Hi there, I'm Olivia! I spend too much time on ao3 and, needless to say, I hate olives.18 (no longer a total baby), bi, she/her.
494 posts
Livhatesolives - Sometimes You Have To Be Brave - Tumblr Blog
hey if you died right now whats your ghost outfit you cant change it be honest
New Jersey Gothic
Jerseyites don’t pump their own gas. It’s illegal to. You don’t know what would happen if you stepped out of your car at a gas station, and you don’t want to.
Fifteen years ago you honed your aim, proud of your ability to toss change into a toll basket while driving past it at 45 MPH on the Garden State Parkway. Now they’ve consolidated and raised the tolls. You get an EZPass so you can still outrun the thing lurking in the Cash Receipt lane.
The Parkway and the Turnpike stretch across the state like arteries. You speed down them at 80 MPH, you are a blood cell in your red car. You wonder where the heart is, but your exit comes before the beating becomes loud enough to drown out the sound of your horn as you flip off someone with a New York plate for cutting you off.
“Not New York. Not Philadelphia. Proud to be New Jersey!” your radio declares. You scoff. As if they’re the only radio station in New Jersey. You scan through the stations until you find another one from New Jersey. “Not New York. Not Philadelphia. Proud to be New Jersey!” your radio declares. You scoff. As if they’re the only radio station in New Jersey. You scan through the stations until you find another one from New Jersey. “Not New York. Not Philadelphia. Proud to be New Jersey!” your radio declares. You scoff …
You drive up Route 18 and even though it’s the middle of the night, there’s traffic because there’s construction up ahead. You sit there and inch forward. Ten years go by. The construction finally ends. You can see your exit up ahead. It’s closed due to construction.
“Why is New Jersey even called the Garden State?” they ask. “It’s just a bunch of highways, landfills, and industrial complexes.” They can’t see. They’ll never see. We won’t let them see. We won’t let them take it from us.
Your friends from North Jersey say that you’re from South Jersey. Your friends from South Jersey say that you’re from North Jersey. The truth is that you don’t even exist.
Sometimes you like to sit out on your deck at night, listen to the crickets and the late-night traffic, and look up in the sky at the stars. Tonight there’s more lights up in the sky, blinking and zooming across the constellations. You sip your tea and smile. Another exciting night for your friends in North Jersey. You wonder which ones will survive this time.
You can’t imagine living in a state so big you need to get on a plane to fly across it. New Jersey’s such a nice convenient size. You could get in your car and start driving and be at the mountains in two hours. Or New York City. Or Philadelphia. Or the beach or the woods or the mall or the amusement park. Everything in New Jersey is two hours away. Only the driving time while you’re conscious counts.
You have a love-hate relationship with New York City. It’s so close and convenient and romantic. But it also steals New Jersey’s tourists. Its sports teams. Its work force. Your friends. Your family. Your pet cat. Half of your wardrobe. Your senses of accomplishment and modesty. The memories of your childhood birthday parties. You cling to the lawn outside of your significant other’s home, begging New York City not to steal it too.
Did you know that Frank Sinatra was from New Jersey? Did you know that Meryl Streep is from New Jersey? Jon Bon Jovi? Jack Nicholson? Kevin Smith? George R.R. Martin? Bruce Springsteen? They’re heroes in New Jersey. They escaped. We know that they’ll return someday to save the rest of us from the things that live in the Cash Reciept lanes.
The Jersey Devil lives in the Pine Barrens, you tell all of your out-of-state friends. They’ve never heard of it, of course. They think that the New Jersey Devils are named after Satan (but then, they also think that the New Jersey Devils are just a hockey team). You insist that if they just spent one night in South Jersey they would understand, just one night, come on, you insist. You insist. But no, they don’t believe you, they’re leaving and you panic because they don’t understand. They don’t understand you’re just trying to save them. The Pine Barrens are the only place it cannot go.
It’s almost that time of year again, time for the New Jersey Balloon Festival. You can’t wait, all of those colorful hot air balloons, and the family-friendly activities, and the carnival food. You have so much fun every year. You can’t ever remember having actually gone, but. It was fun. Right?
New Jersey used to be one of the most popular vacation spots in the country. But not anymore. No one visits New Jersey anymore, they just drive through going somewhere else. Sometimes they get off the Turnpike, though, by accident, end up on a highway they’ve never heard of, going south when the signs tell them they’re going north. But no one ever visits New Jersey.
Central Jersey Gothic
It’s winter, and you visit the beach. The sky is gray, the ocean is gray, the foul-smelling liquid trickling from the sewer pipe is gray, and sand even has a faint tint of gray. The fog rolls in, smelling of salt and oozing gray.
It is November and you are thirteen. The old wooden roller coaster at the boardwalk creaks when the wind blows, and one of you adolescent friends tells you in a rushed whisper about the boy who died on there once. No one knows his name, but they are certain that it happened.
The boardwalk has survived two hurricanes. You are certain that it will not survive the next. Like the pier, it will one day be in your town’s small history museum. That is, if they ever rebuild it.
Your town was once famous for having the most bars in a square mile. Then nearly everything burnt down. The bars. The roller rink. The condos. Everything burns. Fire is cleansing, they say. A chance to rebuild. No one cries arson.
You take a field trip to the Liberty Science Center. They tell you, if you look out across the water, you can see the Statue of Liberty. But that is neither here nor there.
You drive to the North to visit cousins. There are nothing but mountains and trees. Your cell phone has no signal. Your cell phone is dead. The clock radio in your car has ceased to work as well. How long have you been on this road? You swear you’ve seen this rest stop before. Maybe you should stop and ask for directions. But a voice from the backseat whispers “Keep driving.” And you do. You do.
You drive to the South to visit cousins. The pine trees grow taller and everything smells of Christmas. But it’s wrong. The cheer is gone. The sun sets and you see something flapping it’s wings in the sky. “It’s just a bat.” your mother tells you, her voice shaking. It’s just a bat.
You’re still in South Jersey. You’re not sure where you’ve come from or where you’re going, but you know you’re in South Jersey. You feel eyes boring into your back. You feel a hot breath on your neck and think there’s a reason Weird New Jersey started in this state.
You decide to go to college in the North. Someone asks where you’re from and you reply “Central Jersey.” They laugh, but you don’t know why. It happens again. And again. Someone asks where you’re from and they laugh. Finally, you ask why. They reply between guffaws,
“There is no Central Jersey.”
i think it's important to get deeply emotionally unironically involved in a bad piece of media whilst fully aware that it objectively sucks ass. like for your health or whatever
Betty and Archie really are rawing in the shower without even kissing in SEVEN YEARS
“My child is fine” your child checks every single reblog on every single one of their posts to see if someone said something in the tags
THE WANDAVISION FANDOM EVERY FRIDAY EXPECTING FINALLY SOME ANSWERS AND JUST GETTING MORE QUESTIONS
Okay but for real though: what if there is no villain?
It would be a bold move but it would thematically fit with the story WandaVision is telling. Trauma can be overwhelming, the word is often messy, and perception of reality is always complicated by what you can see in the moment. But no one is secretly pulling strings behind the scenes, there’s no one with an ulterior motive, no outside forces bending the situation to their use.
Sometimes the answer is … things are messed up for no good reason.
That’s just how it breaks sometimes.
It’s still sad. It’s still horrible. It’s still a problem.
You can only deal with it and hope for the best.
Me: Disney Plus? As if, the mouse will never own me!
Disney Plus: *releases The Mandalorian*
Disney Plus: *announces PJO tv series*
Disney Plus: *releases Hamilton proshot*
Disney Plus: *releases Wandavision*
Me:
Me: Well shit
this whole thing is way too good to be giffed you need to expirience it
mmmm, *chef’s kiss*
i love how all of the other platforms are banning Trump while Tumblr is here like
invented a chess opening called the lovers gambit where you toss the pieces aside and start kissing your opponent on the table
“Sonically, the ideas were coming from me more. But I remember when I wrote “Tolerate It,” right before I sent it to her, I thought, This song is intense. It’s in 10/8, which is an odd time signature. And I did think for a second, “Maybe I shouldn’t send it to her, she won’t be into it.” But I sent it to her, and it conjured a scene in her mind, and she wrote this crushingly beautiful song to it and sent it back. I think I cried when I first heard it. But it just felt like the most natural thing, you know? There weren’t limitations to the process. And in these places where we were pushing into more experimental sounds or odd time signatures, that just felt like part of the work. It was really impressive to me that she could tell these stories as easily in something like ‘Closure’ as she could in a country song like 'Cowboy Like Me.’ Obviously, 'Cowboy Like Me’ is much more familiar, musically. But to me, she’s just as sharp and just as masterful in her craft in either of those situations. And also, just in terms of what we were interested in, there is a wintry nostalgia to a lot of the music that was intentional on my part. I was leaning into the idea that this was fall and winter, and she’s talked about that as well, that Folklore feels like spring and summer to her and Evermore is fall and winter. So that’s why you hear sleigh bells on 'Ivy,’ or why some of the imagery in the songs is wintery.”
— Aaron Dessner to Rolling Stone on Taylor’s choice to branch out more on evermore (x)
I’m looking forward to every fwb fic from here on out being titled using tis the damn season lyrics
Anyone else feel like they hear the little piano melody from “Starlight” in “Gold Rush”?
the way we missed this the first time… so she did the exact same thing and we still missed it….
