Marandan, 20, stressed as fuck, hopeful ♫Raise a Glass to Freedom♫
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
guys shut the fuck up this is the only thing im gonna talk about for the rest of all time
(publicly shared video of a sweetheart’s dance from Rodney Stanger on fb)
This is really the cleanest Sweethearts Dance I’ve ever seen in my life. I am in love! I am transfixed! Footwork smooth and strong like a mfin mountain river! Incredible! 🤩 😳 🥰
Oh my God this is incredible to watch!
Found the credit, from the Great Plains Dance Company. This is Jocy Bird and Trae Little Sky dancing in the Sweetheart Special at the Seminole Tribal Fair in Hollywood, Florida.
Jocy Bird and Trae Little Sky are married and apparently an adorable couple and I am loving their beaming grins as they dance so smoothly together. 💖
You weren’t ugly 10 years ago, you were a kid, or a teenager, or just a human person. 10 years ago cameras weren’t that good. We still used CDs. People had flip phones. 10 years ago Instagram wasn’t a thing. I hate to say it but every year we spent perfecting our social media presence is not a glow up. A grainy picture of you just existing in the era before curated existence next to a perfectly lit and framed “candid” is not an accurate comparison… Be nicer to your younger self, man. Think about what it’s telling the kids.
the bar outside is loud but at least in here the floor isn’t as sticky and im pretending i’m not fucked up on her while she’s texting her ex. you’re reapplying your siren red lipstick with a little brush, so delicately it’s a dream. we just met.
“i love your dress.” i am slurring. i am fixing the way my mascara is flirting with my cheeks. you smile without fucking up your lipstick, which is a miracle i cannot conceive of. drunk as fuck, i say: “like, is that you, aphrodite?”
you laugh, swirl the last of your perfect color, make eye contact with me in the mirror. “love your hair,” you say. “i saw you dancing earlier, is that your girlfriend?”
i laugh. sharklike, my teeth feel like they make the bark harsh. “i wish.” wash my hands the second time but this time for kicks. i keep thinking about her body and her hips and how she always slides her hands up my back like a promise. it always feels colder after she’s been there. like i only remember warm when she shows it to me. no wonder i’ve been shivering so much lately. “how do you keep your hand so steady - sorry. i am obsessed with your lipstick. i always try and end up wiping it off because it looks like a clown did it.”
you hold up the brush and it takes me a second to realize what you’re offering. you wave one hand, delicate pink nails beckoning me over. “open,” you say. i oblige and bend my knees to give you a better angle even though you’re much taller than me.
“in my experience,” you say. the brush is smooth and your dark brown eyes are so pretty. “all dancing feels good if it’s an act of purposeful forgetting. i’ve been where you are. don’t fill up a cup that has no bottom just because she promises one day she’ll find a lid.” you pull back. that beautiful bright red smile. i can’t stop staring. “oh. and the lipstick? practice makes perfect.” a wink. “you should go with a bold lip, it suits you.”
i love how you applied it, turn to thank you, but you’re already one foot out the door. that good sweet grin. “and let me know if you get bored playing games,” you say, “and want to learn what comes out of lots practice.”
one day i will say “i am going home” and it will fill me up to my fingertips and it will fill me up to my core because my home will be more than a bed or a building. when i go out it will not feel like escaping. when i come back it is not a caging. the sigh of sheets and clean laundry and sipping jasmine tea.
so lonely, i guess. to need to wait for happy.
once there was a witch who lived in the woods. she was ugly and mean and loud, as all witches are, and she never found love. the little girls of the village were warned of the witch, who was known to steal daughters. she would eat them, maybe, or destroy them in her experiments. they were not seen again in any case, so it was all true.
you learned of her by way of your mother, who had hair so beautifully blonde while yours was your father’s rusty brown. you learned of her because you had spilled the water coming back from the well. then you learned again of her when you talked back. then you learned again when you were caught with your fingers in a book, staring at the squiggles you did not understand. the witch, the witch, the witch.
your mother, it is known, was protecting you. she said she did not want you to be one of the girls that were stolen or hurt or eaten or all three. she said that girls like you are particularly likely, on account of being, she must admit, uncomely and unfortunately prone to curiosity.
at seven you told your best friend Patience: i do not fear the witch, but i do wonder how she finds girls. just that year she took a girl named Charlotte, who was lovelier than you by far, so you might have been next, had you not learned to bite back your retorts and stop making snide comments and to only read in the dark, where people could not see you agonizing over teaching yourself.
at fourteen you told your best friend Patience: i do not fear the witch, but i wonder what she eats when it is not children. patience laughed and said - like you, she eats books.
at sixteen you told your best friend Patience: i do not fear the witch, but i would like to see her, to know what she is like. patience has long, shiny hair, and lips so pink they are a sin, and always smiles when she looks at you, even when you are uncomely (as your own mother has admitted). Patience is like a bath of milk, decadent. she holds your hand and says do not go see the witch, for i could not stand if you did not return. so you do not go.
at seventeen, you and Patience uncover a book in the back of charlotte’s farm. shaking, the two of you say a spell over a bowl of violet water in the light of a full moon. the spell is a secret, and i will not write it, but when you come home, you forget the words, thinking instead of how patience looked, wild and grinning, her hands locked in yours, her head thrown back and her eyes closed. wild, untamed. your mother would say uncomely. for the first time, you wonder if the word means - to unbecome.
at eighteen, you told your best friend patience: i would not mind, being a witch, but she is alone. in a sob, Patience tells you: my father will marry me off next year. you both cry into each other’s arms. you have no marriage offers, for you are known to be too-much, a lady who is frightfully observant and clever, neither of which are appropriate behaviors. she sleeps in your bed this night, and smells of lavender. long after the moon rises, you watch her breathing. she wakes up from a nightmare and reaches out to hold you, tucking you against her so easily it is as if you have been displaced your whole life until now, and have only found home by the fitting of her limbs.
for a year, you spend like this. playing with each other’s hair and sleeping in the same bed like little girls. sometimes, when it is late, she looks at you, dark eyes all full and wide, you think she is about to speak. she never does, only reaches out and holds your hand.
on midnight the day before her wedding, she wakes you. i do not fear the witch, she says, for it is better to be eaten beside you.
you take her hand.
there are three witches who live in the woods. they are clever, and wicked, and ugly. they take girls and eat them - girls who would have been married, girls who would have been mothers, girls who like terrible things like asking questions and talking loudly and speaking back to their fathers. do not be fooled by the illusion they will help you - why, two girls from this very village ran off one night, and the witches disintegrated them. i myself found their clothes by the river, and when i turned i heard nothing but laughter, deep in the woods, followed by the scent of lavender.
Every DnD game that starts out with a serious “Lord of the Rings” type of tone turns into a Monty Python sketch and every DnD game that starts out like a Monty Python sketch turns into Lord of the Rings
