Alive in a Box

leopards got filling. it’s cheetah 2.0. Cheetah on meth. look at that leopard shit. 

then there’s jaguar. Jaguar is madness. it took leopard print & decided wait. what if–MAW DOTS. it’s just leopard print with dots in the middle, it’s chaos

look at this bullshit

i’m angry just looking at it

so in ascending order: Cheetah < Leopard < Jaguar

i decided to try a romcom i somehow missed i the 2000s 'head over heels' and i got 3 and a half minutes in and we're introduced to the lonely MC with bad taste in men as evidenced by her extremely short list of ex boyfriends, including her first boyfriend when she was 11 or something because i guess that's still relevant in her adult life.

so she's resigned herself to never finding love and prefers to ignore men to focus all her energy into her career.

this job is immediately presented as though it's for spinsters with no hope of ever finding a man.

the mc's lesbian bestie (whose first line involves her being scolded for being too sexual in the workplace, but moving on) points out their colleagues as evidence that they're doomed to a romance-less, sexless life if they don't switch up their shared career path. the colleagues are three old women, so-dubbed "the menopause triplets":

these women are presented as if they have no idea what's going on at any given moment. this is 2001, and presumably this is an entry level job requiring low effort and no experience.

then their boss bursts into the room, unceremoniously bumping a large painting into the door jam and walls, announcing that it's a new project for our MC.

our MC is thrilled to see the painting. apparently it's a light in the daily slog at her dreary job for loser women with nothing going on in their lives.

And that job is? Conservator of paintings (specializing in Renaissance) at the New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The painting being handled like an old couch on its way to the curb?

The Bacchanal of the Andrians by Titian.

Her lesbian colleague who is presumably also a a highly trained & skilled curator finds it depressing that the MC is so excited about the painting.

i mean they have a lot to bond over!

@happybabysloth yeah but like who's gonna know. who's gonna know he's wearing red. definitely not these guys, he's invited <3

The only way into my building is through the front door which locks itself when closed. There's a back entrance but it's deadbolted from the inside. This means the only people who can get into the building are me, my cat sitter with the spare keys, and the people living in the other two units.

The door to MY unit now... has no doorknob. Impossible to get in.

There is a shared BACK hallway that leads to the shared basement/back entrance. My back door into this hall is always deadbolted. EXCEPT, fortuitously, right now, since neighbor (Molly) in unit 2 had heard Patches meowing when alone and offered to spend some time with her, so I had the cat sitter unlock the bolt.

This, LUCKILY, means there is A Way into my unit. But it requires getting into the building, then going THROUGH my neighbors' unit into the back hall, then up to my unit.

Cat sitter is effectively locked out from Patches, and won't be able to get in if not fixed by the next day.

Text neighbor about predicament. They're willing to look at my door bUT (it's Christmas) they're not home and not getting home until the next day.

Next day, text for an update but hear nothing. (Neighbors aren't attached to their phones much). Communicate with catsitter saying "okay if I don't hear back from neighbors, maybe you go over and I contact a locksmith who you can let in?" (since cat sitter has the keys to the building)

Catsitter is very not keen on the idea

Patches is unaware she's a prisoner.

Hear back from neighbors. Say they should be home around 5pm.

Okay... Good Enough... (Patches graze-feeds so Luckily she hasn't missed any meals but we're going on 24 hours of house arrest Patches).

6pm comes. 7pm comes. 7:40pm I text asking for an update. Nothing.

8:30pm I'm figuring out what friends I can call to break into my own house. Text neighbor again and notice this text doesn't go through.

Text neighbor's partner being like "hey sorry, can't seem to reach Molly--". Get a text back "Sorry this is Molly on David's phone! My phone died." Family Christmas plans ran late but they're on their way back and will be home soon. Thank goodness.

9pm-ish, they get back, give Patches attention and top up her food. I get a text "David fixed your door!" Woo!

Friday 5pm I finally get home

Lugging my suitcase up three flights of stairs while I hear Patches meowing like a dying Victorian child

Shoes off coat off suitcase down fish out keys unlock door grab doorknob

...Doorknob falls off

Falls off right into my hands

Staring at doorknob. Staring at door. Patches meowing. Shove doorknob against door like an idiot and no it does not go back on.

Fucking

Go down flight of stairs, knock on Molly and David's door. David is luckily home. "My doorknob fell off again can I go home"

David lets me in. I scoot past their dogs and apparently I startled the more nervous one since she apparently tried to nip at me but I didn't even notice because I'm like my cat.

Get in through the back hall.

Patches comes bounding over.

My cat.

Doesn't even know she was a prisoner.

Doesn't even know what a doorknob is.

Later that night receive a text from neighbor apologizing for the dog and I'm like "I Did Not Even Notice."

Any attempt to leave my house now is perilous until I fix the doorknob.

Can't even leave my door cracked open because I know Patches is gonna shove her stupid little face through it and become the opposite of a prisoner.

I wanna go buy a reeces peanut butter cup but by god it's not worth the risk

I'm gonna try to fix the doorknob

Or... buy? a new doorknob?

On Amazon searching "doorknob".

You are completely right because I have now investigated the knob and can confirm the screw holding the knob to bar was loose. I have tightened the screw and it SEEMS fixed but I’m very Fool Me Once on this since my neighbor also thought they’d fixed it.

To swap in the new knob I'd need to cut a new knob-hole an inch higher in the door which

With what tools

That would leave an unused gaping doorknob-sized hole in my door which any robber the size of a weasel or smaller will use to rob my home. I don't need fucking Redwall in my home.

Probably bad for the integrity of the door

I don't wanna.

I think what I really want is just the knob like above tags said. Like the knob and the rectangular bar, which I can substitute in for my stripped-bare knob and rectangle bar. I WOULD do this with the new knob, but it's got two welded-on spokes poking out from the knob.

I can maybe drill two holes for the spokes in my door...?

(Squinting at shitty amazon listings trying to see if any knobs don't have the two spokes)

(I think the two spokes might be standard.)

Developing new respect for Jesus (carpenter).

In the meantime, because I'd already unscrewed a lot of things I DID take the genius action of flipping my current doorknob around.

This way the side that causes problems is on the INSIDE.

Doorknob fall of while INSIDE house significantly better than doorknob fall off while OUTSIDE.

I'm retightening all the screws.

So it does!

Never heard the term "spindle doorknob" before so I never would have found this on my own.

They're also all labeled "vintage" which extra feels right since my door predates the Cambrian Explosion.

Several dozen stories of other people getting locked in/out of bathrooms/basements/classrooms/bedrooms/buildings. Extra shout out to the person whose classmate managed to do this twice, in rapid4reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesdweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Patches is on my keyboard

whose classmate managed to do this twice, in rapid succession, to both sides of a classroom door after being saved the first time.

Several people taking this as a sign to go tighten their doorknob screws, including someone whose knob fell off in their hands while doing this

10 or so people reading the "can't have shit in Detroit" meme to mean I live in Detroit. Sorry to confess I'm a fake Detroitite. Doxxing myself by 0.00001% more by informing the world I live in not-Detroit.

Many many people wondering why I'm not pestering my landlord about this. Truth is my landlord is way too sexy, cool, fashionable, smart, pretty, funny, and popular on Tumblr to it's me. It's me. I'm me I'm my landlord. It's my condo. Including, with immense regret, every single doorknob inside.

3 separate professional locksmiths who have reached out offering advice, which is very cool. I have burst into a virtual hardware store clutching my shit doorknob and fainted, only to be caught by three very strong and cool locksmiths rushing to my aid.

ALSO MY PAPER TOWELS

(Ran out of paper towels)

Old knob coming off.

Wretched thing. Accursed knob of woe.

Get undid

New knob reign by forceful coup. Went to great pains to PRECISELY wait Patches is escaping

Patches retrieved

Anyway GREAT care was taken to ensure both knobs are ALIGNED, EVEN, SCREWED ON, with the wait hang on

Patches retrieved again.

Anyway

DOORKNOB SCREWED ON

KNOB

Hudson Williams, #1 Shane Understander

I think Shane was a character who, soon as I read him, made all the sense to me. I felt immediately a kinship and an ownership over Shane. I was like, “I need to be the only person to tell this story. I get it. I want to be the person to be Shane and I want to spend time with him.” [x]

(sources below)

I’ve said this before but: I think that for most of the situationship, shane thinks that ilya holds all the cards and calls all the shots. ilya cruised him, ilya put his number in shane’s phone and told him they were going to make a plan to hook up again, ilya flirts and pursues and makes the sex bets that give shane the cover he needs to keep giving it up to ilya. and later: ilya decides to ghost him, ilya tells him what to do in vegas, ilya resets the tone of their relationship in a way that implicitly tells shane this isn’t real and you shouldn’t get attached. ilya is the person with the power to decide what happens between them and what it means.

but what I love SO much about this pairing is that we the audience get a wider view, and so we get to see the situation quite differently. yes ilya is calling the shots. but ilya is also repeatedly and at times painfully disarmed by shane’s total lack of guile. he’s disarmed by shane’s sincerity, his openness, his inability to dissemble. he’s disarmed by shane’s inability to even understand that he should be dissembling—that the average person would be trying to conceal the intensity of their desire or hurt to avoid making themselves emotionally vulnerable. shane’s heart is in his eyes, to quote hudson. you can always tell what he’s feeling. and I think that gives shane an enormous amount of emotional power over ilya (guy who wears masks on top of masks on top of masks to conceal his own feelings and is used to being surrounded by people who do the same).

to me that whole ep2 sequence is SUCH a good example of this. ilya thinks he can call the shots—I’ll ghost you for six months to signal to you that I’m done with this, I’ve lost interest, we’re not going to do this anymore. and then shane walks off that stage in an obvious state of distress and ilya cannot help but pursue him (he BURSTS into that bathroom! mr paper towel dispenser lean is faking casual but he clearly booked it after shane to make sure shane was okay!). then ilya tries to recover by doing his cocky asshole and turning shane’s distress into a joke about wanting shane to suck his dick. he’s offering shane an off-ramp: we can forget you were upset, we can make this casual and jokey again, we can pretend you didn’t cry. I can reset the tone for both of us here. except shane doesn’t take the off-ramp. he just gets even more tearful, because ilya hurt him and shane cares and he’s not able to pretend like he doesn’t. and HOO boy!!!!!! the effect that has on ilya!!!!!!!! guy who clearly arrived in vegas thinking I’m not going to hook up with shane hollander again, or if I do I’m going to make it crystal clear that we’re not friends, we’re not two people who care about each other or think about each other when we’re not together. and then shane picks him up and throws him through the nearest wall emotionally not once but twice that night (ilya literally never recovered from ‘I need - you.’ game fucking over for that guy!!!).

idk I really loved that post I reblogged last night that was like, it’s fundamentally about trust for shane. it’s about giving himself and his desires over to ilya completely and trusting that ilya will know what to do with shane’s desire and longing and deep loneliness. ilya will tell him what to do. but I guess what I am trying to say is that the exchange of ‘power’ here (if you want to call it) goes both ways, and that to me is what makes this ship soooo emotionally rich. to trust someone is to give them power over you, up to and including the power to hurt you. but I think to be trusted in that way is like… it lays you bare, too. it makes you vulnerable right back. yes, it gives you a power you can wield, but wielding that power often changes you in ways that are outside of your conscious control. it certainly changes ilya in ways that are outside of his conscious control! he doesn’t want to chase shane into that bathroom. he doesn’t want to kiss shane and hold him close and reassure shane that he’s not alone in this. ilya wants distance! he wants control! but shane’s openness, shane’s inability to act like he doesn’t care when he does care, pulls something out of ilya that ilya is powerless to deny or hold back. it’s so instinctive, the way he moves to comfort shane.