have prob done my best job avoiding the anxiety and I'm happy that I have and I assure you they will be barely an eighth of the difficulty of a typical written exam, most kids will do good and if you've done most of the prep already you'll barely have to do any revision, after you give the first one you'll prob get what I mean

as for my username, I changed it to the one I use on other social media because yes it's hard to remember (literally a keyboard smash because I didn't think I would be using Tumblr often when I made the account)

these are the sample paper links

https://cisce.org/publicationdetail.aspx?id=96

http://cbseacademic.nic.in/SQP_CLASSX_2021-22.html

(idk why writing asks on the web version doesn't allow links), these are how your forms are going to be because they are the official ones(well depending on whatever board your school is under)

and ik how exciting it is to wait for exams to get over so you can do something creative you're into, for me it's drawing and I have so many fanart ideas with all these comebacks and my new flaming passion for resident evil (idk how this happened), let's get this bread!

also, I too, am an averagewelcome to the playground enjoyer (｡•̀ᴗ-)

good night!

#fuck school

this ended up being quite a long answer but i actually enjoyed answering it!! the answer is under the cut hehe

gosh i get hyperfixated on every little thing like today school sent out a revised time table?? with new dates for the exam??? when our exams were supposed to start on thursday this week?? which would be fine tbh its extra four days to study but at the same time i was mentally prepared for the exam on thursday yk?? and now math is my last paper yall-

my anxiety gets triggered like that too!! i tend to get panic attacks or sort of blank out in stress because im so anxious and then it refrains me from functioning like a normal human being😭 i just sort of short circuit and then pray for the best lmao, and yes!!! i totally get the need to defend your parents/adults because they are at a level of superiority to you?? its like some sort of twisted duty?? honestly good for your brother, and I'm glad you have an example of the sort!!!

unfortunately im complete opposite this is the exam i am the most stressed out and anxious about rip💀💀but honestly that confirmation you've given me as someone who has gone through it is really comforting, mine start on Monday and i am in full on study mode

!! i didn't mean you had to change your username bby i just meant you could have given me a nickname for the tags but if you're more comfortable with this one that's great!! i think its cute<33

AND THANK U SO MUCH FOR THOSE SAMPLER PAPERS YOU ACTUAL ANGEL ✨✨✨ I SHALL TAG THIS FOR RESOURCES FOR LATER

i am actually always on the web oversio nf tumblr for the most part because my asian parents refuse to let me have control over anything and have put a timer on my phone so that it konks off the moment an hour is up🤡😭 the life of an indian student 💔💔

and omg you do fanart??? is that where the suggestion of people doing fanart for my fics for my milestone event came from?? in that case i would absolutely love to see what you'd create taking inspiration from my fics but don't feel pressured to do so!! and you have a flaming passion for resident evil, while mine lies with genshin lmao

📢WELCOME TO MY PLAYGROUND SUPREMACY 📢

good night! I'm sorry i answered this so late i was studying all day rip, but thank you for this ask it was a lot of fun, I'm going to study a little more before i go to bed and yes #fuck school

#asks—◌#resources.room #melonadeski

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liskantope · 4 years

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Some brief (and sometimes not-so-brief) reactions to major Disney films 1937-1967

Around a month ago I made a temporary switch from Netflix to Disney+ with the goal of watching all major Disney movies in order, roughly paced so that one year of Disney film-making equals one day of real life. I should clarify here that by “major Disney movies” I mean mostly just all the animated ones plus a few hybrid live-action/animated ones, and a few of the most popular live-action ones (at least the ones I remember having a song considered good enough to feature on one of the Disney Sing-Along videos, a staple of my video-watching as a kid growing up in the 90′s). I would have been interested to see Song of the South, which I’ve never seen in its entirety, but it’s not included on Disney+ for fairly obvious reasons. As I get further into modern Disney, I’ll probably skip over most of the sequels and other features I strongly expect not to like (with the exception of Belle’s Magical World, which is said to be so legendarily bad that I just have to see what the fuss is about).

This time range of three decades happens to include more or less exactly those Disney productions that Walt Disney himself took a major role in (he died shortly before the final version of Jungle Book was finished). I’d like to do this again in another month, when I will have gotten up through the late 90′s, but honestly this post wound up way longer than I was imagining and took several more hours than I expected (or could really afford), so I’m not promising myself or anyone else that.

Looking at Wikipedia’s list of Disney productions, I’m a little taken aback at what a low percentage of these are animated features, which to me form the backbone of that company’s legacy; visually scanning the list makes the line of animated films look shorter than I had always imagined, but really what this is showing is that Disney produced far more live-action movies than I ever knew about, including (and perhaps especially!) in its early days. Right now I’m continuing on through the 70′s films, but this set of mini-reviews represents the first month of watching and three decades of Disney magic.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937

This is the full-length feature that began them all and which had the burden of defying contemporary skepticism that a full-length animated feature could be taken seriously at all. We are already far beyond the earliest days of animation and have progressed lightyears beyond the quality of “Steamboat Willie”; throughout the film I marveled at the sophistication of the animation with a newfound appreciation of how groundbreaking a lot of the sequences must have been.

I know I watched this at least a couple of times in childhood and I think once when I was a bit older, but even that was long ago.

Snow White is based on one of the simpler classic fairy tales, and the writers had to come up with ways to flesh out this very short story enough to occupy well over an hour. This was done not by exploring the character of Snow White or the Queen or even filling in extra plot details (the fate of the hunter is never addressed) but by spending a lot of time on the dwarfs. The detail spent on individuating them took a lot of work from the animators, but I think their efforts paid off. I can’t say the same about the attention paid to Snow White or the Queen (pretty much the only remaining characters). Snow White has an almost entirely flat personality, with no sense of curiosity or concern whatsoever about the Queen’s designs to have her killed, just having literally only one goal in mind: to marry this Prince who she’d only seen for about two minutes and run away from out of shyness. (This is of course a trend we’ll see with Disney princesses for a long time.) The Queen similarly only has the goal of being “the fairest in the land”. Something about the particular harshness of her voice strikes me as The Quintessential 1930′s Female Villain Voice (“I’ll crush their bones!”), whatever that means -- maybe I got my idea of what this should be from the movie Snow White in the first place.

I still think “Heigh Ho” (which I’ve known well since early childhood) is an excellent song in its utter simplicity, especially when complimented with the “Dig Dig Dig” song (which I did not remember at all until a few years ago when a Tumblr mutual posted the excerpt containing it!). I’m not enormously fond of “One Day My Prince Will Come”, although I did enjoy playing it on the violin at a couple of gigs with one of my musician friends back during grad school -- I was convinced then, and up until watching Snow White just now, that it belonged to Cinderella.

Pinocchio, 1940

This was a favorite movie of mine in earlier childhood; we owned the VHS and I watched it a lot. As a child, I had no sense of one Disney movie coming from a much earlier time than another one; it was only much more recently in life that I understood that Pinocchio really comes from all the way back eight decades ago. Pinocchio taught me the meaning of “conscience” (both in the dictionary sense and in a deeper sense), and it shaped my notion of what fairies may look like -- for instance, my mental picture of the Tooth Fairy, back when I believed in her, was inspired by the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio.

It’s amazing just how much the quality of Disney animated features improved from the first one to this one, the second. It helps that both the story and the characters are far more complex than those of Snow White. The plot from the original book (which I’ve read in Italian and English) was more complex still, of course. There is one gaping hole where it’s never explained how Gepetto somehow found himself in the belly of a whale (I don’t remember whether or how this is explained in the book), but I’ll forgive that.

It’s interesting to see the 1940′s caricature of “bad (early teenage?) boy” shown in the animation and voice of Lampwick. Phantom Strider talks about the turning-into-donkeys scene as a notoriously dark scene for adults who didn’t find it as terrifying when they were children -- count me in as one of those adults! It’s especially terrifying to see the whole mass of boys-turned-donkeys being treated as slaves in the hellhole known as Pleasure Island and realizing that this is never going to be resolved in the movie -- it’s rather unusual in Disney stories for some great evil to be left unresolved with no recompense even for the chief villain. In fact, Pinocchio is pretty much the only Disney story I can think of where the worst villain doesn’t meet some kind of dire fate. Really, the range of Pinocchio’s view is much narrower: it’s just the coming-of-age story of one puppet in his quest for Real Boyhood. (And yes, I still giggle at how intricutely Jordan Peterson analyzes particular scenes from the movie to support his beliefs about neo-Marxism or whatever.)

Disney+ heads many of the descriptions of the older movies with “This program is presented as originally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions.” I’m a little surprised they don’t do this with Pinocchio, given what appears to me a rather derogatory depiction of Gypsies.

“When You Wish Upon a Star” has become a timeless hit, for good reason. And I still find “Hi Diddle Dee Dee” extremely catchy.

Fantasia, 1940

I saw this one multiple times growing up (for earlier viewings, I was not allowed to see the final number “Night on Bald Mountain”). My mom, for her part, saw this in theaters at the age of around 4 (even though it originally came out long before she was born) and thought for years afterwards that there was no such film in real life and her memory of seeing it had been just a pleasant dream.

I have nothing much more to say about this one except that, representing a very different approach from most animated films, Disney or otherwise, 1940′s or otherwise, it succeeded exquisitely. The “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” number was particularly perfection; it was as though the composer originally had every motion of the story in mind when writing the music. At the same time, having the main character appear in the form of Mickey Mouse in some way seems to cheapen the effect.

The Reluctant Dragon, 1941

I watched this for the first time, not having known it existed. There isn’t really much to say. All that stuck in my mind was one of the shorts, “Baby Weem” (amusing in a disturbing way), and the longer segment which gives the movie its title (also amusing, in a different kind of disturbing way). It was especially interesting to see a 1940′s cartoon portrayal of a very effeminate man, or should I say, male dragon.

Dumbo, 1941

I saw this maybe two or three times growing up, and not in very early childhood. It was never one of my favorites. Later on, I learned that it was done very low-budget to make up for major financial losses in the Disney franchise. This definitely shows in the animation. However, if there’s one thing I can say in praise of Dumbo, it’s that it’s incredibly daring in its simplicity, not only to have such elegantly simple animation but in having a mute title character (instead the main “talker” in the film is the title character’s best friend, who had much more of a New York accent than I’d remembered).

In some ways I find this film incredibly cold and dark by Disney standards, for reasons I can’t entirely explain, and I remember feeling this way even on earlier watchings when I was much younger. The stark cruelty of the humans running the circus, as well as the elephants other than Dumbo and his mother, just really gets to me. (I vividly mis-remembered one of the lines I found most memorable in childhood as “From now on, Dumbo is no longer one of us.” The actual line is, “From now on, [Dumbo] is no longer an elephant”, which in a way, is even more chilling.) In this regard, there was no need to make a modern, woker remake of Dumbo containing an explicit anti-animal-exploitation message -- the 1941 version conveys this message loud and clear. Now that I’m writing this, I suppose it could be argued that this is another instance of what I described under “Pinocchio” of leaving a major evil unresolved in a Disney film. And apart from that, while the ending for Dumbo is meant to be a very happy one, as an adult I find it incredibly naive: Dumbo is now super internationally famous for his extraordinary gift and is entering the life of a child celebrity, and it’s just going to be smooth sailing from now on? I hate to say it, Dumbo, but your troubles are only just beginning. (I was glad to see Dumbo reunited with his mother in the last scene, however, which I hadn’t remembered happening at all.)

“Look Out For Mr. Stork” is a skillfully-written song I’d completely forgotten about for two decades or so but remember knowing well when I was young. I still think “When I See an Elephant Fly” is a fantastic song, especially with all its reprises at the end -- I’d had some bits of it confused in my memory but had kept the main chorus with me over all the years. Now it’s widely decried as racist, or at least the characters who sing it are decried as racist caricatures. For whatever my opinion is worth, I’m inclined to disagree with this, in particular on the grounds that the crows seem to be the most intelligent, witty, and self-possessed characters in the movie. I’m also pretty sure I heard critical things about it over the years which are false. For one thing, not all of the crows are played by white actors -- only the lead crow is, while the rest of the voices are members of a black musical group called the Hall Johnson Choir. Also, I’m not clear that the lead crow was actually named Jim Crow by the time the movie came out (no name is given in the movie itself). Now an earlier, much more forgettable song featuring black men singing about how they like to work all day and they throw their pay away... yeah that seems awfully racist.

Bambi, 1942

I have surprisingly little to say about this one -- it’s just very distinct from other Disney films of the time, in its story’s lack of magical elements, its characters all being animals and animated in to realistically model animals’ movements, its lack of musical numbers, and its plot reaching the same level of simplicity as that of Snow White. Not to mention actually having a benevolent character die, which I don’t think had been done up to that point. I remember watching this a couple of times as a kid; I was never terribly eager to watch it again and I feel the same way now, despite having majestic beauty that I can really appreciate.

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, 1949

This is the first of Disney’s animated features that I never had seen before. What a strange movie, or should I say, two smaller, unrelated movies rolled into one. I liked Mr. Toad’s half better than Ichabod’s half, or at least I found it more entertaining. I was brought up with the book The Wind in the Willows and recall seeing a non-Disney animated rendition of it (which was better and somewhat more thorough than this half-movie-length rendition). I was kind of excited when the “The Merrily Song” started because it unlocked a song from my early-childhood memory that I’d forgotten about for more than twenty years but knew from one of the Disney Sing-Along videos. I still think it’s a not half bad song, especially with the harmony.

The Ichabod story was not at all what I expected, not being familiar with the original book version (I had always assumed that Ichabod must be the name of a villain). I found it completely boring until the final horror sequence. As a child I would have found the courtship part even more boring (at least now I can muse on how man-woman courtship dynamics were shown in the late 40′s), and I would have found the horror part at the end very scary (in fact, maybe this is the reason my parents never showed the movie to me). It is a little shocking in being the only Disney story I’ve seen so far with a decidedly unhappy ending.

Cinderella, 1950

This one I only ever saw once or twice as a child. This is not counting a very vivid memory I have from around age 6 or 7 when I was watching a part of it over at another family’s house and their child, who was almost my age and nonverbal autistic, rewound and repeated the same 2-minute sequence involving the mice for probably about an hour (I was impressed because I at the time didn’t know how to work the controls of a video player).

I suppose this could be considered the second in the main trifecta of the most conservative fairy tale princess stories that Disney did in the earlier part of its history. I think one can argue that Cinderella has the strongest and most fleshed-out character out of those three princesses. I like the spirited internal strength she reveals in her very first scene. That said, like the other earlier princesses, she seems to have one singular goal in life, and that is to find her true love, not, say, to escape her abusive stepmother and stepsisters.

My reaction to this movie is overall positive. The mice were fun (I also like how their voices seemed a lot more like how mice “should” talk than in most other Disney cartoons); the dynamic between Cinderella and her evil relatives, and the dynamic between the stepmother and stepsisters themselves, was shown in a rounded way; and the fairy godmother is a great character despite having only one scene. The character of the king is pretty odd (very selfish yet his main dream is of getting to play with his future grandchildren) while not especially memorable or well fleshed out. There are certainly some great classic songs in this one -- not the most stellar that Disney has ever produced, but solid.

Alice in Wonderland, 1951

I was curious about what I would think of this one, since we owned the video of this at my home growing up and I watched it many times during childhood but as I got older I fell in love with the original Lewis Carroll books which, together, I often consider my favorite work of written fiction ever. I had not seen the Disney film Alice in Wonderland for around two decades, although I made the mistake of catching parts of more modern, live-action adaptations of the story more recently. I wondered what I would make of the old animated Disney adaptation after getting to know the books so well.

There is simply no way that any movie can recreate the true flavor of the books, but Disney’s Alice in Wonderland does a fine job of creating the general nonsensical, sometimes bewildering dream atmosphere, and, perhaps more importantly, capturing the essence of Alice’s personality. I give a lot of credit to Katherine Beaumont for this -- she has the major girl’s role in the next movie on this list as well, but she especially shines as Alice. Two other very distinctive voices, Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter and Sterling Holloway as the Cheshire Cat, also add a lot to the cast of characters.

While mixing around some of the scenes of the original book Alice in Wonderland, with some scenes of Alice Through the Looking Glass inserted, the progression of the plot is a long, dreamlike sequence of strange situations with only a few common threads, true to the original first book (Looking Glass had a little, but only a little, more structure). In the movie, everything breaks down at the end with many of the previous scenes and characters swirling together and Alice frantically trying to wake herself up. One could object that this is not how the dream ends in the book Alice in Wonderland, but there is a similar sort of breakdown at the end of the dream in Looking Glass and it feels very real somehow, as in my experience this is sometimes how vivid dreams disintegrate.

Oh, and did you know that Alice in Wonderland has a greater number of songs in it than any other Disney film? There are nearly 25 that made it into the film, even if lasting just for seconds, with a around 10 more written for the film that didn’t make it.

So, does the Disney film do a good job of conveying one of my favorite books of all time, within the confines of being a children’s animated film? I would say yes. For reasons I described above, and from the fact that it manages to avoid working in a moral lesson for Alice, or depicting Alice as a young adult, or manufacturing an affair between Alice and the Hatter (ugh), like some film adaptations, I would say that this classic Disney version is the best Alice in Wonderland adaptation that I know of.

Peter Pan, 1953

Although I never knew this one super well, this movie has a special place in my heart from the way the flying sequence enchanted me in early childhood. I have to differ with the YouTuber Phantom Strider when he dismisses the 40′s/50′s-style song “You Can Fly” as just not doing it for him, because that song along with the animation of the characters’ journey to Neverland had a major hand in shaping my early-childhood sense of magic and wonder and yearning. I distinctly remembering a time, around age 6, when I just didn’t see much point in watching other Disney movies, or movies at all, which didn’t have flying in them, because what could possibly top the sheer joy and freedom of feeling able to swim through the air? I’ve had hardly any exposure to Superman, and so the kind of bodily flight I imagined in fantasy or performed in dreams was almost entirely shaped by Peter Pan. (At the same time, the crocodile in Peter Pan influenced my nightmares at the same age.)

I only ever saw this one a few times, but I distinctly remember the most recent of them being when I was a teenager, perhaps even an older teenager, and I remember thinking at the time that it was a pretty darn solid Disney movie. I still think the same now, while granting that some aspects of the movie seem a little antiquated and certain sequences with the Native Americans are quite cringe-worthy from the point of view of modern sensibilities. Only a couple years ago, when visiting my parents’ house, I finally took down the book Peter Pan from the shelf and decided to give it a read and found it a beautiful although slightly strange and offbeat story. In particular, I was shocked at how nasty and vengeful Tinker Bell was (particularly in trying to get Wendy killed), when I had remembered her as sweet and naive in the movie. It turns out I was wrong about the movie -- Tinker Bell tries to get Wendy killed there also! -- but somehow the tone is moderated well enough that in this version I never really feel horrified at her behavior, nor do I feel disturbed at the situation of the Lost Boys in the way the book made me view them. The song of the lone pirate who sings about how a pirate’s life is short, right before Captain Hook fires his gun and we hear a dropping sound followed by a splash, is one of the more masterful executions of dark humor that I’ve seen in Disney animation for children.

While most of the songs in Peter Pan, considered as songs on their own, are pretty good, I think the best one is the one whose lyrics didn’t make it into the film: “Never Smile at a Crocodile”.

Lady and the Tramp, 1955

Despite being more obscure than most of the old Disney animated classics, I used to know this one quite well since we had it in our home. I’ve always considered The Great Mouse Detective as the most underrated Disney film of all time, but I think it has serious competition here. Lady and the Tramp is an absolute gem. While not quite as Disney-fantasy-ish with its lack of magic and other fairy tale elements, in my opinion Lady and the Tramp is, in most ways, superior to everything else on this list save Mary Poppins. Beautiful animation which shows Lady and most of the other animals moving realistically in a way we haven’t seen since Bambi*. Everything visually and conceptually framed from the dogs’ points of view. Great voice acting. Consistently solid dialog without a single line too much or missing. A story evoking the dynamic between humans and pets, class inequality, and deep questions about the place of each of us in society and choices between a stable existence among loved ones and striking out to seize life by the horns. Our first female lead who stands on her own two four feet and whose sole goal isn’t to get kissed by her true love (one could argue that Alice was the earlier exception, but she is a little girl whereas Lady is actually a romantic female lead). When Lady is approached by her two best (male) friends in a very awkward (perhaps especially from a modern sensibility) but sweet scene where they offer to be her partner, Lady makes it clear that she doesn’t want or need a husband just for the sake of having a husband to make babies with -- her standing up for her own wants in this way doesn’t in the least turn into a Moral Stand that dominates the movie. Excellent music all the way through.

Oh, and this movie was my very first introduction, in early childhood, to the Italian language (”Bella Notte”), which some 25 years later sort became my second language of sorts.

Criticisms? Well, the baby was animated rather stiffly and unnaturally, but that was like half a minute of the movie at most. And there’s the whole segment with the Siamese cats, which produced a great song purely music-wise (fun fact: Peggy Lee provided the voices of the cats) but nowadays comes across as rather racist. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it, but I will say that I’m sure in the minds of the creators this was no different than having animals of all other nationalities (Scottish, Russian, Mexican) appearing in the film with voices reflecting the respective accents.

*There may be a few exceptions, like Peggy, who seems to be modeled after the musician Peggy Lee and moves like a sexy human woman. The way that human sex appeal is conveyed through the animals’ movements in this movie is quite impressive: my mom confesses to having somewhat of a crush on Tramp growing up and not quite understanding how that could be possible when, well, he’s a dog.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1954, and Old Yeller, 1957

I don’t want to say about these movies, as they don’t really fall under the category of animated classics. I just want to say that, while I saw each of them once growing up, on seeing them again I recognize each as a great movie in its own adult point of view way that is not necessarily very Disney-ish.

Sleeping Beauty, 1959

I think this was the movie I was watching at the time I decided it would be fun to write a bunch of mini-reviews for Tumblr, as my reactions were changing a lot as I was watching. I went into the movie very curious, because while I only remembered enough of the fairy tale story to know that it was another of the very simple ones, and I remembered the one song as a waltz by Tchaikovsky, and I knew I had seen the movie once (and probably only once) as a kid, I couldn’t remember anywhere near enough to possibly fill a full movie time. What was actually going to happen in this hour-and-a-quarter long film?

I wasn’t watching long before I came up with the description “spectacularly forgettable”, in part to justify why I’d managed to forget practically all of my one previous viewing. The story doesn’t have much substance and feels sillier than even the other fairy tale Disney plots, like even minor twinges of critical thought, even granting the magical rules of the universe, are liable to make the plot topple. There is some filler to flesh out the movie, but (unlike with Snow White’s dwarfs) none of it is as amusing as the creators seemed to think it was. The only characters with actual personality are rather boring -- the capers between the members of royalty and the jester are a bit on the annoying side in my opinion. Maleficent seems to have no motive whatsoever. She actually calls herself something like “the mistress of evil” later in the movie. This is pretty black-and-white even by Disney standards, where the bad guys usually at least want to think that they’re on the right side of things or justified in their aggressive behavior. Aurora (the title character) has the least personality of all the Disney princesses. Literally all I can say to describe her is that she has the Disney Princess Trifecta of characteristics: she has a good singing voice; she is friends with all the “nice” animals; and her only goal in life is to be reunited with her True Love who she met once for all of a few minutes. The reason why I couldn’t remember any songs other than the Tchaikovsky one is that there aren’t any.

The one thing I consciously really enjoyed while watching was the fact that the score throughout was Tchaikovsky; the idea of having one work of classical music as the entire score seems like a bold one for a Disney film. As I was digesting the movie afterwards (and watching the short documentaries supplied on Disney+ helped here!), I came to realize that this classical music backdrop was complimented in quite an interesting way by a fairly unique animation style. I had been disappointed by the animation early in my watching, disliking how a lot of the figures in the beginning castle scene (for instance, various people’s faces), looked very “flat” somehow. But I’ve come to see this as part of a style where everything looks almost like a series of cut-outs superimposed on each other, to incredibly beautiful effect in a lot of the outdoor scenes.

My conclusion? If you watch this the same way you watch most Disney animated movies -- focusing on plot, characterization, action, and meaning of the main story -- it will just be kind of forgettable at best. But if you watch it as more of a purely visual and musical piece of art without trying to make much “sense” out of it (so, more like I would watch a ballet), you may find it uniquely beautiful among Disney classics.

One Hundred and One Dalmations, 1961

Whew -- what a complete and utter contrast from its predecessor! I can hardly imagine a film that’s still distinctively Disney while being more different from Sleeping Beauty in every aspect.

I remember seeing One Hundred and One Dalmatians a handful of times in childhood (when I was around 5 and it had just come out on home video, my mom almost bought it for me but decided to go with Beauty and the Beast instead explaining that it had better music -- I grew up knowing the preview for Dalmatians that showed at the beginning of our Beauty and the Beast VHS than the dalmatians film itself). I remembered a number of scenes very distinctly, including a lot of the Horace and Jasper bickering and Cruella smashing one of their bottles of beer into the fire and knew Lucky’s line after getting stuck behind in the snow almost word for word, while I had entirely forgotten all of the country/farm characters and entire sequences involving them. I had forgotten, but soon remembered, the television scenes including the Kanine Krunchies jingle. (Some years later, I think as an older teenager, I read the original book with some interest.)

Although I wasn’t around in 1961, everything about this movie’s style strikes me as very contemporary -- the animation in particular seems like the current style for 60′s cartoons. Something about the dialog and humor feels that way as well, as though it closely represents a sort of 60′s young-people-in-London culture that I’ve never seen myself (I was struck for instance by Cruella being asked how she’s doing and cheerfully answering, “Miserable dahling as usual, perfectly wretched!”). It was a little strange and offputting to see television so prominently featured in Disney animation from so long ago, and to see such a decrepit bachelor pad (with the accompanying lifestyle and attitudes) as Horace and Jasper’s in a children’s movie. The crazy driving in snow at the end startled my adult sensibilities (as I now have some memorable experiences driving in snow) in a way that didn’t affect me as a child -- scenes like that just didn’t feel like Disney after having just watched all the previous films. All in all, these novel features made the whole movie a wild ride.

I’m bemused by the fact that, despite taking place in London (which I hadn’t remembered -- I thought it took place in America), the only accents which are fully British are those of the villains Cruella de Vil, Horace, and Jasper.

Main criticisms: I found all the stuff with Rolly being characterized by his body shape and only ever thinking about food to be in poor taste (although not surprising for the times). And while “Cruella de Vil” is a great jazz number, the movie has no other music to speak of -- my mom was quite right to choose Beauty and the Beast over it.

(I realized when finishing this review that this is the only one of all the movies in the list that I’d actually enjoy seeing again sometime soon. Not sure what to make of that. Something about it is more interesting than most of the others? Especially the human-centric parts?)

The Sword in the Stone, 1963

I never saw this movie until later childhood or maybe even early teenagerhood, when I quite liked it. On watching it again, I was overall pretty disappointed. This movie has some decent songs and some fun aspects to the story, but a lot of it is kind of weak and forgettable and it’s all just sloppily done.

The story has a clear moral message which is generally pro-education and about reaching one’s full potential, but in my eyes it comes out kind of muddled because the story shows Wart ending up as a legendary king only out of the arbitrary happenstance that that happens to be his divine destiny. Merlin’s motives seem kind of inconsistent as well, with him sometimes seeming to support Wart in his desire to become a squire, then flying off in a rage when Wart chooses squirehood over fulfilling a “greater” destiny, then joyfully returning after Wart pulls the sword from the stone and is now set on the fixed path to being king, even though this involved exactly zero change of attitude on Wart’s part. The message that actually comes across looks more like, “We have to just follow whatever fate has in store for us” than “We must strive to be the best we can be”. And, it arguably even comes across as subtly disrespectful to more mundane lifestyles and career paths.

The animation is not great by the high standard of full-length Disney features (I noted how I especially disliked how tears were shown). Wart’s voice seems to change a lot, sometimes broken and sometimes not yet broken. I found out after watching that this is because the character was played by three different actors, sometimes with more than one of those actors in the same scene! This was purportedly because the voice of the first actor cast for the role started to change, but then why does Wart sometimes sound like his voice has already changed anyway? Sloppiness all around.

Still, some parts of The Sword in the Stone are fun even if none of it is stellar, and it entertained me more when I was younger, so worth watching once, especially if you’re a kid, I guess?

Mary Poppins, 1964

I came into this one far more familiar with it than with most of the other Disney movies, including the ones I watched many times when I was young, so it feels a little strange to try to summarize a similar-length review of it. Mary Poppins is in my book without a doubt one of the top three Disney movies of all time, in some respects the very best, and certainly the masterpiece of Walt Disney himself, the culmination of literally decades of determination on his part to turn Pamela Travers’ children’s works into a movie. (I would feel sorrier for Travers about how strongly Disney twisted her arm to turn her books into a movie whose style was entirely antithetical to hers, if it weren’t for the fact that the Disney version of the story is just way better than her rather weak set of stories. I give Travers ample credit for having created an amazing character in the person of Mary Poppins, but for coming up with good stories, not so much.)

I didn’t see the full movie Mary Poppins until later childhood (although I knew many of the songs) and it quickly became a favorite of mine. I went a gap of a number of years without seeing it before I copied the soundtrack from someone when I was in college, which spurred me to go out and rent it (back when Blockbuster was a thing) and so I managed to reconnect with it at the age of 20. More recently I’ve become somewhat of a Mary Poppins enthusiast -- feeling pretty alone among my generation in this regard, with the possible exception of the theater subculture -- having seen probably most or all of the documentaries there are on its production and learned a ridiculous amount of trivia about it, not to mention knowing the whole soundtrack pretty much in my head.

Mary Poppins seems to be Disney’s longest children’s classic, at 2 hours and 19 minutes. All it lacks, really, is an animal-themed or classic fairy tale atmosphere and a proper villain. But what can you get out this movie? Stellar child acting (especially for that period) and excellent performances all around, apart from some awkward but endearing aspects of Dick Van Dyke’s acting (while his singing and physicality is superb). A complex and multi-layered story combining magic, comedy and a little tragedy, appreciable in equal measure from a child’s level and from an adult’s level. Revolutionary special effects which include the first extended hybrid live-action and animation sequence. Timeless words and phrases which have permanently entered the lexicon. One of my favorite extended musical sequence of all time in any movie (”Step In Time” takes up 8 minutes and change, and I’m glad they didn’t go with the “common sense” measure of cutting this “unnecessarily long” number). The Sherman brothers at their very best, in a musical soundtrack that easily scores in my top two out of all Disney movies (the other one being The Lion King). A beautiful message (among several big messages) about the little things being important (or at least, that’s a very crude summary), exquisitely encapsulated in the most beautiful song of the movie, “Feed the Birds” (this apparently became Walt Disney’s favorite song ever, and I’m pretty close to feeling the same way -- I’m determined that one day when I finally have a piano I’m going to learn to sing it along with the piano). I could go on and on here.

If I try really hard I can come up with the sole nitpick of feeling that maybe the parrot head on the umbrella’s handle shouldn’t only reveal itself as a talking parrot head in only one scene right at the very end -- this should have been shown at least once earlier. Even granting that, this film is still practically perfect in every way.

The Jungle Book, 1967

(Let’s get the Colonel Hath in the room out of the way first: “The Jungle Book” is a terrible title for a movie. You know, when you base a movie on a book you don’t have to give it the same title as the book...)

I saw The Jungle Book several times as a kid and, despite not considering it nearly as good as Mary Poppins, similarly reconnected with it in adulthood (particularly the soundtrack). Only several years ago I found myself thinking of getting hold of a double album of classic Disney songs that I thought I’d heard about but couldn’t seem to find online. It soon occurred to me that mostly what I really wanted was some of the songs of The Jungle Book, so I got that movie’s soundtrack instead. I soon learned for the first time that The Jungle Book’s songs were written by the Sherman Brothers*, precipitating an “Ah, that explains why I remember them as so good!” moment. (“I Wanna Be Like You” seems like the clear winner among the songs.) Of course hearing the soundtrack made me curious about the movie, which I did eventually get hold of several years ago; thus I had seen this film exactly once already since childhood.

It says a lot about the music and the overall technique behind this film that I still look back on it as one of the great classics, considering how weak the story is. In particular, I consider a story arc to be pretty flawed when characters that seem significant and/or memorable come in without really living up to their expected big role: the wolves who raised Mowgli play a crucial role in the beginning before more or less disappearing (and it doesn’t entirely make sense to me why Bagheera, rather than they, is guiding him to the man village), and King Louie (who is a well-formed character that I particularly enjoy watching) really ought to come back into the story later somehow (an alternate, and much more complex, ending had him make a reappearance). The villain Shere Khan is not especially well developed in terms of his character and motives, but I do enjoy his menacingly bass voice. Still, the voice acting, the action, the animation, and the overall setting are all very solid here.

I’ll end with some random observations about the song “That’s What Friends Are For”. I think the likeness of the vultures to the Beatles was mostly lost on me as a kid (along with the recognition that this movie came out in the Beatles’ heyday). More interestingly, even when I was old enough to understand how vultures eat, the fact that every single line of the song is a clever macabre double-entendre went completely over my head. I do think it was a very obvious mistake, by the Obvious Standards of Cinematography, to give Shere Khan the last line of the song and begin that line with the “camera” on him, rather than have his voice come in “off-camera” and Mowgli and the vultures looking thunderstruck before panning to him, but maybe I shouldn’t be pushing for overdone techniques here.

* An exception is “Bare Necessities”, which was written by Terry Gilkyson, the original songwriter Disney received submissions from, who wrote two hauntingly beautiful other numbers which were deemed not Disney-ish enough to be put in the film.

Some general stray observations:

These older Disney films love gags involving alcoholism and drunkenness, a bit of a questionable emphasis given that the audience is children. This trend continues into the 80′s at least, but I don’t think one sees it much in modern Disney movies.

Watching these animated films I often find myself flinching as characters’ heads smash into things or gigantic objects smash over their heads, feeling almost surprised when they come out of it pretty much fine. I guess this a staple element of cartoon action throughout the decades, but I can’t recall a more recent Disney animated film where we see this (guess I’ll soon find out!)

There is a certain style of vocal music, with unified rhythm and lyrics but complex harmony and a capella, which seems to have been immensely popular in the 40′s and 50′s and distinctively appears in practically every single one of the 40′s and 50′s films above (“You Can Fly” is a typical example). I recognize it also from some non-Disney-related old records my parents have that were passed down to them. I’m curious about whether this style has a name.

For years I thought the Sherman Brothers did only the soundtrack for Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, only discovering they did The Jungle Book songs rather recently as I explained above. It turns out they were involved in most of the major Disney films around that period, including The Sword in the Stone and The Aristocats (although not its best-known number “Everybody Wants to Be a Cat”).

There is a particularly sad instrumental passage, played by the string section starting with a minor-key violin melody going downward and joined by lower string instruments, which I knew well from my Jungle Book soundtrack (partway through “Poor Bear”) but was surprised to hear in desperately sad moments of several of the other movies around that time (including One Hundred and One Dalmatians and Robin Hood, or at least a close variant of this passage with slightly different endings). I have no idea who wrote this or how it came to be reused so many times.

I knew the name Bruce Reitherman as the voice of Mowgli in The Jungle Book, but in watching all of these other features back to back I’ve noticed that there are some other Reithermans in the front credits of quite a few of them.

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kulaykape · 4 years

Text

The Chief’s Kid Part 1

Ok so, ngl. I don’t much like how this first chapter turned out, but I burned out of energy writing it and I don’t wanna lose interest in writing this story by redoing the first part over and over again.

So here it is anyways, lmao. I promise that part 2 will be much cleaner. This is just me trying to get off the ground with the story. I’ve decided that this is probably gonna carry on much longer than 12 parts, so that’s good :)

Enjoy! (if you can)

---

It was stormy that night. The spirits seemed to be particularly angry, beating down with as much water on our heads as they could. Our uniforms were heavier than usual, and we were soaked to the bone before we’d even reached our destination.

But at the same time, it was a blessing. The rain would make it harder for our targets to make an escape, and they’d never see us coming.

I stood on a roof right across from our targeted building. A few of my men were at my side, and we all watched intently as the other officers got into position below us.

The radio crackled quietly, having been turned down to a low volume. Likely nobody would’ve heard it if it’d been louder, given how furiously the sky was raging, but we weren’t going to take chances.

“Squad 3 in position, Captain.”

“Squad 2 in position, Captain.”

“Squad 4 in position, Captain Beifong. On your call.”

I nodded, and one of my officers flipped the radio off. I wiped my now-floppy hair out of my line of sight and narrowed my eyes down at the building. With how much trouble the Terra Triads had given us- given everyone- I’d seriously been considering collapsing the building on their heads. Until we’d found out there were kids involved.

I retracted the metal from around my right foot, and then slammed it on the ground. Through my mother’s way of sight, I was able to see everything through an echoey, tunnel-like view. There was no exit where Squad 2 was covering, but there was one in the back. When I opened my eyes again, I gestured down below for them to move around to the back. They did so, quickly and quietly.

After a few beats of waiting to let them reposition I looked back at my men. “Jin, Taro, take the two left windows. Pao, Hanji, the right ones,” I ordered, and they all nodded, “I’ll take the middle. Let’s move!”

Our metal cables sparked and sang as we cast them out to the top of the building, and then swung down to the second level of the building. I glanced down to catch my men crashing through the side windows of the first floor, and then some of them shooting up into the second.

I turned my shoulder towards the window before I crashed through, and rolled onto the floor. The sound of thunder was drowned out by screams and yells of fright , and I was immediately thrown into combat mode.

I stomped my foot on the ground and raised a good chunk of the floor up, jabbing at a firebender as he tried to blitz me. The rock caught him and took him with it to the wall. The earth buzzed beneath me, urging me to turn around. And so I did, arcing a kick around as I went and smacking another thug squarely in the fact with a rock.

“Captain!” Pao called out to me. I snapped my gaze towards him. He was pinned down near the wall by two earthbenders, tanking as many shots as he could manage but he was fading.

I sprinted over and whistled at Jin as I neared him. Wordlessly, he stuck his hand out to offer me a boost. I jumped up, and with a loud cry, I slammed my hand into the ground when I landed. Two pillars jumped from the floor, ramming the two into the ceiling with a crack before sinking back down.

Pao nodded at me. “The kids are supposed to be in the basement,” he said.

“Then let’s hurry.”

Pao was the Captain of the Metalbending Police’s Special Corps, the best ambush and combat team the RCPD had to offer. Barring me just having to save his ass, he was the best to have alongside you in a fight.

We barreled through everyone that stood in our way as we made our way down to the first floor. We didn’t stop to fight, Spirits only know what could be happening to those children as the seconds winded down.

I vaulted over a table and pushed my arms out, causing the trapdoor that led into the basement to swing open. Pao and I jumped through, and the yells we heard this time around were much more adolescent.

I couldn’t help but gape for a moment at the sight before me. None of them could’ve been over the age of nine or ten. It was all little girls, lined up in chains along the wall looking less dignified than cattle. Some of them were naked. All of them were bruised and battered.

I remembered what mom had told me before she’d left, advising me with what I’d need to know for when I eventually became Chief.

“You’re going to have horrible, gruesome things come across your desk. And it’s never going to stop, no matter how good you are, Lin. So find some peace in knowing that.”

“Let’s get these kids out of here. Hurry!” I said. Pao and I circled our hands around, then splayed our fingers out. The shackles around each of the kids fell to the floor, but none of them moved towards us. Something tingled in my feet, telling me that this wasn’t right.

Then the basement door slammed shut.

I heard a rock crash into something, and Pao crying out in pain. “Pao!” I turned around just in time to be rocked in the jaw with a rock. I fell to the ground with a grunt, cursing when I saw Pao lying not so far away, soundly unconscious. I looked up to see a figure standing over me, a rock raised above his head, but the world was spinning too quickly around me.

I gritted my teeth as I stared my fate defiantly in the eye, silently apologizing to the kids behind me.

But that quick blow of the end never came. Instead, I heard that sick, cold sound of metal entering skin. But it wasn’t mine.

I let out a groan as the world slowed down and eventually stopped spinning around me, and dragged myself to my feet. The earthbender fell as I rose, and I stared down at him with wide eyes. What looked like one of the shackles had been bent into something like a weapon, a sharp, haphazardly piece of shrapnel. And it was sticking out of his back.

My gaze slowly traveled back up, and I met the eye of a little girl. Her hands were splayed out in front of her, like she was reaching out to the man on the floor. She’d killed him.

And, as a result, saved me.

---

“‘S the matter, rookie? Nervous?” Pao asked me. The van passed over a bump in the road, and jumped up and down with a ba-dump.

I gave him an incredulous look and smiled. “I’ve never had the decency to be nervous,” I replied. Pao laughed heartily and slapped me on the back, like we were headed to the bar rather than a Terra Triad holdup. Everybody else looked like they were at ease too. Which made sense, I guess. I was the only rookie here. Everybody else had been doing stuff like this like clockwork for over a decade.

“Did I ever tell you about the first time your mom coordinated an ambush?” He asked.

I made a face. “Wasn’t I there?”

“No, that was a little while later.”

“Pao, Beifong, can it,” mom- or rather, Chief Beifong- snapped at us. Pao raised his hands placatingly, while I cowered back sheepishly. Mom held onto a hook overhead, the only one standing in the moving vehicle. I stared up at her with wide eyes.

This was who my mother was. An intense leader, with a perpetual glare that scared the shit out of even the people she cared about most. I’d seen her fight (well, spar), and she looked relaxed at worst and amused at best. Neither of those qualities lined her face right now.

The van slowly came to a stop, and I looked out the front window. We’d parked behind a building two blocks down from where we were headed. We’d move the rest of the way across the building tops. I inhaled slowly and then exhaled, and pulled on my helmet. I started to stand up, but a hand pushed me back down. I looked up and met my mother’s stern expression.

“Not so fast, rookie. We still have a briefing,” she said.

I nodded. “Sorry, ma’am.” She squeezed my shoulder subtly, before folding her hands behind her back and facing the rest of the Special Corps Team.

“Our mole said the hostages are going to be on the airship in the hangar. I’ll lead Squad 2 on the rescue,” she proclaimed. I looked around. Squad 2 was me, Jung, and Yen. Two of the older veterans and the ‘little baby’, as I’d been dubbed. “Squads 1 and 3 will coordinate as we discussed earlier. Any questions?” Mom didn’t even give enough time for someone to open their mouths, “Good. Now let’s get this over with.”

The back doors of the van opened and we silently filed out.

“What a briefing,” I muttered to Pao.

“Your mama doesn’t mince words,” he replied quietly, “Now focus, rookie.”

“Jung, Yen, rookie. With me,” the Chief called. We all stepped towards her, and followed her lead as she threw out her metal cable and shot up to the roof. The others maneuvered through the dark alleys below, and their stealth uniforms coupled with the pitch-black darkness of the street made them quickly fade away.

We made our way across the buildings quickly and quietly. I was smiling under my mask as I hopped over ledges and vaulted over ridge vents. It was like we were going on a parkour run, only there were crack dealers and murderers at our destination.

We finally came to a halt at the building across from the port warehouses, and crouched down low as a security light sweeped over us.

“Rookie,” the Chief barked.

“Ma’am?”

“Locate the hangar,” she ordered.

I nodded, and promptly retracted my metal shoe. It made sense that mom would ask me to do it. I’d proved to have a stronger seismic sense than her (maybe because I might as well have been as blind as Grandma Toph). I furrowed my brow as I searched through the ground, until I located a mass of heartbeats clumped together in one of the warehouses further down.

“Second closest one to the dock on the left,” I whispered.

“You sure, rook?” Jung asked.

I blinked twice at him. “...Yeah.”

“Any guards?”

“There’re fifteen people in there.”

“Eight hostages, right Chief?”

Mom hummed as she contemplated our next move. I touched her shoulder, half-expecting to get shrugged off, but she looked at me expectantly.

“We have the element of surprise. We can take ‘em,” I insisted. Truth be told, I just wanted to fight. But that was the type of statement that would get me a smack in the head instead of a scrap.

My mom looked me in the eye as if searching for that masochistic desire of mine. When I hid it well, she let out a resigned sigh. “...Fine. Let’s move underground,” she said. We all nodded, and jumped down to the back alley, then spiraled ourselves into the ground.

---

We popped back up at the back door of the hangar, between the tall building and the endless expanse of water on Yue Bay. My mom signaled for Jung and Yen to take one side of the door, while the two of us crouched on the other.

I grinned underneath my mask as I clenched and unclenched my fists. Something told me this might end up being more fun than any Pro-Bending match I’d been in.

“Three are on the far right, three are guarding the aircraft. The last one is at the front door,” my mom whispered, “Jung, Yen, secure the aircraft. Beifong and I will take care of the rest.” We all nodded dutifully at her, and shifted into a more explosive position. Jung stood in front of the door, his hands poised behind his waist to blast the door through.

I shook the tension out of my hands, and then settled into my fighting stance. The Chief tapped my shoulder twice. Her own little way of saying ‘be careful’, which had sprouted from my Pro-Bending days. I scoffed quietly, but gave her a reassuring look. She turned to Jung, and nodded.

“Now!”

Jung pushed his hands forward, and the door was blasted in. I stomped on the ground, and the earth beneath propelled me through the doorway. Jung and Yen ran past, making a beeline for the aircraft.

Mom and I headed right. I lunged forward and reached towards the ground, awake and rumbling beneath me. It rippled and shook, then crashed against two of the guards before they even knew what hit them.

Metal cables rang out as my mom shot them at the remaining guard. He extended a metal blade and cut through the cable.

I stomped on the ground and raised a rock into the air. Mom stepped forward and kicked it squarely. The guard dove out of the way just in time, but I whirled around and slung a rock in the direction he was diving.

I let out a laugh in spite of myself. “That was fun!” I exclaimed, bouncing on my heels. Mom shot me a withering glare, and I averted my gaze sheepishly.

A yell from the airship ripped me from my embarrassment, and we both watched as the guard at the front door rushed towards it.

“You get in the aircraft, help out Jung and Yen!” Mom barked, “I’ll take care of him.”

I hesitated. “You sure, mom?” I asked a little quieter.

“Don’t worry about me, kid. Now do as I say!” She snapped. I nodded reluctantly, and made my way towards the aircraft while mom took care of the lone guard.

I bent my foreguard into a blade as I came crashing through the window of the control car. I landed with a roll, and took a half-second to see my opposition.

There were definitely more than three guards. I sighed inwardly, making a mental note to make sure I did all the seismic sensing from now on. Then I darted forward.

Fire lit up the control room while metal creaked and whined. Three guards descended on me all at once, but I had more than enough experience fighting in small spaces to take them. I bobbed and weaved around until they were all standing on the same panel of metal.

I slammed my foot into the floor, and the panel shot up, ramming all three of them into the ceiling with a collective cry.

I smirked as I bent the panel to hook onto the ceiling, and threw the guards a small wave as they struggled and squirmed.

“I’ll come back for you later,” I chimed, “You’re going to jail, by the way.” I heard one of them mutter a ‘duh’ as I left, and snickered to myself.

When I got to the main haul, Jung and Yen were finishing tying up a couple of guards. Behind them, the eight hostages (mom had gotten that number right) stood anxiously. “Are we good?” I asked.

Yen nodded. “You handle those three guys by yourself?” She asked.

I huffed. “Yeah. Thanks for helping me out.”

“We wanted to see if you could handle it,” Jung said, “Yen owes me twenty yuans. Thanks, kid.”

“Then I better get half of that,” I quickly said. This could be a nice side hustle…

I looked at the hostages, and frowned slightly. “Let’s get these people out of here.”

Metal footsteps from behind caused us all to turn. My mom looked at us oddly, and then back into the control room. “Why are there people on the ceiling?” She asked hesitantly, and looking slightly fearful for the answer.

“I’ll get ‘em off later,” I said, “Should I take these people back to the vans, Chief?”

The Chief nodded, expression quickly sobering back into seriousness. “Jung, Yen, we’re going to the main warehouse. That’s where the rest of them are holding up.”

“I’ll meet you there-” I started.

Mom swiveled her steely gaze on me. “No. You stay with the hostages. If we’re not back there in twenty minutes, call reinforcements and head back to the station,” she barked.

My stomach sank. I was being sidelined?

“Chief, I can-”

“Do as I say, rookie.”

“...Yes, ma’am.”

---

“You know Chief, she’s more than capable of holding her own,” Jung said once Aiko and the hostages had all filed out. I shot him a look, but he’d been in my service too long to waver. “Kid’s good.”

“Thank the Spirits you’re not in charge Jung, lest we have a rookie killed because you ordered her into a situation she’s not ready for,” I said. Jung raised his hands placatingly. “Squads 1 and 3 are already at the warehouse. Let’s move.”

When we got to the warehouse, we were immediately greeted by a repository turned battlefield. It seemed like everybody in the Terra Triads and their mothers had decided to show up at the port. We were soundly outnumbered.

“Chief, what do we do?” Yen yelled over the commotion.

I gritted my teeth. We needed to shut down their port operation. Not only would they have their emboldened numbers if we didn’t, but they’d have technology.

“Pick up our fallen, get them back to the vans,” I ordered, “We’ll hold it down here.” The two of them nodded, and moved to pick up the injured and unconscious. I took to covering them as they went, fending off any Terra Triad that tried to pounce them.

I shot out my metal cable at one of them, and threw him into another as he ran forward. One of them charged at me from the side, grabbing onto my midsection and pushing me back. I growled, bringing down my elbow on the back of his neck and let him slide to the floor.

I looked back at Jung and Yen, who were both hauling two men apiece on their backs. “Tell Aiko to call reinforcements!” I yelled.

“Chief!” Jung called to me. I looked at him, eyebrows raised. He smirked sardonically at me. “You were right. Sorry.” I scoffed, shaking my head.

“Of course I was right,” I replied.

With that, the two of them sprinted off. I turned back to the battlefield.

The air was heavy with loss and struggle. My officers were suffocating right now. Skilled as they were, the Terra Triads were crawling from every crack and crevice.

Well. This’ll be a lot of paperwork.

---

“Is anybody else injured?” I asked, rising to my feet once I finished wrapping one man’s arm. He’d been slashed in warning by one of the thugs. When nobody raised their voice and I didn’t see any pools of blood, I nodded resolutely.

“You’re a bit young for an officer, aren’t you?” One of them asked in a scratchy and parched voice. I turned around to face the woman that’d spoken, who smiled kindly at me.

“Maybe ma’am, but I’m pretty good,” I said, grinning brightly under my mask. I perked up at the sound of heavy footsteps, and my smile soon disappeared. Jung and Yen were both running towards the van, two injured men resting on each of their shoulders. One of them was Pao.

I hopped down from the van and quickly took Pao off of Jung’s shoulders. “What happened?” I demanded.

“I tripped,” Pao said sarcastically.

“Seriously, Pao!”

“One of those guys… ngh… caught me in my side,” he gestured to a bloody injury near his stomach.

I let out a sigh, trying to force down the twisting in my stomach. Some first mission this was turning out to be. “Alright, lay down here,” I said, settling Pao in the back of the van before starting to help Jung and Yen with the others.

Pao grabbed my wrist before I could. “Aiko,” he said gruffly, and then pausing to cough, “You gotta help her, kid.”

“Is she okay?” I demanded.

“Survivin’. For now.” And with that, he let go of my wrist. I turned towards Jung and Yen, both of them still trying to catch their breath.

“There’s too many,” Jung said shortly, “Call- huff- call reinforcements, Aiko.” I nodded, and went to the front of the van.

“Take these people back to the department. Wire them for reinforcements on the way,” I said to the driver. Once we’d loaded the other officers in, he sped off back to headquarters. I adjusted my mask on my face and started for the warehouse. “Where’re you going?” Jung asked.

“Back to the warehouse.”

He grabbed my arm as I passed by him and looked at me sternly. “The Chief ordered you to stay here.”

I wrenched my arm out of his grip furiously. Jung was only following what my mother ordered, but it felt like more of a betrayal to her than anything else. “She’s my mom, Jung!” I exclaimed.

“And it’s not your job to protect her! She's the Chief, she'll be alright,” He replied. I glared witheringly at him, but I just didn’t have the intimidation factor that my mom did. “You know why she ordered you to stay here. And so that’s what you’re going to do,” he said firmly.

Oh, like hell. “No the hell it’s not,” I snapped at him. And before he or Yen could stop me, I catapulted myself into the air, shooting a metal cable out towards the warehouse. I heard Jung call my name, but it soon faded the further I got.

If they’d really wanted to stop me, they could’ve cut my line or shot theirs out to snag me. But even Jung didn’t have the nerve to separate me from my mom.

---

Finally. The momentum had decided to sway into our favor, as we all started to become less of disciplined soldiers and more of desperate brawlers. The Triads were on their last leg, their numbers no longer multiplying endlessly. And we’d have reinforcements soon to help finish the job.

But I hadn’t been able to get through scot-free. I was fighting on a limp now, doing more hobbling and shuffling than I was swinging and attacking. I’d landed on my ankle wrong after two of the more adept fighters of the Triads had ganged up on me.

I grimaced as pain shot up through my ankle while I weaved around an attack, the pain dull but biting even through the adrenaline. I could only imagine what kind of hell it was going to feel like once the dust settled.

We were pushing back, but we weren’t winning. My men were still dropping off like flies. If we didn’t get those reinforcements soon, then I was going to be suffering much more than a twisted ankle.

The injury proved to be too much of a hindrance, slowing me down just a tick. And just a tick was all my opponent needed to slam me with a rock, wailing me across the warehouse and into the wall. I let out a loud cry as something in my shoulder cracked, and I sank to the floor in pain.

“Oh, well that’s just great,” I muttered to myself through gritted teeth.

“Damn,” the thug wheezed as he approached me, “I’m gonna get to tell the boss I took down Chief Beifong. Wasn’t all that hard, either.” He laughed victoriously to himself.

“I’m not through,” I growled at him as I stumbled to my feet. I must’ve looked pitiful.

Slowly, I tried to raise my hands in a defensive stance. When my right shoulder roared at the effort, I let it drop uselessly with a growl, and was left to hold up only a single fist. I’d figure a way to make it work. I had to.

Or… maybe not.

I watched- rather dumbly- as a flash of black and gold bulleted at the thug, tackling him to the ground with an angry cry. I looked up in relief to see fresh reinforcements start to flood in, but then back at the initial attacker. And I nearly had a brain aneurysm.

Aiko. She had the Terra Triad pinned beneath her now, forgetting (or maybe rejecting) her bending in favor of bloodying her own fists. She rained punches down mercilessly on his mug, and when he reached weakly to stop her, she picked up his face and slammed him back into the floor.

“Aiko!” I snapped, limping towards her. She continued her beatdown, teeth bared and eyes wide. I hurried over and yanked her away from the now-unconscious body. “That’s enough, rookie,” I said. She pushed against me, but I was still a little stronger than her. But I let out a wince as I stepped back on my bad ankle.

It was then that Aiko finally saw me. “Mama,” she said worriedly, catching me as I stumbled.

“You disobeyed my orders,” I grumbled weakly.

“But-”

“There's no but's about it, Aiko,” I snapped, even as she helped me out of the warehouse. I looked around to see the remaining stragglers being quickly neutralized by our more energized forces. I let out a sigh. This wasn't feeling like much of a win. “I shouldn't have brought you on this mission.”

“If you hadn't, you'd be dead right now.”

I was too livid to answer her. So what if I'd died? I was the Chief of Police, it wasn't her job to worry about my welfare. It was the other way around.

For Spirits’ sake, the kid was only seventeen. Even younger than I'd been when I first started out. Maybe she was good. Maybe she was talented. But she was a child. My child.

“Mama. Mama, look, I'm… sorry,” she said. I could hear her voice straining with the apology. The typical Beifong pride.

I shook my head. “I'll chew you out later, trust me. For now,” I let out a pained groan, “Get me back to the department.”

---

SLAM!

I let out a sigh as the door shut behind Aiko (who I’d just finished my promised chewing out with), pinching my brow with my good arm. The healer was still working on my ankle.

She shot a questioning look towards the door, then back to me. “She's very strong for her age,” she commented. When I gave her a look, she added, “Carrying you all the way up here by herself like she did.”

I hummed half heartedly. “Sure. But she's about as stubborn as five earthbenders in one,” I quipped.

The healer chuckled easily, and I shot her a glare that would've been more intense if she wasn't responsible for my wellbeing. “If I were you, I'd be grateful to have a daughter that cared so deeply for me. They're not usually so unconcerned with themselves at that age,” she said.

“I don't need your advice on parenthood, thank you,” I snapped, “I'd like to have my ankle healed, my shoulder repositioned, and to get the hell out of here.”

The healer didn't look the least bit phased. Was I losing my edge? It was probably the kid’s fault. “She's a good kid, Chief Beifong. Maybe a little reckless, but there are worse things.”

I stayed silent. It wasn't like I could disagree with the healer. Aiko really was remarkable. So much so that someone on the outside might even be able to rightfully say a parent’s worry was unwarranted.

And yet, here we were.

“She's my- she's a rookie,” I said, “She made a call that was explicitly against my orders. Hell. I should have her fired for insubordination.”

The healer laughed merrily. “According to your tirade from earlier, it sounded like a simple case of a protective mother and her stubbornly heroic child,” she replied, “I think it's sweet.”

I let out a loud huff in reply. This… this was the price of letting my kid become a cop. Yet another layer of worry atop the whole damn cake. And it was the thickest of them all.

Aiko was good. But I just knew this was going to bite me in the ass sooner or later. It'd been me that took the brunt of it tonight. But only the Spirits know what I'd do if- when- Aiko would suffer down the line.

---

The back door of the department screeched as I opened it, and stepped back out into the chilled air of Republic City. I checked my watch. It was almost three in the morning now, but long nights of the winter were going to keep any brightness away for a long while. And I was still too jittery from the mission to feel the exhaustion yet.

I kicked a pebble and scuffed the sole of my shoe as I stood at the edge of the sidewalk. I then closed my eyes and focused on the city sounds (which never faded, in a town that was perpetually awake). Mom always told me to do that whenever I wanted to calm down.

Mom. My stomach sank, and so did I to the edge of the sidewalk. Slamming the door like that back there would've warranted a deserving ass-beating from any less merciful (or injured) parent. I let out a sigh.

“I expect better from you.”

Her words, filled with all their sharpness and spite, kept echoing in my head.

“Ugh…” I muttered to myself, cradling my face in my hands.

No matter what mom said or how disappointed she was, I didn't regret what I did one bit. But a simple ‘thank you’ would've been nice. Would've been more than nice, actually. I was starting to wonder what it was gonna take for those two words.

“Hey, Beifong? That you?” A voice further up the sidewalk called.

I perked up, taking my face out of my hands. “Yeah?” I called back at the silhouette. As the figure walked forward, I realized that it was Koru, one of the guys from my graduating class. He was working in communications. “Hey, Koru.”

“Hey,” he replied, waving at me with a hand that contained a telegram, “This just got wired over to the station. It's for you.”

I took the message with a knowing smile. “Thanks a lot,” I said.

“No problem.”

As he walked away, I turned my attention back to the telegram. In bold letters near the top left corner, SUYIN BEIFONG was etched into the paper.

I was still smiling brightly. The last telegram I’d gotten from my aunt had been almost a month ago, after my graduation. I quickly got to reading it.

Dear Aiko,

I hope you're doing well! Your cousins and your Uncle Baatar all say hello, and urge you to come visit as soon as you can. Ever since they saw you in the papers, the kids have been wanting to meet you. They think you're a celebrity! To which I told them you might as well be.

I chuckled quietly. I made a mental note to write her back and ask her to ask Junior to start writing me too. We were the same age, and Aunt Su made it out to seem we'd get along well.

How is your mom? I would ask you to tell her I wish her the best, but I wouldn't want to invoke her wrath upon you.

You’re so much like her yet so different, you know. Admittedly, you have a little bit of me in you (don't tell your mom that, though), but you deciding to follow in the footsteps of your mother just screams Lin. Which reminds me to tell you to be careful, please. You’re stubborn and strong-willed (a Beifong trademark), but don't let that be a disservice to you. Your work is very dangerous.

Which is why I hope that you went into the force with your heart invested in it alongside your body. Lin might say otherwise, but I know better. She didn't become a cop because she loved it, but because she wanted to please our mother.

Do what's best for you. If that means being a cop, then by all means, continue. But if you feel the need to escape, then do so. I highly recommend traveling.

Heh. Of course she'd recommend traveling.

Remember, you'll always be welcome to Zaofu. Lin as well, though she might not appreciate that as much. Give her a hard time for me please, since I'm not around to do it myself.

Sending you all the hugs and kisses from your second home,

Aunt Su

PS: Your birthday gift should arrive within the week of your special day. I hope you like it.

I folded the telegram and tucked it into my coat, feeling significantly more warmed up now. I looked up at the sky, bluish-grey with all the Republic City lights it had to reflect. But just a few stars made it through, and peeked and winked at me.

“Thanks, auntie,” I whispered with a small chuckle, “And don't worry, I'll give her the hardest time.”

My aunt was the matriarch of the Metal Clan in Zaofu, a city near the Earth Kingdom made entirely of metal. I knew her face from pictures in mom’s photo album. But something about the way mom looked at that album made me decide against asking about my mysterious aunt and grandma. And so I did my own research. Of course, it didn't take much looking. And Aunt Su had been over the moon elated when I'd sent her my first telegram.

That was three years ago now. Since then, she'd sent me telegrams and pictures religiously, but I always had to make sure I got to the errand boy before mom could. This familial correspondence was my best kept secret.

I stroked my chin as I started to contemplate what my birthday gift could possibly be. If she sent me a meteorite, I was going to freak out- mom probably would too.

I grimaced. Hopefully it was something more subtle, something that wouldn't become a noticeable new decoration in my room.

“Kid, what are you doing out here? It's freezing,” a voice from behind me said. I hadn't even heard the door open.

I looked back to see my mom, who was limping only slightly as she moved to stand next to me. I held my hand subconsciously to my coat, the telegram crumpling quietly. “Mama, you alright?” I asked. She waved me off before handing me one of the coffees she was holding. “Thanks,” I said, and practically chugged it in my gratefulness. I let out a sigh as the black coffee flowed down and warmed my stomach.

With a tired sigh, mom shifted to sit on the curb next to me. We drank our coffee in comfortable silence, simply appreciating the peace.

Damn. This was gonna be life now. Gang raids and near-death situations were going to be weekly. And the paperwork. I let out a groan, not all too excited about coming into work tomorrow- or rather, in five hours.

“Something the matter?” Mom asked.

I shook my head. “Nah. Just tired. I just… can't believe this is my life now,” I replied.

Mom gave me a look I couldn't quite decipher. “You know, you… you did well today. In spite of blatantly disregarding my orders.” I blinked wide-eyed at her. She turned away from me with a growl. “Don't look at me like that, kid. That's the highest compliment you're going to receive from me until you straighten out.”

I smiled sheepishly, before resting my elbows tiredly on my knees. “Hey, uh, Chief… I’m sorry,” I said, she cocked a brow at me.

“You already apologized.”

“No, I'm sorry for giving you an attitude in the med wing. I get it, I'm a rookie, I'm just not ready yet-”

“That's not-” mom stopped herself short with a sigh, brows pulled in almost angrily. I looked off to the side in guilt.

The guys in the special corps said I was remarkable. A talent. Hell, dare some of them say the best since my own mom. But what'd any of that mean if the Chief herself didn't believe it?

“Look, kid. This work, it's dangerous,” she said sternly, drawing my gaze back to her, “No matter how hard I try, I lose at least one of my men every year. This city’s a breeding ground for crime. If something were to happen to you, I don't know what I'd-” she stopped herself short, and I caught a rare glimpse of vulnerability nobody else saw from my mom but me.

I leaned towards her earnestly. “Mom, you know I can handle this. I was the product of all that before you found me!” I saw her flinch at that statement, eyes twitching ever so slightly. But I didn't waver. “I just…” I sighed stubbornly. “I just wanna help you, okay?” I said softly, “I know you're gonna tell me you don't need my help, but you can't be the best forever. Somebody’s gotta look out for you.”

Mom’s gaze shifted from troubled to- well, maybe a little less troubled.

“Is that why you gave up Pro-Bending? To help me?” She asked.

I cringed a little. A part of me would always yearn to go back to the game, back to where everything was a little more humble, with the highest stake not being a life, but a loss. Where fighting was for glory, not for justice.

I felt a little out of touch without it, like I was without that balance mom had always told me was so important for an earthbender. But the reason for my exit far outweighed the pit in my stomach. I was going to stand by my mom no matter where it took me.

“It's not important, mom.”

“Aiko-”

“Look, can we go home? I'm really tired. And we've gotta come back in like, five hours,” I said.

She scrutinized me for one extremely terrifying moment, but eventually found that she was too tired to hold onto the subject as well. With a resigned nod, she held her hand out to me, pulling me up with her from the curb.

As we walked towards the parking lot, she wrapped an arm tightly around my shoulders.

“You're a good kid, Aiko. I'm lucky to have you.”

“Heh. Thanks, mama.”

That was more than I’d been expecting to hear that night.

---

And that’s a 6000+ word sh**storm wrapped up right there. Sheesh. And it was out almost a week after I’d promised to put it out, jc. I’ll try to have part 2 up by next week, here’s to hoping it’s much better! Regardless, I hope u enjoyed this, or at least enjoyed making fun of it. If you have any tips or things you’d like to see in the story, pls let me know! :3

tags: (small gang but i like it :D) @themost-obsessivefangirl @inter-net

#lin beifong #mom!lin beifong #oc:#aiko beifong #the chief's kid #legend of korra #lok

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mcrmadness · 4 years

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🌺💘🌷 GET TO KNOW YOUR MUTUALS TAG 🌷💘🌺

Rules: When you get this, it means someone wants to know more about you, so list 5 things about yourself you want your followers to know! They can be as simple as your age or as complex as your deepest fear, as long as it’s something you’re comfortable with sharing. When you’re done and if you want to, send this to 10 people you want to get to know better!

Tagged by: @cats-crushesandhistory, thank you!!! Tagging: @stufenlosregelbar, @hanhan156, @charlotte-lancer, @autumnrebel, @cupcakecurl, @lycanrvc, - six is enough for now. I’m probably forgetting about basically everyone, I literally had to go through these by letters because I can never remember anything when I should make a list and I still feel bad for not including _everyone. But I decided to include only those who I have interacted with at least a little bit - I literally don’t dare to speak to anyone unless they tell me first that I am allowed to approach them. I also did not tag anyone who I haven’t seen doing these tag games or who I don’t know if they like these or not. And all of you can also just skip this if this is not your cup of tea.

***

I can never write anything short (surprise...) so I’ll just give you a short list here and you can click the read more link and see more of my thoughs on each topic there.

I am a teetotaler and I have never even tried alcohol. I also don’t and have never smoked and I stay the f* away from drugs, too.

I love cats. Like, for real, they’re the best thing in this whole world.

I love all animals overall, and I am actually a horse groom, I have a the “Vocational Qualification in Horse Care and Management”, specializing in harness racing, and I have worked with horses for over 10 years so far.

As a kid, I was a huge dinosaur nerd and I still love them.

I love comics and I have also drawn comics since I was a kid. I still have all of my old comics saved. Lately I haven’t been drawing even nearly as much and only fanart, tho. Drawing is fun but I simultaneously love and hate it.

Lol it seems I have love for everything but humans :D:D:D:D:D:D I didn’t even realize that before making this list looooooooool XD But yeah, more rambling under the cut :D But thanks for reading, if you end up reading it.

1. I am a teetotaler and I have never even tried alcohol. I also don’t smoke (and never have) and I avoid drugs - so much so that I don’t know if getting ADHD medication would break this “rule” of mine because they are made from the same stuff as one well-known drug...

I think it started as me just being so “lawful” all the time and the legal drinking age in Finland is 18, so I wanted to follow the rules at all times so I didn’t even think about drinking before the age of 18 and I was often very much shocked by other teens who did that, and I also remember being really worried when my best friend started experimenting with alcohol as a teenager. Despite the legal drinking age being 18, basically everyone here still started (and starts?) drinking between the ages of 13 and 15. So at school, from Monday to Wednesday, all that happened was overhearing the drunk stories of other kids. And from Wednesday to Friday, it changed to them discussing their plans for the next weekend. It was like this every week. And I never could wrap my head around it (I spent my weekends at home being happy that I could have free time and play The Sims 2 or something).

Then at some point I guess I just felt like I don’t even need alcohol for having fun and I still haven’t felt like that, and I don’t think I ever will either. When I turned 18, I was super annoyed by everyone because EVERYONE asked me “So you’re turning 18, did you plan on going to a bar?” and I would always answer something like “I don’t even drink (alcohol) so why would I?” and what still annoys me a little is people telling me “That’s good. That’s a good decision, drinking is bad.” and like... if you really think so, why do you drink yourself, then?

2. I love cats. Maybe that is partially visible from my blog too but I really, really love cats, and for decades my favorite animal has been tiger. When I was born, we had already 3 cats in the house and the last one of them died when I was almost 13 (he would have turned 16 that year). Before I moved out at the age of 23, there was not a single day without cats and currently my parents have 4 (plus a dog). I am still dreaming of my own cat but I can’t take one now because animals are not allowed in my flat but whenever I move out of this, I will choose one with pets allowed and I will adopt a cat. Most likely a rescue cat if I can find one, or even two so they can keep each other company. As cute as kittens are, adult cats are also important and need homes.

3. I also love animals overall. I actually like them more than humans (but technically humans are just apes so they’re my least favorite animal, then) and when I was 7-years-old, whenever I was asked about my dream job, I always said or wrote “I don’t know, probably something to do with animals!” And since my teens I have had lots of different ideas for jobs but when I was 25, I graduated as a horse groom. And have been (on-off) working with horses for over 10 years now (currently unemployed). Originally I chose the horse work because I was so pissed by the capitalist system and the thought of an office job or job at a grocery store and such was just... ew, no, never! So I chose horses because if I have to work, then I will do something useful and someone’s gotta take care of the animals too and I love animals, and animal work doesn’t feel like work but more like a lifestyle, so I’ve been basically fooling the system AND myself by that. Sometimes I also dream of the work as a zookeeper.

4. As a kid, I was a huge dinosaur nerd and I still love them (Land Before Time FTW). With my siblings we had a huge collection of dinosaur toys and I also have always loved evolution and genetics, so what we did was to give an individual name for every dinosaur we had. And we knew the species of each of them, and we knew so many facts about them too. Each dino also had their own personality and we even created family trees for them. There were generations of these dinos and we also created this “growing up order” which meant we put them all standing next to each other, usually under my brother’s bed because we had so many of them and they didn’t fit anywhere else lol, from the youngest/smallest to the oldest. And our biggest mission, that never got finished, was “The Big Play” which was us playing that the ancestor parents aka the oldest and biggest of our toys were born and we would play with them and play how they grow older and eventually start having their own kids - who were the next generation in our “growing up order” :D

No wonder why I still love playing The Sims games, especially TS3! (I even have a Finnish simsblog.) Lots of the things I have done and loved as a kid still live so strong in me, they just come out differently than what they did then. Imagination and toys changed to video games, especially The Sims (but I did play video games a lot as a kid too) and my love for genetics and evolution is still really strong.

5. I love comics. My favorite comic book character of all times is Garfield - he’s a cat and I grew up with cats so obviously I fell in love with the Garfield comics too, and I grew up with them as well. My mom subscribed to the Finnish Garfield comic in the early 90s and I have full volumes starting from the year 1994. I also have lots and lots of earlier comics and I always hunt for them from second-hand shops and I don’t have too many of them missing anymore, and I’m really proud of my collection. I also collect Lucky Luke, Rantanplan and Asterix - I have almost all of the (Finnish publications of) Lucky Lukes and Rantanplan.

I have also always loved drawing and I drew my first actual comic when I was 9 or 10 years old. Before that I had been drawing lots of “image series”, one image per paper. I still have all my old comics here in a drawer and I have had so many different characters and majority of them have had endless “plots” aka no plots whatsoever :D Before I actually never drew humans, I started drawing human portraits as fanart when I was 16 and the first human comic characters I drew (also as a fanart) when I was 18 or so. Before that everything was animals of some sort - I have had ants, flies, dogs, cats, birds... even ghosts at some point, and I also created one very simple anthropomorphic creature just so that it was easy to draw and I could concentrate on drawing clothes and hair. Oh my god I loved drawing hairdos to these, and so often I had one female “main character” and I gave her a “growth spurt” where I just drew her in different ages until she was “adult” and I continued telling about her life as an “adult”. Very often these differen phases were literally phases, there were soooooo many different styles each just for one year :D Then at some point I started coming up with actual ideas and plots instead of just drawing whatever I felt like drawing. I still draw comics nowadays, but those are mainly fanart and I haven’t drawn about OC’s in years and currently I have no active ones (except for the “self-comics” about my deep thoughts etc.) and I don’t know how to create new ones, I just have no creativity unless it’s provoked by a fandom thing or when I get a base like The Sims 3 where I don’t have an empty canvas but am given the tools for creating something new.

It might be fun to share some of my old comics here one day but this blog isn’t really an “art blog”, even tho I post some of my drawings occassionally. But let me know if you’d like to see some and maybe I will make a post about that in the future.

#tag games #me #mcrmadness’ art talk

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dakotacrisis · 5 years

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Transferred (4)

Less salt. More sweetness. Kagami is my sword child.

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First day of school! A new start!

Marinette was trying to remain positive as she got ready for her first day at her new school. She kept herself grounded with the reminder that whatever happened at least Lila wouldn’t be there. After Chloe, Lila, and Hawkmoth she could take on anything. Hopefully…

No! She can do this! It’s just school.

She packed up her bookbag and made a quick check of herself in the mirror before heading out. Possible downside to not having school be right across the street was how much later she would be to class if she overslept. Not like it was her fault! Nighttime akumas are the worst. There should be a rule stating that classes start at least an hour or two later if there was an akuma the night before. Give Paris’ hardworking heroes the time to rest before carting them off for history lectures and chemistry homework.

As she left her house she saw the students of her old high school filtering into the building. Why should she look on at her school with bittersweet longing? Wasn’t like they were looking at her bakery with woe now that she was gone. She snapped her attention back to the street and started the journey to her new school. It didn’t take long, a quick walk to the underground, ride the train for ten minutes, another short walk and she was at the front doors.

It was a formidable school. Larger than her old school by far and decades older. College Lycee Carnot. Beautiful and ominous. Probably would have been mistaken for a castle if not for the dozens of school students milling about out front.

Practically every student around her had someone next to them. No one was without a friend as they entered the building. Her mind wandered to Alya and what the others might be talking about before shaking the thought from her head. They’re not thinking about her. She won’t think about them.

Marinette took a deep breath and entered the school. She had to stop by the principal’s office for her complete class schedule and map of the building. Now if only she knew where it was.

“Um, excuse me,” She approached one of the other teenagers. An asian looking girl with bright pink dyed hair and a yellow sundress. “Can you tell me where the principal’s office is?”

“Who are you?” The friend with her asked. They had dark red hair in an undercut, jeans with more tears than denim, and reminders and doodles covering their arms.

“I’m Marinette, I just transferred here.” She told them. “I don’t know my way around yet so I could use some directions.”

“Principal’s office is down this hall, take a right, up the stairs, hang a left and it’ll be at the end of the hall. Big old wooden double doors, can’t miss it.” The pink haired girl told her.

“Thank you, and you were?”

“I’m Nanette and this is my friend Quinn.” Pinky pointed to the redhead. “Normally we’d show you the way but we’re going over notes right now so…”

“Oh it’s no problem, I think I can manage.” she thanked them again and took their directions up to the principal’s office.

The principal welcomed her to the school, gave her a schedule, a map, and a hall pass and sent her on her way to her first class.

After getting turned around a couple times Marinette finally found her homeroom. Nervously she knocked on the door and a short, stout man with slicked back orange hair opened it. “You must be the new girl, are you?”

“Yes, I got a little lost on my way here.” she waved the not very helpful map in her hand. “And you’re Mr. Babineaux?”

“That I am,” he stepped aside to let her in, “Attention class, today we are welcoming a new student to our school. Care to introduce yourself?”

“Oh um,” she looked at the faces staring at her and gulped, “My name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng. I just transferred from College Francoise Dupont.”

“Does anyone have questions for Marinette?” Mr. Babineaux said.

One of the students raised their hand. “Isn’t Francoise Dupont that school where the mayor’s daughter attends?”

“Uh yeah, Chloe and I were in the same class.” Every year since they were tiny kids unfortunately.

There were a few nods.

Another hand shot up. “Doesn’t Adrien Agreste attend Dupont as well?”

“Yes. He’s a very good friend of mine.” She felt warmer talking about Adrien. Surprise.

There were more excited whispers among the class.

“Not to sound rude but why would you transfer away from such a prodigious school? I know ours is nothing to sneer at but with so many high profile classmates it doesn’t seem to make any sense.” Another kid asked.

“Well that is...uh…” She didn’t want to come right out and say that she was bullied out of her old school.

“She probably couldn’t keep the grades.” Someone else said.

“That’s not--”

“A lot of akuma victims come from that school too, don’t they? What if she was one and that’s why she had to leave.” Another voice piped in.

“I’ve never been--” Marinette tried to cut in but was promptly cut off.

“Do we really want such a harbinger of bad luck in class?”

“Excuse you.” A figure from the back stood up.

Kagami.

“Who are all of you to form opinions on someone you don’t even know? I agree that Dupont is a good school but Marinette had her own reasons for leaving. Now how about you all be quiet and ask her some real questions.”

Kagami sat back down as the class hushed itself into quiet apologies. Marinette never thought she’d be so thankful to see her romantic rival in all her life.

A few tense seconds went by before one of the students raised their hand. Marinette recognized it as the same girl she asked for directions earlier, Nanette.

“Are your parents the ones that own the Dupain-Cheng bakery?”

“Yes.” Marinette breathed out a sigh of relief, “You heard of us?”

“Yeah. My moms own The Winking Violet cafe a couple streets over from you guys. They rave about your canelés all the time.” Nanette’s smile grew.

“I know The Winking Violet. I must have passed by it a hundred times but I’ve never been.”

“You should totally go there,” the person sitting next to Nanette said, “It’s kinda the local after school hang out spot for the class.”

“Quinn is over exaggerating.” Nanette waved it off.

“No I’m not.” Quinn said. “Your moms reserve extra seats for us practically every day cause they know we’re coming through.”

“I think that is enough for today.” Mr. Babineaux said, “Marinette, take a seat. I think there should be an open one beside Mlle. Tsurugi in the back.”

Oh...next to Kagami.

This is fine. It really is. Kagami is a cool girl. A cool, confident, rich, smart, pretty girl that Adrien has feelings for. This. Is. Fine.

She sat down next to Kagami and kept her eyes up front on the lesson. She could practically feel the tension wafting between herself and Kagami. They weren’t on bad terms but it wasn’t exactly like they were besties either. Why oh why did she have to get seated here of all places?

Thankfully Marinette didn’t need to focus on that and instead kept her attention on class. They were in the middle of a 1500s literature period for right now. Mainly Utopia by Thomas More. Class wrapped up and next it was off to maths. She had to play catch up since it was the middle of term but if she could get the notes off of someone then she should be fine.

“Marinette,” Kagami scooted closer to her, “Would you like a copy of my literature notes?”

“Oh uh, sure,” Marinette gave Kagami her e-mail so she could send over the file. "Thanks, Kagami."

"Don't mention it." She shrugged. "You're my classmate after all."

"Not just for the notes. I was losing control with all those questions earlier and you really helped me out by saying something."

"You're a nice person. You didn't deserve to have everyone gang up on you like that. Especially considering why you left Dupont."

"Lila is a monster." Marinette admitted.

"Obviously." Kagami smirked, "How can your old class not see it?"

"She's a good liar and they are easily impressed. So long as it isn't Chloe saying it."

"Ugh, Chloe," Kagami made retching face, "She irks me something fierce."

"At least you haven't been dealing with her since primary school. Believe it or not but she was actually worse when she was smaller." The girls left the room and started heading to their next class.

"Really? How is that even possible?"

"A princess phase that her parents let her take way too seriously. She was the princess and everyone around her was her servants. Failure to comply resulted in the biggest temper tantrums you had ever seen."

"She hasn't matured much, has she?"

"I wouldn't say that. She's better. Not a saint but I don't hate her like I used to." Marinette wasn't comfortable labeling Chloe the villain anymore. Not when there were Lilas and Hawkmoths flitting about.

The rest of the school day went by without incident and Nanette and Quinn even invited her to hang out after school. Kagami was invited too but she had to return straight home.

Sounds like someone else Marinette knows…

Nanette and Quinn were sweet and fun. Also, Quinn really wasn't exaggerating when they said that The Winking Violet was the class cafe spot. A whole section in the outdoor dining area was reserved for the students.

“Hello, sweetie,” a middle aged black woman with a long mane of curls came up to their table. “Usual for you and Quinn?”

“Hey, Mama. Yeah, also this is Marinette. She’s a new girl in our class.” Nanette introduced them.

“Nice to meet you, do you know what you’d like to drink?” Nanette’s mom asked.

“You too. I’d like a lemonade, please.” Marinette turned back to her new friends. “This place is adorable, Nanette.”

“Thanks. Mom and Mama put a lot of work into it.” Nanette blushed under the compliment. “But that’s a conversation for another day. What do you think of Lycee Carnot?”

“Big.” Marinette said, “It’s a really big school.”

“You get used to it.” Quinn assured her, “I used to get turned around all the time when I started. Nanette found me banging my head against a wall in frustration when I couldn’t find my way to chemistry one time. We’ve been best friends ever since.”

“Well, you guys certainly made me feel welcome. I needed that.” Marinette’s smile dropped slightly.

“It is totally okay if you don’t want to talk about it but I was kinda wondering,” Quinn started, “Why did you transfer to Lycee Carnot from Dupont?”

“It’s a long story.” The echo of Lila’s sadistic laugh echoed in her head, “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“It’s cool. Just curious.” Quinn was quick to drop the subject.

“I guess you already knew Kagami, huh?” Nanette said.

“She does fencing with my friend, Adrien. I’ve seen her a handful of times outside of school too so she’s not a total stranger.”

“I’m honestly surprised that she’s warmed up to you at all. Usually Kagami keeps to herself. Always sits in the back away from everyone and even eats lunch alone. Not that we don’t invite her to eat with us but she just prefers being on her own.”

“I don’t know her that well so I can’t comment but she seems like the type of person who likes to keep things close to the chest.” Marinette shrugged. “Easier to not get hurt that way.”

Quinn and Nanette exchanged a worried glance. There was something going on but they respected Marinette’s choice not to talk about it. After all, they had only just met. They had no right to go digging into her personal business. The two changed the subject and the rest of the afternoon was spent in better spirits.

By the time Marinette had to return home all the nightmares she had endured at Dupont felt just like that. A bad dream.

“This was fun,” Marinette told them, “Next time maybe you can come to my parent’s bakery after school. The house is right above the shop so we could sneak some goodies and play video games or something.”

“That sounds awesome!” Quinn exclaimed. “I am going to gorge myself on cookies.”

“Not if your diabetes has anything to say about it.” Nanette elbowed Quinn playfully. “See you tomorrow, Marinette.”

“See you, Nanette. See you, Quinn.” she waved to them before heading back home.

Marinette’s parents noticed immediately that their daughter was doing much better today. She was smiling and humming and all during dinner she raved about her new school. They were glad she was finally happy again.

As Marinette was settling down for some sleep when her phone buzzed. It was a text from Adrien.

Sorry for texting you so late. Homework got away from me. How was your first day?

Marinette smiled and texted him back.

Better. So much better.

---

(1) (2) (3) (5)

#miraculous ladybug #salt fic #transfer au #marinette dupain cheng #kagami tsurugi #ocs #writing

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morelike-bi-light · 5 years

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Bingo Fic: Rosalie and Emmett as Parents

So this blog reached 500 followers this week! When I started this blog, it never occurred to me that this would happen, or that I’d find such an awesome fan community and such incredible mutuals, but it did and I did, and it’s kind of changed my life! So much so, that I wanted to celebrate! Those blog bingo sheets have been making their rounds, so I made one for myself, and decided that if anybody filled it out, I’d gift them a 500 word fic (500 words for 500 followers, but that wasn’t planned lol) for a prompt of their choosing!

One of my fav mutuals @rosalie-stan was the first to reply, and thus, the first bingo fic is all for her, for the prompt in the title! Hope you don’t mind - I went a little over 500 words, and then added some headcanons, because I honestly loved your prompt way too much. Hope you like it!

❤️❤️❤️

It's a quiet summer afternoon for the first time in almost a decade. The air conditioner is whirring gently, even if Rosalie and Emmett can't feel it. It's not for their sake - Bree volunteered to take the kids out to a movie, but little Alicia was still too young for the theater.

Not that Emmett minds - in fact, he can't think of anywhere else he'd rather be, than plopped down on the couch with his exhausted baby in his arms, and his soulmate tucked against his shoulder as she fingers through a piece of historical fiction that Carlisle had called 'certainly' entertaining and 'passably' accurate.

"Aw. Blinky," he grins, cradling the baby’s curl-covered head closer to his chest as she gurgles sleepily. His brows furrow for a moment. "That is crazy. She's like a little mini Rose."

Rosalie glances up to shoot him a dry look before going back to her book.

"Why do you insist on doing this?"

"What, tell the truth?" He shrugs, carefully so as not to jostle either his daughter or wife. "It's not my fault you married an honest man."

"She's a baby."

"So?"

"So, she looks like a baby - which I'm not."

Emmett springs for the throat. "You're my baby."

Rosalie bites her lip, smothering a grin. She shouldn't reward his bad behavior.

“Don't be funny," she huffs, batting at him absently.

"Impossible," he declares with a smirk. "And you know how many little brothers and sisters I had. I'm a certifiable baby face expert. Trust me, she's almost as close to you as Donnie."

"I trust you more than anyone else in the world," she deadpans. "Doesn't mean you're right."

"But you haven't disagreed either," he points out. "Not that it matters. Whether you disagree or not, she still looks like you."

Rosalie turns on him, closing the book. "You say that about all our kids!"

Emmett shushes her, pressing a cheeky finger to his lips and nodding at the drowsy baby curled in the crook of his arm. Rosalie rolls her eyes - Lisa could sleep through a hurricane - but lowers her voice just a bit.

"A few months ago, you tried to convince me that Bree has my smile, and she's not even related to us."

"I didn't say that," he snorts. "I said you smile the same way."

She raises a perfect brow in disbelief. "And that's different?"

He's as unaffected as she is unimpressed. "Totally."

"Well, I'm not buying it."

"No, really," he drawls. "You both do that cute little thing where you clamp your mouth shut like you're trying to hold it in, but then something will make you laugh, and it'll stretch real wide and get all dimpley."

If she could flush, Rosalie thinks she'd be beet red. Emmett's eyes are crinkled, glimmering like stars. Home, they say, I'm home when I see you, when I see our kids. It should be impossible to say so much with a simple look. She has to duck her head, look at her book's cover instead. "Is that so?"

"Yeah, it's so," he murmurs softly, and sits up straight. "And I can prove it... 'cause you're doing it right now."

The dam breaks, and she can feel the truth of his words as a smile blossoms on her lips.

"You're ridiculous," she says.

"You love it." He's right again.

She shakes her head, sighing as she leans against his shoulder, looking over their fourth child carefully.

"You're wrong about this one though. If anyone, she looks like you - the little button nose, and those same curls like you and Beth." Her smile softens. "This one's all yours."

Emmett shakes his head right back. "She might have my hair, maybe my nose, too. Hard to say - but look."

Alicia's eyes flutter softly as she pries them open, a sweet, familiar blue. Her gaze wanders a moment then settles on her parents, before she babbles a short hello.

"Look at those baby blues. Those are yours, right?"

Rosalie stares for a moment. A phantom pain burns like ice in her throat, but just for a moment.

"Right." She swallows, but she doesn't try to hide her smile this time. "Right. Those are mine. I guess she's both of ours."

“Course, she is,” he hums. “They all are. Always will be.”

❤️❤️❤️

As I mentioned, in the process of writing this, I accidentally created a whole Rosalie-Emmett family, so paragraphs of headcanons for context galore under the read more! Otherwise, hope you enjoyed the fic and thanks for following!

So as you probably noticed, Bree is alive and well and a part of the family in this AU. She not only lives and is a Cullen, but Emmett and Rosalie have adopted and adore her just like their own. Thus, she’s the oldest kid in the Rose-Emmett fam. They've had her for about a quarter of a century during this fic. Eight years ago, Carlisle discovered that a vampire couple could genetically have a child by using a surrogate. After some discussion between Emmett, Rosalie, and Bree, the family decided to expand. Yay!

With this, the second eldest kid is Elizabeth Cadence 'Beth' Cullen, age seven. When she was a human, Rosalie had always pictured naming her first daughter Elizabeth, and her middle name comes from her father's favorite human sister whom he'd once promised a goddaughter. Seeing as he’s the only Cullen with a happy backstory, I like to think he’d want his kids to have ties to his human family, even if he’s outlived them by a century. Anyways, they call her Beth. She has black curls, big wide eyes, and an easy smile like her father, plus the small, straight nose and excellent bone structure of her mother.

Beth is a goofball who loves to get herself into either trouble or danger, though the latter of which is hard to come by with an extended family of vampires and werewolves at her back. However, she is also incredibly generous, whether with her toys, her time, or her patience. She has a quick temper, though, and goes cold when she's angry, like her mom. Her favorite activity is running with her family, especially when Bree picks her up and carries her on her back, but she's also fond of music, and is passionate about dance. Her favorite babysitter is either Aunt Alice or Uncle Jasper, both of whom coddle her immensely, and her role model is definitely Aunt Leah.

Their third child is Donovan Matthew Cullen, age three. He gets his first name from a baby book, but his middle name is that of Emmett's eldest human brother, who always looked after the rest of the Masen clan. He has soft, wavy dark blonde hair, doe eyes, and a full pout like his mother, but he shares Emmett's button nose. During the summer, his cheeks get freckly and the tips of his hair gets sun-bleached almost white. (He also needs glasses as he gets older.)

Baby Donnie, as his older sisters call him, is a serious little fellow, very polite and horribly gentle, who likes to read - which is why he gets on with his aunt Bella so well. However, he can get just as rowdy as his sister, though he is greatly less likely to get messy due to his thoughtful nature and sensitivity to criticism. He gets along perfectly with both Grandma Esme and Uncle Edward, who is dying to teach him the piano, but secretly his favorite is probably Uncle Seth, who always knows how to make him feel both good and normal.

Their youngest, and the topic of this ficlet, is Alicia Esme 'Lisa' Cullen, not yet one. Obviously, her first name is derived from Alice, and her middle from Esme. They chose a slightly different name for her first because as Rosalie puts it, she should always remember to be her own person, even as she learns from others. Emmett assures Bella she has dibs on the next daughter, but I think four is enough for them - and she tells him as much. From Emmett, Lisa inherited dark, wavy hair, a button nose, and a round babyface, but she has her mother's eyes and full, solemn mouth.

Lisa grows up to be a mellow kid, partially due to nature and partially because she's had to learn to adapt on the fly without breaking too much of a sweat. She has the best sense of humor in the family, and the sharpest wit, due to observational skills and an impeccable sense of timing honed by years of living with the boisterous extended family she has (which includes the Clearwaters as step aunt and uncle, and through them, the wolf pack.) Out of everyone, she is the most down-to-earth, but also has the hardest time initiating confrontation when she’s hurt or upset. She has a very special bond with Grandpa Carlisle, and she adores her Aunt Victoria (because why not combine all the AUs?).

Whew, that was a lot! I would not blame anyone who took one look at those blocks of text and ran the other direction. But I enjoyed writing them, so it’s all good! If you actually made it this far, I am very impressed, and flattered, and I love you and thank you with all my heart. Hope you had fun reading!

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tanadrin · 5 years

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Today’s project was reboxing the family Lego collection.

I really forget sometimes how much of my brain seems to be indexed by physical objects: memories and games and trains of thought that I can go literally decades without thinking about until something I’m holding in my hand reminds me of it--and I think that’s one reason that my current adulthood feels so qualitatively different from my childhood, is that I’m not constantly surrounded by the detritus of years of living in the same house, in the same city, for 18 or so years. I’ve moved on average once or twice a year since I was 18, and I haven’t lived in my current city for more than a few years, and even when (rarely) I go back to Nashville, the place has changed so goddamn much in the last 12 years that it’s basically unrecognizable. And anyway, the house has been sold, all the stuff that used to be in it thrown away, nobody I know lives there anymore, etc., etc.

So, the Legoes. Basically, for most of our childhood, Legoes were The Thing. It was what we asked for for Christmas, what we asked for for birthdays, it was our go-to when we were bored. Oh, sure, we had other games--there were four of us, three triplets and an older sibling less than 3 years our senior, so we were all very close in age--like the Creek Kingdom (the creek behind our house was the site of a powerful realm we ruled as tetrarchs), War (running around with sticks with the neighbor kids until somebody got whacked hard enough to go crying to an adult, and we had to play something else), Trial (the convicted person got trapped in the downstairs bathroom until they got bored of trying to escape), and so forth. But Legoes were the good shit, the sure bet on a rainy day.

And I think you can immediately understand a lot about my family if you know exactly how we played Legoes. Like a lot of kids, when we got a Lego set, we’d build it excitedly, and then eventually break it down for parts to build other things. All Legoes went into a common pile, and while in theory you still owned the specific Legoes that belonged to the sets that had been given to you, or that you’d purchased with your own allowance, owning a piece was not the same as having custody of the piece. Pieces that were in your custody were kept separate, in another little box or collection, and were usually rare and useful ones, or ones you were sequestering for a specific project or goal, and it was the norm (and expected) that these would eventually filter back into the common pile when you didn’t need them anymore. You could also trade them, which we did, and trading pieces was facilitated by a common descriptive language, which I think we basically invented ourselves (e.g., “stone” referred to any 1-stud-wide gray wall piece). Sometimes we would get really ambitious and draw up a list of the most-demanded pieces and a generally agreed upon value, either in Lego gold coins (of which we had very few in actual circulation) or another good (usually stone bricks, which were always in high demand, though quite common).

Our taste for factionalism and rivalry was expressed by things like the Lego parliament (our older sibling’s idea; and wisely gerrymandered by him so that he always had the most votes in it) and the epic spaceship battles, full of shifting alliances and sudden betrayals, whose conclusions were arrived at through a combination of arguing about whose spaceship had more guns and what would make for better drama. But for the full effect, you have to imagine, like, three eight year olds and their ten year old brother running around the family room making “pew pew” noises and imitating phaser blasts with their hands, and occasionally hurling a pirate ship hull studded with wings and various gun-like protuberances to the ground to watch it explode into dozens of little pieces.

And I would say that, much to the satisfaction of our younger selves if only they knew, that these are not games we ever really grew out of; they only found different expression as we got older. Now, we have things like the weekly sibling multiplayer game sessions, and the sibling Minecraft server, and (once upon a time) the World of Warcraft guild we started and wrote an elaborate backstory for, but even though I think there are some ways in which I’ve changed a lot as an adult, sometimes even for the better, I find it immensely satisfying that my taste for the kind of games I used to play as a kid is basically unchanged, if only now a little more sophisticated.

When Mom was getting ready to sell the house, she moved everything in it into a couple of storage units out in the part of town that’s all strip malls and gas stations and fast food places. The last time I was in Nashville (which was the occasion of the solar eclipse, and also when I got married without telling anybody), I had to spend a couple of days with my siblings and Dad going through all the things in there and deciding what we wanted to keep, what we wanted to throw away, what needed to be shipped to Berlin, and so on. It was frankly a little heartbreaking--like I said, a part of my memory has always felt extremely external, and throwing away even little nothing objects from your childhood is kind of a wrench when you feel like you’re also losing basically all the memories associated with that object. And a big chunk of the things I had to get rid of was my book collection. And I still have dreams filled with a deep sense of unease principally concerned with walking the halls of a ruined version of the house I grew up in, discovering more piles of my belongings that need to be sorted through, lest I lose some object of intense personal value forever.

My mother has many virtues, but even at retirement age is still, for lack of a better word, Weird About Stuff, in the sense of family objects, especially family objects which she has no moral (or sometimes even legal) right to. I don’t know if it’s a combination of being sentimental and not liking change any better than I do, or her deep-seated psychological need to be in control of everything at all times, but among the things she segregated in her own storage unit, with the intent that they remain with her in Nashville, were the twelve large plastic bins in which the Legoes were then stored. As kind of a last-minute stealth operation (and this incident has weird parallels to a much older family story involving my grandmother, a case of beer, and a dining room set that was hotly contested after the death of a great-great-aunt), we liberated the Legoes and stuck them in the back of Dad’s car to ship them to Berlin, where they have since sat in my older brother’s apartment. Hence the reboxing, since he needed to make some space for houseguests. If Mom noticed the Legoes were missing, she has at least wisely refrained from commenting on it, and of course, we have wisely refrained from mentioning it to her.

The flagship of my fleet (whether space age or castle) was always built on the hull of my favorite ship, the Renegade Runner. Happily, I found her wreckage, including both her original cloth sails (wrinkled but otherwise perfectly intact), while digging through the boxes, and it is now sitting on my desk. Next weekend I’m gonna go over and rebuild her, and I am way more excited about this than is probably reasonable for anyone whose 31st birthday is approaching as rapidly as mine.

#random scenes from my childhood #autobiographical stuff #i also found a pog in one of the boxes #god pogs were such a weird fad

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rex101111 · 5 years

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Izuocha Week 2018 Day 2: Photograph

ALMOST LATE BUT FINISHED LOOKING OVER THIS THING SO YEAH!

MORE THAN TWICE AS LONG AS THE LAST ONE SO YOU BETTER ENJOY IT NERDS!

(seriously though I hope you like it! Week going great so far! knock on wood knock on wood)

Few things can strike fear into Izuku's heart, especially now that he had been a pro hero for a good half a decade now.

A large group of villains bearing down on him with their quirks on display? Easy.

A building on fire with multiple people inside on the verge of collapsing? A bit harrowing, but nothing he hadn't faced before.

His girlfriend holding one of his mother's dusty photo albums while they were cleaning out the attic? That sent a bolt of lightning racing down his spine, paralyzing him on the spot as she flipped through the pages with a look of abject awe.

A quick flexing of muscle and he felt One For All blitz through his limbs, and with a push of his feet against the floor he flew towards Ochako, hand reaching out…

And missing the album completely as she saw him from the corner of her eye at the very last second and leaned away from his grip, his momentum carrying him all the way to an impact with the wall that resounded in the room.

"Oh no you don't!" Ochako laughed as she hugged the heavyset book to her chest with a wild grin. "This book is a treasure trove and I intend to get the most out of it!" She flipped it back open to a random page, her eyes lighting up with unbound glee, "oh my God is that an All Might onsie!?"

Izuku leapt forward again, face stretched wide in panic, "No it isn't!" Ochako skipped out of his grip again with a manic gleam in her eye, "C'mon Ochako it's not that funny!"

"Yes it is!" She laughed brightly, shooting one arm out to wrap around his shoulder so she could get his face in front of the multitude of pictures his mother had taken of him as a young boy, "and adorable to boot! Look at those widdle cheeks!"

Izuku narrowed his eyes at his giggling girlfriend, a small frown at how much joy she was deriving out of this whole affair. He glanced at the pictures with a visible cringe of his shoulders, "I can't believe mom actually kept all these." He shook his head before pointing at one of the pictures of him with the aforementioned onsie, "I mean look! I was like…three!"

"That's what moms do!" Ochako laughed again, curling the arm she had around him to snuggle her nose into the crook of his neck, making his frown smaller by inches, "mine has like…5 of these albums, and that was just for grade school!"

Izuku let out a chuckle despite his embrassment, which was diminishing in favor of enjoying the feeling of Ochako rubbing her nose under his chin, before pointing out another picture. "Hey I remember this…" He picks it out of its place in the album, a picture of him and his mother at a theme park, the both of them wearing matching "ears" that resembled All Might's famous haircut. "Mom and I had this jar in the kitchen where we saved up money for day at that park." He laughed with a tinge of fond nostalgia. "Took us like, a month, but we managed."

Ochako blinked at him for a moment before a smiled warmed her features, "she's a good mom huh?"

Izuku grinned with no small amount of pride. "The best."

Ochako let out a sputtering laugh and slapped him on the shoulder none too roughly, "you're such a momma's boy."

The grin didn't budge an inch. "And proud of it."

She laughed aloud, leaning her head against her broad chest as she did. After a moment she stopped and glanced down at the book, before looking back at him to see his eyes creasing a bit at the edges as he gazed at it himself, and smirked as an idea came to her head, "I propose an exchange."

The sudden seriousness in her voice made him raise an eyebrow, "oh yeah?"

She nodded, bringing up the book into view, "if you let me look at the rest of this album." She patted the page they were currently on, "then the next time you and I visit my folks, you'll get to see all of my embarrassin' baby pictures."

He raised an eyebrow at her, meeting her hopeful grin for a few long moments before sighing in defeat, "fine." He brought his face close to hers, "I'll never be able to say no to you will I?"

She kissed his nose, "never."

They spent a while like this, flipping through the pages of the aging album, Ochako cooing and giggling over the younger version of Izuku while sitting on the dusty floor of the attic between his legs as he hugged her from behind. Every now and again Ochako would point to a particular picture and demand a "backstory", which Izuku was always glad to provide.

This went for about half an hour before she spotted on picture that gave her pause. The picture contained a younger Inko Midoriya holding onto what appeared to be the youngest Izuku yet, little more than a newborn.

But what really caught her attention was the older man standing next to Inko, face in a gentle smile as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, his her a puffy mess of dark green curls that reminded Ochako of the man hugging her from behind.

A man who had turned oddly silent.

"…is that?"

"Yup." Izuku said quietly, his voice strangly level and calm, "Hisashi Midoriya, my dad."

Ochako looked behind her to meet his eyes, "you…never really talk about him."

"Because there's nothing much to tell." He shrugged easily, his face blank and calm. "He left when I was about…two I think?" He shrugged again. "Went overseas to work and just…never came back."

Ochako bit her lip. "Izuku…"

He hugged her a bit tighter and put his face in her hair, "its okay." He mumbled from between her locks. "I barely knew him. He hardly called, never visited." He was quiet for a minute before he sighed. "There was never anyone to miss."

Ochako didn't say a word for a long moment, letting him breath in the smell of her shampoo from where he rested his head (enjoying the feel of his breath on the back of her neck while she was at it), before she chuckled weakly, "well, least that explains why you got so attached to All Might!"

Izuku hummed deep in his throat, "yeah probably."

She meant it as a joke, Izuku very much didn't.

She stared for a long time at the picture, taking in how stiff the man seemed in the picture, how Inko's smile felt smaller than it should have, a frown growing on her face before she slammed the book shut, scaring Izuku out of his reverie as he leaned out of her hair to look at her, "Ochako are you-"

"We're going to have lots of pictures."

Izuku blinked, "huh?"

Ochako turned where she sat to face him fully. "You, and me." She pointed to the both of them in turn, "are going to have a ton of pictures, together, apart, doing stupid stuff we'll laugh about years later." She grabbed his hands and squeezed his fingers, "and lots of pictures with our kid too, so many they won't know what to do with them." She nodded resolutely, Izuku staring at her awestruck. "That's a promise."

She tipped forward; catching his lips in a firm and tender kiss, Izuku pushing back after the shock wore off. Soon they stopped to catch their breath, leaning their foreheads against each other as they huffed mildly, their faces flushed red.

"….our kid?"

"Huh?"

Izuku grinned wickedly, "you said our kid."

Ochako flushed a bit brighter, but didn't shy away from him, "well…yeah, eventually."

"Eventually huh?" Izuku leaned forward again, inching closer to her lips, "why not right now?"

"Maybe because your mother is literally right here?"

The two of them froze, slowly inching their eyes to the source of the voice in unison, finding Inko Midoriya tapping her foot with her arms crossed over her chest, an incredibly amused smile on her face.

They jumped apart so quick and stood up so straight they nearly lost their balance and tipped backwards.

"Mom!"

"Inko-san I swear we didn't-!"

Inko cleared her throat and both young adults clamped their mouths shut in embarrassment. The older woman gave them a moment to stew in it before shaking her head and pointing behind her, "if you two are quite finished goofing off in here," the two somehow flushed an even deeper red, "then I could really use some help setting up the dinner table."

The two couldn't get out fast enough, the sound of Inko's amused laughter nipping at their heels.

Inko took a step to turn around, but caught sight of the photo album Ochako dropped in her haste, the large book still open on the page where the only picture she had left of her husband laid, image open to the air.

Inko stared at it for a long second, before shaking her head with a small smile and walking over to pick it up and put it back in its place.

As she did, she found something else that had been up here for a long while.

Miraculously, it still worked.

She picked it up, made sure everything was in its proper place, and rushed down the stairs until she reached the kitchen, looking at the couple placing plates with a cheeky grin, "say cheese!"

They barely had enough time to fumble a confused response before a soft click resounded in the room followed by a quick flash of light.

"Mom?"

"Inko-san?" Ochako asked at the same time, rubbing her eyes from the sudden flash. "What did you just do?"

"Well." She said easily, holding up the old digital camera aloft like a prize. "You did say you wanted a lot of pictures Ochako-chan." Her grin shrunk but grew warmer. "Consider this the first of many to get you started."

When Ochako blinked the wetness from her eyes and turned to Izuku with a beatific smile, which he matched with a delighted grin of his own, Inko couldn't resist snapping one more picture.

#My hero academia #Midoriya Izuku #Uraraka Ochako #izuocha #Izuochaweek #Izuochaweek2018 #stuff rex wrote #Inko Midoriya #Inko best mom #Photograph #this was fun #like a lot of fun to write #tomorrow is going to be AWESOME TOO JUST WAIT

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purplesurveys · 5 years

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476

If someone's laughing, do you instantly think they're laughing at you? Egh no, not really. I’ve had people laugh at me but I do know about it; I’ve never felt paranoid like this. What is the strangest thing you've been asked? My mom’s masseuse asked me if I was pregnant after taking a good look at me and deciding I looked familiar. It felt weird and eerie until I told my parents about it the next day and they said “Oh yeah, she’s the one with the third eye.” Didn’t feel as strange after that, but at the time when she looked me dead in the eye and asked me that question it was definitely so weird lmao. What’s the weirdest thing about life that people just accept as normal? Sometimes I wonder how people from the far past got to decide how certain animals were safe to eat even though they a) clearly scream danger, b) have such a complex way of being consumed (like crabs), or c) ARE STRAIGHT UP POISONOUS (like the pufferfish in Japan). But hey, we’re all eating them right now.

What was your favorite game as a child? I liked local games. We had langit-lupa (heaven and earth), piko (hopscotch), ice-ice water (freeze tag), Chinese garter, 10-20, and patintero. What’s the stupidest thing you've ever heard? Anything that comes out of conservative Catholics’ mouths.

What's the most random thing you've done out of boredom? It would have to be that time that I got really depressed last December and I spent all my Christmas savings meant for friends and family on a bunch of coloring books and my own set of coloring pencils. All for myself. It’s a little morbid, but whaever. What show did your parents not let you watch as a kid? My parents were pretty liberal and weren’t too strict about shows. My mom absolutely hated Mr. Bean though because she was convinced he was the reason my brother didn’t start talking until he was like 6. She would change the channel if it was on, but she didn’t outright ban us or anything. What is your personal catchphrase? I don’t have one. What is the most pleasurable feeling that doesn't involve anything sexual? Biting into your favorite food after a whole day of not eating. What was your 'Oops, wrong person' moment? I don’t think I have one. I’d die of embarrassment. What do you find attractive that isn't considered 'normal' attraction? I really can’t bring myself to be into the muscular/buff look and don’t mind if someone is on the bigger side, is skinny, or is generelly not a gym person. What’s the dumbest thing you’ve done drunk? Fell asleep in the pool. What's your proudest moment in the bathroom? ?????? What’s something you own that gets you lots of compliments? Technically not mine, but Gabie would lend me a windbreaker-type of jacket that was very colorful. It was green, yellow, pink, basically a very bright and gay jacket. I got complimented on it EVERY SINGLE TIME I wore it by nearly every single person who passed by me in school – and I wish I was kidding lmao. She got it in Baguio for 50 pesos ($1), it’s insane. I think it was lost by another person she lent it to. A damn shame. If money was no object, where would you want to live? Canada. Who is your favourite mythological character? In the brief moment I was into mythology, I really liked the way Rick Riordan wrote Apollo to be in his Percy Jackson series. Big ol’goofball. What's something that's happened which couldn't happen at a worse time? [continued from this afternoon] > Had the sign for my gas start blinking while I was stuck in standstill traffic > Get into a car accident while finally making a turn to the gas station > Get pulled over by an officer for changing a lane and nearly hitting a car, because unbeknownst to me, the accident had closed my right side mirror, making me not see my entire right side and I almost hit the car to my right All happened within ten minutes. I was a freshman in high school and couldn’t be more terrified. Police let me go when I started having a panic attack. What is the best pickup line you've ever heard? I don’t like pickup lines. What did aging ruin for you? Dreams. What is the most hilarious thing you’ve ever heard? Idk, I’ve found a lot of things hilarious. What is the darkest thing you have seen on the internet? It would be either Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared or Too Many Cooks. What's something you really enjoy, but can't have? A regularly luxurious life. What Wikipedia article have you recently read? OMG hahaha so there were times in internship where nothing was tasked to me FOR HOURS and I would get super bored. Then I remember hearing from somewhere that Wikipedia has a whole article that’s just a list of unusual deaths that’s happened from modern history until the present, and I gobbled that shit up until I was given a responsibility. I found out more listicles they apparently had – list of last words, list of people who disappeared mysteriously, etc; read all of those too. What's a book you were made to read in school that you really liked? My #1 would have to be Without Seeing the Dawn by Steven Javellana. It’s the most honest narration of the Philippines’ Japanese occupation I’ve ever read. It’s painful to read, but it’s the beauty of it. What objective did you fail to complete this week? I told myself I was gonna start externals work for my org, but I’ve just been so burned out in the last month that I haven’t gotten around to starting yet. I definitely have to this week, though so it’s not like I’ll completely fail it. What could have gotten worse for you but it didn't? Tbh the desire to end my life? I threw in the towel by the time I was 12, but I’m still here so I guess life is doing something right.

What subject should be taught at schools, but isn't? Adulting. Like being taught about taxes, social security, insurance, documents they ask when you apply for a job, etc. I’m 21 and I know nothing about these. I didn’t even know what insurance meant until I was 20. What is the best thing about having a Significant Other? The idea of having a go-to person for everything is very comforting for me. What makes you unusually uncomfortable? Distorted sound effects. It’s probably not unusual though. What is an upcoming purchase you're excited about? It’s no longer future tense because I was finally able to find Pop-Tarts at the nearby mall! I couldn’t find it ANYWHERE in the last couple of years and I’ve been craving it for the same period of time. Then Gab convinced me to try the supermarket at the mall we went to today and we found a box of Chocolate Fudge gloriously sitting on one of the shelves. It was way more expensive than I remember it being, but I waited for so long that I just grabbed it and didn’t care about my budget anymore. What is the worst game you've ever played? The Hannah Montana game for the Wii that I had was so bad it was good. What’s the oddest thing you like to do? I don’t think I have particularly odd habits. What's the funniest news story you've seen in the past few weeks? There’s a satirical article I came across a week ago that was about how dinosaurs got extinct because they ate pineapples on pizza. It was made even more hilarious by the fact that it included a graphic of dinosaurs and there were slices of pizza with pineapples on them photoshopped into the graphic. Definitely pissed off a number of pineapple enthusiasts that day lmaaaaao. What do you really really want right now? I’m so excited to eat my Pop-Tarts but I think I should save them for tomorrow. What do you hide from people? Suicidal thoughts, because I never wanna bother anyone. What was the first sign you knew you had a crush on someone? When I actively avoided her because it hurt to see her. HAHAHAH yuck drama What's the best lemonade you've made from the lemons life gave you? Lasting long enough to create a family in the form of my orgmates. Who was your cartoon crush while growing up? Sam from Totally Spies. What's the best way to deal with religious door knockers? We don’t have that culture here but I most likely would just never open the door. What’s the most hypocritical thing you’ve ever seen or heard? A large chunk of Catholics. Who’s the most interesting person you’ve ever met? When I was still interning at my PR firm, I shadowed my supervisor in an interview that one of our clients had for that day. Our client’s representative is the biggest badass I’ve met. He’s from South Africa and was born and raised at a time when apartheid was still around. He’s white, so he was brainwashed in school to think that they were superior and for a time, he really thought his race was. Then he got to work under Nelson Mandela’s party when he was much older and that was the only time he realized how backwards that mindset was. Anyway he had Mandela’s spies stalk his ass every single day because of his background and he ultimately got shot twice. There’s loads more stories to tell but I don’t want to give him away.

When I was watching him get interviewed he proved to have a lot of knowledge on history and current events too so that’s another plus. He was just super cool and it was a breath of fresh air to talk to a foreigner that was more aware of social situations than the average Filipino. What just doesn't impress you? Carly Rae Jepsen. What’s the worst possible way to introduce yourself? There’s no worst way; just don’t try too hard because the bullshit can be detected so easily. What makes you wish that you were born in the past or the future? How easy it was to make a living and score a job decades ago. What tragic event was coincidentally beneficial to you? My breakup. What's something people are proud of, but it doesn't impress you? ‘Miracles.’ What's the worst possible moment to go and play on a bouncy castle? Doing it with a bunch of sweaty, rowdy kids. Who is the greatest ever comedian? Not really into comedians so my recommendations might suck for some. What’s your irrational fear? Commercials at night. What's your oldest memory? Playing in a Winnie the Pooh tent when I was 3. What can you not wake up without? Checking the time. What did you think was cool when you were younger that you now think isn’t? Wristbands. What are your favourite or most memorable lines from any movie/show? “How do you like them apples?” from Good Will Hunting. What's something people love to hate? The Kardashians. What’s something that is underrated but extremely useful? Being polite.

#survey #surveys

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wowerehouse · 5 years

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Levaden flopped down against a rock with her usual grace.

“I swear that kid’s gonna break her hand,” she grumbled, ears twitching with agitation.

“That kid’s not much younger than me,” Velshada pointed out, not looking up from where she was carefully brushing out her griffon’s fur. Lightning obligingly raised a wing so that Vel could get at the mussed fur at her joint, and Levaden ducked half a second too late. “If she’s not older. Watch your head, by the way.”

“Yeah, yeah, very funny...you know what I mean. It hurts watching her.”

Privately, Vel agreed, but there were enough people doubting Lin Tenderpaw right now. “Just because we’re all too soft to build up callouses through hard work that way,” she said, pitching her voice just loud enough for the young pandaren to hear, “doesn’t mean we should try to stop her.”

Levaden’s ears perked infinitesimally. It was a kind of smile, Vel thought, an approving one; but then they twitched back again. When she spoke, her voice was quiet.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” Vel matched her tone. “But it has to be her choice. We all know that.”

“I wish this asshole could get it through his thick--”

Velshada threw a curry brush at her head and hoped neither of the pandaren had noticed.

“Sorry,” whispered Levaden. Taking a breath, she shook her head rapidly and sat up and gestured at the griffon. “You know, I was never introduced to her properly. You know I never pass on the chance to meet a pretty girl. You don’t see many like this lioness in Alliance requisition.”

“You’re awful, this is Lightning, and she’s mine.”

Levaden paused halfway through reaching out to scratch at Lightning’s mane.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know how much he meant to you.”

Velshada ducked out from under Lightning’s wing to smile at her. “Thunder’s fine,” she promised. “Talet wanted me to have a flying mount after we got back from--Northrend. Too many places where we had to leave the horses and either go on foot or borrow griffons, and that gets dangerous. She got me Lightning as a late birthday present, officially. I sold Thunder to a friend of ours. Well--a clerk who works for Talet’s fiancee, actually.” To punctuate the statement, she reached out and touched her stirrups, tilting them into the light.

Levaden’s ears spasmed wildly. “No kidding! Good for her. I mean, I’m assuming?”

Vel tucked her hair back in place and decided not to mention calm, graphic threats of death delivered high above Blade’s Edge. Talet was curled up in a sunny spot a few yards away, after all. “It’s good,” she said softly. “Rinda’s wonderful. They deserve each other.”

“Well, I’m surprised you think anyone’s good enough for Talet. Now I’ve got to meet her sometime.” Levaden said casually, though the tilt of her ears and a softness around her eyes said her happiness was genuine. Curious, she leaned forward to examine the stirrup cup Vel had pointed out. For a moment she just glanced at it; then her ears shot up in shock and she gave a low whistle. “So she’s a dwarf, I’m assuming.”

Vel dipped her head to confirm it. Levaden’s surprise was warranted; at first glance the stirrups were just a slightly shiny part of Lightning’s tack, slung over a low fence. A custom piece, to be certain; covered, with a wider base than was common, much better suited for draenei hooves and impossible to result in the rider being dragged, or a broken ankle from a hoof slipping through and being caught.

Any closer inspection, however, revealed nothing short of a work of art.

It wasn’t too much; Rinda was mother to five children under the age of thirteen, and even paladins weren’t that well-subsidized, even in Ironforge. But it was an engagement gift that met all traditional standards. No precious metals or gemstones; Rinda and Talet were practical people, and this was a tool. But it was well-tooled steel, etched in strong lines with symbols that had brought a lump to Velshada’s throat when she’d first seen them.

Draenei carvings--the kind of deeply sacred and traditional markings that she now knew adorned the walls of Shattrath, nothing a dwarf smith could have used so correctly on their own; either Rinda had consulted with a priestess of the Naaru, or her smith had. An intricate web that created the symbols for home, family, and freedom respectively; embossed at the apex of the roller was the symbol for mourning, faced on the flip side by one Velshada had actually needed to find a Vindicator to translate for her--”joy”.

Woven in and around these were glyphs of protection and haste; under the cup was a shaman’s sigil for fair winds. The glyphs themselves incorporated strains of sub-precious metals for the most part, to enhance the enchantments. There was one issue, which Velshada had noted immediately--properly, the fair-wind sigil linking to a Draenei “freedom” glyph should be laced with truesilver.

Whatever smith Rinda had used was a genius. The alloy they’d created matched the magical resonance almost exactly--and could never be used to harm a worgen.

Levaden couldn’t know the meaning behind half the symbols; but she clearly picked up enough, as she looked the stirrups over.

“Remind me,” she said finally. “Who’s she marrying again?”

Vel had to laugh at the sudden break in tension. “Long story,” she said. “It’s...where Rinda’s from, at least, you’re not actually engaged unless you’ve exchanged something, it’s not binding. Not...real. But for Talet the whole idea of an engagement gift is...bad luck, I guess.”

“Is that a Gilnean thing, or...?”

Vel lowered her voice, as if that would keep the half-asleep worgen from overhearing. “I think it’s mostly...a Talet thing.” When Levaden just nodded and waited for her to continue, she tried to contain a wince. “Things you own are...tools. Placing that much emphasis on a thing, anything...it symbolizes too much. It becomes a representation of your bond, and giving that much importance to something that could get lost, or broken, or stolen...”

She hoped Levaden wouldn’t make her spell out what a decade spent living feral in the woods, hounded every moment of every day by the ever-present threat of hunters in horseback, might do to a person’s willingness to grow attached to any single possession.

“So, they compromised,” she finished. “Rinda needed to give her something and Talet needed to not receive anything, so. She made weatherproof cloaks for all the kids, since she got...really good at that, in Gilneas. And I quote...since there’s no point telling me to keep my feet on the ground and she wouldn’t ask it of me even if I’d listen, Rinda wants me to carry some of Ironforge with me, so I’ll always be grounded somewhere.”

Something happened in Levaden’s eyes. It made Vel curl up against Lightning’s side to keep her stomach in one place.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Levaden said softly. “There’s some serious symbolism there, huh?"

“Yeah.” Nothing about Levaden’s voice was making Vel feel any less lightheaded. “Engagement gifts are meant to represent your commitment to each other, right? So. They’re taking care of each other’s...” She fluttered a hand self-consciously. “Dependents, I guess. That way the exchange is what’s important, not the gift itself.”

“You can say each other’s kids if you want,” Levaden pointed out, glancing at Talet. “Trust me. She wouldn’t mind.”

“It’s not that.” Vel could feel her skin burning and hoped Talet really was asleep. “I really don’t...she’s not my mother. I don’t really think of her that way. She’s my...mentor. That’s just the truth. I guess--” She cut herself off with a wince, but she’d already gotten this far. “Would it sound stupid to say that I don’t think of her as my mom but I think of myself as her daughter?”

Without so much as blinking, Levaden said bluntly, “You met Shandris Feathermoon, right?”

“Yes--what? What does General Feathermoon have to do with anything?”

“Ever see her in the same room as Tyrande?”

Smiling in spite of herself as they returned to solid ground, Velshada rolled her eyes. “Levaden,” she said. “When would I ever have been in the same room as Tyrande Whisperwind?”

Levaden threw her hands in the air, eyes wild. “She sneaks up on you!”

Vel couldn’t help it; she laughed so sharply she had to stuff a wad of robe in her mouth to not shriek.

“I’m serious, Velshada! The woman moves like a damn nightsaber! Look, I’m not joking this time--”

#ficlet

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sleeplessinsiswati · 5 years

Text

Toxic Masculinity—A Contagious Kind of Pollution

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My bad, I know I’m late.

*grumble and murmuring*

My bad. Look, i said my bad.

*lower murmuring*

Look, in my defense, I had the post locked and loaded on the queue and then my internet went out. Boom. Now can we get on with what we came here for?

_________________________________________________

As you may know about me, bell hooks is one of my favorite authors. She has inspired me, moment after moment and time after time, to grow and love myself and others more wholly and fully. In her writing she uses a combination of autobiographical, common-sensical language and academic, theoretical research to shed light to the various topics. Here, I will attempt to scratch at the masterpieces of her work, and use both theory and my experience to shed the light of truth concerning what I know about what the world has come to refer to as toxic masculinity.

Your story may be different than mine, but toxic masculinity is something that affects each and every one of us. Let me state again, masculinity is not the issue here; there is nothing wrong with “being a man” or being strong or having power. The issue comes in when notions or ideals of manhood force boys and men to be emotionally unavailable, makes us believe we are not enough as human beings, or encourages us to exploit and take advantage of others in an ultimate quest for power. There’s no way around the reality that this is no way to live, and there is the crux of the argument—living. Most of the things that we come to know and associate with being a “man” and “manhood” have to do with survival. Hunting, fishing, fighting, scanning a room and sizing people up, sports, fitness, taking a hit and not complaining, the list goes on and on. Most of these are guys grasping at straws, trying to get a piece, a bit more power than they had before, in order to survive. But this is not living.

This is why the first step to growth, and leading a healthier life absent of toxic masculinity, is reflection. You must look over your life, your experiences and genuinely ask are you living or are you surviving. Patriarchy, being a system where men and masculine energy dominate spaces of power or with power and women, children, and weaker men are seen as inferior and vessels willing to be dominated or controlled, makes us believe that survival is the ultimate resource and that there are constant, looming threats to us accomplishing this goal. Though at times this may be true, it is not always true, and if we walk through life always scanning rooms with balled up fists we doom ourselves to early graves filled with bitterness, emotions we’ve never experienced, and a life devoid of love. There is more to life than reliving childhood traumas day in and day out, but that more does not come without being able to reflect and to heal.

I don’t remember at what point in my childhood I started hating my dad; I know that it was not always that way. There’s a distinctly fond memory I have with him—wrestling my older brother and I, both of us no older than seven at the time, he pinned us down and stood on our chests saying, “ Who’s the man? Who’s the Man?” Gerald and I were half hysterical laughing, half having an asthma attack, and shouting, “ You’re the man! You’re the man!” He laughed saying, “ No, God’s the Man. Say, God’s the Man.” We giggle between gasps, “Okay, God’s the Man!” Mom came on to the scene from the back room of our duplex and looked at Dad with that look that only Black mommas can deliver; we were sorry that we got dad in trouble, but to this day I love that time in my life, I love that memory.

Perhaps it was the pressures of two lives, two similar personalities, and an age difference spanning over three decades that caused there to be so much friction between us; don’t ask me what the first argument was even about, because I couldn’t tell you. I think that it was the silence that ultimately led to it all. Questions not asked by a son out of fear, and questions left unanswered by a father unaware of the shadow his figure casted. What I do know is that early on in my adolescence I became disillusioned with childhood, with being looked down upon and thought to be foolish, and I know it had a lot to do with Dad and things he said, or how he said them. Something as simple as walking into the room that Gerald and I shared, looking around and making an expression, and finally looking at us and shaking his head was all Dad needed to do to express his disappointment. Honestly I appreciated the silent expressions a lot more than the verbal ones, which seemed to have a back-breakingly painful bite to them. Gerald grew to be calloused and joke about it, but I was raw to it; words more than belts and punishments are what would break my spirit. Around fifth grade I realized that love didn’t really matter, or at least it didn’t mean anything—I loved my dad and he kept smoking cigarettes even after my brother and I begged him to stop; I loved my mom but I couldn’t tell her what I felt about the world because she couldn’t protect me from it; I loved my brother but I felt he constantly belittled me, silenced me, and made me feel like I was stupid (I’m sure he took a few pages from Dad’s book, in this way); I loved myself, or I thought I did, and yet I constantly belittled myself, telling myself that in this world I would have to be stronger. Love could not change anything about life, it just made you feel like you couldn’t even more.

Eventually I gave in to this belief system—years passed and I graduated to full blown “I don’t give a fuck about anything”. I was afraid, powerless and with those tools as weapons I was ready for anything at any time because I felt I had nothing to lose; I felt I had lost so much of my soul already, it wouldn’t matter even if I lost my life. Hotheaded athlete, I knew how to mask my shrewd and heartless demeanor with cool, chauvinistic locker-room thuggery. I acted chill, I wanted to be chill, but in my mind, at any moment I was a shoulder bump away from a full blown “nigga moment”, as so accurately defined in The Boondocks. I was a ticking time bomb, an emotionally unavailable mess all throughout high school, and college was more the same with less of the guard rails.

But before we keep going forward, let’s go back. Black Baton Rouge has become well-known in modern society (before the Alton Sterling murder) for one reason in particular, as far as I am concerned, —Lil Boosie. Now, I’m not talking about “Zoom” or “Wipe Me Down” Lil Boosie, that’s mainstream Boosie. I’m talking “Set It Off”, “Murder Was the Case” Lil Boosie; Boosie that I met that one time at the Mall of Cortana and he said, “Wassup, lil niggas” Lil Boosie. That one. The Boosie BR natives knew growing up was trap before trap was cool. Street, gutta, whatever you want to call it, Black BR loved it and they had to have it. Hell the whole world came to love it, but Baton Rouge had to have it so much that they had to mimic it; kids, even, began to walk with certain swaggers, talking lingos picked up from lyrics. It was a damn masterpiece from a mastermind, and there was no escaping it. The problem though, is what this success for one man meant for many boys (like me and unlike me) growing up in that era. Is being a man being that kind of man? The kind of man in these songs? Why do these boys think less of me because I’m not a “man” like they think they are? Do they know they’re faking?

These were the type of thoughts that got me chin-checked on more than one occasion, questioning what someone saw as their manhood, or them thinking I was calling them soft. I was a huge fan of Dr. King in my younger days, nonviolence and all, but I made up in my mind after one good fight that Dr. King must have never been to Scotlandville, Baton Rouge, a day in his life, and that was that for nonviolence as a way of life in my mind. In a classic case of if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them, I entered the wade pool of cool poses and posturizing. If a scrap came I didn’t think twice about it, and I was willing to take whatever bruises and lumps came with it from the school or the fight. Not like I was built or raise for all’lat, but didn’t seem like there was much other option.

Now let’s press play, back at the start of my university academic career. I had finally made it to the platform where I wanted to be—college freshman, class president, track team, chapel assistant, so on and so forth. And the shit felt as plastic as a maxed out credit card. The aggression, the fight that I had come to know and hate and love—for all its pain and all its suffering, I missed it; it was home, my home. Not much more than a self-righteous leader already, I quickly threw off the mask of who people wanted me to be as the smart, politically correct leader after freshman year, and allowed my passions to roam freely. I did what I wanted, when I wanted, for no reason other than I wanted to.

It wasn’t until I nearly lost my opportunities to continue my studies and was threatened with the potential for never finishing undergrad, that I sat down and contemplated what went wrong, and why. It was then that I had to take a journey through my mind, into my past and confront the decisions I made, the reasons I made them, and the consequences of those actions. It was here that I discovered and acknowledged the pain in my past. The memories of desperately wanting the approval of my father, and simultaneously being pained by not living up to his seemingly impossible expectations; Times where he seemed to be emotionally unavailable hurt me more than any belt whooping ever could; fleeting thoughts of being silenced or crying inconsolably from feelings of inferiority or brokenness. From these starting points I came to resent the presentation of manhood before me in my father, and the power that came with it, with hoping to one day overcome (or overpower) it by whatever means necessary. That bitterness spilled over into other systems of power and I came to resent almost all, if not all, forms of leadership. Being on the lower rungs of the power dynamic at home and the frustration that came with it did not get any better in the world beyond those four wals; I was short, readily referred to as “nappy-headed”, and emotionally vulnerable. The ego bruises and self-esteem damage I received from early on in my public school career led me to believe that I had to become someone powerful, or to have power, in order to not be disrespected. This belief would haunt me from the moment of its beginning up to this very day.

Once I realized this, and I was able to accept that for the vast majority of my life I had been living in my past burdened by unforgivness, that I had not been the person I really wanted to be, I began a journey of learning to become for the first time. It was exciting being able to unlearn ways in which I had limited my own humanity for fear of not being perceived as manly or displaying some form of power, but it has also been very painful at times. Admitting to yourself the damage that you have done to others, the damage you have done to yourself, and the damage that has been done to you is not easy. There are people who to this day I feel I owe apologies to, for things that I said or ways that I treated them, Black women in particular; for the sake of recovering acknowledgement I didn’t receive in my youth but desperately wanted, I took advantage emotionally of women who otherwise loved me, cared for me, and wanted to see the both of us to succeed. Some people, most people, are afraid to look into their pasts and examine the truth of their actions because they do not want to face that there may be consequences to their actions; even towards themselves there is unforgivness and bitterness. The truth is, without confronting our past we are bound by them and they have power over us. Only by being able to non-judgementally examine our actions, accept that they were wrong, and pay whatever toll to move forward, can we begin our journey of healing.

Even I was afraid to begin my journey of unlearning toxic masculinity thinking that I may be vulnerable to the world and it’s threats, but I have come to find my wife and best friend, a life of love and laughter and carefree living, and wholeness through this adventure of learning. Yes, I am now more likely to cry in public and yes I share my feelings more with others, but I now see that instead of living a life silencing parts of who I am and distorting other parts of me to seem more angry or more threatening than I feel, I can just…be.

And that, for me, is enough.

Pain is universal: we all experience it, feel it, and suffer. But the only thing equally as universal, and infinitely more powerful is the healing from that pain; that healing is love. I challenge you to ask what ways has toxic masculinity been a part of your life, and then challenge your self to live a more whole, more alive life. Only by ending this vicious cycle can we stop the pollution of toxic masculinity, and breathe the fresh air of self-acceptance, self-love, and truly show our love for others.

Peace.

#growth

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secretsfromwholecloth · 6 years

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So. *cracks knuckles* I just got finished playing Pillars of Eternity for the first time this morning. I have opinions. They’re under the cut.

The map and pausing functionalities and the “just click on who you want this character to attack and we’ll handle the rest” combat brought the gameplay closer to what I’m used to from roguelikes (extremely low-res so you can see a huge amount of the area on the screen at once, turn-based gameplay that doesn’t require you to react quickly or aim well) and made the game actually playable for me, and I wish they were, if not standard-issue, then a lot more common. I hadn’t played a definable ~video game~ since I was about eight, as much because of gameplay that’s Not For Me as because of bad memories attached to them, and that might not have been the case had I had things like this available to me before.

The setting is fun and intriguing, though I’m still sorting through my feelings about its handling of religion (which has a certain tinge of “we wanted the color and variety of a polytheistic pantheon without having to consider actual polytheism”). I’ll be happy to continue spending time in Eora as I play through Deadfire and whatever future games there are in the series. (PoE III: Yezuha, anyone?)

I’ll take the opportunity to experience something different on future playthroughs, but I really do like my Old Vailian moon godlike artist cipher. I started thinking about Clelia’s personality when @bloodilymerry mentioned that her Watcher was keeping Durance around to keep an eye on him—what would my Watcher’s reasoning be? Because that is something that needs explaining; that guy’s a douche. So I thought, I know, I’ll base her on my twenty-something self who thought someone with misogynistic and white supremacist tendencies could be turned if I was only nice enough to him. That eventually turned into her acquiring my gender (some shifting combination of woman and agender, as befits a Vailian godlike), ancestry (or the Eoran equivalent, Old Vailian mother and alternately overbearing and neglectful Ixamitec father), early-twenties relationship situation (see below), and more besides, as I used the character and her interactions with others to basically relitigate my twenties. (I won’t say the entire decade was a blank loss, but I won’t not say it, either; this process has been quite healing, in its way.)

Where, where, is my option to hug my companions? Or various other characters, like Adaryc? They all need so many hugs. I shouldn’t have to headcanon all the hugs. This isn’t right.

Speaking of the companions:

Aloth: I loved elves when I was active in Tolkien fandom (though I was always Team Aragorn as far as that went). Intellectually, I’m well aware that he’s an adorable woobie who needs lots of hugs. “Abuse survivor falls in with a religious group led by not-great people to get away and then has to escape again from their saviors”? Relatable, I know some of those feels all too well. A romance that explicitly breaks free from the relationship escalator and rejects the weight of societal expectations of what A Romance(tm) should be? It’s like they read my mind. My real-life sexual history is full of Aloths, sad little cuties who needed me, and in my day I befriended more of them besides. I love his VA and think he did a great job. So why did I take until the endgame to start warming to the character? I have no idea. I’m still sorting through that.

Edér: Oh, Edér, why won’t they let me hug you? So in case you can’t tell, I love the big man to death, and his usefulness in combat (he’s nearly indestructible when fully leveled and given well-chosen, nicely-enchanted gear—he took down Concelhaut by himself, with a little help from figurines, after the rest of the party was knocked out) is only part of the reason he never left my party. I went for the mayor ending with him, because encouraging his god-bothering tendencies just seems cruel in light of what’s going to happen in five years. (Side note: “Eder”, accented on the first syllable, is a Basque name meaning “handsome”, and it was one of the proposed names for a character from Forbears who’s also a traumatized war woobie. I eyebrowed mightily when I first heard about our man here.)

As much as I ship Edér/Watcher on general principles, he and Clelia aren’t actually that compatible as a romantic couple per se—we see in a few places that he likes his women less sweet and more fiery, probably because at least part of him sees himself as a big, dumb brute who’s slow to catch onto people’s signals and at risk for hurting women without realizing it if they don’t make their opinions known by getting in his face and yelling. I have a couple of levels of headcanons for what their relationship is like:

If we’re hewing fairly closely to game canon, he loves her to pieces, and her flashes of ferocious protectiveness are kind of hot, but she mostly trips his “tiny baby, must protect” circuits, and it’s a relief to watch her get better and grow into someone who needs less babysitting. She’ll be romancing Tekēhu in Deadfire; he’s happy for them, and her continued fangirling over Edér is background noise at this point, not even really awkward anymore.

If I allow my headcanons to take flight a bit, both of them being lonely, touch-starved, and kind of messed up when they met led to him indulging her when she would want to paw at him at night, because hey, it’s actually kind of nice, especially compared to the loneliness of before, and by time they fight Thaos, they’re having “friends doing a nice thing for each other” sex on the regular but know a Proper Romance isn’t in the cards. Over the course of Deadfire, she gets into a triad with Rekke and Tekēhu, with Edér back in his old role as the beloved friend she sleeps with sometimes, and before anyone says anything, “AFAB person with two boyfriends and another male friend who takes the occasional turn in hir bed” is a spot-on description of my relationship situation from ages 19 to 22, right down to the friend being older than the others and a huge stoner. He wasn’t nearly as good a person as Edér, though.

Obsidian have priors, you know. Just ask Star Wars fandom about Bao-Dur. Let us romance the war woobies, Obsidian.

Kana: Another one who never left the party, due in equal amounts to his usefulness on the battlefield and my emotional attachment to him. I demand the option to throw my arms around his waist and smoosh my face into his solar plexus, goddammit. Especially when it turns out that the Engwithans were kind of terrible and the ironclad evidence of Rauatai’s link to them is destroyed and it breaks his poor heart.

Kana, at first, didn’t resonate with me as an immigrant’s child, in part because his second-generation experience was very different from mine, with parents who viewed their heritage as something to protect him from, rather than enthusiastically passing it down like mine did. But by the late game, I’d come to a new understanding of what his deal was: He was raised with no connection to his parents’ heritage besides them telling him a few “pirate stories”. But in Rauatai, he was physically different and subject to racism, and no amount of loud, enthusiastic patriotism ever quite made that go away, which meant that his parents’ choice to not give him anything else to cling to, rather than smoothing his path to integration, left him feeling alone and adrift. So he latched onto ancient times for that sense of having a place in history, and specifically the Engwithans, viewed as “everyone’s ancestors” in much the same way as the real world’s Greeks and Romans (after all, the Glanfathans and their direct connection to them wouldn’t have been more than a name to him then). If there was a link between them and something as foundational to Rauatai as the Tanvii ora Toha, and moreover if it was him and his work bringing that knowledge to everyone, then maybe he’d finally be allowed that feeling of continuity and belonging. Maybe he’d finally make sense there.

Durance and Grieving Mother: Apparently they had the same writer. The same male writer. Meaning that this man had the opportunity to add two nuanced, fully explored characters to this fantasy world, and he chose to give us a violent incel and a woman with no thoughts of anything besides babies and motherhood. I’m genuinely quite uncomfortable with this and glad they have no equivalent in Deadfire. I didn’t much appreciate having to keep Durance in the party so much to advance his quest, either, and their one-dimensional characterization and stilted dialogue felt like a poor fit with the rest of the game.

Fuck you, Durance.

Pallegina: I’d hug her, but she might run me through with her sword for trying. I’ll let her come to me when she’s ready for hugs. Her absolute certainty and confidence (only shakable by a sexy aumaua woman flirting with her, apparently) are wonderful to see, but maybe one day she’ll form an identity for herself that isn’t so tied up in the Republics and their government.

Sagani: She’s every working mom who knows she’s doing the right thing but still regrets spending so much time away from her kids, and I love her and want to hug her a lot. Also, Itumaak is cute, but Edér, no, wait until he’s had more than two days to get to know you before you try to pet him!

Hiravias: Go have a bath before I hug you. And yes, the racism you face is terrible, but could you shut the hell up about Pallegina’s cloaca? And keep a lid on the lewd comments in general unless it’s someone you have that kind of relationship with? (It’s absolutely in character for someone that lonely to be both desperate to keep the first friends he’s made in years and inclined to push their boundaries and test them to see if they’ll just abandon him like everyone else. And he does absolutely need some hugs. Still, though, dude, not cute.)

Devil of Caroc: Totally needs a hug, but I’m not sure she’d appreciate me just going up to her and giving her one. We can show we care about each other by making snarky comments instead.

Zahua: Poor, poor Zahua. Needs a bath first, but then so, so many hugs. Tied with Edér for loveliest voice in the game—hey, you two want to banter some more so I can sit here and listen to your voices?

Maneha: Girl, come here so I can hug you. I agonized over whether to have her keep her memory or not; I was thoroughly OK with her forgetting it, but reading over the endings, I think the one where she remembers is nicer. Also, she had some of the cutest banter in my playthrough, both her flirtation with Pallegina and her growing friendship with Kana, but...what’s that accent? Northern Cities? Midwest? It works for her, she sounds adorable, and of course I wouldn’t expect someone with her history to sound exactly like Kana, but I wonder a little what they were going for.

Fuck you, Thaos, you’re the worst. Lady Webb, you had atrocious taste in men.

Fuck you too, Simoc.

Ondra is less nice than she thinks, and I look forward to getting on her nerves in Deadfire.

Speaking of which, let’s get started.

#pillars of eternity #watcher Clelia

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seenashwrite · 6 years

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Dearest Nash, I've touched on this before in (I believe) in a discussion re: why some mainstream fics get oodles of notes while more original ones do not, *but* I wanted to get a bit more specific here. There are certain writers here whose writing has a definite vibe to it (if you will) that separates their work from others, and your name is one of the first that comes to mind. Bear with me, because trying to detail what makes your writing stand out is difficult while trying to articulate a Q

^ this is a gif with parts 2 - 4, just FYI

Hmmm… this is a bit of a brain buster. But I can answer it, and I think succinctly, maybe with a touch of that Spidey sense you mention:

Thank you for your inquiry, hope that helps!

I kid. But this is a brain-turner. And a characteristic which, like you say, ain’t limited to me. I’d honestly throw comedians under this umbrella, too, not because I’m necessarily gunning for a laugh every time, but because it’s pretty much their job to take a “basic” (a tenet or fact of life or present reality or whatever) and present the observation with a twist. I think of storyteller comedians specifically, your Patton Oswalt-s, Maria Bamford-s, Kathy Griffin-s, and John Mulaney-s.

So if I can sum up, assuming I’m tracking with you, what you’re more or less driving at with the “how” is this –> Is there anything beyond simply personality, or an auto-pilot thought cascade (for lack of better terminology) that contributes? Are there things someone could do/be proactive about, to perhaps cause this same sort of reaction to happen in their brain?

I think there just might be.

Folks reading this, let me ask you a question, and you cannot look it up:

What was the name of the Sherpa guide who led Sir Edmund Hillary up Mount Everest?

His name was Tenzing Norgay.

Nash, what in the name of the frozen corpse of George Mallory does this have to do with Lion’s question?

I shall tell you.

My father told me that fact when I was quite young, so young I legit couldn’t even ballpark my age for you. The context was that having little facts tucked away in your brain may come in handy. Not in a Jeopardy kind of way, more in a conversational way. I’ve no idea why the man thought the Sherpa guide who led Hillary up Mt. Everest would ever come up during a conversation with enough regularity to justify my knowing that fact (aside from him randomly quizzing me throughout my life) but hey, I guess it just did.

But speaking of Lil’ Nash, the situation for her was that she was the eldest of all the Nash litter by miles… like seven or eight years, I’m not bothering to check. So I had a lot of alone time, and my grandmother was my chief babysitter, so prior to kindergarten and then til I was in about second grade (so: all day long during the week, then every weekday after she picked me up from school), I was pretty much always at her house. Yeah, there were toys, but not a lot to do. And I’d read. I’d been reading on my own for a decent while, not because I was some prodigy but because my dad read to me *constantly* when Lil’ Nash was Itty-Bitty Nash, and it “took”. My mom also, every time she went to the grocery store always - and I mean always - brought back a book for me. It might’ve been an Archie comic—-

Mandatory #fuck the CW’s Riverdale tag

—-or a Babysitter’s Club, or Sweet Valley High, Judy Blume, Madeleine L’Engle, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, you get my point. Some small paperback. It would piss Dad off because he’s a cheap bastard and two buck books once or twice a month were really gonna cut into the savings [eyeroll] but also, in a way, because I’d kill it in a half day/a day. Wouldn’t put it down. After awhile, I started writing my own silly little kid stories, then - and this is where the creative writing love came about - I started writing soap operas for my Barbies. (When I was older - like, 5th grade? 6th grade, maybe? - none of my peers were still playing with Barbies, and I got made fun of when, at a sleepover, they saw my stash. And I was like - No, no, no. Those aren’t for playing. That’s my cast.)

Time went on, and when I was bored at post-church lunch/dinners, I would also read the old encyclopedias at my grandmother’s, the ones from the late ‘60s/early ‘70s that she had for my mom and my aunt. As I got even older and became fascinated with rooting through the boxes in gran’s basement, looking at all the cool old clothes, I stumbled upon my aunt’s collection of Whoa-Hooooo Shit There’s No Way My Grandparents Knew You Read These books. Those kinda Harlequin-esque ones, except my aunt’s tastes run close to mine, none were the same shtick with different covers, shmultzy-sappy romance, there was always some sort of intrigue along with the sexy times, and she also had, like, every legit V. C. Andrews (meaning: not the ones from the ghostwriter, this was way before her death) book.

What is my point? I read a LOT. Now-a-days, other than fanfic (which… straight up: I don’t read a lot of that, either. I peace out on probs 80% of it before the third-to-fifth paragraph. It’s gotta sell me fast, yo) I haven’t read fiction in probably, oh…. 12 years? I think the last ones were the first couple Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Wait, no! I lie! I read the 50 Shades books when I was traveling 2x/wk for a job about 4 years ago, and I needed the laughs. It worked. Oh my days, that woman can’t write. The screenplay might’ve been worse, it goes her, then Buckleming, then everyone else. It’s bad. In any event, past decade or so, it’s more historical stuff and true crime and science stuff and all that old fart jazz.

Okay, so that’s #1: Read. And not just anything, be well-read, and that doesn’t mean developing some level of expertise, by “well” I’m saying to cover the spread. You’re building your tool kit, is all. You won’t use most of it, but it’s nice to have options. You also don’t always have to get this stuff from reading now-a-days, because podcasts. Cover the spread there, too. Lemme look at my bookmarks….

[Spongebob narrator voice: A few moments later]

I’m back. Science - Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe; General current stuff without being news - CGP Grey’s Hello Internet; current events with shittons of pop culture, past and present - Greg Proops’ Smartest Man in the World; fun history stuff - The Dollop; entertainment stuff - How Did This Get Made.

#2: Keep a notebook with you and jot down turns-of-phrase that spark something in your brain - things you read on websites, on twitter, in articles, things you hear people say (real life, TV, movies, podcasts), and write it. Don’t snap a pic with your phone or make a note in your phone. There are studies behind this, I’m not hunting them down, you’ll just have to trust me, but there are, and it goes to being reflexive, a brain “muscle memory” thing, if you will. You’re not doing it to plagiarize, you’re doing it to dissect it, kind’ve like you did with the example you gave on me —> went from punch action to punch spiked with booze to a punch with a spiked gauntlet.

Which leads to #3: Mental dictionary. I have a large vocab repository, and it stems from the tons of reading - I stop and look up stuff if I either don’t know it, or it’s used in such a way that I think they’ve got it wrong and want to double-check that maybe there’s another usage I don’t know - and also stems from a drive to combat the (still fairly thick) deep South drawl I can’t kick, and not for lack of trying. But see, I couldn’t have whipped out that progression if I weren’t aware that one definition of “spike” is “to add alcohol to”, or of the common shtick in stories of spiked punch like at high school proms typically, or knew about the existence of spiked gauntlets / old school armor.

And I guarantee you that a good chunk of people didn’t really “get it”, and just thought “Nash Be Nashin’, that nutty gal”. So they “get it” on that level, but don’t Get. It., if you see what I’m saying. And that’s fine. Maybe it got something cranking in the back of their mind and it’ll hit ‘em in the middle of the night, or they’ll be watching Game of Thrones or something, see a gauntlet and be like “Oh goddamnit, I just got a throw-a-way one-liner from three years ago” and have a chuckle.

Related, re: looking stuff up and things that people “get”? I didn’t know fuck-all about Twilight, but it seemed of import to the folks around 5 years younger than me, the Nashlings wouldn’t shut up about it, so I got a good working knowledge of it. Same with Harry Potter, and through it I got to “know” J.K. Rowling, who I find to be an exceptional writer, so that was great, and I’ve watched the movies for the most part over the years at Christmastime, and I don’t give the first shit about what “house” I’m in, nor do I care about what Patronus I’d fart, but I have a working knowledge of what those are, and horcruxes and who Snape and Voldie are, you get my point. I can keep up. But to do it, I had to take the time to look it up. One thing I would not trade for gold is Michael Sheen chewing the goddamn scenery in that battle segment from the last Twilight movie. Have I watched the movie? No. But that scene is the shit. And that baby CGI is horrific on several subtle levels. And not-so-subtle. I’ve digressed.

Back to those notes: So if you’ve got these notes jotted, you might see something else and think “I feel like that could’ve been snappier…. why do I think that….” And you’ve got a resource at your disposal, that little notebook. Hell, jot that thing down - things you think could be done better. I have in many documents a highlight around chunks of scenes for my big dog story where it says in bold above or below “DO BETTER”. Meaning: there’s a better way to get from A to B, but I’m just not quite there yet. I’m pretty quick on the uptake and can crank out something snappy on the fly (like say, in CASPN chat or when banging out a short reply or thank you note) but there’s definitely times I gotta slap a DO BETTER on it and walk away til that snappy something-or-other light bulb goes off.

Here’s a recent one where I backtracked, matter of fact - that noir spoof thing I wrote? Along with my co-writer, Moscato? There was a line that I couldn’t hit with a good zinger, so I just said moments were going by like a fat hamster on a wheel, which is cute, but not really grooving with the setting/the vibe. Less tipsy, when I was correcting some inelegant formatting and a misspelling [sigh], I went “Oh! Why didn’t this occur to me last night? Right. Wine.” So the line is now about moments dragging like a rolling donut with a copper on its tail. Get it? The cop’s a fat ass. The donut-cop stereotype.

…….Fine, it ain’t my best, but it fits better. Moving on.

And this leads nicely into #4, and a specific tip I can impart - assuming you’ve got a passable-to-high level of vocabulary in your tool belt, practice messing around with making nouns into verbs, and twisting random stuff into descriptors and using bizarre words/things in metaphors/analogies. Like, I say “adulting” quite a bit. Ali - @littlegreenplasticsoldier - I thiiiink was writing recently about Sam being drunk, and he’s a tall wobbly Jenga tower on his last Jenga. Going back to the noir, pulpy detective style, try messing with the whole “S/he was like a ___ that ____”. Add on to stuff that’s well known - He was like a dog with a bone, if the bone was a ____ and he was a ____ and we were in a ____. (I have *nothing* in mind to fill those blanks, by the way, feel free to twist it into sumpin’)

What else…. okay, here’s a #5: In drafts, let yourself wander, and see what kicks out. It can be fueled by silliness or anger, but I don’t reckon you’re gonna get the “snappy” you’re aiming for if you’re down in the dumps and going full-court-press angst. The best stuff, IMO, comes from the space in between goofy and pissed, and that is The Land Of Snark. You can always re-style it to bend more dry or wistful should you need to, certainly, depending on the situation.

Have a sample of a primo Nash Digression that was fueled by ire in a recap from Season 12 (episode 19). I had said - RE: the random inclusion of the character Joshua, which still pisses me off because they burned a character that held massive potential for future stuff as he’d been shown to be the only angel with direct access to Chuck, so, y’know, that could never come in handy, like ever again in the series, right? - the following.

Mandatory pre-emptive #fuck Dabb

[Spongebob narrator voice] A few moments later —>

On god, I have no idea where that came from, and here’s where we go back to ol’ Spidey up there, because end of the day?

All that other stuff’s the foundation, sure, but there’s always gonna be the weird iggy, the thing that can’t be learned or taught, whatever the quirky synapse is that fires off in my/our brains. In my experience, it’s an ADD-ish sort of jam mixed with the Nostradamus effect. Meaning, (A) we’re at Level 10, rapid fire thought processing >50% of the time, and (B) throw out enough stuff for long enough, some of it’s going to stick. And I whiff it plenty. Multiple times in CASPN chat I’ve been like “Whoo, tough room” when something falls flat.

A specific example: @mrswhozeewhatsis - and I think you saw this, but anyone else seeing this may not have - gave probably the most fantastic analogy I’ve seen regarding the whole “getting it” thing, and while it was on the topic of meaty plots that get too far into the weeds (my specialty) and how it can lessen appeal to a broader audience, it still applies here.

She said “Sometimes, when I’m reading something of yours, I feel like there’s a joke I’m missing. It’s like watching Spaceballs without having seen Star Wars.” I say that to say - nobody’s gonna land references that cover the spread 100% of the time. And, y’know, fine. I figure maybe it’ll prompt someone to do a quick google for - well, let’s use Spaceballs. Most folks will no doubt get the Star Wars part, but maybe not Spaceballs. Maybe they’ll check it out, find something they enjoy. Or learn a new word. Or get a brainstorm for a story. Who knows?

Last tip: Don’t actively mimic anyone’s style. Much fail. And I don’t only mean because if they’re on a social Venn diagram with you, would likely recognize themselves in your stuff——

Takes a moment to wave to the peeps still trying with me! #bless your hearts

—–but because it’s fucking hard. I did it broadly on the noir thing, that’s not a hard thing, to homage generalities, but the way I’m messing with doing this on that silly Princess Bride series? Purposefully styling it like Goldman? It’s good challenging and all, and it is making it feel more in the groove with the book/movie, but I have to be in the right frame of mind or it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard, and when I have pushed it, then gone back, it’s sloggy, soggy garbage.

I say all that to say: it’s an amalgam of brain-wiring/personality, and world/life perspective(s), and knowledge acquired over time. The first just is; the second will evolve in myriad ways, maybe for the better, maybe for the worse; the last is the one where you/we have control, we can fill bucket after bucket of information, and the well won’t ever run dry.

Sorry this took so long. I kept adding and subtracting. This is the edited version, if you can believe it. Welcome to Nash Brain. 😉

#Dear Nash #becominglionhearted #Writing Advice #and / or #Writing Stuff #maybe #Writing Tips #unsure #we'll go with all of it #ah I know #Writing Style #that's the ticket #Queueby Dooby Doo #Dad's on a blog post and #he hasn't been queued in a few days

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clefairytails · 6 years

Text

lesbian tag game

thx for sending me this @redcladsheikah <3 all my lesbian friends should do this too, if you want uwu i’m too lazy to tag like 50 ppl hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh @lebians @tiedyked @talaxian @lesbian-mcelroy @ireallylikecameras

1: did you ever think you were straight?

not really, i knew i liked girls even as a child. but i did go through multiple periods of trying to convince myself i was straight, needless to say it didn’t work out lol.

2: what’s your favorite element of gay culture?

our sense of humor! it’s amazing that we’re all so funny despite putting up with so much bullshit.

3: are you femme, butch, or neither?

femme! i’ve been looking into femme history lately, bcs the idea that femme is just an aesthetic is a misconception c:

4: do you prefer to date femmes or butches?

tbh every time i declare i have a type i immediately fall for someone that’s the complete opposite of that, so i have no idea. lately i’ve been wanting a goth gf, but i just developed a crush on a prep soooo i’m terrible at self-reflection. this bitch don’t know what she want.

5: what’s the worst part about being a lesbian?

the feeling that there’s a part of you that needs to be fixed, but you can’t do anything about it. it’s like seeing a picture on the wall that’s crooked, but it’s stuck like that and you can’t ever straighten it. or having a hair out of place that keeps sticking up no matter how much you try to gel it down.

6: what’s the best part of being a lesbian?

is women too obvious of an answer? girls are angels and i’d die for all of them

7: how long were you questioning for?

pretty much never, i guess. i had crushes on girls since kindergarten, then in 2nd grade i was told girls could only like boys, so i tried my best to be straight even though in my heart i knew i wasn’t. since i couldn’t make myself like boys, i kinda just ignored the idea of liking anyone at all until middle school, when i found out what the word “lesbian” means online. of course, all the stuff i found about lesbians called us disgusting perverts, so i went through many phases of calling myself literally anything else but a lesbian. i’ve only started using the word lesbian specifically in the last few years, especially since i joined an amazing discord group. i love them so much, they’ve helped me feel so proud of being a lesbian <3

8: what’s the most annoying thing straight people do?

exist.

jk lmao, i’m honestly not annoyed by straight people, but i like making jokes as if i am. it’s hard to annoy me in general, i’ve got a high tolerance for that type of stuff. if i have to answer, i hate it when strangers (usually straight men) pry into my sex life, but i’m not really annoyed by that as much as i am creeped out.

9: what do you look for in a girl?

vampirism is my only requirement.

10: if you had to marry someone you know right now, who would you choose?

@lebians bcs i feel they’d be the most able to put up with my bullshit. everyone else would kill me on sight. if only @ireallylikecameras was still single, then when we got married we could put together our 50% employee discounts at BK and get infinite food for free, ending world hunger. i think that’s how it works, but also im gay and therefore bad at math.

11: do you have a crush right now?

does being in love count as a crush? if so, then i have three.

12: do you fall in love easily?

i crush easily, and i say i’m in love easily bcs i’m a leo (meaning i need to exaggerate to live), but actually feeling love? only once.

13: is there anyone in your life right now you think you’ll date in the future?

fingers crossed.

14: is there anyone you want to be kissing right now?

at the moment i’m feeling very touch repulsed, so no. but i also go through periods of feeling touch starved, and during those times i’d kiss pretty much anyone lmao.

15: do you think you’ve met your future wife yet?

i don’t know if i want to be married. i hate making commitments.

16: top, bottom, or vers?

i suspect i’m a bottom, but i’m also a virgin with no self awareness about what she wants or likes, so who really knows.

17: is there anyone you wish you could fuck right now?

still feeling touch repulsed, so no. also i have issues with actual real life sex. i always think i want to have sex, but when the situation becomes real, i feel disgusted by it and chicken out. i have no idea if this is some sort of asexuality or internalized lesbophobia. i should probably go to therapy lol.

18: rough or gentle?

rough, in theory. like i said, virgin who doesn’t know what she likes. but as a general rule, i don’t like slowness.

19: how many stereotypes do you fit into?

i’m fat, hairy, make lots of jokes about hating men (at least online, not in real life bcs i dont wanna get stabbed), i sometimes look like a guy,

20: what version of the lesbian flag do you like most? (butch, lipstick, original, etc.)

i like the femme one! i have it as my banner, it’s the lipstick lesbian flag without the lip print. the original flag was so fucking good, too bad it got taken by the terfs. the labrys is such a powerful image, and purple is a good color. also i saw a moon lesbian flag going around, that one is so good.

21: do you have a good gaydar?

hhhh i’d like to pretend i do but tbh i’m not very observant and straight up bad at reading people.

22: be honest, would you rather be straight?

yes and no. i’d rather have been born straight, because it would’ve saved me so much pain, but it’s a few years too late for that lol. if there was a magic pill that could make me straight today, i wouldn’t take it. i’ve been through so much as a lesbian, it means something to me now and i wouldn’t trade that for anything.

23: are you cis?

yep.

24: are you a sugar mommy or a sugar baby at heart?

hardcore sugar baby. my dream job is being an older woman’s trophy wife.

25: are you committed to someone at all right now emotionally?

hhhhhhhhhh unfortunately. i don’t want to be.

26: are you looking for a serious relationship currently?

yes, but i shouldn’t be. i don’t think i’m ready to be in one.

27: is there someone you’d like to be in a serious relationship in?

yes, but she’s straight and already married lmao. whoops.

28: do you want children?

no, i’m too selfish and irresponsible.

29: is your family accepting of your sexuality?

my mom and dad are, though they don’t take it very seriously. pretty sure they expect me to grow out of it one day. can’t blame them tho, i’m waiting for the same thing lmao. my extended family is huge, and their opinions range from being extremely homophobic to being gay themselves, but i’m interacting with them less and less as i get older.

30: how confident are you in your sexuality?

very confident, though i don’t want to be. i’m still secretly hoping one day i’ll see a guy i’m attracted to and he’ll fix me, but being realistic, i’m a huge fucking lesbian. women are enchanting.

31: are you polyamorous or monogamous?

monogamous. my insecure ass could not be poly hhhhhh.

32: what advice do you have for your 12 year old self?

be more selfish. you don’t have to put yourself second for the sake of others, especially at your age. nothing you do will matter in a decade, go fucking wild.

33: have you ever been to a gay bar?

nope. i want to go one day, but i have terrible social anxiety.

34: leather jackets or flannel?

both of those are really hot, but i’m gonna go with leather jacket.

35: describe your dream girlfriend

- vampire

- big tiddy goth gf

- nice personality or smthn

- uhhhhhhhhh tiddy

(ok but srsly, i can’t answer this question bcs i NEVER know what i want!! i always thought my type was THICC for sure, but all three of the ladies i have feelings for rn are pretty skinny and flat chested)

36: do you have any lesbian friends?

at least 50 lol.

37: what elements of gay culture do you actively participate in?

air, water, sometimes earth. never fire.

38: do you find straight people irritating?

nope, but i do find straight pda uncomfortable to look at. mostly bcs it reminds me of what i'm supposed to want. but i’d never tell a straight person that, obviously. i’m not rude.

39: would you rather adopt a kid or have a biological kid?

i’ll adopt a tortoise, and feed her any children that cross my path. but if i did ever have a child, i’d want it to be biologically mine and my wife’s. mostly bcs i’d want to know what it would look like, which is a selfish and stupid reason to have kids, and exactly why i’m not gonna lmao.

40: do you love yourself?

i’m a LEO (jokes aside, i don’t know. sometimes i do, sometimes i don’t. but i love myself more as time goes on. definitely more than i did than when i was a teen, at least.)

#tag game #long post #im a LEO

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