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the-little-crime-writer · 4 years

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DiAngelo is the only survivor of the largest mass suicide on American soil. He found the bodies of his 39 friends lying with plastic bags over their heads, wearing neat black tracksuits with an 'Away Team' patch and Nike trainers. Now we discover why he was left behind...

It was midday when Rio DiAngelo arrived at the hilltop mansion overlooking San Diego to find all the windows closed, the curtains drawn, and outdoor lights burning in the sunshine. The front door was locked, but he found a side door ajar and warily pushed it open.

The unmistakable stench of death made him gag and he covered his face with his shirtsleeve, which still smelled of cologne from his morning shower. As he walked through the eerie silence, he knew what he would find. And he dreaded it. Upstairs, 39 of his friends lay dead in their beds after the largest mass suicide on American soil. All members of a bizarre cult, they had each downed a lethal cocktail of vodka, barbiturates and apple sauce to leave their 'earthly containers' and join an alien spaceship trailing the Hale-Bopp comet.Yelling out in case anyone was still alive, DiAngelo raced from room to room. But all he found were bodies with plastic bags over their heads. Each one wore a neat black tracksuit with an 'Away Team' patch and Nike trainers with their comet-trail trademark. The 21 women and 18 men had each packed a small bag for the journey, and have five dollars in their pocket. Thoughtful to the end, each had left a note saying. 'I forced myself to go into each room and check everyone,' said DiAngelo. 'With each body I came across, the loss became too much to bear. They were my closest friends. I loved them dearly.'

DiAngelo, who's real name is Richard Ford, became involved with the Heaven's Gate Cult in 1994 after attending one of their meetings in a California hotel or 'Cultifornia' as sceptics often call the state that spawned Charles Manson and the Reverend Jim Jones. He had listened while nine androgynous-looking members wearing identical loose clothes and cropped hair described their absolute belief in aliens, the paranormal, and reincarnation. One of them was 59 year old Thomas Nichols whose sister, Nichelle, played Star Trek's Lieutenant Uhura. Forbidden to have sex, hug each other, or even shake hands, the Heaven's Gate cultists concentrated on purifying their bodies and spirits ready for the move to 'an advanced level of being' on another planet or dimension. They called each other brother or sister, observed daily rituals, and were allowed to watch only selected TV programmes. Individual needs were minimised so that a member who had run out of deodorant, for example, would have to apply for a new one in writing.Anyone entering the immaculately clean mansion referred to as 'the temple' had to take off their shoes and wear surgical socks. Silence prevailed, and many of their neighbours assumed they were 'a bunch of monks.' In line with their belief that they had been sent to earth as angels, six members were castrated and, according to DiAngelo, 'they couldn't stop smiling and giggling about it.'

On some days, members had to report to their superiors every 12 minutes while on other days they were required to wear a cone on their heads as they would in alien bodies. Many common words were changed so that members would not remember their human past once they had ascended into space. For instance, house became 'craft' and kitchen became 'nutri-lab.' Their 65 year old leader Marshall Applewhite had started the cult in 1972 with Bonnie Nettles whom he had met while undergoing treatment for homosexuality in a psychiatric hospital. They had abandoned their human names and called themselves Guinea and Pig, then Bo and Peep, before finally settling on Do and Ti.Ti died of cancer in 1985, But Do, claiming he was Jesus reincarnated, said he continued to communicate with her. The group survived financially by running a successful web page design firm which they also used to try and win converts and spread their message. Their own website featured pictures of stars and nebulae downloaded from NASA and appeared very businesslike. It also stated that suicide is acceptable for cult members who want to ascent to 'a higher level of life.' Heaven's Gate shared some of the beliefs of 19th century occultists like novelist Mark Twain. In 1907, Twain wrote a short story about a hero leaving Earth for 'an extended excursion among the heavenly bodies' on the trail of a comet. He took his passport and five dollars for the fare. Despite their fantastic beliefs, DiAngelo was converted and lived in this eccentric community for nearly three years. I'd just turned forty and recently divorced and I was trying to find meaning in life,' he said. 'I'd had a fairly troubled past that included a violent, unstable mother and other bad relationships. The group shared my interest in UFOs, music and Eastern Religions.

But in, December 1995, Do's teaching took a more sinister turn and DiAngelo later recalled that he 'sat us all down and told us that we might have to leave our bodies behind. Amazingly, we didn't really have a problem with that. We trusted Do implicitly. 'We found a suicide recipe that used phenobarbital, vodka and apple sauce, and Do and some of his helpers went to Mexico to buy enough of the drug for the entire group.' Eleven months later, an amateur astronomer took a photo of the Hale-Bopp comet, which showed a mysterious oval-shaped object trailing in its wake. Although NASA later described it a 'proto-comet' 2,000 miles behind Hale-Bopp, other astronomers dismissed the sighting as a hoax or error. Hale-Mary, as it was called, has not been seen since. Do, however, convinced his followers that it was a spaceship coming to take them away and that his deceased partner, Ti, was flying it. Seeing significance in everything, he told then that Hale-Bopp even had the same initials as Helena Blavatsky, another 19th century occultist with whom the group shared beliefs. Having decided on this 'Star-gate' plan, the group prepared to enjoy a final spree on Earth by spending some surplus money. They went to Las Vegas and stayed at the Stratosphere Hotel, and rode the rollercoaster and the Big Shot free-fall ride. A week later they went to see Star Wars and visited the San Diego wild animal park and Sea World. For their 'last supper,' they booked a table for 39 at a local restaurant where waiter Eric Morales was struck by their politeness and helpfulness. 'From the moment they arrived, all austerely dressed and looking the same, I knew this would be no ordinary shift,' he said. 'I made a joke to sort of set the mood and when I returned to their table five minutes later they were still laughing at it. You could tell they didn't get out a lot. 'All thirty nine ordered exactly the same: turkey pie, salad, blueberry cheesecake and iced tea. They were very pleasant, but guarded. When asked where they were from they said things like 'from the car' and 'from all over.' Six days later, employees at the restaurant watched news footage in amazement when they realised the oddball diners they had served had gone straight home and killed themselves. 'It was the last time they were going to be together,' said Morales. 'The bill came to three hundred and fifty one dollars which included a twenty six dollar tip. Our manager was so taken with them, he stood in the doorway and shook hands with each one as they left.' A month before the suicides, DiAngelo decided he wanted to leave the commune. He moved to Beverly Hills, and began working for a web design company. 'I left with Do's permission,' he said/. 'I told him I felt I had something to do outside...like a task. I think part of it was to explain to the world the philosophy of Heaven's Gate and the sort of people they were. Be an instrument of clarification. 'I believed Do was from another planet. He taught me to be more aware, honest and sensitive to the world. In short, a better person. What I gained from the group was phenomenal.

On March 27th, 1997, a parcel arrived at DiAngelo's office. It contained an upbeat farewell video and a message saying: 'By the time you read this we will have exited our bodies.' 'There was no mention of sadness or fear, but rather an air of excitement and anticipation. The cult he called 'his closest brothers and sisters' were aged between 26 and 72 and are believed to have died in three groups - 15 the first day, 15 the next, and nine on the third. In the heat of the Californian spring, many of the bodies had already begun to decompose by the time DiAngelo discovered them. Eager to be helpful, they cleaned up after each round of dying and had even taken out the rubbish. Police found handguns, rifles, and ammunition at the mansion which DiAngelo believed Marshall Applewhite had assembled because he feared a Waco-like siege by the FBI. He had also spent, $1,000 on an insurance policy that would pay out a million dollars each for up to 50 people in the event of abduction by aliens. The company said Heaven's Gate were one of 4,000 policyholders worldwide who had bought alien abduction insurance, with Britain and the USA being their biggest markets. The aftermath of the Heaven's Gate deaths was predictably prosaic. San Diego County planned to auction off their belongings - worth an estimated $1 million and give the proceeds to surviving family members. But DiAngelo claimed that his brothers and sisters wanted him to inherit the web design firm and announced his intention of settling the matter in court. Neighbours living on the same street as the group campaigned to change it's name after crowds of 'strange visitors' kept arriving to pray there. And the $1.6 million mansion itself proved unsellable because of it's gruesome associations and the obstinate smell of formaldehyde in its air conditioning. Two months after the suicide pact, two former members of Heaven's Gate also tried to 'exit their earthly vehicles' in a Holiday Inn four miles from the cult's mausoleum. They were dressed and prepared exactly the same as their departed brothers and sisters. One died immediately. The other was found unconscious, and went on to evangelise for the cult, touring the country with a 70-minute video of the bug-eyed Marshall Applewhite. He killed himself the following year in Heaven's Gate style after telling his friends that he would 'rather gamble on missing the bus this time than stay on this planet and risk losing my soul.' DiAngelo went on to apply the computer skills he had learned from Heaven's Gate to his earthly life. He auctioned off the cult's van on eBay and signed a deal to write a TV movie based on his experiences. But the project never got off the ground. A tabloid offered him $1 million for exclusive rights to his story. At the time he refused, preferring to preserve the dignity of his departed friends. Upon reflection, he later said he should have taken the money. 'I've been on a rollercoaster over the last decade,' he said in 2007. 'I still miss my friends so much and I still haven't met anyone who can compare to them. Not a day goes by that I don't think about them. 'I'm the last Heaven's Gate member on Earth, so there must be a reason why I'm still here. But although I still want to live like them, dying like them definitely isn't part of my plan.' DiAngelo re-established contact with his 19 year old son and confessed he was now 'a slave to commerce like everybody else.' Ten years on he was still haunted by the events of that terrible day, but relieved that he didn't join his friends in the mass suicide which shocked the world. The group's website is still maintained by two individuals allegedly surviving members who left after 12 years to get married (forbidden within the group which prized gender-free platonic relationships) prior to the group's exodus to the 'Next Evolutionary Level.' They confirmed in a statement on the 20th anniversary of the mass suicide that Heaven's Gate no longer existed but that the site remained available to those seeking information about their beliefs.

The world's fascination with the extraordinary actions Heaven's Gate undertook is yet to abate...

#Heaven's Gate Cult #Marshall Applewhite #rio diangelo #Richard Fort #Mass Suicide #tcc crime #tcc post #tcc cults #tcc blog #true crime #true crime community #real crime #real deaths #religious cults #dangerous cults #The Serial Killer Chronicles #my blog #follow for more

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astonishinglegends · 3 years

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Ep 196: The Christmas Monolith and the Warminster Thing

"The air was brazenly filled with a menacing sound. Sudden vibrations came overhead, chilling in intensity. They tore the quiet atmosphere to raucous rags and descended upon her savagely. Shockwaves pounded at her head, neck and shoulders."

– Descriptions of the “Thing” by Arthur Shuttlewood, as reported in his book, The Warminster Mystery

Description:

In a rare dual-subject episode for us, we take a look at two somewhat Christmas-themed stories, the mysterious yet not-so-mysterious "Utah Monolith" and the Warminster "Thing." In the first part of the show, we discuss the recent discovery of a 9.8-foot-tall metal triangular prism-shaped pillar we've dubbed "The Christmas Monolith." This story made the rounds after state biologists from the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources spotted the out-of-place-artifact while conducting a survey of bighorn sheep by helicopter over San Juan County in southeastern Utah on November 18, 2020. Two days later, the Utah Department of Public Safety posted a photo of the monolith on Instagram, with more pictures and videos of the puzzling pillar to follow. The internet and media outlets were soon abuzz with speculation about who, human, alien, or otherwise, would've illegally planted the iconic looking structure in such a remote red sandstone slot canyon in the middle of nowhere and why. Other metal columns have appeared in Romania and California, prompting the question, are these pranks, artworks, a message, or perhaps all three? The second part of our show tonight examines a freakish "flap" of High Strangeness that's so fantastic in its details and so widely experienced at the time that it's baffling why the story has mostly become forgotten. Generally considered to have gotten its start in the early hours of Christmas morning in 1964, this saga of shocking incidents in hindsight seems to have only publically peaked on December 25th and continued well into the following year, and only gradually declined in the decade to follow. The holiday literally started with a bang for the residents of the town of Warminster in Wiltshire County in southwestern England. Numerous citizens and British soldiers training nearby awoke to a medley of piercing, thundering, clattering, metallic noises in the sky and on their rooftops, the nature of which nearly defies description. The strange and untraceable sounds would continue to accost the townsfolk, with some reporting these sonic attacks were so violent it threw them to the ground and sickened their pets. As 1965 wore on, the unearthly rackets would eventually coincide with sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena and craft so unique they sound unusual even for a UFO wave. And what bouillabaisse of the bizarre would be complete without cattle disappearances, freaky interstellar messengers, and tall, humanoid-alien visitors? Warminster had it all. All told, this series of strangeness was so beyond comprehension, and with no vocabulary to satisfactorily describe it, the phenomena became simply known as the Warminster "Thing."

Location:

The former site of the “Utah Monolith” a.k.a. “The Christmas Monolith.” The 9.8-foot tall metal prism-shaped triangular pillar was discovered on November 18, 2020, in a red sandstone slot canyon in the former Lockhart Basin in northern San Juan County, Utah. The structure was spotted by state biologists from the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources while conducting a survey of bighorn sheep by helicopter. The monolith was seen being removed by four unknown men on November 27, 2020. If you zoom in all the way on the above map you can see its shadow.

Location:

The town of Warminster in the western part of Wiltshire county in southwestern England. Warminster sits on the western edge of Salisbury Plain, famous for the standing stones of Stonehenge and Avebury as well as other ancient landmarks, and known as “crop circle country.” Wiltshire is also home to training facilities for the British military.

Reference Links:

The “Utah Monolith” on Wikipedia

“The Warminster ‘Thing’: UFOs and Supernatural Disturbances in ‘Small Town England’” by “MirageMan” on AboveTopSecret.com

The UFO-Warminster website

The timeline of events on the UFO-Warminster website

“The mystery of Warminster's 'UFO'“ By Kevin Goodman on the BBC News website

“UFO called “The Thing” celebrates 50th anniversary in Warminster” on OpenMinds.tv

“BBC Documentary on the Warminster UFO Flap” on AboveTopSecret.com

“1964, United Kingdom, The Warminster Thing (UFO)” on UFOCasebook.com

Warminster, a town in southwestern England

Wiltshire County, England

“10 Unsolved Christmastime Mysteries” by Robin Warder on Listverse.com

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Credits:

Episode 196: The Christmas Monolith and the Warminster Thing. Produced by Scott Philbrook & Forrest Burgess; Audio Editing by Sarah Vorhees Wendel. Sound Design by Ryan McCullough; Tess Pfeifle, Producer, and Lead Researcher; Research Support from the astonishing League of Astonishing Researchers, a.k.a. The Astonishing Research Corps, or "A.R.C." for short. Copyright 2020 Astonishing Legends Productions, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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seymour-butz-stuff · 3 years

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It’s difficult to fathom such a defining moment in American history so vividly and fulsomely recorded by so many at the same time; the attacks of 9/11, for example, were widely photographed but a live visual record of the attacks themselves was relatively limited due to the suddenness of the event, and the unavailability of such technology at the ready for witnesses to use.

Of course that is entirely due to the widespread use of smartphone video technology which has turned everyone an amateur videographer. Video has proved itself an enormous force for social change, as evidenced most vividly by the racial justice protests this past summer, galvanized by a single video of a Black man being murdered by a white police officer. In that context video has become a uniquely useful means of preserving and disseminating actions by police which normally went unseen by the majority of the population.

The sheer speed by which this ubiquity of video recording provided the country an unmistakably clear picture of what exactly occurred on Jan. 6 was itself stunning, but perhaps even more stunning was the relative indifference of the participants to its implications. In video after video we saw people engaged in indefensible acts of criminality and violence, seemingly oblivious or indifferent to the fact that their actions were being recorded for all to see. Whether that indifference was due to feelings of personal entitlement by the persons involved, a belief that their actions would not be seen as criminal, or for some other reason is a fruitful subject for discussion, but for now, the reasons why so many people willingly allowed themselves to be recorded while performing such acts is less important than the consequences of that decision.

As reported by Andy Greenberg, writing for Wired, some enterprising technophiles have distilled the image of every single person culled from videos of the Jan. 6 insurrection and subsequently posted on social media, complete with a clip from the video in which their image was taken.

When hackers exploited a bug in Parler to download all of the right-wing social media platform's contents last week, they were surprised to find that many of the pictures and videos contained geolocation metadata revealing exactly how many of the site's users had taken part in the invasion of the US Capitol building just days before. But the videos uploaded to Parler also contain an equally sensitive bounty of data sitting in plain sight: thousands of images of unmasked faces, many of whom participated in the Capitol riot. Now one website has done the work of cataloging and publishing every one of those faces in a single, easy-to-browse lineup.

The impulse by these Parler users to to publish their individual “records” of the violent attacks on the U.S. capitol doubtlessly stemmed from a feeling of triumph and achievement at what they had wrought. Unfortunately for many of their compatriots, it also provided law enforcement with an unprecedented tool to ensure the prosecution of the most violent offenders.

Late last week, a website called Faces of the Riot appeared online, showing nothing but a vast grid of more than 6,000 images of faces, each one tagged only with a string of characters associated with the Parler video in which it appeared. The site's creator tells WIRED that he used simple open source machine learning and facial recognition software to detect, extract, and deduplicate every face from the 827 videos that were posted to Parler from inside and outside the Capitol building on January 6, the day when radicalized Trump supporters stormed the building in a riot that resulted in five people's deaths. The creator of Faces of the Riot says his goal is to allow anyone to easily sort through the faces pulled from those videos to identify someone they may know or recognize who took part in the mob, or even to reference the collected faces against FBI wanted posters and send a tip to law enforcement if they spot someone.

As Greenberg explains, the originator of the site (described only as a ‘college student in the greater D.C. area’) appears to recognize the privacy implications of his project and its implications on freedom of expression. The site remains a work in progress, specifically to “differentiate between bystanders, peaceful protesters, and violent insurrectionists” by including the hyperlinks which put the participants’ activities into context and eliminating photos of press and police who may have been present as onlookers to the event.

But beyond that, Greenberg points out that the easy creation of such a site by a “D.C. college student has broader, and considerably more worrisome implications:

Despite its disclaimers and limitations, Faces of the Riot represents the serious privacy dangers of pervasive facial recognition technology, says Evan Greer, the campaign director for digital civil liberties nonprofit Fight for the Future. "Whether it's used by an individual or by the government, this technology has profound implications for human rights and freedom of expression," says Greer, whose organization has fought for a legislative ban on facial recognition technologies. "I think it would be an enormous mistake if we come out of this moment by glorifying or lionizing a technology that, broadly speaking, disproportionately harms communities of color, low-income communities, immigrant communities, Muslim communities, activists ... the very same people that the faces on this website stormed the Capitol for the purpose of silencing and disenfranchising."

In response, the site’s creator notes that the while the site did employ “facial recognition” technology (Dlib software), what he has done is more akin to “facial detection” achieved by “clustering” faces from 11 hours of video posted on Parler after the event, an effort which ultimately yielded approximately 6000 unique facial views from 200,000 screened images. Nor does the site attempt to link names to the faces (although it encourages others to do so, in order to report possible offenders to law enforcement).

Still, while the fact that so many of these insurrectionists chose to (voluntarily or involuntarily) reveal themselves may be gratifying to those of us who view the Jan. 6 events with horror, we should keep in mind that there is often a fine line between legitimate free expression and illegal, criminal activity, and that line is always going to be dependent on who is drawing it.

At the moment facial recognition software sucks unless you’re a white male. So it’s ironic that this particular group of idiots were overwhelmingly white males, making the task of identifying them so much, much easier.

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lovemesomesurveys · 3 years

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“Like ships in the night, you keep passing me by”

Do you own a black leather jacket? A pleather one, yes. Something badass about wearing one haha.

Do you find musicians or athletes more attractive? I’ve been attracted to more musicians, but that’s cause I’m more familiar with them. I don’t see a lot of athletes as someone who doesn’t watch or care at all about sports. Although, guys in baseball uniforms are nice. haha. Oh, back when I was like 13 or 14 I remember thinking Andy Roddick, a tennis player, was hot. I saw his photo in a magazine. Are you better at spelling or writing? I think both. How many siblings do you have? Two. If you could have an ice cream sundae right now, would you? No.

Do you use emoji's? Yeah. I don’t go crazy, but I like to use them as I see fit. When was the last time you lost a tooth? I broke a tooth like 10 years ago and had to get it pulled. You ask this question like it’s the norm to loose a tooth when I’m pretty sure the people who take surveys are past the ages where you lose your teeth. Do you like bendy or regular straws better? I like to use coffee stirrer straws cause the holes are small. If someone signed you up for karate lessons, would you take them? Uh, no. What's your favorite song? I have numerous favorite songs.

Click shuffle on any music device. What's the 12th song that comes up? Nah. What's your most used website? Tumblr and YouTube. Do you come on this website as much as you used to when you first found it? Not as much, no. I used to spend like all day on Tumblr back in the day. Now I typically just get on at night as part of my nighttime routine of Tumblr and surveys. That’s also when I watch the most YouTube cause I like to listen to ASMR at night. I feel like I probably go on YouTube more now than before or perhaps it’s about the same. Do you drink hot tea? Once in awhile. It’s usually when I’m feeling really anxious or really sick.

“& it’s too cold outside for angels to fly”

Is there anyone you want to see in concert really bad? I’m sad I never got to see Linkin Park. I don’t know if they’ll decide tour now, but it wouldn’t be the same without Chester. :( Do you like Abercombie? Nah. Do you still take a survey even if they don't capitalize letters? Yeah. Does your computer have word correct on it? It’ll do the red squiggly line if something is misspelled or it doesn’t recognize the word and if I hit control and click on the word it’ll offer a suggestion if it’s a recognized word. What's one of your wishes for 2013? Well, we’re towards the end of 2020 now and I just pray we’re able to get through the rest of the year without anything else crazy coming at us. Do you fight with your mom often? No, my mom is my best friend she and I very close. We just bicker sometimes. Would you rather have your son have the name Daniel as first or middle name? Sounds more like a first name to me, but meh I don’t really care for the name at all. I don’t even want to have children so it doesn’t matter lol but if I did I’d go with another name. Have you ever made up a food combo & everyone tired it & loved it? Pizza rolls and mustard. What was the last movie you watched? Would you recomend it to people? Bringing Down the House the other day cause I happened to catch it on TV. It came out in like 2003 so it’s not new, but I’ve always liked it. I think it’s funny. What is one word you cannot seem to spell? Every time this question comes up I always say “onomatopoeia” for some reason and damnit I have yet to spell it right without having to look it up. I don’t know what it is about that stupid word that I just can’t seem to remember lol. It’s a word I never use unless this question comes up, so I guess maybe that’s why, but still. I should be able to spell it. Were you born on an odd or even number? Even. Do you like Ed Sheeran? I like several of his songs. When you type, what hand & finger do you use to hit the space bar? I use my right index finger. I don’t type the proper way, I use my index fingers lol. I type really fast that way, too. Do you like to take pictures of you in the mirror? Only if I want to show the shirt or outfit I’m wearing.

“you are the best thing that’s ever been mine”

Have you read the book Lord of the Flies? Yeah, it was required in my 10th grade English class. Would you rather type or hand write notes? My handwriting is trash, but I feel like handwritten notes are nice. Do you like the number seven? I don’t have anything against it. Do you believe that when you go to heaven, you become an angel? No. I believe in angels, but not that we become one. Angels are another of God’s creations. They’re ministering spirits. They’re their own thing and humans are another. How much money do you plan on spending tomorrow? I don’t plan on spending any money tomorrow. Are you good at writing poems? No. I dabbled a bit with it when I was like 16 and angsty, but they’re so cringe. I still have the journal stored away with them and I’ve gone back to read them as an adult and yikes. Do you come on here daily? For the most part, unless I’m really not feeling well. What's one thing you wish you were perfect at? No one is perfect, but it’d be nice to be a functioning adult. Can you play the saxophone? Nope. Does it bother you when people breathe loud? I will say I feel uncomfortable when someone has a breathing problem because it makes me hyper focused on my own breathing and I end up feeling like I can’t breathe. Are you going to any concerts in 2013? Can you believe it's going to be 2013? I didn’t. The last concert I went to was back in 2009. Were you in love with the movie Mary Poppins? Not in love with it, but I like it. Do you like breadsticks? Yes. Have you ever been on a mountain? Yeah, I took a gondola ride up to one. If you had to get rid of one of your sense, which one and why? I’d really rather not.

“the first cut is the deepest”

Can you swim? Nope. Do you usually wear shorts around your house all year long? No, I wear leggings all year long. Do you remember Sesame Street? Of course. It’s also still very much a thing. Do you believe every word that comes out of peoples mouths? Of course not. You have to take some things with a grain of salt or healthy dose of skepticism. You gotta gauge what is being said and who is saying it, too, and make the judgment. That doesn’t mean I don’t trust my loved ones or that I think everyone is a liar or something, but people can give misinformation unknowingly, so it’s not always being done intentionally. It’s just not a good idea to believe every single word that comes out of people’s mouths. Do you like the questions that really make you think? Depends on my mood. What are you asking for for Christmas? Just a few little things. What time do you plan on going to bed on Tuesday? I don’t have a set bedtime for any given day, I go to bed whenever. I’ve talked a lot about my messed up sleep schedule in surveys. It’s certainly not planned. How many of your friends are online right now on here? I have no idea who’s currently on. I’m kind of the night owl of the survey community who’s up doing surveys while everyone is asleep like normal people. When they’re getting up in the morning, I’m going to bed, ha. :X Do you know what Je means in French? I do, actually. How often do you write in red pen? I don’t recall the last time I used a red pen. Do you cut your own hair? No. I used to trim my own bangs back when I had ‘em, though. Do you have any pictures in your room from concerts? No. Would you ever name your son Harry? Again, I don’t want to have children, but Harry is another name I don’t particularly care for. Have you ever had your nails done in french tips? Yeah, the one and only time I got my nails done, which was for my 8th grade promotion. Is it harder for you to type on a keyboard that isn't yours & not used to? Yes, for sure. I also don’t type as fast on my phone than I do on my laptop.

“I wish I was a little bit taller, I wish I was a baller”

What shoe do you take off first? Hm. I think my right. What do you think a good teen couple name would be for a story? Uh I don’t know? If you were coming to the states from another country, where first? I’m from the states. Would you pay $82 for facial products? No. Do you get a lot of compliments often? Nope. It’s rare. Was Mean Girls one of the best movies in your opinion? I wouldn’t say it was the best movie, but it’s a favorite of mine. It’s just a classic, ya know? One of those nostalgic movies with a lot of memorable quotes. If it was Sat, 2 in the afternoon, what would we find you to be doing? I’d most likely be asleep. Do any of your best friends have red hair? No. Would you like to be on the cover of Seventeen magazine? No. Or any magazine. Would you rather go to an Adele or Bruno Mars concert? I mean, I like songs from both so I wouldn’t be opposed to either one. Would you like to live in Sweden? No, but I’d love to visit. Are you concerned about your weight? Yes. I’m too underweight. Do you know anyone who has the middle name Sebastian? I don’t think so. Do you remember where you got your first kiss at? Of course. Did you ever watch the show 8 Simple Rules? I watched it here and there cause it was part of the TGIF lineup that had other shows I liked.

“I hope you’re in the mood, because this is going to be a long ride”

Does your computer need to be cleaned? Underneath the keys badly need to be cleaned. Would you ever name your child Sushine, Raine, River etc? I kinda like Raine. Is it any of your friend's birthday today? No friends. When is the person you like birthday? I don’t like anyone in the romantic sense. Do you like yogurt? Nah. When you type, do you ever mix letters around by accident? (EX: ot - to) Yes. Do you like butterflies? No. I’m afraid of ALL bugs/insects, even the ones people think are cute like butterflies and ladybugs. Nopeee. Do you consider the tomato a fruit or vegetable? Tomatoes apparently can be referred to as either one. I always thought they were a vegetable. Does it rain over where you live? Yes. It hasn’t rained since like March or April, though. We Californians get excited when it rains cause it doesn’t happen often lol. I hope we get some soon. It’s been cold now at least, which I love. Is there any snow on the ground? It doesn’t snow in my city. :( Do you like soup? I only like ramen. When's the last time you made cupcakes? It’s been a few years. How many lamps are in the room your currently in? My lights are off. Have you talked the person you like today? Have you ever been bullied? No.

#personal #text #survey #surveys

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incoherentbabblings · 4 years

Text

Take Back the Cake, Burn the Shoes, and Boil the Rice (4/11)

Within two months there have been two murders of Gotham newlyweds moments after the ceremony. The only connecting factor was both brides wore the same designer’s work. Needing to establish who exactly is behind the crimes, Bruce enlists Tim and Stephanie to have the biggest wedding Gotham high society has seen in decades, putting a target on their heads not just for the killer, but Gotham society too. It goes about as well as you’d expect. Ao3 Link Here!

Tim had no idea there was such a market for wedding planners. He imagined most people planned it themselves. Stephanie had made the very valid point that neither of them had time. Apparently, because she maybe still hated herself a little, she chose possibly the most ridiculous looking woman who came at an equally ridiculous price tag.

“Why’d you choose her?” Tim asked, as the two paced back and forth in one of the drawing rooms of Wayne Manor.

Stephanie was picking a hanging nail. “She had stupid glasses.” She muttered. “Her website screamed ostentatious. That’s what we want right?”

“Well yeah but –”

Alfred opened the door for Mrs van Dijk, and Tim couldn’t help but mutter a curse at the sight of her. Stephanie caught Alfred’s face as he shut the door, to which she noted he seemed quite relieved to be rid of the woman.

Bottle eyed didn’t do it justice. Her glasses seemed an inch thick, and they took up half her face. Humongous brown pupils peered through at Tim as Stephanie very quickly made her way over to him, holding onto his shirt and showing off the ring. Mrs van Dijk’s clothes were seemingly made from rags, and various bits draped across the floor. Her nose was tiny, upturned and pointy. Her teeth were too big for her mouth. She grinned maniacally at the sight of the young couple. She herself somehow looked sixty and thirty at the same time.

Stephanie had picked a winner surely.

“Oh, how happy I am to meet you! I thought for sure I was being pranked when you rang me!” She looked and wandered around the room, utterly fascinated. “And at Wayne Manor no less. I am the luckiest person in the world… Do you mind if I just put my bags here?” The four assorted totes and satchels and rucksacks seemed a bit excessive to Tim, but he nodded, not quite sure what to say. She slapped them down with a delighted squeal.

Nails on a chalkboard. Tim smiled, baring his teeth as they clenched together uncomfortably. Stephanie stepped in, being on the ball for once.

“Thank you for agreeing to help us! And on such short notice too.”

“It’s going to be a rush to get everything done in time.” Tim confirmed.

They all sat down, but then Mrs van Dijk decided she was too far away and stood up. She settled in between Tim and Stephanie, both of whom flinched at having a stranger be so close. They flinched again when she took a hand each and tugged them onto her lap, a little pile of happy hands. Happy sweaty hands. Tim shivered up his spine, and Stephanie’s left leg spasmed at the uncomfortableness of it all.

“I have had a think the past two days.” Van Dijk said earnestly. “You said, Stephanie, you wanted the grandest wedding Wayne money could provide.”

“Yup.”

“I am going to work a little unconventionally. A little traditionally. But you two are the most important clients of my career. I will give you the world.”

“…Thanks.” Tim responded lamely.

“In my thoughts, I see the Cathedral.”

Neither Tim nor Steph were religious.

“I see gold and white.”

Neither were colours they wore nor sought out.

“Carnations for flowers.”

Carnations were for funerals. Tim and Stephanie knew this very well.

“I see the reception here, in the gardens.”

The weather was never good enough to guarantee any event outside.

“And your gown…”

There, Stephanie could not cave in. “I want Rebecca Andrews.”

“Oop! Pardon?” By now word had spread that she was a cursed designer.

“I have my heart set on her you see… Ever since I was younger.”

“…But I… I brought books!” She threw their hands off her lap, Tim rubbing his freed palm against his trousers as the woman fumbled through the tote, tugging out three lever arch files.

“Oh wow… you really prepped for this.”

“I told you! I will give you the world.” And then she sat down, tossing one folder to Tim, and one to Stephanie. Slapping her own open, Mrs van Rijk flipped through pages until she found examples to show Stephanie.

“See? Oh, Mr Wayne wouldn’t you die to see her in this?”

Tim struggled not to swear. “Oh boy.” He said instead.

That seemed too many ruffles for one human body.

Stephanie blinked, and agreed. “No no. I’m sorry, but this is the one area I must put my foot down.”

“…Even though…”

Stephanie smiled reassuringly, and confirmed, “Even though.”

Mrs van Rijk stared at the huge taffeta construction and sighed sadly. “One day I will get a bride in one of these… Nevermind. I will arrange an appointment with Ms Andrews. Funny lady that one.” As she put the folders back, Tim shot Stephanie a look which amounted to kettle meet pot.

Otherwise, they went with whatever this lady suggested. The only thing both Tim and Steph genuinely liked the idea of was a lemon cake rather than a fruit cake. They told themselves that because it maybe wasn’t even going to reach the altar, what they wanted didn’t really matter. Details were details. What mattered was ensuring they were a target.

Stephanie proceeded to go on a coffee date with Cassandra, who gave the evils in her characteristic manner to anyone creeping to close, and a trip to the arcade with Damian, who grumbled and pretended to shoot a photographer with one of the guns for a zombie shooting game, until Stephanie called him over with the food she had bought him. Tim uploaded an old photograph of them when they were fifteen to his social media pages. Bruce mysteriously went to visit Crystal’s hospital when she was on shift, ensuring that she was seen chatting the Mr Wayne. The picture that went in the news was not the most flattering of Mrs Brown – her expression was nothing short of mystified and in awe that Gotham’s favourite child was talking to her – but it served the same goal as the other outings.

The family was doing everything they could to prove that Stephanie was not just someone out of the blue who had stepped into the role of fiancée for Tim. She was a Gotham girl through and through, her mother worked an admirable job, she was known by the family and spent time with them independent of Tim…Older photos began to be circulated. Old school photos when they both attended Gotham Heights were circulated, as was the fact that she was a student in her final year of Gotham College who volunteered at the clinic on Park Row, just around the corner from Tim’s social housing redevelopment project.

Don’t think of this girl as an upstart, they were practically begging, she’d been a part of Tim and Cassandra and Damian and Bruce’s lives long before anyone cared. Tim, who actually braved reading comments and replies, noted that, for the most part…well they weren’t flat out insulting her. Or him.

For the most part.

That counted for a lot.

Though some of them…

Thankfully Bruce and Dick over many years had cultivated a stock image of a slightly batshit (hah) bonkers family that only seemed to grow with the years in equally odd members. Off kilter, sure, but overall a good family. Thank goodness for Gotham stereotypes.

Next step in becoming a target – an engagement photo shoot.

Tim was not even aware these were a thing, but found himself standing in a full suit a mere three days later. Images to be posted amongst societies circles and to be sent with rsvp invitations. This had been it’s own conflict. None of their superhero friends has been invited, but indeed to everyone, this was for real. Tim had ignored the Titans for days at this point, unable to explain what was going on. There was no pithy explanation.

He had been given a black tux, a dark red suit, a navy shirt and chinos, and a pot of hair gel to style himself. Stephanie, meanwhile, was upstairs, with a veritable army of beauticians, hairdressers and too many dresses to count.

It was raining, because of course it was. But the photography studio had insisted on going forward in the manor gardens.

“We can make it look real Austen and shit.”

Tim really didn’t understand the man’s reference. Said man was holding a camera with a very large lens that Tim suspected wasn’t necessary for this kind of shoot. He had sunglasses on, despite the weather, so Tim knew he was very cool. The four assistants who had been with Stephanie trotted down the stairs, moving quickly to set up lighting. All four looked a little dissapointed, but whatever reason Tim didn't understand.

"Okay?" He asked.

One got in Tim’s face and began fixing his hair. He instinctively flinched away from a stranger in his personal space, but quickly smiled apologetically and allowed her to resume. His gut churned from enduring the uncomfortable closeness.

"It's fine. We just... she's been hurt quite bad hasn't she?"

Tim flinched completely away. It seemed the look in his eyes was enough to make the lady look to the floor, and find something else to work on. Tim's protectiveness was flaring, and he knew it was making others uncomfortable. But he also doubted it was as uncomfortable as Stephanie was having strangers examine her body like that.

“Am I okay to come down now?” Stephanie’s voice drifted in from the top of the staircase, providing a welcome distraction.

The man (Tim couldn’t for the life of him remember the name) immediately became effusive.

“Of course, princess! Let’s see you. You’re in the red dress, right?”

“…Yeah.”

She poked her head around the corner and stared at Tim. She sighed sharply at how handsome he looked. “I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “Can I hold onto you walking down? It’s a lot of skirt…”

Tim didn’t care that she was blatantly lying. He hopped up to the top step, holding out his hand for her to take. When she did take, still half hidden behind the wall, Tim felt her trembling. He looked at her inquisitively.

“My scars…” Was all she could say. She was bent over, blonde hair curled to look like Sleeping Beauty’s. The assistants who had done her hair had made the decision to have it all down in order to hide her upper back, shoulders, collar and arms. She was wearing flowers in her hair, and her makeup made her look otherworldly. Tim realised it was all to draw attention upwards, away from her torso.

Tim squeezed her fingers. Stephanie as a rule did not show skin... not since Black Mask.

“You wore that purple dress, remember? The one I got you? That showed more skin.” He tried to remind her, so she could logic her way up to being confident in the beautiful dresses.

She only shook her head, and he could see her eyes growing frenetic with an increasing panic.

“No-one was paying attention, not like this. People are going to see me.”

He stepped closer, creating a bubble around them that made Steph’s breathing quieten, and her back straightened. Saying she was beautiful wasn’t going to work. Some of her scars, little that he had seen, were not beautiful. He wouldn’t lie to himself and say they were. Stephanie was beautiful; the injuries, the torn skin, the white shiny scars, the mangled puckered wounds… there was no beauty in the experiences that created them. No amount of sweet talking would convince her nor the world of it. But that didn’t mean she was lesser for it. Not even close. He stared straight into her eyes, praying he looked reassuring.

“It’s okay.”

She nodded, and gently, encouragingly, he tugged her forward into the viewpoint of the photography team. It was a strapless crimson gown, with a sweetheart neckline and a large wide skirt that made her waist tiny. The photographer hissed. She looked lovely, but some scars shined in the artificial light. It was going to make tidying up the images awkward.

“Oh.” He stated. Stephanie immediately hid behind Tim, feeling humiliated. “Do we want to hide these in post? Or are we drawing...”

Tim glared in an intensely threatening manner, and the man coughed, correcting himself.

“Doesn’t matter. You both look like royalty. Every time I do one of these shoots… but this must be one of the best.”

His team twittered like little birds in agreement. Stephanie struggled not to roll her eyes at the weak save.

Shots were taken of them walking down the stairs, though Stephanie did manage to trip of the final step, crumpling in a heap on the floor. The man had ensured she was okay, then demanded she remain there. Tim was forced to sit behind her, two or three steps up.

“Fix her hair and dress.” The man commanded. Immediately her position was altered, and her hair was pulled to cover certain patches of skin. Her breathing wobbled.

She wasn’t good enough.

A little off put by having so many people fuss over her, Stephanie reached upwards. Tim gave her his hand, and then quickly, unthinkingly, pressed a kiss to the back of her head. He watched as goosebumps trailed up her back, and he cursed himself a little for even attempting to comfort her.

“Oh!” Shouted the man. “Hold that. Her ring looks good.”

There were four outfits and locations in total – the strapless red gown for Tim’s black tux in the main staircase being the first. For the Thomas Wayne’s library Stephanie perched herself on a leather loveseat armrest, sitting awkwardly and slightly off to the side in her insecurity. Tim had his bowtie removed and three buttons undone, to which he promptly redid one. Stephanie was changed into an off the shoulder green dress with sleeves that split open to expose her arms and hit the floor. The gown had such a deep neckline that Tim’s eyes were drawn to a white scar that went up her sternum. She caught him looking and hissed like an angry cat, unsure if he was staring at her chest or the wound. The golden gown, the one that looked like rays of sun, for the shots in the conservatory was beautiful, but again, Tim could see she was growing increasingly uncomfortable with both the attention and exposure. Repeatedly for couple shots she would start to migrate behind Tim, half hidden away until called out and forced forward. Tim found he couldn’t say anything in front of the photography crew to comfort her. He kept some part of himself connected to her, hoping the touch would ground her. Obviously this was not an option for the solo shots.

She seemed much happier with the final dress. A shorter purple dress with feathers all along the hem. It had a high neck and long sleeves. Tim couldn’t help it, he laughed as she brushed through the bird feathers. She shivered in her bare legs though and begged to put on a pair of tights. The man narrowed his eyes, or at least Tim thought he did behind those glasses, but agreed.

“Some posed shots.” He said, staring down into his viewfinder. “Then go frolic outside.”

“Frolic?” Stephanie raised on eyebrow, and Tim mirrored it.

“Outside?”

Tim took off his blazer as he and Stephanie questioned the photographer in between snaps being taken. Steph grabbed a hold of Tim’s shoulder to balance as she zipped up a boot. The rain was coming down as hard as ever.

“Yes. We need some natural shots.”

His assistant opened the double window doors, cold air blasting its way in. Rainwater dripped inside, and Tim shuddered at the fit Alfred would have. The water crept dangerously close to one of the rugs, and even Stephanie made a panicked oomph noise, and she rushed out front into the pouring rain, hoping that the quicker this round was done the sooner these people would pack up and leave and she could return to flat shoes. Her heels were starting to ache to the point of distraction.

Tim rushed out after her, resisting the urge to yell at the frigid water which immediately soaked him to the bone. Stephanie looked back at him, her dress clinging in all the right ways, hair a sodden blanket. She was laughing from the shock of how cold it was.

“I can’t believe you agreed to this?” He yelled over the sound of the rain hitting the paving stones. Stephanie just laughed and held out her arms for him to step into. Her makeup was starting to run, but rather than making her look like a drowned rat, she looked lively and bright. Her face flushed red from the cold, and Tim willingly went straight into her hold.

She brushed his wet hair out of his eyes, grinning at the face she saw underneath. Still so pale, with such dark bruises under his eyes. Still not sleeping well. But he was happy, at least for the moment. She didn’t want her moodiness ruin that for him.

Stephanie couldn’t get that moment of the kiss to her hair out of her mind, nor could Tim stop thinking about the declaration of love and kiss on the lips she had given him last week. They were stumbling in the dark, seeking physical comfort in each other, and both knew how dangerous it was. Simultaneously, and without mentioning it to the other, they resolved to corner the other. Soon.

Until then, when the photographer called for them to kiss, it was Stephanie who cradled Tim’s face and pulled him close. It was the kind of kiss that they made when they were adolescents: enthusiastic, clumsy, but infatuated. Stephanie tried to convince herself that it was just another kiss for the job, like the ones one their dates and engagement dinners, but as always the sharp stab of enjoyment that came with Tim’s smiling kisses made her shiver and doubt. She squished his cheeks and laughed when they broke apart, and when she tried to leave Tim’s hold and playfully pulled her back around her waist, tossing out further into the rain so he could run inside before her.

She collapsed in, ankles a little wobbly, grimacing at the water they had allowed into the room. Tim shut the windows and huffed.

“Perfect.”

Remembering they had been watched, the redness in Stephanie’s skin vanished, and she resumed staring at her feet, shuffling backwards behind Tim.

Hair dripping wet, and conscious that the pair might catch a cold, Tim tried to be genial when he asked if they were done. The man bared his teeth and he flipped through the images. He didn’t look totally satisfied.

“I don’t know… Can we go for some more artsy stuff? You guys got a ballroom, right? You two are such a good pair…I just want some more to play around with.”

Stephanie stumbled in her shoes, growing more tired by the moment. Tim began to shiver. One of the assistants not so subtly nudged the man, letting him now his time was up.

Bruce in one his blessed moments of good timing, had at some point begun watching through the open door to the drawing room, seemed to realise that Tim and Steph had also had enough.

“Thank you, Mr Hare, but I’m going to have to ask you to wrap up. Let my kids dry up.”

Being referred to one of Bruce’s own made Stephanie stare in open shock, whilst Tim looked gratefully at him, giving a small smile.

“Oh.” Said Mr Hare – Tim tried to not feel guilty at not knowing his name for the entire shoot – and finally he took the hint. “No worries. This was a good session! Listen, I’ll send them when their done to van Rijk. She’s a beast, will probably want them tomorrow if I know her.”

Bruce smiled politely and indicated for Alfred to begin showing them out.

Tim’s shivering had grown worse, and Stephanie noticing this, rushed to one of the sofas which had a cream throw resting over the back to cradle Tim within.

“Rub your chest if it’s gets unbearable.” She uttered, “That’s where all the important bits are.”

Tim smiled, teeth chattering. “Minus a spleen.”

“Huh?” She looked at him, confused.

“I… Oh. I never told you?”

She tilted her head, gears turning ever so slowly in her head. “That you don’t have a spleen? Tim! You’ll get sicker easier and worse!”

She managed to kick off her shoes and moved in closer, tugging the throw around them both. With the assistants out of the room, Tim grew somewhat warmer knowing she was being genuinely caring in this moment.

“How long ago?” She asked, shifting so she could keep them both somewhat warm.

“Um…” Tim looked at Bruce helping Alfred escort the team of the estate. “When I first went looking for him. Got stabbed.”

Her breath warmed his neck, and her fingers drifted down to where his scar was. She cooed when he twitched as if her touch hurt him, but to Tim it felt like a bolt of electricity had passed straight down his spine. He told himself it was because of the static from the rain and humidity.

Bruce watched the group begin to pack up, both ensuring they had left with all their equipment but also listening to their conversation, trying to not to smile.

“I think…” He interrupted, and the pair jolted at the reminder that someone else was in sight of them. “You both should shower up. Then a quick word with you both.”

Stephanie was the first to break away.

“Can I use Cass’ room?”

“We have a spare room if you want it. We have loads of spare rooms.” Tim hinted.

Steph didn’t take the hint. “Cass’ is fine.”

Bruce, however, did hear the hint, and in a rare moment of paternal ingenuity, decided to throw a little bomb into the mix.

“When is Stephanie moving into your apartment, Tim?”

Stephanie, who had no idea such an idea was on offer, gulped. Tim, also appeared a little thrown.

“I… I…”

“I’ve never even been to your apartment.”

“Well, there’s your chance.” Bruce said. “Now hurry up, before Alfred sees the state of the floors.”

Bruce’s edict was law, and reluctantly Crystal agreed for Stephanie to move out.

When it came to moving in with Tim, Stephanie was surprised how easy it was. She really didn’t own that much stuff to begin with, and Tim had a lot of spare space.

Tim’s apartment, based in Park Row no less, was large, and took up two floors. He seemed awful proud of it. Steph didn’t miss the piano sat in the corner but chose not to comment.

“One of your projects?”

Tim huffed, thinking she was diminishing his efforts with Park Row. He was lifting her suitcases up the stairs. “Well, the redevelopment is as good as I make it… And I live here… so you know, I stand by it being good.”

“Hmm.” She set one of four boxes on the couch. Hard and square, it didn’t lend itself to resting and relaxing. Tim had probably chosen it for the aesthetics more than anything, and was likely cursing himself that he had offered to sleep on it whilst Stephanie took his own bed. Glaring at the obnoxious chandelier which hung down from the open space of the ceiling of the first floor down to just above their heads on the first, she hummed to herself.

“These aren’t…I…”

Tim waited patiently at the top of the steps for her to finish.

“How did you make sure you haven't just gentrified the area?”

Tim put down her suitcases, practically skipping down the steps to get to her level, a little put off with her question. “You worried I kicked poor people out of Crime Alley?”

Stephanie blushed, and defended herself. “Not intentionally.”

“No. Not intentionally. Not unintentionally either.” He scoffed, but before he could turn way, Stephanie halted him.

“How then?”

Tim couldn’t hear the sincerity in her tone, instead he heard patronising accusations. His temper flared unexpectedly. She still could rile him up like no other. “You care?”

As could he to her, apparently. Her blush turned to a flush of red anger, and her defensiveness became aggressive.

“What kind of question is that? Do I care about your job? The unprivileged? Gotham in general?” She waved her hands. “Nevermind. Not if you’re gonna take everything like an attack.”

With a whirl that smacked Tim in the face with her long ponytail, he flinched back and watched her drag another box in. It was too heavy for one person, and she was going to hurt her back in her stubbornness.

“Steph, let me help.”

“I’m fine.”

“Steph –”

“You don’t always need to be so –”

“You know you can accept help from –”

The pair trailed off, both bent awkwardly over a box, glaring at each other. Stephanie was the first to break, groaning in a tantrum and stomping up the steps. She looked down over the railing to Tim looking up at her.

“You honestly don’t have a spare room?”

“No. The other room is an office and a bathroom. It’s just for a few more weeks… I made space in my closet for you.”

“Thanks. Real generous there, Timbo.”

Her sarcasm was biting, and Tim felt the childish urge to stick his tongue out at her. She vanished from sight though, rolling her clothes through to his bedroom. Kicking the box at his feet, his eyes widened in shock at how heavy was, and he stumbled away.

“What she got in here… boulders?”

Dragging it into the hallway, Tim popped outside to see Crystal driving away, the two remaining boxes left at the foot of the steps to the door. They were lighter than the box of bricks, and once they were inside Tim shut the front door. Stephanie was still upstairs, so was likely unpacking her clothes.

Opening the heavy box in some grim determination to be vindicated in its contents, he was instead met with a box filled with stuffed soft toys.

She still held onto them? At the top of was a somewhat familiar teddy bear. She had held onto it and smacked him with it playfully on occasion. When he had visited her to tell her he was having to leave Gotham… when she was pregnant, when she didn’t know his name or anything about his parents or who was behind that mask… all she had known was this boy had – for some unknown reason – chosen to stay with her, to spend time with her. She had taken a lot of convincing over two years it was because Tim genuinely loved her, and it wasn’t out of some Bat driven duty to be kind to those weaker than you. By the time she believed it herself, she had seen Tim kissing someone (someone who she now knew he didn’t want to be kissed by) and everything had gone down the crapper. Seeing that stuffed bear affected him more than he expected.

Resting under it was the duck he had won her the other week. Its silly face peering out from under the other toys made him laugh despite his tense mood.

He picked up both toys and walked up the stairs. In his room, Steph was piling her shoes into a corner of the closet. Tim set the duck down on a table that rested at the foot of his bed.

“You kept this?” Tim asked, waving the teddy.

Stephanie gasped, clumsily pulling herself off the floor, and reached out to take it. Tim snatched it back.

“Give it.” She cried.

“Did you seriously bring everything? I could have helped you pack. Even the toys.”

She seemed increasingly upset, when Tim was only trying to tease. “I’m serious Tim, give it.”

He didn’t give way, so in her frustration, she shoved him. Hard. No damage was done, but the look of horror on her face at becoming physical like that with him made Tim’s stomach drop more than anything.

Her face turned white and she begged, “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

Tim really didn’t know what to do with her constant mood swings, so awkwardly returned her bear to her. She nearly ripped it out of his hands and cradled it reverently.

“It’s fine. I shouldn’t have made fun of you. I just thought it was sweet, that you held onto this stuff.”

In her hands, Stephanie looked down at the bear. When she spoke, it was near a whisper.

“My dad bought it for me.”

“He did?”

“Mmm. When he was… when he was trying to be better.” Her look grew angry then. “I don’t know why I keep it.”

Without thinking, she plopped on her bed, staring at nothing. Tim realised he needed to intervene, and quick. He sat next to her and took one of her hands in both of his.

“We need to talk, I think.”

Dropping the bear, her other hand joined the three. Tim tried not to shiver at the warmth. “Me too.”

“Let’s get the rest of your stuff in, yeah? Is it all for upstairs?”

“I have some photo albums. And a couple of things for the kitchen. Figured you didn’t cook much.”

“Not really.”

She pulled their pile of hands into her lap, her look growing softer by the moment.

“Then I’ll cook tonight? First meal in a new place. Be a good wifey and all that.”

Tim tried not to imagine Stephanie with rollers in her hair, red lips and a frilly apron holding an apple pie. He failed. “Can’t comment on the contents of my fridge.”

“That’s okay.” She stood up, wandering down to the yellow duck. She pinched its orange beak. “Tim?”

“Mm?”

“I am genuinely interested in your work. I’m not being accusatory about that.”

“Thank you, Steph.”

She smiled, but it was sad.

With one box filled with stuffed toys, it truly didn’t take long for Tim to help her move the rest of her stuff into his room. Photos proceeded to take up free surface space, and Tim’s bathroom quickly became filled with so many items for the bath that his mind drifted to the idea of Stephanie. In his tub. In his apartment. He burned red for the rest of the afternoon, his brain not allowing him to let go of her soaking in bubbles.

There was one that smelled like cola candy that he liked, but it was at that point he decided he was being creepy, and wandered back downstairs, to find his fiancée’s head rammed in the fridge.

“Alright there?”

“Garlic…red onion… half a pepper…” Her muffled voice was amused. “Butter… cheese… milk.” She shut the door, hands full of everything except the milk. “Pretty standard student fridge contents huh?”

“I’m not a student.”

“Nah, but you have twenty-year-old brain anyway. We’re all messes.” She looked at the ingredients in her arms. “I can do something with this. You good a stirring?”

“I have movement in my wrists.”

She smiled. “Then grab me a knife, cutting board, pot and frying pan?” When he did, she jerked her head over to the sink. “Fill the pot three quarters up and throw a chunk of salt in. When it boils – two mugs of pasta and stir.”

It was a simple quick dish, but she gave Tim enough instructions to make him feel like he somewhat contributed to the food that she made. Sitting with her at the counter, watching her pile cheese higher and higher into her bowl, made him feel content in a manner he didn’t feel often in his home.

When they were finished, Tim stared into his empty bowl gathering the courage to say,

“We should talk.”

Stephanie beat him to it. Tim picked up the dishes, hand shaking a little.

“I’ll wash up.”

She reached out, fingers wrapping around his wrist gently. If he wanted, he could pull away without being violent, but he held still. Steph looked at him, trying to make him understand.

“It can wait a little bit.”

She was right, but Tim couldn’t shake his nerves. He set the bowls down, then sat back on the stool.

Stephanie’s hand shifted, and then suddenly they were interlocking fingers.

“Tim…” She began, and she was unable to look at him as much as he for her. “How much of this is real for you?”

Tim had told Dick he had wanted her to start the conversation, for her to lead the way, but now when it was happening, Tim moved from nervous to frightened.

“What do you mean?”

The look Steph gave Tim from the corner of her eye was indescribable, but the closest Tim got to giving it a name was pity.

“Do you want to be with me?”

“Do you?”

Deflecting like a wimp. Avoiding conflict. Tim tried to convince himself it was because Stephanie had to be the one to tell him. The moment she was decisive, so would he.

Instead she sighed like she didn’t know what to say. They were still holding hands. Tim began to breathe shallowly.

“Please, Steph. It’s fine if you don’t.”

There was his admission. She knew, she’d always known. But somehow, she had found the talent of laying her cards close to her chest, and he hated it.

“It’s not that.”

Not a denial. Not really an admission either.

“What is it?”

“It’s everyone else. Like, I’ve been getting all these messages all the time from people I haven’t spoken to in ages but then Kara keeps messaging me asking what’s going on. Why I didn’t tell her? Why are her and Conner not invited? But I can’t… I can’t lie to our loved ones about you.”

“Because you…don’t love me. And you don’t want to lie to the people we love that you do.”

He felt hollowed out. He felt like he was hurting her. But she had agreed to this. She didn’t have to. He had given her a way out. So what? She was being a martyr?

“No…No Tim.”

And suddenly Tim could breathe again.

“But don’t you get it? Even if I wanted… we are lying to everyone. How can anything good come from a lie? Especially for us. Where has us lying with each other ever done us any good?”

Oh. She thought they were repeating old bad patterns.

“I’m not lying to you.” He said, trying to reassure her. Not once since this whole thing had begun.

“And that’s all that matters?”

“It should. We’re the ones in this…relationship…so that’s all that counts.”

She sighed patiently, like she was explaining something to a child. “Tim, we don’t live in a bubble.”

Tim ignored it, and shamelessly began to beg. His patience had run out. It felt like he was pulling wisdom teeth, that’s how closed off she was being.

“Stephanie. Steph, please. You can’t say it’s a lie when I’ve done nothing but be honest with you. You have to tell me the truth.”

“About what?”

“You said you loved me at dinner.”

“I did.”

“Do you?”

“Of course, I do.”

Tim did not feel any lighter with the admission, nor did Steph look happy to say it.

“When this is over, do you want to be with me? For real? Like I do for you?”

Finally, finally, they looked each other in the eye.

“I don’t know.” Her voice was wet, quiet, and strained, like she was on the urge of crying. She didn’t even sound sure of her uncertainty. Maybe Tim was completely delusional, but he sensed that for all her talks of wanting the truth, she didn’t know what to do with it when it was staring her right in the face.

She was still frightened, and Tim knew it was from every piece of negative and positive attention being flung there way. Like Tim, Stephanie just wanted to be left alone. Unlike Tim, she couldn’t cope with the attention. And he didn’t know how to help her.

She then got up from the table, picking up their bowls to do the washing up. She had gotten what she wanted from the conversation. Tim was being earnest, like he always was. Tim still loved her, like he always had. Tim wanted a real relationship with her, like he had always wanted.

And she had only given him mixed signals in return. Self-loathing bubbled in her gut, which only served to fuel her seemingly growing self-esteem issues. Her anger spiked.

And she’d tried so hard to get over her adolescent insecurities too…

Patrol was waiting, after which Stephanie would spend the night with Cass at the manor, and Tim would return to his apartment, staring at the empty space in his large bed.

Neither slept that night.

#tim drake #stephanie brown #dc #timsteph #my fic tag

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purplesurveys · 4 years

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816

Gonna do a before and after of one of the first surveys I took when I was FOURTEEN. Fucking wild that I’ve been doing this for nearly a decade. Kinda my way of celebrating the fact that I’ve just been reunited with my old blog, which Tumblr has apparently changed the URL of. Baffled by the move but still stoked, and @a-zebra-is-a-striped-horse is absolutely the coolest person for being able to find it haha. Let’s gooooo 1. Are you registered to vote? No. I still have 3 years to go. < That’s so precious. I’ve been a voter for four years now. I registered the second I turned 18 and I remember being very excited to make it to the presidential elections because only a handful of people from my high school batch were 18 by the time of the elections. 2. When days go by, do you cross them off on the calendar? Only when I’m counting down for something. < This still sounds like something I would do, but I don’t really get to anymore because I have digital calendars on my phone and laptop now. 3. Are you currently counting down to something? If so, what? Summer vacation! 4 days left! < Again, so cute. There’s no countdown that exists because I honestly don’t know when it will be okay enough to go out like normal again, but I am waiting for Covid to go away or at least for a vaccine to be available.

No #4? 5. Ever got injured at work? What happened? Nope. < I sprained my ankle at one of the parking lots in school, while walking to my car. Worst thing was it happened in front of an ongoing rally, and I heard their chants slightly falter when they saw me fall. I tried to play it cool, but my foot clearly felt fucked and someone had to hold my arm as I hopped to my car.

6. What color is your roof? Brown. < Stop pretending like you have a roof, Robyn. The house has always had a rooftop.

7. Do you use MySpace or Facebook more? Neither. < I was still far too young when MySpace peaked so I never did get to participate in its glory days. I definitely use Facebook a lot more, then and now. 8. Last time you sharpened a pencil? When I took a diagnostic test last Monday. < Sometime in 2019 when I was still heavily into coloring and I bought several coloring books and a pack of coloring pencils. I loved coloring and wish I kept it up, but it was just a bit of a hassle for me to sharpen every ten minutes or so. 9. List all the people in your phone under T: Zero, zilch, nada. No phone. < A high school batchmade named Dani, a college colleague named Kate, and a couple of aunts and uncles whose contacts start with Tito and Tita. 10. How old were you when you got into text messaging? I once had a super obsessive text problem when I was 11, I think? < That would be the first time I got hooked with texting, but I got my first phone when I was 7 and was already texting by then. Mostly my parents and grandpa, but still. 11. Do you pay rent to your parents? No. < No. They’ve already told me they won’t pressure me to do so either, but out of gratefulness for taking care of me for 20+ years I have absolutely no problems covering some of the bills when the time comes. 12. What do you think of Obama’s new healthcare bill? I don’t know a lot about it. < Honestly, still same. That’s another country’s politics altogether and we have enough issues in our own nation as it is. I do pay attention to US issues that are more universal like LGBT issues, police brutality against black people, Trump as a person...but not the more in-depth ones like healthcare or student debt. 13. How many icons are on your desktop? 34. < Exactly half of that. 14. Do you spit or swallow? Get outta here!!! < Still can’t relate. 15. Ever wrote something on a bathroom wall? Nope. < Eugh no, public bathrooms are so nasty. I don’t usually touch anything in them other than the faucet. I’ve written on other things though, like the desks in school. 16. What’s your definition of a slut? Uh. < Someone who often has casual sex with a lot of people, is how I understand it. 17. If you use the word “slut”, do you apply it to men who do the same thing as what you listed above? Nah. < I don’t really use the word. 18. Do you dye eggs for Easter? I did once, in a children’s party. < Yeah, just that one time at my second cousins’ place when they were in the mood to paint on eggs and invited me and my siblings. 19. What did you do on the first day of spring? Never experienced spring. < We don’t have spring. 23. Are you currently crushing on anyone? No. < Yes. 24. What color hair did the last person you kissed have? NKSB. < LOOOOOOOOOL I spent like two minutes puzzling over this like who tf is NKSB??? Eventually realized this just meant ‘Never Kissed Since Birth’ oh my god 14 year old Robyn you were SO uncool. Anyway, her hair is black. 25. Do you stand up to say the pledge in school? We don’t have a school pledge, but we do recite our country’s pledge and yes, we stand up every time we say it. < Not anymore in university. Everyone just kinda does their own thing in college and we’re never gathered as one student body for anything, except for graduation. 26. Do you like your eye color? God no. It’s so boring. < I mean yeah it is a bit boring, but we kinda have no choice. Unless you go to West Asia which is nearing Europe as it is, nearly all Asians have brown eyes and black hair. 27. What brand of orange juice did you last drink? Zesto. < That’s the only brand of orange juice I’m okay with drinking, even eight years later. 28. Pens or pencils? Pens. < Still feel the same. 29. Last skirt you wore and why? My school skirt, because I have to go to school. < Omfg again, this is so precious. The last one I wore was my denim skirt, but it’s also been a while since I wore that because one of its buttons has since popped out and I never got around to having it fixed, leaving me with no skirts. 30. Last time you wore heels, what kind were they? A prom I went to. I actually have no idea what kind of heels they are so I’m just gonna say old-women heels. < They were stilettos, you dumbass. I also wore a pair of stilettos the last time I wore heels. They’re my favorite kind, so. 31. Shoes you wear the most? My Keds. < My pair of Onitsuka Tiger sneakers. . 32. Favorite quote at the moment? “YOU DUMB BITCH! I’M NOT HOLDING A MICROPHONE! ARE YOU FUCKING STUPID?” - CM Punk < Holy crap, I do not remember this quote at all and had to look it up on YouTube and – no regrets. Watching it made so many memories come rushing back lmao that clip is hilarious; Punk is the greatest. Right now I don’t really have a favorite quote. 33. What was the last magazine article you read about? I forgot. < It’s from the website version of the magazine, but the last article I read covered a viral Facebook post wherein someone had photoshopped the faces of The Big Bang Theory boys onto the traditional graduation photos of my university out of boredom. Article is here for anyone who wants to see how well the pictures turned out lol. 34. What do you think about communism? I don’t know enough about it. < I completely support the progressive youth orgs, especially the ones in my university, that are aligned with communist, socialist, and Marxist ideals. They speak the truth more than any other orgs, so I don’t shy away from defending them or promoting their ideals, especially on social media, even if it puts me in danger. 35. Are you planning on going to college? If so, which one? Of course. I want to study in Ateneo. < CAN WE CANCEL 14 YEAR OLD ROBYN?????? What a disappointment omg. You were always meant to be in UP, you weirdo. 22 year old me takes that appalling statement back lol I can’t even begin to imagine spending my college years in Ateneo. 36. What’s your favorite flower? Ugh I hate flowers. < Peonies and roses. 37. What’s the nearest beach? I think it’s like…600 km away + a 2 hour boat ride. < No it is not. There’s a beach I come back to in Nasugbu and that’s only 100 km away. 38. Ever been to Florida? Nope. < Still nope. 39. How old is your brother’s best friend? He’s probably 9 as my brother’s 9. < I don’t know if he has one and I don’t really care anymore. 40. What type of car did you ride in last? A Kia van. < Sksksksks this was referring to the school bus I used to ride omg :( I was last in our Vitara, when I had to go to the hospital to get some tests done back when I still had a pesky fever. 42. Are you excited for summer 2013? Fuck yeah. < I honestly don’t remember how it ultimately went, but apparently I was excited for it so that answers the question. 43. What class were your parents (ex. class of ‘75)? They’re the same age so batch ‘89. < There we go. 44. Are you in debt right now? For what? No. < Kinda-ish? I promised my sister I’d pay her for helping me out with iMovie (I wanted to make Gab a video for her birthday, but had never done it before), but I haven’t had the chance to do it since I only have big bills at the moment. She’s asking for ₱200 but I only have ₱1000s in my wallet, so I can’t pay her for now. 45. If you’re old enough, do you have a credit card? If you’re not old enough, do you want one when you’re older? I definitely want one. < Yep, still want one. Though I’ll need a crash course on how to use it because my parents never really taught me how cards work. 46. What color is your phone? No phone. < Apple calls it space gray but it’s really just black. 47. Have you ever had someone read a text message they weren’t supposed to see? Yes. < Yes. That person was me, and I accidentally read a text from my dad meant for only my mom when I was 5 because I had stubborn fingers that would click on anything. 48. What’s the minimum age you think someone should have a cell phone at? 10. < Holy cow, that’s a nope for me. I’d say 12 or 13. 49. Would you ever work night crew? Sure. < Yes. I’ve seen my girlfriend’s mom do it and honestly I find it pretty badass, especially because while everyone is stuck in traffic trying to get to work by 9 AM, she’s cruising down the highway on the opposite lane with no problem, to be home by 9 hahaha. 50. How old is the last person you texted? 41. < 22.

#survey #surveys

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angeltriestoblog · 4 years

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I figured out what I want to do with my life! And made a vision board!

It came to me in a flash, really. One minute, I was watching a handpainted narration of the life and death of one of the greatest painters of all time, and next thing you know, I've abandoned it completely and started furiously typing away at my laptop about what I envisioned myself to be in five years' time. And I know I've had my fair share of false alarms in life: I thought I had what it takes to be a lawyer after seeing Legally Blonde for the first time while on my way to a school field trip, and seriously considered pursuing a career as a fashion blogger or MTV VJ because I was kind of fed up with school.

But this one just makes sense. Advising and assisting clients in producing content, collaterals, and campaigns according to their business objectives and based on collected data! It marries my love for writing, my knack for snooping around (the academic term is research!), and the specialty in technology and management my university ensures I'll have at the end of my four-year degree. i have yet to see how it’ll allow me to give back to society since that’s also a factor I want to consider in looking for a dream job but I’ll make it work. I found it hard to sleep that night, thanks to this nerdy, giddy kind of adrenaline rush I had. I broke down this big idea into smaller and smaller action steps until all I had left was a refined list of ideas and intentions, and a splitting headache.

I needed to make sure I was constantly reminded of their existence so all my choices and decisions would serve as a step closer to reaching all of them. So I caved in to the wishes of the "law of attraction" side of the Internet, and created my very own vision board! Simply put, this act of visualization is a powerful technique that can be used to manifest desires and reach goals. Our subconscious minds mainly recognize symbols and images: by merely looking at our vision boards everyday, subliminal messages are being sent to our brains, which will encourage them to work tirelessly to achieve the statements we are feeding to them. I can't find any explanation for this that's less abstract but since many people seem to swear on it and I have a lot of free time and printer ink, I figured why not, right?

It was convenient that I had this small corkboard from Daiso already stuck to one corner of my bedroom wall with several layers of double-sided tape. It used to be a year-long calendar of birthdays but I realized that I've never referred to it and often have to rely on either Facebook reminders or stock knowledge--there is no in between. All I had to do was to look at my list of goals, and compile photos that correspond to each of them, cut them up and arrange them in an aesthetically pleasing manner. You'll see below that I lacked the stereotypical luxury car and beachfront mansion with a walk-in closet and that's because I decided to focus on my goals for the next five years so it looks even a little bit more achievable.

Here's the finished product, along with explanations for each picture, to make this how-to more personal and to also hold myself accountable.

Make my girl Jenna Rink and everybody at Poise proud by writing for a magazine | I had listed a specific one at the time, and if you follow me on Twitter and Instagram, you already know what it is and how this endeavor turned out - but on this blog, I'll shroud it in a little cloud of mystery for now and talk about it more in a future post. I'm very happy producing content for this space of mine and have no intention of stopping any time soon. But at the same time I know that I'd be missing out if I didn't take the chance to be part of a community that leads me to like-minded individuals, allows me to grow even more in my craft, and "gives creators a space to speak their minds and push the limits of their artistry, without imposing any restrictions or expectations", as I stated in my application form.

Be active in three organizations next school year | (I had to blur one of them out because I'm not a member yet and I don't want to jinx it.) I know it's bold of me to assume that we'll be returning to school any time soon, but if we are ever lucky enough, I want to outdo myself when it comes to the orgs I'm a part of. I have been a good follower throughout my first two years of college but now I believe it's my time to try my hand at leading a group of people and being more involved in the conceptualization and execution of projects.

Go on a trip to Europe | Not even just a specific group of countries anymore (I used to be a France, Italy, Spain supremacist)--I mean the entire continent! (But then again, with its rich history and culture, picturesque tourist spots, diverse cuisines... even the sheer adrenaline rush that comes with being in a land completely different from the one you come from, how could anyone not want to go?

and 12. Get the job of my dreams | I actually nicked these photos from the website of a cooperative I want to work for once I graduate from college. I know that I can't plan out the rest of my career trajectory as early as now: things are bound to change at some point, but I hope that I stay in a field that combines creativity and business strategy to craft campaigns, create meaningful content, and market solutions to brands.

Expand my network | I acknowledge how knowing people who know people who know people can open windows of opportunities that I wouldn't have been able to have anywhere else. But I also look forward to building genuine connections with people from all sorts of industries. Talking to the same circle of friends can sometimes feel like you're trapped in an echo chamber: there is certainly much to learn from others' viewpoints.

Volunteer to teach kids | I don't think the written word could have changed my life as much as it did, had it not been for the presence of English teachers who believed in the power of the language to shape the minds of the youth. I guess this is just me trying to give back and help the next generation express their ideas and bring them to life by channeling my inner John Keating.

Maintain a clean workspace that is conducive to productivity | Especially during these days, I spend a solid 18 out of 24 hours sat at my desk, trying my best to make magic happen. It's very important that I keep it a constant and active source of inspiration, free from any distractions, and at the right level of comfort. Although it's not as minimalist as I hoped it would be and my table is about an inch too high for my liking, I'm still pretty satisfied!

Document memories consistently, be it through a physical or online journal | Speaking of clearing out my room, I recently found around 20 notebooks I had filled up over the years. Though maintaining them must have been such a hassle especially as I got older and reading through them was a distraction from completing the task at hand, I am thankful I painstakingly chronicled everything going on in my life and kept them in good condition. Seeing the goals I had set for myself all those years ago and how I achieved most of them without making a conscious effort has inspired me to do my older self a favor by putting in the work now so she can reap the rewards. (While I'm on this note, can anyone recommend a good app for journaling? I keep all my current entries in my Mac's Notes app because even though I am more of an analog person, I seemed to have lost the patience and persistence required to keep a physical journal. But at the same time, I'm scared of my laptop suddenly cr*shing and wiping out everything I had stored)

Stay focused on my work always | I didn't know how to show this without having to spell it out in words so I Photoshopped my face onto the head of a woman working in a cafe because those who study in coffee shops along Katip always look like they're getting stuff done.

Keep learning about the world even when I'm outside of the classroom | And this is not limited to frequenting the nearby museum, although that does sound like a great idea right now. This could also mean attending seminars, workshops, and talks, buying books and binge-watching documentaries or YouTube videos about a topic that I find interesting, engaging in discourse with someone (plus points if they have a different viewpoint!)

Write my own book | Before I even found out that humans were destined to pick a career and work until they died, I already knew that I wanted to spend my days as a writer. Specifically, I wanted to see my name on the cover of a book: By Angel Martinez. (Please refer to the 4:32 of this video and look at how far this dream actually goes back.) But once I realized that I wanted to enter the world of business, I thought I would have to give this up altogether. Thankfully, I now know that one's ability to get published is not reliant on their career--I mean, even beauty gurus get book deals these days. I'm not really sure what it's going to be about but I'd honestly be down for anything: even if it's just a compilation of my best entries on this blog.

13. Go all out when I take myself on self-care dates | I'm talking about picnics at the beach, with a basket full of fruits, a posh looking hat, and a good piece of classic literature! Or fancy dinners for one complete with as many glasses of red wine as I can down! People watching at Downtown Disneyland like my paternal grandmother in hand, with a plastic bag of souvenirs on one hand and a cream cheese pretzel on the other! (The possibilities are endless and I'm already mapping most of them out.)

14. Be financially stable enough to re-enact that one scene in Pretty Woman where Vivian Ward struts down the streets of Beverly Hills in a chic white dress and black hat, an endless number of shopping bags in tow | The part where I humiliate a sales lady who snubbed me the day before because she didn't think I could afford what she was selling by saying, "You work on commission, right? That's right. Big mistake, big, huge." is entirely optional.

I also included some two inspirational sayings that were originally laptop wallpapers from The Everygirl. I feel like they perfectly sum up the attitude I want to have as I forge my own path and accomplish everything I have set out for myself. If I was somehow able to convince you that this activity serves as the perfect springboard for all your dreams and aspirations, here are a couple of tips that could hopefully help you make yours!

Be ready for some intense introspection | Though it may look like a simple arts and crafts activity at the surface, making an effective vision board simply cannot be achieved if you're not willing to do some much needed reflection and watch it balloon into a full-on existential crisis. Identify which areas of your life are most important to you and how you would like to see them evolve over a period of time.

Specificity is key | The trick is to make your goals as concrete as possible, then translate them into visual elements. I know some people who wanted to get into particular universities, who have Photoshopped their names onto acceptance letters and pinned those to their corkboards. As stupid as that may sound in retrospect, I reckon it's an elaborate way of claiming something that's right within your reach.

Design it any way you want | Don't feel pressured to make it look like it's worthy to be on someone else's Pinterest because that's exactly how you lose sight of why you're doing it in the first place. The only person your final output has to resonate with is you.

Don't get discouraged | Although a vision board can attract positive energy and manifest your intentions to the universe, one thing it isn't capable of doing is granting your wishes in an instant. Don't be upset if what you have cut out and stuck on has yet to happen: I truly believe in the saying that the more you look for something, the more it seems to avoid you. Instead, continue to work hard and focus on the progress that you have already made.

Have you made a vision board of your own already? How has it turned out, and how many of the things you had put up have come true? I know you may be a complete stranger from the other side of the world but I'd be happy to hear from you anyway! Wishing you love and light always, especially during trying times such as this. Wash your hands, pray for our frontliners, and check your privilege!

#recs #personal #quarantingz #angeltriestoblog #vision board #goal setting

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thechicchicsagency · 4 years

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Can Anna Wintour Survive the Social Justice Movement? A reckoning has come to Bon Appétit and the other magazines of Condé Nast. Can a culture built on elitism and exclusion possibly change?On Monday, as swiftly as a 9-iron taken to a tee at Augusta, Adam Rapoport resigned as the editor in chief of Bon Appétit magazine after a damning Halloween photo circulated on social media that morning. Drawn from the vast insensitivity archives to which so many influential people have made inadvertent submissions, the picture, from 2004, shows him costumed in a tank top and thick chain necklace as his wife’s “papi,’’ the term she attached to it in an Instagram post several years later.As it happened, Mr. Rapoport had been facing mounting grievance from his staff about the magazine’s demeaning treatment of employees and freelancers of color and the dubious ways in which its popular video division presented culturally appropriated cooking. But these apparently were insufficient grounds for forcing him out.Over and over, power structures seem to require that accusations of racial bias are documented by photographic evidence — proof to override a reflexive or simply inconvenient skepticism. Police officers abused their authority for decades without consequence. It was not until a growing body of video footage revealed all the brutality, and the systemic prejudice at the heart of it, that the world began to express the outrage there to be mined all along — justice by iPhone.In that sense, Mr. Rapoport’s ouster at the hands of a camera was entirely fitting. Bon Appétit belongs to Condé Nast, a media empire perhaps unrivaled by any institution on earth in its supplication to image. For decades, both at the level of corporate culture and branded worldview, the company’s lifestyle magazines have held to the notion that there are “right’’ people and wrong people, a determination made by birthright.

There are the rich, and there are the dismissible; the great looking, and the condemned — a paradigm that has now become dangerously untenable, and one the company has been striving to change.Within the Condé Nast framework, autocratic bosses were left to do whatever they pleased — subjugating underlings to hazing rituals with no seeming end point. So much was excusable in the name of beauty and profit. “Difficulty,” Kim France, a former editor in chief of Lucky magazine, told me, “was regarded as brilliance.

”No one at Condé Nast has had more of an outsize reputation for imperiousness wed to native talent than Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, the artistic director of the company and more recently its “global content adviser’’ as well. Mr. Rapoport, who spent 20 years at the company and turned around an ailing product in Bon Appétit, reported to her.What sort of management cues were to be taken? Famous for a self-regarding style — she might demand that subordinates arrive 30 minutes early for certain meetings she attended — Ms. Wintour was obviously not in the best position to try to convince him, for instance, that he should not ask his assistant (black and Stanford-educated) to clean his golf clubs. (That was one of the many revealing details in a Business Insider exposé of the food magazine that arrived this week.)Race is a fraught subject at Condé Nast. Several employees of color I spoke with, all of them laid off over the past few years, talked about the challenges they faced. They struggled to be heard or get the resources they needed to do their jobs at the highest levels; they faced ignorance and lazy stereotyping from white bosses when the subject of covering black culture came up; they all said they were exhausted by always having to explain it all.

Even though they were no longer at Condé Nast, not one of them felt free to speak on the record out of fear of retaliation from the company or the concern that they would be looked at as complainers, making it much harder to find work.Editors’ PicksHotels Transformed New York’s Social Life. Now What?Solving the Mystery of What Became of J.F.K.’s Other Patrol BoatOne former staff member who is black could not fail to see the irony in being made to go to unconscious bias training — which became mandatory at the company early last year — only then to lose a big chunk of his portfolio shortly thereafter. “I felt so devalued,’’ he said, “after working so hard.’’Unconscious bias training is supposed to alert you to your blind spots in your perception of people and ideas. But at the level of corporate and creative governance, the programming at Condé Nast has not been seamlessly woven into the company’s broader philosophy. Last month, during a round of layoffs, in which 100 people were let go amid the economic calamities of Covid-19, the company dismissed three Asian-American editors, all of whom covered culture at different publications.Among the top 10 editorial leaders listed on Vogue’s masthead, all are white. According to a spokesman for Condé Nast, across divisions on Vogue’s editorial side, people of color make up 14 percent of senior managers. On June 5, amid global protests spurred by the death of George Floyd, Ms. Wintour sent a note to her staff, acknowledging that “it can’t be easy to be a Black employee at Vogue,’’ and that the magazine had “not found enough ways to elevate and give space to Black editors, writers, photographers, designers and other creators.”Although Vogue has made a greater effort to feature black women on its covers in recent years — Rihanna, Serena Williams, Lupita Nyong’o — the gate swings open far more easily for those who are not. And in this particular area, too, legacy weighs heavily. When LeBron James made history as the first black man to grace the cover in 2008, he shared the space with a white supermodel, Gisele Bündchen, who appeared as a damsel in his clutches, an unmistakable reference to King Kong.

A spokesman at Condé Nast admitted that much progress needs to be made in regard to diversity at the company, but he defended Ms. Wintour’s record, pointing out that she has passionately supported various designers of color throughout her career, helping to raise money for them through her work with the Council of Fashion Designers of America. She also installed two black editors to lead Teen Vogue, genuinely radical in its content, one following the other (Elaine Welteroth and then Lindsay Peoples Wagner).At the same time, Ms. Wintour has presided over Vogue for 32 years, and during that period she has done more to enshrine the values of bloodline, pedigree and privilege than anyone in American media. A brief and very inconclusive list of Ms. Wintour’s assistants in the 21st century includes the Yale-educated daughter of a prominent Miami dance director, the Dartmouth-educated descendant of a major bank president, the Princeton-educated daughter of an Oscar-winning screenwriter and so on. For so long it was central to the Condé Nast ethos that you had to be thin, gorgeous and impeccably credentialed to retrieve someone else’s espresso macchiato.

Even now, as the publishing industry continues to implode and wonderful writers who could really use the work (or at least the prestigious affiliation) abound, Vogue continues to list among its contributing editors people like the German heiress Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis and many others among the well born. Five years ago, Ms. Thurn und Taxis posted a picture on Instagram of a homeless woman reading Vogue, seated on the sidewalk, with the words, “Paris is full of surprises.” Vogue quickly issued a statement, calling the gesture distasteful, and then proceeded to run her byline on its website at least 10 more timesLast year, Grace Coddington, another contributor, who had held enormous influence over what was shot for Vogue and how, in her many years as the magazine’s creative director, was photographed with her collection of “mammy’’ jars, racist ceramics depicting African-American women as servile maids.

Ms. Wintour clearly believes that she can break from the past and kill off any vestiges of a system steeped in the benighted values for which she has become the corporate avatar. The public apology from Bon Appétit was quite startling in its admission of failure, particularly its concession that the magazine “continued to tokenize” the people of color that it did hire.As part of her contribution to this new wave of progressivism, Ms. Wintour wrote a piece for Vogue.com a week after the death of George Floyd, aligning herself with Black Lives Matter and calling on Joe Biden to select a woman of color as his running mate.For someone who had seemed so averse to activism as the world has roiled from inequality for years, it felt like a desperate grasp for relevance. A spokesman for the company bristled at the suggestion, arguing that it is Condé Nast’s job “to cover what’s going on in the culture in the moment.”As it happens, André Leon Talley, who recently wrote a memoir about his complicated relationship with Ms. Wintour, as a black man and longtime former editor at Vogue, also has a lot to say about the current moment. This week in a radio interview with Sandra Bernhard, he offered his opinion about his ex-boss’s professed transformation.“I wanna say one thing, Dame Anna Wintour is a colonial broad; she’s a colonial dame,” he told Ms. Bernhard. “I do not think she will ever let anything get in the way of her white privilege.”

#Vogue #racism #anna wintour #2020 #blm

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crystalninjaphoenix · 5 years

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Chaos Theory

Part Four

(One boy has been found! Now what about the others? More puzzles to solve.)

If anyone was walking through the streets of the historic section of the city at 1:40am, they would’ve been surprised to see the two men sitting on the curb, staring intently at the blue screen of a laptop. Jackie had the computer carefully balanced on his knees, JJ leaning on his shoulder as he watched. “And add to the list of things this guy knows about me,” Jackie muttered. “My freaking email! Yaaaay.”

That is a bit disturbing, JJ signed, frowning. How could he know all this?

“Look, as someone who’s hacked before, I can tell you that very little on the Internet is entirely secure.” Jackie opened his email, immediately noticing a message from an email address: [email protected]. “But still, this guy must have some crazy skills. I’m starting to think he supplemented any cyber stalking with regular stalking. You know, following us around. Maybe placing spy cameras in hidden locations.” He clicked on the email he’d received, opening it to see it was completely blank, except for an attached zip folder called “Set 2.”

That seems a tad excessive, doesn’t it? JJ asked, but he stopped, reconsidering. Well, actually, this entire idea is excessive. If he wanted to go after you, he didn’t need to invent this entire twisted game.

“That’s true. But some people just like to fuck with others.” Jackie downloaded the zip file, then found it in the laptop’s Downloads folder and unzipped it. “What worries me is that I’ve never even heard of this guy...”

The “Set 2″ zip folder had just one file inside: 2.png. Frowning, Jackie clicked on it. What popped up was a black-and-white image of a staff, with wings sprouting from the top, two snakes twining around its length. “Oh! This, this! That’s a...uh..” Jackie bit his nails a bit, thinking.

JJ looked at him, then finger-spelled a word. C-A-D-U-C-E-U-S.

“Yes! Caduceus!” Jackie shook his head. “Man, my brain is all over tonight. More than usual.” He took a deep breath. “You know what this is? It’s a medical symbol. Henrik has a sweater with a caduceus on it, Jack got him it for his birthday one year.” Guess they now knew who the second set of puzzles was for.

Focus, Jackie, JJ implored. But is this all there is? I don’t understand what this could be pointing to, other than...who’s next.

“Well, with your puzzle I had to play around with editing an audio file.” Jackie closed the image and opened the laptop’s photo editor. “Might as well start doing the same for this picture. I mean, obviously not audio editing, but you know.”

The very first thing Jackie did when opening up the editor was click on the brightness slider and slide it all the way to the brightest setting. And words immediately appeared in the previously black area of the caduceus’s staff. Jackie leaned closer, tilting his head to the side. “ ‘Follow the skulls’...” he read out loud. His brows furrowed. “Well that means nothing.”

JJ waved his hand in front of Jackie’s face to get his attention, then signed, Perhaps it relates to some clues in the city around us?

“Maybe. But I don’t have any idea what that could be referring to.” Jackie tapped his fingers against the laptop’s edge. After a moment, he started playing around with more sliders on the editing program. After turning up the contrast, something else appeared. “Whoa, hey, what are these?”

A string of figures were now wrapping around the edges of the picture. Small words in the top left corner said “Start here.”

It must be some kind of code, right? JJ asked. They’re numbers, but they go too high to be a simple alphabet substitution.

“Yeah, but there are letters too.” Jackie began reading the string out loud. “68 74 74 70 73 3a 2f 2f...I have no idea what this is. But I guess that’s what Google is for.” He opened up the website, plugging ‘cipher decoder’ into the search bar. An overwhelming amount of results popped up. He blinked. “I...I don’t even know where to start.”

Trial and error? JJ suggested.

Jackie’s face fell, a gray cloud falling over his expression. His eyes darted to the small clock in the corner of the laptop.

Perhaps there is one that could identify the cipher when you type it in? JJ suggested. But other than that, we don’t really have much of an option.

“...you’re right. You’re right.” Jackie took a deep breath. And another. “Okay, let’s start.”

It took five minutes to find a decoder that gave them something recognizable after plugging in the code from the picture. It turned out to be a url for a YouTube video, which Jackie immediately typed into a new tab.

“Oh! Uh, there’s earbuds.” Jackie handed one of the buds to JJ. “We can listen together. I know we could just take out the earbuds and listen with the laptop speakers, but just in case...” Just in case of what? He wasn’t sure. But JJ took the earbud anyway, awkwardly putting it in.

Jackie didn’t know what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t...this. He physically leaned backwards at the sound of the intro: “Yo, what’s up guys? I’m Chase, and welcome to Bro Average!” He had to pause it for a moment, just to bask in the confusion. “I-I thought...” he said slowly. “Was...was I wrong about who...?”

JJ looked confused as well. Perhaps it’s both of them?

“But there are four sets? I-I don’t...?” Jackie shook his head. “Nevermind, it’ll make sense later, once we actually get to them. Because we’re going to. In time.” Jackie laughed. JJ gave him a concerned look that he waved away. “I-I’m fine, let’s just...see if there are any clues here." He pressed play.

It looked like any other video by Chase. In fact, Jackie thought he’d seen it before. It followed the same format at first. The music, the shots of Chase hanging out, the attempts at trickshots that always failed at first. Chase once said he liked to include the fails so the viewers would know he’s no better at these than anyone else, and that anyone could do the tricks if they tried. But then—

What was that? JJ signed quickly.

“I don’t know.” Jackie paused the video. He used the arrow keys to go back, but when that failed to pick anything up, he resorted to using the comma and period keys on the keyboard to go frame by frame. Until he finally managed to capture the image that had popped up for a split second: A hollow red circle, divided into fourths, with a red skull in the center. There were also a few strange dots and dashes along the bottom.

Am I correct in assuming Chase didn’t originally have those in his video? JJ asked. But then, how did that get there? Is it possible to put images in a video on the web?

“No, but...” Jackie tapped the screen. “This is on a different channel.” Indeed, instead of Chase’s BroAverage channel at the bottom of the video, the channel name was a string of numbers with a few letters that looked similar to the encoded url that had been hidden in the .png of the caduceus. “That means the video could’ve been downloaded, then edited and reuploaded. There could be more of these...actually, there probably are. The image said ‘follow the skulls,’ I bet it meant ones in here.” He frowned. “What are these dashes? Morse code?”

JJ nodded in agreement.

“Well, great, guess we’re going to have to write these down and find another decoder—”

Jackie. JJ raised an eyebrow. I know Morse code.

“You do?” Jackie blinked. “I didn’t know that. Since when?”

Since... JJ paused. 1923, I believe.

“Oh. Okay. Well, that saves us some time. Here, I’ll just open up Notepad and write down the code on this image, then we can see if there are more images sneaked into the video.”

There were. Five more times, the image of the red skull appeared, each time accompanied by more Morse code. Jackie copied the code into a page on Notepad, and once he was sure there was nothing else hidden in the video, he passed the laptop to JJ. JJ glared at the code, then slowly began the process of translating. Jackie looked around the dark city while he worked, legs bouncing. The city was always empty at night, but it seemed even quieter than normal. He didn’t like it.

What if the gamemaster was somewhere in the darkness right now? He said he’d be watching. How? What if he was following them? Or were there cameras, invisible eyes, dangling in the shadows? Making sure they didn’t break the rules and get help? What time was it? How much was left? Though he didn’t want to, Jackie began wondering what would happen if he failed. He knew the basics, of course, he’d never see the others again. But what would happen to them? Would it end with something as simple as a gunshot? Or would it last longer? Maybe they wouldn’t be killed at all, maybe they’d vanish into a worse fate—

JJ tapped Jackie’s arm, and Jackie yelped. JJ sharply withdrew his hand, then asked, Are you alright?

“Y-yeah, I-I just was, um...thinking. You startled me. Are you done?”

JJ clearly didn’t think Jackie was actually alright, but he nodded. I’ve finished. I believe it’s an address.

“Here, lemme see.” Jackie scooted closer. It was indeed a simple address. “Spiralnest Street...that’s in the north part of the city. It...it’s dangerous there.”

Well, we don’t have much of a choice, do we? JJ signed, sighing.

“No. No, we don’t. We’re going to have to be quick, and hope we don’t attract any attention.” Jackie closed his eyes, preparing himself, then opened them again. “We can’t take public transportation, nothing runs this late at night. Neither of us can drive, and even if we could, we don’t have a car. How fast can you run?”

JJ bit his lip. Not as fast as I would like.

Jackie looked at the time on the laptop. He watched the numbers change from 1:56 to 1:57. His stomach twisted sharply. “Okay. Okay. We have time. We’ll be quick.” He shut the laptop, putting it back in the box. “Let’s go.”

He stood up, and JJ did as well. He grabbed his hand and the two of them started running.

And somewhere else in the city, a man sitting at a desk leaned back in his chair, staring at a screen on a bank of monitors. Three hours left. They were still ahead of schedule, but now only slightly.

He reached over and switched cameras, checking first on a room with two people behind a sheet of plexiglass, then another with a single man lying unconscious on the floor. Good. Nothing had changed.

He stood up. By his calculations, it would take them anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour and a half to reach their destination. Enough time to drive over there and set up the final puzzle of Set 2. He chuckled.

He couldn’t wait for this part. It was a classic, one of his favorites. Though he had a feeling Jackieboy and his friends wouldn’t appreciate it as much.

#jacksepticeye #jacksepticeye fanfiction #jacksepticegos #septic egos #jackieboy man #jameson jackson #brigid writes fanfiction #chaostheoryfic

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alcalavicci · 4 years

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Jill’s timeline of Dean, 1936-1979. She said something about working on an 80s timeline too but I didn’t find it:

Robert Dean Stockwell was born on March 5, 1936, at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles.

His father was Harry Baylis Stockwell, age 30, an 'artist' employed by motion picture studios. His original birthplace was Missouri. His mother was Elizabeth Margaret Veronica, age 24, a 'housekeeper' employed at home. Her original birthplace was New York. This was her second child. [Me: Jill somehow got his birth certificate. I guess this was in the days before they got a lot more secure about who got birth certificates?? Either way, it’s not really something I approve of because that’s applying genealogical methods to a living person, which genealogists generally frown on doing.]

1953 - 1956: The mystery years. Jill: “Dean left college in the spring of 1953, and disappeared for awhile until he showed up doing live television in 1956. When interviewers asked him what he had been doing, he spun quite a fanciful tale. There is no way for any of us to know how much is true, and how much he was making up. According to him, he changed his name several times, and began an odyssey of traveling across country doing odd jobs and living with the laborers of the land (Woody Guthrie, anyone? Bob Dylan also made up his own past when he hit New York. Must have seemed quite romantic at the time). “Dean says that he worked in the mailroom of a large company in New York....but when people began to figure out who he was, he hit the road. Worked on the railroad in Texas....in Mexico.....worked as a fruit picker.....worked in a bakery in New Orleans.....eventually ended up in New York again, and decided to try acting once more.

Jill: “Here are a few facts I've been able to find: Dean attended the University of California in Berkeley from 1952 to the spring of 1953, when he dropped out. His brother Guy was attending the university at the same time, and when Guy graduated (probably 1954), he became a schoolteacher in northern California. A former pupil of Guy's recalls Dean coming into the classroom occasionally to read Shakespeare to them (how cool would that be?). Also, Dean himself has stated that he was in 'northern California' when James Dean was killed in an automobile accident (which was the fall of 1955).

“Because of these few facts, I get the feeling that Dean was with Guy during a lot of these 'lost years.'

“However, he definitely was in New York during 1956, as that is where the live TV shows were originating from that he appeared in. He attended a few classes at the Actor's Studio, which is where he met Suzanne Pleschette. Since she is a real person, I will take that fact at face value.

“The rest is a mystery.” [K: I think there’s some truth to Dean’s claims- he was in NYC during the summer of 1955 and acted in a religious show, The Wise in Heart, to get money to go back to LA, according to Nature Boy. Nature Boy’s author confirmed this was pulled from a magazine interview with Stockwell. So, between the summer of 1955 and up to fall/winter 1955 at the earliest, spring 1956 at the latest, he was with his brother in Northern California, working as a logger, before going back to LA. Between spring of 1953 and the summer of 1955? I’m sure he found work elsewhere, was recognized there, moved, changed jobs, and that’s why he went through so many, but he may have exaggerated as well. After moving to LA, Dean soon met Berman. They had certainly met well before 1957- Dean wrote a poem that mentioned Berman’s son Tosh blowing out the candles on his 21st birthday cake.]

1957: A new adult Dean Stockwell emerges. Sometimes Dean says he went back to Hollywood in 1956, but another time he stated he returned to Hollywood on his 21st birthday, in order to collect the money that had been held in trust for him (it wasn't very much.......I'm thinking around $25,000, but I'd have to look that up). Dean turned 21 on March 5, 1957.

This is the period when Roddy McDowall took that photo of Dean's that shows up on the mantel in the QL show "M.I.A." [Me: Dean doesn’t look that young in the picture, based on his hair. I’m thinking the picture that’s in Roddy’s art book was taken around this time, while the MIA picture was taken in the early 1960s.]

There is so much happening between 1956 and 1957, that I have a feeling he was traveling between New York and Hollywood, rather than staying put in one place. He makes his first film as an adult, a western, titled "Gun for a Coward." "The Careless Years" will follow that one, plus countless appearances on TV dramas, plus a run in a Broadway play "Compulsion" with Roddy McDowall from late 1957 to early 1958 (while rehearsing for Compulsion, he appears in live TV dramas from New York........he was busy!).

Also, in 1957, he began to hang out with the beatniks living in Topanga Canyon, above Los Angeles. His address is listed as an apartment building in Hollywood (there's a photo of that building in our Files section), but he eventually buys his own home up in the canyon (I have no idea what year).

Dean states in the recent Neil Young biography that he spent a lot of time with the artist Wallace Berman and his family, and that Berman's revolutionary way of thinking was a profound influence on him. Berman was an avant-garde artist who worked with collages and symbols, often incorporating Hebrew letters (having to do with the Kabbala). When Berman's art exhibition was closed down due to obscenity, it was Dean Stockwell who bailed him out of jail (this was still 1957).

1957 - 1959: This is the period of time that Dean is hanging out at Jazz clubs, and is referred to as a Hollywood Hipster (with the likes of another child star, Bobby Driscoll), when he's not being compared to the late James Dean. He shows up in a documentary about the 'Beats' in California (a film I would love to get my hands on. :-) It's also the time when Dean's name is being connected to quite a few Hollywood starlets (Janice Rule, Diane Varsi, Ina Balin, Suzanne Pleschette, Sandra Dee).

1959 - 1962: At this point, almost every interview/article about Dean Stockwell centers on his relationship with another quirky personality, Millie Perkins. They were young, they were different from the mainstream, they were 'hip' without being obnoxious, and they made a cute couple. It's difficult for me to even figure out what else Dean was doing at the time, because everything centers around his marriage to Millie (1960 - 1962), and their efforts to hide from the press. They are married shortly after he finished "Sons and Lovers" and are going through a divorce by the time of "Long Day's Journey Into Night."

A brief glimpse into Dean's character is provided by Katherine Hepburn, during the filming of Long Day's Journey - he showed up for filming on the first day, an outdoor scene, without a coat during cold weather. That bothered Kate so much, she went out and bought him a coat, and had it there for him the following day. The director stated that Kate Hepburn had a soft spot for heavy drinkers. Apparently Dean arrived for work with a bottle of vodka close at hand. Sounds like he was getting a bit of a reputation.

1963: This is when Dean runs into Dennis Hopper again (they first met in New York in 1957, through their mutual friend Roddy McDowall). They become lifelong friends. Dean is mentioned in 'Andy Warhol's Diary' as being one of the guests at a party at Hopper's house, with Russ Tamblyn and Suzanne Pleschette. [Me: According to Semina Culture, this is also around the time when Dean met his longtime girlfriend Toni Basil.]

A photo of Dean from these days was taken by Dennis Hopper, and can be found in our Files, as well as in the Photo Album on our Website. [Me: That picture- with the egg on Dean’s face- was taken in 1965.]

1965 - Makes frequent appearances as a continuing character on the TV series "Dr. Kildare." Stars in a black and white film shot in France, titled "Rapture."

1966 - creates a short art film titled "Moonstone" with his artist friend George Herms

1966 and 1967 - in a sense, we can call these 2 years as 'lost years' or 'mystery years' also. Only called that because Dean's life at the time cannot be discerned by movies or TV appearances. Instead, we find Dean creating collages for Art Showings, living in Haight-Ashbury (verified by the beatnik poet Charles Plymell, who became a friend of his at the time), and perhaps sojourning in London for awhile. While in Haight-Ashbury, he attends parties at Plymell's apartment with the likes of Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg. [Me: There was Mr. Paracelsus, Who Are You? early around this time, but after that, nothing until late 1967.]

1968 - appeared in the psychedelic hippie movie "Psych-Out"; according to sources, the only actor in the film who actually lived in the Haight district at the time. But not for long, because now he's reappearing in Topanga Canyon with Russ Tamblyn, and eating breakfast at the local restaurant there. He befriends the female owner, who introduces him to her new boyfriend - Neil Young.

Also starred in a British TV mystery drama (which puts him in London, if only briefly). [Me: This was Thirty-Minute Theatre: Before Breakfast.]

Also made appearances on The Danny Thomas Show, and FBI.

Finishes the decade by performing (most charmingly) in a Bonanza episode....... and writing a screenplay titled "After the Gold Rush." Introduces George Herms to the music of Neil Young during an acid trip.

1970 to 1973 = Dean continues to make short art films with his friend George Herms. Also makes a short documentary about the making of "Breakaway," which was an art film created by the artist Bruce Connor, starring Dean's girlfriend at the time, Toni Basil.

1970 = stars in the film "Dunwich Horror" with his friend from the 1950's, Sandra Dee. Asks George Herms to paint the hieroglyphics on his torso for a scene in the film.

1971 = Joins his friend Dennis Hopper and other "Misfits of Hollywood" in Peru for the making of Hopper's film "The Last Movie." LIFE Magazine does a cover story about Hopper down in Peru, and stories circulate about the wild times on the set. Hopper spends a year editing the film, but Universal refuses to distribute it. The title of the film is almost prophetic regarding Hopper's career. [Me: His stepmother Nina Olivette passes away this year.]

Also in 1971, Dean stars in two television movies - "Paper Man" and "The Failing of Raymond."

1972 = stars in a low-budget biker-on-the-road flick titled "The Loners." The press release for the film states that Dean Stockwell has 'been living in England.'

1973 = Stars in "The Werewolf of Washington." Dean later says that the script was funny, but he knew by the very first day on the set that he was in a stinker.

1974 = Appears in a play in Albuquerque called "Relatively Speaking," and tells an interviewer from the local paper that he is tired of being typecast as a murderous lunatic who guest stars on television dramas. He would like to try comedy. [Me: There’s a 1972 newspaper article about Win Place or Steal that says he’d love to do more comedy, but I think his first comedic role as an adult was in his 1964 episode of Burke’s Law.]

Also around this time he is showing up in Taos quite a bit, getting drunk and stoned in bars with Dennis Hopper. But even though he was getting quite a reputation in Taos (and not a good one - Dean quotes, with good humor, a person saying "I always thought Dennis Hopper was the biggest asshole in Taos - until I met the other guy....,"), that isn't his entire existence. He is also still living in Topanga Canyon above Los Angeles, and the magazine "Fighting Stars" does a cover story on Dean about his newfound interest, Stickfighting.

Dean comes across in the interview as an eager, enthusiastic man, younger than his stated age (the photos that accompany the article look like a man in his 20's instead of a man approaching 40), who has discovered the martial art Stickfighting after appearing in a low-budget film in the Phillipines. He is so involved with this sport that he brings his instructor over from the Phillipines, Remy Presas, to stay at his house. He also tells the interviewer that he really doesn't care if he never acts again, as long as he can be involved in this martial art.

At the same time, though, Dean is happy to give his blessing to an official Fan Club, started by a woman named Geordie James (whom our member Claire was corresponding with at the time). Dean even telephoned Ms. James when he returned from the Phillipines, and he sounded just as eager and enthusiastic over the phone as he comes across in the magazine interview. Alas, there was a fire at the home of Ms. James, and the Fan Club never got off the ground.

1975 = stars in another low-budget film, this time a comedy, titled "Win, Place or Steal," with his friend and Topanga Canyon neighbor Russ Tamblyn. [Me: This was filmed around 1972.]

Also in 1975, spends a fastpaced summer with his friend David Bowie, who was living in Hollywood at the time. Bowie recalls making the club scene with Dean and Dennis; Iggy Pop remembers them visiting him in the mental hospital.

1976 = Does the photography/artwork for the cover of Neil Young's album "American Stars 'N Bars" (9 years earlier, Dean had contributed a photo of the artist Wallace Berman for the cover of the Beatles "Sgt. Pepper" album).

Also, in 1976, Dean and his girlfriend Toni Basil accompanied Dennis Hopper to the Cannes Film Festival for a showing of the independent film "Tracks," which both Dean and Dennis had appeared in. According to the gossip columns, there were parties on the beach from dusk to dawn, and it was here that Dean meets his future wife, Joy Marchenko. They begin a 5 year correspondence.

1977 to 1978 = Toni is very active in the punk rock scene, and the artist Bruce Conner makes a documentary about punk rock clubs in California, with her in it. Toni introduces Dean to the band Devo. Dean makes a tape of their music and gives it to Neil Young. Then Dean takes Neil to a club to see them.

1978 = Probably the beginning of the breakup with Toni, as she begins an affair with Devo's bass player. Dean moves in with Russ Tamblyn, still up in Topanga Canyon. During a frisbee game with Russ and Neil, the idea for "Human Highway" takes shape. Joined by Dennis Hopper and Devo, they begin filming a movie which will ultimately take 5 years to complete, and will end up being completely different than the original conception.

Stories circulate about the wild times on the set, which began as simple outdoor shots filmed around Taos, New Mexico, but which will end up being a very expensive studio set created by Neil Young's imagination.

1979 = Dean appears in Las Vegas doing comedy dinner theater ("Come Blow Your Horn"). Also directs an avant-garde play in Los Angeles called "Man With Bags," starring Russ Tamblyn (this is where our member Claire gets to meet him). A few weeks later she gets to meet him again at an art exhibition of George Herms' work, which includes a showing of Dean's film creation "Moonstone." A good time was had by all.

#stockwell sassies

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yes-kassiopeia · 5 years

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A little dive into Ashton’s pinterest

I’m not sure if anyone is going to be interested in this long long loooooooong rant ... but if ever.. !

Well if it’s really Ashton’s.... Cause I can’t be 100% sure, but if it’s not him let just say it’s a very good imitation. In case it’s actually his I won’t give the link, but i don’t think it’s too hard to find anyway... (i wasn’t even really looking for it....)

Aesthetic Board Analysis

All of the Pins below are directly from a the Board called “//SOUL OF ASH//”. There is much more, and i just picked a few that sparkled my very own interest, so i wouldn’t say it’s necessarily representative, but the whole aesthetic theme is there.

The description of this Board goes as : “A misunderstood mind with the catastrophe that was his mentality, formed by stardust and in love with the galaxy. | Black and Red. Some pictures belong to me. Aesthetic board for myself. Skulls, crowns, kings, wolves, Lana Del Rey, leather jackets, spray paint, feathers, birds(ravens, sparrows, doves), cameras, royalty, polaroids, black and white photos, green eyes, motorcycles, books, glasses, pianos, roses, strong coffee and coffee shops, cafes in cities, rings, strong alcohol, crosses, occasional trench coats/blazers, chess, smoke/fog, dark hotel rooms, unfinished handwritten letters, science, sarcasm, lighters, neon”

A lot of the pins are directly uploaded by the user and a large part of the rest comes from tumblr (and Ashton said he had a private tumblr and that we would never find it, so maybe it’s actually him?), the others comes from random website or are re-pinned.

First things first, I was a bit surprised by the amount of “daddy” pins. I mean we joke about him being “daddy” all the time and all the sexual connotation behind it too, but I wasn’t expecting him to be so blunt about it and so ... into it? (Once again, if it’s really him, that is...)

Another theme that is largely present in his pins, is this tormented love. Kinda trapped between ardent desire and unrequited feelings. Although the pronoun ‘her’ is present a couple of time, i notice some “he/him” as well, but i don’t know if he’s referring to himself or someone else.

There are quite a lot of dark messages spread around this board too. like “I laugh with many but don’t trust any” or “Pain is fuel”, “Endure & survive”, “LOST”, “I’ve been having a bad day for the past several years”, “we grow from the worst”, etc. Which sounds like him quite a lot, in his dark hours, and this board is pretty dark.

A few Pins also acknowledge his fear of being or becoming addict to alcohol, but also a pessimist state of mind like ‘fuck this i’d rather been drunk’ and present aesthetic pictures of strong alcohols...

A couple of coffee related Pins as well, because hey, it’s definitely not Ashton if there’s no mention of coffee somewhere.

You also get he wants to be a good man, but don’t want his kindness to be taken for granted or abused. So it’s like a battle in himself between being good and being strong.

‘Ashton’ (once again not 100% sure) refer to himself as a wolf and a lone wolf a lot in his Board. And there not a lot of people in it. There are aesthetic picture of him in black and white (that have been seen elsewhere, so it’s no proof). But there’s only two pictures of him with other people. One at a party with Ivy Levan and Zakk Cervini. And the other... Is this famous Lashton one :

I grouped it with a couple of other pins that made me think about Luke or Lashton. And we know since Nikki’s (lashtondaydream) fanart that Ashton does like this picture a lot. Plus, while all the other pins have no caption at all, this one does. and say “// my brother //”. And that’s why i think it might actually be Ashton’s account. And i’m really glad that he pined this!

Last, but not least !

He has another board which is called “// dances with tears in his eyes //”, that remind me of Luke a lot. The aesthetic is pretty different from the rest, it’s GOLD. I’m pretty sure i’m not the only one who associates Luke with gold... The Board is very small, only 6 pins, but there’s a lot.

A YSL golden logo on black background.

A white and gold angel wing

Golden neon saying “GOLD IS THE NEW BLACK” on black background

A hand-lettering of “Heart of Gold” in gold on black background

Two red roses (btw this pin don’t match the aesthetic at all...)

A white message on black background “some night you dance with tear in your eyes”

So the title directly come this latter pin, but he changed the ‘your’ into ‘his’ which accentuates my believes that it’s about Luke. And I think it’s really cute that he has like “capsule of luke” on his board. (and of course, he doesn’t have one for anyone else) and that it features two red roses...! just saying

There are other board with other topic, one about “geeky stuff” like comic and tv shows, another one about fashion and style, one with only cute animals! etc. but it doesn’t serve my speech here so i won’t comment it. There’s a board with quotes from books that can be pretty interesting, but it’s also very cryptic.

This is already too long. I don’t know if anyone has read it up to here ^^’ i’m sorry. I had quite a lot of fun digging into this account and i wanted to share it with you. Tell me what you think about it? Do you think it’s his account? Let’s talk ! :)

#lashton #ashton irwin #ashton 5sos #5sos #ashton fletcher irwin #lashton analysis #lashton theory #digging #ashton pinterest #luke and ashton #ashton and luke #lashton is real #lashton is alive

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siramay-the-showgun-dragon · 5 years

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Demencia Theory- Not What She Seems

hello my villainous fans and random scrollers by I am from the villainous amino and I am about to show you a theory made by my friend M. with the help of me and a few others to show you a side of dementia you do not seem to see, so before I show it heres a link to M’s original theory on amino:https://aminoapps.com/c/villainous-4971691/page/blog/demencia-theory-not-what-she-seems/8BWv_8mvCmujakwpQx6kxLZvbMaxp5L6LbghR now lets begin

Oh, Demencia, you childish, hyperactive ball of enthusiasm!

With your evil chaotic-ness and your enchanted feelings for your boss, how could you ever be more than the silly thing that meets the eye?

We could think of a few ways.

The following theory is brought to you by the amazing minds from the Villainous Theory Chat! Those that were involved with this theory include: Notdepresso, Siramay (hey that's me :D), Snivy, and Lynxi!

(And me but eh)

I'm almost tempted to say "forget about all of the other theories about Demencia you may have heard of before" because, this. is. insane.

We Villainous theorists believe that Demencia is....

A Podemos Bailar agent.

Y'all:

Now before you start shaking your heads, hear us out.

Yes, she acts like she has an evil agenda.

Yes, she's the practical personification of chaos.

Yes, she's absolutely head over heels for Black Hat

And yes, she's just so darn silly and maybe even annoying to some.

And doesn't she play it off so well?

Demencia is always at the max with all of these qualities and they never waver.

Her imperfections are too... Perfect.

But oh, is it an amazing disguise.

Who could possibly realize they're being fooled when they are too busy laughing at the fool?

As we all know, Demencia annoys and bothers both Black Hat and Flug with her obsessive and destructive qualities, to the point where they try to avoid her at all costs. Notice how it's always Demencia who approaches them and that it's never the other way around unless the two are absolutely forced to?

The woman has a ridiculous amount of free time to herself; finding the time to teach a bear and a handful of robots a song, destroy thousands of dollars worth of products, draw her Demencia Tips, attempt to romance Black Hat, make puppets, learn guitar, etc.

With all that free time and privacy... Who really knows what Demencia can and will do?

This disguise, this face she has made for herself is perfect. She is free to stalk her subjects right in front of them and not be questioned for it except for the occasional, exasperated "what does sHE THINK SHE'S DOING!?"

And this is just the minimal tip of the iceberg.

There's so much more.

Demencia's bizzare behavior truly doesn't raise any real questions because everyone within the manor is so used to it that something as odd as messing with a computer to creating your own "advertising" short without anyone's knowledge to it is seen as Demencia being Demencia.

This lizard lady could do almost anything without ever being truly interrogated for it.

She has trained her prey to not be scared of her as she walks right up to it.

Another thing to note about Demencia's behavior is her job at Black Hat Organization. As stated by Flug in the Anniversary short, Demencia handles all hero extermination. This, however, is only to his knowledge. We have no evidence other than Flug's word and a possibly staged picture to prove this. We've yet to find anything stating that a hero has died at any particular time.

In fact, we dont even know if this is really Heavy Punch's cape from the Evil Conquest episode.

cape?

Bish W H E R E ?

(And don't try to tell us it's because it's a kids show, Gravity Falls, a DISNEY production, managed to sweep in 2 paragraphs full of hidden jokes within the same screen pan without drawing too much attention from the younger audience) (besides that there are to many dark and demonic jokes in villainous for that to be a reason also just look at the episodes on mojo jojo and rob) ((this bold is me))

But this all pales in comparison to what's truly incriminating about Demencia, and the answer is found buried within this fandom's favorite bookmarked tab: Podemos Bailar.

Now, I made a post the other day about what we discovered is going on in that right side scrolling of commands on the website: http://aminoapps.com/p/56jwha

What we discovered is that two people are interacting over that animation loop. One person is telling another how to decode a specific piece of an audio file in order to get a message while the other is actually inputting the commands to do just that.

We can firmly assume that these two are our last two dancing agents.

Now how does this tie in with Demencia? Well, it has already been established that Demencia knows how to create her own codes and sneak them into BHO's production videos as we see happen in the very first short, The Perception of Evil, in which a code flashes on screen saying "Demencia Was Here".

Funny enough, a short was released a few months back called "Demencia Wuz Here". And my what a controversial short this one is if you see it like we do.

Let's break it down:

So Demencia left a hidden code for someone to decipher that referenced an advertisement short that didn't even exist yet. This means that the short was a premeditated thing and not just something done at the spur of the moment for some pickles.

What's also good to note is that there was no reference to King Wazuq's Glove before ((well like that one end frame but nothing else in like actual videos that what I think he meant)) this episode and the outer Demencia doesn't appear to be the type to search for information that deeply for something she wouldn't even know she'd need months before hand.

Unless... The heist was staged.

What we also see in this short is Demencia being able to hack into The Defence Departments, high security, Area 52 cameras in order to capture her stealing the glove. A very difficult task I'd imagine for an empty-headed lizard girl. But... She really hasn't proven herself to be all that has she?

Another thing to note is that Demencia created this entire short on her own. 505, Flug, nor Black Hat knew of this until they walked in on her but, once again, do nothing to stop her. It's just Demencia being Demencia.

Also, have any of you noticed that Demencia is the only character in Villainous so far that labels herself as an agent?

Oh, but this only goes deeper.

Not only is Demencia a Podemos Bailar agent, and not only is she working as an undercover agent amongst villains, she is also the agent telling the other what commands to input on the Podemos Bailar website.

She is telling her true co-worker exactly what to do to find a code she has hidden especially for him in her "advertisement" short.

But how can we be so sure that it's her?

How can we be so sure that it's that video specifically?

Because, if you click and drag the I See All picture into the Google search bar, you will find a link to the website's assets page. With that page are a series of links to different parts of the site. One of those links holds the exact audio file from the "Demencia Wuz Here" short...and it is the only short there.

The short Demencia made without anyone's knowing.

The short that she aquired impossible information for.

And the short she specifically designed and planned from episode one to reach out to her last comrade for and betray her villainous coworkers.

I mean, just look at her body type and compare it to the yet-to-be-found female Podemos Bailar agent! They're a practical match, thick ((EXTRA THICC note I hate using that word)) legs and all! And there is no way that giant next to her is Flug!

Also, another thing to consider is, if neither of these last two agents are on the villainous scene, then how have they been aquiring photos from within the manor? Flug's notes about 505's creation and the picture of the organization's plans to go to Japan are prime examples!

(another thing about that japan plan pic is that in the same episode it was released with we can see dementia reading that EXSACT same magazine that's in the picture! the clues are hiding in plane sight and no one is any the wiser!)

The evidence is stacking here people, and we the Villainous Theory Chat truly believe that it's only going to become more suspicious as time goes on.

This also means that there is a secret audio code that we need to find in the "Demencia Wuz Here" video. All we need to do is follow the steps she's given us on the site in order to find it.

There is a spy among us and she is clothed in green. (A sheep in lizards clothing)

I hope you enjoyed reading our idea!

Happy Villainy!

and that's his theory he has others to I might post here but if you like this then go to the villinos amino and join are theory chat! and if you are against this theroy tell me why and we at the theory chat will try to debunk you debunking this unless your right BUT YOU GOT TO OPEN YOUR EYES DEMENTIA IS NOT WHAT SHE SEEMS, SPREAD THE WORD or not black hat might be listening and we don't want to blow her cover! but I would like to see more talk about this

so I'm siramay and remember keep claim and drag-on

#dementia #demencia #villainous #villainous demencia #villainous dementia #M #siramay #siramay the showgun dragon #men without hats #Podemos bilar #Podemos Bailar #villainous theroy #theroy #cartoon network #cartoon network LA #theories #villainous theory chat #secret agents #someone write fanfiction for this

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healthgnome · 6 years

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Dear, Isaiah because it’s come to my attention.

It has come to my attention that the past back-and-forth of abuse accusations have been slowly resurrected and I see now that it is certainly within my time to once more explain my side. I truly wish not to be slandered and lied about on such a big platform and I wish the same for my friends, Ryan and Zayne. I genuinely try very much to be a decent, good, and helpful person. Sometimes I slip up as anyone would but I certainly know that I would never try and genuinely bully or hurt someone. For any time I might have joined in on some fun-making - trying not to go overboard and apologizing if I did end up actually hurting- I once again of course apologize for that. I go with the flow of how I think a dynamic is working and sometimes a dynamic does involve some making fun meant in no big harm. A prime example of such would be the friendships between Mark (Markiplier), Bob (Muyskerm), and Wade (LordMinion777). Where it is within understanding that they are all good friends but Wade gets the brunt of a lot of jokes. Any time there is sincere hurt, not that we have seen- but I guarantee there would be apology.

In Any Case, now that that introduction is out of the way I shall diffuse all that has been said in a post made by former friend Isaiah AKA (currently) @for-abused-kids about myself, Zayne (@thevvytchbytch) and Ryan (@literallyrealdeadstuff).

Not one of us have “stalked” your blog on a daily to find out if you have talked shit. If you mean during that whole giant commotion, sure there was a lot of digging in order to actually provide evidence for the claims we make. After that? Maybe checked out some posts to make sure there wasn’t still any sort of slander on any of our names, or we were informed of such a thing taking place. And yes, you have had their name(s) and mine on your blog in a “talking shit” kind of way.

We did not go to your house after dark, how would you know if you weren’t there. That is assumption. (and you know what they say lol) And a letter was written to your parents coming from a place of concern and explanation. I had not wished any abuse on you to happen.

As well, you are repeatedly saying that we lied to your mother telling her you ripped up the note. It was not meant to be a lie or anything of the sort, we simply had no contact and therefore wanted to make sure the note was actually read.

Hmm. I would really like to point out though that you claim that Zayne had the audacity to go to your home and deliver this note with someone who stole from your home while at the hospital. Do not act like you are not leaving out very important parts to this statement, and that the counterpart, leader, truest perpetrator, and manipulator to this was someone mentioned throughout this letter.

There was a lot of yelling between yourself and Zayne. A lot of it was not meant in harm, which was understood at least eventually; a lot of it was out of anger because something had happened, was done, or was said. And there was a lot of back and forth.

Allan was a friend of all of us for a while until he was slowly let go from all of us because he is a bad person. Personally, I stayed friends because my really fucked up brain could not handle being any more alone than I already was. You had liked him for a long time. Told us about it, or when certain things may have happened; sometimes these feelings went away (which is normal), and sometimes they were strong. I can provide proof for this too. Yes he was an awful person, and I was usually on your side when he did bully you. I did exclaim, and of course I understand how feelings work, that perhaps not being friends would be a good idea. I also told Allan this countless times but he enjoyed messing with you and I am not him nor could I control his actions.

The competition? There was a small friendly barely-a-competition thing going on in regards with Zayne. And it had barely lasted as well. At least from what I understood.

Ah yes the cum stains things. We used the word cum out of what we thought would be respect for your identifying away from femininity. Just as we would use the word “dick” or any variations thereof rather than vagina when referring to most of us and genitalia. Which sounds gross to say but we are teens, most of us horny, most everyone on T, genitals were a common point of discussion. And yes, you did leave vaginal discharge stains, or cum stains or whatever you feel most comfortable calling it, on the futon. And this is a pretty normal thing from what I know. People “get wet” and people have sexual liquids. It be like that.

From what I, and many others know, you do talk to a lot of people, including children, about your trauma.

I don’t remember you purposely triggering Zayne with Ed Sheehan, you did not have control anyway; Allan was the controller and was persistent on having that song on. However, you have attempted to physically hurt Zayne when you punched them. It did not actually hurt because it was frankly weak (not that I could do much better). What next you’re referring to after this is that Zayne was allowed by yourself to punch back; they simply know how to and are stronger than they appear.

Oh god. The Asian thing. That’s a huge bag on it’s own and has been talked about previously, you want more info on this or another post? Talk to me. Here is a link to a post with a bunch of evidence of this and other things & here is a link to a quick post by Ryan. There will also be a couple of photos at the end of this. But simply, Isaiah, your evidence was hardly; you have very white features, two very white parents, and have never presented otherwise, this coming from a very white person.

Congruently, have you seen Ryan or a picture of him recently? He has anything but thin lips. If you’d care for an example of thin, look at me. His hair is quite thick, has varying curls throughout as has been complained about and explained in the past. As well, it does deeply tangle itself if not taken care of daily. I, on the other hand never brush my hair- at the same length- and it barely gets more than a little disheveled. There is evidence of all of this. He does not at all have a small nose. Whilst not the darkest person, the summer provides a pretty good tan, more so in his youth. His father is actually not white- which is a known fact rather than a guess. If he is at least a quarter black, and has those features, I think it’s fair for him to claim that he is mixed on a hookup/dating app.

Oh, and I am quite aware of all of the arguments you’ve had about your father and his heritage. It’s what sparked that one post about the “Native American” 80’s/90s festival necklace. Which was a genuinely funny incident if you look back on it.

I have heard varying things to do with you imagining sex with anyone you are friends with. Just as I have heard varying statements about a lot of things that you exclaim to have or currently happen in your life.

We have called you straight as you have called yourself straight or straight-passing because of the fact that you were or are masc-aligned and would now prefer to date fem-aligned individuals due to trauma. But considering you are not mono-attracted to only men/masculine leaning individuals, you are not completely gay either. So if you can call yourself one you can essentially call yourself the other since you seem to be comfortable enough doing so. (I’ve recently seen a word to use for nonbinary-straight attraction! it’s “strayt”; similarly, there is “gai.” I bring these up not to make-fun or cause harm but they may be useful to you.)

In regards to Ingrid, as far as you have spoken to us and as we have seen, you have changed what you claim to have identified as whilst dating her. From secretly trans, to a cis girl, to questioning (not in this order, necessarily). Regardless, for many reasons it seems as though this was an unhealthy relationship.

You have taken stories right out of others lives and claimed them to be your own, these would be delusions, dear, not hallucinations. And it is at least a possibility that a lot of other things are delusions, too. This coming from someone who has had experiences with some sort of psychosis, delusions, hallucinations, gas lighting (from yourself, Isaiah. as well as from others.) and other such things that I can explain more if asked. And there is evidence of this all, as well.

I have never been abused by my parents. They are wonderful individuals who also try to be good, decent people. They have taken in my friends (including you, Isaiah) and done a lot to help them in times of abuse and need as well. That being said, there can be, from what I’ve seen, varying degrees and methodologies of abuse that different groups take part in. They are all horrific and I absolutely, full-heartedly, condemn all of it. But that is a fact given by apparent evidence. This being said, your parents have Not admitted to doing all of this, at least not to yourself, but to your sisters. I am genuinely curious as to why, if they’d admit doing harm to them both to you and in writing, why would they not come through with all of this to yourself?

On this topic, Stockholm syndrome, while something truly awful, is a kidnap-specific symptom. You can google how it affects others, but those websites are a lot less trust-worthy. We both went through the Hell of the junior research project and you are an academically intelligent person, you should be able to tell the difference between a trustworthy site and an untrustworthy one.

As far as your gender, speculations have been made based upon a lot of things you have said, and some seeming fetishization of nonbinary people. This is not said to invalidate your feelings or anyone else’s for that matter. It is simply that you are a rightfully suspicious individual. Again, this coming from trans people both binary and non- alike.

Regarding what I’m pretty sure is the video of you sitting on my legs, Isaiah, I don’t remember if there was an apology (whether or not in the video) but this wouldn’t be the first or last time something like this had occurred.

Finally, you have abused me. You have done me harm and I now understand that. I have tried to do a lot for you but you have done a lot to and taken advantage of me and my mental state.

Once again here is a link to a post with A Lot of evidence. Want more? Contact me.

As always, best regards to your mental health,

former friend, Alana.

PS; Please, for the love of everything, do stop misgendering Zayne and use *their* correct pronouns ( they / them ) !

The photo below contains obviously curly hair, not-at-all thin lips, a not-at-all small nose, etc. You can see.

#forabusedkids #firstnonbinarypresident #usedandchildabused #firsttranspresident #bullying #abuse #toxic friends #toxic friendships #abusive relationships #abusive friendship #toxic relationships #tobias #isaiah #depression #anxiety #psychosis #child abuse

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