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chorusnihili · 3 years

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what is wd gasters past

"A rather broad and invasive question, I'd say, but I suppose I can give you the rundown."

"I was born on the surface while tensions were already high, enough that my parents, assuming that I had them, were gone before I had a chance to remember them. I was mostly raised by a mismatch village of monsters; well-cared for, not the only one that didn't have a specific home."

"I didn't miss living on the surface and never wished to return there, quite frankly. The only thing that made it worth living there is that in my final few years there, I did have something close to an adoptive parent. Who, unfortunately, chose death over leaving their home."

"A lot of monsters like to paint the underground as this hellish, soul-sucking fate worth than death. Personally I never found it that bad. I suppose I never was the type to feel wanderlust or anything of the sort. I was happy merely knowing we were safe and humanity likely had no interest in pursuing us."

"So I dedicated most of my life to making the Underground as good a place as possible. Anything that could make life more bearable. Try to cheer up those affected the worst by the change. During this time, a lot of monsters took up psychology; you can find a lot of studies on stress, despair, and trauma written during this time; techniques for coping and helping loved ones, many of which still hold up to this day."

"Unfortunately given the fact that communication has always been a hassle to me, it ultimately wasn't a field of study that suited me well, although I've been told I'm a good listener."

"So my attention broke from such studies to poking around the world about me. Much of the underground was new and needed to be explored and understood, and, what can I say, I was young and ready to believe that magic could do anything. Except, maybe, restore my eyesight. Heh."

"The migration through the underground was relatively linear. The forests of Home, the snowy landscapes of Snowdin, the rainy marsh of Waterfall, the deep caves of Hotland, and finally, the empty caves of New Home. But New Home was the end. The final stop. Assuming a vaguely dome-shaped barrier forming to the shape of the mountain, we had found it on all sides; the entrance at Home, the exit at New Home, the presumably small entries in Waterfall that human trash falls through, the tunnels in Hotland that the lava flows through. We reached the end; there was nowhere else to go."

"Monsters began to fan out, build permanent civilizations. Asgore and Toriel chose to build their castle and kingdom right on the cusp of the barrier; why, I'm not entirely sure. Perhaps it was meaningful, to them. A sign of having conquered the humans, something to put them at ease. I never asked, it never seemed appropriate."

"Although many monsters seemed disappointed that there was nowhere else to go, I found a sense of satisfaction from it. We had discovered everything; there was nothing else that might creep out from the shadows. We had an understanding of the world we now lived in, a map from top to bottom, left to right. And now, all we had to do was reshape it into the world we wanted it to be."

"Much of my early life was uneventful. I spent a lot of time in theoretical research, interested in the topics of how and why magic worked, but specifically, the interaction of two magical forces. Why some attacks seemed to be so devastating and others seemed to do no damage at all. A spent a fair amount of years analyzing magic, categorizing it, writing formulae for the so called Stats, for LOVE, EXP, HP, ATK, DEF, INV, et cetera, et cetera. Frankly, the field is incomplete; close enough for most situations, I think, but not perfect. I found it wasteful to continue efforts on it. I believe that the main goal of science is to improve life; if the science cannot be applied to do so, then I do not see the point in continuing it.”

“My studies were broad and varied. Sometimes I’d dip into the health sciences, sometimes I’d dip into architecture. I’d do odd favors for people, look into anything that caught my interest, sometimes even take up tasks for the King himself; ones of minor interest that he didn’t want to bother the Royal Scientist with.”

“But, the focal point of my studies always came back to energy. What could we do with it? How can we harness it? All monsters are made up of energy, of magic, it’s inherent to our souls, the way we express ourselves, even our body is made of magic, turns into magical dust due to a complicated chemical reaction when HP is depleted.”

“This, of course, lead to my most famous accomplishment. The idea of using magic to power things had been around forever, before recorded history. But there was always a mage or monster involved, directly or indirectly powering the thing in question. I sought to cut out the intentional casting of a spell to induce power. After all, this entire Underground was full of ambient magic; from previous spells, simply from Monsters existing; recycled, reused, breathed in and out, baked into food and released again: Why couldn’t the world itself power things?”

“It turned out to be more complicated than expected; failure after failure taught me that it simply wasn’t feasible to use magic without a soul casting it. But, we found another way--and to be fair, it wasn’t exactly an idea so much as exploratory research, but research with very promising results. Promising enough to earn me another scar on my face, heh. Had one of the other scientists not pulled me out of the way, I might have been destroyed by the CORE before the CORE was even a thing.”

“Nonetheless I was far from discouraged. I was actually very ecstatic. Enough so that Asgore had a very hard time calming me down and getting me to explain what had happened and why I had a new crack down my face.”

“I started work on the CORE immediately. Sketching out blueprints and gathering people to start building the skeletal structure of the building while I put together the intricacies of the mechanism that would create and convert pure energy that could be harnessed and used for whatever purposes we desired. It took a very long time, but it’s no doubt one of my greatest creations. Asgore asked me to take up the position of Royal Scientist not long after. I accepted, of course, I wouldn’t think of declining, but it was a very strange thing to me.”

“It wasn’t long after that when the human child arrived. I remember hearing about it, one of the other scientists telling me that Asriel had chosen to keep the child. Keep the child, I had thought, like a pet, like a person would choose to keep a dog or a cat. I thought it frankly ridiculous, but having the human child around brought a new era of hope to the kingdom and, I, ... couldn’t resist being pulled along. I personally thought that the idea of peace between humans and monsters was ridiculous, but it was such a pleasant idea and the people were so happy...”

“Of course, it didn’t last. In a single night, both the human child and Asriel had passed away. The duo had broken through the barrier, only to seal their own deaths. It was a travesty. A whirlwind of horrors, one after another. The devastation, the despair--it was unlike anything I had ever experienced, even when humanity had first sealed us underground. At least then, we had the relief of peace. Now, we had nothing.”

“The King declared war on humanity.”

“It was a dark time.”

“The peaceful life I had was replaced by one of fear and anxiety. I knew what humans were capable of. I lived through it, I wore the mark of their hostility on my skull--and Asgore wanted to willingly throw us back into that over revenge? We wouldn’t survive. There was no way we’d survive. But if there was any chance of giving us any sort of fighting chance, I was going to find it.”

“My research turned from finding ways to make the underground better to combat. Once again, energy proved to be my friend. I revisited old research about LOVE and EXP and ATK and DEF--and wrote up a hypothesis about another state. ITK. Intent to Kill. Unlike LOVE and EXP, which are slowly, solely increasing values, ITK rapidly fluctuates and acts as a modifier on attack. Even a soul with a LOVE of 1 can do an extreme amount of damage if they, in a particular moment, are filled with the desire to kill the one they are striking.”

“Monsters aren’t made for war. In general, monsters aren’t made for hurting each other. It’s one of the many reasons we were slaughtered so mercilessly. So I created a ... weapon. That could circumvent that weakness. The ITK Blasters, as I called them, could take even the smallest ITK and multiply it to do horrific damage.”

“I did other research on the topic as well. How to convert HP into a temporary boost of ATK. With these two advancements...even a monster as relatively weak as I am could be incredibly strong.”

“I wanted to perfect the techniques before I tried teaching them to anyone. But, such things never came to pass. Asgore lost his will to continue seeking war. He knew that he had only declared war in a fit of rage and to give his people hope. So rather than continue killing, he wanted to find a different way to bring everyone hope. He wanted to find a way to break the barrier without anymore bloodshed. He asked me to research the human souls.”

“...”

“I wanted no parts of it. We got into a ... rather nasty fight. I said a lot of things I regret. I called him a coward for bending to the will of his people instead of doing what was right. I told him that any attempt to breach the barrier would result in the complete extinction of our species. I told him that it was his job as king to protect us, not lead us to our death.”

“I was angry and afraid, and I took it out on the wrong monster.”

“It’s about at this point that you really cannot understand my history without a basic understanding of how time flows. I’ll spare you the lecture of multiple timelines and parallel realities, but at the very least, you must understand that the flow of time is... well, it is inherently linear, but, consider it like a... I want to say a Turing Machine. Or perhaps, a VHS Tape. The same segments can be replayed again and again, can be overwritten, can change from iteration to iteration.”

“So the fact that Asgore died in this timeline...and is still alive in the current timeline...it may at first seem contradictory, but it is not, I assure you.”

“Asgore’s death hit the Underground hard. Undyne took over as Queen, but the knowledge that the last remaining member of the Royal Family was gone still loomed over everyone’s heads. Undyne was more determined than Asgore ever was to free the monsters and I felt like there was nothing I could do.”

“So...There was little I did. I was overwhelmed with grief and hatred. I kept at the research. I honed the abilities, again and again and again. I drove myself to exhaustion, I isolated myself. I barely slept and ate. I neglected my duties and while the others understood I was grieving, it eventually got to the point that Queen Undyne delivered the ultimatum that I had to either get my act together or surrender my position as Royal Scientist. I resigned without any argument.”

“Much of the time is a blur. Most of my studies and research done with poor practices and hardly documented. The research that lead to me creating Sans falls into this. I wished to know if...

“Of course, two monsters can create another soul. This much is obvious, monsters reproduce on a regular basis, enough that in the modern day, there’s an ongoing population crisis for monsters that need certain environments. But I wanted to know if ... a monster, could theoretically, singularly donate a portion of their soul and create another living monster out of it.”

“This is probably a piece of research that very much fits the criteria of not stopping to think whether or not I should try to do so.”

“It required extracting part of my soul. Which, to do so without killing the monster, requires a massive power source...luckily, or unluckily, I had the entire CORE at my disposal. So I constructed a machine that could, indeed, extract part of my soul. What resulted was the most painful experience of my life and left me comatose for six months. It’s also the cause of the circular scars in my palms.”

“I hadn’t intended to extract two pieces of my soul, but, it happened, whether through oversight or simply as a matter of how the procedure was carried out. I used the smaller piece to create Sans; intending to keep the larger piece for further study. I destroyed everything used in the experiment afterwards. I felt it was something that no monster should have the power to do.”

“That’s not to say I regret creating them. I don’t, and nothing will ever change that opinion, even knowing some of the terrible things they’ve done in other timelines. But I do regret the methods that lead to their creation.”

“I don’t know why Sans is so weak. And I resisted the urge to try to figure it out. There’s a fine line between a healthy interest in your child’s health and treating them as a science experiment, and I ... wanted to stay as far away as possible from that line. He’s fine the way he is. He doesn’t need to be fixed.”

“That didn’t stop me from using the second piece of my soul to create Papyrus to look after him, though. Or teaching him magic to the best of my ability, even teaching him how to use the Gaster Blasters.”

“Having them...helped. A lot. I won’t say whether I was very good at it, but I enjoyed being a father very much. The grief was still heavy, but I was able to start returning to a somewhat normal life, and even start following what was going on in the Underground again. I learned of Doctor Alphys’s research on the human souls, and though I personally disagreed with it... decided to look into it in Asgore’s honor.”

“My immediate thought was that her ideas about Determination could mesh well with my previous research about soul extraction, albeit with a few modifications--although I had destroyed the equipment I used for the process, I remembered it well enough. So I got to work on a theoretical DT Extractor; but the further I got with it, the more horrified I became.”

“I simply couldn’t tolerate the idea of it. Humans or not, already dead or not--the mere idea of extracting the literal lifeforce out of a soul... No. It was not a process I would condone.”

“I had just finalized my decision to destroy the blueprints when I fell.”

“It was... a laughably simple mistake, really. The CORE is designed to rearrange itself to prevent the wear from the heat from causing too much damage in any one area. The doors pneumatically seal themselves to prevent egress during this time but... I was simply too distracted by the blueprints and I opened the door, and walked through anyways.”

“There were no further safeguards. There was nothing I could do to save myself. It was over before I had a chance.”

“...”

“I don’t regularly talk about my time in the void. Not because doing so bothers me, but because it’s simply... indescribable. When I awoke, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. There was no me, but my consciousness existed. I could see and hear thousands of timelines at once, as if I was standing in an arena, with each and every seat filled with a television playing a different movie. A jumbling mess of information.”

“I have no idea how long I was there for. It was like learning to exist all over again. Step by step. Learning how to move closer to visions of interest. Learning how to seep into those visions. Learning how to block out the immense noise. Learning how to speak without a body. Learning how to see the void. Learning how to construct a body out of it. Learning how to hunt down my timeline.”

“In many ways, it was a rebirth, and with each and every step, I lost more of myself. I lost myself to the aching hole of my soul being missing. I lost my conscience, I lost my heart. I dedicated everything to the endless goal of stitching myself back together again.”

“I learned so much about the reality I live in. How malleable it and time is. I evolved into something grotesque, something that shouldn’t be alive. I gained power that no monster or human should have. Things, and even souls, could be changed at my whim. And yet the one thing I truly wanted seemed to be impossible.”

“I did a lot of terrible things while I was stuck like that. Some were intentional, some less so. Many were reset thanks to Flowey, others will never be fixed.”

“I have Sans to thank for finally helping me to achieve the goal, even if not fully. He built a machine that gathered enough of my soul that... I’m able to manifest my original form and can think clearly once again.”

“Even so... It didn’t change the fact that my soul is still shattered, somehow held together by the tug-of-war between Determination and Void, and that my fall into the Void reset the timeline into a state where I never existed.”

“And that leads us to now. The Gaster you currently speak to exists in a timeline that has made it to the surface, though I’m not particularly fond of being up there and generally hide in my lab in the CORE.”

“Well, I certainly hope you didn’t expect even a rundown of over a thousand years to be short.”

“...Or, were you posing the question to someone other than myself...?”

#let type = answer #Anonymous #let type = headcanon #let type = in character #let form = refused #((Gaster stop talking holy shit

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sir-silly · 4 years

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The Last War fan review

So, our beloved show has ended. And while I wish things would have gone differently, I did cry with relief when Clarke looked over and saw everyone already waiting for her.

Anyway, I wanted to share some of my thoughts on the finale.

1) Going right into the title sequence kind of shocked me. It wasn’t that big of a deal, but I was just immediately like “oh.” It was a bitch-slap in the face that they left a gap in the credits for Bob Morley. Why you gotta do us like that?

2) Murphy screaming “come on” while they used the defibrillator on Emori was heartbreaking. And his little whispered encouragements were so freaking cute.

3) Clarke rampage? Yes, please! I love me a badass woman. However, unlimited ammo is a sin in writing. The moment Octavia picked up the sword was a big “oh yes.”

4) Did Cadogan not care about his son like at all? Lmao. Why is he so hung up on Callie and not his other kid (who I can’t even remember the name of). I don’t care if they explain in the prequel, that’s still a shitty parent choosing favorites. Along with his wife, like, was she not his greatest love? It was Callie? Kinda fucked up.

5) Why the fuck could Jordan figure out it was a test and not a war in 5 seconds when the Disciples were studying that shit for decades? I know he’s Monty’s son, but he’s not a genius or anything.

6) Thoughts on the test: I think Cadogan would have failed and the human race would be destroyed. Why bother asking questions if you already know all the answers?

7) Why wasn’t Gaia in the finale like at all?? Like, what the fuck. She was hunting??? For what?? That really annoyed me because I’ve grown to really like her and there was no point in her not being involved in the last episode. They seriously couldn’t have thrown her in there? Like, come on! Even Niylah was there! (not saying that I don’t like her, it’s just that Gaia has felt far more important to the story than her).

8) I do think that Jasper and Hope are cute together, and I know they spent the majority of their lives either alone or only with their parents, but GOD I can’t stand how awkward they are. Also, I know ya’ll have feelings for each other and shit, but is now really the time to be making out?? Why do people think that’s okay in literally the worst situations? I know it’s a show, but come on.

9) And how the fuck did Jordan throw and catch that sword? He’s a child who’s never fought a day in his life. Unless they suddenly want to tell me that Harper and Monty were secret ninjas and taught him all their tricks, I don’t believe that.

10) I’m being pissy and bringing up things from the past, but I don’t care. Why the fuck couldn’t Harper and Monty gone into cryo? I know they were happy and shit, but I’M NOT. How the fuck did it take so long for him to get into the files for Sanctum? His ass has done that shit a thousand times before in about two minutes and suddenly it takes him 80 years? Bullshit.

11) I’m still being pissy, but how the fuck does Jordan know what a magician is? “For my first trick, I will make an army appear.” Bruh, no. Monty wouldn’t have known what a magician was either. If they weren’t being taught what a Navy Seal was, there’s no way they knew what magicians were. Calling bullshit on that one as well.

12) I was pretty surprised that the Disciples didn’t start firing on Wonkru immediately. Like, this is the war they’ve been gearing up for forever and they don’t attack as soon as possible? Also, where the fuck did Wonkru get their war paint? Do they just constantly have it on their person? Or did their asses literally spend time making their paint before going to Bardo?

13) I fucking love Miller and Jackson. They’re freaking adorable. Murphy’s flat “I am glad you are safe” was so fucking funny. Also, saving Emori in one scene just to kill her in the next is bullshit. They should have just killed her the first time and done the same thing anyway. Murphy screaming at Jackson to do something and sobbing was heartbreaking. Fantastic acting on Richard Harmon’s part.

14) Octavia putting on Lincoln’s same warpaint again was once again, so sad. I miss that man. He was too good for his own good. And while I do think that her and Levitt are very cute together, I’ll always prefer her with Lincoln. But I think that he would be really happy that she has found someone new to love.

15) Apparently whatever Echo “did” to Levitt was so forgettable that I don’t even know what she’s talking about. Bad writing. I shouldn’t forget that in just a few weeks, I should remember as soon as I see the two of them in the same room.

16) Lexa. Just all of it. There were some suspicions that she would show up for the last episode, but I didn’t really believe them because I didn’t understand how she would be integrated. I’m glad that they did bring her back, but I’m also not. It was amazing to see her back by Clarke in all of her armor and glory, but knowing it wasn’t actually Lexa was just a punch in the face. It wasn’t her mind, so it’s almost like they didn’t bring her back anyway. I honestly would have preferred if they used someone else for her Judge, because that just really didn’t do it for me. Their hug was sweet, but it didn’t even count as her returning. I personally think that her Judge should have been Bellamy or Madi instead, as they both certainly could fill the role of “the subject’s greatest teacher or the source of their greatest failure...it can be their greatest love.” This is just my preference. Believe me, I know how much Lexa meant to Clarke, but as a fan, bringing our favorite Heda back in that way wasn’t the best way to do it. As a writer, it makes sense, but it doesn’t as a fan. The writers can’t just think of what is the best storytelling, they have to think of what those watching will think.

17) I’m confused about the mindspace? Why did Clarke wake up in her solitary room with her memories painted all over the walls, but Emori woke up in the castle with a view of the desert? Why wouldn’t it have been her and Murphy’s cave? Is there a reason it was the bedroom and not the cave?

18) I know this isn’t canon in any sense, but could you imagine if Murphy and Emori fought over John’s body and she won, and then suddenly woke up with a penis? How fucking funny would that be? Just had to throw that out there.

19) Can I just again reiterate how fucking cute Miller and Jackson are?

20) I’m curious about the location of the test. Why did Cadogan’s take place on a pier, while Raven’s happened on the Ark? If it was their favorite place, wouldn’t Raven’s have been actually out in space? Like during a spacewalk? I’m confused about that.

21) I knew that Raven was somehow going to be involved in the test just because of the trailers we got for the final episode. My two guesses for who the judge would be were Finn and Abby. Though I am happy that we got to see Abby again, I would be curious to see if the scene would have played out any differently if it had been Finn.

22) Where was the full line that was given in the trailer? Because that was amazing. “We’re selfish, and we’re violent, and we have destroyed too much, but we survived.” I loved that line far more than what we got instead, which was simply, “Have we made mistakes? Yes. Clarke, me, all of us, but we were just trying to survive.” I definitely would have chosen the former over the latter. Poor choice on the editors’ parts.

23) How the fuck did Octavia and Echo go out to the field and get Levitt with Echo only being shot once? With all the bullets, the three of them should have been torn apart, I don’t care how much Indra could cover Octavia. Calling bullshit on that as well.

24) Bringing this up kind of late because I’m giving my reviews as I’m rewatching the episode, but what they had Eliza do was really fucked up. Her and Bob suffered a miscarriage during the filming of season seven, so the scene of her holding Madi and crying “my baby” is like 10 times more heartbreaking. If they made her film that after having a miscarriage mere days, weeks or few months before, that’s really, really messed up.

25) They really played-up Sheidheda’s bringing back of “jus drein jus daun” in the trailer. In reality, it was far less intense. I would have preferred what I had been expecting, which was him coming to help convince Wonkru that they would be able to win. However, I am super glad that he is dead and Indra finally got to kill him. I love how that bigass gun just turns people into mist lol.

26) The beginning of Octavia’s speech was literally like “what the FUCK guys” and it was hilarious. And I swear to god if I hear her say “we are Wonkru” or “you are Wonkru” another time, I’m gonna scream. I know it was legit the last episode but I’m sick of it by now lol. When Indra was like “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Octavia’s face was just like “omg me too” and it was really funny.

27) Bellamy. His situation was a whole problem itself. He deserved a hell of a lot better and wHY DID HE CUT HIS HAIR I LIKED IT THE LONG WAY. Anyway, you can bet your ass I’ll be writing a different ending where he didn’t die because FUCK THAT. When I do, I’ll be sure to share it.

28) I’m fucking confused about Murphy and Emori both transcending. Because, what the fuck. Emori died. The dead don’t transcend. Her mind wasn’t even in her body, it was in Murphy’s. So how the fuck did she end up alive and in her own body again. I’m glad she’s alive, but I just don’t understand. It would have made way more sense to have either not had her die in the first place, or to have Murphy, Miller, and Jackson keep pumping her heart so she technically “lived” anyway like Echo.

29) If Madi had decided not to transcend, would she still have been paralyzed? I mean, I would assume not because Levitt and Hope’s gunshots were healed, as was Emori, but I’m curious. Also, wouldn’t Raven’s leg have been fixed? Because if they only fix recent wounds and not old ones, that’s stupid.

30) On the point of Madi deciding not to transcend, why did she? Why didn’t so many other people choose not to? Like, not one Eligius prisoner or person from Sanctum chose to live? No one else from Wonkru? Why didn’t anyone else other than the main cast and guest stars not transcend? I totally understand the Disciples transcending, but seriously, nobody else wanted to live? That’s really weird. Madi and her friends really couldn’t have chosen to live on Earth with Clarke and the others? I just think it’s really unrealistic that not one single person outside of the group chose not to transcend.

31) I was really surprised that Murphy and Emori chose not to transcend, because as the Judge said, they would eventually die and not join them in the infinite. It shocked me due to their fear of dying and wanting to be immortal, but I’m really proud of them.

32) I’m disappointed that those who don’t transcend can’t have children. There were suspicions that Emori might have been pregnant (which were never confirmed), but the idea of her and Murphy having a kid together was adorable. They’d have their teeny tiny families with those two, Hope and Jordan, and Octavia and Levitt.

33) This isn’t as much me pointing out a problem as me wondering, what was Clarke going to say to the Judge when she turned around? What else did she have to say or ask? Was it about Madi? Or maybe Lexa? Or just transcending in general?

34) It’s pretty shitty that some of our questions went unanswered due to the fact that there will be a prequel. On the other hand, I live for lore, so I’m just glad that they eventually will be answered. But still, that doesn’t excuse shitty writing.

35) I want to see a stupid edit of Picasso taking the test where the Judge is Madi.

I think we all know that season seven was really not what we wanted it to be. We’ve been really disappointed by the writers and unfortunately, this is what we got out of it. I believe they really could have done a better job, but I am at least glad that everyone ended up together.

The writing was lacking. Too many questions were left unanswered, I don’t care if you’re making a sequel or not. Plot holes. It really could have been a good season if it was done better.

My ranking of the seasons is as follows: 3, 2, 4, 1, 6, 5, 7. Seasons 4 and 1 are kind of interchangeable for me in spots three and four, as are 6 and 5 in the two spots behind them, whatever the order may be.

But I still love the show. I love the characters, their development, and many things about it. It has been quite the journey and I am glad to have been a fan of the show.

May we meet again.

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tokowh · 3 years

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Accepting my own condition

It's time for me to finally talk about this. After finally working up the courage to speak about this to a close friend group thanks to what month this is, I finally feel comfortable enough to announce this publicly.

I am on the Autistic spectrum.

I've been afraid to speak about this because, not going into too gruesome of details, I was often alienated or at worst picked on because of my 'quirks'. Even to this day, I still feel leery about really speaking publicly about this because the internet has a rather... 'Checkered history' when it comes to people on the spectrum.

However, I think it's time I start speaking about this openly. I've been wanting to push myself out of my comfort zone for a while now, and with it being Autism Acceptance month, I figured now was as good a time as any.

As said, I am on the spectrum. In my case, it manifests as extreme anxiety in social situations and has a noticeable effect on how I communicate. I also have difficulties learning things the conventional way, most of the time. I was often held back a few times in school because of this. I'm going to go into this individually:

The social anxiety is the worst. I often find it hard to speak up when being talked to, often not saying more than I have to. It also makes it extremely hard for me to refer to people by their titles or names. If I'm typing I don't really have this problem, but I don't know why it is, but I really have to force myself to actually speak someone's name or title. (I definitely know this for a fact because it annoys my mom to no end that I have a hard time calling her mom. There's no malice behind it, I swear. It just feels like my voice hits a brick wall when I have to say someone's name or title.)

I suppose that's also a part of 'affecting how I communicate'. I am a much, MUCH better typer than I am at speaking. I have a soft and somewhat higher-pitched voice than most guys; I have no idea if that's part of me being on the spectrum or if that's just how my vocal cords unfortunately developed. In either case, it does not help me any. I'm extremely mic shy, having tried to speak in some online pubs before only to be mocked because of how I sound. This, of course, did not help my social anxieties in the slightest.

As a byproduct, I also tend to mumble random things that pop into my head if I start to drift off into my own head or if I'm feeling even slightly drowsy. Thankfully, if I slightly focus enough I can keep myself from doing stuff like that, but it's hard to keep on guard like that 24/7. As you can imagine, this also does not help my mic shyness one bit.

When it comes to learning things, I have rather extreme difficulties learning things by the book. When I was in school I was held back at least two-three times. Ironically, despite the fact that I'm much better at writing now than I am speaking, one of my greatest difficulties growing up was learning to read, write and spell. The internet definitely helped me thanks to it becoming the primary way we communicate these days, but until I first logged onto it, my grasp of the written language was very... 'Loose' to put it one way.

I definitely learn a lot better doing compared to reading or the like. And even then, it takes me several attempts to really get something down pact. Heck, despite apparently getting a 4.0 in my final year of high school, I could not tell you what I learned from it, especially anything relating to advanced math and algebra, to save my life.

Those were the main things I was planning on talking about. Now that those are out there, I suppose there are other things I'd like to address, in no particular order:

My 'special interest': I really do not like this term or the connotations that come with it. It feels like 'oh, so THAT'S why he likes 'x'' instead of it just being a facet of my personality. If I really had to say what it was though, I will say it'd probably be dragons. But again; even if I weren't on the spectrum, I'd like to think that'd I'd still like dragons because let's face it, they're kind of just a really amazing mythological creature with a lot of lore behind them. A close second would probably be the 90s, but that's more likely because I'm a nostalgic old fool who was born then and grew up really liking the aesthetic.

I have a bad habit of not letting things go and stewing on them longer than I should. What should be minor setbacks or failures to me always feel like a massive deal. There are days were something minor I did in the past that had no real repercussions on anyone, in the long run, will pop back into my head and refuse to leave. As you can imagine, it makes it hard to stay motivated on almost anything.

Lastly, as always, fuck Autism Speaks. Their scare tactics and spreading misinformation about what I have to line their own pockets is a major reason I've been so afraid to ever publicly announce this. Well over half the negative or harmful stereotypes people have with the spectrum originated from there.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'd like to thank a few people for finally helping me work up the courage to publicly admit this. Suede, whose own announcement on publicly admitting to being on the spectrum helped push me to think about this, the people on Kind Words, for taking their time out to help encourage a stranger not to be afraid, and the people on GoldenGriffiness' Discord server, who's acceptance of me finally announcing this finally gave me the confidence to speak publicly about this.

#autistic community #autismawerness #autism acceptence month

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imma-lil-teapot · 4 years

Text

TMNT 2003/2k3 Headcanon: Crying - (Leonardo)

Feel free to scroll past this first part if you’re not interested in my silly rambling and nonsense. I won’t mind. Promise. ;)

Okey-dokey then, with the global epidemic that is the Coronavirus well in action and most of the world stuck in lockdown (starting this Friday for us too), felt like getting the ‘ol creative juices flowing with a little headcanon-y thingy in preparation for -possibly- more fandom writings to keep myself busy during the house arrest (well... it kinda is!) and hopefully my mind off all the bad news. :(

Also, this is totally my first one on the blog! WOOT! Please bear in mind that I’m SUPER rusty! Haven’t written in ages so there are bound to be typos and all matter of general errors scattered throughout the post. Don’t pet them! They bite!

Anyhoo~ Despite attempting to create and share with the goal in mind to uplift spirits, I decided to start on a rather upsetting subject (PLEASE DON’T LEAVE! They end on happy notes ;) ) because, Imma just come and say it, I enjoy seeing my favourite characters shed tears (not for just any old reason -their personality plays a huge role in this- and CERTAINLY not for sadistic reasons, land sakes no! But... well, you’ll see~ ;) ) It makes me all gooey and fuzzy inside to see them display such raw emotion and I just wanna leap into the TV screen to hug and console them. I dunno why. Maybe I’m nuts like that. (Remembers Raph crying at the farm when Leo was badly injured and wishes she could just hug them all and take away the pain) Oh well, if you enjoy visualizing the same, then *High Fives*. :)

So yeah, if you read the title, you’ll know this is based on the 2003/2k3 series (my favs). Hope you all enjoy~ :D Grab tissues cause sad turts ahead! :’(

Jibber jabber stops here~

TURTLES~

LEONARDO - You are here

RAPHAEL

DONATELLO - Coming soon

MICHELANGELO - Coming soon

WARNING(S): Because of the subject, Angst and Hurt/Comfort will be present.

RATING: G (General)

WORD COUNT: Don’t have the foggiest.

ANYTHING ELSE TO ADD:

And apparently gifs too, so without further ado: (Completely unintentional but in actuality, totally intentional rhyming)...

TO THE HEADCANONS~~~~

~LEONARDO~

-- It’s no easy feat to make the leader in blue turn on the waterworks. Leo won’t cry for any old reason. It’s not because he has no emotions, far from it, but being the leader of a small ninja clan -who happen to be family as well- is no easy task in itself: he has a lot on his young shoulders and deals with many issues on a daily basis few his age ever have to.

-- It’s because of these reasons that Leo doesn’t cry often. One of the lesser likely to out of the four brothers. But when he does, it’s an emotionally distressing sight to behold.

-- Leo tends to cry whenever those closest to him -namely his brothers, his father/master and truest friends- are severely injured or are in a dire situation. Remember his angry/moody arc? The thought of losing any of them causes him great pain and distress, especially if he were the cause of any of it, and when that happens, he can’t stop the dampness that forms around his eyes and soaks into his mask.

-- He’s not fond of crying, especially in front of others, even though he fully comprehends its normalcy. He feels he needs to be everyone’s rock, their fortress of physical and emotional stability to turn to for strength when things get rough... So when the tears start to fall, he feels he can’t show them, can’t allow them to watch him crumble under the gripling weight of helplessness and anguish.

-- He frantically wipes at his eyes and desperately attempts not to sniffle, but it’s a hopeless battle, for his tears are already a steady stream.

-- He’ll try to hide when possible, usually retreating to his room to allow the worst of the emotions to spill over before returning to the others... Though he may be in there a while: when Leo lets his emotions go, it can be just as powerful as his red-banded brother’s rage.

-- He spares no time in making sure the coast is clear for the tears are already streaming by the time he reaches his futon, and there’s no stopping them now as he lets himself drop to his knees, only halfway onto the mattress. He purposefully leaves the room unlit, cloaking his form in the darkness.

-- He sniffs a few times as he shuffles up against the wall, sitting upright against it, bringing his legs up and hugging them loosely and droops his head against a single knee pad.

-- His voice desperately wishes to escape. To express its misery. But he won’t allow it to, often placing one hand over his face in a bid to quell the sadness and remain silent in the battle against his own inner turmoil. He refuses to let anyone see him in that state of utter sorrow and vulnerability.

-- He whimpers ever so slightly and coughs a few times as breathing becomes difficult. He knows this episode won’t be over any time soon. Fortunately, he keeps some tissues next to his bed for such rare occasions and tries not to blow too loudly. He thinks back to the last time he cried so hard... It’s been a while. It felt like a build up.

-- Time has been forgotten as he’s lost in deep thought. By the time he slips a hand across his eyes, only the material of his mask is still slightly damp. He clears his nostrils a couple of times before considering whether he was ready to return to his family. He’d of course straighten up his bedding beforehand, and would also require a trip to the bathroom to wash his face. A true ninja leaves no evidence.

-- Leo tries to put the horrifying images out of head before leaving his quarters. He doesn’t wish to be weighed down again and thus maybe cause his emotions to come out a second time. He knew someone would catch on that time. Instead, he holds his head up high, focusing on the there and now to carry him forward.

BONUS EXTRA~

-- Failure is also one of his greatest foes. Leo despises it, but not in the irrational sense; he fully comprehends that in order to grow, one has to lose in order to learn and thus, succeed in turn, and while it can frustrate him when he’s unsuccessful at mastering a martial arts technique for example, he understanders it’s part of the process and that no one’s perfect.

-- It’s when his slipups could spell casualties or death to his family and/or friends is when it weighs down on him like a boulder strapped to his shell.

-- A really big one.

-- And it hurts. So much so that it causes him to become despondent and often teary-eyed when no one’s looking.

-- Boi Bloo might also cry from especially sad movie scenes. He gets seriously into the story, and when the scene is just right -perfect music, perfect timing etc.- you may just catch Fearless with watery eyes.

-- He can’t help it. After all, he’s a leader, and very caring and kind-hearted individual, so movies showing children or anyone/anything defenceless getting hurt has him not only visibly upset, but also angry at the cause. He’s a softie like that.

-- He won’t have a meltdown, of course, but the tears are definitely there. Just don’t tease him too much; he’s easily embarrassed by it. ;)

BONUS EXTRA EXTRA FEMALE READER OR S/O EDITION~ (Can also use an OC/FC insert if you wish, up to you)

You had figured something was up by the time you’d finished greeting everyone in the Splinterson household except for the Turtle you’d long to see most and he hadn’t made his presence yet known.

The idea that he must’ve been practicing or meditating swiftly vanished when Mikey told you he’d been in his room in the dark for the past few hours. “The guy hardly ever naps, and even so, never this long.” He’d told you. “I dunno, (Y/N), we were about to check on ‘im when you arrived, but maybe you should be the one to. Think he’d really appreciate it.” And there was absolutely no argument from your side as you were already making your way up to the room.

You didn’t know what to expect as you neared the doorway. Could he possibly still just be sleeping? Meditating in the dark instead of his usual spot by the training area? Or... was he sick? The latter now had you concerned and you picked up your pace... Only to pause mid step when an unmistakable sound reached your ears: a sniffle.

Had it come from within his room? It was the only logical explanation as everyone else was downstairs. You were truly perturbed now as you stood outside the doorway and called out the ‘eldest’ Turtle’s name.

There was some shuffling to be heard but you were unable to tell for sure what he was doing -probably trying to neaten up his bed- “(Y/N)? Just a second, okay?” he responded in a rather awkward verging on frantic tone, and you were certain you heard another sniffle escape him.

That, along with the way he’d replied really didn’t help to put your mind at ease. “Leo, are you alright?” Nor was the pitch blackness in which he remained concealed in.

“Yeah, just... l-looking for something.” There was some more shuffling as if to prove his point, but you were having none of it.

“Then maybe this,” you began, turning around to flick the light switch, “will help?”

“No! Wait!” But it was a split second too late for as soon the brightness illuminated the entire room, you had caught the telltale signs of an emotional meltdown in progress plastered on his face before he quickly turned away and briskly wiped an arm across his face, attempting to hide the shame... or perhaps embarrassment?

“Leo...?” your heart and voice softened, “Hey, what’s wrong?” You automatically walked to him, closing the gap he was now trying to form.

“Nothing,” he lied, and acknowledged it was a fruitless attempt but still couldn’t stop himself. Autopilot panic mode was enabled now. “It’s nothing.”

Unfortunately for him, autopilot mother hen mode was activated for you as you reached with both hands to his carapace and shoulder, gently turning him to face you. “I can see that it’s something.” Your words were gentle, and you wanted nothing more than to take away his pain. “Look at me, Honey.” His body was turned but his head remained to the side. It was clear he didn’t want his obvious distress on display, even to you. “Please, Leo?” You tried again, and slowly but surely, his eyes met yours, and you felt your heart sink further.

The fabric of his mask was wet and eyes were still red with fresh tears that threatened to fall. He appeared so broken and helpless as he stared at you, and even though he uttered no words, you could practically hear him despairingly ask “Is this what you wanted? To see me at my lowest?” from his expression alone.

Never had you witnessed the leader of this band of mutant brothers cry. At times you had wondered if he ever did, and yet here he was; the incredible pillar of strength and dignity you had come to know and adore, in tears and so dejected that you couldn’t stop your own eyes from becoming damp the more you gazed at him. “Oh, Sweety...” You whispered as you felt your soul shatter. It was too much to bear. You slowly wrapped your arms around him, one around the midsection and the other over his shoulder, and buried your face into his leathery neck, offering every ounce of comfort you could muster.

It didn’t take him long at all to sink into the embrace and return the action. Beyond the point of concerning himself with showing the pain he felt -or the wetness now soaking into your shoulder when he placed his forehead against it- he sniffed and finally allowed the tears to fall once again as fresh waves of emotion surged throughout his body.

And this time, he couldn’t keep the whimpering to himself.

“Shh~ It’s okay, it’s okay,” you soothed, lightly patting and rubbing along the scutes of his shell as he weakly sobbed, finally letting go of all the sadness that gripped him.

You weren’t even aware of what was wrong, and you most likely wouldn’t find out til later once he calmed down, but right now, he just needed you to hold him. Hold him until the hurt was gone... And so you would.

AND THAT’S ALL SHE WROTE!

ALL THE FEELS!! I EMBARRASS!!

OMGosh, this turned into a monster! The mother of all HCs!! :O No seriously, this wasn’t meant to be this long! I was suppose to squish all four into one itty bitty little post, but then it just grew... and grew... and GREW! Personally, I blame the Reader Bonus but I’d be damned if I didn’t enjoy writing it! ;P You guys here on Tumblr got me slightly addicted to them and have wanted to attempt some myself so... Anyhoo~ I can’t really say if I’m entirely content with the whole thing, I dunno. I feel some parts are better than others (writing style-wise) but yeah, I really need to get back into the swing of things...

Speaking of which, I DO plan on adding my two cents on the other bois as well, but judging by how this one turned out, they’ll most likely all be this length, more or less, so each Turt will get his own post so I can really jot down those details with all the freedom in the world! That being said, I can’t say when they’ll be added but hopefully soon-ish. :) Raph's next on the list!

Thank you all so much for the read and hope you enjoyed~ :D

~Drag0n Mistr3ss’ Random Fandoms*

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isoisolated · 4 years

Text

I have ADHD and it's not fun

29/12 edit: coming back to this post, I just wanted to add that at the time of writing, my adhd was unmedicated. Thought this might be good thing to note.

My friend Ondrej kept sending me articles and texts posts written by other adhd people (mostly adult males) that it finally pushed me to write my own, because even though I could relate to some minor and major parts, something always felt a bit of and also because ADHD is a condition that's been heavily ignored by medical professionals not only in adults, but especially in adult women, which is a group I sort of represent myself.

I could talk about this for ages, my therapist frequently tells me that I have this gift of intense self-analysis and immense passion to get it all sorted out once for all. I guess it's another way of saying I'm so hyperaware of my own existence and my brain simply latches onto it and constantly tries to solve its own problems.

If you do not care about my own personal history, just skip to second headline.

I was clueless for the first 20 years of my existence

Now, ADHD isn't the only thing that's been making me feel almost alien, I dare to say that my puberty years were mostly about developing and internalising bit of trauma and processes that do no good in later life.

I love music. And I mean I truly endlessly unconditionally love music. Being a daughter of music composer, I was 6 when I first asked my dad to show me where to press record in Logic Pro and told him to leave me alone while I recorded my first song. It was called Autumn is here and it sounded like something made by 6 years old.

I remember we were attending castings for TV shows or commercials and later I was told that it was me who initiated such trips and that I always wanted to be a part of such things. I don't remember initiating such things but I remember for sure that I was very shy and uncomfortable when I was supposed to show off.

I remember I was supposed to take piano lessons. And I was so baffled that I had to follow the book and play what's in the book, instead of playing thing I wanted. I think I told my parents after few lessons that I do not like it and was dropped outta it. This became a pattern, if I recall correctly.

But that's nothing out of ordinary, kids are harder to get focused and entertained. I remember two moments from elementary school where I was told by my classmates that I'm acting like I have ADHD and it got me real mad every time, because in my head ADHD looked like not paying attention in class, being body hyper and overall just annoying.

I could find a proof that I made myself first to-do list when I was 14. Since 14 I felt like I need more self control and self regulation, that I need to fit myself more into ambitions I had and have and in order to do that, I started making to-do lists with ambiguous tasks such as “work more on music” and “work-out”. It was also in during my great isolation era, I had no real life friends but one that I was seeing occasionally, I wasn't going out, I came from school on Friday afternoon and left my room on Monday morning. I was making friends online since I was 11 and lived mostly online.

At that time I also started figuring out what was wrong with me. Since ever I always felt a bit “off” compared to my peers, I always felt weird (and was told that thousand of times in my life), I always felt like I was thinking about things a bit differently and my humour was different and my hobbies were seen obscure by my classmates (even though they weren't obscure at all). I felt alone for most of my growing up and feelings of complete loneliness and detachment haunt me to this day, making me spiral.

I thought I might suffer from bipolar disorder, because I had high energy episodes and my emotions were so intense. I was crying almost everyday for both external and internal reasons, my head sometimes felt like too much and I found temporary peace in self-help books and esotericism.

I was around 17-18 when I realised all of this is bullshit and that no book can make me do things that I wanna do. I'd spent hours, days and months thinking about doing things, being crippled by this weird force that hold my body down, unable to do anything, no matter how much I wanted it. I'd beat myself up for it, thinking I was just so damn lazy and stupid and pretentious. I wanna be a popstar, a successful musician, I have to do all these things and if not, I'm gonna fail so much and my life will lose its meaning.

When I was 17, I released my first EP and for some reason, it found some attention and success, if we might call it that. Suddenly I felt on the right path, I was seen as a musician and also very young one. Even though I still was sad almost every day or had intense sadness episodes that could last for a week, it felt right and I couldn't wait to finish high school and become a full time musician.

I'd produce music in unplanned episodes of total focus, where I would sit and do things for hours straight, without eating. My most favorite songs were made during 6-8 hour sessions and it felt amazing. I couldn't bring myself to produce music if I hadn't the right vibe or idea for it.

It was around that time this woman texted me, saying she wants to be my manager and that she really likes my music. It felt so unreal but here I am, with my own professional manager, on my way to be the most amazing music person.

I'd crush on people (and mostly boys and men) constantly, it was also very episodic, could last for days to month where I'd had nothing on my mind but them, drowned in daydreaming and just imagining things and also letting them know all of that. It was magical but it was fleeting. It still is. But it is the greatest inspiration, where I feel so much emotions it makes me see things and then I can transform them into music.

But there was still something wrong with me, I was very emotional, still struggling with making my routines work, I'd come up with new plans and schedules every week just to fail them the day after. It was exhausting and I saw nothing alike in my world too, I was alone and my experience was just not enough will power.

I could get mad so easily, I'd clench my fists and was so close to punching someone and when I hated someone I hated them with immense passion and spent hours just imagining myself confronting them. I was so mad all the time on background too and even slightest thing would put me in classic rage mode.

I have problems remembering dates and names, I'm bad at remembering people's faces, I'm bad at learning things by myself even though I have interest in them. I'm bad at making routine for myself and actually following it.

I finished high school and planned to go study abroad but it turned out it isn't what I want so I came back and started looking for a job. Around that time I met my now best friend and thanks to him I actually started thinking even harder what might be wrong with me, so I looked up ADHD. And didn't believe that at all. I wasn't like this, was I?

Then, the summer came and I met my friend (and also a fan) while being out for a beer. We chatted, had a great time and then told me I kinda am like a person with ADD. I was confused because I didn't recall what that does mean, later I remembered it's another (and outdated) term for ADHD, but it's the “quiet type”, where the hype happens mostly inside and doesn't manifest outside that much. So I started researching once again, because I trusted him and it was that one push I needed.

It's been year since that moment and it took me months to accept that I might suffer from ADHD and to this day I still have feelings of impostor syndrome, making it all harder for myself just like that, to be more interesting for myself. I still yet have to accept this.

I was transitioning into adulthood and yet had actual emotional breakdowns, I was crying and my heart was aching and I couldn't bring myself to do things I want, to learn more about music production, to learn how to sing better, to learn my favorite k-pop choreos, to work-out, to embody my own vision of who I want to be. With music, I am my own boss and it's the worst.

Covid-19 hit our country and here came the first lockdown. It pushed me over the edge and I felt like I was losing all of my friends, I felt those feelings of loneliness and weirdness again, I felt like nobody knows what's wrong because I don't have it as bad as others, I was hurting so much my body was shaking and twisting. I decided to try medication, even though I told my psychiatrist I don't want to, I just felt like I cannot be like this anymore, it's too much pain and no matter how much I try, I can't make it better, I can't make it work.

I started taking Strattera and after month or two, I saw it working. A bit, I could focus better and bring myself to do things more and more frequently, and if I had these weird emotional meltdowns, they weren't as intense as before. This serves me as ultimate proof that I am not making this up, because if I were, the medication wouldn't work and make me feel better, right?

So, what am I doing now?

I'm still a huge mess and I cannot see myself in a better light. Even though I have job that I perform at at stable rate, even though I have just a little problem cooking for myself, even though I have no troubles falling asleep, even though I can enjoy things greatly when those high energy waves hit me.

I'm tired of myself, I'm tired of myself not being able to do anything again. I ignore my manager because I already know I have nothing else to say than “I cannot bring myself to do things and you know that, I'm sorry for being a constant failure.” When people compliment me, I thank them but deep inside I don't accept it.

I have unreleased and WIP songs I can see never being released, ever. When I listen to music from my favorite artists, I can also feel the pain from the fact that I'm not like them and that I probably won't ever be, because my brain sabotages me every damn time.

From the very moment I wake up to the very moment I fall asleep, there's music playing in my head. I don't choose what's playing, sometimes it's song I don't even like and yet it's stuck on loop. I talk with my therapist in my head, I'm having weird flashbacks in my head to my memories, I'm having “you should do X right now” and “why aren't you doing Y” stuck on loop too. This all is happening at once, every moment I'm awake, even when I'm talking with people. It's exhausting.

I'm bored most of the time, I have interesting books in my bookshelf and still cannot read them because I have to reread paragraphs in order to actually understand them. And even then, I find my mind wandering again. I have problems with long texts and long tutorials.

I get frustrated easily, my head is overflowing with ideas I can't act on. I'm living in weird worlds I made up for myself, and then reality hits me.

I had my first depressive episode few months ago. I felt like nothing matters, that I don't matter, I felt nothing and emptiness, I crawled up in bed and was mindlessly watching youtube videos. I didn't want to eat or drink, I wanted to not exist at all. That episode passed but it was my first encounter with actual depressive state and I know I can slip into it more easily now, it simply developed along the way, after 21 years without acknowledging that I have problems and I struggle.

People don't understand the struggle, when talking to them about my problems, it's like talking to an automated assistant, coming up with phrases like “Did you try yoga?” “everyone struggles sometime” “you cannot accomplish everything”. They say they wanna listen and help until they don't.

I have a mental graveyard for ideas I won't ever finish, no matter how good they are, because my brain won't let me. Proper medication would help, therapy also helps but I can't talk myself out of actual executive dysfunction.

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder, our brains are literally underdeveloped in some areas and wired differently. Our emotions lack regulation normal people have and our motivation is fragile. This can't be changed with yoga, this cannot be solved by trying more. Not to even mention, capitalist society is especially damaging to neurodivergent people (and not only them, of course).

While on this journey, I am still meeting more and more people having same struggles like me, finding people who understand you is the best thing to battle impostor syndrome. Sometimes I can't help them and sometimes they can't help me, but it's okay, because we know we understand each other and if I wanna complain and vent, we can do so without having to explain this condition over and over.

And I hope that someone finds this relatable too, because as a woman I know my group isn't represented enough. We are not children, nor adult males, we need more attention and more support, from both healthcare system and each other.

While doing this, I hope to get myself proper medication and continue doing what I love the most - music. I don't love anything else more than that. I hope to get rid of “all or nothing” mindset, I hope to be more consistent, I hope my music will reach its listeners and fans. I still have enough time, I think, even though my sense of time is neurologically altered.

#adhd #actually adhd

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femmedplume · 4 years

Note

Don't mind me! Dropping in from the atla tag! I read your thoughts on the whole Azula going crazy after realizing she has no friends and I was wondering... The creators of the show wanted to have another season where they would work on a redemption arc for Azula, cause let's face it she did some horrible stuff but she was just as much of a victim as Zuko. And she was still basically a kid. What do you think a redemption for her would have been like? And what do you think she would be like after?

Ooh great question!

Hmm. 🤔Well, I definitely think she could have a cool redemption arc, because the ATLA writers have already proved they can write one hell of a redemption arc lol. I think if they did do a redemption arc for Azula, it would be a longer road than Zuko’s -- and I would love it if they explored her abuse trauma like they did with him.

She’s definitely a victim of her terrifyingly abusive dad. So maybe part of her redemption arc could be her being taken in by a loving family and being actually nurtured and cared for. Not that she never had anyone to try to tell her how to be better, but she never really listened to Uncle Iroh; I don’t think they clicked the same way he clicked with Zuko-- which was in part Iroh’s fault. At the same time, even as a child she was dismissive/disrespectful of him, so it’s clear he probably wouldn’t be the one to get through to her.

So maybe an Earth Nation family? Like remember that one time she was gloating over how their father was going to murder Zuko, and she taunted him about finding a “nice Earth Nation family” to adopt him? So that would be a great callback/little narrative irony, if she found a family there. This would be after her arc in the comics so far, of course (where she leans into the insanity and villainy for a while)--

--So maybe an Earth Nation family, who lost their only daughter to the war, takes her in after she’s injured somehow and cares for her. They have a farm, and she ends up working on it with them while she heals up.

Maybe they have a son, a couple of years younger, fiery and full of hope, who follows Azula around and gives her the admiration she craves so much. She can’t teach him bending, but she can teach him regular combat skills. He introduces her to his friend group, and because she can’t firebend or Princess them into submission, she has to learn how to-- gasp!-- interact like a normal person!

Hilarity ensues, but she figures it out slowly.

And maybe when she acts all high-handed and threatening, her Host Family makes it clear that she can’t force them to do what she wants and that they won’t stand for “tantrums”-- which would probably be the first time anyone put her behavior into that perspective.

At first, she’d probably say hurtful things, sneer at them, be ungrateful for their help; because like I said before, Azula has NO tools for emotional expression, and has never had to be grateful for anything. But the Earth family would lead by example, and eventually she’d start trying to be better. She’d also have to re-examine what she’d been taught about kindness being weakness and such.

She’d probably also be having extreme PTSD reactions to failure because of her past-- but the Earth family would give her understanding and gentle care, and help her understand that she doesn’t have to be perfect to earn validation or kindness.

Meanwhile, she’s living in this Earth Nation village, and learning the same way that Zuko did about the atrocities that the Fire Nation has committed from the victims’ perspectives. Maybe she finds out that she herself is directly responsible for the death of her Host Family’s daughter, and that’s the moment that finally gets through to her--

--because Azula’s biggest flaw is her inability to take responsibility for her behavior. Zuko (eventually) apologizes, tries to make amends, all that, but Azula never gets to that point. So all this time she’s been acting out that Might Makes Right™ Fire Nation MO; but learning that she personally broke the hearts of people she cares about finally breaks through that cultural and personal arrogance and forces her to face her crimes and mistakes.

AND THEN.

Then the redemption arc can really begin!

GUILT!

REMORSE!

THE DRIVE TO REGAIN HER HONOR!

Azula, too ashamed to face her Host Family, flees the Earth Nation village and wanders from place to place, trying to outrun her guilt. As she travels, she meets people; and for the first time, tries to help those she comes across instead of harming. Tries to make up for the past. Because she is strong, and smart, and capable and determined, she would definitely be successful in helping to rebuild the Earth Nation. Maybe she starts to gain a bit of a reputation-- a good one-- and people learn they can turn to “The Red Pilgrim” (because of her cloak; she still likes Fire Nation red,) in their hour of need.

But! Because the Earth Nation is so mistrustful of firebenders (and she’s keeping a low profile,) Azula can’t use her bending when she’s helping; which forces her to find other ways to make things happen. She draws on what she’s learned from Mai’s cleverness, and Ty Lee’s friendliness, and even Zuko’s strict code of honor-- and ends up discovering that being (relatively) nice and trustworthy gets her the friends and loyalty she’s always wanted in a way that her terrifying powers can’t.

One of the people she ends up helping is a kid whose parent is super abusive, and surprise! The Abusive!Parent is someone Azula befriended earlier; someone who flattered her and agreed with her and liked to laugh at other people’s humiliation like her. A friend who behaves like Azula used to behave, which is super seductive.

Then she sees Parent!Friend verbally/emotionally abuse their kid, which brings up Azula’s own unexplored daddy issues. Finally, finally Azula realizes that Ozai is a bully, and that by emulating him, she’s been a bully her whole life too. In standing up for the kid to Parent!Friend, Azula says all the things that she never even knew she needed to tell Ozai-- and she tells Abused!Kid some things that someone ought to have told Zuko and herself.

So from there she could return to Host Family and confess her crimes and beg forgiveness, and/or go back to Zuko and try to rebuild their familial relationship. The Host Family might not forgive her, and that would be reasonable--

--but maybe some of the friends she’s made in the village do. Maybe they understand that she’s trying to be better, and give her what encouragement they can.

Zuko would definitely forgive her; their relationship is fraught and tense, but he knows what it’s like to be trying to regain one’s honor. The most obvious step from there would be for her to try and find a place in the new Fire Nation government, but what I’d love to see is her becoming a teacher... and maybe a priest! Joining a Fire Sage temple, using her experience to help teach new firebenders the right way. Maybe finally finding someone to fall in love with (I low-key ship her with Mai or Ty Lee lol.)

Growing up, growing old and wise.

Letting go of her anger.

Doing her best to balance the bad she’s done with good.

Becoming Grand Master Azula, the greatest firebending teacher of her generation, thus fulfilling her ambition of being The Best™ at something.

Making up with Mai and Ty Lee, (although I’m betting Suki and Sokka are not going to be inviting her over lol.)

Actually getting to know Aang, and realizing Oh My God I Almost Killed This Sunshine Child Why Didn’t Anyone Tell Me??

Visiting her Earth Kingdom family regularly, or sending them gifts and letters. Visiting Zuko on holidays. Learning not to be jealous of his Firelord-ishness. Learning to be proud of her big brother for all he’s accomplished. Being Best Woman at his wedding, and Auntie Zula to his kids. Taking a Family Trip to the beach every summer--

--calling him ZuZu in front of Very Important Ambassadors and such, because lol.

REDEMPTION!

#avatar: the last airbender meta #azula #stitch answers an ask #redemption arc #thevalkyriewarrior

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mbti-notes · 4 years

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Hi. thank you for writing this blog, you're really helpful. I'm sorry if my question is weird. I'm physically unattractive and people often comment/mocking my looks. because I was a very sensitive kid, I withdraw from people and become really introverted. now I'm in college but my communication skill got worse. when classmates talk to me, my mind went blank and I always need seconds to answer. I want to know what's wrong in my thinking, is it because I can't accept the reality of my looks?

Not a weird question at all. No child deserves to be mistreated and I’m sorry that you had to go through the bullying. There are two main issues that I think you need to address: 1) the residual effects of being bullied, and 2) your standards for evaluating the worth of people, including yourself.

1) People get bullied for all kinds of things. It’s missing the point to try to compare what kind of bullying is worse than others. The most important point, in terms of psychological health, is your subjective experience of the bullying and whether it had a significantly negative impact upon your well-being. In children, the experience of constant bullying is a recognized form of psychological trauma.

When people experience emotional trauma, the way that they perceive and assess situations changes. It has to. All human beings have a survival instinct. When you live your life experiencing constant threats, it is normal and rational for the mind to find ways of protecting itself. Therefore, bullied children are much more likely to feel fearful, anxious, and/or defensive in social situations, since most of their social learning took place in situations that were legitimately threatening, hurtful, and painful for them. Unfortunately, fearful, anxious, or defensive behavior tends to get worse over time and causes problems in life when the original trauma is never properly addressed and resolved. This is why bullied children are more likely to struggle with mental disorders as well as socialization and relationship problems later in life.

Children need care, love, and affection to thrive, but many are thrust into bad situations, and it’s not their fault. As a child, you barely know up from down, so you can’t be expected to know how to fend for yourself in very negative social situations. Try to look at your situation more objectively. Imagine that, today, you were walking down the street and you witnessed somebody bullying a young child about their looks. How would that make you feel? Would you join the bully and ridicule the child, believing that the “ugly” child is worthless and deserves it? A sensitive person is capable of empathy, so I doubt that you’d want to be the bully. An empathetic person would immediately know that the child was being mistreated and want to stop the bully, would they not? A bully wants power over people, and their greatest success is to teach you how to bully yourself. Not only do they make you feel like shit by calling you ugly, they also gain complete control over you once they convince you to call yourself ugly, for the rest of your life. To be more objective, look upon your childhood self not through the disdainful eyes of your bullies but rather through the empathetic eyes of the good person that you are. You didn’t deserve to be bullied. You deserved to be loved. You deserve love.

Everybody needs to go through level 2 ego development in terms of learning how to adapt well to their social environment. If your social environment is loving and full of affection, you’re going to learn that the world is a safe and positive place, so you’ll naturally feel confident in navigating it. If your social environment is threatening and painful, you’re going to learn that the world is a frightening place, so you’ll naturally feel unsafe and insecure in most situations. As a child, you had to adapt to a negative social environment as best as a child could. From being bullied, you “learned” again and again that physically “beautiful” people get praised and physically “ugly” people get scorned. Since you were repeatedly called “ugly”, you’ve come to expect that people will scorn you, and you might even start to unconsciously attract people who confirm your distrustful worldview. Bullying is always worse for children because they have no preexisting knowledge of how to cope with it. The early adaptations that you learn in childhood tend to stay with you because they serve as your “default” mode. Whenever you feel a little bit stressed by a social situation, your psychology tends to “regress” to those early adaptations, even when the present situation poses no objective threat to you. It’s a mental reflex, aka a defense mechanism.

There’s a lot of debate in the psychological community about whether it’s possible to rid the brain of traumatic memories. However, even if you take the most pessimistic position of believing that childhood trauma is written into the brain and stays with you forever, that doesn’t mean nothing can be done about it. If you are able to improve your awareness and understanding of the many ways that your past trauma has impacted your cognitive, emotional, and behavioral patterns, you can then implement some practical strategies for disengaging your past adaptations, i.e., you can learn healthier coping mechanisms instead of allowing your “default” mode to run the show all the time. This is generally what they teach you in cognitive-behavioral therapy. A lot of people are in therapy to try to make sense of past trauma or abuse.

For example: You’re talking to someone new, and you suddenly freeze up. Why did you freeze up? What’s going on? Time to reflect on yourself honestly. Chances are, you are afraid. Based on your past experience, perhaps you’re afraid of trusting this new person only to have them turn around and mock you, and then you’re instantly that hurt kid again. It is a perfectly reasonable fear to have because you have experienced it several times before. Humans are considered smart for being able to learn from their past experience. Once you’re aware of the fear and its source and able to accept it as legitimate, then you have a chance to implement a better coping strategy. Perhaps you take a deep breath and remind yourself that this new person is not the old bully of your past. Remind yourself to give this new person the benefit of the doubt. You can’t develop a good relationship without giving a little trust and being positive. A lot of people can overlook physically unattractive features once they see a nice personality, but it’s a lot harder to overlook a negative and distrustful attitude. Another way to cope better is to work on your people skills and communication skills, which will help boost your confidence.

2) Beauty has a very important place in human psychology. Without connection to beauty, people wouldn’t be able to access all the good, positive, wonderful, and sublime things about being alive. I would never downplay the importance of beauty; however, the fact is that most people’s concept of beauty is superficial and wrong. For a lot of people, beauty is merely about ego: comparing and contrasting, competition and jealousy, self-harm and violence. If beauty is meant to be a human good, then why does it drive people to be their worst selves? There’s something rotten going on. True beauty is NOT about whether you are more/less beautiful than, it’s about nurturing the ability to see the best side of everything in the world. Not many people nurture this ability in themselves. If you did, you’d never ever call yourself ugly, because everything in this world has some beauty in it. If you aren’t able to see it, then the problem lies in your own perception, not the object itself.

Human brains are built to process information about physical appearance very quickly. This cannot be helped. We all make snap judgments based on physical appearance because this ability was very useful for human survival. However, human beings also have the capacity to reflect on the veracity of their snap judgments as well as the intelligence to realize that outward appearance and inner qualities are two different things. Failure to use one’s higher intelligence means remaining very hasty and shallow in judgment. To be shallow isn’t just to care about appearances, because we are all primed to care about appearances, it’s to take appearances as the only/primary standard for JUDGING someone’s WORTH. Shallow people easily become bullies when they feel the need to elevate themselves socially by putting others down. All you have to do is read through comment sections on gossip pages to know that no one is immune to having their appearance mocked, not even beautiful celebrities or supermodels. No matter how objectively beautiful you are, there’s a shallow person out there ready and willing to pick you apart, for their own egotistical reasons. The fact of the matter is that there are lots of shallow people in this world. There’s no avoiding them, there’s no wishing them away, but you can always render their judgments meaningless, and thus very easy to ignore.

Be brutally honest with yourself, would you rather use the criterion of “physical beauty” or the criterion of “good moral character” to choose a mate/friend for yourself? I’m not saying that the two criteria are mutually exclusive, I’m simply asking which one is more important to you. If you say “physical beauty”, then you must count yourself as one of the shallow people. And if you are shallow, you’re going to care a lot about what other shallow people think. By being shallow yourself, you’re doomed to judging yourself through the eyes of a shallow person - you. If you say “good moral character”, then congratulations, because you understand what really counts for creating a successful relationship. It takes someone of good moral character to recognize another, and when you have good moral character and prioritize it, it’s easy enough to see through shallow people and their meaningless judgments. If you surround yourself with people of good moral character - people who are capable of appreciating you for the good person you are and vice versa - you will exist in a very different social space, a place where shallow people can never get any real foothold.

Many people make the mistake of thinking that they need to be beautiful to be loved. Makes no sense. When you focus only on physical beauty, you turn people into mere objects, and, worse, you turn yourself into a mere object and allow others to treat you as such. Genuine feelings of love don’t come from physical beauty, they come from deep within the heart. What is it that you really want from people? Do you want them to praise your face and body? Is it going to make your life meaningful and fulfilled in the long run? No, because what people really want is love. To experience love, you must be a good person who is capable of love, and then you will have the ability to spot good people who are capable of loving you. If you are not even capable of loving yourself and seeing the beauty in yourself, how can you ask others to? If you are not capable of loving people and seeing the beauty in them, what kind of people will you attract and who would want to be around you?

You are not a passive player in social situations. Children who are bullied often feel passive and helpless for good reason, but that doesn’t have to be the case for the rest of your life, does it? You get to choose your attitude towards socializing (whether to trust or distrust), you get to choose how to engage with people (whether to focus on outer or inner qualities), you get to choose what sorts of people to engage with (shallow or kind), you get to choose who to keep as your long term friends (those who praise your looks or those who appreciate your true beauty). When you always default to the old lessons you learned from childhood trauma, you’ve essentially given up the power to choose, thus remaining a victim indefinitely, trembling in fear in every social interaction. And if the only standard you have for navigating social situations is the “physical beauty” standard that shallow people told you should be elevated as the most important human quality, you’re going to live a very shallow existence, devoid of love, because you’re not using the right standards in your approach to relationships. Do you want to think in the same way that the bully taught you, or do you want to have your own way of looking at the beauty in the world and trust in yourself?

#bullying #trauma #abuse #physical appearance #appearance #beauty #shallow #socializing #self worth #ask

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fyrapartnersearch · 3 years

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18+ Roleplay Buddy!

Hello, hello! I am 18+ and looking for an 18+ NSFW Partner.

-My name is Erika

-I’m 21 years old (Soon-to-be-22)

-From the USA (Eastern time-zone)

-Currently in College

Hello! Anyone that sees this is welcome to message me if you are interested and you see this post. I’m an experienced role-player that has been writing for around 4-5+ years now. I’m open to any types of pairings while RPing a story. Especially looking for partners to message. Someone who is casual and fun and we can just both write together. Have as much creative freedom as you want for whatever story that we are able to create. I want to have us both be able to enjoy it. Don’t be afraid to tell me any ideas, suggestions, stories of your own, and so on and so forth! I like to make sure that my partner is comfortable whenever the two of us chat!

Also a small note, I do have a life outside of writing such as school and working in general. I try to understand with my partner or whoever a chat with so with that being said, I have a busy schedule and I can’t message all the time so I just ask to understand that this is long term for a reason and if I happen to miss your message it is because I am busy, working, and possibly sleeping. I try my best to reply whenever I can but sometimes I do miss and hope that you can understand that happens. I like to be understanding myself and if there is the chance that you can’t talk or RP then I completely understand and rather you focus on life than feeling obligated to message me.

Besides that, I myself am looking to start a long term mature and mostly smutty story, I love fantasy, romantic, action, darker themes dabbled in, and most storyline RPs, if you have an idea that I haven’t tried I’m willing to do it too along with more realistic plot points. I’m very detailed and like a detailed partner too, I usually roleplay in the first person but I do the third person as well if I have to if it is better fitting for the roles within the story. Just tell me which one that you prefer. If you don’t have a preference in mind then I’m sure we can discuss further to settle on something enjoyable. As much as I love smut I do like to have some kind of story so that the constant sex will not get boring. So basically some porn with a plot!

-I do also have a few mini-plot ideas that I can share below to get some creativity going for whoever is interested but nothing is completely set in stone and I am more than happy to change things around to fit both of our needs or come up with something fresh entirely! Just want to help get people brainstorming and see some of the ideas that I have in mind at the moment too.

First, an innocent person unexpectedly being dragged into the crime world when they become the affection and obsession of a mob boss that is not easy to avoid or escape from. The innocent person knows their evil and wrong but it’s very hard to resist them in any way. The more the innocent person tries to stay away the stronger the obsession becomes to the point of being drawn into each other no matter how bad the relationship may be for one another. This plot can have a darker theme and tone to it but I am more than happy to do a much more of a redemption arc to this one.

Second, is an asylum plot, a newbie that enters and is eye-catching to a few other patients that have been living inside the hospital. All having the same thing in mind, leaving the hospital but it’s not as easy as said with the other patients inside and corrupted doctors around. There also could be an alternative plot or side plot in general with a doctor and patient-focused relationship dark theme mostly for this plot and can be supernatural as well.

Third, is more of a pairing with a goody-good and the delinquent, having a more of an opposite attraction sort of situation between the two, maybe starting off with bullying or dislike for one another and having the two interacting. Possibly a dominant bad boy/girl, overpowering the submissive and innocent of the pair. The makings of a possible relationship being able to develop between the two of them or having it eventually crumble apart. I have some more brainstorming that I want to do with this but I would be happy to hear any ideas that you may have if interested, feeling that this will be another more casual and a slice of life in general.

-Those being the more realistic plot points above I have in mind grounded in reality but here are my more fantasy-based plots below.

First is a vampire and human plots as I have a few different ideas that could be used for these roles in general, a human that becomes the bride and/or groom for a ruthless vampire that has been looking for their soulmate all their life. But the soulmate is a human of course and doesn’t know of supernatural life or even in possible denial of there being supernatural beings in the first place. An alternative plotline for the arranged marriage is the human’s parents had been in debt years ago right before they were born, deciding to make a deal with the vampire to be able to provide a good life for their child. But of course, there has to be an equal exchange, that being their hand in marriage once at adult age. With that agreement in place, the human is allowed the chance of a normal life without worries, unaware as their next mid-stone birthday they will have their whole world turned around. Those are the two main ideas in my mind but I am happy to hear anything that you may have. This being more character development and a plot-focused one if you have an interest in this one.

Second is a damsel in distress plot, a princess of a well-known kingdom that gets kidnapped by a group of bandits. The princess is held by them to get as much money as they could for having a ransom. But the more they travel the closer they get to each other. Or it could be the opposite and the princess is actually saved by a hero of the kingdom. Possibly a knight in shining armor, a wanted criminal looking to get some treasure, or even the so-called village idiot. Either way, there is a princess that needs saving! Both developments go over the course of classical fantasy adventure land. Monsters, magic, and everything in between. With this one, I wanna do plenty of world-building, plenty of establishing of characters, and making it feel like the environment is really alive around our characters too.

Third is a human becoming the affection of a wolf’s pact. A lost human in the forest runs into wolf territory unknown to the human. Leaving them completely trapped as the wolves take the human and use them as the housemate. The plot could also be an alpha finding their mate after years of searching but now has to claim them along with the troubles that their mate is a human. But with a human in wolf territory, it can be quite hard with the rising tension in the air. This one could be of course one pairing or multiple pairings depending on those who are interested in playing multiple characters throughout the story.

Fourth, more sci-fi fantasy alien focus plots! An alien has been tracking along and stumbled upon Earth, out of all the millions of places that they could have ended up, the alien is right within the human’s home. Different avenues could be made here, maybe the human taking care of the alien and helping them adapt to life on Earth. Another could be that the alien is being tracked down by the government and changes to the two of them being on the run from the law. With that in mind, we could do the reverse of the story, the alien decides to take one of the humans from Earth and travel along with space. Humans being a species in which are quite rare at this point and nearly on the verge of extension. Leading to some otherworldly beings stepping in to ensure that the human lives life enough to repopulate. Another more action-driven plot is an alien and an android, one being a galactic criminal and the other a bounty hunter that is trying to stop them and end their crime spree around space. Much more of a cat and mouse chase with plenty of encounters in between. Who will really win this game in the end? All of these ideas of course either taking place in a more general modern-day Earth or the bounds of space. Since there are three separate ideas just specify which one you would like to go more into planning with.

Fifth, much more futuristic or steampunk theme plot. A mad scientist and their Frankenstein creation, one would call them a mad person for trying to bring someone to life, whether mechanical or a real being either way after trial and failure over and over again, Their creation finally comes to life! Their greatest accomplishment is finally complete yet it’s unlike anything they ever expected. Sure bringing something to life is amazing in itself but when that life is rather lacking in intelligence, it can be quite troublesome. As mentioned this will have a more futuristic setting with some world-building in mind, a dystopian future can be used along with this too if wanting to give a chance at that too.

Sixth, a bit more of a large idea retaining inside of a home. A human, rather down on their luck, not much family and not having the best of life always passes by an old home, large and intimidating in size. Practically having the look of being abandoned. Even with retaining the look of nothing inside, the home always seems to call for them. Beckoning them inside yet the human always ignored the call and walked along by day after day. Growing the urge to follow that call as it gets louder and louder each time until finally, the human decides to end it and see what’s truly inside. Now, for this plot, I would like it to have a bigger scaled version of symbiosis. Beings that are occupying the same space despite having a history of not coexisting together. Some depend on one another for their own reasons while others use the living space to benefit off of what comes inside the trap. A labyrinth of sorts once inside, would the human truly have what it takes to escape or will they be completely swallowed up whole. This being a rather bigger idea on my end with playing multiple characters and such but you are always more than welcome to play more too. If this one piques your interest then just let me know so we can start discussing more.

Seventh, a more fantasy-themed world in general with this one. I have been really craving something with being suddenly dropped into a world that is much more intimidating and overwhelming around them. Think Alice in Wonderland or Little Nightmares and such where the goal of the main character is to return home again. Having to rely on wits and watch their step every way in fear of making the wrong move at any time. Though with further exploration of this land will you get swept up and trapped inside or manage to crawl your way back out. With this one, I am open to hearing any ideas that you would like to add along with the overall tone as I see it being a wonderous trip through unexplored lands or a gritty survival trail to home. Either way, I am happy to explore more on it.

Eighth, more Sci-Fi fantasy in mind with this one. More groundhog day in mind. Being trapped repeating the same day over and over again only to wake up and do the same. It seems that only you have the memory of what happens which makes you seem to be the one responsible of breaking this loop. Trying multiple ways, trial and error day after day, all seems lost until finally one day you meet someone that remembers your name.

-As stated above all the plot ideas that I mentioned are open to change and I am happy to hear any other ideas that you may have. I myself am a very open-minded person and am happy to hear whatever ideas, kinks, fetishes that you may have in more detail as we chat alone. Everything and anyone is welcomed to message me!

+I do wanna mention a few things here since most people scroll to the bottom and I just wanna make sure I get across the most important information here.

+18+ only partners

+I usually play female characters, I have played male characters in the past but do not have nearly as much experience with them. I could give it a try if you request but it will probably be some of my more shaky work.

+I like to control my character and I would like to keep control of my character. Please do not control my character in any way. I hope that I do not come across as rude but it is a small pet peeve of mine.

+Also apologies in advance but I do not really much fandom stuff really, things with pre-established characters and history are not my strong suit, and feel that I make them more of my own version of that character than anything else so I would rather just do my own OC’s then do a character from something else made.

+I also would like to make this clear once again, I do have work and I am a college student, this is why it’s a long-term roleplay and I am looking for a recurrent partner. If I am busy then I am busy. I would much rather be doing something fun but alas I cannot spend all my time writing and I just want that to be a clear understanding before you decide to message me.

TL;DR: I’m looking for a new detailed long-term roleplay partner and I am more than happy to hear any ideas in mind. As far as contacting me goes you can always message me but I will warn you that I usually don’t do my roleplaying on Reddit since I tend to not get notified about messages so if you are still interested after that I am more than happy to share my discord. Please be patient, as I try to get to every message I can and I apologize if I do miss yours in that process.

And if you are having trouble adding me there then please message me here and let me know!

Discord: BbwCandy18#9717

#oc rp #long term #original #submission #long post

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spelviin · 4 years

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this has been sitting in my drafts for at least like a month because i basically just wanted to get my bonkers far-fetched theory out in writing somewhere and i never really intended to publish it BUT

henry’s dad fact this week just made me kinda think at least some of it might have legs sooooo

my long-ass, incredibly unlikely Oak Theory under the cut

tl;dr

okay, so. 1939. one hildy russett makes the great decision to give her full-ass, real-ass name to the heart’s greatest desire casting director, aka full fledged (and likely high-ranking) member of the cult of the doodler

then proceeds to be used as a blood sacrifice in doodler summoning ritual

ritual is kind of??? successful, but then stud convinces it to peace the fuck back to wherever it came from, the mystery box vanishes, the end

or is it????????

like, a cult that almost successfully summoned a chaos entity isn’t just gonna give up after one failure. fuck no. they’re gonna try again. which is where the facts get dicey, and my theory kicks in.

so the remnants of the doodler cult are disheartened by their near miss in tennessee, but they regroup and try to figure things out

the casting director recalls the name of the blood sacrifice, and the cult does some digging on her, until they find a scandalous secret in her recent past

a child, born out of wedlock, either given to an orphanage or being brought up by distant relatives or whatever. a child who is now connected somehow to the doodler by way of blood sacrifice magic or... something idk. told you this was dicey.

anyway the doodler cult needs that baby for a future ritual. so the doodler cult gets that baby, either by adoption or more, shall we say, nefarious methods

they give the baby an alias, a new name. a powerful name. a name referenced several times in the script JJ abrams wrote when he was chanelling the doodler.

oaks growin’ tall. oak ridge, tennessee. barry fuckin oak.

doodler cult raises the baby in secret as one of their own, hoping to use his blood (aka hildy’s blood, aka possibly the blood of the unsung hero???) to take another shot at a summoning ritual

except as it turns out, barry can’t fuckin do shit, because he sucks of magic reasons idk

sooooo, what are we gonna do? give up? fuck no! we’re gonna get another fuckin descendant who can do it!

barry strikes out on his own, using the nascent hippie free-love movement in the 1960s to start up a commune that basically functions as its own branch of the doodler cult and tries to churn out a descendant with that eldritch x-factor

this is where our favourite nastyboy comes in

henry grows up in the cult commune, raised from birth to succeed where his father failed

when he’s old enough, barry tells henry the truth of their mission, his birthright, and the important role he has to play in creating this new world.

henry, being the sweet dude he is, is absolutely appalled by this. of course he’s not gonna bring about the end of the world, that’s so messed up!

they have a huge fight, and henry loses control. not in the way we’ve seen, but in a biiiiiig fuckin way. he gives into the chaos of his anger, and just blows. the fuck. up.

maybe he injures ppl with that eldritch energy he didn’t even know he had. maybe he injures barry, maybe even actually kills him. who knows?

certainly not henry, because the trauma of it all is too much and between that and the Forbidden Eldritch Knowledge coursing through him his mind just shuts the fuck down

he blacks out completely and wakes up naked in a forest weeks later, and we know the rest from there. mercedes finds him, they get married, have two beautiful boys who somehow inherently know the name and face of an eldritch abomination, and the rest is history

henry lives for the next 15 years as a normal, nerdy geologist dad. his mind literally can’t process the horror of his upbringing or the guilt of what went down after the argument with his father, so he packs that shit up tight behind a triple-locked door in his mind, rationalizes the extended blackout that lead him to his now-wife as nothing more than a bad trip, and moves on with his life.

he raises his kids as best he can, without the stringent boundaries his overbearing father placed on him (or any at all) and, above all, refuses to ever express anger for fear of giving into the chaos and losing himself like he did before.

which, i mean, kind of works??? except he basically ruins his kids in his attempt to protect them and sends himself down a toxic cycle of suppressing his feelings that just makes everything worse in the long run so i mean. not the best of strategies.

anyways, that’s the background theory. in terms of what comes next, here’s what we know now:

barry seems stoked that henry’s brain door is starting to open and he’s “remembering who he is”

he also offered henry the chance to abscond with the twins, probably trying to use their powers for his own gain (bc as we know, the twins have magic too as confirmed by boreanaz and, in this ep, chekhov’s snake)

erin said that at least one of the anchor trails seemed to lead to a commune

barry’s in a place called oakdale or oakvale or something along those lines (similar to oak ridge, perhaps???) so by the sound of it, it’s possible he’s back to his old commune/cult-establishing tricks

also, interestingly, the only time willy has shown actual fear is when henry started to open the brain door and access more of his powers, which indicates he might have some idea of what’s going on there and it freaks him the fuck out

also also, barry’s super fucking scared of willy

basically, i think barry wants to use henry and the twins in another summoning ritual with the help of his new commune/cult buddies, in order to a) succeed where he believes his mother failed in summoning the doodler and ushering in a new world, and b) use that eldritch power to get the upper hand in some sort of coup against willy.

i also think there’s some sort of link between henry’s powers and his anger (something to do with loss of control = chaos or smth like that? although that seems a bit toxic so maybe he just subconsciously believes there’s a link), and that he’s going to have to learn how to express both in a healthy way rather than, y’know. bottling it all up until he’s basically and incredible volatile molotov cocktail of dangerous eldritch energy they way he’s been doing it so far.

...yeah that kind of petered out at the end there, but honestly it’s because i’ve put so much thought into possible backstory i have no fuckin idea what’s gonna come next.

but honestly whatever it is, even when i inevitably end up being 1000% wrong about all of this, i’m stoked to find out

#og #posting my cringe theory on my fail blog #honestly this isnt even a proper theory it's basically just fic but shittier and in bullet point bc im a lazy fuck

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ask-de-writer · 4 years

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DARING DO and the ADVENTURE of the X'IBIAN VASE! : MLP Fan Fiction : Part 1 of 21

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DARING DO and the

ADVENTURE of the X'IBIAN VASE!

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck) @ask-de-writer

And

Carmen Pondiego @askcarmenpondiego

Cover Art by

Doctor Dimension

52630 words

Writing begun 08/26/15

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Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights. They may reblog the story. They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions, provided that such things are done without charge. I will allow those who do commission art works to charge for their images.

All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fictions is actively encouraged.

///////////////////////

Daring Do was sitting at the bar of the Adventurer’s Guild, sipping her coconut milk and pineapple juice. She was still steaming about the Royal Museum’s Acquisition Committee trying to put her last find, the Golden Necklace of Pharow Underrock, through “the routine process.”

The routine process gave them the possession of the neckalce for over a year before she could see any return on the difficult, expensive, and dangerous expedition to obtain the priceless artifact.

Her recovery of it from Count Umber had involved a physical altercation. The memory made her sweet drink taste sour.

Glancing into the back bar mirror, she casually placed a hoof on her pith helmet. A business suited pony approached her, proffering a card. Instead of taking the card, Daring Do swiftly lifted her pith helmet. A knife, aimed at the suited pony stood quivering in her hat, sunk deep into the cork.

She pulled the knife out and flipped it casually back. The thump of it striking hilt first was followed by the collapse of the silken robed pony who had thrown it.

She turned toward the shaken business suited pony who had just paled three shades of yellow green lighter. Brightly, she said, “Well, that was a few moments of rollicking fun! What do you have for me?”

With a shaking hoof, he proffered a card. “Please call us at your earliest convenience. If you wish, I can take you to the appointment."

Daring Do raised an eyebrow. “Appointment? You would make an appointment without asking me? A bit arrogant, aren’t you? I have some personal business to take care of first. I will call later, after it is done.” She turned her back and pointedly resumed her drink.

It tasted better, for some reason.

She sat at the bar until she was sure that he was gone, sipping her drink, the case with the Golden Necklace of Pharow Underrock safely in her saddlebag. Daring Do hated what she had to do next.

She and her mother, Carmen Pondiego, master thief and head of V.I.L.E., did not see eye to eye on ANYTHING. However, her mom’s advice was the best that she was going to find. Daring Do steeled herself and pulled out her magic net mirror. She tapped the code that she could not forget and hated.

The glass shimmered before a dark, redheaded figure with a gleaming grin answered the call. “City Morgue, you kill ‘em, we chill ‘em. Oooh! Look who is finally dropping a line.”

Answering in a gritty voice, Daring Do spoke low. “Uncle M, I’m trying to get a hold of-” “Yeah yeah, I know. Don’t go ruffling your feathers. Hey Red! Yer kid is on the line!”

Daring rolled her eyes as the view shakily changed to the beaming visage of a khaki colored unicorn mare dressed in red, her pale green eyes throwing a piercing glance at Daring Do. “Adora!! I am so glad you called! How was your trip? I hope you haven’t come across too much trouble. You know I will send some agents to help you if you ever need it.”

Daring Do rubbed her brow, “Mother, you know I hate that name, and no I don’t need your lawless agents. I… I just need some advice.”

A soft chuckle arose, “Of course, Daring dear. Now what seems to be the trouble?” Carmen lifted her brows as she calmly smiled, and the young pegasus held back a scoff. The thief seemed too friendly and eager to help, but why?

“Listen, its not trouble, I just want your -honest- opinion.”

Carmen pouted playfully, “My dear, you wound me, I have always been truthful to you.”

Sourly, Daring Do replied, “I do know that, Mother. That is the only reason that I am calling you now.

“The expedition went well. I even got the legendary Golden Necklace of Pharow Underrock. The assorted traps didn’t even cause much damage to the Pyramid of Keychops.

“The Royal University would not and will not underwrite the expedition but they want me to DONATE the necklace. They even threatened my tenure in the Chair of Antiquities to get it for free. The Royal Museum was almost worse.”

The face of Carmen in the mirror nearly lost it with hilarity. “The Royal Museum!? It takes over a year to sell them a glass bead! Then they will try to push you into letting it go for less than half of your price!”

Resisting a twitch in her eye, Daring Do cleared her throat, “Listen, Ma, what… Would you LEGALLY do if you didn’t get paid for a job that you did over a year ago?”

The thief took a moment to think. “Do you really want to go through the whole legal mess of suing said offender? Of course it would make it easier if you actually had a written contract.

“Heavens knows you don’t use the office here that I gave you and you bounce around from location to location so often without a home base so I don’t have any idea where you would keep such a document anyway…”

Daring’s grip on the mirror tightened. “Mother… I DO have an office. It is in the Royal University! I am the Chair of Antiquities!”

“Right. Well, I would collect whatever you agreed on selling and take it elsewhere.. Are you needing my help with that?”

Daring Do’s grip on the mirror tightened even more. “Mother … Mother. I have already taken it back! I also know that V.I.L.E. makes a ton of money on the, um, resale of assorted goods.”

Dryly, Carmen pointed out, “In spite of our REPUTATION, we have NEVER been caught doing or been convicted of ANY CRIME.” Her face twisted to a cheerfully sideways smile as she added, “Give me a few moments to check our inventory of PERFECTLY LEGAL buyers.”

Instead of “hold music” the recorded image of her uncle Marehem's blue furred, orange maned visage appeared giving the commercial message, “Allstable Insurance, You are in good hooves with Allstable! Please feel free to inquire about our customized policies and truly reasonable rates!”

Daring Do’s teeth grinding together would have been sweet music to any dentist!

Carmen’s cheerful face came back to the mirror in time to save it from being tossed across the room!

One eyebrow raised in amusement, she poked, “Adora, my sweet. I COULD move the necklace for you. V.I.L.E. does have to be paid for their efforts, of course. How does 20 percent sound? I am only offering such a good rate because you are family, no matter that SOMEPONY managed totally destroy all records of her connection to her MOTHER.”

Carmen grinned as Daring Do’s teeth ground together again. Regaining her control, she asked her mother, “Oh, another thing. Do you know anything about the ROT law offices? They offered a card, I think they want me to find something for them.”

Silence came over the mirror.

“Mom?”

Carmen sighed, “Daring, if being an outlaw taught me anything, its presentation. If you are shady, you pick a shady name for intimidation, for greater intimidation one would use a completely harmless and cheerful name, though that is rare.

“I don’t know much of them but if their name means anything, I would use extreme caution if dealing with them. It could be a bluff or it could simply be an acronym, it could mean that they are rotten to the bone. Are you sure you don’t want me to send someone…?”

“I AM FINE BY MYSELF, MOTHER. Thank you.”

“Alright, Adora, dear. If you are in the area, we’re having lasagna at 7:00,” Carmen shrugged, blowing a motherly kiss.

“I’ll be sure to miss it..” Daring Do groaned, turning off the mirror. She rubbed her forehead, fingers running through her monotone mane.

Daring Do was just getting ready to leave when the unconscious pony in the silken robes started to stir. He fumbled for and recovered his knife.

Setting eyes on her he got up, made a formal Far Eastern bow and said, “Miss Do, if I may be permitted to say so, that was most ill done. That pony and a few others with him are treacherous liars and wish to steal a priceless thing to which they have no right.”

Daring Do returned quietly, “It was very bad form of you to try murdering him here, in this club. The alley or even the street outside would have been better.

“As for his character, I already know that much of him and his associates. What more can you tell me?”

Haughtily he dodged her question. “You knew of his evil ways and still chose to listen to him? Perhaps I have misjudged you.”

She made a formal Far Eastern bow to him and replied in perfect X'ibian with an ancient proverb. “The failure to listen is the greatest cause of Ignorance.”

The pony’s eyes flew wide and his face fell. “I have erred greatly by my precipitous action. Be sure to listen with wisdom.”

He took his leave, robes making a slight swishing sound against the carpet of the Club floor.

Daring Do followed him out but he was nowhere to be seen. Consulting the card, she trotted up the street.

The building itself was not even hard to locate. It had a flagpole hanging over the street with a flag of pale off green with gray letters outlined in brownish red. “The Legal Team of ROT, for all of your legal needs!” was flapping in the breeze.

She entered, thinking ironically of the old joke, “pony walked down the street and turned into a drug store. After five sales, he bought what he wanted and changed back into a pony!”

She walked up to the receptionist and proffered the card. The receptionist looked down her nose at Daring Do and pronounced, “You are late for your appointment. You will have to wait for at least an hour.”

Daring Do gave her a return snooty stare and retorted, “No, I do not. THEY made the appointment without consulting me. I informed them that they would have to wait until my business was done.

“I am only marginally interested in whatever they want me for. You may inform them that they can call me at their earliest convenience to set a mutually agreeable appointment.” She tipped her pith helmet and turned to leave.

Frantically, the receptionist called after her, “Miss Do! Please take the elevator with the bronze doors! The Partners will see you immediately!”

“That is better, Horstense!” Daring Do entered the elevator, which had an earth pony operator. She serenely pulled a large, double edged knife and began to carefully trim her left hoof. Conversationally, she mentioned, “If this car gets stuck between floors, you get stuck too. Not seriously, of course. You will become qualified for a higher paid job, though. Castrato in the Fallen Pony Choir.” He paled at the thought. The elevator ride was uneventful.

She stepped out into a foyer with big glass doors at the far end. They had black and gilt letters proclaiming, ROT, the firm for all Legal Work.” Beyond the doors was an office with three desks placed in a U shape with a single hard chair at the focus of the U. The desks were not occupied, so Daring Do checked to see if the doors were unlocked.

They were. With a grin, Daring Do entered and quickly leaped across the desk at the center. She first lifted the comfortable, padded swivel chair out and replaced it with the hard chair. Checking the desk itself, she found a large flagon of expensive pomegranate juice and a snifter. There was only one door that they could enter from. She took their waste baskets and put them where the door swinging in would just miss them. Checking the other desks yielded an assortment of documents, a number of them were maps with X'ibian characters instead of Equestrian words.

She settled herself comfortably, far back, near the doors, away from the focus of the desks. She leaned back, smiling, and poured a healthy shot. While studying the maps, she started sipping.

Looking closely at two of the documents caused her to pull out her Magic Net mirror and make several urgent calls.

NEXT ==>

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#DARING DO AND THE ADVENTURE OF THE X'IBIAN VASE #part 1 of 21 #MLP Fan Fiction #Written by De Writer and Carmen Pondiego

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mjihkaaaa · 4 years

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Transcript: “Randy Writes a Novel” by Randy Feltface

I have transcribed this hour-or-so-long comedy piece. if I put the transcript on tumblr, it might pop up in the search results of some poor sod wondering whether it’s a thing that exists. fAiR uSe DiScLaiMEr or something, I’m making no money off of this and am posting it out of the goodwill of my heart, and also I sat down for two hours to make the transcript so it’s probably work. /original date of transcription, not that it makes a difference: 2019-07-16 /link: you can find the actual piece yourself or buy the dvd like a good consumer

||[Beard guy] Hey Randy? Yeah mate? ||[Beard guy] Ready to do this? (exhale) Yup! ||[Announcer] Please, without further ado... Welcome to the stage... The purple one... Randy! (Applause) YEEES! HELLO! THANK YOU! LOOK AT YOU ALL, MMMH! This is so EXCITING! This is my favourite bit of the show, this bit; The expectation - You don't know what to expect, I don't know what to expect. I've got high hopes for you people. I think you're gonna be fantastic. Some of you may have never seen me before, there's probably a couple of you wondering what the fuck is going on right now - couple of people up the back probably regretting smoking that spliff before they came in... "... ... ... the fuck is that?" it's alright, just relax. Throughout the show I'm probably gonna walk from about here, over to here. Any further than that, it's gonna ruin the magic, alright? And, um, this is pretty much what it's gonna look like for the next fifty-fix-and-a-half minutes, so just adjust your eyeballs to this shit accordingly. Looks pretty good, we did my tech rehearsal today, and we set this lighting stand and was like that looks good, that's good, and Stu, my lighting guy back there, said "iS tHaT iT?" and I was like ehh... eh... no, Stu, we can turn on the lamp as well, like this ... (lamp turns on). Yes. So we did that just to justify Stu's certificate for... in fucking... theatre production. GIVE IT UP FOR STU! UP THE BACK! (Applause) Who's having an alcoholic beverage this evening? (wooing) Ah-WOOO! I don't drink anymore, I used to SLAM that SHIT into my FACE like a WEAPON but I quit ... and nothing really changed, you know, I didn't notice too many differences between being sober and being a drinker ... UNTIL ... the first time I got pulled over by a cop, and had to do a random breath test sober. Because my physcial and emi-seeonal reaction was exactly the same as it had always been when I was a drinker. Which was ... - "OOOOH fuck I'm fucked I'm fucked I'm fucked I'm fucked I'm fucked I'm fucked I'm fucked I'm fucked I'm fucked I'm fucked I'm fucked I'm fucked" - "wind down your window please sir" - "IIIII'm fucked I'm fucked I'm fucked I'm fucked I'm fucked I'm fucked" - "one long breath into the bag sir" - "NAAAAAAAAAA I'm fucked I'm fucked I'm- (blow) I'm fucked I'm fucked I'm fucked I'm fucked" - "... you're free to go mate" - !!! ... oh yeah, I am, and the sense euphoria I felt was the closest feeling I've had to being drunk since I quit drinking. To the point where I now drive around on friday and saturday nights, LOOKING for cops. And if I get pulled over, I pretend I'm drunk just to get an extra rush... AHHH! Seriously, if you ever get pulled over, and you're sober, pretend you're wasted. Oh, the BUZZ! It's like shelving nine pills at once, it's fucking sick. Seriously, the next time the cop's walking towards the car, just be like - - "ohh, shush everyone he's COMING! act normal he's comin- put it down! put it down, he's coming! shush he's comi-!! he's here!" - "... ... ... Wind down your window please, sir." - "yeah, I'ma do that, I'ma do that, I'M DOING IT! ... Ah, it's electric. The button's in the middle 'cuz it's electric." - "... ... ... Have you had anything to drink tonight, sir?" - "NOOO ossifer [officer] not on a tuesday" - "It's a friday-" - "NO friday either mate!" - "One long breath into the bag please, sir." - "yes I will, you fucking champion ... y'know, people say youse are cunts but I don't reckon youse are, PBRRTT (blow) - WOOO! hahaaa..." (Cop checks bag, shocked.) - "Uh... You're free to go." - "FUCK YEAH! BRRRRRRRRR MEEPMEEP" (Applause) I took it so far once, I got down to the station for a blood test - ahhahaAA, gets addictive when you get to that stage... I've got track marks, it's out of control! and laDIES AND GENTLEMEN - you're very close, aren't you. Hello! (Shriek) Um... The reason we're here is because, didididii, didididi-didii, I wrote a book! Yes! Woo! Yeah, you can clap, but I'm concerned that it might be a bit shit. I don't know. It's weird - this is it here - I'm not sure if it's any good 'cuz I think I'm too close to it, y'know, I can't tell anymore. I'm concerned that it might be, like, an ugly baby that I'm looking at through the eyes of a loving mother? And it's not until I take it out for a walk in its little pram and people start screaming in horror and crossing the street to avoid me that I'll realize I've made a piece of shit baby? There's nothing worse than a piece of shit baby, is there... - "Ah, who's this little guy- WAUGH YOUR BABY'S A PIECE OF SHIT!" - "God... damn it..." But do I need to be told it's good to know that it's good? You know, that's how it goes with comedy; If I come up here and tell a shit joke, you tell me it's shit by not laughing, and I stop telling that joke. But with a BOOK I won't know it's shit until it's out there. Forever. Until I DON'T sell a million copies. Just wake up one morning, surrounded by towering boxes of unsold books, featuring on an episode of mentally deranged hoarders... We need to lay off hoarders, by the way. I think there's one too many television programmes "exposing the horrors" of people that like collecting shit. It's their house, let them do it! - "No we have to fix them!" No you don't, people are fucked up! If they wanna climb over a stack of cat shit stained national geographic magazines from the nineteen seventies to get to the kettle, fucking let 'em. THEY LIKE IT. - "Yeah but it's a mental illness-" Yeah, well, may be, but I would argue it's MORE insane to film them doing it, and then package it like a tacky microwave meal for one, so assholes can sit at home going "LOOK HOW SHIT THAT PERSON IS! They've got too many of the same thing..." ... Who's more insane in that sce-nario, I ponder... ANYWAY my book... My book is called "Walking to Skye", it's about a young man who walks from the southernmost borders of Scotland up to the Isle of Skye in the far north, retracing the footsteps of his great-great-grandfather and having a massive existential crisis along the way. It's a reeeeeeeeeeal HUMDINGER, and now that I've written it I'm terrified to let anybody read it, so what I've decided to dewwww, is; I'm gonna read bits of the book out, you're going to react, and then at the end we'll all collectively decide whether or not I should kill myself. Okay? Okay. Here we go. Hm-hm-hm. Ready? Everybody comfortable? No-one needs to go to the toilet, or get a drink, or anything? No? If you do, seriously, just go for it, because fucking... (waves hand in front of eyes). I'm not.. going.. to notice... Ahem, okay, ahem... Here we go. Alright. Here we go, here we go, okay. Khm. Blblbl. Okay. Phew. Alright. Here we go. Walking to Skye, chapter one. ... Phew. Okay. Khm. Blbl. Okay. Khm. Phew... (Sigh)... (Shivering) Read it... Just fucking read it... Come on man... Just... Son of a bitch... Pth... EHGgghhh... I'm too scared. (Audience goes "aww") No, fuck off. It's weird being scared for this, y'know, it's strange to be scared of something so intangible as JUDGEMENT. You know, I care what you people think, but taste is so subjective. Y'know, one man's "To Kill a Mockingbird" is another man's "Twilight" saga. Hello there, what's your name? (Matthew:) "Matthew." Matthew! N- where- right about there, mattie (adjusting line of sight)? Tell me, Matthew, what do you fear, what's your greatest fear, what are you scared of mate, we're all friends here, open up, unpack some shit, what are you-.. What's your biggest fear, Mattie? (Matthew:) "It must be rejection." Rejection? Same as me. <close> what do you know about my fear of rejection? </close> How old are you, man? (Matthew:) "Twenty-six" Twenty-six! The twenties are the time for rejection, my friend, it is the best time for rejection. Have you been rejected a few times? (Matthew:) "Quite a lot." Fucking rack it up, Mattie, rack it up mate, you just get- you wear those scars like a fucking warrior, mate! And then you get to thirty-six, my age, and you could not give a fuck, my friend. I'm telling you mate, rack up the rejection while you can, and then just.. fucking.. grab whatever's left. That's what you've got to look forward to. Let's hear it for Matthew! Yes! (Applause!) Rejection, eh? I think, actually, Mattie, Mattaroonie, Matterectomy, I think for me, Mattanoonles, I'm actually more scared of ... failure, in this case. I fear that I might've written a shit book, and as a result I'll fail, y'know. But I believe, Mattress, I believe it was Ernest Hemingway who put it best when he said "The first draft of everything is shit". And I often thought of that while I was writing my book, it's a great thing for young readers and young writers, sorry, to keep in mind, because it kind of lets you off the hook, y'know. And it makes you feel not so bad when you churn out something akin to Fifty Shades of Grey fanfiction. - "Every nerve ending in my body tingled as he boldly placed his swollen member directly onto my left shoulder ... and whispered into my ear ... 'tickets please' ... suffice to say, that won't be the last time I catch the bus to Broad Meadows." Khm. True story, true story. Okay, I'm gonna read the book - Broad Meadows, good suburb, Broad Meadows, good name! (Audience member goes WOOO!) Hahahaha, WEEEEEW! Has Broad Meadows ever had that reaction anywhere ever? How good is Broad Meadows- WOOOOOO! WOO! Wooing is one of few things you can do in a crowd. You can't woo when you're on your own, can you... You can't just be walking down the street like WOO! - "What's wrong with that person?" But if there's a group of you going "woo!" it's like, - "Naw, they're having a nice time, aren't they..." Wooing in- when you're in an audience is one of the few times you can get away with wooing. You can't, fucking- don't woo at the butcher's, y'know? - "I'll just have a ... 2 pounds of some sausages and uh, some pound of mince, and let me- six pound fifty WOOOOO!" - "I no longer wish for you to purchase my meat products." What was I talking about? Ah, Broadie? Yeah, Broad Meadows, it's a good name, Broad Meadow, like it makes sense, there was an expanse of just fucking... no stuff, there was some broad meadows, and they went "let's fucking build it here" and it was an honest name. All these new subdivisions now, they're all fucking, just... - "What are we gonna call this deserted swamp?" - "Um... Spring Valley Mountview Niceface." Fuck that! Name them honestly, y'know? - "Where are you living now?" - "Shitty water feature." - "Ah!" - "Where are you?" - "Stabbyville." - "Ah! ... How's that?" - "Yeah, it's good, it's close to schools, which is great, but um... We do get stabbed a lot though, it's a... You know, we knew the risks..." - "'Cuz it was in the name?" - "'Cuz it was in the name! yeEEeeAh." I like an honestly named place. I was Broken Hill recently, that's an honestly named place. - "We had a hill, we fucking broke it. Welcome to Broken Hill." Actually, Broken Hill have gone one further, they've named all the streets in the centre of town after elements. 'Cuz it's a mining town, they went thematic with that shit. So you're walking down Chloride, and you hit the corner of Bromide, or Oxide, I love that! That makes sense to me! I live in Collingwood - it'd be much easier to direct people to my house if I could send them to the corner of Soy Latte and Hipster Fuckwit. That'd take out all the guesswork ... When you're heading to Frankston, don't forget to check out the beautiful parklands on the corner of Bucket Bong and Pregnant Teenager. They are just enchanting. Alright. Gonna read the book. Blblblbl. You cool Matt? Sick. I'm gonna keep talking to you so you feel included. Therefore, not rejected. Khm, okay. Alrighty. Okay. Here we go. Alright. Shut up, I'm gonna read it. Okay. Phew. Walking to Skye, chapter one . . . Fascinating man, Ernest Hemingway. I didn't know a lot about him, but I kept thinking of that quote, "the first draft of everything is shit", while I was writing my book, and I started to think, "who are you to tell me my first draft is shit, Hemingway? What did you ever do that was sO fUckIng gOOd?" So I realized I didn't know anything about him, so I decided to do some research on him, and it proved to be an excellent means of putting off writing my book. And now I can tell you everything I know about him as an excellent means of putting off reading you my book, so... Swings and roundabouts, my friends, swoongs and rimbledibbledoodledoodoos, as they say in Scotland ... They don't say that. No-one has ever said that. Anyway, what I suggest we do, okay, is I'm just gonna tell you a little bit about Ernest Hemingway, bit about Hemmers, and then we'll just let the segway into reading the book develop organically. Like a runaway fungus at the bottom of a misplaced coffee cup. - "Aw, guys, how long has this been behind the couch? ... There's little people in it!" - "Save us! Save us from our porcelain prison!" - "wwWAAH!" (tosses cup) KSSSH - "We're free!" - (Running noise, tktktktktktk) - (Randy steps on the little people with an audible crunch) It's just for me, that bit, it's just for me!.. Okay. Okay, here we go, ladies and gentlemen, for the very first time I would wager in all of your living memories, I now am proud to present to you, the life and times of Ernest Miller Hemingway in approximately three and a half minutes. Go! (Background shifts) Born in Chicago in eighteen ninety-nine, son of a physician and a musician, reasonably uneventful childhood, decided to study journalism. Enlisted with the Red Cross during World War One, got blown up in Milan and spent six months in hospital with severe shrapnel wounds in both legs, fell in love with a nurse, they decided to get married. He came home to prepare, she stayed there and ditched him for an Italian soldier, which initiated a life-long pattern of him rejecting women before they had a chance to reject him. Take note, Mattie. Got a job as a foreign correspondent, fell in love with his roommate's sister, married her and moved to Paris. They hung out with Gertrude Stein, they kicked it with Pablo Picasso, he started writing in earnest, moved to Toronto, had a kid, moved back to Paris, published a couple of books, cheated on his wife, got divorced, married the other woman, converted to catholicism ... ... ... Cut his head open after pulling on a cord thinking he was flushing a toilet, and instead ripped a skylight from the roof and smashed it onto his face, moved to Kansas City, had another kid, his dad committed suicide, he shot a lot of bears for some reason, had a car accident, had another kid, went to Africa to kill some wild animals and got dysentery - Karma! -, published another book, moved to Cuba, shot himself in the leg whilst aiming at a shark! Cheated on his wife, got divorced, married the other woman, published "For Who the Bell Tolls", sold half a million copies in a couple of months and got nominated for a Pulitzer prize, cheated on his wife, got divorced, married the other woman, became the self-appointed leader of a band of village militia outside of Paris, and was subsequently brought up on charges for contravening the Geneva convention and got away with it like a FUCKING CHAMPION! Got pneumonia, moved back to Cuba, and spent most of his spare time on his boat, tracking nazi u-boats with a machine gun and a pile of hand grenades - I AM NOT MAKING THIS SHIT UP! Had a few more car accidents, three more concussions, got clawed while playing with a lion! ... Got depressed, drank, got fat, published a couple of more books, went back to Africa to shoot some more wild animals and barely survived two separate plane crashed in the space of twenty-four hours, winding up with a fractured skull, internal bleeding, cracked spine, ruptured liver, first degree burns, and a paralyzed sphincter muscle - Karma! -, won a Nobel prize, had a file opened on him by J. Edgar Hoover, left a bunch of shit in a safe in Cuba and moved to Idaho paranoid that the feds were following him, which they were, because he spent most of the nineteen fourties working for the KGB! AGAIN, NOT-MAKING-THIS-SHIT-UP! Suffered from hepatitis, nephritis, hypertension, hemochromatosis, anemia, and impotence - Karma! -, got committed, received way too much electroconvulsive therapy and came out all fucked up, started hinting at suicide so immediately got re-committed, received another couple of months worth of electroconvulsive therapy, got released, put both barrels of his favourite twelve gauge shotgun into his mouth, and BLEW HIS FUCKING HEAD OFF. WHAT A GUY!!! (Applause) Ah... That is all true! What a fucking unit! Hemingway is the quintessential anti-hero, the talented, charismatic, belligerent, suicidal, alcoholic genius that can't keep his dick in his trousers. And he still found time to write about fifteen books! I've written one, and it took me ages, because I procrastinate like a motherfucker! I only got this written by doing most of the work in my local public library, because it's very difficult to masturbate in the reference section without getting caught. It's... It's almost impossible, in fact ... Almost. I don't even enjoy masturbating anymore, I just do it to avoid other tasks. And if it's something I really don't wanna do, I can seriously just go back-to-back wanks, just AARGH, just 'till it's painful, like NAAAAAAAAH, like hurty cum, like MWOOOAAARGH, WOOOMMMHHH MHHHH MMHHMHMMM RMMMMMHHHHOOkay fine I'll do the fucking dishes. And you know the weird thing about books is that you only really need to write one to be considered to be a great writer. Until last year, "To Kill a Mockingbird" was the only book that Harper Lee ever published. One book in eighty-nine years. To be fair that one book did win the Pulitzer prize and sold over fourty million copies, so she didn't really need to do another one, did she... - "Hey Harper, you gonna write another book?" - "Nope! Did you read the first one? FUCKING NAILED IT! FUCKING NAILED IT! I'm just doing the one. Just doing the one." Imagine if I did that. Came up here, told one joke, and then stared at you for fifty-eight minutes. - "You gonna tell another joke?" - "Nope! Did you hear the first one? FUCKING NAILED IT! I'm just doing the one." There's not many jobs where you can just do the one, is there... Just... Writers, and... Suicide bombers. Hard to do two of those... Or maybe UFC fighters that get punched in the head so hard in their first bout that cerebral fluid trickles out of their eye sockets. - "Ohhh, that's fucked Randy..." It happens. It's pretty much the perfect example of why we're sort of festering in this evolutionary cul-de-sac, isn't it? - "Welcome to planet earth, there's approximately seven billion of us, as you can see there's quite a few of us that don't have any clean drinking water, OH! Here's a large group of us that get paid millions of dollars to knee each other in the face! Obviously still... Ironing out a few of the kinks." Martial arts, mixed or otherwise, should not be the domain of fat-necked roughians trying to stomp on each other's ballsacks. Just as yoga should not be taught by twenty-two year old gym instructors that did a one week yoga retreat in Bali and now get around in low-slung fisherman pants with a bindy and a plat talking about mindfulness like they've ever had any fucking life experience at all. I'm sorry, you can tell me to relax and center myself when you spend maybe ten or fifteen years considering what that actually means. Until then, go back to taking photos of the froth on your coffee and shut the fuck up. And I'm torn! I'm torn because I do yoga! I buy oragnic vegetables. I blindly sign internet petitions without reading the fine print, give myself a good old pat on the back and go back to downloading hardcore pornography... I'm trying to be a good buddhist, I'm trying... But it's even difficult to identify as buddhist in the current climate without coming off as some sort of new-age pompous twat dipping his toe into the "What does it all mean?" kiddie pool while holding a beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and staring lecherously across the back yard at your cousin's tits. - "Geez, Tamara's grown up since last Christmas, hasn't she..." And I mean, Buddha was just a dude who found enlightenment sometime around the fifth century, and he decided to stick around and talk about it, y'know. But he made it clear that everything's optional, I guess, y'know, "here's the thing I've discovered, I think it's pretty nifty, but you can find your own way through it". He was kind of like a benevolent woodwork teacher, just overseeing the workshop, but allowing his students to discover for themselves which machine is most likely to cut their fucking head off. - BRRRRRRRRRRR-WAUGH! - "It was that one, Gareth, well done. A plus, matey, A plus for you." And there's been loads of other buddhas since, right, but they haven't necessarily felt the calling to stick around and talk about it. I guess they just become enlightened and fuck off. I think that's fantastic. But ... Are you only enlightened if you're able to share it with people? Y'know? If I write a book and nobody reads it, is it still art? What is the collective noun for monkeys? ... ... ... Seriously, does anybody know what it is? I was trying to think of it all day. Anybody? (Inaudible audience response) What? (Audience member:) "Gang" Gang? Gang of monkeys? Coming through on my gang of monkeys, we're a little gang of monkeys, ooh-A-A-A! It's not gang! Anybody else? If you come up with something stupid, I'll sing a dumb song about it ..? What else? (Inaudible audience response) What is it? (Inaudible audience response) ... Oh you people are fucked. Does anybody know what it is? It's not barrel, by the way. It's troop. What, what did you say, uhh... Gang. Who-what, what's your name, who said gang? Where are you? (Victoria:) "Victoria." Victoria? How are you, Victoria? (Victoria:) "Great." Thanks for coming to my show. Hey, Victoria, riddle me this m'sister, have you read "Go Set a Watchman"? Harper Lee's new book? (Victoria:) "Naw." Naw. Has anybody read it? (Audience member:) "Half." Half. That is the best book review ever. - "I read half." Has anybody read "To Kill a Mockingbird"? (audience responds yes) yEES we reAD IT at scHOOL, fuck off. For those of you who haven't- for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, "Go Set a Watchman" was the Harper Lee book that came out last year, right, and if you don't know the backstory, alright, I'll just fill you in. Victoria, listen up. Um... Basically, Harper Lee, right? So, Harper Lee, she had a stroke in two thousand and seven, and until she died earlier this year, she was in like, assisted care, she was in a wheelchair, she was deaf and she was blind, and her sister Alice had been taking care of all of her affairs, until Alice died in twenty fourteen at the age of one hundred and three, like a fucking boss... Anyway before Alice died she was pretty much the last line of defence between Harper and this 'lawyer' that had just sort of been loitering in the wings, right. And when Alice died, this 'lawyer' just happened to discover the manuscript for "Go Set a Watchman" in the locked safety deposit box in an obscure vault in a random bank, where it had been busy minding its own business for the last fifty-six and a half years, and according to the 'lawyer', Harper was delighted that the manuscript had been discovered, and suddenly reversed her life-long vow to never ever ever publish another book ever ever again, particularly not "Go Set a Watchman" which she actually wrote before "To Kill a Mockingbird" and didn't think was very good. Other people think that maybe the 'lawyer' was attempting to get filthy rich by brutally fist-fucking an eighty-nine year old stroke victim, but the question is; ... ... ... The question is, if "To Kill a Mockingbird" had've stayed in that vault, alongside this newly discovered manuscript, would it still technically be a work of literary genius? Or is it only when something's been evaluated by the world and possibly someone's made some cash off it that it's considered to be valid artistic expression? Is art only art once it's been witnessed? Acknowledged? If I don't take a bow at the end of this show, does it devalue the performance? Will you feel unsatisfied? Or rejected? ... I recently read that book "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work" by Alaine de Button, and in it, he says; "we might consider art as anything which pushes our thoughts in important, yet neglected directions". Now, I'd like to consider what I do artistic expression, but that sort of poses the question - do people really need their thought pushed in the direction of old ladies being brutally fist-fucked? Is that my artistic legacy? Is that what I'm gonna leave behind? Y'know, "Randy... He was the old lady fisting guy, wasn't he? Eh. Very droll, very droll. Yeah." Because Ernest Hemingway is remembered more for his literary talents than for being an insufferable cunt with a penchant for killing shit and cheating on his multiple wives, does his artistic legacy outshine his tactless and unfortunate personal life? Is it better to be a mindful human that leaves no palpable remnants of artistry behind, or a violently unlikeable sexual deviant that shits handfuls of heart-breakingly beautiful sonnets and sonnatas out of his asshole before brunch? Because it's the image of the tortured, self-destructive artist that prevails nine times out of ten. Amy Winehouse was just a girl that wanted to sing some songs, do you know what I mean? So... Should I just keep my fucking mouth shut? And try to navigate towards enlightenment, leaving behind an intangible trail of good deeds? Or do I dive deeper and deeper into the inky, black ocean of self-destruction and self-indulgence until I nail my chosen art form, leaving an echo for the eternal wonderment of countless future generations that will just breeze over my asshole personality? ... it's what's keeping me up in the night times. Eh... (Pause) Y'know, from the moment we're born we become less than human? You know that? E-... E-hh... Eh... All the bacteria from our mother is passed onto us on the way out of the womb, and from then on, we just continue to collect shit, on the inside and the outside, until the day we expire. Occasionally, you get to choose what that shit is, but most of the time you have very little say in where it comes from or when. You just have to duck and weave your way through the shit for as long as you can, until the chunk of shit with your name on it finally-AAARGH! cleans you up. Look, I know this was billed as a comedy, but a-ha-ha-HAA! LET'S TALK ABOUT DEATH! Woo! There are some pretty fucking ridiculous ways to die, though- OH, like that guy, that scuba diver they found when they put out the bush fire! *oh my go-od have you heard this fucking sto-ory?* They put out, like, a bush fire, and they found a dude in full scuba gear, and they figured out that the water bomber plane or helicopter that scoops up the water to put out the fire accidentally picked up a diver and dumped him into the flames! What a fucked up way to go! It's pretty much the polar opposite of "He died peacefully in his sleep", isn't it? Just dumped out of a plane into a blazing inferno... with a highly flammable gas tank instead of a parachute strapped to your back? - "NOOoo!" (Explosion noice) "I just wanted to look at the fish..." What do you say to his family? - "Uhh... At least he died doing what he loved." Well, he was a firefighter that enjoyed skydiving and water sports, but I'm not sure he ever wanted to combine the three... That's better, isn't it? - "Tell more jokes you little purple fucker." I had a good joke the other day - How do you know if a hippie has been to your house? ... They're still there. Haa... How do you know if someone's vegan? ... They'll tell you, yes, ahaHAHAA! Hahahaha, I'm vegan. Um... I initially became vegan for environmental and ethical reasons, and now I just do it to give people the shits at dinner parties. Like, - "Get it away, I can't eat that, meat is murder, STOP HAVING FUN EVERYONE!" It's a funny conversation, the vegan one, you bring it up, people just go - "... shut up fuckhead" But it's funny, 'cuz you know you don't actually need to eat meat. You don't NEED it. Nobody actually needs it. Unless you're on hemodialasys and you have to inhale a rare porterhouse steak every three hours to stop your kidneys backing in, you don't actually need it. That makes it a choice, and it's your choice. As long as you understand that that choice is born from belief and that particular belief is called "carnism". It's an inherited belief system that sort of conditions us to eat meat, and the notion is so... pervasive, I guess, it's viewed as a given rather than a choice. But it's totally a choice. - "Where do you get your proteins from then you little poofter!?" PEAS! (Gasp) It's crazy. And I know it's easy to just lump veganism in with all the other food allergies and just go - "They're the annoying fuckheads that don't eat the good stuff" which I get, I totally get... We're having Christmas at my house this year, right? Three months out, my cousin calls me to discuss her son, my cousin's son, which makes him... Someone I couldn't give a fuck about, anyway; She calls me up, the first thing she says - she doesn't even say hello - the first thing she says is "Brayden can't have blue." - "What the fuck? - "BRAYDEN can't eat BLUE FOODS." Apparently this kid, if he eats anything with a blue food preservative in it, he just KLKH (imitates death) just taps out. That is bullshit! Firstly, don't call your kid Brayden. Secondly... secondly, blue is not even a natural colour for foodstuffs. It occurs very rarely in nature- name me one blue food. (Audience member:) "Blueberry." BLUEBERRIES ARE FUCKING PURPLE! I'm talking about mentos blue, like seven eleven slushie blue, what flavour is that? Fucking highlighter? - "Ah no Randy, blue means mint-" MINT IS GREEN- if you planted mint and it came up blue, you would SET that SHIT on FIRE. - "And that's cool! It's cool! it's like ice, it's like water!" Water is clear. The only time water is blue, is when there's billions of tonnes of it and it's all in the one spot. And then it's got all sorts of shit in it, like salt, and SHARKS ... BLUE MEANS SHARKS IN IT! don't eAt iT it'S gOT SHARKS IN IT! You know, when sharks eat people, it's fucked, but it shits me how they immmediately go out and kill the shark like - "awrH it's gONe roGUe. iT's gOnE rOgUE!" No it hasn't, it's just doing what millions of years of evolution have programmed it to do, fucking swim around eating shit. - "yeeeeeeeah but ... ... ... it came into our bit. thIs bit's oUR bit oF tHe ocEAn." No-see that bit there? That big fucking wet bit? That's its bit. This bit here, all of this dry bit here, that you're standing on with your legs, your legs that have evolved to stand on the dry bit, that's your bit. You go into its bit, you're going to get bit. That's the lesson. ... Paddle out next to a seal colony and wiggle your ass around like a slutty little ol' dove, complaining when you get munched. It's that weird disconnect, y'know, it's the same thing as carnism, it's like if I imagine a pig is just a pig, and all pigs are the same, then I can detach what is on my plate from how it got there. It's just how most of us are brought up, y'know. But if you saw someone slit the throat of a Labrador, and then string it upside down to die an excrutiating death just squirming and bleeding out at the end of a steel hook, you'd think it was a bit fucked. How is a pig any different? It's not. It's actually not ... I said that on stage in Rock Hampton, in Queensland about four months ago. I was like, "how is a pig any different?", and a man in the audience yelled out "BACON!". Touché, sir. You win this round. He actually came up to me after the show - I was standing at the merch desk not selling anything - and he-.. I saw him coming from the other side of the room, just this massive dude, like - (stomping noises) - "Ah, you're a large man" and he said - "I was the one that said bacon" - "fucking don't kill me" and he goes - "nah, you alright mate, you alright mate, you alr-" It's the most passive-aggressive Aussie male thing you can say to another- - "naah, you alright mate, you-" It basically means "I wanna punch your fucking head in, but I don't wanna upset me misses. You alright mate." Anyway, he goes to me, - "Mate, you're not gonna make any friends in rock hampton being vegan. Did you know that Rocky is actually the beef capital of Australia-" - "ah fuck I didn't know that" - "-with over two and a half million head of cattle within a two point five k radius of the town centre?" - "fuck I didn't know that either" - "And that is a fair wack of the thirteen million head of cattle in Queensland alone, seventy percent of which is bred purely for export. Few fun facts for ya matey, few fun facts." I said - "thank you sir I did not know any of that" Did you know that, globally, cows produce thirty-eight percent more greenhouse gas than every single car, truck, bus, boat, train, and plane combined each year? That breeding animals for food uses up one third of the planet's fresh water? Takes up fourty-five percent of the earth's surface, and is responsible for a whopping ninety-one percent of amazon destruction, making it the number one leading cause of species extionction, resource consumption, and environmental degradation destroying the planet on a daily basis? FEW FUN FACTS FOR YA MATEY, FEW FUN FACTS FOR YA! Now, I'm aware this is in danger of becoming a TED talk at this point... - "jesus, a lot of statistics, is there gonna be a test?" It's alright, it's fine, I'll read the book, alright? I'll read the book. Not forcing my opinions on you, I'm merely saying them with a microphone, and you're paying for it. LOCK THE DOORS-no, seriously, okay, here we go. Khm. I'm gonna read the book. Y'know we've got McDonald's home delivery now? Does anyone do that? (Audience responds) You... You do? You know you can already get it in your car? You can get it without getting out of your car, but what McDonald's have now done is they've removed the gruelling walk from the front door to the car, so you no longer have to do that humiliating - "BWAAAAAARGGGGGHHHHH- WUUUUUUUUUAHHHH! OOOOOOOAAAAARGGHHHH! Now I have to reverend carpool! Oh, God damn you, God damn you -click- MRRRRRRGHHHH! HMMMMMRGHH! MMMMOOUUHHH WHY CANNOT THEY JUST BRING IT TO MEIN HAUS?" Well now they can. I think it's a good thing. Keep the fatties off the streets, STOP 'EM HOGGING UP THE FOOT PATHS, if they wanna eat shit, let them do it in their own home- WHO'S WITH ME? (Audience starts applauding) Don't clap that, it's a horrible thing to say. yoU'RE moNSTerS! ... Okay. You all good Mattie? Sweet. Okay, here we go. Blblblblbl, okay, kh-hm, alright, here we go, buggedabuggedabuggeda, okay. Stop it! Okay ... Do you like my typewriter, by the way? Isn't it beautiful? It's basically here just as a prop, but occasionally I am always tempted to just go ... (humming). Eh? A few "Murder She Wrote" fans in the house? Heyo? Everyone else going - "What? What is that? Sounds like an old person's joke." ... it is! It is! It totally is! Alright. Here we go. Okay, fuck, here we go. Blblblblbl. Walking to Skye, chapter one ... I bought a bookshelf on Gumtree recently, um, it was an amazing experience, I'll quickly tell you about it and then I'll read the book, but- I found it strange, becasue it made me start to think about the way our, like, methods of communication have sort of changed over the years, y'know? In the old days, if you wanted a bookshelf, you'd just go see Gareth the Bookshelf Guy, 'cuz he was the dude in your tribe that made the bookshelves, he had a little bookshelf cave, he was REPUTABLE. Now any mad bastard can sell their shit on Gumtree, you know what I mean? As a species, we're sort of able to cope with knowing and gossiping around like a hundred, or a hundred and fifty people. That's like the limit of our tribe. Any more than that, it starts to get confusing, which is why we created abstract constructs like territories and deities to unite larger groups of people under an imaginary common factor. And it works the trick, because we only really gather en masse on special occasions, but I think like social media and mmmh... It's fucking all that up, y'know? I think we're able to deal with the thousands of people we're connected to on a daily basis, and as a result we neglect our immediate one fifty, y'know? That's why I never get invited to parties anymore. It's not 'cuz I ramble on about veganism and fisting old ladies, it's because I'm not on facebook and everybody just assumes you are. I am so behind on the births, deaths, and marriages of my friends that I feel like the time traveller's wife every time I go to a party, I'm like... - "This is Tim, he's our son, he's six now-" - "Fucking... Didn't even know you were pregnant." Anyway, you know smartphones, aren't they great? You know that, right, they're not, they're not that great, you don't need the internet in your pocket, you work at Cole's, okay? You're not working for the president, you don't need it, you don't need that much information. And also, what was the point of developing opposable thumbs for you to take a photo of your head, post it on the internet, and then just stand by for validation. No-one gives a fuck about your head! They'll only validate it in order to gain permission to post a photo of their own head on the internet and stand by for validation. The people who give a fuck about your head will at some point see it in real life. Fuck your head and the neck it rode in on. Your vanity is sucking up my bandwidth ... Anyway this is what's going through my head as I'm on Gumtree looking for a bookshelf, because- you know when you put something on the... on the... in like... in the search in booktree- in booktree? what the fuck- When you put something in the search on Gumtree - I'm having a stroke up here - When you put something in the search, right, and like, there's always a couple of things that come up in the list that are like the polar opposite of what you searched for, and like "get out of my head gumtree algorithms, CONSPIRACY!"? No but seriously, it's all you type, it's like "bookshelf", and it's all bookshelf, bookshelf, bookshelf, grammophone? Huh. Bookshelf, bookshelf, bookshelf, combine harvester? What the fuck? ... Huh, that's actually a pretty good price. Anyway, on this particular day, I found two bookshelves that worked for me, in terms of cost, and more importantly, geographical convenience, 'cuz I'd be fucked if I'm driving to Broad Meadows to pick up a bookshelf, right? So I type in bookshelf, and I see the two things, and I'm like okay, one seller is Cathy, the other is Morgan. I send them both the same text message, "Hello! I saw your bookshelf on gumtree, is it still available?". Cathy texts back straight away, saying - "sorRRY iT wENt thIS MorNING!" - "That's cool, Cathy, I'm sorry I gave you an annoying voice in the retelling of this story." Morgan's response came through a couple of minutes later, and simply read, - "It was my wife's bookshelf." ... HOW DO YOU RESPOND TO THAT? Aside from the fact that it doesn't answer my fucking question... His use of past tense in that sentence unnerved me slightly. I'm like, aahhh, I should probably just find another bookshelf... And then I noticed he lived in the suburb next to me, so I replied; - "Is it still available?" He responded with the letter Y. Just a Y. Is he asking me why I wanna know if it's still available? Or is it a Y for "yes", and he's so in the throws of grief that he can't manage the E and the S? I assume it's a Y for "yes" and respond, - "Cool! I'll take it. When's a good time to come and pick it up?" No reply for fifteen minutes, I'm like... ah he's forgotten about it, fuck it, I'll find another bookshelf, and then when his reply actually does come through I realize he spent those fifteen minutes crafting his response, because it's a FUCKING THESIS. He must've felt so bad about only using a single consonant in his previous text that he just massively overcompensated with this one. Also, for some reason, felt that the use of punctuation? Entirely unnecessary. So it's just one obscenely long sentence, which reads; - "You must come and pick up now I only have short time here at house and also it wide so bring van or trailer and there's stair but I can help you carry it down stair if you come park out front walk up path ring bell and I will help you carry it to trailer or van I only accept cash and if you do not come now I will sell it someone else" (Shriek) Again I'm thinking, ahhh, I should just find another bookshelf at this point, but now I am FASCINATED by Morgan, and I simply must meet the man. So I drive over to his house- before I left, I sent him a message saying - "Cool, I'll be there in ten minutes" and he replied "ok", but spelled it OK-A-Y which just fascinated me more, that he'll use four letters to spell a two letter word, but only one letter to spell a three letter word, MORGAN IS OFF THE FUCKING CHAIN! And as I'm driving over to his house, I'm trying to picture what he's gonna be like, y'know... His pidgin English might suggest ethnicity of some sort, but I don't wanna racially profile him; Maybe he's an old man who recently lost his wife and is not that very good at texting, or maybe, and I'm really hoping this is the case, Morgan is just batshit crazy. So I get to his house, and I go up to the- ehe, I park out front walk up path ring bell, and I... I brace myself for the door to be opened by like, an old man in a smoking jacket, wearing fishnet stockings and suspenders, just puffing on an opium pipe while a butler just creepily polishes a goldfish in the background, and then a tiny pugdog wearing a fez hat just trots up the hallway, sits on the mat, looks up at me and says "RELCOME TO OUR ROVERY ROME!"... And then the door opens, and I am thoroughly disappointed. Before me stands an average caucasian male in his mid-thirties, dressed casually, hipster sheek, stubble, glasses with designer frames, expensive watch - I immediately think "architect?" but the house is too cheesy for that - it's like a double story doll's house with bay windows - but definitely a designer of some kind? Maybe a graphic designer? He's too skinny for manual labour, but he's too hip for the public sector, BUT THIS CAN'T BE MORGAN. Because Morgan's text messages would suggest that he's not that technically savvy, and then the man standing in front of me says - "Hello my name is Morgan" AND THE PLOT THICKENS! He invites me in, shakes my hand, closes the door, and twenty minutes later, I will be witnessing Morgan perform some of the most aggressive acts of violence I've ever seen in my life, and I will be speeding away in my car bleeding from the face. Here's how this shit went down... I go into the house, and I notice two things immediately; One, this is a house in the throws of renovation. Nothing too extreme, but there's like drop sheets on all the furniture, there's freshly painted walls, there's a bathtub wrapped in plastic in the hallway, awaiting installation- someone's doing some work on this house. The second thing I notice, on the way up the stairs to the second floor, on the first floor landing, is a wedding photograph featuring a very cleanly shaven Morgan with a very beautiful bride. Very much in love! The photograph is very much on the floor, and the glass in the frame is very much smashed. She's not dead, she's left him, and THE PLOT THICKENS A BIT MORE FOR MORGAN! And as Morgan unceremoniously like, kicks the photo frame to one side on the way up the stairs, I really wanted to pry into Morgan's life and ask heaps of inappropriate questions... But he was clearly a broken man. He had this terrible air of sadness around him, so I didn't wanna intrude. Luckily for me, though, I didn't have to, because Morgan immediately began oversharing and told me the whole fucking story aaAAAH! Thank you Morgan! I shall hang off your every word and then retell your tale to two hundred strangers and record it for a fucking DVD! He IS a graphic designer -YES!- and he's really good at it. He does like massive rebranding campaigns for large corporations, he gets flown all over the world doing this shit, right? About four years ago, a woman hired Morgan to rebrand her florist business, and he did such a great job she married him. And he thought everything was just fine, until about three months ago. Morgan had to do a presentation in Sydney, right? But he was on his way home from overseas and got stuck in Dubai due to a flight cancellation, so rather than cancel the meeting, Morgan suggested to these businessmen in Sydney that they do a Skype chat, because he's so technologically savvy, despite his fucking baffling text message style. So Morgan checks into a hotel, cracks open his laptop, and starts skyping with this room full of businessmen in Sydney, who are all watching Morgan on a massive screen on their boardroom wall, right? And everything's going great, Morgan is totally nailing it, until about halfway through; He realizes that a file he wants to show these dudes is on the desktop of his home computer back in his home office in Melbourne. And he decides to live share the desktop of his home computer on the Skype chat. He knows how to do that, he can remote control his computer from anywhere in the world, it's not particularly new technology, but Morgan makes it sound so impressive. So this room full of businessmen are all watching keenly, like - "OOAHP! MARGARET, BRING IN SOME BISCUITS, THERE'S SOME NEW-FANGLED SHIT GOING ON IN HERE!!!" as Morgan clicks a few buttons and (click) brings up the desktop of his home computer on the Skype chat. Now, what Morgan doesn't realize is that his wife has been using the "Photobooth" app on that particular computer to take pictures of herself. To take naked pictures of herself. To take naked pictures of herself... doing some pretty fucked up shit. It's embarassing, to say the least, just as Margaret came back in with the biscuits- - "I've got you the b-WHUIEAAAAURRRHHH!!!" Now, those of you who are familiar with the Photobooth app will know that how it works, is it accesses the built-in camera in your computer and with the click of a button, (click) takes a photo of you when you're standing in front of your screen. And if you know that, you also know that if you leave that application open, the camera also stays open, witnessing whatever may be happening in front of the computer, in real time. Such as your wife, in your home office, fucking your best mate. OOOOOOOOOO NOOOOOOOO MOOOOOOOORGANNNN... Nooooo... Morgan then goes on to tell me she's keeping the house, his former best mate is moving in, and while they're out for the day shopping for fittings, Morgan must suffer the indignity of moving his shit out, and selling the stuff they don't want on Gumtree to this guy. Ahhh... It's at this point of the story that Morgan starts crying, he breaks down, and I do not blame the man, it's fucking horrible and I just wanna give him a big hug and say "Everything's gonna be alright, Morgan", but I am holding the full weight of a BOOKSHELF halfway down a set of STAIRS and Morgan is the only thing stopping that bookshelf from caving my face in- I was like, MORGAN! MMMMORGAN! And Morgan managed to pull himself together ... for about eight seconds? And then just went BAHHH and let the bookshelf go. I fell backwards, it literally rolled over me, and took out the light hanging above the staircase, I'm now lying on my back getting showered in broken glass, as the bookshelf turned end over end and just went FONK right through a freshly painted wall at the bottom of the stairs. I'm like, AAH. aaAAAh. aaAAAAAAhhh. aaAAAAAHHH. I've got a tiny cut on my forehead which is just pissing blood, for some reason - apart from that, I'm fine. Morgan, however - he's not fine! Morgan is the opposite of fine. Something happened when the bookshelf lodged itself in the wall and his sadness just (click) went away in a second, and he started PISSING HIMSELF laughing. Hysterical. And he had the creepiest laugh I've ever heard in my life- I'm standing there like "this is weird" and he's like "mwhueHUEUEEUEUEUE! mhhwuEUEUEUE!" like some sort of demonically possessed baritone cookaburra, - "mwhueEUUEUEE, a-HOGUGUGUGAGAGAGA!" - "Um... Uh..." - "mwueEUEUUEUEUE" - "can I still have the bookshelf?" - "yuuEEEEAAH" We extract it from the wall - the bookshelf, incidentally, showing no sign of having just rolled down a staircase and smashed through a wall. We carry it out to my car- we had to stop about six times, 'cuz Morgan was like - "Hang on a minute, mwueHUEUEUEUEUEE" We got it to my car, put it on the trailer, and Morgan was in such a great mood he let me have the bookshelf for free. Ohh! Hahaha... Mm... And that's where the story SHOULD end. But there was something about the bookshelf going through the wall that flipped a fucking switch in Morgan's head, and he is now hungry for more destruction. So as I started tying the bookshelf down to my trailer, Morgan just strolls over to like an upright mailbox on the front lawn and just starts trying to wrench it out of the ground. Really putting his back into it. I'm like, "are you okay buddy" and he's like "YEAP" (struggling) HUAH! He pulls it out of the ground whereupon he wields it like a fucking battleaxe and just starts smashing up the front garden, just beheading the daisies, fucking up the lavender... I'm like, "uhh, hey Morgan, maybe you wanna stop and think about that" and he whirled around and looked at me like Jack Nicolson chasing Shelly Duvalle up the stairs in the shining and said - "WHY DON'T YOU MIND YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS?" ... yep, yep, cool, man, yep, yep... Now, I like tying knots. I'm quite good at tying knots if I tie something down I take my time because I want it to stay there... But as Morgan nonchalantly strolled up the driveway, rolled up the garage door, and put the mailbox through the windscreen of an Audi!? I must admit, I kind of rushed my knot tying job. I got in my car, I'm about to drive off, I'm like, looking at the house going "ah, I'm sure he'll be fine" and then an armchair smashed out of an upstairs window and just went DOINK DOINK DOINK DOINK down the front lawn. I was like "... what's my duty of care in this situation?". I didn't want to call the cops on him, I didn't want him to trash the house, I'm like - "daw fuck I'm gonna have to talk to Morgan" So I got out, I walked up the driveway shitting myself- you know when someone does something really violent and you're just like "ah, fuck, we're not supposed to do shit like that!"? Yucky, just yucky feeling in my tum-tum- and I'm standing there, standing there in the garage and there's like an adjoining door in the garage that leads into the house. I can see in through the door into the house, up the staircase, it's like a wooden staircase, and I'm standing in the garage just going - "ah fuck..." (gulp) "morgaaaan. Morgaaaan!" Like I was calling a cat for its dinner? "Morgan! Moggie-moggie-moggie-moggie-moggie!" And then I notice a small trickle of water start to come from the top step. And then a little bit more water, and then QUITE A LOT OF WATER, just pissing down the stairs like shitty water feature, I'm like "aw that can't be right" and then Morgan appeared on the top step holding a hammer like this: - "BAAAH!" (jumps out) I was like - "WOAH!" and he's like - "mwhuEUEUEUE" Starts running at me wielding the hammer, like "UEUEUEUE", I'm like "aw no no I just wanted to buy a bookshelf..." he's like "UEUEUEUEUEUE-.. RRAH!" runs straight past me, I'm like - "Where are you going?" he's like - "UEEEH!" made a beeline for my car, I'm like - "NO, MAN! STOP!" he's like - "UEUEUEUEUUEUE" - "STOP IT! JUST STOP!" He spins around and goes - "I just checked my phone, she texted me fifteen minutes ago saying she'll be here in fifteen minutes, WE'RE GONNA GO!" and gets into my car! - "fucking... jesus... fuck me" I run down the lawn, get in the driver's seat, I'm like - "What was with the water?" he goes - "Ah, I put plugs in all of the sinks and turned all the taps on!" I'm like - "Oh that's fucked" He's like - "JUST DRIVE!" I was like - "AAH!" I took off so quick, rounded the corner of his street, and the bookshelf just went "mrrreeUUWh-BOOSH" and exploded against the guard rail, just exploded in a shower of badly tied knots and broken dreams... So me and Morgan just fucking left it there, like a little breadcrumb for his ex wife to find on the way home to her destroyed gingerbread house. I dropped Morgan at a train station. I have never seen him again. And that, my friends, is why I no longer shop on Gumtree. Thank you very much! Thank you very much. (Applause) Haha, ah, fuck... You know my favourite bit of that story? I just made it up. Yes, not true. There is no Morgan. MMMH! It's very unsatisfying, isn't it? - "But I saw him in my head. I saw Morgan in my head." ... ... ... Why is it we can feel so robbed when someone tells us a story we just heard isn't true, and yet so satisfied at the end of a fictional novel? Y'know? You know that? ... You know the other great thing about that story? First draft. FUCK YOU HEMINGWAY! ... (sigh) Can't end on that, can I? - "Those LIES? WE DID NOT COME HERE TO BE HOODWINKED, SIR!" The truth, eh? ... The truth is, I'm... I'm not an exceptional person, y'know? Nothing interesting really ever happens to me, I'm massively flawed, and I think I'm quite forgettable, if I'm being a hundred percent honest. And this isn't the shit bit at the end of the show where I get on the cross, I'm like "lOve mE on the wAY OUt thE doOr". It's not that, it's just that I don't think- on a scale from one to memorable, I'm not that memorable. Not on like the Morgan sort of scale, not on the Ernest Hemingway scale, certainly, y'know... But if I tell a great story, maybe people will remember that instead. Remember the card trick and just... pretend that they don't know how it's done, y'know? ... But must we leave a legacy? MUST we make an impact? Do we HAVE TO leave a footprint? Is it okay to just settle, seek safety, nest, y'know? Or must we constantly shake our lives up, or suffer the indiscriminate cruelty of having it shaken against our will? Must we try to carve a path through the tall grass, feeling as though no-one has ever felt how we feel? Terrified at what may be lurking low in the grass on either side of us, but just pressing ever on with that paleolithic instinct deep within our chromosomes that the only way is forward, that you HAVE TO keep going? That eventually you'll stumble upon the edge of the field, hitch a ride from a passing car, and meet up with the rest of the gang for tea and sandwiches at the old town hall? ... (deep breath) Do we feel like the path that we are carving through the grass is all our own? Only to finally float above the field with the sweet relief of expiration and realize that the field is insignificantly miniscule in size, and that there's only one path through the grass - the exact same one that every human has trod before us will ever after, just stumbling blindly along a tiny hyphen between the words "birth" and "death". And when reduced to that level of crisp simplicity, fear cannot exist ... So. (pausing, readying) Phew. Walking to Skye, chapter one: (Blackout) (Applause and credits)

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