Evening ::

God, I will never stop sneezing. It was my fault because I wanted to get into the candle restorations and the burning sage and the breathing meditation and all that..

This night or next I have to sit down and find out if I need to review Dark Shadows now or if I need to wait until this supposed end to the cure arc or not. Barnabas found that a cure means death and his death means he lives on, what an interesting creature. Vampires in media torture themselves for no reason, they are so lonely with eternal life for one reason or another but then ignore all the people who really would understand them. They have infinite life, so they have infinite chances for all this kind of friendship and so on.

And then Julia is an entire bitch, she has some weird fetish for Barnabas at the cost of the actual Collins family. She wants to work with this cure, killed her only colleague, and for what? She lets David get so deep that they think of sending him away, and when someone wants to help him, he dies and he is left looking like another troubled kid. And then she constantly is catty and petty under that facade she has to hold to keep this in the air.

This arc is so damaging to my image of the good people of this show, though... how many times can you look a man who doesn't sleep and is the center of accusation after accusation in the face and not say what he is. It's a gothic book come to life, so they never actually say "vampire", but oh my god. "Undead", "he's dead", "something else", "supernatural"... all these terms when meanwhile Julia goes in, tells him what's what, and starts her double crossing forever of the Collins family. And even more than that -- SARAH COLLINS is a ghost, they say ghost and we see her come and go like dear Josette so many episodes ago and Bill Maloy when he came to Vicki! How does SHE get naming privledges while everyone else is so stupid and blind to Barnabas Collins?

But you can't even skip episodes of the show now because the writers made sure that the characters do like one important thing each episode... ONE... In the "Beginning" era before Barnabas I could play it in the background and listen in on them talking and even step out of the house for a while. Now I have to make sure I tune in because someone literally might just die or have been injured or I can't miss what Sarah said or what Barnabas did. It makes me so mad (not really)... They are so stupid when before they were just conceited or proud. I'm happy I decided to group this and Addams Family together in a box to watch, plus they play stuff OTA that's similar so I'm already very familiar with Munsters! All that means is that when I get successfully rotted by this show I have other options.

Also "supernatural? you can't be serious!" -- BURKE YOU WENT TO A SEANCE, YOUR FIANCEE GOT POSESSED... a SEANCE... the SECOND SEANCE AT THE SAME PROPERTY IN FACT!! this is why you died in a plane crash

This is my favorite thing to watch right now, if not only to finish the series btw

Night ::

things are so exciting to me, i got through making a brute force copy of my story and learned that the evilest fictional people do have more fun.

his name is david and his partner is ives and i love them because i made them codependent cannibal black magic necrophilic necromancers. i want to make them a game and a story, idk which one would get more 'attention' online. either way i am only 3% scared to do so because this is the holy mary mother of god of all "problematic" stories. i might have to only release on ao3 bc it includes grooming, murdering, cannibals, favorite person style attachement, yandereism, necro-activity, crazy ass people, and a thinly veiled version of the catholic church under a different name.

I had hoped to release content for it on tumblr too, but it seems there's no use in putting it anywhere except the place it can release, on this site, and ao3... it's why i hate modern internet dwellers but at the same time that's why i made this at all, isn't it?

i side eyed myself as i kept stacking on top of what i made before and i connected this and that, then i wanted to avoid accidentally fridging my favorite character... its too interesting for me

anyway i got the idea for intensity by watching hannibal. i think i was afraid of going too grand or being seen as edgy when what i really wanted was transgressive and symbolism-loaded. i saw that when i watched season one and i reviewed it on the media log. i think im ok now with making this story because of that.

i felt like this story was too alive for a novel in a sense, but maybe that means im losing my ability to write it that well? like if blood meridian could be unfilmable (or at least no one is willing to go through that many hoops to film it in any way) then maybe it reflects on me that i can't get this story out?

i don't think it matters either way, as i will tell the story, but for now im happy i got the outline done...

Morning ::

The mind can change and warp from what it takes in. When I meditate on old prose and words that I've never seen before, I can eventually read it like I came from the period. Watching old shows and marinating in the past is something else, too. I watched Dark Shadows just because I couldn't stop watching. I got to the color imagery by now, and I know the meaning of slow progression.

I bring these up because, in this space, I can see all the little workings of my own mind to process these. And in Dark Shadows' case, I've essentially been subjected to months of the most minute and dramatized reactions to slivers of new information. Vicki wants a family, so she latches onto this new family and their history, and when she gets to following her own private passion, Burke tells her it isn't healthy. Of course it's not healthy for her in the plot, the vampire is trying to prey on her, but in reality she was just being wistful. He reacted like that because of her own intensity, because Maggie had gone missing and all those girls and animals were attacked. There was another stranger around the house with Vicki that no one truly trusted, but it was none of her fault, either.

That's all that got me wondering about influence. Someone who knows how to use influence, like so many people seem to get better at, can do so much. No one trusted Jason McGuire and actively hated him, but he wormed his way in by playing the long con. And in the other corner, Willie was beat and manipulated into submission, becoming someone no one trusted and into a loyal, trusted servant. By the end, Willie remained in the house, but Jason was to be eliminated for all his scheming. His greed killed him for barking up one wrong last tree.

Spending time observing some low-effort production from the 60s where everything was scuffed and awkward, yet was able to draw you in perfectly. With a sentence like I started, you'd assume I was rearing to talk about people.. but no. I haven't seen too many people lately, and the ones I do see are too close to me to look at. So I get to observe drama characters.

I wonder about this world. How it functions as it does, the people within it, how they do this and that. This world isn't built for observers, and it kills me to observe, but I can't help it. I think when I eventually move on, I have to stop, but I want to live here for today.

Either way, I have to go now. I want to go to the thrift store today, if going there at noon is a good idea.

Night ::

I don't want to talk about this when she's here or give her a chance to speak, so I want to get it out now while I am the one in charge. I don't even know if it's right to speak about us as different people, it makes us so far away from each other. I love her and know how she hurts and can remember what her pain felt like, but she is alien to me as I am now.

I think there's three of us in total, one of us is me, lucid and content. The other one is thy hyper one, happy and spinning and loud while being quiet at the same time. The third one is her, vindictive and self hating in the name of loving the world. She's a part of me who hates herself that badly, but right now I can't even feel her. I can't feel the visitor, either. Well, that part isn't true, I think she and I have a nice relationship with each other.

But her, she wants to kill the bright one but also cradle her in her arms. She told me so herself through our mutual document. I'm happy that she doesn't have to hear it, because I don't want her to hear it from her of all people. She wants to take us and rip our teeth out and grab us by the jaw and twist, all sorts of things. But I put a stop to it because I named her once, meaning she had to retreat for now. It's part of our game: I cry, she grabs me up and blames her, and then we come to terms with who we are in the moment.

I know it's not my place to say something like this, but I wish this was something like alters rather than three distinct versions of me in the moment. Recently I've been helping the cooperative side of me by indulging her with old games and nostalgia. She's so happy that I almost feel something for her. I still haven't heard from the wicked one, though. Where we can freely speak to one another, she prefers to only wait until she can claim our mind entirely and write such horrible passages in our space. I don't think the happy one of me has ever seen it.

I don't understand how that could be, that she's never seen it… Myself and her of all people know exactly what we do to each other and who we are and what we did when we were each other's signature emotion. I know we can never forget, because I hold the sovereign key: that this world will continue whether I cry or I do not. She shrinks away in time when I force this on her, and then I just have to rest. Maybe the chipper side won't come because of the wreckage, but then she appears to me and I can practically imagine us holding hands. I want to think she's a younger me, harmed and endangered, but she still lives. She loves to live life and she loves to protect others, and that is so powerful an ideal that even the evil side of us has to obey… I wonder why she's not our primary state, then, and she just wants to be coddled by me.

Morning ::

I waited for so long to get to see her again. She was a stuffed elephant. I never expected to see her, at least not for real. Something I wanted to have to appeal to a me that I shouldn't tap into.

I thought about it. She played music from her head, a lullaby that I can't remember the name of. She was plush, pink, round, and cute. As a baby, I believe I rejected her and carried someone much less special than she was to me now.

I don't know what it is about childhood toys. The bunny I carried everywhere, loose at the stitching and much, much worse for wear than the photo I saw of her online stays with me now. But the elephant that I pulled the tail of and whispered to at night is gone. I remember that she broke her head, the notes became unaligned, but I still listened to the steel-toned song.

The bunny, my grandma ordered clothes for. We bought doll clothes of the time and gave her shirts and outfits. She had an entire wardrobe and dressed like a sailor. We took pictures of her, but I haven't seen them in years. But I remember the blue and white and the yellows. I remember when my family got so frustrated with me that they hid her from me, but only for a while.

I remember as well, I had a care-bear plush, too. It was minty green, so maybe it was Bashful Heart. It was small and worn in the same way the bunny was. My grandma told me that there was a way to change the size and condition, but I had to close my eyes for the magic to work. So I did. I hid him away in the chairs, out of my sight, then sat on the couch and closed my eyes. When I opened them and sought him out, he had disappeared.

She told me that it meant the magic worked, and to look just where I had sat. In my spot, there was a giant replacement for the old one, said to be the same one enhanced by how much I loved it. I think maybe she might have known about the Velveteen Rabbit, something I had never read until high school. So because of that, I accepted the plush bear, but I never believed the magic explanation for a second. I think I was too smart, but in some abstract way, I wish I had believed her.

Do you know that story of the Velveteen Rabbit? When you love your toys so much as a child, they have to leave you one day and they become real. When your toys are burned or tossed away, they never die, they gain new life. And you can find them somehow, if they let you observe them, and it would have the same spots, the same wear, but they look back at you with wide eyes.

Maybe that was what I stole from them, the ability to become real. When I put my bunny, her clothes long gone, on my desk every day, I feel the absence of love. But she sits on the desk, not discarded of. Just to remain. But my elephant and that bear, and so many others, they are gone.

Night ::

I have so many ideas for my game... I don't know how to code, but it won't stop me. I'll just make it a visual novel.

My story is dark and brooding, and no novel I can write ever does the idea justice. David does this, then he does that.. I borrow this plot and I borrow that plot... I take a break, and then I come back.

I wonder if it's my own expectations that won't let me finish the story, but now that I have the program to write this thing without coding, I think I can do as I please.