We have got to talk about the kids
in all those Goosebumps books.
For example,
if your family vacation
is to an amusement park
called HORRORLAND,
and your station wagon explodes
in the parking lot upon arrival,
maybe
shrugging it off,
buying an extra large popcorn,
and heading straight for
The Deadly Doom Slide
is not your best possible
course of action.
Or,
if you steal a weird camera
from your creepy neighbor’s basement
and every picture you take
shows bad things happening,
like decapitation
and Tofurkey,
and then all the bad things
from the pictures
start happening,
Stop Taking Pictures.
Or,
if you move into your new house
and there are a bunch of small children already living in your bedroom
that your parents cannot see,
maybe,
don’t just grab a juice box
and go play in the cemetery
that
is
in
your
backyard.
Or,
when I tell you of the ghosts
that live inside my body;
When I tell you
I have a cemetery in my backyard
and in my front yard
and in my bedroom;
When I tell you
trauma is a steep slide
you cannot see the bottom of,
that my anxiety is a camera
that shows everyone I love as bones,
when I tell you
panic is a stubborn phantom,
she will grab hold of me
and not let go for months–
this is the part of the story
when everyone is telling you to run.
To love me
is to love a haunted house–
it’s fun to visit once a year,
but no one wants to live there,
and when you say,
“Tell me about the bad days,”
it sounds like all the neighborhood kids daring each other to ring the doorbell,
you love me
like the family walking through Horrorland holding hands–
You are not stupid,
or careless,
or even brave,
you’ve just never seen
the close-up of a haunting.
Darling,
this love will not cure me.
And this love will not scrape
the blood from the baseboards,
but it will turn all the lights on,
it will bring basil
back from the farmer’s market
and it will plant it in every windowsill,
it is the kind of love
that gives me goosebumps,
when you say to the ghosts,
“If you’re staying,
then you better make room,”
and we kiss against the walls
that tonight are not shaking,
so we turn the music up
and we dance to Miles Davis,
and you say,
“My god,
this house.
The way that it stands
even on the months
that no one goes into
or comes out of it.”
How reckless, the way that I love
like the first chapter of a ghost story.
Like the gentlest hand
reaching out of a grave.
just in the case that i never get around to making more art for the au (which is entirely likely cause, this is me. I create AUs and then never touch on them again, or at least not for several several months) So I thought I’d share some of the concepts and ideas behind it
Y’all. Please get a Shimeji. I love them and it’s a good distraction when my brain is messing with me. I have Sollux currently.
You can have multiple on your screen at once and they just wander around and you can have them sit on things and grab things. It’s a Chrome extension. Have fun!
In honor of it having been twenty years since it happened, I figured I’d tell you guys about the Pipeline Explosion I Should Have Died In.
I was turning six that year, it happened in June, so I was five. June 10th, 1999.
Putting it under a read more to save your dash.
My sister and I were at our daycare -- She’s two years older than me and the daycare also had pre-school to 1st grade. Our stepdad was running late to pick us up, but it wasn’t a big deal to us. There were snacks, people to play with, a playground, grownups who didn’t mind staying late to watch us.
Now, this being 1999, no one really had cellphones yet. They existed, but they weren’t that widespread just yet. He’d called before heading out from someplace and they were just holding us there until he arrives -- about twenty or thirty minutes after the call.
He arrived, packed up the kids, we got out.
Normal day.
He had a bike that he used to get us all home -- I would ride on the back, my sister on the seat, him on the pedal. Balancing act. All fun and awesome. We went slowly.
On any other day, we would have stopped in the creek and played for a bit. Since he had been running late to get us, he was also running late to pick our mom up. The creek playing did not happen that day. We got within several blocks of our apartment and saw two guys pushing a car up a hill. We laughed about it for a second, then stopped in our tracks as an explosion and a mushroom cloud popped up in the distance.
Our first thought was that the car we’d seen had exploded.
We kept heading home.
It took another twenty minutes and when we walked in, the phone was ringing off the hook. It was my mom. She was practically crying over the phone and all I really remember was that my sister was suddenly pushing me into our room to pack some of my stuff into a bag. We packed up, got down to my stepdad’s truck, threw our stuff in and drove off.
It turned out that the creek we usually played in had been filled with gasoline by a failing pipeline and then a spark had been created. It was only a few blocks from our daycare, about eight blocks from our apartment, and my mom’s work had been evacuated. She’d stayed inside as long as possible to try and reach us. She’d seen a mushroom cloud over our daycare. Reminder: I was five, my sister was about to turn seven. Not quite two years between us, actually.
On the other side of my family, my dad’s mom carried a police scanner. She was a police reporter for years and a reporter at the time. My grandma had been hearing the news of three unidentified bodies, with no details other than the location everyone in the family knew we played. My dad couldn’t contact us, having only heard about it after we’d already gotten to the apartment and left again.
We picked up my mom, got to his house, settled in for the night to try and figure out what was happening.
Three kids had died. One of them had gone to school with my sort-of-brother.
If we hadn’t been running late, we would have been another three bodies in the creek.
I don’t really know why I’m telling this story other than trying to deal with the trauma. You’d think that twenty years would be enough time to get over something, right? But we could have and probably should have died back then.
After my dad and grandma found out that we were still alive, my dad refused to let us out of his sight for about a week and a half. My stepdad would randomly stop what he was doing and call out to us in the house (We moved in with him after the explosion) until we answered. My grandma had a treat box -- you behave or do an extra chore, you get a treat. After the explosion and finding us all alive, my sister and I got the entire box at once.
My mom followed us around for a long while, when she wasn’t at work and we weren’t at school.
Here, have some photos of the mushroom cloud and the exploded creek.
The cloud could be seen from the San Juan Islands.
One day my health teacher in middle school just like … didn’t show up for class. And so of course we were all “oh if he doesn’t show up in fifteen minutes we’re legally allowed to leave”, giggling about it and all the bullshit. He did eventually show up, ten minutes into the class time. He looked haggard as fuck, sweating all over, hair messed up, beaten to hell and back. We stared at him and were about to ask what in the world happened to him when he stopped in front of his desk and smacked his bicycle helmet down on it.
His helmet had this odd discolored patch on it. Like, white against white, but … weird? It’s then that I realized his helmet didn’t have a discolored patch, it had a patch missing. A big chunk of his helmet had just been shaved away, the curve of the helmet gone and sanded flat by whatever it had been scraped against. And running through that patch, from one side of the helmet to the other, was this big crack, like the whole helmet had split like an eggshell.
Our teacher took a couple deep panting breaths and then told our class: “And this,” he took another deep breath, “is why you always wear your helmet”.
And that’s the story of how an entire class of middle school students took helmet-wearing very seriously for the rest of their lives.
My sister was doing a charity cycle, and on the last day there was awful rain. Going down a steep hill her brakes failed. I got a selfie from her missing her front teeth and she had a black eye. Before I can even lose my mind about her injuries, my dad sent me a picture of her shattered cycle helmet, the tattered ruins of her Alice in Wonderland costume and the scuffs on the shirt and cycle leggings she’d been wearing under it.
The helmet prevented her skull/face from taking serious damage and the long sleeves/leggings meant she got grazes on her limbs instead of needing skin grafts. Honestly - safety first.
The VERY FIRST BIKE RIDE OF HIS LIFE, my four year old lost control of his bike, panicked and forgot how to use the break and flipped over his handlebars and went head first into the curb.
He got up like it was nothing, got back on his bike and finished the bike ride.
No bruises, no cuts or scrapes and just a couple tears for fears.
His helmet has a HUGE dint in it. Nothing punctured through. Structural integrity is still fine. All the paw patrol characters are still there. That 12$ saved us a trip to the emergency room.
Hey PSA!
YOU MUST GO TO THE HOSPITAL IF YOUR HELMET LOOKS LIKE THOSE ABOVE!
Helmets prevent you from dying but you could STILL BE CONCUSSED or have internal injuries!
And always replace a helmet after a fall where you hit your head! Even if it doesn’t look dented, the padding inside can still be damaged enough that it’s much safer to get a new one!
Seriously. It saves lives. I see people riding bicycles without them all the time and the general thought about it is, “I’m not going fast or far, I’ll be fine!”
Fun Fact: The height from the top of your head to the ground can, in fact, kill you. If you land in just the right way, even at low speeds, you can still die. If you crash and don’t hit your head but get tossed into traffic, you can get injured or die.
1972 - Bernie wrote a letter in support of abolishing all laws dealing with abortion, sexual behavior (adultery, homosexuality, etc.), and drugs
1983 - Sanders signed the first proclamation to create the first Gay & Lesbian Pride Day in Burlington, VT
1985 - Burlington passes proclamation protecting LGBTQ people from housing and employment discrimination
1993 - When Congress members attacked non-discrimination in DC, Sanders voted “no”
1993 - Voted “no” on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
1995 - Sanders rebuked Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham for using the word “homos” when talking about gay people in the military
1996 - Voted against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)
1999 - When Congress tried to keep domestic partners from adopting children in DC, Sanders voted “no”
2001 - When Congress tried to keep domestic partners from receiving health benefits, Sanders challenged it
2004 - Voted against the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage
2007 - Voted to expand and strengthen penalties for violent crimes committed in the basis of sexual orientation
2009 - Voted to expand federal hate crimes to cover offenses motivated by gender identity and sexual orientation
2009 - Supported Vermont’s first-in-the-country law legalizing gay marriage
2010 - Voted to overturn “don’t ask, don’t tell”
2011 - Called on President Obama to support marriage equality
2013 - Co-sponsored the Employment Non-Discrimination Act
2013 - Co-sponsored the United Families Act to allow LGBTQ Americans to bring their partners to the Us
2014 - Co-sponsored the International Human Rights Defense Act
2015 - Co-sponsored Civil Rights to include sexual orientation and gender identity protected categories
2016 - Co-sponsored Bill to designate June 26, 2016 as LGBTQ Equality Day
2016 - Bernie condemned conversion therapy
2017 - Co-sponsored the Every Child Deserves a Family Act which prohibits foster care entities from receiving federal assistance if they discriminate against prospective LGBTQ parents
2018 - Committed to passing the Equality Act
2019 - Has proposed a comprehensive housing plan that addresses societal homelessness, which disproportionately impacts the LGBTQ community
2019 - Committed to advancing policies that ensure fair treatment for transgender people who are targeted by police unfairly
But yeah, Bernie Sanders “skipping” a forum on LGBTQ rights to host campaign rallies is breaking news
This is the exact same propaganda that got spread to get people to not vote for Hillary. Don’t buy into it and start thinking people like Bernie or Warren are bad choices because they’re still the best options for your votes right now
when i watched good omens, i didn’t expect to love tv crowley, and it fuckin blindsided me. all at once, i thought, oh gosh, damn, and fuck, roughly in that order, and here’s why.
where tv crowley and book crowley most significantly diverge is the bookshop fire. in the book, “Crowley cursed Aziraphale, and the ineffable plan, and Above, and Below.” in the tv show, instead of cursing him, he calls out for him desperately before falling to the floor with a quiet “you’ve gone.” for book crowley, az is “Aziraphale. The Enemy, of course. But an enemy for six thousand years now, which made him a sort of friend.” for tv crowley, aziraphale is his “best friend.” naturally, in the bookshop fire, tv crowley is in fucking agony. this is not how book crowley reacts.
see, one of book crowley’s most basic traits is his optimism. “Because, underneath it all,” the book says, “Crowley was an optimist. If there was one rock-hard certainty that had sustained him through the bad times—he thought briefly of the fourteenth century—then it was utter surety that he would come out on top; that the universe would look after him.”
it’s a really beautiful passage. and i can’t relate to it at all.
after the fire, book crowley thinks he might “get completely and utterly pissed out of his mind while he waited for the world to end.” where book crowley only considers it, tv crowley actually does it. he does go to wait out the end of the world while drunk, and does give up, and he does break down, and he is not an optimist; he is a mess. that struck me. i’ve never seen a heroic character so blatantly need help before. but crowley gets help; he finds a friend and confesses how much aziraphale means to him; he gets back in the car and forges onward through the fire, even though he’s clearly Not Okay.
and there, on the flaming m25, book crowley and tv crowley diverge again. tv crowley is not an optimist; he’s not holding the bentley together with the hope that it’ll all work out. but he does it anyway. tv crowley doesn’t have optimism, but he has something that is, to me, even more important. in the show, “Crowley has something no other demons have, especially not Hastur: an imagination.”
an imagination. strangely enough, in the book, crowley admits to lacking it: “They’ve got what we lack. They’ve got imagination,” book crowley says. but tv crowley has that imagination, and that is what saves him–and that, to me, makes so much sense.
tv crowley is traumatised. when he fell, some part of him broke, and while he claims he “sauntered vaguely downwards,” he really took a “million-light-year freestyle dive into a pool of boiling sulphur,” and it hurt. tv crowley is hurt. and so am i.
i also give up. i also break down. i don’t, and can’t, ever believe that the universe is looking out for me–or for anyone. i am not an optimist. but you know what? i have imagination. i have friends. and if it came down to me to help save the world, that is exactly what i would rely on.
Book Crowley was written by two youngish men at the dawn of the post Cold War era. He is a young man because they were young men. He has optimism because that was the mood at the time. Optimism that decades of MAD was over.
TV Crowley was adapted by a man who is older, and more cynical, and has lost his best friend to Alzheimer’s.
Book! Crowley was written by young men with the world at their feet, and really, why wouldn’t you feel optimistic as your life starts out?
TV! Crowley was written by a man who lost his best friend to Alzheimer’s and no, it wasn’t a fire, but this man knew/ knows intimately that you don’t just pick yourself up from that straight away. You go and you drink and you mourn andyou grieve and you cry.
And only when that’s happened and you come to terms with the fact that this man is never going to come back, you shift to accommodate that loss and then you look toward what needs to be happening.
TV! Crowley’s reaction was so much more realistic for the relationship he and TV! Aziraphale had and it would’ve been out of character for him to just dust himself off and drive straight to Tadfield, because it would have been like saying those six thousand years meant nothing to him. But they did and so he broke.
I’ve lost someone I’ve loved very suddenly. I’ve had those final conversations, sitting by myself at a lonely table with a ghost. Sometimes there are things left to say, apologies to make. And if I could have said, “Where are you? Wherever you are, I’ll come to you,” and done one last thing to help them—I’d have done it. Even if it meant holding myself together through an inferno by the force of my imagination, even believing as Crowley did that I would still never see them again. He didn’t know Adam would give the angel back. But they had unfinished business, and he was going to finish it, if it was the last thing he did. Which it should have been. He didn’t expect a happy ending, he just needed an ending, one that wasn’t cut short.
I don’t think it would have been unrealistic for him to keep moving forward exactly - speaking as a trauma survivor, sometimes when the world has fallen apart, all you can do is throw yourself into what’s in front of you and try not to think. (This is actually my default crisis mode.)
Collapsing in the feels is for later, when you have a) time and b) enough distance that you can survive them. It’s triage, basically.
That said… The distinctions pointed out here are very real and very powerful, and can be brought together under a single heading: book!Crowley is further in his recovery than TV!Crowley.
See, I’ve been doing a lot of processing and healing lately. And you know what? Turns out that’s the difference between “This is fine!” being defiance and optimism, or cynical despair.
A freshly wounded survivor says this is fine, I’m used to it, everything falls apart.
A healing survivor learns to say this is fine, I’ve survived so much more, you think this will stop me?
And the imagination thing? Well, part of getting out from under a fog of trauma and triggers is figuring out who you are outside of that. Often, it means building new identity. Book!Crowley has had more chance to identify with humanity.
(Zukka: Remind me to write a post sometime about her vision of exactly what anguish and rage and self-loathing hide behind “just asked questions” and “sauntered vaguely downwards,” because there is a fuck load of “laugh so I don’t scream” in those phrases.)
#fandom has written off Gabriel as dumb but like #you don’t show up unannounced with a violent enforcer your employee is clearly uncomfortable around and trap him in a room by accident #this is deliberate mob level intimidation #“politely” reminding him exactly what theyre capable of if he steps out of line #and its terrifying #he cant even look at them
@ileolai hitting the nail on the head as usual!
In addition, Sandalphon is blocking the exit. And he and Gabriel are standing at complete 180 degree points with Aziraphale in the centre. This is a thing I have known sadistic interviewers to do: to deliberately sit (or stand) at such angles to the victim/interviewee that they can never have both interviewers in their eyeline at the same time. To make eye contact with one, you have to lose sight of the other. Normally I’ve seen it done with the two interviewers at 90 degrees, so the interviewee has to keep turning their head. This is even more cruel: Aziraphale has to turn his back on whomever is not speaking. It’s a deliberate tactic to make a victim more awkward and wrong-footed, and in this case, even physically vulnerable.
Yep. You’ve articulated what I was trying to get at with ‘’trap’’. You don’t block off the exits like that to have a polite conversation. You do it to threaten somebody.
It’s like they took the mob intimidation bit from the original book and turned it into something far more horrifying and with more weight for his character arc, because this is what gangsters do to scare people. imo Gabriel is fairly well aware of whats going on long before the surveillance photos come into it and he just likes watching Aziraphale squirm with anxiety over how much he knows, because he’s not stupid, he’s a sadistic bully.
yeah who thinks gabriel is dumb? i never got that vibe from him. he plays at nice and polite but he’s totally a mob boss who’s being politely terrifying
i just had the weirdest moment, i was feeling my front teeth with my tongue because they’re the tiniest bit crooked, and then i had the thought “i’ll check if they’re also crooked in my other mouth” and then i realized to my shock and confusion that i have only one mouth, leading me to believe that in a past life i was a terrible monster with two mouths
A few months ago, I thought to myself “Mmm I’m so tired… how much longer in this one again?” and I knew instinctively what I meant by ‘this one’ was this body and this life. I then spend a few wide-eyed moments having an identity/existential crisis like how many times have I been on this earth to have such an instinctive response to being bone-weary to my soul? No one can really answer, especially not me.
In July 2017, one night I woke up around 2 a.m and blurted out in a quasi professorial voice “the Equinox Bird has infinite beaks, all in the wrong direction, and infinite eyes” and I don’t know what the fuck I was dreaming about but it still haunts me. It seemed like a very important information for a few seconds.
One time I passed out on the couch after going a few days without sleep, and when I woke up mom said I had been speaking in German in my sleep, and it sounded like I was ordering people to build something
When I was like 5 my mom took me to the grave of her friend that died of cancer and I asked what happened and my mom explained that she died and i fucking said “I died once” and my mom asked me to explain and I went into pretty detailed explanation about how I died in a war because “I got stabbed by a gun with a knife at the end” (my exact words) and I met god and she (she’s a woman obvs) asked if I wanted to stay or go back to earth and I said I wanted to go back so I chose my mom cause she was struggling to have a baby (she had me through IVF) and lemme tell you that changed her like nothing will make you second guess your religious beliefs like a five year old explaining heaven and god to you
this post is a fucking ride and it reminded me of something i forgot
one time i was playing on my wii (like 5-ish years ago) and i thought to myself “i haven’t checked on rowan in a week, has he died from the plague? :(“ and i didn’t think anything of it for a bit until later when i had a “what the fuck” moment
I love this kind of shit because it happens to me all the goddamn time. Like:
-The other night I rolled over in the middle of the night to shake my partner awake, proceeded to tell him how I was glad that ‘this time round we would truly have the freedom to love each other properly’ and how his hands belonged to his last self, but his eyes had never changed in all the lives I’d known him. And he just laid there in the dark like wtf because I was asleep. Like I’d woken him to tell him that all in my sleep and then left him to have a crisis.
- Watching the history channel with my Pop on the couch, tender age of 7, and they’re talking about crucifixion. And my pop, ever the funny man, is like “that looks like it aughta hurt”. And I just turn to look at him and without hesitation reply “only at first”. And he’s like “what do you mean” and tiny me just shrugged and said “well there’s a place beyond the hurt where everything just stops” and he turned the telly off and left the room.
- night before Christmas 2012, dreamt I’d been stabbed in the lungs by an angel with the face of a falcon. He looked at me and told me he had to do it, so that ‘my next breath would come as a rebirth’. When he started to glow so brightly that it burned my eyes, I woke up to all the lights in my house on and a dark bruise beneath my rib cage. Will admit, that one freaked me out.
- walked past a graveyard with a friend back in middle school on the way to her house, and mid conversation I stopped talking and stood stock still, looked over at the walls,and quietly said “I have a friend in there”. Then picked up the conversation and continued strolling like nothing had happened. To be fair, I didn’t realise what I’d said. She still tells me I’m the reason she can’t walk past that graveyard anymore.
- a couple of years ago when I was in Wales I walked past an old stone house just outside of Aberystwyth, and just started to weep. I had the overwhelming thought that I needed to be in there to get dinner ready for the children, but in a different life so long ago and so impossible to reach, that thefeeling of loss was instant and overwhelming.
- was about to use a pedestrian crossing, when my whole body just sort of went hey don’t do that, and so I stopped and put my arm out to stop the woman who was crossing behind me, and 2 seconds later a car came skidding around the corner and crashed into the tree on the other side of the crossing, and I just whispered “ha, not this time” and didn’t really think about it until later when I realised I’d nearly died again. (Btw i waited for th ambulance to show up and the dude driving the car was fine, just hit his head and was drunk af at 10:30am on a Thursday).
- another dream I had just this week, I was sitting in an otherwise empty cinema with a tall, thin man. I can’t really recall what he looked like, except he was well dressed, impossibly pale, and he kind of blurred when you looked directly at him, so I mainly watched him out the corner of my eye and looked ahead at the blank movie screen. He was holding my hand, and he asked me if i enjoyed my life. I said yes and explained why. He then said, almost verbatim, “And how does this one weigh against the last? Can it tip the scales, or is it, at last, to be found lacking?” And I replied, almost verbatim “I weigh my lives against my joy, and each life I find there is more joy to be discovered.” He replied with a laugh, lifted my hand to a kiss and said “till next time then” and disappeared. I woke up in the dark with both my cats sitting on me, alert, and staring out my bedroom door.
So many more, but these are the first that come to mind.
When I was little, my mother, my sister and I would dream in unison so often that one time when my mother was having a rather dull dream about golf my tiny 3 year old self shook her awake and told her to stop because it was boring. She dreaded having nightmares because both of us would wake up shrieking.
My sister and I have also been known to argue in our sleep. Witnesses assure us that whatever made the shouting start, we both knew what it was and were mad about it. We don’t need to be in the same room for this.
We also stayed in a haunted house for a while. An old lady had fallen in the chilly hallway just outside the warm kitchen, broken her hip, and couldn’t reach high enough to open the door, so she died of hypothermia a foot away from a telephone and warmth. Without fail, every person who stood in that spot and tried to open that door - the single most used door in the house, being between the kitchen and the bathroom and front door - felt cold and found themselves scrabbling frantically at the door handle, which was always strangely hard to open from that side. You got used to it to an extent, but it always hit strangers hard.
Good Omens AU where nothing changes except that upon realizing that Warlock isn’t the antichrist they absentmindedly bring him along for the ride, and he’s just like in the background playing gameboy or something in every scene
Passerbys, clearly seeing Crowley take Warlock as he’s “going home and packing”: oh my God he’s taking the kid\oh my God you’re leaving your husband and kid
Warlock who just at this point lives in the Bentley: aw man I lost the squirtle
But on the other hand….
Crowley, rushing into the bookshop thinking Warlock was in there with Aziraphale when really Warlock ended up hitching a ride with Shadwell for story reasons:
Story reasons for Warlock to hitch a ride with Shadwell: Look, I don’t know where Nanny’s gotten to; he could be halfway to Alpha Centauri by now. But he’ll be back sooner or later, and when he does he’s going to hunt you down for what you did to Brother Francis. So as long as I tag along with you, I’ll run into Nanny again eventually.
They were named Killer, Terror, and Stalks-by-Night and he misses them very much (Adam might miracle them back along with the Bentley, but he doesn’t know that yet)
I like the idea that after Armageddon, Adam fixes it so that Warlock can stay with ‘Nanny and Brother Francis’ rather than go back to parents that really aren’t the best, and they don’t even realise at first, they just keep looking after him because it’s what they’ve been doing for the last 11 years anyway, and Warlock is happier with them. Maybe his parents just forget, and think they never had a child, and Warlock sometimes misses them but to be honest they weren’t exactly very good parents and it was Nanny and Brother Francis who actually raised him (especially in the tv version).
And when they go back to Crowley’s flat and Aziraphale’s bookshop, they find there is an extra room in each, which is full of things that were in Warlock’s bedroom back home, and Warlock just settles in and switches between the two for a while (until they presumably move into a cottage in the south downs like everyone headcanons)
How about another story from the life of Krasimer?
I’m a cosplayer. Firstly, let’s get that out of the way. Secondly, as many people who know me can attest to, I am absolutely batshit crazy about Halloween. Like, I start celebrating the moment August rolls around (Don’t you dare judge me.)
Anyway.
Last year, for Halloween, I was in college. We were allowed to wear costumes on campus and there was a trick or treating event at my school. This allowed me to dress up as creepily as I wished because I have always wanted to do costumes in a major way -- I might do them for theaters at some point in the future? -- anyway. I wanted to do something simple that could be broken down easily if I wanted to move easier afterward.
I chose Little Georgie, from It. As in, the creepy version of the child who got murdered. The version controlled by Pennywise.
I had the balloon and everything. I had the raincoat. I had the boots. I had dark makeup smeared around my eyes and I had blood dripping down the sleeve of the coat. (Another story to tell later is the story of ACQUIRING THAT FUCKING COAT, but this is not that story.)
I went to class. With my balloon, which I had rigged so that it “Floated” without helium -- I wrapped a thick wire in white yarn and made it look like it was a normal balloon. It just didn’t shift around and that creeped people out even more.
But I went to class.
Dude across the classroom wearing a pajama onesie looked up from where he sat down to see me sitting there. He squinted, frowned, looked a little closer and saw the special effects. He then jerked back in his chair and looked like he wanted to run away.
He came up to me after class and asked me if I was Little Georgie. I said yes and he grinned.
I should also mention, I do amateur voicework. I can imitate the, “You’ll Float Too!” thing. Like, dead-on. I did this in front of him and he almost fell over sideways.
I got a lot of candy.
Another “Should mention” thing was that it was EXTREMELY foggy that day. So I’m wandering around in a bloody raincoat, with a bright red balloon, in the thick fog and people cannot see me until they are right next to me.
theartofmadeline
stormborns
discoholicmusic
tangentwithtanner
jacobvanloon
andulkaphoto
