izzy's playlists!
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
PR's Tumblrdome
if i look back, i am lost
roma★
⁂
h
d e v o n
Cosmic Funnies
Misplaced Lens Cap
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
blake kathryn
occasionally subtle
Andulka
Show & Tell
we're not kids anymore.
hello vonnie
ellievsbear
Sade Olutola
seen from Uruguay
seen from Türkiye
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from Italy
seen from Hong Kong SAR China
seen from Bangladesh
seen from Nigeria
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from Mexico
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from France
seen from United States
@ofdustymesa
#OFDUSTYMESA : ㅤㅤwriting blog for rustin cohle from hbo's true detective. previously found @monstroum / @detectiev. triggering content ahead, please mind your step. sideblog to @ofbizarre , please refer to the main blog for rules.
ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ⁰ carrdㅤ ¹ ch. studyㅤ² headcanons ㅤ³ aestheticsㅤ
““Never trust a survivor,” my father used to warn me, “until you find out what he did to stay alive.””
— Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard (via vonnegutphile)
I wanna go on record as saying that this is a very bad idea.
the music spilling out of the strip club's surround system feels so out of place, rustin can't help but wonder whether it is an auditory hallucination. there's a consistency to the air there. cohle thinks of sludge ... something that sticks to the pad of his fingers. something that clogs up the back of his throat and that tastes of scented hand cream. a dozen dreams, soaked up by a dozen single dollar bills. it's a depressing establishment but the only one he could get jesse pinkman to meet him at. cohle guesses it makes him feel safe, being surrounded by people who'd notice any wrongdoings but wouldn't immediately dial nine one one.
a long dark haired woman slowly twirls on the pole. a red light hits her from above. for a moment her body twists into a strange shape --- a spiral made of flesh and skin. the detective fluttered his lashes and focused on the table between them. jesse doesn't think them making business like this is a good idea. cohle agrees. "ain't no one here who gives a shit, pinkman." he mumbled before lazily glancing towards the entrance of the club. no one sees him. no one knows who he is or what he does. rust reaches into his jacket's inner pocket.
"pills. dopey stuff." he took out a couple of camel cigarettes. "the good stuff. somethin' you'd take yourself." he stretched his arm to offer one to the kid. a peace offering.
the proof of his transgressions is largely anecdotal. derived from unreliable sources. sustained by cognitive biases. (so what if he’s battered and bruised, spooked like a fawn in a hunter’s crosshairs? so what if he’s the poster boy for slack-jawed lackeys?) rustin cohle could inspect the nooks and crannies of his chemical sarcophagus, shackle his bony wrists together, bring him into the precinct for a date with the feds — god knows they’ve been vying to beat the daylights outta him — yet none of it would deter jesse from doing his thing. slipping through the cracks. auctioning off his loyalty to the most demanding bidder. suffocating in slow motion. pretending to like it.
“lemme just make sure that i heard you right. you don’t wanna know me… but you’re, uh, gonna kidnap me.” he shifts his weight forward, teetering on the brink of a provocation. how’s that for a fallacy? “not like some psycho stalker, obviously. you got a badge. that means the kidnapping’s super legal.” note the flimsy veneer of sarcasm. the nervous bob of his throat. each brush with law enforcement leaves him wounded. tarnished. stitches littering what once was soft.
it’s no surprise that jesse is the perfect scapegoat. he’s snappable as a twig and prone to courting trouble. he’s a dollar-store worshipper, bearing the brunt of heisenberg’s commandments. “c’mon, man.” a helpless little groan. “don’tcha have any, like, real criminals to bust?”
rustin is a weeping willow of a man. he sits there, watching and listening to pinkman's little performance, weighed down by the sweat in his clothes rather than any genuine interest for pinkman's complaints. the kid's a stray dog, growling and barking at the leash nearing his throat. cohle has no intention of taking him back to the precinct. he's well aware of what men with badges can do to people as fragile and lonely as he. perhaps the marks left on him are from previous run-ins with johnny law, perhaps not. either way, jesse pinkman was fucked.
when the other guy tests what lines he can cross, detective cohle makes sure to warn jesse of something he ought to already know. "there's worse things i can get away with for wearin' a badge." it comes in a slow drawl, as if the lingering threat between his words has no urgency. is it rustin? is it the quaaludes? is it that shit-hole of a place that takes its' time digesting young men like jesse pinkman? either way, cohle's hand remains on the car's door handle.
he nods towards it. "inside." the detective orders.
Rust + hands on hips
you'll never get what you want. (rust) / from @pinkman
"hm." he hummed as he pulled the lit cigarette away from his lips. rustin cohle regarded pinkman the same way he regarded everything else around him; with confident indifference. jesse knew more than he let on and, even so, cohle made no efforts to appease or befriend the kid. he wouldn't fake empathy --- he couldn't. the detective knew very well what it meant to be an addict, what hell it was to have to share your bed and life with dependency ... but to facilitate that very same hell to others? that he would not abide by.
even now as he leaned against his car, watching pinkman lose his shit over being followed into an empty parking lot, a couple of bruises evident on the side of the boy's head, rustin doesn't offer him any pity. the public opinion pendulum always swung between disgust and pity for men like jesse. somewhere in the middle, right where rust sits, was opportunity. "whatever image you've created of me is a fallacy." he drawled while pushing himself off the car. "you don't know me, jesse. and it ain' 'cause you're more inept than anyone else, it's 'cause i don't want you to know me." one hand reached for the passenger's door and held it open for pinkman.
heavily-lidded eyes met wider ones. he was still being weighed down by the side-effects of quaaludes. even if he wished to muster some sympathy for the kid, he couldn't get through the thick gelatinous wall left by the unprescribed medication that separated both of them. "just like i don't wanna know you." said cohle bluntly. he flicked his cigarette onto the asphalt and nodded with his head towards the car. "get in." they were going for a drive.
THE ROOM SMELLS LIKE PERFUME. the scent doesn't follow her, trailing at the pulse points as it should, but rather hangs still in the air. a gift from clay after one of his business trips, every morning she sprays it into loose air, wasting a fragrance she can't stand in a way that will fool his senses, allow him to mistake the lingering essence as a sign of devoted handling. hoping, every morning, to reach the bottom of the bottle.
"this a friendly visit than?"
she follows behind rust, sitting in a space already table-set by a pack of cigarettes. smoking would be a tell if she did it less, a nervous tic that he could dissect. as it is, dove's smoking all the time now. she's nervous all the time now. there's barely any room in her stomach for food between the knots. it's why the dress, finely tailored as it it, gaps slightly at the waist. no appetite. no space for it.
"didn't know you and i were close like that."
she was too old to pick up an accent when she came to louisiana ⸺ too old a ridiculous phrase for nineteen, just at the crest of womanhood, the filmy edges, lace dipped in the mississippi ⸺ but she's got some of that molasses way of speaking now.
"so this is a social call." turning the pack over absently, releasing rust's eyes momentarily to watch it go, she smiles. it's empty, pretty, white. it would resemble the vase over her shoulder, if there was something scratching to get out behind the porcelain. "you came to gossip. ⸺ why, somebody else say i spent too long talkin' to their husband?" it's like that here. has been since she came into a world with infinite sets of french doors: revered on one side, slandered on the other. that young girl, the spanish girl (no matter that the difference between spain and cuba has been iterated and reiterated), the new york girl. the one with the tits and the hair and all that face. if rustin cohle's a saint, what's that make her?
the only one able to hold his gaze, apparently.
"can i make you some coffee, rust?" around here the usual offer is tea, but as an east-coast girl she'd never picked up the habit. detective cohle strikes her as the same; in need of something stronger. from the other side of the table, dove had mishandles his question because it's a learned skill, one frequently associated with being a woman in a man's world. you spend enough time hearing you don't understand that you learn to interpret all options, pick the one that suits. it's not an obfuscation because dove knows what he means, just as rust will know she doesn't mean it. "you look tired."
she was low-lidded like that earlier this morning.
she mocks any attempts at familiarity and rustin does little more than watch her from across the table. she's just another thing sitting in his field of vision, blurred at the edges, fading into all the other colours and smells and textures the physical world had to offer. her little jabs have a sharpness to them that might have made the older female population of the area build a sturdy and decade-long grudge against dove. but can he blame her? city girl like her got parachuted into the middle of the swamp because of a man. no guidebook, no rehearsal, just a ring on her finger and the faith that someone ( anyone! ) would be kind enough for her to rely on.
but the rituals and unspoken rules around those parts were as obnoxious as the stains of sweat adorning the back of his shirt and pits. of course dove had stooped down to their level of passive-aggressiveness. there'd be something wrong with her if she hadn't.
when she mentions gossip is the first time rust remembers to blink his tired blue eyes. "would be none of my business if you did." she did that a lot: bring up subjects connected to promiscuity as an attempt to derail conversations. rust sat quietly with her after clearing that up. he couldn't give two shits who she was or wasn't fucking. they weren't close. this wasn't a social call. he did not, in fact, care. involvement in the personal lives of others meant further distractions and further opportunities to be disappointed. detective cohle was far too busy doing just that already.
he saw four squares of light reflected on both of her big wet eyes; glass windows behind him let the sunshine spill into the kitchen. but the sun rays didn't reach dove. she had sat on the side of the table furthest from the light. cohle tastes bile. cohle tastes charcoal. cohle tastes...
dove offers him coffee. rust suddenly felt compelled to reach into his breast pocket and produce a cigarette of his own. "someone 'round here ought to be losin' sleep over all 'em dead people." a pointed remark, rasped with a cigarette now dangling from thin lips. cohle raises his lighter to the tip. when he inhales, he leans forward to rest both elbows on the table. "hm." the detective breathes smoke right onto the surface which separates them. "you look well rested." he drawled. "better than usual." rustin said. there was an accusation in there somewhere.
her husband had definitively not spent the night there.
rust cohle does not indulge himself unless these indulgences are self-destructive . he doesn’t buy things because he likes them , doesn’t eat anything because it tastes good , doesn’t make advances on people because he’s attracted to them , all he really does is get drunk or down unprescribed medication which he thinks will keep him numb and somewhat functional . and even these habits don’t feel like rewards to him ; rustin is knowingly punishing his body because he’d rather not feel anything than face the truth about his pessimistic worldview : he didn’t properly mourn his daughter’s death and he doesn’t know how to reach out to people for help . and instead of addressing these problems , rust prefers to justify them by painting the entirety of the world as corrupt and cruel . as a citizen of the world , he too is corrupt and cruel in his own ways and , therefore , unworthy of any pleasure .
for RUSTIN : sit . gesture for my muse to sit down .
what did the world smell like before humankind came along and ruined everything? moist dirt? sweet fruits? animal shit? rustin can't even try and guess anymore; the plane he exists in has had every single atom infiltrated by the hot stench of tobacco. it had a weight to it, this smell. a texture ... sometimes the sharp taste of something chemical will zap him out of the dull smokey rhythm he has fallen into but it is only momentary. soon enough he'll need another hit. something stronger, something weirder, something deadlier...
dove gestures for him to sit and all rustin can offer in return is a small nod. what did she smell like before the still dusty louisiana waters soaked her wings down? something lighter, he imagines. lighter than all the expensive furniture she's surrounded with. but dove doesn't look like she owns any of it --- she is part of the decoration, another velvet lined thing for the cancerous agents of his camel cigarettes to slowly sink into. a stuffed bird gaining dust around her feathers; damned if she breathes, damned if she don't.
"i ain't gonna waste your time, dove," rustin drawls, sitting at her kitchen table at a weird angle. he hadn't fully risen from his barbiturate induced sleep --- there was another layer of methaqualone he needed to push through in order to start feeling things again. "ain't here as police either." he blinked lazily at her, his head shake more of a twitch than anything. cohle's boss had chewed him off for stalking dove's husband around town. if he were to find out he was inside whitfield's home he might get suspended for a while. wouldn't be the first time.
"just need someone t'a look me in the eye while they're talkin' to me." though his lids are heavy, rust's gaze is relentless. he watches her from across the table with the patience ( or the high ) of a saint. "did you spend the night with your husband?"
RUST - 5, 11, 21
5. do they masturbate often?
routinely, yes. sadly it's usually emptied of joy. whenever rustin jerks off it's always with the goal of clearing his head so that he might stay focused and objective about his work. it's never out of desire or impulse, he's usually very good at containing those, it's more of a mechanical thing. he has seen how lust can derail a man ( marty isn't the only guy he's known to think with his dick but y'know ) and he's too dedicated to his job and too god damn pessimistic about humanity and all of its' components to ever let loose. --- like his substance dependency, is all in the name of keeping him functional in order to his detective's eye remains sharp.
11. how long can they live without sex?
oh, a long time. a very. long. time. it's not as if rust doesn't find people attractive or occasionally reflect upon the pleasures of intimacy. but he's stuck in a deep layer of hellish nihilism which usually keeps him from getting physically or emotionally involved with other people. he does not seek out sex. that is not to say it doesn't occasionally happen, when the stars align and he's feeling particularly miserable and someone touches his face gently enough or when he's fallen off the wagon and had a few and some lady at the bar says something sickeningly sweet...sometimes, once in a blue moon, it happens. but again, rust usually prefers not to get tangled in other people's lives. not outside of work at least. nine times out of ten, if he's given a choice between having sex or going back to his empty apartment, he'll prefer to be left alone, getting high on downers until he can't think anymore.
21. how old were they when they learned about sex?
maybe around eleven? twelve? he had a vague concept of it when he was younger but only really had a talk about the birds and the bees when he was around that age. but he didn't dwell on it too much when he was living up in alaska to be with his pa. he was more concerned about learning basic survival skills.
Inside Rust’s Cohle storage and evidence, True Detective s01e07
“ [...] I COULD ALWAYS TELL WHAT WAS REAL AND WHAT WASN’T. SO, WHEN I’D SEE THINGS, I’D JUST ROLL WITH IT. ”
“ BACK THEN, THE VISIONS ... MOST OF THE TIME I WAS CONVINCED THAT I'D LOST IT. BUT THERE WERE OTHER TIMES, I THOUGHT I WAS MAIN-LINING THE SECRET TRUTH OF THE UNIVERSE. "
rust often “ hallucinates ” . years of drug and alcohol abuse combined with heavy amounts of unresolved trauma have taken their toll on him . he claims to have synethisia , a type of hypersensitivity which can cause a sense to trigger another sense . it’s not uncommon for cohle to describe places has having a taste or sounds reminding him of a color . his condition makes him intertwine all of his senses into one complex sensory experience . that , allied with his occasional hallucinations , give rustin cohle a sort of mystic layer . in the show , we often feel like rust’s visions associate closely to reality and even , sometimes , serve as warnings or symbols meant to be read along with the narrative of the show . ────── this isn’t to say that rust is able to see the future or that he has magical powers ; 𝙷𝙴 𝙲𝙰𝙽 𝚃𝙴𝙻𝙻 𝚁𝙴𝙰𝙻𝙸𝚃𝚈 𝙵𝚁𝙾𝙼 𝙵𝙸𝙲𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽 . these hallucinations don’t actually affect reality . not to mention that what he sees is often abstract ( the sky changing colors momentarily , lights of passing cars lingering in his field of vision long after they’re gone , murders of crows forming spirals ) .
this is just to say that , if during a thread cohle sees things that you feel like symbolize or foreshadow information he’s not supposed to know about your character , don’t worry . his visions do not serve as an epiphany / inform the character about real life events . only thing these might influence is his mental / emotional state or how he relates to certain characters/situations but that’s it ! 𝙰𝙻𝙻 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙸𝙽𝙵𝙾𝚁𝙼𝙰𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽 𝙶𝙰𝙸𝙽𝙴𝙳 𝙵𝚁𝙾𝙼 𝙷𝙸𝚂 𝙷𝙰𝙻𝙻𝚄𝙲𝙸𝙽𝙰𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽𝚂 𝙸𝚂 𝙴𝙼𝙾𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽𝙰𝙻 𝙽𝙾𝚃 𝙿𝚁𝙰𝙲𝚃𝙸𝙲𝙰𝙻 .
Days of nothing. That’s what it’s like, you work cases. Days like lost dogs.
journey to the interior, margaret atwood
