#go ask alice

[kitschydoll]

#grace slick #jefferson airplane #go ask alice #60s #alice in wonderland aesthetic

[thisisallthehattersfault]

Does that mean Nika kills Arlong? Or just damages him enough to put him in his place?

Divinity shines through Luffy’s skin. It turns his body gold, casting long shadows on the floor. Arlong’s face goes still with shock, and then, slowly, with fear. It’s almost gratifying to see that, even after all this time, people still recognize the face of God.

When Joyboy next speaks it is not through the mouth he has borrowed from Luffy, but from his own throat, echoing and trembling through the broken room they’re in.

“You are ashes now, but there was fire in you once. You chose to let that fire turn to despair, and in your despair you lashed out. You have caused grave harm to the undeserving, Arlong. But this is not all you are. It is not all you can be. You know you are more than this.”

Arlong trembles in every limb. He drags himself backwards, away from Joyboy on his shaking arms. “You’re not him,” he says, and he is begging. “You’re not him!”

“I am.”

“No! Fuck you, you’re not him!”

“Look at me, Arlong. Look at the face of your God.”

“No!”

“It's not too late to fix this. You can be forgiven.”

“I can’t forgive you!” The words are a scream that might have been a sob if Arlong were clinging less tightly to his rage. “How — how dare you. You’re not him! Fuck you, where were you? Where have you been? Where the fuck have you been?! Do you know what they’ve been doing to us?!”

Guilt, that old, worn coat, settles heavy on Joyboy’s shoulders. He says “I’m here now,” because that will have to be enough. “The dawn will rise, and you should be there to see it.” Arlong has backed himself against the wall by now, slumped with nowhere else to go. Joyboy has followed him, and now stands at Arlong’s feet. He lowers himself to one knee, and reaches out his hand. Says “You know you can build something better than this. It’s why you’re so damn frustrated, you know what you’re capable of. You turned that frustration on the wrong target but it’s not too late to change your aim.”

Slowly, Arlong drags his gaze away from Joyboy’s (Luffy’s) face to instead glare at his outstretched hand. He stares like he’s never seen fingers before. “You want me to repent?”

Joyboy says “Take my hand.”

“You — you — do you expect me to kneel? Should I pray to you?”

“No. Just take my hand.”

“I won’t!”

“Do not let your pride keep you from the one thing you truly want. Take my hand.”

“Stop it!”

“Take my hand!”

“Never!” Arlong, weakened and beaten as he is, lunges with his teeth bared.

Joyboy swallows disappointment, and accepts his answer.

—————

“Why did you ask him?” Luffy mutters petulantly. “You knew he was gonna say no.” He nudges Arlong’s corpse with his foot and ignores the sharp disapproval Joyboy sends him, because of course he does. Brat.

Joyboy thinks of justice, and rage, and wasted potential. “Sometimes,” he says, “It is the asking that matters, more than the answer.”

Luffy scowls darkly and kicks the corpse again. Kick, kick, kick. Joyboy longs for his own limbs, if only to scruff the misbehaving pup. (His sons—) “He hurt Nami. She was crying. I wouldn't forgive him even if he said he was sorry.”

Luffy’s anger is not yet the wrath of a God, but the seeds of it are there. Someday soon those seeds will grow into a rage that bleaches the sky and calls forth a red and bloody dawn. For now he is a child, disrespecting an enemy’s corpse. (Joyboy longs for his own limbs, if only to embrace the boy.)

“The forgiveness doesn’t really matter either, in the end.”

Kick, kick. Luffy glares sullenly at Arlong's body as though there are answers to be found in his ruined flesh. "That's stupid," he says.

"Yes," Joyboy agrees, softly. "It is."

#One Piece #monkey d luffy #monkey d. luffy #Joyboy #Joy Boy #Sun God Nika #Arlong The Saw #God AU #Deity AU #Reincarnated AU #I really need to come up with an actual name for this fic #buuuuuut that can wait until I'm done writing it #fic excerpt #teasers an excerpts #go ask alice #Anonymous

[hibiscusbabyboy]

Go Ask Alice (1973, dir. John Korty)

#1973 #go ask alice #john korty #beatrice sparks #prepcore #summercore #vintage coquette #coquette aesthetic #coquette #girlhood

[thegothicalice]

Hello !!!

I hate when people ask me about my demisexuality but can you tell me about you being "aromantic" ?? Is that like total aversion to love and affection ??

Not exactly? I just have no personal need for romantic affection in my life, not really an “aversion.” Love’s a complex thing and I enjoy reading about it and seeing it manifest romantically elsewhere I just don’t have much want for it personally, platonic love means more to me.

#go ask alice #aromantic #I… don’t particularly like or enjoy questions about this area of my life btw

[fentanyl-rabbits]

"Hello Alice" by Catrin Welz-Stein

#art #painting #Catrin Welz-Stein #alice in wonderland #surreal #go ask alice #white rabbit

[moon-sun-pessimist]

‘I'm not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I've gotten from books.’

Beatrice Sparks, Go Ask Alice

#book quotes #go ask alice #reading #booklr

[telekinesis-mind-control-comics]

#alice in wonderland #alice #go ask alice

[susiephone]

i just finished rereading "unmask alice" by rick emerson and am once again ready to resurrect beatrice sparks just so i can fight her personally. though tbh i feel like the fair thing would to be resurrect alden barrett's mother too and let her take a crack at her.

#booklr #unmask alice #go ask alice #jay's journal

[mysticalblizzardcolor]

Jefferson Airplane -White Rabbit-

#youtube #Go Ask Alice #Alice in Wonderland #Art #Music #60s music #Psychedelic music

[dollarbin]

Dollar Bin #33: Grace Slick's

Welcome to the WRECKING BALL!

Something you just gotta kneel down and submit to whatever The Dollar Bin offers.

I was down on my hands and creaky knees in my favorite shop a week or two back when I hit a vinyl goldmine: seven records I did not already own and knew I'd listen to at least once. Seven records for a dollar each. Seven!

Well, a lot of what I bought ultimately sounded pretty mediocre so calling it a goldmine is a stretch. I'm guessing you need a lot of iron to forge a wrecking ball big enough for Grace Slick to mount and crash about on so let's say I hit an iron mine. Check Grace out on the album's backside.

I'm guessing OSHA did not approve this photo shoot. But saying I hit an iron mine still doesn't sound quite right... After all, I suspect a lot of what I bought sucks: Stephen Stills 2 was in the stack. So maybe it was more like a tin mine? Tin doesn't sound like a valuable metal and, sorry Grace Slick, but ridiculous as your record appears it may win up not even worth a buck.

Even so, did I waiver before laying down my 93 pre-tax cents for Grace Slick's Welcome to the Wrecking Ball, an album which I knew absolutely nothing about from an artist who, apart from her early penchant for chasing rabbits and someone to love, is largely a mystery to me? Definitely not. After all, what the hell else are you gonna buy for 93 cents and then take any interest in? 1/8th of a burrito?

And there's always the chance that a record which looks this wacky will have songs that are equally bonkers. And bonkers is good, yeah? Slick on the cover looks like she'd spent the day as an extra for a B grade zombie flick featuring a lot of smoke machines. And I love how Slick's name and the album's title were slapped on post production, perhaps by a real zombie. What's more, she's standing prominently on Steiner Avenue. And that has got to mean something. Right? Maybe? Please tell me this a big, well thought through concept record, every line and every sound and every image dedicated to one silly cause...

Including the gatefold image; what's Slick out to smash here? The patriarchy? Stephen Sills? Us? Man, I'm getting excited.

There are no Captain and Tennelle and their corpulent dog records framed on the walls of my home as ironic testaments to my wit; nor do I own any savvy Hanging With My Gnomies or Dogfather tees that proclaim my sardonic depths. But who the hell would have a record collection and not want to own this record based on its looks alone?

It's not strictly true to say that I don't know anything about Slick post Jefferson Airplane's debut record, the one which features the aforementioned two songs that everyone knows. I got a copy of Bark, their 71 record, out of the Dollar Bin the same day I picked this little number up and it sounds... unimpressive.

To begin with, that album's vinyl has more flexibility to it than the quinoa tortilla I tried to eat for lunch today; seriously, I could wrap up some beans and rice in my copy of Bark record and call it lunch (I guess I should add a fish head or two based on that record's cover).

Those quinoa tortillas, on the other hand, would be right at home on my turntable, and they might ultimately sound better than Welcome to the Wrecking Ball. (Fair reader, I'm still getting up the courage to finally drop the needle on this thing; I promise to do so before we're done.)

But Grace Slick deserves my respect and open mind, and I'm going to give it to her. After all, she helped me learn how to dance. For reasons that are now lost in the sands of time I went to an 80's elementary school in which the mothers and the cool kids decided that dance parties, complete with placing our mostly chaste hands on each other's hips for slow dances (one poor young lady had to dance every one of those with an insistent and utterly uncool me for three straight years; sorry Amy!), were meant to start in the 4th Grade.

Seriously! Starting at age 10 we'd gather together for birthday parties at the Badminton Club or in someone's backyard with the most intense of the cool kid's older brother as DJ (he'd do a steamy lip sink to Shout! mid-party; we'd all freak out with awe. That dude probably sells commercial real estate these days and actively fantasizes about building a time machine so he can go back and repeatedly relive the greatest moments in his life at those parties, during which he was a cheesy, corpuscled combination of Marty McFly, Ferrris Bueller and the Fonz to all us kids) and go two steps left and two steps right with a clap accompanying each motion to everything from Buffalo Soldier to, you got it, We Built This City on Rock and Roll, Slick's incredibly regrettable 85 anthem about the pressing need for more easily accessible rock clubs in everyone's hometown which routinely tops "Worst Song of All Time" lists.

Did we think We Built This City on Rock and Roll was the worst song of all time back in 4th grade? Heck no. Often, some of the 4 foot tall cool kids would mount party tables and dance on them during the track, belting out the lyrics in their smurf voices. We were a pack of 4th grade white kids and we were actively building a city on rock and roll in real time. And it was awesome. Honestly, I don't know if I've ever even heard the song as a grown up, and I'm not plastering it here. Play it in your own blog; I'm listening to it in my ten year old brain, and it's working some serious magic.

And so, Grace Slick deserves the benefit of the doubt! Let's drop the needle and see what her wrecking ball of a dollar bin record has in store for us.

Holy Freakin' and Sagging Space Balls. This record sounds like Joan Jett, only inexplicably worse; it sounds like Poison covering Motley Crew while on speed; it sounds like Tesla's, (we're talking about the band here, not the automobile; and why we're at it, are the members of Tesla sitting around right now even richer than Elon all because they copywrited their band's name?), follow up to their even-then-it made-me-apoplectic record Five Man Acoustical Jam entitled Listen to Us Destroy All Sense of Purpose Within You With Our Glam Rock Ninja Moves (okay they don't really have a record by that name; I made that up; but they do have a record entitled Bust A Nut, and I'd argue, without any basis of knowledge whatsoever, that that record sounds a lot like Welcome to the Wrecking Ball).

This song sounds like what they'd play in the concourse area before a Donald Trump rally: everyone's standing around bumping each other's fists behind their wrap around sunglasses indoors, no one has sleeves on their shirts, and everyone wishes they could get a pair of red, white and blue Trump brand solid gold sneakers for their very own; and of course they all know Jesus will soon descend once again, only this time he'll rock a polyester jumpsuit and go agro on everyone who doubts the Donald.

To be fair, there's nothing here to suggest that Slick was a Republican; I'm making unfair analogies. But there's also nothing here to suggest that Slick had any capacity for making music anyone would ever enjoy listening to. Come on, you decide: does a song like this give you any version of pleasure?

What's worse, I can't find anything on the record that's actually as good as the title track. Slick sings, or perhaps declaims is a better word for it, about how much she loathes music critics, then moves on to describe dominatrices with their hands on the whip who have the devil in their heart and so on; then she lays this on us:

Slick chases us around the stereo space while we flee in terror; listen to the guitar soloist prance, pose and persuade us to reconsider everything we hold sacred; and then, at the end of the song, listen to everyone go totally nuts. I hear screams, laser beams and drum drops; I hear the effects of a lot of coke. Or maybe Slick was just going all in a few years early, trying to come up with something that would get fourth graders to dance on tables. Because we absolutely would have done so to this song.

Someone, please, call Alice; tell her to bring the doormouse. I want my 93 cents back.

#grace slick #jefferson airplane #Youtube #stephen stills sucks #we built this city on rock and roll #go ask alice #tesla the band #joe freakin' lala

[forthegothicheroine]

I've have the fortune of never having to read a Beatrice Sparks book, but I still very much appreciate getting a reminder of how awful she is. (The book you mentioned is going on my to-read pile). I wonder if gen Z kids have any awareness of her whole deal, or if Go Ask Alice has been consigned to history.

That's a really good question! I read Go Ask Alice when I was around 12 or so and had been given lots of Barnes & Nobel gift cards for my bat mitzvah. I'd heard it was about a girl who did drugs and died, and that there was controversy over whether it was true or not. I read it, and it didn't make a huge impression on me other than "Well, that was sad." I was pretty clueless about drugs, not being cool enough to get invited to any interesting parties, so it seemed plausible enough.

I don't know if Barnes & Nobel still sells Go Ask Alice, but I doubt they have the balls to sell Jay's Journal.

For those, Gen Z or otherwise, who don't know, Go Ask Alice was supposedly the true diary of a girl who, well, did drugs and died. Jay's Journal was supposedly the true diary of a boy who got into the occult and then died. Both, and other such books, were in fact written by Beatrice Sparks, a freelance writer and certified liar. (Also a Mormon, which I mention only because I've heard ex-Mormons say you can tell it from the language used in Go Ask Alice.) Alice was bullshit written at the height of panic about weed and LSD (for the record, both can be bad for you if you already have mental illnesses, but don't cause them on their own,) and it was pitched to a celebrity whose daughter's suicide may or may not have occurred under the influence.

That's bad and exploitative enough, but Jay's Journal was an act of monstrous cruelty. Sparks took the diary of a real kid who committed suicide, which was sparse but detailed depression, drugs, religious oppression, heartbreak, and intervention by parents that we would today call abuse. Based on him being vaguely into hippie mysticism and having once used a ouija board, she slandered him as an animal-sacrificing satanist who had been possessed by a devil, and his girlfriend as the same. This was a journal that had been sent to him by the boy's mother, who believed in Go Ask Alice and thought that getting the word out about teen depression was important.

A lot of lies get spread around today about teens in danger, often by other teens on places like TikTok, but in the age of google, it is at least a lot easier to look things up if they sound implausible (whether or not people actually do so.) I have no idea what they're teaching kids these days about drugs, especially in states where weed is legal; I was taught that all drugs were super addictive, until I reached my senior year and a health teacher admitted not all of them were. I imagine it varies wildly. I don't know if any conservative schools out there use Go Ask Alice as required reading, but it's possible.

(Hilariously, Go Ask Alice is also one of the most banned and challenged books in high school libraries because there's lots of implausible sex in it.)

So, to kids and parents and teachers, I guess the lesson here is to verify things where you can. If you see a viral post that sounds outlandish, check for it on Snopes. If people are scared that teens are levitating pencils with their minds due to the powers of the devil, ask why those kids haven't gotten a million dollars from James Randi. Google an author's name if something feels off. Because sometimes outlandish stuff turns out to be true, but sometimes people have a lot to gain by lying.

(And read Unmask Alice by Rick Emerson.)

I'll let Paul F. Thompkins and Danny Lavery have the final words:

The Stages of Accepting That Go Ask Alice Wasn’t Real

Lines From Go Ask Alice That, In Hindsight, Should Have Tipped Me Off That This Was Not A True Story

#go ask alice #unmask alice #books

[spiralhouseshop]

New in the Spiral House Catalog!

Unmask Alice: Lsd, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries by Rick Emerson

Full disclosure, I loved the Go Ask Alice and Jay's Journal books as a younger teenager. As an older teenager growing up in Utah, I actually listened to Rick Emerson, the author of Unmask Alice, on the radio. When I moved to Portland I was happy to find his familiar voice on the radio again and have followed his endeavors ever since.

That being said, this book is excellent. It's well documented. It's a great story and an intriguing peek behind the scenes of what motivated the tragic War on Drugs and the Satanic Panic told almost in journal-like digestible segments that keep the story moving along to an earnest and revealing story.

Hardcover 384 pages

From the Publisher:

Two teens. Two diaries. Two social panics. One incredible fraud. In 1971, Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed diary of a middle-class addict, Go Ask Alice terrified adults and cemented LSD's fearsome reputation, fueling support for the War on Drugs. Five million copies later, Go Ask Alice remains a divisive bestseller, outraging censors and earning new fans, all of them drawn by the book's mythic premise: A Real Diary, by Anonymous. But Alice was only the beginning. In 1979, another diary rattled the culture, setting the stage for a national meltdown. The posthumous memoir of an alleged teenage Satanist, Jay's Journal merged with a frightening new crisis--adolescent suicide--to create a literal witch hunt, shattering countless lives and poisoning whole communities. In reality, Go Ask Alice and Jay's Journal came from the same dark place: Beatrice Sparks, a serial con artist who betrayed a grieving family, stole a dead boy's memory, and lied her way to the National Book Awards. Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries is a true story of contagious deception. It stretches from Hollywood to Quantico, and passes through a tiny patch of Utah nicknamed the fraud capital of America. It's the story of a doomed romance and a vengeful celebrity. Of a lazy press and a public mob. Of two suicidal teenagers, and their exploitation by a literary vampire. Unmask Alice . . . where truth is stranger than nonfiction. Find it in our catalog here

#go ask alice #unmasking alice #rick emerson #books

[dionysianpubliclibrary]

Go Ahead. Submit.

The Vineyard is now open.

Play well, stranger, and may good health find you as you wander between the rows.

We've been waiting for you.

#call for subs #writing #art #poetry #punk #zines #comics #d.i.y. #fiction #folk punk #diy #go ask alice #dionysian public library #dpl

[hibiscusbabyboy]

Go Ask Alice (1973, dir. John Korty)

#1973 #go ask alice #john korty #beatrice sparks #summercore #prepcore #autumncore #fallcore #hell is a teenage girl #girlblogger #girlblogging #this is what makes us girls #girlhood #girl interrupted #lux lisbon #vintage coquette #coquette #coquette aesthetic #partycore #tw: drugs

[thegothicalice]

Hi! I want to watch more films and well you are kinda the person to ask! So how do you find the time to watch so many films? How do you come up with what to watch and where/how do you tend to watch them?

And any other tips and tricks?

Oh boy, this is a slightly tricky question? But to start— loving movies is a full-on hobby that I make time for, including researching and learning a lot about film history, meta analysis and other things I have shelves of books about.

For one, I’ve used the tv as background noise while doing other things since roughly middle school— so it’s very common for me to watch a movie during breakfast and dinner, and do multiple movies during days off that I’m working on some kind of project. It’s a whole “if I’m not doing two things at once I can’t pay attention to either” situation. (And when I was doing 45-60 hours a week of drawing homework in college and still could find the pirating websites I can’t use anymore I watched so many movies).

I am very much a horror nerd. And in general, the horror community can be like being part of a club and being able to know director filmographies and intricacies of subgenres is part of that community— and since a lot of the actors and directors and effects people worked together in this kind of weird expanding web it makes exploring the genre kind of like a game (like I like The Thing and oh Rob Bottin worked on The Howling too and learned the craft from Rick Baker who was the first to get an Oscar for special effects makeup while working on An American Werewolf in London that John Landis directed but he also did the vampire movie Innocent Blood like ten years later and—). There’s a reason my Letterboxd watchlist never seems to dip below 600 even watching at least once movie every day.

I use Shudder a lot, but also Prime, Hulu and Tubi, and occasionally there’s stuff free on YouTube. I also hoard a lot of physical media. Since I’ve recently given up on Netflix I’ve been finding bootleg Blu-ray’s on eBay, because relying on internet when I’ve had many years of bad Wi-Fi and also a deep love of special features and commentary means physical media is something important to me (there’s a whole thing about preserving history outside of the internet’s ability to make things disappear but that’s a whole other conversation)

(This is about 8’x5’)

Like I can have whole long diatribes about movies, because it’s a thing I get really into— I did rope one of my friends into a whole thing explaining the moral and existential concepts in Saw and Hostel II and the way to make PG-13 horror films function successfully and why 2000s horror in relation to American political landscape was Like That for almost an hour yesterday— which is why giving advice for new or casual watchers is tricky for me 😅

Anyway I have no clue if any of that was helpful but good luck!

#go ask alice #movie questions #physical media

[melancholydoll]

I love Long Beach.

This was a in Bixby knolls.

#me #los angeles #california #Long Beach #lbc #weekend fun #weekend drives #friends #I love car rides #go ask alice #alice in wonderland