✧♱𝒮𝒯𖤐𝑅𝒞𝐻𝐼𝐿𝒟♱✧

Weddings on The Alamo

It’s been a few years since the events of Euphoria S2 happened, and while it may have been a bit of a timeskip, these characters have evolved in ways not even I could’ve imagined. And yet, it makes so much sense where they ended up. 

We open with Rue driving and later trekking in the deserts of Mexico, catching up with where she’s been all these years. Instead of her doing drugs, she’s now selling them. She worked at a smoke shop for a bit, but got entangled by Laurie and her crew again, after not being able to pay off her debts. So, Laurie is now making her pay off her debts by making her a drug dealer. We learn that Fezco (RIP Angus) has been sent to prison for 30 years, and we have no idea where Ashtray is or if he lived after last seasons finale. Faye is also apart of these shenanigans, and during a smuggle mission, both her and Rue had to swallow golf ball sized balloons filled with fent. They passed through border patrol, with only a mild release of farting on the way, until they had to defecate all of the balloons they had to swallow back at Laurie’s place. 

Mind you, drug dealers have a very shady, dirty practice of how they make their money. And no shade, that’s fine and all, get it how you live it henny — but the concept of using lube to swallow balloons filled with FENT is beyond dangerous. Not to mention, the scene where Rue and Faye have to get the drugs out of their system, involving a strainer and a dog EATING SHIT OUT OF FAYE’S ASS???!!! I’m sorry WHAT??? Red Flag No.1 for Sam’s fetishes being shown to millions of viewers. In future instances, I’ll be using “🚩” to highlight these events. 

The second B plot of the episode, we see how some of the other characters are living their lives. Lexi is an assistant for a screenwriter in Hollywood, while Maddy is a talent manager for a young actor, Dylan, who stars in a show called LA Nights. We get a small mention of Jules being a sugar baby, and then we get into the lovely hell of a high school peaked relationship between Cassie and Nate. Cassie is a future housewife that wants to be an influencer and OnlyFans model, and Nate took over his dad’s construction company. 

Nate and Cassie are getting married soon. And sadly I hate that this is going to be the B-side story to Rue’s A-side main story. Nate and Cassie are not interesting enough as a couple to deserve this kind of limelight. Not only is Nate like a mess in hisself, we see he’s slightly more calmer than what he used to be. Cassie on the other hand has only gotten worse as the years go on. In reality, I’m finding it hard to really understand where the measurements of Cassie as a character ends and where Sydney Sweeney’s persona as an actress begins. Cassie mentions how she wants to have this luxurious wedding with $50k flowers is so funny, because she follows this up by saying she doesn’t want to have a “ghetto wedding”… girl wtf do you know about ghetto?? Chile bye. 

Anywho, Rue finds her way to her next mission and we see she has to deal drugs to a guy named Alamo. He’s essentially a pimp from the looks of it and his whole thing and business is about selling what sells best. The glorious conch that blooms… aka P00SAY. He said a line that really gave me 🚩from Sam, when him and Rue were getting to know each other, saying “You must run them b*tches like a n*gga”. Samuel Levinson, you are the only writer in this show, the hell are you thinking you can write something like that? Either way,  this exchange plus further events end up being the start of a budding relationship between Alamo and Rue after he nearly tries to shoot her testing her faith. 

There also is a heavy amount of imagery and depictions of religion this season, that’a far more on the nose in-comparison to the last few seasons. After Rue met that nice rural farm family in Jerusalem, TX, to Rue talking to Lexi and Ali about wanting to take her faith seriously, we see that Rue is trying to find her place in the grand scheme of what is going on in her life. Trying to turn her life around for the better. But like Lexi said, and even the realities of the world we live in. It’s one thing to be a believer, but it’s another thing to become a Christian when all they’ve done is either be judgmental or hurt people based on their beliefs. The way that Rue’s life has gone, there’s always room for second chances, but the answer is truly which master will she serve? 

The Ghetto Wedding

Episode 2 was wild, but a bit of a bore. Rue is successfully working at a strip club being the house mother to all the girls, she gets into a fling with a girl named Angel. We also see more of Nate and Cassie’s ku klux ass relationship that nobody cares about (more to come on that). We finally see more Maddy and Jules!!! Like AAAAHAHHAHAH I love my gorgeous girls, especially Maddy this episode. Working so hard to get a piece of the American Pie that they tell us about, when in reality it’s all a scam. I want so much more of Maddy’s character, but given what we’re dealt with there’s no saving her. As for Jules, she’s a penthouse doll living a lavish life with an art degree, sure she has a sugar daddy, but she’s living a better life than her peers. I think her and Rue are just meant to be with each other, they are star-crossed lovers that weren’t meant for each other at first, but after so many years things change, so who knows, we’ll just have to wait and see. This episode racked us up to 7 points for the Sam Levinson needs to be in jail red flag counter. From Faye getting banged in front of a N*** flag, a pig shitting in Laurie’s house, the amount of N words being flung around by inbreds and Angel— anywho let’s talk about the wedding of the week. 

We open episode 3 with a flashback of everything Jules has been through. She attended an art school struggling to achieve her dreams with her roommate Vivian at the time, until Viv introduced her to the world of sugar babying. Jules had many clients, but there was one, a cosmetic surgeon who became her permanent client, and she became his new muse. 🚩 for the bondage kink that happened with the surgeon using plastic wrap on Jules. Nothing super eventful happened with Rue’s story aside from seeing Rosalia’s character dancing while wearing a neckbrace lmfaoo. Rue’s selling guns to clients, Alamo has it out for Laurie still and has plans to kill her bird after the pig thing… which we see the pig again running amuck in the club, peeing everywhere 🚩and Alamo kills it. 

Rue invites Jules as her plus one to Nate and Cassie’s eloption, and ohh my lordt does Jules look amazing!!! Maddy looks phenomenal as always!!! I loved their shady moments in between talking about the wedding, Cassie and Nate. We saw Cal and Jules talk about his perverted tendencies and how he got busted for his pedophilia. The real drama started when Naz confronted Nate during the reception about how he owes him money… Nate has been doing shady business behind Cassie’s back, which could threaten both their lives, and yet all Cassie cared about was her wedding and becoming poor. For some reason, they hired a James Brown impersonator and they all started rapping “Get Low” by Lil Jon and The East Side Boyz, which was like the most unseasoned thing I’ve seen in a few months. Skipping to the end of the episode, we see Nate get his ass beat DOWNN by one of Naz’s henchmen, Cassie cries as usual, and Nate ends up getting his pinky toe cut off which was wilddd. 

Kitty Snitches

Episode 4 opens right where episode 3 ended with Rue under custody. She ends up working with the police to begin snitching on Laurie’s crew and her illegal drug activities. 

Nate and Cassie are looking like a miserable couple already. Still hate how ugly their house is, but in terms of the plan to pay back Naz, Cassie begins working with Maddy and pawns her wedding ring to rent an apartment across from Lexi’s complex. She’s trying to start elevate her OnlyFans/influencer career with Maddy’s help, it’s weird seeing Maddy and Cassie working together after everything in season 2. Still hoping it fails terribly for Cassie though. 

Jules gets a gig to paint for a Lexi’s boss, but she ends up painting an explicit painting of trans women running around nude while on a picnic… yeahh that’s not family friendly at all. They didn’t really do much with her character after that scene kinda sucks. Maddy ends up taking Cassie to an influencer party that a guy Brandon is attending to intermingle with some of the guests, she ends up doing a line with him and another girl. Meanwhile, Rue ends up witnessing Angel’s replacement Kitty doing a private dance on camera for a few guys, that turns ugly when they end up having sex with her. Rosalia’s character Magic (I only just learned her name) eavesdrops over the conversation and tells it to the club owner, which causes an argument between Rue and her for almost blowing her cover. All the while Laurie’s crew raids the club, killing the club owner and robbing their safe. Thankfully, Rue notices one of the suspects in the getaway car is Faye, because you definitely can’t miss those big lips anywhere. 

Stand Still Little Piggy

There’s been a lot thats transpired over episodes 5 and 6, also I kinda stopped doing the whole “🚩“ thing because at this point, there’s too many to count. We get a flashback of Alamo’s life as a kid and how his mom swindled a man she was dating, causing him to never want to get screwed over by a woman in his life. The biggest part of the episode is the ongoing feud/war between Laurie and Alamo’s crews after Laurie’s crew stole from his strip club as he plans his attack to get his stuff back. Rue still finding herself in the midst of all of this mess almost gets her head knocked off, body deep in the ground, when Alamo and his crew begin to think she’s a traitor working double sides because of the night her and Magic witnessed everything happening. Rue is sent on a mission to try and retrieve Alamo’s stuff in the midst of Alamo and Laurie working together. Rue is going through a lot, she visits a church and calls her mom trying to receive redemption for all of the bad things she did. Later on, on her way to Laurie’s, Rue ends up almost dying again after nearly running into a truck. And somehow a Joshua Tree catches on fire, which Rue views as an answer from God for her divine retribution. 

Also, her and Jules aren’t doing well at all, they had a major fight. I really hate the way Jules’ character is being treated and how she’s been on a stagnant decline in terms of character growth. 

On the other end, Cassie is starting to feel her ultimate fantasy (and no I don’t mean the Barberella one from earlier in the episode). Cassie almost tries to leave Maddy as her manager, once she begins to see the major success she could have if she joined an influencer house. Thankfully, Maddy thinks 5 steps ahead of Cassie and made sure that didn’t happen by bribing her to sign a contract in return to be on a show with one of the actors her boss manages. Lexi ends up helping her get the gig unintentionally with Maddy threatening her, and Cassie gets the role. Cassie is a pretty good actress nevertheless and ends up really showing her chops with her improv/trauma acting her first day on set with Dylan. She ends up deleting her OnlyFans account, but will she end up regretting this? I ask that because she ends up receiving Nate’s finger as a package in the mail. Speaking of Nate, he ends up getting another body part removed after not repaying his debts, even though Cassie has been sending him the money to do so amidst all of her sex work shows going overtime. Nate needs to really get it together, but I’m surprised he isn’t dead yet.

As for Maddy’s story, she ends up being introduced to Alamo while hanging out with Rue at a café and they end up chatting about what Maddy wants to do with her business. They end up networking and collaborating on a joint venture, where Maddy chose two of Alamo’s girls, Kitty and Magic, to join her in becoming online sexual fantasies with Cassie. Maddy is about just as much of a pimp as Alamo, which is why they seem to get a long so well.

Rain or Shine, We Trust on God’s Time

We head into the penultimate episode with a background story on Ali, his past with his addiction and drug use, the tough relationship he had with his wife and daughters, to getting off drugs and becoming a sponsor for other addicts. He lost so many people that were fellow addicts on their recovering journey, dealing with so much pain I’m surprised he stayed clean for so long.

Rue visits Lexi to share with her about her religious revelations ever since she started trying to live right. Seeing so much that’s transpired from working with Laurie’s N*** crew of supremacist drugpins to Alamo’s dirty sex trafficking ring and gun/drug deals. All of this causes Lexi to be extremely judgemental towards Rue and her beliefs + her working in cahoots with the DEA to bust Laurie. Lexi is a very pretentious and judgemental person, while yes her views aren’t wrong, it is sad knowing how Rue can’t even come to her longtime friend for solace.

Rue goes to visit Ali in talks of her final mission, in hopes to finally break free from this cycle and runaway, but Ali has another idea to help save her and her mom from this very risky situation Rue has found herself in. But as Rue does, she decides to take the hard road and go visit Laurie instead. This obviously doesn’t go well with Rue making a deal with these rednecks in blood to shoot Alamo when he comes. Rue gets locked inside a bedroom until the morning comes, but Faye frees her so they can get Alamo’s stuff from the safe. Them sneaking out together had to have been the loudest part of the episode… and when they went to the safe, Rue’s key didn’t work, so Faye grabs the key her boyfriend, Wayne, owns. They open the safe and to their surprise, there’s no money, only ID’s of random women (including Angel). Faye gets upset feeling betrayed and yells out Wayne’s name.

We move onto Cassie and Maddy’s story with Cassie dealing with the reprecussions of deleting her OnlyFans and Nate’s ongoing dismemberment for the money he owes Naz. Naz even goes as far as to call Cassie about how she can get him the money her husband owes. All the while, we find out that Cassie wasn’t allowed to move on with her acting dreams because of her OnlyFans career. It was a stupid decision on her end to delete her main income in hopes of a dream that barely took flight. In turn this caused Maddy to get fired from her job, and as Queen Maddy does she goes over to Cassie’s to check her about the bullshit she keeps finding herself in. Maddy sets Cassie up with a paparazzi outing with Dylan. Cassie and Dylan have sex, and it ends up going insanely viral after she posts about it.

With the steady growth in her new OnlyFans account, she ends up going back to content creation, but not without a visit and threat from Naz. She gets bodyslammed through a glass table, gagged and tied up by Naz’s henchmen. He tells her that she has only 72hrs to get the remaining money for him or else… but in reality Nate’s actually been buried alive with not long to live. Especially now that there’s a rattlesnack. Cassie needs help getting the money, so she contacts Maddy to see what she can do. Maddy goes to Alamo and ends up having to succumb to him in order to get the million dollars. Her and Alamo go to meet Naz and Cassie on the construction site where Nate is buried, and after being swindled, Alamo shoots and kills Naz. They end up getting Nate out, but to what surprise? He’s already dead after the snake bit him and poisoned him with his venom. When you realize that Maddy did all of this and is now in debt with Alamo is crazy…

And now… we’re at the final countdown. Rue manages to get away by using a metal rod to hit Wayne on the leg after Faye wakes him up, she then punches Faye in the face and starts running for her life with the bag of ID’s. Wayne chases her, shooting and missing with every shot until she escapes. Almost home free, one of the other hicks comes in riding a horse with a lasso manages to get Rue and drag her back to the house, but thankfully with help from G, he shoots and injures the guy so Rue gets free. Both Rue and G, high on adrenaline drive off managing a huge win for Alamo. Rue stays with Ali for a bit, and while we think things are on the up and up, we find out she ends up overdosing on the “percocets”/fentanyl that Alamo gave her. There’s a quick scene where we see Jules painting a picture of Rue while she’s stuck in her penthouse with her sugar daddy. Honestly, as a Rules truther, them not mending things and getting back together will always not sit right with me. WE WERE FUCKING ROBBED!!!!

We continue with the storyline of Big Eddy and Mitch transporting the girls and the drugs, but the DEA ends up busting them. Wayne and Faye manage to escape before it all goes down, everybody gets arrested meanwhile Laurie hangs herself on the top of the house. Turns out Alamo had a second trick up his sleeve, he had Bishop on stand by and they switched the trucks with the drugs inside. 

We see Maddy and Cassie, in deep distress and shambles, at a café trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces of their life now. Maddy ends up putting Cassie onto the business of helping her with the girls while also continuing her OnlyFans career, as well as getting … . Now living with each other, Maddy heads out to go see Alamo. Lexi and Cassie end up talking about Rue’s death and how Rue left a bible at Lexi’s apartment, she started reading it and began gaining new insights and epiphany’s from her first read through, but her biggest takeaway is acceptance and learning that this wasn’t her fault.

Ali pays the Silver Slipper a visit to confront Alamo. They have an old-fashioned showdown, and Ali shoots Alamo to death with his shot gun. Thankfully, Bishop sabotaged him and now Maddy is out of debt from Alamo FOREVER!! Ali then goes to pay a visit to the nice family that let Rue stay with them for a bit in Jerusalem, TX. A beautiful sequence with a beautiful final parting goodbye from Rue. 

Conclusion

This season was a huge clusterfuck of so much mess and wild instances that took place. There’s no way of knowing what you were going to expect from its turbulent beginning to its euphoric and saddening end. Characters took massive shifts and turns, the plot felt a bit messy, but the overall story with Rue was so fun to watch. As much as I can diss Sam Levinson for not having a writer’s room, and inconsistent character flaws, he did what he initially always wanted to do, to tell an honest and true story of addiction. 

Addiction is a feeling you can’t fight, like emotions and water, it wanes and flows, comes and goes as the days past. It can become tolerable, but it never goes away. In the end, we learn from this show and its characters, that not everybody gets a happy ending. Not everyone lives a dream life after the horrors of high school. Life goes on, and you just have to try and push through in hopes that you can make something of yourself and the cards you’ve been dealt. 

In God We Trust, Rue. Thank you for being a constant in our lives for 7 years, when life felt a bit normal in 2019 to now.

✧ Recovering Integrity

Month 4 is all about learning to recover the integrity of being an artist. This year has felt more like a repeat of last year, though some things are a bit different for me. As most of you know, I’ve taken on more of a hobby, being consistent with blogging more about the emotional landscape I traverse daily on my blog and newsletter, while also creating another page all about the latest hot topics and pop culture news. It’s been pretty fun, given I’m not putting too much pressure on myself to be hyper-consistent, nor polished (aside from making my IG look aesthetically pleasing lol).

I've been coming to terms with certain things in my life, such as my inner saboteur/shadow version of myself, that I am naturally very underrated in life. My skills and talents get praised by people in my real life, yet online rarely get noticed as often. There's a certain beauty in being a flop, but it's hard to feel as if I’ll ever succeed in my dreams. When people don't notice your talents, you lose a sense of faith in your abilities, and when you begin to not believe in yourself, you lose faith in yourself and your inner artist — and I believe that’s happened to me.

But something I’ve been having to realize is that coming to terms with the artist and the person I am requires a shift in taste and perception, shaped by my identity. Julia says that you must toss out the old and unworkable to make way for the new and suitable. The old version of ourselves is grieving the person we no longer identify as, but it makes way for the new version of ourselves coming into form. A bit of tension will exist before it becomes a sense of relief in the new identity we take on. Be prepared for bursts of volatile tears and sudden bursts of laughter, giddiness, while simultaneously experiencing a depressive wave of loss. Regaining your creative identity comes with losing the false self you were sustaining.

✧ Recovering Possibility

Month 5 taught me about learning how I can rediscover the possibilities I have as an artist.

Through these last few months, we have learned that being an artist is a divine manifestation. We bring our ideas into fruition from the ether of what God/Spirit blesses upon us. Creating from that void and extracting its gold into a multitude of things. With creativity, we as artists tend to think the well will run dry if we use too much of our creativity, creating a sort of scarcity mindset. Julia reminds us that creativity comes from the source, and God/Spirit shouldn’t be anthropomorphized as a parent that gives its child limited freedom. Spirit is our source of infinite abundance in terms of love, creation, and ideas.

As artists, we also deserve to be in solitude. To rest and recharge ourselves after using so much creative energy in our daily lives. Defending your right to downtime requires a lot of resiliency and courage — especially if you have people in your life who think your withdrawal from interacting with those you love is a selfish act. By being afraid to appear selfish, we become self-destructive, blindly acting out this aggression to make a conscious decision. We strive to be people pleasers, wanting to be good, be nice, be helpful, and unselfish. To be generous and of aid to others when in reality, what our inner world desires most is to be left alone. And when we can’t get others to leave us alone, we eventually begin to abandon ourselves and our needs.

Julia asks us to question ourselves, are we acting on our self-destructive tendencies based on our true nature? I can honestly say, yes, I am VERY self-destructive. Constantly blocking my blessings of what could potentially be good for me, but I also know what my triggers are and how that can affect my mood. Every day is a learning process, and I am constantly trying to heal myself and my traumas from the years I’ve experienced disruption in my pursuit of happiness.

✧ The Moment is Now…

I’m thinking of ending things… such a great way to say you’re over something or someone. That’s how I’ve been feeling this entire month. It’s already May, and time is zooming past. Before long, the cycle will continue, and come July I’ll find myself repeating a four year period of experiencing a terrible, yet needed, summer character development arc. I didn’t really start realizing that that’s what I’ve been experiencing until last year when I had a major ego death moment that led to me “quitting art”, which really isn’t quitting entirely, it’s just an elongated hiatus for the foreseeable future.

I haven’t even begun to act on my resolutions of finding a higher-paying full-time job, nor moving out/escaping from my mom and all that entails with her.

Part of me is fearful because I’ve grown so content with the way things are, leading my heart to become a waiting room of sorts for something new to bloom in my life. If it’s not me actively looking and struggling to find a new talking stage, it’s me looking for a new job and never getting a call back or barely getting a chance to move on with my application. A few weeks ago, I found myself getting sad about the impending future of my coworkers at my job. Some I love more than others, but overall, I really enjoy most of my coworkers. And the sad part is that the coworkers I get along with are about to start moving soon. I doubt I’ll be staying much longer myself, I’m just hoping I can get a raise and one last quarterly bonus before I do decide to leave.

Most days all I can ever do is just lie in bed and watch new shows or discover new movies to pass the time. Everyday I feel this sense of fatigue after a long 30hr work week, and I know that’s not a lot of time to work compared to most people, but it is a lot for someone who HATES retail working — even though it's the only skillset I have in the working industry. When I’m not doing that I scroll on social media, ignoring my journaling traits and spending time curating my feed to whatever I like to see, but there are some times when I scroll and I find myself getting annoyed by how toxically positive people try to be during these times.

Whenever I see viral tweets of people saying “Keep creating despite the travesties in the world, this world needs more of your artistry” or “whenever you don’t act on your creative ideas, it’s damaging to your soul”… and a whole wad of other crockery that I honestly get so annoyed about. Creating amidst the chaos of this world can make or break you. I believe it’s partially broken me and my fear of touching my own artistry now. I’ve gone months now with barely creating much, aside from trying to become a blogger now with my Let’s Talk Poptopics, Cinema Starview, and Playlist Check projects. I mean hey, it’s something sorta creative, and helps me maintain the little bit of creative energy I have left in my body.

Update for May 4th: On a positive note, I’ve been trying some new things and acting on The Acts of Sol, specifically amour and suono. Discovering a lot of new music, experiencing the highs and lows of romanticism and crushes… honestly not fun, but it’s whatever.

I’ve recently been addicted to eating fufu and egusi soup from this African restaurant called Kemi’s Kitchen. It’s sooo delicious and feels soul nourishing. There’s a lady in my city who has a small baking/sweet business that she vendors at my friend’s coffee and vintage pop-up shop. Her cookies are delicious, specifically the banana pudding and Biscoff cookies (and I hate banana pudding, but the cookies she makes, make it taste way better).

I gifted my friend, an original piece of mine. The last piece I created for the foreseeable future is “Botanyskull”. In other news and updates, several big changes have happened. I got a new job at a western wear store near me and it pays full-time. At the time of me writing this, I haven’t started it yet, but hopefully all will go well at this new job. The biggest change that’s happened is that I ended up moving out and cutting off my mom. I’ve been in a desperate boat of trying to keep myself afloat and look for a place to stay, it’s been hard but I’ve been doing my best to figure some things out. I have a GoFundMe currently up if anyone wants to help in any way they can. I seriously need help in achieving some type of housing but I haven’t been able to get anything just yet. Whatever you can donate will really help.

Hopefully next month will go well, I’m trying to hold onto hope somehow.