These are the some of the things I truly like about being an immigrant to Puerto Morelos who has established roots in the community. They are kind of random thoughts, some being quite minor. But when I look at the sum total, it creates a vibe of the big picture.

1. I always know where to go to get the best food. For example, which guy sells the best tamales or the best esquite. One time my esquite guy was not on his usual corner. I saw some gringos looking for him. They were disappointed. I called the guy and his wife answered. She said he was in the hospital for a period of time but she was making the food and selling it at her house. She gave me the location and I went there. There was a line of people outside of her door!
   
2. I go to a certain taqueria all the time. One night their card reader was down and I didn't have any pesos. The manager was like, just pay me tomorrow, no worries!
   
3. I always know when a house is going up for sale or for rent via word of mouth. I find out the information before the sign goes up or before a middleman advertises and adds his commission to the price.
   
4. When an appliance breaks, I call my appliance repair man who lives one block away. He fixed my washing machine for 200 pesos. One time, I was locked out of my house. The neighbor called his friend who was a locksmith at 11pm. The guy showed up in five minutes and charged me 100 pesos with a smile.
   
5. I get invited to many parties and celebrations. Have you ever hit the piñata at a Mexican birthday party. It is a riot to see the adults scrambling for the candy alongside the children. Have you ever sang the song they sing when they are hitting the piñata?
   

Have you ever been to a Quinceanera? What an amazing experience. The food, the drink, it is similar to a wedding celebration! I am one of the few gringos who gets an invite.

1. I am involved with the school. I get to know the teachers and attend the functions. It is a true connection.
   
2. I have a position and a role within the community. One which I have earned by offering respect and gaining trust. This is something which can not be purchased with money.
   
3. Through my connections with the community, I have gained an even deeper awareness of the local vibe. I sense things that do not appear right quickly. I am not afraid of mlnor things because of ignorance. I am way more patient and forgiving.
   

There are many other things, these are simply the items thay came to mind at this moment.

I am NOT the Original Poster. That is u/tabadmanners and u/ThrowRAbadmanners2. He posted in AmItheAsshole and relationship_advice
There was a previous BORU post with the first two posts by u/matthewsmugmanager here. The newest posts are marked with **** and are over a year later.
Thanks to u/missxmonstera and u/burnt-----toast for the rec
Mood Spoiler: ooooooof I want to bang my head against a wall
Original Post: August 1, 2022
Hi everyone, using a throwaway because I don’t want this on my main but I would like an outside opinion.
My fiancée “Lola” and I have been together for five years (engaged for a little over a year) and we have twins (boy and girl, 2.5). Our wedding is in two months.
Lola usually takes care of feeding the kids in the morning since I work early, and so I never noticed this until recently. I took a week vacation from work to just spend time at home with my kids and Lola and started to notice something that bothered me.
Lola has been teaching our kids bad table manners and sees nothing wrong with it. I hadn’t noticed this before, as they don’t eat this type of food for lunch/dinnesnacks or eat it all the time so I guess I just missed it as I wasn’t home or she fed them other things on the weekends.
This morning I was helping Lola make breakfast and then I got the kids ready while she brought their food out for them. As they were getting ready to eat, I noticed they didn’t have forks/spoons so I told Lola I would get them and she said there was “no need”.
I watched instead and she gave the kids tortillas that she ripped into pieces and they were using their bare hands to grab the food using the pieces of the tortilla. I asked her what she was doing and that she should be giving them utensils but she seemed shocked that I was concerned and said that’s how they always eat it.
I told her that she was teaching them bad manners and making them think it was okay to just grab food with their hands. She told me they do that anyway when they have chips or grapes or tacos and pizza and listed a bunch of other snacks and fast food you eat without utensils but I pointed out that those things are usually made to be eaten quickly or on the road (like fast food) so utensils aren’t needed.
She said I was being offensive by calling her way of eating gross and saying it was having bad manners, but I do think it’s gross to see someone grabbing at food with their bare hands like that. She said she grew up eating like that and would always use tortillas to eat things like eggs or meat/rice/beans and that it wasn’t gross because she always made the kids wash their hands before they ate.
I ended up giving my kids forks for them to eat which they didn’t want to use, which made me even more frustrated with her because now they’re used to this.
Lola has been really annoyed the rest of the day and wouldn’t let me help her with lunch, and earlier she was walking around the house speaking to someone (probably her sister) in spanish about me and i’m starting to feel a bit annoyed.
AITA?
EDIT: wow lots of replies quickly. They seem to be mixed so far but I will add in that the kids CAN use utensils and use them with foods like soups/pastas/etc, I just fear that allowing them to continue using their hands will make them used to it.
Relevant Comments:
You're not wrong for wanting to teach them to be able to use utensils, but the way you went about it was terrible:
"To be clear, they can use utensils I just think that allowing them not to will make them used to eating with their bare hands and then they’ll try it with someone that CANT be eaten that way, say soup or spaghetti for example."
"They do use utensils when eating other things like pasta/soup/etc"
So like... what's the problem then?
"I think it’s bad manners and a little unhygienic"
What does 'bad manners' mean? In this case it just sounds like it annoys you. And unhygienic? They've washed their hands.
"What if you went to to a restaurant and saw people grabbing at all the food with their hands and fists and shoving it in their mouths? would you not consider that bad manners?"
Info, is your fiancée a POC? Is it a cultural thing?
"She is not of color. She is mexican but very pale with green eyes"
"Lola is not brown. She is Mexican but she is white"
Mexicans aren't white no matter how fair skinned they are.
"There are white Latinos, which my wife is. If you looked at her you would not think she is Mexican."
OOP is voted YTA
Update Post: August 4, 2022 (3 days later)
Hello (again). I’m hoping so follow all the rules so this doesn’t get deleted or anything but I wanted to post a quick update because I got a big fat reality check yesterday.
I admit that at first I was annoyed and defensive that everyone was ganging up on me and saying I was racist/an absent parent/ etc.
However, surprisingly enough, it was the comments who were trying to defend me and somewhat agreeing with me that ended up changing my mind. At first I was mainly focusing on the 2-3 comments in my defense but as I read more of them I started to realize that they WERE sounding racist/disrespectful and then I realized the rest of you were right, and that is what I sounded like in my post.
There were a few comments saying something like “In America that is not normal” but we are not in America and hearing people say that to me while defending me was shocking to say the least. I don’t want to be one of those people who goes around telling people that they need to speak a certain language or do a certain thing because of where they happen to be.
I showed my wife the post and she saw a lot of your disrespectful comments agreeing with me calling her way of eating unhygienic and she said they sounded like me which made me realize I was an asshole.
For those asking if I had never seen my wife eat like that: no i hadn’t and I asked her why she never did even though she said i she grew up doing it. She told me how a few months into our relationship I had made a comment about someone in a film being “poor and weird” for eating food with their hands. I do remember having said this and it is something that I should not have said. She said that is why she didn’t eat like that in front of me but she thought I wouldn’t mind if our kids did, as they are toddlers and toddlers regularly eat with their hands.
I am doing a lot of self reflection and have apologized deeply to my wife. She said she needs some time to think things through after seeing the post and my comments as well as everyone’s comments, which I fully respect.
Thanks everyone for your insight.
*****Update Post 2: January 9, 2024 (1.5 years later)****\*
Title: My (M32) fiancee (F32) suddenly doesn't want to marry me anymore because of a disagreement we had a year ago. What now?
Hi everyone. I've been with my fiancee "Lola" for almost 7 years now and we've been engaged for 2 of those years. We have twins together (M&F, 3) and I thought we were happy.
About a year ago we had a small fight/disagreement about how she was raising our kids, but after receiving some feedback from Reddit, I was able to see that I was in the wrong and I was being incredibly offensive toward my wife (this was on a different account that I lost the info for, but everyone was very helpful so thanks again). I apologized and she seemed to accept my apology, and I thought things were back to normal after all of that. She seemed to be her normal self again and we didn't argue/disagree about that topic anymore. In fact, we hadn't had even a minor disagreement for months after that. I thought we were happy.
Well, we were originally planning to get married last year (October of 2023) but she ended up changing her mind and saying she wanted to push back the wedding a bit. I was a bit confused and she wouldn't really elaborate on why, she just said it was stressful to plan a wedding with toddlers and she needed some time so I agreed.
Well, she just dropped a bomb on me out of nowhere a few days ago when she randomly stated that she doesn't think she wants to get married anymore. This was heartbreaking to hear, of course, and I asked that we sit and talk it out. She ended up telling me that she doesn't think we are compatible (after 7 years?) and that she thinks we should go our own ways and co-parent. I'm devastated. I pressed for more information, like what made you realize this? And why now? And she basically said that she felt like I didn't really "know" her and that I didn't want to know her. I thought this was ridiculous! I know everything about her! I know her favorite color, movie, and song, I know her favorite food, I can read her body language extremely well! I DO know her, we've been together for years! She said a few more things and apparently, she's been thinking over our relationship since that fight happened a year ago. She said it was "eye-opening" for her, and that when I let her see the post and she looked through all the comments, she realized things about me that she had swept under the rug for years and blown off as one-time issues. She went on a whole schpiel about all these things she had realized about me and how she didn't think we should be together anymore.
I don't even know what she means. I think I zoned out for most of her rant because I was so blindsided and hurt by this that I was trying not to break down in tears. I offered to go to couples counseling and individual counseling but she said it was too late and that I should have done that/offered that a year ago when this all blew up. I don't even know what to do now, and I think it's a bit unfair for her to put all of that on me. Just because I didn't think of therapy after a minor disagreement A YEAR AGO I'm no longer someone she wants to marry? Thats insane.
I don't know what to do. How can I get her to give me another chance to see that I still love her and we can make this work? What can I say to make her change her mind? I'm so lost and I don't know what to do.
EDIT: I think it might be a good idea to link the original post with the details of our disagreement as some people are asking for the details and accusing me of avoiding the question so the post can be found here
EDIT: I feel that you all have given me a lot to think about and reflect on. Thank you. I will no longer be replying to comments.
Relevant Comments: (There are a lot. I tried to include the ones that were most relevant)
Someone responds to OOP when he questions why she would wait a year:
Commenter: Probably bc she was trying to reconcile her conflicting feelings and trying to make it work. With time and reflection, she's realized that that incident you previously posted about (as well as many others) changed the way she sees and feels about you when all added up. It sounds like you didnt make a sincere effort to learn about and understand her culture, which is likely what makes her feel like you dont know her. It sounds like she's tried really hard to ignore her doubt and keep it together bc there is love there and you have children together but she's realized she's only been dragging out the inevitable.
You made racist comments about heher culture my guy. Its understandable that those kinds of things have the potential to fester and become looming issues. Even if you stopped making them, you were the type of person to make them in the first place and she may have spent the past year wondering if you still felt that way but were just holding your tongue.
OOP: Well I did learn that the part of her culture that I insulted was just a way of doing things and I corrected my actions. You're right that I didn't actively go out and learn every single thing about her culture but she didn't bring that up either so I'm not sure what I could have done.
You could have taken an active role in learning about her culture:
"Yes bit it is HER culture, right? Like, wouldn't it be the default for her to be the one to teach me if I don't know about it? Like when you go to school, you are taught things by the person who knows about them. It's not like they make you go out and learn it yourself on the internet right? If she wanted me to be more active and involved/learn more, why not help with that or teach me more?"
Yeah but it's also a culture YOUR children share???
"Well I wouldn't expect her to teach our children my culture, so I just figured that she would teach them hers and I would mine."
"This is harsh but I think you are right. I never really thought about how I was also being racist to my children and that breaks my heart."
You need her to hold your hand with teaching you all of this?
"I don't mean that I needed her to tell me what to do but I just don't understand what people mean when they say I should have learned about it myself. Its not my culture and she didn't discuss it with me. I didn't even know I as being offensive in the argument we had. Am I just supposed to google "Is ____ offensive to ___ culture" for every action?"
Maybe she wanted someone to take an ACTIVE interest in her culture instead of just passively waiting:
Okay, I think I understand what people are saying now. You don't think that is a little bit manipulative though? I'm not trying to be malicious or offensive I am honestly asking. Like if you had an issue with your partnetheir actions, you don't think it's a bit manipulative to never bring it up and just expect them to read your mind/know there is an issue and fix this issue (that they don't know about) by themselves somehow? Or am I being naive?
Zoning out:
"I don't normally zone out, I just meant I was in shock at that time.
It was a bit deal and I apologized and addressed the issue. I didn't just drop it, I learned from my mistake and from being roasted by reddit on the post. I admitted my failures and I apologized and she seemed to accept the apology and it was never brought up again. I did work to repair the damage, as I apologized and understood that I was being ignorant and racist and I did not want to be that person. I realized that I was erasing and judging part of my children's culture and I did want them to be involved and I wanted my wife to keep teaching them about her culture as well.
I will be getting individual therapy and I hope I can make it up to her."
It's done. Counseling wouldn't have worked anyway because you only admitted you were wrong once reddit told you:
"Well she never told me that I was being disrespectful and I didn't really know it was important to her culture. Once I realized that I apologized to her."
Similar to the above, one more exchange:
Commenter: Do you think that coming to reddit (which is typically a male dominated forum) and deciding you were an asshole to her only because perfect strangers said you were, instead of believing your literal fiancée that you were hurting/being an asshole to her, contributed? Because I sure do.
OOP: I never thought of it this way. I had a similar realization in my last post, as a lot of the people who were defending me were doing so by sending my really racist messages, like explicitly racist/using slurs to describe people from her culture, which is what gave me a wake up call about my actions being wrong, but I didn't really think about the gender of the users here.
Editor's note: There's one more longer comment exchange that would take up too much space, but here it is if you're interested.
Update Post 3: January 15, 2024 (6 days later)
Hi everyone. This will likely be the last post I make about this situation as everything seems to be final now. This one is made with my ex's permission and she will read over it beforehand, as she thinks I am an unreliable narrator.
First of all, we have broken up. She gave me back the ring even though I said she didn't have to and she could pawn it and keep the money. She didn't want to do that and gave it back to me. I think I will pawn it myself and give her the money since she has moved out of the house. She moved in with her brother and his partner, who was actually able to get her a job where he works and she is apparently starting next week. We will split our time with the kids since she said she was able to get shifts that align with my schedule (I have a pretty flexible schedule but I just prefer to work the same days/times every week) so we will trade off the kids when each of us is at work and we are going to split the weekends. We are going to get a custody agreement but we talked about it and agreed to 50/50 and we are both going to be cooperative as I don't want to stress her out and I do want to see my kids.
I will also be brushing up on Mexican culture so that I am able to participate in things with my children and I am looking to take some Spanish classes as well so I can communicate with them in both languages.
I showed my wife (editor's note- this is a mis-type by OOP) the last post the day after I made it and she read it over and read all my comments and a lot of the other comments. She took like two days to do this. Afterward, she said she wanted to talk and asked me if I was serious when I claimed that I thought she wanted to break up because of the one fight about the food. I said yes, because I was serious and did think that, and she said she couldn't believe me. I asked her to elaborate and she got very mad and asked me if I was really so oblivious to my own actions. I realized that I probably have been oblivious to my own actions, and that I've been selfish and she kind blew up and said something and asked me if I "needed a fucking list" so I could see all of the shit I've been doing. I told her I would appreciate if she could communicate some of the issues, and there was no need for a list but she said that a list would probably lessen the chances of me losing focus while she went on a rant (ouch, but deserved). We ended up having a long talk about it and she wanted me to include this in the post, so I will add it below:
(Note that these are just things that happened since the fight about the food)
-When one of her nieces had a quinceanera, I kept calling it a sweet sixteen. She said she explained to me multiple times that they were different, had different meanings, differed cultural significance, and had different practices. She said I still called it a sweet sixteen when I would talk to people about it or mention it. She said I also embarrassed her at the party because she felt that I was making fun of how her relatives were dancing.
-I (to this day) sometimes call her Spanish instead of Hispanic/Latina/Mexican. She said there is a big difference and me slipping up and forgetting is bs.
-When she was pregnant with the twins, I told her she could give them names that are pronounced in Spanish so that her non-English speaking family could say them easily and also since they are half Mexican. We agreed that she could, so long as I could choose which name was final. She said that I have not held up my end of the deal, and that when we were at Christmas with her family in December, I "obsessively" corrected her family members when they pronounced our daughter's name "Eh-leh-na" (Elena) and kept saying it "Uh-lay-nuh". According to her, I did this more than 6 times that night and she stopped keeping count.
-I didn't 'let' her feed our kids some Mexican stew she had made because it looked spicy (I genuinely thought it was). She said she told me she hadn't used spicy peppers, but that night I fed them something else before the soup was done and she said I disrespected her and her parenting skills.
-She feels like she is not allowed to listen to her music/any Spanish music because I will complain or change the song. She said she can only listen to her music when I am not home, otherwise I will always change it within a few seconds.
She said there were other smaller examples but these are the bigger ones that she had already mentioned/brought up before and nothing had changed. When I asked her why she stayed with me for so long or why she didn't mention these things more, she said that she's always had low self-esteem and she thought that I was a good person/partner other than these things so she always talked herself out of a break up, but she was just over it now.
The things she listed off really opened my eyes and made me realize how selfish and unaware I've been, and I know that I need to change. I apologized to her and I know it won't change her mind but that's okay, I just want her to know that I do regret my actions.
I'm not going to ignore her or grey rock her like some people were suggesting, as I want to remain amicable for our children. I want us to have good communication, as I don't want our kids to grow up with parents who hate each other and can't have a simple conversation. Thank you to everyone who left comments, especially the ones who were harsh.
(I also want to correct a typo in my last post where I said we were going to get married in Oct of 2023. It should have read Oct of 2022.)

Do NOT comment on OOP's posts or dm him. You will be banned from this sub and put this entire sub in jeopardy.

Hello everyone,
In exploring Puerto Rico's economy and its historical context, the concept of a new neologism, "Chardonismo," has emerged. This concept captures a socio-psychological phenomenon prevalent in society, particularly in relation to economic and colonial history. It is hypothesized that Carlos Chardon may have been one of the early figures to exhibit tendencies aligned with "Chardonismo." However, this interpretation is subjective and open to different viewpoints.
"Chardonismo" is reflected in several historical instances, which may be seen as passive or indirect acquiescence to external influences:

• Reactions and movements within the UPR Rio Piedras Student Body, including the campaign against Pedro Albizu.
• Events such as the Río Piedras Massacre (October 24, 1935), the Ponce Massacre (March 21, 1937), and the assassination of Police Chief E. Francis Riggs (February 23, 1936).
• The attempted assassination of Governor Winship (July 25, 1938).
• Institutional decisions, such as the omission of publishing Ana Roque's work, as detailed here: El Tesoro de una Científica Rebelde.

These events may illustrate aspects of the socio-political climate at the time but are not necessarily direct indications of any individual's actions or beliefs.
The Neologism: "Chardonismo"

Definition:

Chardonismo is a socio-psychological phenomenon where individuals or groups develop a dependency on external economic forces or authority figures, leading to passive acceptance and support for these entities, despite potential exploitation or detriment to their interests.

Definición:

Chardonismo: Un fenómeno socio-psicológico donde individuos o grupos desarrollan dependencia hacia fuerzas económicas externas o figuras de autoridad, resultando en una aceptación pasiva y apoyo hacia estas entidades, a pesar de la posible explotación o detrimento a sus propios intereses.
Aspects Encompassed by "Chardonismo":

1. Economic Dependency and Colonial Dynamics: Reflects the impact of historical colonial relationships and economic dependence on external powers, particularly the United States, including over-reliance on federal aid.
2. Psychological Impacts and Societal Attitudes: Addresses long-term economic dependence, its psychological effects, and the influence of external policymaking on local attitudes, such as feelings of inferiority, helplessness, or passive acceptance.
3. Corporate Control and Cultural Consequences: Includes the implications of corporate dominance and the influence of external (particularly U.S.) businesses on Puerto Rico's local culture and social structures. Examples include employment in manufacturing conglomerates like Pepin, Coca-Cola, Amgen, HP, Microsoft, etc.
4. Perpetuation of Inequitable Employment Practices: Involves favoritism, nepotism, and reliance on personal connections ('palas' or 'padrino' culture) over individual merit in employment practices, often influenced by external corporate cultures and practices.
5. Challenges in Business Succession and Entrepreneurship: Encompasses the difficulties faced by small businesses in adapting to the economic landscape shaped significantly by external forces and the generational gaps in business continuity, leading to a reluctance in business handovers.
6. Economic Vulnerability and Lack of Diversification: Highlights the vulnerabilities of an economy heavily reliant on external manufacturing and federal aid, emphasizing the need for economic diversification and autonomy in policymaking. Policies and regulations governing Puerto Rico's economy often give preference to the US market and companies.
7. Historical Incidents and Enforcement of Authority: Captures how incidents like the Utuado/Jayuya Uprising, Cerro Maravilla, and other events reflect the enforcement of external authority and power dynamics, as well as the role of external policy decisions in shaping local events.

It's important to acknowledge that these observations may be influenced by personal perspectives or a lack of complete information. This is a multi-layered, multifaceted complex topic which requires multi-disciplinary evaluation, and diverse viewpoints can enrich the understanding of "Chardonismo."
Do you think "Chardonismo" resonates with the socio-economic condition of Puerto Rico? How do you see these aspects manifesting in society?
What do you think?
EDIT: Missing focus in the aspects section.

My boyfriend of seven years and I are finally officially planning our wedding. Although we aren't engaged yet, we want to plan in advance especially considering the costs. He did mention that he would propose on our 10th year, so we are building up our funds currently. For now, we are still looking for venues, photographers and videographers, mariachi and bandas, catering, and everything in between. This post is also to help me write things out to see how much more planning we have to do. Here's what we've talked about so far:
​

• Guest List - Our current guest count was bigger than we thought it was, around 81, 104 for wiggle room in case some people bring plus ones. Most of our guests will be family and the rest are friends from college and high school who have been waiting for this moment. We might add more people in the future but I would rather have a "small" intimate wedding with close ones we still talk to. is 100 people considered a lot?
• Wedding Venue - Our dream is to live in a novela on our wedding day. We want to have a venue either at a ranch/farm or somewhere that has a barn-style venue. We live in Georgia so it may not be hard, but it'll be hard in the Atlanta area. If anyone has any recommendations let me know. We have no budget yet so we may be flexible once we save up. We want to have hotels or accommodation nearby since most of his family is traveling from out of state and some of our friends live a couple hours away. Hopefully, we find one where we can stay late, like maybe 2 in the morning, and have alcohol. Are there venues that actually allow you to stay that late?
• Rings - He got me a ring for my 15 / Quinceanera, and I absolutely love it. It's a white center stone in the middle with two sapphires (my birthstone) as side stones. In the middle where the gallery is, there's a heart. The tiny details are what I love about it and he wants to get a similar ring for me. He is very adamant about spending money on diamonds. Although I appreciate the gesture, I really encourage him to spend it on a moissanite instead. Even though he tells me no, I'll let it slide as long as he's sure about it. I believe his budget is around 2-2.5k. I showed him my pinterest board on what style and shape rings I'm into, and he has a very good grasp on that. I also plan to surprise him with his wedding band so hopefully, it's something he'll love.
• Dress and Suit - I plan on having something flowy with Mexican embroidery. I don't plan on getting a ballgown or mermaid silhouette. I'll probably have to get one custom-made if I don't find one to my liking. I'm not sure if It'll be sleeveless or not, I'm very self-conscious of my underarms and my arms in general. My boyfriend might want to go as a charro or I'll also suggest a nice suit with embroidery to match so he can wear a cowboy hat and boots. Or he could change at the venue into the suit now that I think about it.
• Padrinos - We don't have a set list of who would be padrinos for what, but we're fairly certain some of our family members are more than willing to help out with things.
• Music - I'm certain my side of the family will be expecting a mariachi, so with every party and Mexican restaurant I go to, I go mainly to see how the mariachi plays. So far I have one in mind and even got their business card. If we do have a cocktail hour, I'm making a playlist on my Spotify which I currently use to study. It's mainly going to be used as background noise as family mingles and settles in. We're still not sure if we'll be going out and getting a banda, but if we do, we're looking. As for DJs, we're not sure where to start other than going to family parties to see them live. So far we've had misses.
• Catering - We of course want to have our delicious Mexican food for everyone to enjoy. We are just not sure if we want to have a big budget for catering and offer a buffet, hire a taco stand, or make the food ourselves. It'll be a lot if we did it ourselves and I want my family to enjoy the days leading up to it and not be stressed if we made enough or if they get fatigued from making so many batches of food. I also want to have an antojitos station for small snacks and fruit cups for in-between cocktail hour, food, and cake.
• Decoration - I plan on DIYing as much as I can, even the centerpieces. I love being crafty, so the majority of the decorations I have in mind can be DIYed and done in advance in the next 2-3 years. I plan on having custom-made papel picado from a Mexican vendor as well as Talavera flower vases from a Mexican pottery shop for centerpieces. And yes, I do plan on letting guests take the centerpieces lol.
• Wedding cake - we're not too sure about wedding cake, but we are looking forward to sampling and rating the cake flavors together when the time comes.
• Video/Photographer - There's a videographer who does stunning movie-like productions based in Texas but I'm wondering if that's too extra for our size of a wedding. Usually, when we hire photographers, such as in my 15era, it was kind of mediocre I would have rather have a friend take the photos and I'll edit them myself.

If there's anything I missed or any suggestions please let me know, I want to be super prepared and make sure we save up enough money. Things could change in the next 2 years so I would rather be safe than sorry. Also, does anyone know about how much I should expect to spend on a wedding this size with everything I just mentioned? I want to be realistic and see if we can afford it or stick with a backyard wedding at my future in-laws' house.

During a debate on HBO's Real Time last October, host Bill Maher declared that Islam is "the only religion that acts like the mafia, that will f***ing kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong book."
​
Maher was apparently referring to Islam's "blasphemy" laws, which ban on pain of death any "insult"—as found in a statement, a picture, a book—to Islam and especially its prophet, Muhammad.
​
While Maher has been criticized for his "Islamophobic" assertion, he and others may be surprised to learn that the similarities between Islam and the mafia far exceed punishing those who say, draw, or write "the wrong thing."
​
In what follows, we will examine a number of these similarities:
​
We will begin by looking at the relationship between Allah, his messenger Muhammad, and the Muslims, and note several parallels with the relationship between the godfather, his underboss, and the mafia.
​
Next, we will examine the clannish nature of the mafia and compare it to Islam's tribalism, especially in the context of the Islamic doctrine "Loyalty and Enmity." For example, in both Islam and the mafia, members who wish to break away, to "apostatize," are killed.
​
We will consider how the mafia and Islam have both historically profited from the "protection" racket: Islam has demanded jizya from non-Muslims under its authority/territory and the mafia has demanded pizzo from people that fall under its jurisdiction.
​
Finally, we will consider what accounts for these many similarities between Islam and the mafia, including from an historical perspective.
​
1. Allah and Muhammad/Godfather and Underboss
​
The padrino of larger mafia organizations and families—literally, the "godfather" or "boss of bosses"—has absolute control over his subordinates and is often greatly feared by them for his ruthlessness. He has an "underboss," a right-hand man who issues his orders and enforces his will. The godfather himself is often inaccessible; mafia members need to go through the underboss or other high ranking associates.
​
Unlike the Judeo-Christian God ... Allah is unreachable, unknowable, untouchable.
​
Compare this with the relationship between Allah and his "messenger" Muhammad (in Arabic, Muhammad is most commonly referred to as al-rasul, "the messenger"). Unlike the Judeo-Christian God—a personal God, a Father, that according to Christ is to be communed with directly (Matt 6:9)—Islam's god, Allah, is unreachable, unknowable, untouchable. Like the godfather, he is inaccessible. His orders are revealed by his messenger, Muhammad.
​
If the Judeo-Christian God calls on the faithful to "come now, let us reason together" (Isaiah 1:18), Allah says "Do not ask questions about things that, if made known to you, would only pain you" (Koran 5:101). Just follow orders.
​
2. A "Piece of the Action"
​
The godfather and his underboss always get a "piece of the action"—a "cut"—of all spoils acquired by their subordinates.
​
So do Allah and his messenger, Muhammad. Koran 8:41 informs Muslims that "one-fifth of all war-booty you acquire goes to Allah and the messenger" (followed by Muhammad's family and finally the needy).
​
3. Assassinations
​
The godfather, through his underboss, regularly sends mafia men to make "hits"—to assassinate—those deemed enemies of the family.
​
So did Allah and his messenger. One example: A non-Muslim poet, Ka'b ibn Ashraf, insulted Muhammad, prompting the latter to exclaim, "Who will kill this man who has hurt Allah and his messenger?" A young Muslim named Ibn Maslama volunteered on condition that to get close enough to assassinate Ka'b he be allowed to lie to the poet.
​
Allah's messenger agreed. Ibn Maslama traveled to Ka'b and began to denigrate Islam and Muhammad until his disaffection became so convincing that the poet took him into his confidence. Soon thereafter, Ibn Maslama appeared with another Muslim and, while Ka'b's guard was down, slaughtered the poet, bringing his head to Muhammad to the usual triumphant cries of "Allahu Akbar!"
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4. Circumstance is Everything
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While the mafia adheres to a general code of conduct, the godfather issues more fluid orders according to circumstances.
​
This is reminiscent of the entire "revelation" of the Koran, where later verses/commands contradict earlier verses/commands, depending on circumstances (known in Islamic jurisprudence as al-nāsikh wal-mansūkh, or the doctrine of abrogation).
​
While other religions and scriptures may have contradictions, only Islam rationalizes them through abrogation—that is, by giving prominence to later verses which are seen as the "latest" decision of the deity.
​
Thus, whereas Allah supposedly told the prophet that "there is no compulsion in religion" (Koran 2:256), once the messenger grew strong enough, Allah issued new revelations calling for all-out wajihad till Islam became supreme (Koran 8:39, 9:5, 9:29, etc.).
​
While other religions and scriptures may have contradictions, only Islam rationalizes them through abrogation—that is, by giving prominence to later verses which are seen as the "latest" decision of the deity.
​
5. Clan Loyalty
​
Loyalty is fundamental in the mafia. Following elaborate rituals of blood oaths, mafia members are expected to maintain absolute loyalty to the family, on pain of death.
​
Similarly, mafia members are expected always to be available for the family—"even if your wife is about to give birth," as one of the mafia's "ten commandments" puts it—and to defend the godfather and his honor, even if it costs their lives.
​
Compare this to the widespread violence and upheavals that occur whenever Allah or his prophet is offended—whenever non-Muslim "infidels" blaspheme them. Or, as Bill Maher put it: "Its' the only religion that acts like the mafia, that will f***ing kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong book."
​
Islam's "Loyalty and Enmity" doctrine (al-wala' wa'l bara')—which calls on Muslims to be loyal to one another even if they dislike each other—is especially illustrative. Koran 9:71 declares that "The believing [Muslim] men and believing [Muslim] women are allies of one another" (see also 8:72-75). And according to Muhammad, "A Muslim is the brother of a Muslim. He neither oppresses him nor humiliates him nor looks down upon him…. All things of a Muslim are inviolable for his brother in faith: his blood, his wealth, and his honor"—precisely those three things that mafia members respect among each other. This is why Muslims like U.S. Army Major Nidal Hassan, whose "worst nightmare" was to be deployed to fight fellow Muslims, often lash out.)
​
6. Death to Traitors
​
Once a fledging mafia member takes the oath of loyalty to the mafia—including the Omertà code of silence and secrecy—trying to leave the "family" is seen as a betrayal and punishable by death. Any family member, great or small, is given authority to kill the traitor, the "turncoat."
​
According to Islamic law, if born Muslims at any point in their lives choose to leave Islam, they are deemed "apostates."
​
Compare this to Islam. To be born to a Muslim father immediately makes the newborn a Muslim—there are no oaths to be taken, much less any choice in the matter. And, according to Islamic law, if born Muslims at any point in their lives choose to leave Islam, they are deemed "apostates"—traitors—and punished including by death. Any zealous Muslim, not just the authorities, is justified in killing the apostate (hence why Muslim families that kill apostate children are rarely if ever prosecuted).
​
In the words of Muhammad—the messenger ("underboss") of Allah ("godfather"): "Whoever leaves his Islamic faith, kill him."
​
7. Distrust and Dislike of "Outsiders"
​
Aside from loyalty to the family, mafia members are also expected not to befriend or freely associate with "outsiders"—who by nature are not to be trusted, as they are not of the "family"—unless such a "friendship" helps advance the family's position.
​
Similarly, the second half of the doctrine of Loyalty and Enmity—the enmity (al-bara')—calls on Muslims to maintain distance from and bear enmity for all non-Muslims, or "infidels."
​
Thus Koran 5:51 warns Muslims against "taking the Jews and Christians as friends and allies … whoever among you takes them for friends and allies, he is surely one of them." According to the mainstream Islamic exegesis of al-Tabari, Koran 5:51 means that the Muslim who "allies with them [non-Muslims] and enables them against the believers, that same one is a member of their faith and community," that is, a defector, an apostate, an enemy.
​
Similar scriptures include Koran 4:89, 5:54, 6:40, 9:23, and 58:22; the latter simply states that true Muslims do not befriend non-Muslims—"even if they be their fathers, sons, brothers, or kin." Koran 60:1 declares, "O you who believe! Do not take my enemy and your enemy [non-believers] for friends: would you offer them love while they deny what has come to you of the truth [i.e., while they deny Islam]?" And Koran 4:144 declares "O you who believe! Do not take the infidels as allies instead of the believers. Do you wish to give Allah ["godfather"] a clear case against yourselves?"
​
8. Deception and Dissimulation
​
As mentioned, close relations to non-mafia individuals that prove advantageous to the family (for example, collaboration with a "crooked cop") are permissible—as long as the mafia keeps a safe distance, keeps the outsider at arm's length.
​
Compare this to Koran 3:28 which commands "believers not to take infidels for friends and allies instead of believers… unless you but guard yourselves against them, taking precautions." According to the standard Koran commentary of Tabari, "taking precautions" means:
​
If you [Muslims] are under their [non-Muslims'] authority, fearing for yourselves, behave loyally to them with your tongue while harboring inner animosity for them … [but know that] Allah has forbidden believers from being friendly or on intimate terms with the infidels rather than other believers—except when infidels are above them [in authority]. Should that be the case, let them act friendly towards them while preserving their religion.
​
After interpreting Koran 3:28 as meaning that Muslims may "protect" themselves "through outward show" when under non-Muslim authority, Ibn Kathir, perhaps Islam's most celebrated exegete, quotes Islam's prophet ("underboss") saying: "Truly, we smile to the faces of some people, while our hearts curse them."
​
Similarly, a few years ago, Sheikh Muhammad Hassan—a leading Salafi cleric in Egypt—asserted on live television that, while Muslims should never smile to the faces of non-Muslims, they should smile, however insincerely, if so doing helps empower Islam, especially in the context of da'wa.
​
The idea of hating "outsiders" is apparently so ingrained in Islam that another leading Salafi cleric, Dr. Yasser al-Burhami, insists that, while Muslim men may marry Christian and Jewish women, they must hate them in their heart—and show them that they hate them in the hopes that they convert to the "family" of Islam.
​
(For more on the doctrine of "Loyalty and Enmity," including references to the exegetical sources quoted above, see al-Qaeda leader Dr. Ayman Zawahiri's comprehensive treatise by that name in The Al Qaeda Reader, pgs. 63-115.)
​
9. "An Offer You Can't Refuse"
​
Although the novel-turned-movie, The Godfather, is fictitious, it also captures much of the mafia's modus operandi. Consider, for example, that most famous of lines—"I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse"—spoken by the Godfather to one of his "godsons," an aspiring actor and singer. After being turned down by a studio director for a role that he desperately wanted, the godson turned to his Godfather for aid.
​
As the movie progresses, it becomes clear that the offer that can't be refused consists of nothing less than violence and death threats: after the Godfather's messenger to the director asking that the actor be given the role is again rejected, the director awakens the next morning to find the bloodied and decapitated head of his favorite stallion in bed with him. The godson subsequently gets the movie role.
​
Throughout history, converting to Islam has been an "offer" that countless non-Muslims could not refuse.
​
Throughout the context of the entire Godfather trilogy (which captures well the mafia's approach to business) making someone "an offer they can't refuse" means "do as I say or suffer the consequences," possibly death.
​
Compare this to Islam's threefold choice. On Muhammad's orders, whenever Muslims conquer a territory in the name of Islam, its non-Muslim inhabitants are given three choices: 1) convert to Islam ("join the family"), 2) keep your religious identity but pay tribute (jizya, see below) and live as an "outsider," a subjugated dhimmi or 3) execution.
​
Throughout history, converting to Islam has been an "offer" that countless non-Muslims could not refuse. In fact, this "offer" is responsible for transforming much of the Middle East and North Africa, which were Christian-majority in the 7th century when the jihad burst forth from Arabia, into the "Muslim world."
​
And this offer is still alive and well today. For example, several older and disabled Christians who were not able to join the exodus out of Islamic State controlled territories opted to convert to Islam rather than die.
​
Like the mafia, then, Islam's offer to conquered non-Muslims ("outsiders") is basically "join our 'family,' help us and we will help you; refuse and we hurt you."
​
10. The "Protection" Racket
​
Once the mafia takes over a territory, one of the primary ways it profits is by collecting "protection money" from its inhabitants. While the protection racket has several aspects, one in particular is akin to an Islamic practice: coercing people in the mafia's territory to pay money for "protection," ostensibly against outside elements; in fact, the protection bought is from the mafia itself—that is, extortion money, or pizzo. Potential "clients" who refuse to pay for the mafia's "protection" often have their property vandalized and are routinely threatened and harassed.
​
Compare the collection of pizzo with the Islamic concept of jizya: The word jizya appears in Koran 9:29: "Fight those among the People of the Book [Christians and Jews] who do not believe in Allah nor the Last Day, nor forbid what Allah and his Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the religion of truth, until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued (emphasis added)."
​
In the hadith, the Messenger of Allah, Muhammad—in our analogy, the "underboss"—regularly calls on Muslims to demand jizya from non-Muslims: "If they refuse to accept Islam," said the prophet, "demand from them the jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay jizya, seek Allah's help and fight them."
​
The root meaning of the Arabic word "jizya" is simply to "repay" or "recompense," basically to "compensate" for something. According to the Hans Wehr Dictionary, the standard Arabic-English dictionary, jizya is something that "takes the place" of something else, or "serves instead."
​
Simply put, conquered non-Muslims were to purchase their lives, which were otherwise forfeit to their Muslim conquerors, with money. As one medieval jurist succinctly puts it, "their lives and their possessions are only protected by reason of payment of jizya" (Crucified Again, p. 22).
​
And to top it off, just as the mafia rationalizes its collection of "protection money" by portraying it as money that buys mafia protection against "outsiders"—when, as mentioned, the money/tribute serves only to protect the client from the mafia itself—so too do Islam's apologists portray the collection of jizya as money meant to buy Muslim protection from outsiders, when in fact the money/jizya buys protection from Muslims themselves.
​
Conclusion: Mafia—What's In a Word?
​
What accounts for all these similarities between Islam and the mafia? One clue is found in the fact that the very word "mafia," which means "hostility to the law, boldness," is derived from an Arabic word, mahya, which in translation means "bragging, boasting, bravado, and swaggering."
​
This etymology is a reminder that Sicily, birthplace of the mafia, was under Arab/Islamic domination for over 200 years. Aside from a borrowed etymology, could some of the mafia's modus operandi also have been borrowed from Islam? Isolated on their island, could native Sicilians have co-opted the techniques of social controls that they had lived under and learned from their former overlords—albeit without their Islamic veneer?
​
The mafia is not the only historical example of a non-Muslim criminal organization to be influenced by Islam. For example, the Thuggees — whence we get the word "thug" — were a brotherhood of allied bandits and assassins who waylaid and savagely murdered travelers in India, often by first feigning friendship. Although they were later associated with the Hindu cult of Kali, the original Thuggees were all Muslim. As late as the 19th century, a large number of Thuggees captured and convicted by the British were Muslim.
​
The similarities are clear: Along with assassinating his opponents, including, as seen, through treachery, Muhammad also personally engaged in banditry, ransacking the caravans of enemy tribes.
​
And if the words "mafia" and "thug" have Arabic/Islamic etymologies, the words "assassinate" and "assassin" are derived from a Medieval Islamic sect: the Hashashin, who pioneered the use of political assassination—with promises of a hedonistic paradise for the assassin who almost certainly died—in the name of Islam.
​
At any rate, when HBO personality Bill Maher recently proclaimed that Islam is "the only religion that acts like the mafia, that will f***ing kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong book," he was barely touching on the similarities between the mafia and other criminal organizations, and Islam.

[least useful]

superstar mode ($4.99)

• “exclusive theme”
• boring
• 5 bucks for a new color of your screen
• not that exciting

politician ($4.99)

• you can be a school board director
• you can be a mayor
  • minimum age of 25
• you can be a prime minister
  • minimum age of 35
• you can run for chief minister
  • minimum age of 25
• you can run for district governor
• provincial governor
• you can be a president
  • minimum age of 35
• if you live in china, you can’t run for any offices
• there's not all that much you can do

business ($4.99)

• allows you to start up any company
  • as long as you have enough money to start up the company
• allows you to acquire any company
  • as long as you have a certain amount of money
    • you bid on how much you’ll buy the company for
• you can make billions (possibly even trillions)
• 24 different industries
• somewhat difficult to succeed
• you have to be somewhat meticulous
  • annoying

musician ($4.99)

• you can join a band
  • you can join as a keyboardist, bassist, drummer, guitarist, or singer
• you can perform at concerts
• you can have relationships with your bandmates (romantic or platonic)
• you can audition as a solo artist for a record contract
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• repetitive
• you can play different genres (pop, rap, christian, rock, country, etc)

challenge vault ($4.99)

• allows you to win new accessories
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• fun
• too expensive

[somewhat useful]

pro athlete ($4.99)

• you need experience playing whichever sport you want to join in either high school or college to get in to said pro league
• you can win championships
• you can join a pro football league in the united states
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• you can join a pro baseball league in the united states
• you can join a pro hockey league in the united states
• you can join a pro soccer league in britain
• you can join a pro soccer league in spain
• you can join a pro soccer league in italy
• you can join a pro soccer league in germany
• you can join a pro soccer league in brazil
• you can join a pro rugby league in britain
• you can join a pro rugby league in australia
• you can join a pro volleyball league in the united states
• honestly, it's fairly fun

street hustler ($4.99)

• you can become a scam artist
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  • the most fun street hustle
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  • you can practice your skills
• you can become a panhandler
  • you can beg for money
  • you can use your pet (even exotic ones) or your kid (even if they're an adult) as a prop
• you can become a busker
  
  • you need an instrument
  • allows you to master things you may have otherwise not been able to master
  • you can perform songs for individual people
  mafia ($4.99)
  
• Mafia, Irish Mob, Latin Mafia, Russian Mafia, Triads, and Yakuza
  
• you can rise the ranks and become godfathechairman/skippepadrino
  
• you can become a rat
  
• you can extort businesses
  
• increased chances at successfully stealing cars
  

god mode ($7.99)

• lets you mess with your appearance and stats
  • only before starting your life
• special talent
• royalty
• switch to your child’s live

[most useful]

actor ($4.99)

• there's a lot you're able to do
• easier to get roles if you get the acting talent using god mode
• you can audition for a film role
  • you can have a supporting, bit, or lead role
  • the film can be a romantic comedy, a comedy, a thriller, a romance, a musical, a horror movie, an indie movie, an action movie, a fantasy movie, a bollywood movie, a drama, or a childrens movie
• you can audition for a tv show role
  • you can have a regular, lead, recurring, or ensemble role
  • the show can be a sitcom, action, docudrama, crime, drama, fantasy, or children’s
• you can get a talent agent
• you can try to become an extra
• probably the most fun of all of the job packs

boss mode ($11.99)

• gets you all the job packs
  • actor, mafia, musician, politician, pro athlete, street hustler, business
• gets you all future job packs
• good if you want to get 3+ job packs or if you are looking into getting a future one

the in-app purchases i've found to be the most useful

unlimited age downs ($9.99)
can allow you to sell your company before it loses its value

• you can undo up to 20 years of your life!!
• you can sell stock before it loses its value
• helpful if you have a bad business year, make a bad investment, or get killed bc you can just undo it
• even though it costs $10, I think it's fairly useful
• I've used it so many times that had I not bought it, I would have spent so much more money

bitizenship ($7.99)

• gets rid of ads (rly nice)
• unlimited generations
• interact with bosses
• exotic pets is also fun

investor expansion pack ($4.99)

• gives you access to a financial advisor
  • this financial advisor may have famous clients
  • they will get a percentage of your investment
    • usually 8-20%
• gives you access to the financial news
  • I don't find this to be particularly important as it really only tells you what happened last year, and won't help you make any future investments
• gives you access to asking for someone's opinion about the market
  • you can ask friends, parents, siblings, children (when they're adults), and significant others
• gives you access to the bond market
  • government bonds
    • the coupons have a percentage which tells you the amount of money you will get back after however many years are in the parenthesis next to a country's government bond (usually 3, 5, 10, 15, or 20)
  • bonds can default
    • if this happens, exit out of the app and reopen it
    • invest in things that are low on the risk bar so it doesn't happen as much
    • if you make an investment for a smaller amount of years, they're less likely to default
  • local bonds
    • these are a good investment since they have virtually no risk (although i've found that these are much more likely to default than government bonds) and they mature faster
  • corporate bonds
    • these tend to have the most risk and the highest coupon percentage
    • these are the ones most likely to default
• gives you access to crypto
  • if you have access to unlimited age downs, i would suggest always aging up one year and seeing which coins/tokens did well/didn't do well and aging back down and investing in the ones that did do well
  • if you don't have access to unlimited age downs, it's a good idea to go to college when you're older and make lots of friends so that you can ask for their opinions (you should also be doing this when you're young like between 15 and 25 because your friends should also be willing to give you information on the topic). they'll likely be able to point you in the right direction. all in all, though, if you don't have unlimited age downs, it would be better not to invest in crypto, since there's a good chance that you'll lose a large sum of money
• gives you access to funds
  • I don't really use this one, but like as I said before, you can just age up and see what funds do well and then age back down and invest in them
• gives you access to investing in local companies
  • these ones are fairly risky, i wouldn't suggest investing in them
• gives you access to the stock market
  • i would suggest always consulting either a family membelover or a financial advisor before investing, but don't let that stop you from investing in stocks. there's good money to be made in this area
• not too expensive (compared to other bitlife packs)

Chapter One (continuation)
Technorituals
José pressed play and then sat on a small stool with a pile of herbs tied with a red cloth and a bucket of cool, clean tap water. At his feet was a plastic tub (palangana) where he would make his sacred waters (omiero) for a healing bath to the oricha Babalú Ayé (San Lázaro). It was September 2007 in Oakland, California. He had already prayed over the herbs, asking for the blessings of his ancestors and spiritual lineage of his godparents in Cuba. He sang along to the video of a similar ritual that had been recorded in Havana on one of his earlier trips, where a room full of priests had made sacred waters. As José sang along to the recording, he, like the priests in the film, twisted and ripped the herbs to make the bath. In the Oakland garage I could hear the crowing of roosters and the background chatter of the Cubans in the video as José, a Salvadoran by birth, sang along to the songs.
"Ewe ayé" (herbs and earth), José sang the chorus, responding to the lead singer (obá) in the Cuba video singing in Lukumí. When he was done, he asked me to stop the recording so he could "season" the waters. The bath would then sit a whole evening in front of Babalú Ayé with two candles, and then would be portioned out to his godchild, who was sick with cancer. José told me that he did not know all of the songs himself.
"I have a hard time with the language [Lukumí]," he tells me. "I use the recording to make sure I do the songs right."
"Why don't you work with other priests in the area?" I asked him after the omiero was placed and prayed to in front of Babalú Ayé.
"People here are very exclusive," he told me. "They are all about power trips and money, and charging so much for things. . . . My [religious] house [in Cuba] is not like that. They are more about helping . . . about making sure things are done correctly. . . . [With the recordings] it's like they [his Cuban religious family] are here. Están presentes [They are present]."
Other examples of using videos in rituals are fewer, as this is not a commonplace practice, primarily because the physical presence of other priests is typically considered a requirement of Santería. However, there are many cases when technology has been used to expand and facilitate long-distance relationship or spiritual needs that mirror José's use of the video-inspired sacred waters. They are technorituals in that technology is not simply a tool of practice but an integrated element of ritual gestures. Gloria and Hugo, for instance, mentioned getting readings over the phone. "I call my madrina [in Cuba] and she gives me the ebbó [prescribed ritual offering]." Gloria told me that sometimes she would do the ebbó herself in the United States, but in certain cases, her madrina would do it for her in Cuba. It is increasingly common for people to get divinatory consultations over the phone or online from great distances. Priests will use a stand-in to embody the client, or speak directly to the oricha on behalf of the person using coconut or cowry shell divination, while the person is present through the phone and, more recently, video chat. As long as the person's name is called forth, and the oricha understand whom they are being asked about, then the oracle can be questioned this way. This is the case, for example, even in non-techo-based consultations, where during the itá divination it is common that parents, loved ones, and other relatives of the initiate are spiritually diagnosed and discussed, even given ebbó, when they are not physically present at the ceremony. This form of long-distance messaging (both spiritually near and far) transposes the question of space in unique modalities. It can be likened to what Villepastour (20120, 38) describes in Yoruba batá drumming as a form of "ancient text messaging," where the drums are "extensions of the mouth." Similarly, long-distance messaging in techno-assisted rituals extends the bodily capacities of oricha and other copresences, collapsing, time, space, and place.
In another example of techno-assisted long-distance rituals, Caridad, a young Cuban woman initiated in Miami, was told that her mother (a white Cuban still living in Cuba) would only be allowed to travel to the States if she received her "beads" (collares, also elekes, religious necklaces that mark the first level of initiation) and "fed" Yemayá an animal sacrifice at the "foot of the ocean." Yet her mother did not practice or believe in Santería. Caridad was told to do the ebbó on her mother's behalf and then place a doll in her mother's name and give the doll collares. She then had to send her mother a necklace that did not appear to be Santería-related but which had been washed (sanctified) without her mother's knowledge. She also had to find a way to get her mother to pray at the Church of Regla in Havana (the Virgen of Regla is the Cuban-Christian avatar of Yemayá). Caridad used a video of herself to implore her mother to pray to the Virgen of Regla (Yemayá incognito). I found out later that Caridad's mother hit the lottery (el bombo), eventually coming to live with her in the United States.
Other more controversial stories circulate about people receiving and paying for oricha rituals online. While these tend to be dismissed as farces and swindles, I did meet one woman from Texas who had initially paid online for her Orula initiations, "hand of Orula," and had received an Eshú oricha and several other items in the mail. This woman was undergoing in-person rituals in Cuba and telling the story to Cuban priests in Havana, who were having a good time laughing at how gullible the woman was to have actually purchased such a ceremony. The conversation quickly turned to the "atrocities" that American santeros committed for the sake of money, with one Cuban asking me, was it true that in the United States we "bought blood from a market in a plastic bag and poured it on Eleguá?" Coming to the defense of American Santería, I denied that this was a common practice and let the incredulous Cuban santeros know that American santeros did indeed use live animals - that it was in fact a hot controversy that had ignited police and animal rights groups against Santería in the States. Still, one American-based priest assured me that certain groups of "non-traditionalist" Santería and ifá groups did indeed initiate people online, and also purchased blood at super markets. However, I did not interview anyone who admitted to conducting or knowing people who did these practices.
Technoritual interspaces facilitate the emergence of copresence. For instance, OmiTalade told me that he and another friend initiated to Changó did indeed feel the power of Tina's Kabiosile.org videos. Unaware that I knew the produce of Kabiosile.org or that the videos were about my godfather, OmiTalade related to me how his friend actually got "shook" with the energy of Changó while watching the presentation of the three Changós in the Vamos Al Tambor DVD that they had purchased online. He sent me a link to "the most powerful thing he had even seen" that turned out, to my surprise, to be the video of Padrino Alfredo singing. OmiTalade then proceeded to tell me that instead of going to Havana, he now wanted to travel to Matanzas. Even Tina admitted to me that during the editing and production she had also felt something while listening to Padrino Alfredo's voice:
"I did almost get possessed once [laughing]. And I don't even get possessed."
"Through the video?" I asked her.
"No, when I was working on the CD and I was listening to it through headphones. I was staying at my friend's house in San Francisco. . . . I was working on the website and I was working on the marketing, and everything like that and I had been listening to the music, you know, to inspire me because I was working on this stuff and trying to describe certain things and the next door neighbors came over to complain about the 'jungle drumming'" she laughed heartily.
"Oh my god!" I exclaimed at the "jungle drumming" comment.
"And so, I had to start using headphones when I was working on stuff. And I was listening to it and working on the Web site and it got the Changó part, the part where everybody always gets possessed. And I started to shake." Laughing, she paused for a moment and the said, "But, to me, I don't know. It's always spiritual . . . whenever I watch them."
In another interesting academic moment of copresence, an anthropologist and friend told me that while teaching Katherine Hagedorn's book Divine Utterances (2001), which includes a CD of Cuban Lukumí music and indicates in the text when to listen to certain songs, one of his students approached him during office hours to say she was uncomfortable about what she was feeling while listening to the CD. To paraphrase this professor's comment on his student's discomfort, he told me, "She tells me that the book addresses how the music and songs are used to call the oricha down, and then of course felt strange when listening to the recorded songs, asking if she was 'calling them down.'" The student asked if listening to the CD was required and said that she felt uncomfortable with possibly attracting the energies; that she had "felt something." Through their somatic copresence, the oricha made themselves known to the student who was uncomfortable with their sensations. Needless to say, the professor did not require her to continue to listen to the CD.
While practices are indeed being transformed, challenged, and reconfigured by technology, I prefer not to examine these spaces as contaminations or transgressions of any one type of singular Santería, but instead I note the ways that technoritual interspaces reflect a larger relationship emerging in and through specific Santería ontologies. I suggest that we must start with understanding Santería modes of perceiving first. Indeed, I argue that it is only through Santería ontologies that we might learn to appreciate any new forms of practice and ethos that emerges, especially within these technoritual sites.
Spiritual Contagions
Arguments for and against recording and the use of cameras have been described to me in practical and sensual terms. Alex, an African American initiated to Oyá in New York City who came "from a long line of spiritualists," told me about having to constantly take spiritual baths, "feed" the earth with grains and other offerings, and be careful of simply "picking things up" from other people, places, and especially videos. "Hazardous ritual waste" is part of the spiritual work needed to cleanse practitioners but also the esoteric dangers that might be encountered in Afro-Cuban religious worlds (Wirtz 2009). This hazardous waste includes anything from bad intentions to coins, candles, animal carcasses, food offerings, or even the bodies of practitioners. Bags of rotting flesh, fruits, and other offerings are left in bags at different natural sites and are part of the material elements that gesture toward a larger phenomena of spiritual contagions that practitioners are concerned with as affecting copresences.
For santeros, paleros, and espiritistas (spiritualists), food is a "potent vehicle for establishing and manipulating the spirit-human dynamic" (Espírito Santo 2010, 73). For paleros in particular, food is sometimes used "to distract their victim's spirit guides so as to more easily pierce his or her spiritual 'space' and inflict the intended damage or death" (Espírito Santo 2010, 73). The oricha are often the only remedy that can counteract the spiritual damage inflicted by palo twistings (trastornos). In Cuba and Florida, where Santería is practiced very openly, ritual waste left at cemeteries, oceans, rivers, mountains, crossroads, and other public places have caused uproar from local government and residents (Palmié 2013, 152; Wirtz 2009, 478-79). A concerned resident in Hialeah, Florida, who claimed to have "lived next to Santería for seven years," described "the dead creatures, as you know, are thrown into our waterways or streets and our vacant lots." In response to some of the sloppy disposal of ritual waste, the Church of Lukumí Babalú Ayé, which won the 1993 Supreme Court ruling against the city of Hialeah, recently published an "Eco-Lukumí" public service video on its Web site, informing practitioners on the proper disposal of ebbó (offerings) in order to not contaminate the environment, enforcing a message that "Nature worship demands good stewardship." Nevertheless, hazardous ritual waste does have the capacity to do spiritual harm by transgressing "boundaries between bodies against the will of those affected" (Wirtz 2009, 481). Alex's concerns about contaminating spirits and, by extension, videos thus follow Santería epistemologies of hazardous spiritual and ritual materials as containing affecting copresences.
Alex wears white most of the time because, as he explained, "Spirits just like me. And so, I have to be careful where I go. The white [clothes] keep things calm." Alex does not condone any type of filming during Santería rituals and, like many self-claimed "traditionalists," is opposed even to the photographing of oricha and new initiates (iyawó). Like Alex, priests in Cuba and the United States often describe how they felt religious presences through the screen. Armandito, a Cuban godfather in Havana, described videos as another form of batá drums, which he likened to a "telephone that calls the oricha." This technological expansion of spirit has a long history for Afro-Cuban practitioners, as has been noted with phonography, where technology has been understood to take on the ambiguities of ritual materialities and their affects since at least the early 1900s.
Practitioners I spoke with who identified themselves as "more traditional" described the use of religious media as "contaminating," as having the potential to "steal one's soul" or "allow in" evil, negative spirits (malas influencias); some even claimed to get mounted by a spirit through the screen. Laura, a white Central American teacher who lives in Miami and was initiated in Matanzas in 2002, echoed similar concerns. "Anyone who records will fall into osogbo [bad fortune]. It's okay to watch [the videos] though. The spirits only take it out on the person who recorded them." She told me the story of a woman who had "invited spirits in by recording things. . . ' She lost her marriage, her job . . . even her home. She left herself open to anything." In both Cuba and the United States, priests expressed trepidation that capturing a person on film (whether through video or photograph) captured their spirit, soul, or essence and is linked to forms of spiritual control and enslavement. Spiritual morality is extremely important. Santeros, paleros, and espiritistas must constantly be attentive to the dangers of falling into the dark side of spiritual works: "That good and evil, moral and immoral, are categories that are in many contexts implicitly or explicitly referred to as dichotomous alternatives, naturally embedded within the potentialities of these practices, tells us that we are dealing with a frame of reference that is understood and transferable in these same contexts" (Espírito Santo 2010, 72-73).
Jay, a white American priest in Miami, spoke of how he had to unplug his phone and television at night because the spirits "wouldn't let him rest." He talked about his spiritual "communications," referencing several times the 2005 popular Hollywood thriller White Noise, in which an architect played by Michael Keaton uses electronic voice phenomenon to contact "the other side." Jay believed that Keaton's character had fallen into negative paranormal activities, tapping "hostile spirits" because he "didn't know what he was doing." On the other hand, Jay felt the oricha and egun protected him. While the example is certainly not ubiquitous, it was not the only time that popular movie representations of spirituality were invoked when I interviewed Santería priests about their understandings of video recordings. Indeed, Santería practitioners drew from multiple subjective realms to understand and interact with these influential copresences. The spiritual-religious agents are often referenced through representations in popular culture (from both the United States and Cuba) such as films, songs, or books. Within the large gamut of diverse Santería practitioners I interviewed, videos were recognized as active sites of spiritual transmission.
Teodoro, a priest in Matanzas, asked me to sit in and video record a cowry shell divination ritual for one of his American clients. During the reading I played several roles: I was an English translator, a videographer, and a religious secretary (known in Matanzas as fifíta and in Havana as feícitá). The fifíta handwrites what the oricha "speak" when they are "brought down" (bajada) through cowry shell divination. Indeed, cowries are called the "tongue" (la lengua) of the oricha. As the following except demonstrates, divination utterances frame practitioners' encounters and negotiations with techno-engaged copresences and show how this system often educates copresences in proper spiritual conduct.
Teodoro began the reading by collecting energy from Olorun (the sun) using a glass of water. I set up the video camera in a unobstrusive space, capturing the entire procedure so that his American client would have multiple copies of his reading. "Lo que se sabe no se pregunta," I translated to English: "Do not ask what you already know." Teodoro advised the client, "Your mother has passed and is unhappy." The client nodded in agreement. "Until you fulfill your role as a good son, you will be unhappy." Teodoro kept looking at the camera when he spoke, saying he could feel the client's mother in that area of the room. Tears streamed down the man's face. I wrote quickly and translated poorly. The client needed to offer his mother her favorite meal and speak to her kindly in order for her to halt her affliction. Since she was an "unenlightened" spirit, he needed to do several lifting rituals to align her with the light and bring her to the positive side, as she had died "in darkness." Only then, Teodoro claimed, could his mother be venerated and added to the client's boveda table, which was her proper place. The client was immediately referred to a local spiritist to begin the process of training his mother's spirit and also needed to be cleaned at the foot of the palo cauldron (nganga). After the video recorded reading, the American told me how he was estranged from his mother when she died. He was going to show the reading to his sister, who did not believe there is an afterlife.
During this process, the oricha, Teodoro, the client, his dead mother, the video camera, and I were elements of an embodied interarticulation of multiple systems of Afro-Cuban remedies. When the shells are brought down, all copresences are moving, and any system - ocha, palo, or espiritismo - can be activated through the shell's gaze. Enviornments are manipulated and work directly with the fields of energy, in, on, and around the client and the priests' bodies and, as was shown, the spirits themselves often need their own training in order to understand how to properly interact with the living in death. While some remedies, such as the earlier example, are simple ceremonies to bring the afflicted spirit toward the light, in other cases extreme forms of spiritual training are needed. Some Cuban espiritistas follow a version of "scientific spiritism" that considers their practice to be higher than the animistic mysticism of more material-based African-inspired practices such as Santería or palo. Espiritismo de cordón (spiritism of the cord), on the other hand, fuses African, indigenous, and Catholic practices, and practitioners of Santería often use this system to work spirit.
Santería initiations multiply the spirit space (see Clark 2007, 89; Sandoval 2008, 365; Fontañez 2006, 269). While people are alive, the connective spirit energy (ayalá) sits in back of the neck at the base of the skull (monokú eleda). The oricha is seen to enter initiates through the crown and lives in the head-organ (orí). Conceptually inspired by Enlightenment principles in French Kardecian Spiritism of the cord, priests' "spirit-souls" are understood to embark on journeys to obtain ever-expanding forms of "light" (luz), "progress" (progreso), and "development" (desenvolvimiento) while they are also considered to travel in "the dark" (la oscuridad) through their encounters with the difficulties and contaminations of life, dangers, and negative spirits and people (Sandoval 2008; Feraudy Espino 2002). Each practitioner has a set of protector spirits that are part of their cord. Photographs and videos are increasingly seen as doorways to these spaces and facilitate access to a person's embodied subjectivity in different spiritual environments. Along with the common congo (male and female) African slave spirits, there are Spanish gypsies, nuns, priests, and various forms of indigenous spirits that normally hail from the person's genealogy or ethnic makeup. I know a Filipina priestess who has a small Filipino pygmy as part of her spiritual cord.
The cordón espiritual connects the various different spirits to the person's body and life-worlds. Like an electrical cord, the spiritual cord allows for the spirits to give energy to and assist practitioners. While there are normally between five to seven spirits identified during the spiritual cord masses, there can be as many as nine or twelve. One woman I met had twenty-one different spirits. Each spirit must be attended to with specific elements that reflect their characteristics. For instance, nuns often like rosaries and crucifixes so they can pray to God on your behalf. I've seen female warrior spirits who ask for machetes, bows and arrows, or a mortal and pestle to make magic and charms. Intimate details of the various copresences' lives will come out through divination, spiritual masses, dreams, or messages. One must pay attention to these signals as they are ways to become more spiritually in tune with your cord. These copresences are sites of embodied environments, where spirit is felt in the air, on the body, and through the cord.
Teodoro's reading draws on espiritismo de cordon's understanding of a connected link of spiritual energy between spirit, oricha, and palo copresences and the body of the client (like an electric umbilical cord). The reading, also known as a gazing (mirada), is an ontological shift in energy. Rather than just seeing, the gaze is experienced as a punctum that Barthes described as an act of bodily feeling. These piercing gazes are registered kinesthetically through a sensorimotor awareness of space, copresence, and materiality. In divination gazes, oricha can make change through movement, what is called standing up for or defending the person. When this is done, the situation or problem that needs resolution is said to be "at the feet of the oricha" (see chapter 2).
The camera are also more recently used as another form of sacred notebook (libreta) - a "video-libreta" of speaking and seeing copresences. While the American's deceased mother was an active agent making his life unhappy, the oricha, Teodoro, the camera, and I participated in her punctum - in linking her copresence to heal the spiritually damaged body of her son. By training the deceased mother, Teodoro and the oricha negotiate the parameters for the work (trabajo) that the spirit demands. In divination, practitioners consult (consultar) the multiple pathways (caminos) that are walkable as well as the ones that are inevitable - those laid out by oricha and Olofi (the creator). The recording taps into the copresences' series of networks, where the mother's pain, even in death, profoundly impacts her son but can also be mutually affected by the living. The camera, in this instance, forms an additional witness (testigo) in Santería ontologies, and, in this case, Teodoro noticed the mother's spirit hovered by the camera. Cameras also thus attract spirit.
Copresences are not mutually exclusive. Energies of nature, death, different ancestors, and humans are constantly transgressing in and out of energetic intra-actions. The momentum of these energies electrifies the bodies of practitioners in close proximity, as they pull (jalar) other copresences down (bajan) into and emerge through other nearby bodies. This spiritual current is measured, rated, and experienced by practitioners in a qualitative differential of feeling ritual power, the aché (Daniel 2005; Matory 2005). J. Lorand Matory (2005, 123) explains that the terms ase in contemporary Wester African Oyo-Yoruba, axé in Brazilian candomblé, and aché in Cuban Santería are virtually the same word used to denote the power and life force "embodied in human agents, animals, and inanimate objects." Indeed, the spiritual power of aché is often measured by the communal feelscapes of the current.
Tina described this ranking in terms of place. She felt aché in the "calling power" of priests in Matanzas that she rarely felt in the U.S. Santería: "Generally speaking [in Matanzas], the energy . . . comes from a group of people all on the same page with the liturgy, knowing what they are doing, knowing what the responses are, knowing what dances are, knowing what to do when oricha comes down. Everything becomes more natural but it also becomes more intense." During drum rituals, both aña (batá) and cajón de muerto (wooden box drums for the dead), a strong current will bring down multiple copresences. The assessment of a weak current, where only one or no copresences come down (bajar) to the ritual space, corresponds to an event being considered unsuccessful; the copresences have decided to ignore the call and not attend. Practitioners discuss currents in terms of bodily feeling. "I felt the current, it was strong." Or "I did not feel a thing; there was no current there." No sentía nada. Ahí no había corriente. If current is "weak," then something is missing (algo falta), perhaps practitioners' "hearts" (okán) are not sincere or in the right places. Whatever it may be, the quality of spiritual currents is registered on the body and is crucial in the successful feelings of ritual spaces; Villepastour (2013, 63) describes this as "leading from the inside."
To be continued...
A Problem with Mediation

CHAPTER ONE: ELECTRIC ORICHA
Cyber Ocha
In 2006 I traveled to Los Angeles, California, to meet with two Mexican American priests, Hugo and Gloria, in their home to view some of their travelogues with several of their godchildren. Their oricha were in a private room so that if one did not know they were practitioners, this would not be visibly evident upon entering their home. They were concerned with stigmas and di not want to be visible as Santería priests. Cuba travel allowed them to limit the rituals they conducted in their home. They used videos as personal notes for their own religious learning, as a mean to introduce their godchildren to the idea of traveling to Cuba, and as a form of communication with their Cuban godmother, Lourdes.
Five of their godchildren - Frank, who had traveled to Cuba previously, and the other four, who had not - sat around their large flat-screen television as the video played. The video showed a drum ceremony and also featured portions of a cajón (wooden drum ritual) that Gloria's African slave spirit (congo) had requested. Hugo, Gloria, and Frank would interrupt to elaborate and give details. For those of us who were not familiar, we soon were able to identify different people, their roles, their importance, and how Hugo and Gloria felt about them. Like many of the travelogues I experienced in the United States, this video featured mostly black Cubans. Many were in states of possession, which enhanced the sensing of Cuban copresences by the mostly Latino group. An underlying theme was how the energy, spirit, or essence of Cuban oricha could be sensed through the television. One godchild mentioned that he felt he knew his oricha family in Cuba and could not wait to be able to visit. Overcome with emotions, he stated that he could sense the spiritual current in the video. "I can feel their power!"
In most cases, "showings" of ritual videos are selective. Most priests I spoke with in the United States only allowed practitioners to view their videos. While in Cuba, a whole room would sometimes be packed around a small television set watching a video that in some instances had been filmed the previous day, with many of those present in the recording. In Cuba there is an underlying recognition that, unlike most of those watching themselves onscreen, the video would soon be traveling. Indeed, a clear marking of a cosmopolitan religious tourist in Cuba (whether Cuban or foreign) is the use of a camera during rituals. Video cameras are items of especulación (conjectural boasting), seen as a coveted symbol of status in Cuba (Cabezas 1998; Fernandes 2003; Holbraad 2005; Pertierra 2009; Routon 2010). They are examples of Santería's spiritual power (aché) to attract positive benefits (iré), often translated in economic and commodity terms in practitioner's everyday lives, bringing a foreign cache of mobility, money, and power to Cuban rituals (Holbraad 2005). They mark Cuban casas de santo as having access to foreigners, dollars, and ritual tourism (Hagedorn 2001).
Still, many priests feel that capturing on video oricha possessions and sacred rituals is sacrilegious and absolutely abominable. In a conversation with Pastor, a half Jamaican, half American priest in Miami, about recent practice of recording and producing videos he asked me with disdain: "Do you think it is right that they are taking our most sacred religious secrets and showing them to the world only to make money?" I told him that I believed that it was a decision that had to be made individually as a priest and that I tried not to judge people for doing it, however I did not think it was right if any priests were exploited or not adequately compensated in the process. He went on to tell me, "I've done recordings, but I would never show them to anyone who is not initiated, and I would not sell them on the Internet as if it were a cheap thrill. Our ancestors were sold on chopping blocks and now our traditions are being sold on eBay!"
Pastor references black traditions being consumed on eBay, hailing a spiritual epistemology that references the economies of violence in slavery through which blackened bodies emerged. By disposing of the historical codas against outsider visibility established to ensure its secrecy and protection, he saw videos as revealing Santería, laying it bare to a hostile world that only wished to purchase blackened exotica. Pastor told me, "Technology is like a nganga [palo cauldron]. It can turn on you!" This ocha-centric rhetoric that envisions technology as a palo nganga relies on perceptions that palo is evil and unvirtuous. Nganga "capture" spirits of the dead (often dead slaves) in order to perform forced spiritual labor (Espírito Santo 2010, 72). Spirits captured in nganga for evil purposes are referred to as "dogs" (perros), similar to the slave-hunting dogs used in colonial Cuba to capture cimarrones (runaway slaves). Nganga dogs are given animal blood in exchange for illicit spiritual works:
That paleros are known to value spirits whose lives and deaths have been characterized by violence or insanity is suggestive of the idea that moral vulnerability is a fundamental trope in understanding a perros's efficiency. Paleros are often thought to manipulate this ignorance to their own ends for, as the saying goes: 'arriba de la nganga, no hay sentimiento' (where the nganga is concerned, there is no room for sentiment) and, just like their perros, being recognized as a palero can entail being regarded as naturally unvirtuous (Espírito Santo 2010, 74).
...
Envisioning technology as an nganga - a potentially dangerous vehicles that can enslave spirits and turn them toward illicit deeds, Pastor reads media through a complex network of racialized copresences. If, for him, technology is palo, then learning from elders in the "true traditional" manner is the more enlightened and positive ocha (see also Ochoa 2010a, 389). Pastor sees technology as contributing to a loss of cohesive understanding and disrespect in Santería through a degradation of spiritual moral behavior, likened to palo, but particularly with younger practitioners: "Nowadays . . . because they [young priests] read something or talk to someone online, [they] think that is the only way it is done. In my time, you could never question your elders. Now, people go from one godparents to the next, or learn online," he told me.
In an interesting contrast to Pastor's story, I chatted online with a young man from New York, OmiTalade (his online identity), who told me how he used video recordings to learn prayers, song, and dances since he had fallen out with his godfather and had problems with local priests. He had purchased all of the Lázaro Ros's and Abbilona's oricha CD collections, as well as any book or DVD that came out on Santería, and he was in the process of planning a trip to Cuba with a friend of his who had a connection to a "cheap" but "well-respected" priest in Havana. He told me how at first he was reluctant to go to Cuba "because of the whole communist stuff," but after watching videos that his friends had recorded in Cuba and online, he could not wait to go.
Other young priests that I spoke with in the United States echoed this sentiment. Through encounters with video travelogues that they saw online or at other santeros' homes, they experienced Santería in Cuba as more "authentic," "less expensive," with fewer "power plays," and they were willing to make the (usually illegal) trek through third countries to experience it for themselves (see chapter 2). Mary, a Filipino American Santería priestess in San Francisco, told me how for years she had gone from one godparent to the next, always feeling like she was getting "ripped off" and never "learned anything." She felt that through the use of religious videos, music, and Santería websites, she could now learn directly from Cuba - referencing an e-community of oricha that sounded romantically like an idealized Habermasian public sphere. This "Internet Diaspora," Joseph Murphy (2008) points out, is ever expanding through a proliferation of Web sites, chat groups, social networking, e-botanicas, technorituals, and more. People can learn from "cyber elders," while heated disputes over practice, authority, and ethno-nationalist centricity are played out in a global ochasphere in the "Virtual Atlantic," as Stephan Palmié (2013) has described it. Mary was initiated for five years at the time I interviewed her, and she said that she had only recently learned how to moyuba (pray) through the purchase of a CD online. Similarly, Nick, a black American Santería priest in his late forties living in Chicago, told me he was in the process of learning how to drum through videos sold over the Internet. There is even an iPhone app to instruct drummers on Havana-style batá.
In this virtual ochascape, there have been declarations of war between different communities of practitioners. For example, fierce debates between Yoruba traditional religion and Cuban American Santería priests have disputed authenticity, orthodoxy, and practice (Palmié 2013, 178). As I examine in chapter 5, the attempts of Cuban babalawo to virtually strip "African-style" ifá priests of their titles for initiating women in Cuba have also played out both on- and offline. In a particularly bizarre case, the ingestion of Giant East African snail juice by African Traditionalists in Florida in March 2010, which became news for the Miami Herald,
created an outcry of regla de ocha practitioners who wanted to distance themselves from this oddity (Palmié 2013, 173-79). This event led to the construction of the Lukumí Council of Obá Oriatés of South Florida in the spring 2010, consisting of twenty-seven priests who spoke out against Yoruba traditional religion "detractors" from Santería: "Those priests ordained in the Lukumí Religion for whatever reason wish or are desirous to be ordained by/or convert to the practices of the Traditional Yoruba Religion will abandon and renounce any and all rights - heirarchical and practical. We will not recognize nor validate the consecration or the privileges of those priests that abandon Lukumí worship to adapt to those of the Yoruba Traditionalists" (in Palmié 2013, 177-78).
Despite these more dramatic disputes, cyber ocha and video rituals are nevertheless important modalities of practice and learning that are productive of global oricha assemblages. While learning under the direct tutelage of an elder continues to be seen as a more authentic and privileged site of religious knowledge acquisition, many priests both in the United States and in Cuba admit to using some form of religious media or technology to aid in their spiritual learning process. Tina, a white American priestess and friend who married a Cuban and moved to Matanzas, and who eventually produced videos on Alfredo Calvo, her father in-law, told me that films have become a "game changer" in terms of the transmission of religious knowledge and the impact on oral traditions. For her, whereas books could be confusing or tainted by the author's interpretation, films were unmediated: "I think technology has done even more than books ever could to document and preserve the elders' knowledge, still with filters of course, the camera person's eye and the editor's cuts both impact hugely what is finally preserved, but I still think it is more 'raw' than the analysis and interpretation imposed by a written chronicle. So much more of the interpretation imposed by a written chronicle. So much more of the interpretation is left [to] the viewer." Tina described how she was first chastised by elders for filming and then publishing recordings, but she holds that technology and the Internet has allowed for people to share information in ways that have been highly policed in the past. After reading an earlier version of this manuscript, Tina wrote me about the impact of recordings and the Internet and her role in capturing teachings through these technologies:
Before, we relied on one person's interpretation of what another person said, the essence of an oral tradition. Now, we have Alfredo's [Calvo] words . . . edited by me, of course, but still, his words, his understanding. . . . It is pretty powerful stuff, particularly in a religion that has traditionally rested on the interpretation and passing on of an elder's knowledge verbally by someone else. . . . Not to aggrandize my role in it, I quite honestly didn't think about it that much at the time . . . but now that he is gone I realize the force of what was recorded and the power of the Internet in transmitting it.
...
Attesting to the idea that there is a sense of newfound sharing enabled through the Internet, many priests emphasized that technology had become a new form of learning that allowed them to have more "freedom" from elders who policed the religion and held on to coveted religious knowledge. Much of this was described in neoliberal terms that offered the Internet as a site of individual freedoms from tradition. Younger priests described how elders "took advantage" or policed godchildren, refusing to teach them if they did not become "indentured" to them. OmiTalade mentioned that he had only recently begun to rely more on religious media after falling out with his godfather, who had charged him exorbitant prices and did not properly conduct his ceremonies. When I asked OmiTalade how he knew that they had been done improperly, he told me that it was through conversations with priests online. The following chat conversation from my logged field notes shows the types of Santería chat interactions that often challenge offline relationships (note, I am La_Matancera):
OMITALADE: . . . he only gave one ram to my yemaya and chango [sic], and charged me for both.
OMITALADE: I paid twelve [thousand dollars] for my santo. So I should have had all my animals.
LA_MATANCERA: Did you know that at the time?
OMITALADE: I posted on OLU [oricha social networking group] and found out that I should have had two rams, one for each of them.
OMITALADE: and, a yemaya [priesthood initiation ceremony] should only cost six or seven [thousand dollars] not twelve.
LA_MATANCERA: So what happened with your padrino?
OMITALADE: I broke it off with him. He does a lot of stuff wrong like that. But I still got my santo. And I'm planning on going to Cuba to do my pinaldo [knife ceremony].
​
OmiTalade's frustration with being exploited by his godfather is an interesting contrast to Pastor's nostalgia of a recent Santería past, without YouTube or eBay, where younger priests would never think to challenge their elders. While the dynamic of breaking ties with godparents over money issues and questioning their religious authority is nothing new, technology has become a key element in the credentialing and discrediting of priests. Practitioners who incorporate media are often seen as "inauthentic" and nontraditional, similar to the use of the term "modern" to disparage religious "deviations." An obá from Miami discredited another obá from Los Angeles by telling me, "he doesn't know anything. Everything he does is an invento [invention]. He learned from his iPod." "Invento" is often invoked as a universal term to dismiss other santeros. This resonates with the Cuban term "inventar" where Cubans invent creative (and often illicit) economic activities as part of the mundane survival techniques employed in response to economic crisis and the shortages of living under the U.S. embargo.
While many echoed a negative attitude toward videos, others thought that the notion of "secrets" was archaic and stemmed from a colonized epistemology that needed to be shed. For instance, the "African-style" babalawos in Cuba, who began initiating foreign women to ifá (iyanifá) in 2004, thought that all knowledge should be accessible to those who desired to learn it (see chapter 5). While I never witnessed them filming their rituals, one of the priests told me, "If we learn from books now, why not videos?" Indeed, one Cuban babalawo I know has his entire ifá manual on his laptop and reads directly from the screen during divination consultations. While media technologies are certainly connected explicitly to commercial endeavors and alternative personalistic economies, I do not suggest that they exist in some tainted space. Rather, I find it interesting how videoscapes emerge as specific negotiations of translocal Santería, expanding and energizing Santería copresences.
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"My name is not money"
While in Habana Vieja, I stayed at the house of the former members of Ibbú Okún, an all-female folkloric dance troupe that had traveled to the United States in the 1990s. The head of this group, Amelia Pedroso (oñi Yemayá, ibae), was a highly regarded female lead singer (awkpón) and drummer who recorded several CDs before her untimely passing of lung cancer in May 2000 (Villepastour 2013, 69; Vincent and Woolfe 2004, 58). She had been initiated to regla ocha at age three and at the time of her death had been a priestess for fifty years. At her family's home we would often sit and watch videos of their previous performances, listen to CDs of them recorded in the United States, sing, and even sometimes get up and dance along with the videos. Alina, a priestess of Ochún, and Gordo, a priest of Eleguá, would sometimes correct my pronunciation and give me advice and suggestions. For them, videos were a way of bringing past experiences and people "back to life." For instance, Amelia Pedroso's copresence insists on attention where she is known to halt or delay rituals in order to be attended to. She continues to teach her extensive knowledge of Lukumí songs, dance, and dumming through her videos and CDs. Amanda Villepastour (2013, 67) describes how Pedroso's voice "cut through the drums" as a rare female lead singer. Indeed, her energetic power has been expanded through death, where her recordings and copresence continuously bring her back to present.
On several occasions while watching videos of Ibbú Okún's U.S. tours and performances, the group members would relate to me why they returned to the island, why they loved Cuba. Alina described her and Amelia's impression of "the cold" (both literal and metaphorical) that penetrated U.S. religious spaces, and how this "coldness" had brought them "home" even when they could have stayed in la yuma (abroad). Amelia and Alina both have many foreign godchildren, and Amelia had a following of American female drummers (Villepastour 2013, 67). This coldness also referred to an economic presumption of ownership - as Alina told me, "My name is not money." Addressing some of the ways that many Cubans like Amelia, and even Alina herself, had felt taken advantage of by Americans' filming, she told me: "They think they own us because they have money. . . . They come here with their cameras, and record in a moment what has taken us years to learn and study. . . . Then they take it and make money off of it and we stay in our humbleness." Frustrated, Alina took a drag from her cigarette, nodded her head, and emphasized, "Es así." That's how it is.
While religious recordings are valuable in multiple ways, it is not only Cubans who feel "taken advantage of." Americans described hoping to feel a sense of solidarity with Cuban priests, but when they arrive on the island, they felt like "passports" or "bank accounts." I spoke with foreign santeros who produce music and videos for profit in Cuba, and they mentioned the sometimes unrealistic expectations of Cuban musicians and priests, where stories are riddled with "intrigue," discord, and gihts over money, power, and recognition. This also occurs between Cubans and Americans themselves. One American man told me of another American who travels constantly to Havana, saying that he "uses Cubans" and takes advantage of the American practitioners by taking them on Santería tours. Cubans criticize other Cuban priests for "selling rituals" to tourists and being willing to do anything for money. Indeed, while many Cuban women were prohibited from playing batá drums, foreign women have been learning to play and recording videos of drumming since the 1980s (Villepastour 2013, 69-70). Increasing frustration with this double standard and marginalization of Cuban women was what gave Amelia Pedroso the gumption to teach herself how to play the unconsecrated batá (aberikunlá) and start Ibbú Okún. In a 1999 interview, Amelia described how, after being a lead singer for thirty-one years, she had read in a book that women were allowed to play unconsecrated drums in Nigeria, and it "moved" her; she was "called" by the drum (see Villepastour 2013, 51; Vincent and Woolfe 2004). Indeed, drums are often described as telephones that "call down the oricha." Specifically citing the double standard, Amelia explained, "In Cuba, for many years now, the men still do not want their Cuban women playing drums, but a foreigner arrives and they teach them. . . . They are not a threat because they leave" (Villepastour 2013, 70).
In a more personal example of the politics of videos and recordings, my father, Piri Ochún, a drummer who has a private collection of personal interviews with elders (such as Amelia and others who have now passed), is extremely protective of his collection. In fact, even I have only see a few of them. When I explained some of the video recording experiences that I had been studying, he told me about his own personal relationship with videos. In a 2008 conversation with him, he told me how he first began recording religious elements of his life in the late 1980s a few years after making santo because he was told by the oricha to "document everything he did in life." "I've only let one video out of my hands, and that person went and published it in a book," he said, holding up the book (which will remain unnamed here) that had transcribed Piri's recording in order to create a "manual" of religious songs for practitioners. "Look, at this. And [they] even gave me credit [in the acknowledgements] as if I had given permission for this!" Stories of practitioners being taken advantage of by broader circuits abound in Santería discourses, warning of people who come to the religion for "the wrong reasons," for economic "interés" (interest). While many harness the economic power of these religious media, this practice is part of a long lineage where economic exchange and transnational religious transaction are at the core of Santería and other similar practices across African diaspora "interspaces," as Wirtz (2007b) calls them. These concerns about videos thus emerge within a longer history of skepticism and caution that permeate religious interactions (Johnson 2002).
On the other hand, those Americans I spoke with who do record and publicize videos of music and rituals often feel that they are "called to do so" by "spiritual paths" laid out for them by copresences. For instance, Tina, who, as I mentioned previously, produced several DVDs and a CD on drumming and music of Santería in Matanzas (two of which were specifically on Padrino Alfredo), explained that she made recordings because "everything appeared in [her] path." She had come from a publishing and marketing background in the United States and was in her forties when she was initiated there to Obatalá. "I knew nothing about the religion. . . . I made ocha [priesthood] to save my life," she told me. While she had to hide her practice from her family, when she finally went to Cuba for the first time to undergo her "knife" ceremony (kuchillo) in the late 1990s, Tina felt for the first time that she "could be who [she] was and really glory in this spiritual awakening that was happening" for her. Speaking of her first experience of Santería in Matanzas, she told me: "It was all around you. . . . [Santería] could be an integrated part of who I was. You know, I wasn't hiding my beads under my blouse and all of that stuff. I couldn't imagine being without that. . . . It was about living that ocha life that just felt very, very right to me. . . . It was spiritual. It was a relationship with ocha and a relationship with Matanza that was very strong."
Compelled by the experience, she told me, "it was so beautiful, and so vibrant and so powerful in Matanzas that I wanted to share that with the world." She felt that the oricha had brought her to Cuba for a number of reasons, and that the Matanzas traditions of Fermina Gómez practiced in Alfredo's house needed to be "shared," "preserved," and "demystified." She was "pulled" to do it. She described how she took care with what she chose to show in the films: "I tried to be very respectful about it. I have a lot of stuff behind the curtain that I would never use. . . .Everything that I used . . . you know everything that I published was stuff that was public, that you could walk in off the street and see."
She told me that Alfredo was always very open with her filming but that she still always asked his permission to record. When Alfredo died in August 2011 she realized how essential his permission had been to her ethics of publishing videos, telling me, "It was funny when he died, I just couldn't even think about filming his [death] ceremonies at the end, because he wasn't there to ask him permission." However, Padrino Alfredo's children and family members did film certain elements of his death rituals with a camera my father had given to them many years earlier.
Filming is part of the emerging practice of transnational Santería world. Tina started Kabiosile.org, an online Web site dedicated to publishing religious videos and information, which began with one CD. One of her Puerto Rican American godbrothers had brought her in to help finish the music CD because, since she was living in Cuba at the time, she had local resources available. They started making DVDs because, as she related, when Americans began filming their presentations to take back to the United States for verification of their rituals, "Cubans also wanted copies of their presentations" for keepsakes. She was approached by several Cubans to film these public drumming presentations, and when she was asked to join the CD project Bata y Bembe de Matanzas (CD, 2003), Tina decided to pull from her own video collection of presentations to create the first video, Vamos Al Tambor (DVD, 2003), which is a film of the drum presentations of three Cuban Changó initiates. After receiving positive responses to the CD and DVD, she went back to her archives and gathered footage with her husband, Alberto, and put together a series of unique drumming clips, along with interviews that she thought might be useful. However, when she showed it to a friend, an American priest and drummer in the San Francisco Bay Area, he told her that, given how different Matanzas Santería drumming is in relation to Havana drumming, which is what most people in the States were familiar with, "people wouldn't understand what was going on." So, in the second DVD, La Fuerza del Tambor (DVD, 2006), she decided to do interviews to explain the different drumming that had rarely been seen outside of Matanzas. For the last film, El Lenguaje del Tambor (DVD, 2007), Daniel Alfonso Herrera, a famous drummer in Matanzas, approached her to do an instructional video on how to play batá. According to Tina, she was just going along for the ride that oricha had for her, and these opportunities kept "appearing in her path."
While the economy of religious videos is a rather recent phenomenon, these media are increasingly prolific and play a crucial role in multilateral exchanges while produced (and reproducing) new and old forms of belonging. In Cuba, travelers like Tina, Piri, Gloria, and I are often asked to videotape rituals and ceremonies, leave cameras and other equipment with Cuban priests, and dub or deliver videos and other media to religious family members in the United States. Drawing on Wirtz's (2007b, 51`) metaphor of the "interspace," which extends beyond only physical spaces, Santería has continually been "constituted and reconstituted at the juncture of competing metacultural stances." She described these stances as "the sacred," "the suspicious," and "the folkloric." Wirtz argues that the "sacred stance" - or that which embodies practitioners' historical relationship to sacred power and communication between humans and the divine - is marginalized in relation to the other stances. The sacred stance references practitioners' understandable obsession to remember ritual procedures, and to debate the correctness of each other's ritual performances. Based on slavery and feelings of loss - loss of ritual knowledge, language, and tradition - priests guard ritual secrets and idealize the "deterioration of a once small tight-knit religious community." As Wirtz suggests, this preoccupation with loss and an emphasis on secrecy has served as a form of protection from the oppositional or "outsider" perspective, which is "suspicious" toward Santería. The "suspicious stance" thus "ascribes danger and criminality to Afro-Cuban ritual practices . . . [it is a historical consciousness] of linear scientific progress according to elite, Eurocentric norms, a progress threatened by the corrupting influence of what white elites generally understood to be anachronistic practices" (Wirtz 2007b, 52). The more recent "folkloric stance," on the other hand, understands Santería to be a marker of Cubanness and national heritage that, while celebrating racial mixing discourses (mestizaje) emphasizes the syncretic nature of an "African past" with Yoruba roots. The folkloric, I would add, effectively secularizes Santería forms hailing dance, music, and artistic elements over "religious" practice. If we understand the relationship of ritual videos as an extension and expansion of this "interspace," it would be helpful to see how the three stances are also constitutive of "the transnational" in Santería. Video recordings form part of a reconfiguration of transnational religious communication, ethos, and praxis. Priests in Cuba, like Tony and Dunieski, talked about how they could video travel even though they could not physically leave, and even some American-based priests see Cubans as spiritually present through videos.
To be continued...
Technorituals

CHAPTER ONE
Electric Oricha
The anthropologists, like the poet, is a peddler of "home movies." The former brings inklings of arcane forms of mankind to those who cannot indulge in the exploration of strange areas; the latter brings inklings of arcane forms of thought to those who cannot indulge in the exploration of strange ideas. But are not such endeavors basically narcissistic?
- PIERRE MARANDA
​
Sensing Spiritual Currents
Matanzas, Cuba: Sweat soaked my jeans and the hot sun beat down on the pavement, leaving no reprieve in the short shadows left by the closely packed buildings on the main street as I walked up the slope toward Misleidis's house. It was October 2005. I had met Misleidis, an attractive young Cuban woman, a week earlier. "I'm finishing my year [of initiation]," she told me, and then invited me to her house for the party. Her boyfriend, Humberto, was coming from Spain, and it was going to be "hechando humo!"(smoking hot!). She lived in a large colonial building adjacent to the city's small downtown.
When I entered the front door I was immediately drawn to a large beautiful "throne" (trono) erected in the corner of the spacious living room. The oricha, in their china pots, sat elaborately dressed in large adorned handkerchiefs (pañuelo). The rotating mechanical fan wafted the scents of the pasta salad, cake, sweet pastries, and flowers that lined the front of the altar. Thus far, it was a typical religious "birthday" party (cumpleaños de santo). Unlike any other party I had attended in Cuba, however, a Sony television had been set up with a brad-new shiny DVD player (with the plastic manufacturer stickers still on). We all gathered around. At the time, DVD players were still illegal in Cuba, making this public display especially memorable. Misleidis pressed play, and large speakers blasted batá drums and singing. A recording of her drum presentation, made a year earlier, began to play on screen. An excerpt from my field notes describes the religious video moment:
Misleidis danced slowly in the DVD, heading facing downward dressed in all white. Covered in a long shawl, heavy beaded necklaces (masos de collares) draped her neck and back. Humberto (her boyfriend from Spain) sat in front watching the ceremony for the first time. On screen a thin man grabbed his head. His body trembled and his leg jerked. You could see that he only had partial control of his body. He was about to get possessed. It became more intense and he tried to leave, but some priests blocked him. The singer shook the bell in his ear. He began spinning and flapping his arms as he was mounted. Then, a high-pitched awkward laughter came out of his baritone voice.
As we watched the television possession, a woman standing next to us in the living room began to shake. Someone turned the sound up. On screen Ochún danced in the man's body. Off screen Ochún possessed the woman and saluted the throne. Ochún took Misleidis and her Spanish boyfriend into a back room to consult them. The DVD continued to play and people commented on the double possessions - how Ochún was "called down" through the screen. One woman told me that Ochún really loved Misleidis.
...
While reconsidering this ethnographic experience I was struck by a descriptive anxiety. It was difficult to elucidate what had occurred that day. As Pierre Maranda described (1980), rather than being an anthropologist who simply participated in the peddling of "home movies," indulging in the narcissistic reproduction of the strange, it was important for me to give serious attention to the ways in which copresences operated in Santería currents, los corrientes espirituales. Afro-Cuban religious boundary work draws on forms of spirit materialities. They key to the "spiritist dilemma," Diana Espírito Santo (2010, 71) notes, is to not weigh down the spirit. Indeed, videos lend an ephemeral density to the matter of spirit copresences and their electricity. As we can see from Misleidis's party, electrical fields are considered to change the surrounding space and can be measured by the power felt in the room by practitioners.
Practitioners describe how they feel the strength of currents, meaning that the copresences manifest in ranges of their electricity. Messages from oricha and dead spirits head in one's ear, or seen in visions, dreams, or other forms of spiritual communications are called spiritual "transmissions" (las transmisiones). The spirits have been described as "radio transmitters" and conductors that allow two-way communication with copresences (Wirtz 2007b, 101). The corriente espiritual is a "charge" to the ambient power of a ritual space, and it connects practitioners and copresences to each other with bodily tingles, sounds, and sensations, and possessions. The power of spiritual currents is also considered to reflect on the spiritual power (aché) of practitioners, whose ultimate goal is to "call" or "bring down" copresences. Like electricity, when a spiritual current is "strong" (fuerte) priests are "shook" or "mounted" as if shocked by the power of copresence. Through videos, copresences are similarly stimulated and stimulate.
Videos have historically been prohibited in Santería. Only since the 1990s has this prohibition shifted; nevertheless, they are still considered contentious. Today practitioners see a connection between spirit electricity and media technologies. Well versed in new forms of social networking, media, digital video, and audio recording technologies, practitioners in Cuba and the United States often describe a link between technological electricity and the spiritual energy of copresences. Recordings are seen to transform and compound spiritual potential, movement, and feeling within certain circuits. Copresences move through, travel with, gain access to, and interact with practitioners daily. Video currents are felt in much the same way as spiritual currents in possessions. If we use the notion of electrifying spiritual currents in possessions. If we use the notion of electrifying spiritual currents, in Santería we can broaden our notions of travel and mobility to think about somatic experiences of technology as kinesthetic.
Given that Santería copresences are cross-spatial subjects, elements that expand and shift bodily registers, I want to understand how technology expresses these embodies postures. More than simply visual representations of Santería - video experiences instead pierce the body as part of the broader Afro-Cuban sensoriums. Sensoriums are culturally encoded even as they organize and make culture (Ong 1991). They allow us to explore sensory apparatuses as operational complexes where we might attend to particular forms of perception (Ong 1991, 28). Santería sensoriums are thus activated through religious "videoscapes," where a social body "might gain control over itself" (Berko 1992, 88). The making, watching, immanence, and materiality of video-based experiences are thus embodies tactics where religious sensorimotor perceptions are shared across notions of presence. Indeed, video experiences accentuate copresences; they are intimate caresses (Rivera 2007) of somatic ontologies, or what Roland Barthes (1981) has described as "punctums," those moments when a scene jumps out and pierces you "like an arrow."
In this chapter I explore the embodied sensual currents in transnational Santería video experiences as an intervention in theories of mediation in anthropology. Drawing on copresence ontologies, I argue that videos in Santería should not be seen as only visual representations or always transcendentally mediated. Santería practitioners already exist within fields of electrifying copresences. Unlike "mediations" between here and there (see Engelke 2010; Meyer 2009, 2011; Van der Veer 2002), Santería video relationships expand copresences' electrifying relationship with practitioners. Akin to diffraction - or the process where light waves spread out, modulated, and detectable, as described by Karen Barad (2007) - the electricity of copresences are redistributed. The electric nature of spirits and oricha dispute a separation or distance between boundaries of spirit-worlds and living-worlds, effectively reconfiguring the way the world is understood. For instance, at Misleidis's house, practitioners sense Ochún's spiritual currents in possessions on and off screen. This evanescent sensibility affects how practitioners engage with media and everyday movement. Here I explore media as intra-active with copresences, rather than transcendentally mediated. I argue that the electrical waves of oricha and egun call for a reconfiguration of anthropological understandings of media and religion.
​
Video Logistics
I made the hour and a half trek from Matanzas to Havana on a tourist bus that, when off-duty, picked up hitchhikers and passersby (which in this case included me). The bus dropped me off at the train station La Cumbre in Old Havana, where I found a maquina - a transportation system of cars (mostly individually owned 1950s Chevys) that make bus-style routes around the city. In 2006 the maquina efficiently transported Cubans anywhere in Havana for ten pesos a trip. Although it is technically "illegal" for foreigners to travel in maquinas, this is usually ignored if you can pass for Cuban. I made the trek Cuban-style - to a ceremony where I was told Americans would be conducting rituals. Like most Cubans, I also arrived late .
The ceremony had already begun, and upon entering I saw the group of Americans who were visiting their godmother. I stood behind a young man who was trying to sneak a video recording by hiding the camera through a crack in the door covered by a white sheet where the ritual was being conducted. The white sheet indicated that this ritual was private, only priests were allowed in the room. A priestess "mounted" with the oricha Obatalá made a beeline for the white sheet, pushing the cameraman and demanding in Lukumí that he cease videotaping immediately . What was most astounding about this encounter was that, after the fact, everyone kept mentioning how that was the "real" oricha who had come down, since it did not permit the disrespectful, albeit hidden, filming of the ritual to continue in its presence. The Americans who were admonished by Obatalá played back the moment on their camcorder as an example of an authentic oricha "caught on tape."
American-based santeros in Cuba began recording rituals during the 1990s as "proof" so Santería communities in United States would recognize the ceremonies they underwent in Cuba. At first they would record mostly drum presentations (la presentación), the public aspects of their initiations, but increasingly other exclusive rituals, such as the actual "seating" (asiento) or the divination (itá), were also filmed. Cuban priests also took to dubbing these videos and, in some instances, recording their own presentations as keepsakes. Cubans also drew on technology and media as forms of documentation, pleasure, and religious study. Religious media are an increasingly prominent element within Santería. It is commonplace for practitioners to record or have recordings of secret rituals and imagery, as well as to have religious music, prayers, and rituals on their iPods and computers in video and on all new technological formats. While books have a long contentious history in religious learning, new media and online social networking communities are increasingly being used in addition to oral traditions.
However, due to the historic criminalizing and repression of Santería, which as a practice has emerged in the violence toward blackened bodies, practitioners have rightfully needed to protect themselves from outsiders and are cautious of visibility (see chapter 3). Similar to other Afro-Cuban religions, ritual oaths of secrecy developed in colonial and early republican Cuba and are still used as part of membership and inclusion rites. The protection of Santería as a secret and hidden racialized practice is evident in Santería's stand on visibility. Indeed, in both Cuba and the United States, Santería was (and to a certain degree still continues to be) perceived as superstition, witchcraft, and black magic. Media technology such as audio and video recordings and photography has therefore arisen within Santería as suspect. Some self-proclaimed "old timers" continue to see any type of public visibility and media as negative. Santeros in both countries spoke of continuing to hide their practice for fear of persecution, and many only cautiously reveal their Santería affiliation. For example, Daniela, an elderly priestess I interviewed in 2006 in San Miguel del Padrón (a marginal, mostly black, worker's neighbor on the outskirts of Havana), refused to be recorded by video or audio and talked extensively about how cameras were the colonialist "tools" used by "whites" to steal "black's magic." As a result of a tumultuous history of Afro-Cuban religious persecution and forced secrecy, most practitioners considered any type of video or audio recordings suspect and prohibited them. These technologies were seen as having the ability to take power away from sacred items, or to transfer negative influences to practitioners.
Yet these media are increasingly being incorporated in Santería rituals. Historically, photographs operate as objects of power in certain spells or protection charms, and are placed on spiritual tables (bovedas) for the dead. Photographs do not simply represent an individual but actually lay claim to a person's spirit-matter. Even Daniela admitted to using a picture in a spell/offering (obra) to keep her son safe while he was living in Spain. Tying the picture with blue and white thread and the overcome bully stick (amanza guapo, a plant used in spells) to an anchor, Daniela offered her son's picture to Yemayá for safekeeping in his travels. Her son was told to also make a belt of blue and white cloth to "tie him down," as he had been advised that he might be "corrupted" by the "loose foreign morals" that floated around Spain.
Transnational Santería practitioners do not necessarily belong to the same cultural, racial, national, or class backgrounds, nor do they have equal consumption practices or religious habits. For example, even though very few Cubans have access to Internet or video chatting, they are familiar with these practices and they reference traveling-by-video in a similar way, as a form of social-spiritual linkage and movement. For instance, Tony, a Cuban priest in Havana, talked about how his religious family members in the United States were able to "get to know him" through video-traveling. When I visited Tony to watch a video with him, there was a power outage, so he talked to me about his American-based goddaughter, Patti, showing me all of the gifts she had brought him: a Chinese fan, several golden bells, a golden Buddha statue, a small porcelain fairy figurine, several bottles of perfume, and a video camera. Explaining why he let Patti record rituals, Tony told me with a wistful sigh, "Patti is a good goddaughter. She takes care of her padrino. . . . You get a lot of yuma [foreigners ] who come and they take the santo and exploit the religion and go back to their countries and get rich. Not Patti, she is a good santera. She is here for the right reasons . . . not for a boyfriend. That's why people are jealous. They see that I got a good one, and they are envious, because I don't have to sell my ass or the religion, and I have iré [blessings]."
Frustrated with the local community of Santería, how everyone was "pulling each other down" and fighting over the few crumbs of foreign capital that sparked a new tourist economy in the 1990s, Tony explained to me how he could metaphorically "leave" the island. "Even though I do not travel, people know me over there. I'm in the videos my godchildren take back, and they know me" (Beliso-De Jesús 2013a, 704).
A year later at Patti's Los Angeles, California, apartment I found myself watching the video I was unable to see in Havana with Tony. Patti, in her thirties, was born in Nicaragua and brought to the Unites States as a young child. She lives in a small two-bedroom apartment close to Hollywood, where she works as a waitress and sometimes as a substitute teacher. "Padrino, look at how hard things have been," Patti talked at the television, lamenting to Tony at the failing U.S. economy, saying that she had recently lost her job and was now unable to travel to Cuba. Watching the video at Patti's house in Los Angeles, it was as if Tony, her "modern" Cuban godfather, was in the room. "I miss my familia de santo" (saint family), she told me.
Pausing the video we were watching, Patti provided background about different things that were happening on screen while also commenting at the differences of Santería in the United States. "[In Cuba] Santería is laid back . . . it's a part of everything." Pointing to the Cuban women in the video wearing pants, she exclaims, "See, they are in jeans! . . . you know here that would be a no-no." Since I had waited over a year to watch this video, I was particularly excited. However, once we started watching, I have to admit, I was disappointed. There was nothing unique about this video to distinguish it from many of the others that I had watched, filmed, or participated in, reflecting for me perhaps my own problematic expectations where I had secretly hoped for something unique or revealing. Yet for Patti this video was extremely important.
In the video, a group of Cubans were singing and dancing to the drum. Three male drummers sat at the head of room pounding the three batá drums, as the lead, a young black Cuban singer, engaged the crowd. The songs and dances were all familiar, even a bit lackluster, given my experience of the difference between the Havana versus Matanzas-style of drumming. It was, to my disappointment, what I had come to recognize as a normal Havana-style tambor. I chastised myself for the expectation of a "discovery" that did not seem to come. I had indeed become too anthropological - my desire for the strange perhaps? Instead, it was Patti's interruptions, her experience of the video that made this moment particularly telling. Even though I knew she had watched this film over and over, she was still excited. It still meant so much to her. She fast-forwarded to the part where Tony was getting mounted by Ochún. In this scene, Patti was also onscreen, dancing next to her padrino as Ochún spun his body gracefully around the room. She was mesmerized by the moment. There were tears in her eyes.
These processes are complex, diffracted, and multiple. Indeed, while practitioners experience these video differently based on many different socioeconomic, racial, gendered, and national factors, there is a Santería sensibility that also posits a profound sense of spiritual experience. Dunieski, a young hip-hop artist and priest of Changó who had illegal Internet in his Havana home, would upload different videos (mostly hip-hop, but some of Santería tambores) to Youtube. He also had a myspace page for a short period of time, and he talked about how he had met other priests and hip-hop artists online. Dunieski told me that although he had very little possibility of leaving the island (and was hoping to meet a foreign girlfriend online), through videos and the Internet, he felt he left Cuba every day: "I'm not like [the local] people here, with their limited small-mindedness of the world. I leave here every day. Or when I can get online. . . . [Through the Internet] I'm practically a foreigner." Dunieski made a small income selling Internet access (approximately twenty cents a minute) and sending e-mails for other Cubans. His brother, a Cuban living abroad, had brought him a used compute and paid for his Internet access, which used a foreign business account siphoned to Dunieski's home. He often played a key role in connecting online foreign practitioners with religious houses for local rituals in his barrio.
Metaphorically, the idea of video travel is in line with a more contemporary practice of cyber travel. However, practitioners are not the only ones traveling through the screen. Copresences also use video currents. For example, an American practitioner had an abusive uncle who had molested her as a child; after his death, as a spirit, he drove away lovers she had in her life. She would wake up with bruises on her body and needed an extreme "capturing" ritual (capturación) to help remove the uncle's possessive and violent force (a presence that could invariably return if she somehow managed to "pick him back up again"). She was cleansed with a black hen, sacrificed in order to capture the spirit that was attached to her body. The spirit was goaded into a glass jar that was quickly capped and then buried in a cemetery. She had recorded this ceremony (which was done in Cuba) so she could show people in the United States how it was done in case the uncle's spirit returned. However, at the moment of the "capturing" when the jar was capped, the camera was turned off so that the spirit would not "jump into the camera" rather than the glass jar.
Priests draw on Santería epistemologies with copresences and the spiritual currents that run through somatic negotiations in their understandings of religious media. Nevertheless, a transnational religious economy of rituals is also part of spiritual intelligibility and the embodied registers that vides activate for priests in different Santería contexts. It is at this juncture where I turn to map the new uses of and concerns over video religiosities.
To be continued...
Cyber ocha

Well, thats not entirely true. Angry is probably the correct awnser. To give some backstory, me and therapist are 99% sure my anhedonia comes from a perfect storm of environmental factors. Lots of layers and resons and excuses from people around me with ultimately the same consequences. Like learning to not form my own opinions at a young age for because different people would teach me not to for their own benefits but all ultimately contributing to the same goal. This manifested in me being flimsy, gullible, etc. Only opinions are things ive learned before someone else had the chance to teach me about them first.
Lots of things and lots of lessons all learned in that manner but from people that were directly conflicting with eachother. Its also come to her intention that there was no one in my life in a proper functional relationship without any strings or catches. Everyone nice had thorns and if I put my trust in anyone completely I would get stung but I was repeatedly taught to do it anyway making me repeat this cycle of being disappointed and then being shamed or made to forget that disappointment effectively destroying my chances of building up any sense of expectations for the world around me.
However, this last weekend I learned of a family that effectively had been looking for me since I was a child. They were my god parents, and aparently they drove me and my mom from the hospital the day I was born. They took care of me when my mom would live her life and for many years they baby sat me. They had a stable life, a stable relationship, and while I was reprimanded it wasn't out of guilt or shame. They had a baby, I was asked to watch that baby for a moment and the baby rolled off of the bed he laid on. She came in screaming at me and told me "to get out of her face". I have a sharp memory of my childhood even if I can hardly remember the last few years, so I remember it as if it were yesterday. I ran to hide behind the sofa and they couldn't find me for an hour or so. Even as I kid I knew how to be really quiet. She called her husband home and my mom but not the authorities yet before I came out of hiding. I was 7 or so when this happened, and it left a mark on my soul. To this day I do not attempt to be around or hold children and I become totally numb when I see them. If anhedonia is disinterest than this is complete rejection, even i can admit theres repression here. Ive tried to interact with babies since or have been made too and it just doesn't go well. But there's a block there anyway so I've never cared.
My memory tapers a bit here as another scar forms for another reason but I remember never seeing this family much again after that. I always thought it was because of the incident, I thought she didn't want to be my godmother anymore. I've had alot of family members be disinterested in me so it was sad but I didn't question it. Like the sea anemone I am I just kind of drifted on. A few years later I was asked to pick another god mother, as I decided to het baptized in time for my quinceanera. It was a choice of mine that criticized by some, but supported by others which is likely why I still went through with it. I choose my mothers best friend who had known me for almost just as long and who's daughter I had known since I was a kid. There was not many other choices really. I thought back to my former god mother, I likely could've mentioned her...but I don't remember anything coming from it. Likely my mom saying she hadn't heard from her in years. After all...I remembered I hurt her baby and how she disappeared after that..why would she want to be involved? Time went on (2 years for bible classes) and towards the end of my classes my mom got back in touch with the woman and she asked to take me out. We went to dinner and it was nice, though I ordered something I didn't like very much and only picked at. After dinner I remembered leaving it in her trunk but not rushing to go get it because I didn't like it. I didn't think about how I could've just thrown it away in house because I was 13 and dumb. I didn't see her again after that and she never came to my quinceanera. I thought I had messed up again and when she gave me the chance to make amends, show her I was "older and better" I was ungrateful and I ruined it. Thats why she didn't come after that, thats why she wasn't at my party, and thats why she didn't want to be my God mother anymore.
Im 22 now, going on 23 and my "new god mother" left my life years ago. I'm not close with any of my cousins as they and my aunts are gone too, and I struggle interacting with my half siblings (dads side) because my sisters have never been very interested in me due to our age gap and my brothers don't take me very seriously (Im the baby so I'm often infantilized). I wish I was just over thinking it, but I have such a hard time having straight forward conversations with them because they insist on messing with me or trying to get me upset for laughs. They say it's because I'm the youngest but we're all adults now. I just want someone in my family to take me seriously.
Anyway, my new job required I get social media. Ive never been present much as my sense of self is negative on a good day and completely nonexistent most. I don't like projecting myself because I feel like there's nothing there. I'd rather be just a voice I guess, because that's how I see myself. Well...She reached out to me, the one from when I was born..and she asks how I am and wants to meet up. I figured she was just being nice so I was nice back but she was really insistent and would keep reaching out when i didn't respond much. So I made plans and brought my boyfriend with me because I dont really have family for him to meet. They either dont get together or I dont see them. And...it was nice. Their family is still together and still happy..but it's all grown up. My god father looks much older than I remember..but it's been 10 years since our last vist and even longer since I saw him regularly. Their son (the baby) is 14 now and he's bigger than i am. She looks exactly the same as I remembered her..it's comforting to say the least..
I feel a bit uncomfortable but I do the routine of polite and people pleasing. It's easy to pull off when its all you do. I don't look for any deeper meaning to this, I've learned not to. But...she mentions the incident of me dropping her baby and she..apollogizes to me. There's no blame or excuse or explanation..even if she wasn't the one in the wrong. She told me she thought of it so often over the years and regretted it every moment she did, for yelling at me the way she did but also putting me in that situation to begin with. That "She should have known better and I was so young". That's the first and only time any adult in my life has apologized like that to me and meant it like that. My mom attempted to once but went back on it pretty quickly, and there was another one but she had never hurt me- it was an apology out of pity. Of course I've been apologized to but...never by someone like this, someone who was apart of something so deeply routed in me for years and genuinely wanted to me to depart from it. She didn't even know it was something I still thought about, I was so young...I could've forgotten about it by now. But here it was haunting her as much as it haunted me..and nothing bad had actually happened. Her son was completely fine. She could've just laughed at my childish ignorance and moved on. But she held onto it.
She then broke down into tears about not being around all my life, about how she had always considered me family and loved me and my mother. That if anything were to happen to my mom she was always there ready and willing to step up for me. It wasn't malicious or anything..she had her own family and her own life..she just genuinely wanted to support me...thats when she told me the reason she left was because my mother cut contact. Apparently it my mom "didnt feel right" because my mom was single and she was married. She protested but my mom never awnsered any of her calls after that, for years...
Then..they ran into each other when I was getting ready to be baptized and my mom invited them to my party. Thats when they picked me up and took me out, because they wanted to reconnect with me. My mom then broke the news to her that I had chosen another god mother and her heart broke. She couldn't come to my party because it hurt to much. My mom became angry and cut contact again. She tried to reach out and she tried to find me online but I never used social media.
What hurt most about learning this was realizing they lived alot closer than I thought when I was little. I went to middle school, highschool, made friends, met my boyfriend all not very far from where they lived. Their son goes to a highschool near my friends house. They were there the whole time, trying to find me the whole time.
Do i believe my mom would do something like that? Yes. I'm anhedonic because of my mom as well. I've faced her wrath first hand on multiple occasions. One of the first lessons i learned about her is that she'll prefer to lie for her own benefit and to keep things convenient then tell an uncomfortable truth that makes her look bad..even if I wasn't ever allowed to be angry with her anyway.
My God mother cried as she told me this and apollogized that she wasn't there for me, even gave my mother the benefit of the doubt and hoped that now that I had a choice I'd choose to continue being in their lives. She told me that she hoped I never thought she didn't want me anymore..which of course is exactly what I thought as there are so many other people who loved me once upon a time too..but with her tears and insistance on seeing me I couldn't help but believe her. My god brother even mentioned a memory of his that I accidentally made for him becoming a core memory. I guess i accidentally introduced him to the zelda serious and now its one of his favorites, but thats how he remembers me.
That full family unit where the air isn't sad and I don't have to take responsibility for other's actions towards me...That "hope" my therapist was talking about and "role models" and such.."people I can look up too without a catch"...it was all right there..the whole time..and my mom took it from me because of her own pride.
But I guess I'm not surprised. Ive been learning lessons like that since I was born. I don't know what I dont know and what I question is my own fault. If I close my eyes it wont hurt as much.
But this does hurt, not in the full way I'd like it too but it does. Im still anhedonic, im still knotted inside..but someone took a genuine shot at cutting out one of those knots this last weekend. I think it might stir something in me, but I dont want to have hope.
I dont know if anyone will make it this far or read this but I wanted to leave this here for someone or no one to find.

With the caveat that Season 5 is (almost certainly) not happening, even via spinoff. (Although I wouldn't mind a Chicago spinoff called "The Loop" or something.) I also apparently hid this whole thing behind a spoiler tag, sorry.
Here's how my wife and I whiteboarded a Season 5:
1.) Camila kills Ruth at the end of Season 4, which opens the door to the U.S. Army entering Mexico and shutting down the cartel.
2.) Marty and Wendy figure out/learn pretty quickly that Camila pulled the trigger, and the two quietly inform the FBI of that fact. In the FBI's mind, that invalidates their oral agreement with Camila.
3.) Marty and Camila fly to Mexico to formally hand over power to Camila. Everyone is there. The Army swoops in, kills/arrests everyone. Camila is captured and imprisoned. The FBI gives the cartel operatives a choice: work for Marty or be arrested. Naturally, they agree.
4.) The FBI rescinds the immunity agreement with the Byrdes and/or allows them a percentage of the laundering profits. Either way, the central conflict of Season 5 is the fact that the U.S. government is now the de facto head of a Mexican drug cartel, funneling the profits to fund its own operations. The Byrdes still have a handler that they answer to. Wendy Byrde is now the chief foil to the government's control, and uses her connections to pull strings and give the two room to maneuver.
5.) The Chicago PD begins making noises about investigating the death of one of their own. One of the first uses of Wendy's foundation is using her Rust Belt clout to ask an Illinois politician on the board to quietly call the Chicago chief of police and make the problem go away.
5.) Meanwhile, Camila manages to get in contact with one of the lieutenants, and they begin to orchestrate an assassination attempt on the Byrdes.
6.) Without Ruth, Rachel begins running the Belle casino, supervised by Marty. Marty may still love his wife, but Wendy's history of putting the cartel operations at risk, lust for power, and ruthless maneuvering has raised serious doubts in his mind. The proximity to Rachel reignites some of the old connection the two have for one another, and they hook up.
7.) Wendy sees this, and it's a trigger for a serious split. All that talk about whether Marty would leave "after all this is over" comes boiling up. Wendy confronts Rachel, and the two violently argue -- let's say Wendy does something like threaten her with a broken glass. Rachel tells Marty what happened, and Marty and Wendy have a yelling match. Has something irrevocably broken between them?
8.) Meanwhile, the FBI have begun placing the same sort of unreasonable demands upon Marty that the cartel did: deliver more money. Siphon some off to a separate account. Marty becomes suspicious that one of the agents is using the money for his own personal slush fund. He tries to use Maia, who is unaware of how the agency is using Marty to run the cartel. But Maia becomes suspicious and begins her own investigation.
9.) Wendy, spitefully, allows the FBI's pressure to continue. She continues her behind-the-scenes machinations, assisted by Charlotte. In one scene, we see how Jonah's maturation continues. Ruth had commented at the end of Season 4 how like a man he looks in his suit, and killing the cop/PI was his quinceanera, as it were. He's always had an obsession with guns and violence, and Wendy uses this. He's now the family's unlikely muscle.
10.) Jonah informs Frank Jr. of Ruth's death. The two bond, and Frank Jr. takes on the role of big brother of a sort. Jonah isn't laundering, but he tags along as Frank Jr. shows him the ins and outs of what it means to run the local mob. He also drops by the local sheriff.
11.) Wendy's power continues to grow, enough that an investigative reporter comes knocking. Who is the kingmaker at the heart of Midwestern politics? What starts out as a cushy, dishy story becomes a problem as the reporter starts digging deeper. We see the dark side of the media: trading favors for access.
12.) The reporter digs deeper, and Wendy starts getting calls. Jonah makes a late-night visit and warns off the reporter, who suddenly realizes what he's getting into. But when he shows up with a camera crew the next day, Wendy and Marty realize that they have a problem. In a twist, Marty discovers just how deeply in debt the news organization is, and simply buys a controlling stake via a shell account. He sends a representative (Charlotte) who informs the staff of sweeping layoffs and a new editorial direction. The Byrdes have just bought into the creation of a (small) media empire.
I'm going to end it there. The themes of Season 4, though, are simple: the U.S. government now runs the Byrdes, Camila wants revenge, and Wendy's monomaniacal quest for power threatens to split the family entirely. It would be nice to work Three in as well, as he seems like a quiet idealist. I almost see him as someone who will try to use his newfound clout and money to try and avenge Ruth's death, but will have absolutely no idea of how to do so. If anything, though, the Three plotline would be deliberately short, pathetic, and probably end with Wendy somehow taking control. And thus ends the Langmores, as Three ends up in another trailer.
Do the Byrdes get out? No, not in this season. We close with a schism: Wendy is hosting a major fundraiser at a house by the lake, there's another huge fight, and Wendy, drunk with power, scornfully tells Marty she doesn't need him anymore. The lights and music are faintly visible across the lake where Marty and the kids sit, contemplating their future.

Hey folks, I have been thinking more and more about season 2 and it seems that nearly every major theme explored in S1E13 “Fail Safe” laid the groundwork for the major themes season 2. I actually think this is pretty insightful on where things are going in the next couple of episodes.
Lara, Cortez/ Cushing, Kent/ El
After episode 13 aired, Lara’s likelihood all but became imminent.So much so that a lot of people were sure we were going to see her in the finale. We got two major pieces of foreshadowing, one we learned that her crystal was on earth and Tal-Rho was interested in speaking with her. Two, when Sarah and Jordan were on the bridge at Atlas Pond Sarah mentioned feeling liked she belong when talking to her grandmother at the pond about stories from Mexico. This also laid the groundwork for Sarah’s Quinceanera and finally the parallels between Cortez/ Cushing and Kent/ El that feel too heavy handed to not be explored in some way. Especially combined with Anderson’s “It’s not yours to give.” Based on how everything else has played out, it seems like there is something coming with how Clark approaches the idea of “El” with the boys given we got the initial groundwork in this episode and this episode has been such a blue print for how season 2 has played out.
Tal/ Kal Dynamic
Episode 13 essentially become the proof of concept for the season 2 dynamic between the two brothers. It set the stage for this dual look on humanity. For Clark, it about being accepted by humanity and for Tal it was about being rejected by humanity. This would essentially set up the dynamic for their time in prison together in 2X07 and finish rounding out the fraught relationship Tal had with his father which set up the start of Tal’s redemption arc which is in process. Lastly, it set the stage for Tal to become this sort of representation of all of Clark’s fears about blending in and being accepted.
Chrissy/ Lois Dynamic
Before episode 13, Chrissy and Lois seemed to be mostly on the same page. This episode introduced this concept that Lois has secrets she is protecting and set the stage for everything with Ally. Without Lois and Chrissy’s arc in this episode, Lois and Chrissy’s dynamic would be faltered but also less fraught in season 2. This argument has become a fundamental part of how they have approached Ally.
Lana for Mayor
This episode pretty much introduced the concept of Lana running for mayor as she feuded with Mayor Dean over the fallout for the Edge stuff. With in days of this episode airing, it was pretty accepted and understood that Lana would be running for mayor in season 2. On a side note, this was part of why the Daniel Hart detour felt so unnecessary, we had been waiting for six months for this plot line.
Jonathan/ Candice (Tegan)/ Jonathan’s Inferiority Complex
This is little funky, but I think it seems pretty clear that what is happening with Candice in season 2 was originally meant for Tegan, but the role needed to be recast. While Tegan had been introduced before this episode, we see a couple of impactful things. First, Tegan reminds Jonathan had great his family really is. Not just his dad, but his mom and grandfather as well. This sets the stage for Jonathan feeling like the only average or mediocre person in his family. We then get the start of Jonathan’s identity crisis with the line “I don’t know who I am” which sets the stage for Jonathan’s aimlessness in season 2 which ultimately leads to the X-K story line. In addition, we also see that Tegan/ Candice has a sort of need to manipulate Jonathan for her own needs. While she was not successful in season one, it certainly opened the door for season 2 and X-K.
X-K
Before episode 13, it seemed like X-K had ended at episode S1E10. The audience then learns that the DoD is actually sticking around a little but longer to extract all the X-K so no one else gets hurt or gets powers. Again, major foreshadowing that the mines and X-K are going to come into play in season 2.
The Boys Skipping School
The boys skipping school seems like beginning to the arc around both Jonathan’s X-K use and Jordan’s training with Sam, which Lois and Clark are inevitably going to find out about and be pretty upset with Sam and Jordan. Essentially, the boys had been through a traumatic experience and started acting out. If you look at how this played out in episode 13, both Jordan and Jonathan were hesitant about school, having to face an all-school assembly about Edge (It is kind of fair if you think about it, I am not sure I would want to re-live that trauma again at school). The boys cut class, while there were certainly girls involved, the boys did not need much persuading to leave. While Lois and Clark’s discussion and punishment seemed fair, they also seemed to miss bigger picture on why the boys seemed hesitant about school and if perhaps the trauma from the Edge ordeal was at play. We also see episode 2X03 Lois mentioned that “kids are pretty resilient” and the start of 2X07 where the neither the boys nor Lois take much time to express their feelings about Clark’s arrest. This is in strake contrast to Sarah and Lana who are both sort of emoting all over town about Kyle.
It seems likely that this was the set up around the fact that the boys are not exactly thriving as part of a Superhero family and may need a little more coaching and time from their parents to adjust. This is conjuncture but I would love for this to actually be what has been building. This idea that the boys are struggling more than they, or their parents realize. It does not exactly give the boys an excuse for their behavior, but it hopefully opens the door for a more holistic conversation about why they have been acting out.
7734/ repositioning the Kryptonite
While the fail-safe conversation between Lois and Clark was great on its own. It also seemed to serve to reposition the Kryptonite to wherever the writers needed it. While John Henry is technically in charge of the Kryptonite, it did not answer a lot of big logistical questions around where stored, how it is secured, etc. which means the Kryptonite was open for the taking with little explanation. It means that all those weapons and more seem to still be at play even if there is no R&D lab. Bonus, I expect (hope) we get another Jordan kryptonite episode this season. I am such a sucker for a Jordan Kryptonite episode.
John Henry Irons
While logical, this is also where we get John’s initial idea that he wants to move on and leave the Superhero life. We see his hesitancy, but we also see how easily Lois and Clark are able to pull him back in with a simple call to responsibility. It does not take much for Clark to talk John into being 7734 gatekeeper.
A more compassionate Sam
This is mostly because I had gotten through every other character, and it seemed only right I add Sam. While Sam always had some compassion, I think this is the first time we really see him care about Clark as a person, versus just a Superman an awesome but dangerous superhero. We see Sam call Lois about project 7743 and that seems to be a theme that continues through season 2. Sam had purposefully left contacts in the DoD that knew to notify him if anything went wrong with Superman and he seems ready to take responsibility for Anderson which again feels like the Sam we see in S1E13.
Conclusion
Pretty much every major character arc and dynamic (save Bizarro, Natalie and Ally) where spelled out in S1E13 as a sort of proof of concept set up for season 2. It is certainly interesting as S1E13 did a decent job of returning to some of the family dynamics we saw early in season 1. It will be interesting if we see the last few themes presented completed in season 2. Specifically the boys struggling more with Superhero life than Lois and Clark realize and the continuation of the Cushing/ Cortez, Kent/ El parallel. On a side note, seeing the completion of the Cushing/ Cortez, Kent/ El parallel feels almost as certain as Lara at this point in terms of foreshadowing and I hope it has the pay off where both the boys get to explore this and not just Jordan.

Hey folks, I keep getting misquoted on this sub for having concluded here that the Cushings have the same amount of time on screen in Season one and Season two. That post only looked at season two and simply concluded the percentages with and without the leads. So, I went back and did all of season one to see if I could figure out why the Cushings have been causing so much heart burn this season. So, if you want the answer, keep going.
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The numbers are in and the Cushings have gotten more time in season two. This includes their screen time with and without the leads. In season one, about 8% of total screen time went to Cushings without Lois, Clark, or the Boys. In Season Two, this is almost double at 14% which is about 2.5 minutes of screen time that is going to the Cushings in season 2 that was used elsewhere in Season 1. This does not seem like a lot, but I think this is part of what people are feeling.
When you look at the Cushings’ screen time holistically, the Cushings are getting about 19% of screen time in season 2 and about 17% of screen time in season one which is just about half a minute more on average in season 2. I did include both 110 and 205 which were very special Cushings episodes. While the Cushings got a lot of screen time in these two episodes, all of the additional screen time in these episodes were shared by the leads.
Quantitively, the Cushings are actually getting more time dedicated to their stories in season 2. Looking at things qualitatively, the Cushings are more centered in the story telling than the were last season.
As I was scrubbing through to take down the time stamps, I noticed an evaluation during season one. I think the Cushings time on screen can be broken down in two three tranches, with things shifting about ever five episodes in the first season.
Season 1 Episode 1-5
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The first five episodes saw the least of the Cushings on screen and all but 5% of the episode’s time was with the Cushings without the leads. It is not patricianly surprising that the Cushings were well received and praised for being well rounded and powerful foils to Lois and Clark. It seemed liked they grounded the show, were able to provide a public landscape to showcase similar for the things the Lane-Kent family was going through privately, and were great conduits to explain Smallville to the audience and the Lane-Kent family.
During the first five episodes, a majority of the Cushings time was devoted to either providing exposition around what was going on with Morgan Edge or welcoming the Lane-family to Smallville. While the show did do the initial work around Sarah and Kyle’s mental health, it was relatively light and did a really good job contrasting how Lois and Clark responded to Jordan joining football and how Clark was able to handle the trauma of being a hero compared to Kyle. In the first five episodes of the series, I have nothing but praise for how the Cushings were executed. In fact, 105, the Harvest festival is an often critiqued episode was one of the better Cushings stories. This episode did a great job comparing and contrasting how Clark and Kyle were able to handle (or not handle the trauma) with their jobs as Superhero and hero respectively.
The show also did a great job of showing Lana attempting to work within a system to make change and failing and Lois, working outside of traditional systems to also try to make the world better.
Season 1 Episode 6-10
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Season 1, episodes 6-10 actually represent the most time the Cushings have been on screen in the entire series run, and also include the episode with the most Cushings time to date, it you count Lara/ Lana as Cushings time, which I did for the purposes of this Analysis. Looking at the time the Cushings spent without leads, it is only about 10%. Which accounts for about two minutes less screen time where the Cushings are alone on screen than in season two.
While the Lana in particular was on screen more, she was heavily involved in the Edge case and was doing heavy exposition work. Because Lana was doing the exposition work, it meant Lois and Clark did not have to and their time could be spent on their sons. I think part of where the heartburn for season one is coming from is that because the Cushings have had a plot divorced from what Lois and Clark are up to, Lois and Clark are now responsible for delivering a majority exposition as characters, which means their screen time is simply explaining to the audience instead of having big emotional family time. The Cushings are no longer burden with explaining what is going on with the villain which means they seem to get all the big emotional scenes anyone could ever want.
It is also worth noting that this tranche of episodes represents the only time in season 1 that the Cushings went an entire episode without the leads. This was episode 8. Episode 8 also represents the first time that the Lane-Kent family only had one scene together. In all prior episodes, we got at least 2 family scenes. While I cannot remember the specific outlet, maybe the AV club, I did see a critical reviewer note that it seemed odd that they decided on this Sarah/ Kyle school musical plot in episode 8 , given the more serious tone of the episode for everyone else.
In pure speculation, episode 8 also represents a sort of simplification of the story. Episodes start occurring in the span of one day which I suspect simplifies things like wardrobe. As many people know, season one was plagued by known COVID delays, the writers on the show have also talked about how they had to scale back what they originally wanted to do and the final 5 episodes or so had pretty significant rewrites. I suspect it was around this time in production things need to be simplified for quicker filming and cheaper production if they were ever going to finish the season and giving the Cushings stories that were not contingent on the Lane-Kent family would have allowed that.
Season 1 Episodes 11-15
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Episodes 11-15 still only represent about 10% of time without leads, but episodes 12-14 represent about 12% without leads, which is closer to what we are seeing in season two, but still a little bit less.
This also notes a shift in the plot around the Cushings. Prior to the 11th episode, a majority of the Cushings screen time without the leads revolved around Edge case and delivered the exposition instead of the Lane-Kent family.
For the first time, the Cushings screen time becomes all about the Cushings, it was no longer about Edge, it is no longer about welcoming Lois and Clark into town, it is just about them. In 112, when Lois talks to them about Eradication, it was all about Kyle’s experience, even though Lois was asking to help Clark, this centered the Cushings. In 113, the only scene with a lead was Lois and Lana picking Jordan and Sarah up at the police station. The majority of that time was focused on the Cushings be ostracized from the town. In 114 the only scene with a lead was when Clark went to visit Lana and again, that visit centered around the Cushings moving from Smallville.
This final chunk of episodes around the Cushings really focused on their story. With Lane-Kent family time down to just a single scene in the final 5 episodes of the season, it is easy to see how the balance feels like it had shifted during the course of the season.
It is not surprising that the Cushings started to receive some flak as the season wrapped up and people started to show fatigue around the Cushings. I also felt that the Cushings story did not go anywhere particularly interesting and it was mostly just treading water until the finale once they had their big conclusion in 110.
The show then upped the Cushings time for season 2 after they were already started to cause some heartburn.
Season 2
In season 2, the Cushings have been on screen about 19% of the time, with about 14% of the time going to scenes without other leads. While season one only had a single episode where the Cushings and a lead did not interact, season 2 has had three in seven episodes, almost half.
It is also worth noting, this season has continued to center around the Cushings in a plot that has nothing to do with what anyone else on the show is doing. Neither Lois nor Clark acknowledged that Lana was running for mayor until the 7th episode.
While the Cushings had a very special episode in season one, that was very much focused on Lana/ Lara and was very much centered around the Edge case and Clark’s mother. While the Quinceanera episode was nicely paced and slowed down to what we saw early in season one, that was very much a story focused on the Cushings. I think a Cushings focused story works, but as documented in mom comparison Lana had more time with Sarah in a single episode than Lois had had in the first six episodes with either of her boys combined. So, Lana was given this big love letter to her daughter and Lois has barely been on screen with her own sons.
It is also worth noting that 202 and 207 had the least amount of Lana and Kyle time, but Sarah had a scene with Natalie in 202 and Aubrey in 207, so the good news is that it does seem that whatever is going on with Sarah will eat into the Cushings screen time allotment versus Lane-Kent time. So, at a minimum, things are not going to get worse, even if they are not getting better.
Why is this happening
So, I have no idea why this is actually happening, but I have a speculation. A lot of people have speculated that this is Emmanuelle Chriqui contract. I think a piece of that is probably correct. She is granted so much screen time an episode and you can see that in the breakdown, but not all the Cushings time goes to her. What that does not explain is why the Cushings story has been so divorced from the main plot. I think it likely, mostly production related as you can a change in how the Cushings are approached between 8-10, this was likely right when production seemed to really start to take off and they figured out how to produce this show in the time it needed to be produced.
In terms of the Mayoral plot, I think this was actually designed to allow leads to attend mayoral events, if the timing worked. Lois or Clark could have attended the event in 202 or 203. In 204, it could have been Lois picking up coffee on her way over to the Gazette that had talked to Lana, especially given Lois had been in the diner the night before. I suspect that in early drafts, Lois and/ or Clark were supposed to be at more of these Mayoral events but with how things were going in production, it did not work out. That also meant the Cushings needed a plot that was not contingent on Lois and Clark like the Edge plot. I have said this before, but I think a stronger Mayoral plot for Lana would have been Lois doing decent amount of reporting on the campaign and Lois challenging her in the way the press often does. I think that is the story we all thought we were getting this season. Instead, we got something that was not dependent on the leads to film. This is all certainly speculation, but we know these writers are smart and know how to produce good TV. Why weigh the Cushings down with this Mayoral that feels repetitive and underwritten?
How does this get fixed?
So, in a perfect world, the Cushings would go back to a similar role they had in the first five episodes of season one. I think plenty of people would prefer that.
Given that it seems likely that Cushings need to both be on screen about 15% of every episode and they can only sometimes interact with Lois and Clark (though producers, remember phone calls are a way to do this without actually having to be in a scene together), is to burden the Cushings with more exposition to whatever Lois and Clark are doing. This is certainly a tall order given that it also does not make a ton of sense for the Cushings to know the truth about Superman. This means the writers are limited to a Smallville specific story each season that the Cushings are involved in and but do not know about Superman.
I think the other answer is the be less ambitious on the Superhero stuff. I think that the writers have sometimes missed this season is that this show works not because it is like the MCU but because it is not. As someone who found the MCU to be a lot of punching and very little character or Plot, I tapped out a long time ago. Sure, I came back for WandaVision, but even then, I liked the early episodes when it was the weird, quirky TV sitcom thing. My favorite episodes of S&L have been the ones where Clark is in the Supersuit the least and where we have had the most family moments (That tends to correlate as well). I think there are a lot of people that share that sentiment. The fanboys get pretty much everything they want all the time. It is okay if this show is not for the traditional Superhero demographic. Sometimes if is okay if we just get a small action scene like episode 203 with more family. I guess my vote, is that if the options are more Cushings, a bigger superhero moment and very little Lane-Kent family time, I would prefer less action and less Cushings.
Conclusion
In Conclusion, not only are the Cushings getting objectively more screen time in season 2 and more screen time without leads, but they are also getting stories that are focused more on the Cushing. While there is no way to conclude that the Cushings are the reason the Lane-Kent family is not getting more family time, there is a clear relationship between when the Cushings started getting more, and the Lane-Kent family started getting less.
Because the Cushings are both getting more screen time and it is not serving the story at all, it means that all the exposition work that the Cushings did around Edge last season has been shifted to Chrissy and Lois. So, this in tern means less of Lois’s time is going to family time and more is going to telling the background of this cult. This is why Lois’s time as a mom is feeling pinched, the writers need her to carry exposition in a way she did not have to last year. Last year, Lois got to be more in the action and be more of a mom.
Looking at things for quantitively and qualitatively, it is reasonable that the audience is feeling the additional screen and plot time dedicated to the Cushings as it very much feels at the expense of Lane-Kent family time. I think it makes sense to note that for the Cushings to be well rounded characters, they do need some plot and development that is not just entirely at service of the Lane-Kent family. There have certainly been characters on other TV shows that have been criticized for only being at service to the leads. With that being said, the Cushings should be of some service to the leads at a minimum and they have not really been at all this season.
So, to conclude, in comparison to season one, the Cushings are getting more screen time while offering less to the show.
About the math:
I included anything that had Lana or Kyle on screen for more than 10 seconds. Leads including Lois, Clark, Jonathan and Jordan. I did not include scenes that had Sarah but no leads, but I actually think this is counted towards the Cushings times. That has happened twice in season 2, 202 and 207 and in both cases, Lana and Kyle got less. Everything is within a few seconds, but I think materially it is there. I used the Amazon prime extended cuts for all time stamps. The percentages are how much time Lana and Kyle are in a given episode divided by total episode run time.
Charts, Graphs and Data
Total Data Set
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Season One Number
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Season Two Number
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Reminder, I am not OP! The original post was made by u/StillAngryafterfour.
ORIGINAL:
I've been stalking these subreddits for a while and I thought just reading people's stories would help me. Or If I found someone with a similar situation and I could see how they did it, but I guess my situation is unique. So here we go.
First, let me be clear. I don't care if you think this is fake. I don't care if you want to rip me a new one after I vent. It already happened. I thought I was okay. I thought I moved on, but after last weekend. It all came back and that anger I had back then just came in full force and even though I'm back home with my fiancé. That anger towards my ex just won't go away. I spent years in anger management for what she did and the situation that was created and I thought I was okay. Right now I just turned 39. I was 18 when I met my ex Marisol. During that time, I was a gangbanger with the Latin Kings. I was in a member since I was thirteen and always in and out of trouble.
Marisol was a church girl. my grandmother dragged me to Sunday Mass and when I saw her, to me, it was love at first sight. I asked my cousin, who was a friend of hers if he could introduce us, but he refused. He didn't want me to mess with her. He didn't want me to "ruin" her. Have you ever met someone that you wanted to make yourself better to be with? Wanted to be that man who would walk the right path? That was her. When I found out that she was going to church almost everyday, I hung out by the steps, talking to her. I always walked her to and from church. She made feel like I wasn't worthless. One thing led to another and we were dating and I felt great. For a year and a half I pushed myself away from the gang life, got my GED, became a regular church goer and was thinking about the future when I got unintentionally pulled back in.
I was at a store and ran into someone that I used to have problems with. They were running their mouths and I tried to ignore it, I swear I did. I just let them talk and I walked away, but then I got stabbed in the shoulder blade and I lost my mind, I beat the shit out of him. I got arrested and suddenly it was like the shit I did to make my life better vanished. Marisol was pissed at me, my grandmother kept bringing up my past mistakes and my cousin was telling me that he knew that I wasn't going to change. My public defender saw me trying to better myself and by the grace of God, got me off after a month in lock up. Despite being angry with me Marisol did visit me almost daily. A month after I got out, I found out I was going to be a father and I didn't want my kid to have a dad that was dead or in jail.
We eloped, I went to a trade school to become a mechanic and I busted my ass for my future family. When Luna was born, it was almost the worst day of my life. Marisol wouldn't stop bleeding. She went into shock and they had to give her a double hysterectomy. She was in the hospital for months and Luna became my world. I wanted her life to be the best, I wanted to give her the world. When Marisol was released, I promised her that our daughter will have a life far better than ours and for years I kept that promise.
I saved enough money to move us to the suburbs, became homeowners, I was girl scout leader if you could believe that. I made sure Luna went to private school, made sure she knew how to defend herself and always made sure I was the perfect husband. I didn't know my parents. Didn't have a positive male role model in my life, so I didn't know what a healthy relationship looked like... that's a lie, T.V. dad's were my male role models and I mimic them and the marriage they had on T.V.
As the years went by I owned my own garage, my cousin became a Pastor, my grandmother was still a pain in my ass, my relationship with my wife was stronger than ever, I made sure I kept my prison body, but Luna... Luna hated me. Since she turned thirteen she just started hating me. She didn't want me to hug her. Rolled her eyes every time I told her I loved her. Ignored me when I ask her about her day in school. It hurt me and Marisol saw it. She told me that she's a teenager and that I should just let it ride. She will come back to me. For two years it was like that. So for her Quinceanera, I wanted to go all out. Got everything she wanted and she was still disrespectful and briefly the old me almost came out just to put her in her place but instead, I went to my cousin, vented my frustration and doubts about being a good father and he told me to just let her be and he said a prayer for me.
I wanted a slide show for the father-daughter dance. I got a chunk of the the pictures of us together, but I realized I didn't have any recent pictures of us. She didn't want to take any. The last time I had pictures of her and I smiling with me was on her thirteenth birthday and those were on my daughter's broken tablet. I took that tablet, went to a repair shop and I didn't care the cost. I needed that tablet fixed. After a day and three hundred dollars. The tech fixed it and I was happy. I knew her passcode, but I never bothered invading her privacy. I just wanted those pictures and when I opened that tablet and looked in the gallery, there they were. My little girl, smiling and happy to be with me. I felt great. Then the instant messages appeared. It was my daughter talking to my wife. It was a long banter that she didn't want me to dance with her and it did hurt, but like my wife said, she's being a teenager. Then she said something that destroyed me. She texted why she had to do the father-daughter dance with me since I'm not her father.
I felt my heart stopped, I got dizzy, my mouth dried up and I needed to sit down. My wife responded that I raised her, I loved her, and that's makes me her father. But Luna responded by saying that my cousin is her father and she can't wait for her to turn eighteen so she could tell me the truth and she could live with her real dad. That she hated me, that she thanked God that I'm not her father. Marisol began cussing her out. Saying that it was a mistake for my cousin to tell her the truth two years ago and the more they talked, the angrier I was getting. My wife lied to me for fifteen years. My cousin whom I confide my issues about Luna and my fears about being a bad father not only fucked my wife, but had me raise his child. I wanted to hurt them. I felt a mixture of anger, sorrow, grief. I wanted to scream, cry, and die at the same time if that makes any sense.
I went to a dark place and so I wouldn't do anything stupid, I told Marisol that I needed to focus on work so I could pay the Quince and instead I drove to Manhattan and saw my old public defender who wasn't a low level attorney anymore. He had a nice expensive firm near Midtown East. I was surprised that he remembered me, but apparently, I was his first case as a public defender. We sat down and I told him everything. Gave him the tablet and when he turned it on, the messages just kept coming. Only this time, Luna was talking to my cousin, her real father and he was telling her to give me a chance. How I was always there for her, but Luna told him that so was he. How it makes sense that they have so much in common and even called him Papi multiple times in their conversation and he responded and told her that she was his little girl. We went through our options and he asked me what do I want to do? and I told him that I wanted to go full scorched earth. I wanted to poison the well and he asked me several times if that is what I wanted and nodded. I also told him that everything had to be filed before the Quince in two weeks.
So we sat down and spent the next twelve hours on what was needed to be done and I followed his instructions to the letter. I secretly placed my business for sale. Called the private school and told them that I will not be paying for next year. Closed the college accounts, and the savings that I had for Luna and prepared to place my house for sale online. No one was the wiser. I followed his instructions perfectly. There was only one thing I deviated from. The day of the Quince.
That day went off without a hitch. The whole family was there. Luna was smiling, having fun. Marisol kept asking me if I was okay and I lied to her. It was hard lying to her, from the moment I met her, I never lied to her and during those two weeks, every time, I kissed her, held her, made love to her. It was hard not to scream at her. It was hard not to hate her. She knowingly let me raised another man's child. She slept with my cousin, a man who saw as my brother, the godfather of my child, the best man when I eloped, my confidant. So the rage was hard to suppress to say the least.
When it was time for the father - daughter dance, I called her to the center of the stage. She looked annoyed, but walked over. I had the music playing and she smiled and it tore me apart, seeing her smiling at me. For years I wanted to see that smile again and now I didn't want it. As we dance, I had the slide show playing. Pictures of the two of us and towards the end of the song, screen shots of her text messages with her mother and real father.
Needless to say this didn't bode too well. Marisol looked like she saw a ghost, Luna just kept staring at the large screen and my cousin just stared at me with fear. Marisol ran to me and told me that she could explain and I told her that I filed for a divorce. That she could explain it in court. She grabbed my arm, begging me and I pulled back. I told Luna that I busted my ass to give the world, and now she doesn't deserve it. I began to walk out, but not before telling my cousin that every time I see him, I'm going to knock him out, then I knocked him out.
The aftermath was harsh. Marisol and Luna was at my grandmother's apartment. Her family was shocked and disgusted with her, they wanted nothing to do with her. Her father actually apologized to me. I don't know why. He never liked me despite turning my life around. That man hated me, but now I was the perfect husband and father, but just a few days prior I was the "former piece of shit." My grandmother had to audacity to tell me about the story Abraham and how when came back from battle three years later, his wife had a one year old child and he raised him as his own and how I should be like Abraham, so I told her to get the fuck out of my house.
Marisol came a few days later, crying as soon as she saw me, telling me that it was an accident. That when I was arrested she was so angry at me and my cousin was there to console her and one thing led to another and they had sex. It happened only one time and she was faithful to me ever since. She was willing to take a lie detector test to prove it. So I asked her how long she knew Luna wasn't mine and she started crying more. That look she gave me just told me that she knew from day one and asked her to leave. She wanted to go to counseling, telling me that I'm overreacting and we could make it work. It was in the past and I needed to get over it. That I am Luna's father, despite what happened and I allowed my temper to get the best of me. I must've repeated "get over it?" over a dozen times at full volume while grabbing her shit and tossing it out the door. I called her a lying whore. I told her that I didn't want to see her fucking face ever again, and I told her that this life that I built, no longer belongs to her before shoving her out the door.
A couple of weeks went by and she kept blowing up my phone. Not once Luna tried to reach out to me. Marisol was shocked to learn that I sold my business. Even more so when she learned that I had an open house. She came in screaming, telling the viewers to get out of her house and pleading with me to seek help. That I was ruining our marriage. That I had no right to sell our home. The home where we raised out child in and I told her that this house is full of lies. It's a house where I raised another man's child and when I sell it, I will give her half and ordered her to get out before I called the cops. It was a bluff, all she had to do was play the victim and I would've been arrested, but she didn't, she complied. Shortly after this my cousin came to talk to me and I knocked him out, dragged him outside and closed the door.
I refused mediation, Marisol wanted to reconcile, but I didn't. I wanted a divorce and my attorney filed for a fast track divorce and in three months we were in the Nassau county courthouse, I barely spoke to anyone during that time, I read horror stories about the court system, especially during divorce proceedings, but I didn't have that. I had a female judge who was very fair. My attorney took care of everything. First, Marisol's lawyer tried to talk about my past when I was in a gang, as if my past barred a reason for me to be a terrible husband and father, but my attorney quickly smacked that down and the judge reprimanded her attorney for trying to shame someone who turned their life around.
My attorney presented all the evidence and offered a lump sum alimony payment with the pending sales of the house, and business. At first Marisol kept asking me to reconsider, but I ignored her and when she finally realized that I'm not budging she agreed. Yet the real surprise happened when it came to child support. My attorney presented all of the text messages from Luna's conversation with Marisol. Showing that not only Luna knew, I am not her father, but she cannot wait to be with her real father, saying that she no longer has to live a lie. Marisol was completely caught by surprise from this. Then my attorney filed a motion to have my name removed from Luna's birth certificate, have my last name removed as well as not being responsible for any child support since all parties agree that my cousin was her father. Marisol was shocked by this. She yelled at me, begged me not to do this to Luna that I am her father because I raised her and as pathetic as I may sound right now, but if Luna didn't act that way towards me. If she didn't say those things, I would've agreed. There were moments that I wanted to reach out and try to make it work, but then I would look at Luna's continuing text messages to her friends, her real father and mother and I refocus on my resolve.
'Til this day, I don't know what hurts the most. Being lied to by a woman who you thought was the love of your life or having a child who you tried to make their lives better, to give them the world, just toss you aside like trash.
The judge was quiet for a long while reading page after page after page of the text messages. In the end, she agreed. I was not financially responsible for Luna and my name could be removed. My attorney also file a motion for the courts to go after my cousin to pay for child support and a motion to sue my cousin in civil court for all the money I have spent raising Luna. The private schools, dance classes, girlscouts, horseback lessons. Everything I have ever spent on that child and after my attorney explained to the judge that my cousin committed fraud for knowingly allowed to me to raise his daughter and not offer any financial support or assistance. It was a hail Mary, and the damn judge agreed.
I didn't bother looking at Marisol when the judge made her decision. I didn't bother listening to her as I walked out the courthouse. I didn't care as I heard her cry. Her telling me that she only cheated one time and was faithful ever since. I just didn't care anymore. A few weeks later my ex called me, shocked that I stopped payments on Luna's private schools and all of her activities, and told her to call her baby daddy before hanging up. Even Luna called me, first time since this entire ordeal and she fucking calls me crying that she has to go to public school, that they were moving to the old neighborhood and how scary it was and how she wanted us to be a family again. I told her to go to her real father, the man who she truly wanted and ask him. I yelled at her, told her that not only she knew for years, but I read all the text messages, the back and forth and from her own words, she was thankful that a hoodlum like me wasn't her father, even though I haven't been a hoodlum since the day I found out I was going to be a father. I hung up on her after that.
I thought about ending it countless times. Thought about ending my cousin, but I made him pay. He had to pay me a half a million dollars. A half a million that was all mine and not one cent belong to my ex because she agreed on the lump sum. I didn't care that the money came from the church. I was hurting. I left New York shortly after, went to Idaho, as furthest away from New York as possible. I just picked a random state and city and just left. Opened up a new shop, got a house, but for two years I had trust issues. For two years, I saw a therapist, anger management, I went to rage rooms. It was difficult. Until I found myself going back to church and ironically that was where I met my fiancé.
Joslin is wonderful, she just turned thirty at the time and we just hit it off. I told her everything that happened to me. I explained to her that I'm going to have trust issues and she understood. A year later, she told me that I was going to be a dad and insisted that for me to have a DNA test, just so I can have peace of mind. I forgot what it felt like to be happy again and when my son was born, I was overjoyed. I called my grandmother for the first time in years. She cried, and when I told her about my son, she insisted that I come to New York so she could meet her great grandchild. Guilt tripping me by saying that she's ninety and would like to see me one more time and I agreed.
We flew to New York, rented a car and drove to Bushwick. The one thing I dislike about the hood. You only need to see one person from your past and the whole fucking neighborhood knows that you're back. My grandmother saw my son, met my fiancé, made an offshoot comment in Spanish about her being white and I just yes her to death. I was planning to spend the week, do the tourist thing for once. It was Joslin first time in her life in the big apple and I wanted to make it special. Damn it, nothing works out as planned. First my ex shouted my name from down stairs. I looked out the window and was surprised how fat she got. My grandmother told me in Spanish to talk to her and Joslin agreed.
I went down stairs, was awkwardly silent for a minute and that anger just came back like a flood. Marisol told me that I look good and said that she looked like shit. She told me that she missed me, that she never been with another man since the divorce and I ignored her. She even had the audacity to tell me that I'm a grandfather and I gave her a look. Apparently Luna got with a decent guy, and got knocked up at eighteen. Her baby daddy joined the Marines to support them and Her father wanted nothing to do with her, just pays the child support and refuses to acknowledge her. He's no longer a Pastor and is working at the Banco Popular two blocks over. Then told me that Luna named the baby after me and I couldn't stand looking at her.
Marisol wanted me wait because Luna was on her way over and I just walked away. I went to my grandmother's house and I didn't have to tell Joslin anything. She just knew and we left. In the elevator I told her what happened and she smiled and told me everything was going to be alright. The look on Marisol's face when we left the building. She was looking at my Fiancé like she was the other woman and Joslin without missing a beat introduced my son to her. Well she said "I would like you to meet his biological child." that was a knife twist, but she knew my pain.
Marisol kept trying to stop me from leaving. Telling me that Luna felt bad about what she did and Joslin wanted me to make amends, but I was so angry. I hopped into the car. Ignoring Marisol's pleads and Joslin told me to extend an olive branch, so I gave her my number, so Luna could call me and left. At the red light I saw my cousin by the cuchifrito stand and I don't know what came over me. I got out the car, ran up to him and beat the shit out of him. Joslin was screaming, telling me to stop and when we locked eyes, I could see the fear. I spit on him and left.
I'm back home. Working, being a dad, and a good fiancé to a beautiful woman. Yet since going back, when I'm alone with my thoughts he anger comes back. Luna did text me with a picture of her smiling with her son and telling me that she was sorry for what she did. Yet, I don't know if she's sorry that she missed me or if she's sorry because the man she wanted to be her father wasn't the man she thought he was. I'm so confused and I'm scared to reach out to her. I want to get past this. I want to move on. My family was my everything, my daughter was my world. Even after these years it still hurts, it still makes me angry, but I know I need to move on, but it's hard. I want to reach out to Luna, but I'm so scared. I have people telling me to let her back in, but all I could think about are those text messages and the lies. The constant lies. I need help and my usual methods are not working.
Thank you for reading this, I needed to vent. Like I mentioned, I don't care if you think this is fake. I really don't give a rats ass, but your help is appreciated.
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UPDATE #1:
I'm waiting for the mods to approve this, it's been a while and yesterday was father's day. Luna tried calling me several times and I looked at the phone. I wanted to answer, I didn't, but all that kept lingering in my mind was those messages. What she said to her mother, to her real father, her friends. So I ignored it, eventually I listened to her voice mail and she sounded so cheerful, she briefly apologize for her actions, but to me, it didn't sound sincere, just passive. Maybe I'm overthinking it. She mentioned about her son, her finance and asked me to call her. Simple requests and I became infuriated. My grandmother and my fiancé are telling me to give her a chance, but when I asked my grandmother if Luna or Marisol ever asked about me in the four years I left, she said Marisol did, constantly, but not Luna. So in my twisted mind I think Luna wants me in her life to her child would be taken care of. Or maybe she wants to milk me and that made me so angry.
Even Marisol tried calling me constantly and I'm already thinking about changing my number. So I spent the majority of my father's day in the gym, hitting the heavy bag and I have an appointment today with an anger management group. Maybe they can give me an outside opinion. If this ever gets published by the mods. I would like to get your opinion as well. In the meantime, I'm just figuring this out on my own.
UPDATE #2:
I would like to thank luigionfigi42 for his advice on sending an email as a start. I sent a small email to Luna that simply said "what do you want?" didn't expect the multi-paragraph response. She started the email profusely apologizing for how she acted. She said when she found out I wasn't her father, she was angry. She confronted her mother and she cried, making her promise not to tell me. Since she felt "lost" she began to talk to my cousin, her real father more and more. He told her of my violent past, the things I used to do, things that I kept a secret from her. This made her angry and the more they spent time together, the more she pulled away from me. She said she felt bad from time to time, but my cousin would reinforced her feelings towards me.
The day of the quince she said while we were dancing, she realized how stupid she was acting. She realized how much I loved her and then her messages appeared on screen. In the days that followed she was told by my wife's side of the family to give me space. To not call me and she listened. She said she was watching her family fall apart because of her and she couldn't do anything to fix it. She told me she understood why I did what I did. Yet she wanted to reach out. Her grandfather kept telling her that I loved her, that I raised her, and despite what I saw through her messages, I will do the right thing and she believed him. During the divorce her mother fell in a dark place. Not talking to her, barely eating, she was just existing.
When she found out that my name was removed from her birth certificate, she said she had a panic attack. Her mother told her that they will have to move back to Brooklyn and when she asked about her life and school. Her mother told her "That was the life your father gave you, and he's not your father anymore." so she called me, begging and I cursed her out then hanged up. She cried for days. She tried to reach out to my cousin who pretty much ignored her. She even went to the church and he told her to leave. Called her a "mistake". Her mother refused to talk to her, basically locked herself in a room, only leaving to use the bathroom or take a shower. She begged her grandfather to take her to see me and when they came to Long Island, she learned that I moved. Her grandfather told her that he will talk to my grandmother and find out where I went.
for the next two years, according to her, it was hell. The entire neighborhood knew what happened to her and her mother. Her "father" avoided her at all cost and tried not to pay child support. It took her grandfather to threatened him to start paying. In the meantime, her mother didn't talk to her. She was just locked in her room. The few times they did spoke, she called her a ungrateful girl and she was the reason why she lost the love of her life. Her grandfather had to put her mother in her place by telling her that her infidelity was the reason why she lost the love of her life and she locked herself back into the room. So Luna barely stayed home and that was how she met the father of her child.
He worked in the corner bodega, they were the same age and after a few months of "talking" one thing let to another and she ended up pregnant. Her grandfather was furious, but when her boyfriend insisted that he would marry her, that cool things down. Luna said her pregnancy was a blessing in disguised. Her mother began talking to her again and even began leaving the room to be by her side for every check-up. Being a senior in High School while pregnant was cliché but she made it work. A month before the baby was born, she graduated, and her boyfriend joined the Marines. He wanted to elope before leaving, but she wants a wedding.
Her boyfriend had no issues naming his son after me. Apparently, his father was absent and the fact he was a junior was a reminder that he shared the name of a man who didn't want him. When she heard I was in town, she got a speeding ticket trying to get to my grandmother's apartment. She wanted to see me. Wanted to apologize, wanted me to see her son. She just wanted to see me. However, she was late and she cried. When her mother gave her my number, she wanted to call me immediately, but the entire neighborhood was talking on how I beat her "father" up, so she waited. Her mother was sad to see that I moved on and have a son. Luna was happy to know she had a little brother, but her mother became a little more depress. I felt sorry for Marisol.
After I read the email, I called Marisol and asked her if this was true. That she refused to talk to Luna for years and blaming her for our divorce. She confirmed it and at first I yelled at her, but I regained my composure when I hear her crying. I told her to move on. Find someone else, but she said no. She told me that I was her husband and I will always be her husband. It broke my heart a little. I then had my grandmother go see my cousin so I could talk to him. The second he heard my voice he began to cry and begged me to forgive him. I just asked him why he didn't be a father to Luna? Why he poisoned her against me and he said it was envy. He was in love with Marisol and I took her from him. When I was arrested, he console her. Manipulated her, and barely last a second with her and she realized what she was doing and shove him off of her, but he already came.
When she found out she was pregnant, he knew the baby was his. They both knew. It was supposed to be a secret. Marisol took her double hysterectomy as God's punishment for her infidelity and deceit. When Luna turned thirteen, he was drunk. Seeing my life, and envy was the one sin he couldn't shake. So he wanted to ruin it... and he did. I told him when we see each other again in Hell, I will be his eternal torturer and hung up on him. Joslin was there for me, she told me that everything will be okay.
Luna and I commented through email. I spoke to her on the fourth, she spent over an hour crying while talking to me. I even spoke to her boyfriend who asked me permission to marry her. I thought it was funny, but honorable. My wedding is next month and Joslin wants me to invite Luna. At the same time, Luna wants me to give her away for her wedding in November. My future father-in-law sat me down and told me that he couldn't grasp my situation, but respect the road I took. Because the road save his little girl, gave him a handsome grandson, and a future son-in-law that he would kill for. That made me laugh. But he told me that I need to let go of the anger and start forgiving, but never forget. He's right.
So we gave Luna an invite to my wedding, even offered to pay for the plane ticket, her boyfriend or should I say fiancé said that he will work it off at my garage when they arrive... I kinda like him. As for me giving her away. I don't know yet, let's see how the wedding happens first. Thank you again for the advice and the few DM's. No one was rude or disrespectful. You guys helped me so much. I'll update if something happens, but for now, I have to get things ready for my wedding next month.
"FINAL" UPDATE:
A lot has happened in such a short window. Again, I would like to thank the large number of support within the DM's. Of course there were hate messages, but all I could say to those people, what you would've done and what I did are two different mindsets; and until you go through the same situation or something similar - don't tell me how I should've felt. Leading up to the wedding I was already on eggshells. Joslin was the happiest I have ever seen, my in-laws were freaking due to the number of people that were coming. I swear, I think the whole town came. While all of this was happening, I was an hour and a half away in Boise waiting for Luna and her family at the airport. In the days leading up to her visit, we spoke. A lot. Her mostly crying, apologizing and me just listening. When she couldn't speak anymore, I was talking to her fiancé who is more down to earth.
When their plane landed, I was so scared. Not for seeing her again, but I was afraid due to my anger. I was afraid that I would lose my temper. The second she saw me at the terminal, she ran to me, crying and for a split second, I saw my daughter when she was seven. I was weird, picturing a child in my mind. She ran screaming Daddy and the second she hugged me, she began to cry loudly. It was like a wail that caused so many people to look at us. She just kept saying sorry over and over. Asking me to forgive her and I just held her for over fifteen minutes. She refused to let me go. It took her fiancé and I to convince her to do so. It was as if she felt the second she let go, I was going to vanish. After she composed herself, her fiancé properly introduced himself and then they introduced me to their child. I won't lie, I cried. I wasn't angry, but I cried holding this infant. Luna was also the splitting image of her mother when she was nineteen, which made made me wonder about Marisol.
During the drive home we talked about her fiancé's boot camp, how he's going to be a career man, how Luna was going to college online to learn accounting, mostly catching up conversation. When we arrived at my house, Joslin and her family has a spread ready for them. Since we've been together, Joslin learned how to cook Spanish foods, but the week leading up to Luna's visit; she went a little overboard. Yet I get it, she wanted to make an impression. Her and Luna just hit it off, every few minutes Luna would walk towards me just to give me a quick hug and go back to Joslin. I was just holding my son and my... grandson.
While Joslin was introducing Luna to her family, I put the babies to bed and I went to the porch for some fresh air. Luna's fiancé was standing by foot of the yard, staring at all of the bisons roaming around. For a moment I wanted to give him the dad talk, but I felt that it wasn't my place. Instead I asked him how he liked the view and he was awestruck. I know the feeling, living in the city the majority of your life, wide open spaces is a marvel to take in. After a minute or two he looked at me and told me how regretful Luna was. "I've been with your daughter for three years and not a day goes by when she mentioned how much she misses you and regret what she did." out of everything he told me, that single sentence constantly replays in my mind. Her fiancé's name is Roberto for a man who is only nineteen years old he acts and talks like a man in his thirties. That tells me he had a rough life to mature so quickly. I know the feeling.
The following day, I had to go to the shop and Luna practically jumped in the car with the baby. Even Roberto told her it was okay and to enjoy herself. Luna looked like she was going to hyperventilate and I told her that we'll work a half day and I'll spend the rest of the day with her. That seemed to do it and I slowly began to realize how traumatized Luan was. During the drive I asked Roberto how bad was she? she has severe abandonment issues constantly afraid that he's going to leave her, despite him telling her that he will never. She calls him a lot, a bit clingy at times, and in the beginning, afraid to do be herself in fear that they will break up. He had to reaffirm his love for her just so she could let her guard down a little. This was my doing. I know that, but he doesn't blame me. He told me he completely understood why I did what I did.
Allow me to say that Roberto is a terrible mechanic. He knows nothing about cars, so I had him clean up to the shop so he could 'work off' the plane tickets. We closed early and when we arrived, Luna practically ran towards me. She looked unhinged. I told her that I'll be back and she went to her fiancé, when I walked into my house, Joslin told me that Luna needs to be reminded that everything is going to be fine. That I won't leave her again. I didn't know what to say, but Joslin grabbed my hands and told me that Luna is hurting and she needs her father.
For the next couple of days I spent all of my time with Luna. Getting reacquainted with her. I took her to my in-laws ranch and showed her the Bison's, the Elks, and took her on a hike. Two days before the wedding I apologize to her for leaving. I apologize for the way I acted, apologize for the actions I took. She didn't want to hear none of it. She told me that there's nothing that I should apologize for, she said she knows she was the reason why it all fell apart, that she knows it was her fault and I had to stop her. I began to cry, I told her that it wasn't her fault. I was angry, I was hurting and despite what happened, I should be the one who should apologize. We both cried and just held each other.
Luna appeared to be slightly better, on the day of my wedding she was happy. In the last minute, Joslin made her into a bridesmaid and Roberto a groomsman. The wedding was beautiful, during the reception I asked the deejay to play the song from Luna's quince and I asked her to dance with me. She was crying the entire time, holding on to me for dear life as we danced. I haven't felt this happy in a long time. I let Luna and her fiancé stay in my house, taking care of her little brother while I went to Hawaii for my honeymoon. When we got home, she was happy. She hugged us it felt great. Roberto told me that he's going to Camp Dwyer in Afghanistan and would like to know if Luna could stay near us. He would pay for an apartment near us, until he could buy a house. Of course I said yes. They went back to the city the day before yesterday.
Like I said, it's been eventful. Luna's wedding is in November and Roberto is leaving in December. Roberto sent me what constitutes as a years rent for a townhouse community three miles away from my house. However, Joslin suggest we should put a double wide on our property for Luna and let her save her money to buy a house when Roberto comes back. Marisol has been blowing up my phone and based on the messages she left, she's not happy that Luna is moving. Right now, my focus is my family and to mend my relationship with my daughter.
Reminder, I am not OP.

I know that we are young, and I know that you may love me, but I just can’t be with you like this anymore, Alejandro.
La Icona poses, serving face as the intro begins, while Ursulina pulls a handkerchief out of her titty and begins a grand exaggeration of tearing up while mouthing the words.
You know that I love you boy, hot like Mexico, rejoice.
Icona begins walking across the stage similarly to how she did her runway walk.
At this point I’ve got to choose, nothing to lose.
Ursulina points at Icona with mock incredulity, then back at herself, and smiles.
Don’t call my name, don’t call my name, Alejandro.
The chorus hits, and Ursulina begins to dance like a mother at a quinceanera - kooky, a little awkward, but full of energy and purpose, while Icona…keeps on runway walking.
Stop, please, just let me go.
Ursulina falls to her knees, as if begging, while Icona stands over her, eyes focused right on Alejandra, who raises an eyebrow.
Alejandro, Alejandro.
Ursulina stands up and waves her handkerchief wildly, as if calling out to a spurned lover.
Ale-Alejandro Ale-Alejandro.
While Icona…does one more runway walk across the stage.
…
Thank you, monarchs. I’ve made my decision.
Ursulina Ultimo, shantay you stay.
Ursulina smiles and clasps her hands together. “Thank you, judges.”
La Icona, you are a beautiful queen, who I have no doubt will live up to her name. Now, sashay, away.
“You mean I don’t already?” Icona mock gasps, causing a few to chuckle, before doing one last runway walk to the back of the stage. “Alright, peace!”
La Icona: “Well, that wasn’t how the fantasy was supposed to go. Like, whatever, Alejandra clearly didn’t wasn’t dazzled by my impeccable beauty and expensive lewks. Even the most iconic will always have haters.” She tongue pops. “For you Iconarinas out there, though, I’ll see you on the runway!”
Lipstick Message: Haters will hate…lovers will follow me on Instagram! XOXO
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The monarchs enter the werkroom after the elimination.
“Well that was…fun?” Ursulina laughs. “Honestly, I’m not sure what you kids these days get out of performing like that.”
“Oh, come now, mother, you did great,” Yarelis smirks.
Yarelis Blac: “Okay, I’m embellishing a little. Mother Ursulina did passable. Enough to send Icona home, even if that bar was buried as deep as Rupaul’s grave.” She chuckles. “But let’s be real here, I would have smoked both of those bitches with my hands tied behind my back.”
“That was so exciting!” Marge claps her hands. “But poor Icona…”
“More like good riddance, if you ask me,” Navimadre rolls her eyes. “That one clearly was only in this for the fame grab, nothing more.” “Aren’t we all though?” Valencia smirks. “Like, these are the Olympics of Drag for a reason. This is the best way to build up your brand.”
“But underneath that comes the implication that you at least have some passion for the competition,” Navi grumbles. “Kids these days, I swear.”
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I hope to never do this again,” Ursulina grins as she wipes the makeup off of the mirror. “Let someone else be the lip sync assassin of the season, because I don’t want it!”
Margarita Mont. Blanc: “So much for a dependable ally, I suppose. But the old bitch did have a point - passion in the art is a must if you’re competing for the crown, and though she was the only one here with…standards, I suppose, Icona ended up being more of a mannequin than a real threat. Pretty, plastic, only good at standing there and looking pretty and plastic.” She smirks. “But now, I don’t have to worry about sharing the spotlight. And the rest of these bitches?” She waves a hand dismissively. “They don’t know what’s coming.”
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The racers enter the werkroom the next day with varying levels of excitement - Margarita, Ana, Keanna, and Nizhoni looking subdued, while Ursulina, Marge, and Yarelis are full of energy while Keanna and Navimadre toe the line between the two.
Marge N Charge: “It’s a new day in the werkroom - god, I can’t believe I’m finally saying that on live television, ahhhh! - but anyway, it’s a new day in the werkroom and I’m still here!” She pumps a fist in the air. “And I’m so excited to see what comes next.”
“So what do we think we’ll get to do today?” Marge asks peppily.
Marge N Charge: “And if I can get some outside opinions as to what other people are looking forward to, well, maybe I can see who’s good at what and use that knowledge accordingly!” She winks. “To help myself, of course! What, do you take me for a saboteur?” She gasps. “Marge, the villain? Scary.” She shudders.
“Honestly, at this point?” Yarelis shrugs. “Who fucking knows. Talent shows are almost always reserved for All-Stars, yet Alejandra throws it at us day one. For all I know today we’re gonna build a shrine to Gaga herself.”
“Oooooh,” Marge replies, starry eyed.
LET’S GO GAGA!
The sirens sound, and the monarchs cheer. Well, most of them do, anyway.
FOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRR…ALEJANDRA!
BAM! The door opens, and Alejandra cartwheels out, dressed in a tank top and short shorts that seem to come from her own merch.
Hello, my racers, and welcome - officially - to week two!
The monarchs all cheer this time.
Now, if you know me, then you know I love to sing and dance my gay little heart out! Even today, I live live live for a performance. So today, we’re going to get you guys all geared up for a musical!
Some monarchs cheer. Others look around nervously.
Yarelis Blac: “Well, shit. A musical episode two? When I can’t sing to save my life?”
Now, unfortunately, I could not secure the rights to Gaga: The Musical. Something something about how it’s already been done on Season Four and how Dulce would sue if we brought that up again and-oh, I’m just kidding! Not every challenge will have Gaga themes about it - I am versatile these days! Alejandra winks. Rather, this season, we’ll be celebrating arguably the most famous woman to hail from our wonderful little island nation - the one, the only, Jennifer Lopez!
Now, you will be lip-syncing in this particular instance-
Yarelis Blac: “Oh, thank god. That I can do.” She winks
-but you will be dancing your little hearts out on the main stage in real time, filling one of nine fantabulous roles from across J.Lo’s life and career. And Ursulina Ultimo, as the winner of last week’s lip sync, you will have the power to assign these roles!
Ursulina Ultimo: “Ooooooh, power.” She grins evilly, clasping her fingers together, before dropping the act. “I’m just kidding. I’ve always played fair since my childhood days, and one drag competition won’t change that.” She winks. “Those that have roles that fit them, will get them. The rest will be decided by my best judgment - though, if I keep arguably the strongest part to myself, well, then teehee!”
Ursulina assigns the roles as follows:

1. Nizhoni Ariel Santana as Young Jennifer
2. Margarita Mont. Blanc as Broadway J.Lo
3. Yarelis Blac as On the 6 Era J.Lo
4. Keanna Loch as This is Me…Then Era J.Lo
5. Marge N Charge as Movie Star J.Lo
6. Navimadre as American Idol Judge J.Lo
7. Anacaona as Love? Era J.Lo
8. Ursulina Ultimo as Triple Threat J.Lo
9. D.J. Valencia as Ben Affleck

Margarita Mont. Blanc: “Ursulina, putting herself as the triple threat the week after she lip synced for doing what she’s known best for? Don’t make me laugh.” She snorts. “But she had the right idea, giving me the role of the Broadway star. This win is mine for the snatching. Easy.”
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As the monarchs prepare for their “Night of 1000 J.Los” runway, Nizhoni and Marge chat.
“You seem more upbeat than you were the other day,” Marge comments.
Nizhoni gives a shy smile. “Well, you know how it is. Nerves and all, being in a room full of all these well-established drag artists, realizing that you’re hopelessly out of your depth…” She shudders. “Like, me and Icona were the youngest here by a long shot, and we saw what happened to Icona, so for that entire first week I was just kicking myself, thinking “Oh Nizhoni, why couldn’t you have been more patient? Why couldn’t you have waited a few more years?”
“And what changed?” Marge asks as she applies her lipstick.
Nizhoni laughs. “Well, then I got to dance for the first two episodes, which is the one thing that I’m like, really good at, in or out of drag. So it’s probably all downhill from here.” She shudders.
“Well hey, you never know what could happen.” Marge shrugs. “Sometimes, us baby monarchs really hit our growth spurt on these shows, you know? Yeah, okay, some of us end up like Icona did, way in over our heads and out the door right out of the gate, but then some of us end up like Huntress Harubani and end up winning the whole damn competition as well.” She chuckles. “Hell, the number of monarchs that I’ve seen that use Drag Race as their personal therapy or growth arcs in their life are already plentiful, so who says we can’t join them?”
“Well, yeah,” Nizhoni frowns. “But there’s still all of that imposter syndrome there too, you know? I placed safe doing what I do best last week, and it’s not like there’s going to be another dancing challenge after this one, so…” She sighs. “Honestly, part of me wishes I had waited for whenever Virtual Drag Race: South America gets announced.”
“South America?” Marge asks.
“Yeah. I’m actually Columbian, originally. Parents are from there - was born there, actually - before they immigrated here to Puerto Rico when I was five. And like, that’s long enough for me to consider myself Puerto Rican, but that doesn’t change the fact that-”
“-you feel like you have a foot in two different worlds?” Marge finishes. When Nizhoni nods, she smiles. “I’m the opposite, myself. Born here in Puerto Rico, but then my mama got a job in the States and moved us all there when I was in elementary school. And it’s funny, because you hear on the news and such of Puerto Rico technically being part of the States, but not actually as a state and instead it’s really just its own sovereign island nation that’s both separate and not at the same time, and you thrust that on a gay teenager trying to find a home, an identity, something that he can relate to?” She laughs. “Point is, you don’t have to choose. You can be proud of your Colombian roots and consider yourself a proud Puerto Rican at the same time, because you are. And you-” she pauses putting on her wig to point at Nizhoni. “-are a talented drag artist who has every right to be here as any of the rest of us.”
Nizhoni sighs, but there’s a hint of a smile behind it. “I guess. Thank you though.” She applies her eyeshadow to her left eye. “That did help.”
“Sometimes, all you need is an old has-been yapping away in your ear to remind you younguns that the things you’re worrying about now won’t always worry you in the future.” Marge winks. “And hey, us baby queens have to stick together, no?”
When Nizhoni smiles this time, it’s for real.
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Who wins?
Spreadsheet
Stats Spreadsheet

Hey folks, no one was done a dedicated post on Lara this week and it seems so necessary (I mean as necessary as posting a long winded theory post about a Superhero TV show can be). This is less a single theory and a collection of theories that I have been thinking about as well as some things that have made their way down in threads, but I thought it would be fun to roll them up in a single post.
Background
Before I go through in too depth, I wanted to recap a few things we learned in season one about Lara Lor-Van just to level the playing field.
As we all know, Lara Lor-Van is Clark’s Kryptonian mother. As we learned in S1E10, Lara Lor-Van was originally genetically matched with Zeta-Rho (Tal-Rho’s father). What was left out in the episode (along with a few other things) was that Tal-Rho and the rest of the babies born on Krypton were pod babies while Clark was the first natural birth in generations. The writer of this episode Adam Mallinger explains this here. More importantly, Lara was the scientists behind the technology for both the Eradicator and the Sunstones, though she only ever envisioned the technology being used to perverse Krypton’s culture and never expected to take over another people.
In the 10th episode, Lara reveals that her sunstone was stolen by Zeta-Rho which is why Clark never found it. In S1E13, we learn that Lara’s sunstone is on earth and at a minimum Zeta-Rho knows where it is. Tal-Rho asks to speak to his mother and Zeta-Rho denies this request. Interestingly enough, in the same episode, Sarah talks about finding her sense of belonging by talking to her Abuelita (Grandmother) about stories from Mexico even though her family has been in Smallville for generations. Given the Cushings are usually going through a similar struggle as the Lane-Kent family, it feels to glaring to ignore the parallels. (On a super tangent, this is the same Episode where Jonathan makes a vague comment to John Henry about “Not knowing what he is”.)
Finally, the season one finale left us with some interesting information about sunstone and the Eradicator work together. Prior to the finale, I was assumed that what happened with the sunstones and what happened in the Eradicator, happened separately. I had recently compared it to software. I had assumed that the Eradicator and sunstone where like two different hard drives on two different computers with the same operating system. Even though they start out with the same information, any updates done to one hard drive does not impact they other. The finale actually showed us the opposite. Lois was able to see Zeta-Rho’s sunstone memories in Jordan’s eradicated mind. This means that the Eradicator and Sunstones were operating off the same database so to speak and as the Sunstones learned new information, the Eradicator was also updated with the same information. (With that being said, I also think this may have been to save money on production, it meant that they could show Zeta-Rho’s memories without having to recreate Krypton, so this may end up being an inconsistency in the show down the line.)
So, with this background, it seems exceedingly likely that Lara will show up. There was no purpose in revealing that Lara Sunstone was on earth besides foreshadowing it was on earth. It is certainly not a red herring (even though this show has had plenty) because it does not serve to misdirect the audience. There was no payoff to that particular misdirection, at least I do not think there was. If you do, I would be interesting in hearing why and how.
Lara and The Visions
This is my most favorite theory, but also the one that feels the least likely. I like this idea that Lara is actually causing the visions with her sunstone. The thing that makes the visions particularly interesting is that Clark is the only one having them, at least as far as we know. They are no effecting either of the boys, which means it’s unlikely whatever is doing them can reach all Kryptonians. They cannot be solely sound based, because again, it would mean that Jordan would also be hearing them. Clark is being specifically targeted. The other thing to note is that these visions are volatile. If this were an experienced villain like Manchester Black, Clark would not even realize he was having the visions. Instead, these are noticeable, violent, disruptive. These feel more like a call for help then anything. They sometimes happen with the Earthquakes, but the first time was somewhere off the coast of North Korea, far away from Smallville.
The sunstone makes sense because we have seen Jor-El’s sunstone react uniquely to Clark. In the flashback episodes, we see the Sunstone glow when Clark touches it. That does not happen when Jordan touches it or when Edge grabs it to destroy it. Given that Lara is a geneticist, it makes sense that she somehow coded the sunstone to Clark specifically.
So, between the destruction of the Eradicator, the destruction of Jor-El’s crystal (and the fact it is buried in the front yard), and Clark’s eradication, is there is chance the visions are actually Lara’s sunstone reaching out or has somehow become unstable in everything that has happened. I believe in more whimsical version of the mythos, Clark often learns about Krypton through visions, sometimes brought o by Kryptonite. So, it’s not to far away from the source material for Clark to be having Sunstone induced visions.
Lara created the Monster in the Mines
Whether Doomsday or something else, there is a monster in the mines. I think there is a real chance that Lara helped create this monster. The mines are full of X-K that rained down from Kryton’s destruction, so it is extremely plausible that the monster in the mines rained down with the X-K. The thing that is interesting about X-K that the show did not going into is origins besides that is came from Krypton. In the original mythos, it was originally a synthetic Kryptonite, developed by Supergirl in the Silver age to combat the effects of green Kryptonite. It failed, giving powers instead. X-K certainly got an update for the show with the heat processing and the combination of Eradication but given the show has decided to go back to the mines, I think there is a chance that X-K was manufactured on Krypton, along with the monster, and Lara was the scientists in the middle of it all. (Also side note, what are they doing in the mines, are they still pulling out the X-K or are they mining for something new?)
Now, am NOT I saying Lara is going to be a villain, absolutely not. But, we have already seen technology created by Lara that was meant to be benevolent used maliciously when in the wrong hands. This makes for an interesting story and an interesting dynamic with Lara. Instead of becoming a mild-mannered holographic matriarch that is at the ready to burn the Kryptonite out of her descendants as needed, she is a scientist that is forced to answer to questionable decisions. It gives us a new dynamic that is more than “Jor-El but make him a woman.” I think this would open up a really interesting dynamic and give this character something to do besides be a deus ex machina with mushy family moments. As much as I want a really really mushy moment where Clark takes the boys to the fortress to meet Lara, I also understand what that does not necessarily serve the story. The thing is, Clark does not need Lara the way he needed Jor-El. The only time all last season that Clark needed Jor-El was when they had to burn the Kryptonite out of Jordan. Given that Clark was able to take on Jordan’s heat vision, there may even have been a scenario where Clark could have done that himself, he just did not want to for obvious reasons.
So, in Summary on this one, is there a chance that the Monster in the mines was created by Lara? Could Clark’s relationship with his new found Kryptonian mother be fraught by unethical scientific practices.
When do we meet Grandma Lara?
I have been thinking the 5th episode for a long time for a few reasons. The first is that it is again written by Adam Mallinger who gave us Lara last time, so it is not unreasonable he would be assigned to write Lara’s second introduction on the show. In addition, the 5th episode is Sarah’s Quinceanera episode. It makes sense that an episode on heritage and traditions would pair nicely with Clark and the boys meeting Lara. We also now know that Clark’s visions are not going away anytime soon. Whether caused by Lara or something else, I suspect that she is somehow tied into the solution.
Lastly, Clark has not had to struggle without Jor-El yet. If Clark were to find Lara in the next episode, he would miss a valuable opportunity in his own growth as a father. One of the things I think the show does so nicely is show us how Clark really had to embrace all of his identities as a dad. The boys need Clark to be Clark, Superman, and Kal-El at different times. Part of losing Jor-El, gives Clark the opportunity to become a Kryptonian father, which I think is important. Clark needs to start to fill the role Jor-El filled in his life for his own boys. A lot of the first season was Clark emulating Jonathan Kent Sr. (The broken trust speech, the log scene, the skipping school lecture) and while that will remain important, it is equally important that he serve the role of both his fathers for his own boys. Finding Lara too soon or making her too useful detracts from that.
Where in the world is Lara Lor-Van
This is not my original thought but something someone else brought up way down in another thread. Where exactly is Lara’s sunstone. If her sunstone was in Tal-Rho’s fortress, why did Tal-Rho not just use it. How was Zeta-Rho preventing that from happening, given he was just a hologram. Is the Sunstone in another location on earth that neither Tal-Rho nor Clark knows about? Is there a chance Clark learns about the sunstone in the next episode but ends up on a multi episode quest to find it?
How do you see Clark finding Lara’s Sunstone happening? Do you think this is a given or is this the weirdest red herring in history?

Hey folks, this was meant to be a reply in a comment on the interview that came out today, but then I wrote too much and there were too many characters, but I still wanted to share my thoughts. So u/majorcarter_sg1, here is the response you had asked for.
We are all starting to get frustrated with the bad promotional materials. For some, there is not enough Superman, for other's there is frustration around the potential, and likely overplayed Lois and Clark drama, that is very likely quickly dealt with. For others, there is already not enough Jonathan based on the promo materials alone. As requested, here is a running list of things that I can remember being bad in the season one promo materials.
- Leading into the third episode, they Paint fight (Which was about one of the most lovely family moments of the season, in my opinion) looked like it was going to be a big superpowered, tantrum, freak out from Jordan, when really it was just a nice moment with Clark and Jordan roughhousing
- The 4th Episode, the promo had a few over the top misdirects. The first was when Clark and the boys were playing football and you have Jonathan kind of turning away from the camera as Clark threw the football. Just by the trailer, it looked like Clark was absolutely ignoring Jonathan, when in fact Jonathan had just made a catch and Clark was about to have a conversation with Jonathan. Say what you will about everything that happened in that scene but the promo played it off as way worse then it was.
-Also, the 4th episode, teased Jordan yelling at Jonathan about not needing dad to help Tag (I actually think what was used in the promo and what made it on screen was actually a different take because it was way different in the promo), because it was not even close to as angry as it actually was
-Heading into the 6th episode, there was a bunch of promo material, and again, I remember thinking how horrible Jonathan's story sounded going in, like I remember them kind of teasing more jealousy around Jonathan, and again, I was really pleased where things went. (I know, Jonathan had a rough arc, but this is not really about that, not this time).
-I also think this Helbing interview interview is worth a read as well, this came out in advance of the 6th episode. it is certainly factual, but I don't think it does a very good job of explaining what was going to happen and kind of plays up some of the stuff around Jordan.
-The whole log scene heading into the 6th episode looked really dramatic but it was actually a light hearted training scene
-The Season promo released ahead of the 6th episode featured a lot of footage from the bank robbery, because it looked great on camera and was really just an action scene to fill out the Superman exposition, but had little to do with the season. Also, the 9th episode had the DoD pulling up and it seemed like the DoD was coming for the Lane-Kent family when it was actually just B-reel of the aftermath of the subjekts.
-Heading into the 14th episode, it was heavily teased that Jonathan would be teaming up with John Henry Irons, which then created the massive panic that Jonathan was going to become kid steel , which was had really unsettling implications of giving a white boy a Superhero role that should go to a girl of color, only for Natalie to be reintroduced as a series regular, completely easing that concern.
-In what I think was a Cavanagh interview, (Or maybe Helbing) it was teased that the Lane-Kent family would be tested like they never have been before, and they were but not in the way the interview kind lead on. Like, reading the interview I was kind of dreading what that meant because again, it threatened integrity of the family and again, that never happened.
-I think there was an episode interview with Helbing where he called the Fortress a Mancave for Clark and said it was were Clark went to get away, but that was never how the fortress was presented on the show. The first time we see it, it was a place where Clark took Jordan to share their heritage and try to figure out the powers thing. In ever other instance, it was kind a place used in emergencies only.
​
Here are a few of the episode descriptions from the first season:
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S1E3:

Clark shares some of his Kryptonian history with Jordan and Jonathan during a family breakfast, and Lois and Chrissy dig deeper to uncover the truth about Morgan Edge.

This really described a single scene in the episode and more importantly, Clark did not share Kryptonian history, he talked through the mechanics of Super hearing.
​
S1E4

Lois and Chrissy spot Morgan Edge conversing with Mayor Dean and Kyle Kushing, and the two see right through his insincere move to try to win over the town; Clark agrees to help Lois out at a town hall meeting.

Again, this was really just describing two scenes, and really did not even get close to touching on the big themes of the episode.
​
S1E7

Clark struggles to help Jordan, who is grappling with a new power; Lois enlists Clark's help, which leads to a surprise encounter.

Again, this was just described a couple of scenes and does not make mention of *Marcus Bridgewater (*Which was the name Lois knew JHI as in this episode)
​
S1E9

Lois, Chrissy and Clark team up to piece together the significance of Smallville to Morgan Edge.

This literally just described the opening montage, and besides for he opening montage, Clark actually never really helps. In addition, I remember there being almost no Jordan in the promo besides for Jordan running down the hall at the school to meet Clark. He was not in the pictures, etc.
​
S1E10

Lana reaches out to Lois and Clark when Kyle starts behaving strangely; Jonathan opens up to Jordan; Sarah storms out after accusing her mom of always covering for her dad.

This was actually just wrong, Lana never reached out to Lois and Clark, Lois shows up at Lana's house and punches Kryptonian Kyle. Jonathan does open up to Jordan, but it was just scene, and not as impactful as we were hoping.
​
S1E11

Clark makes a startling discovery about Morgan Edge.

Nope, Edge actually makes a starling discovery about Clark. Also, doesn't mention anywhere that this is the flashback episode which was actually the huge draw here. Also, most of the promo material where just Lana, Lois and Kyle in the Cushing's Kitchen, and I am okay just saying that was the least interesting and impactful scene in the episode. Like, they probably could have taken it out and the episode would have played just fine.
​
S1E14

Lois is worried about Jordan as he and Sarah continue to grow closer; Clark pays Lana a visit; Jonathan spends more and more time with John Henry.

This was the episode description that started the Kid Steel Panic.
​
By comparison, when you look at the back channel materials, things that either cast and crew post or things that are leaks, the picture tends to be a lost more positive.
- There were a ton of "leaks" from episode 11, which showed The Atom Man and the Fleischer. While Adam Mallinger, who is a writer, recently tweeted that these were real leaks, I do think this was a set up given these images were pretty great and came right as the 8 week COVID Hiatus was really starting to drag on. It also meant people were psyched going into the 11th episode because we saw these
- Again, we got the battle of Metropolis "Leaks" during the second COVID Hiatus, and those actually seemed to be a little more invigorating then the actually official materials.
-Jordan Elsass kept posting flirty pictures Kayla Heller (Tegan) that seemed to be popular and kind of drove up engagement and made people want to know more about that story.
-While we don't know the payoff this season, we have seen early pictures and videos on Jonathan playing football, all the quinceanera pictures which look great and make me way more excited than anything official and of course the Tire swing tease.
​
So in general, I think the the things that come through social/ unofficial channels have always made me feel better about this show then things that have come through. I think part of the issue is that this show tries to be overly cautious with promos and fixates on the least interesting story, least impactful story to create drama without spoiling what's really going to happen. So, we get cagey half answers, which just make people more nervous.
​
The other thing is that Promo materials have been coming out at a slow trickle for almost a month now and next week is going to be a massive ramp up, with more interviews and I expect that Jordan and Alex hit the road on a mini virtual press tour.
The other thing to note, is that this season is starting at a weird time. With the Olympics taking up most of February, the options for the show were to either air the first chunk of episodes before the Olympics in January or wait until almost after March until the Olympics concluded. I think this show will likely be a fall show for the 2022-2023 season, following a more traditional TV season, the network needed this show to air in early January. This made promoting the show particularly tricky. If the show premiered later in the year, promotional material would not have kicked off until the new year and it probably would have been condensed down to just a couple of weeks. Since this show is airing in early January, the Network needed to leverage the Flash and start promoting the show over a month before it aired.
That has meant a prolonged promotional cycle unlike anything I have seen (Since I did not join in until after the pilot aired). Even during the COVID hiatus, the show pretty much just went away for 6 out of the 8 weeks. So now, instead of a bunch of questionable promotional material coming down the pipe very quickly, it has been a nearly non stop, daily trickle of things no one is interested in.
This show has stepping into a perfect storm of bad promo for a month, after not being good at promoting it's self to start with.
I have one, slightly positive prediction. I think there is a very fair chance we get a new longish trailer on Tuesday. The show likely needs to reengage after the holidays and the CW seems to be going all out of promotion is a way they are not doing for Naomi, so I think there is an extremely good chance the network was another trailer up their sleeves, hopefully one that is better than what we have been seeing.
Sorry guys, this was a bit of a ramble, but I wanted to share how consistently bad the promotional materials have been even when the show has been good.
Edit: What other promotional materials have you seen that have made you not exactly excited for an episode, only to be pleasantly surprised when the episode actually aired?
Edit: There is also a good chance that most of the over bloated episode description for the first episode is actually just the first 10 minutes of the episode. Literally just everyone's exposition.

Hey it's me arvar, back with another review:
Intro: In the series of reviews that will begin here; we are going to try and take a critical look at the Legacies series, especially the unfolding of the story as scene through the teleplay onscreen. In this case; we are assuming multiple things about a potential watcher:

1. There is no foreknowledge of any of the events that have happened in The Vampire Diaries (TVD) or The Originals (TO) as part of this review. (There will be times where I specifically point out a call back to the original series if I was able to research it, but I would rely on other fans to inform/educate myself and others for any of those components I have missed that enhance the viewers' experience.
2. A viewer is only capable of watching the show on Netflix and only in singular progression. I will not (unless really necessary) point information out that will become known in later episodes and I would appreciate any comments to be spoiler free. I say this as a person who will be writing these reviews having seen every episode available on Netflix to date, but none of the new episodes available on the CW. As an addendum here, only cannon is show cannon unless readers again educate otherwise.
3. I will be assuming some familiarity with colloquial mythology and mythological creatures. This is to help us use the visual medium as a means of contextual clues to understand the story at a deeper level that would not be available with just text. This also means I will attempt to keep the exposition minimized on relational creatures.

What is this all for: This started as a project to improve my critical reviewing skills on a hobby of screenplay and movie script writing and analysis. I have done some detailed reviews on my favorite TV show, Chuck, but having gotten invested in the Legacies story, and wanting a break from my writing woes, I wanted to attempt to take the skills I have begun to develop and apply them to the Legacies TV show. Having said this; it should be known I have no affiliation to the show, no additional insider knowledge, and I do not write scripts for a living. So, consequently, feel free to ignore everything I say :). I do Hope, however, that we can go on this journey together and as I improve we can all appreciate the show together.
So lets get started
01x06 - Mombie Dearest
Before we start; this was the best episode of Legacies by FAR!
Teaser:

• The introduction of the zombie bride, the ominous music, the way we can see the veil and the wedding ring, the while dress, the elongated fingernails, but no other features, then we see the camera behind the dress walking down a hallway in the school and then transition to Alaric talking to Caroline. This was all really great camera work from the slow introduction to the way we are shown clues to guess who this is, but not actually explicitly state it. The only thing I would say is that having the camera top angled up or down instead of head on would be much better. One thing that I've seen in other shows is that for the "good guys" we see more angles from the top down whereas the "bad guys" are from the bottom up. Something like this would be interesting framing for each monsteschool shot as a way to show the viewers information without stating unnecessary information. For instance, in this case we are led to believe that the hallway is that to Alaric's office, but we don't know it until the next scene.
• I admit I cheated here and went back to TVD to see if the dress was recognizable and discovered the pearls, the embroidery, the make of the gown, even the blood splatter was identical to TVD. This was a really cool throwback where if you know you know, but if you don't it doesn't detract from the episode itself. When i talk about wanting clues from previous shows, but not making it mandatory to have seen the rest of TVDU this is what I mean. Also whoever plays Jo is so much better than Matt Davis!

ACT I:

• " I was sort of, um ... Yanked awake" screams spells that raise the dead IE necromancy! (a person who uses witchcraft or sorcery, especially to reanimate dead people or foretell the future by communicating with them.

The word necromancy was adapted from necromantia - from the Greek nekros (dead body) and manteia (divination). The compound form was first used by Origen of Alexandria in the 3rd Century CE and in the 17th Century English. Homer's Odyssey is the oldest literary account of necromancy under the direction of Circe, Odysseus travels to the underworld to gain insight about his impending voyage home by raising the spirits of the dead through spells Circe taught him. I''m not going to go into all the places Necromancers have been throughout society; that would take forever.
The mythological origin of zombies is not clear though they have been part of western culture for centuries. Mary Shelley’s 1818 Fankenstein introduced harvesting body parts, HP Lovecraft’s Herbert West: Reanimator (1921 a doctor concocts a potion to revive corpses, American literature WB Seabroook The Magic Island 1929 also inspired the film White Zombie. This also went on to such things as I am Legend (1954) Stephen King Cell (2006) … let’s just say Zombies in some form have been around for hundreds of years and are pervasive in SciFi culture.

• Speaking of contrasting the therapy between Hope and Emma here compared to the previous round, we see Emma still being formal, but becoming less of a teacher and more of a "friend", while Hope basically became a hyperactive girly-girl. Hope has done a complete transformation from the first time. Before she leaned back, was distant, introverted, argumentative, but now she is chippy, talkative, bubbly almost. I really like how DRR switches from I'm bubbly to "Oh my God, Who am I right now" to straight faced I must be the protector of the school in a matter of seconds.
• You can practically see the hamster wheels turning in Hope’s head as Raf says he is Lizzie’s date.
• I also want to talk about how Josie reacts to Lizzie saying she had sex. The way she puts her head down, is seemingly withdrawn, and Lizzie not recognizing this. It helps the narrative that Lizzie gets whatever she wants, and yet Josie really wants more. This was also one of those times I wanted Lizzie to just keep her big mouth shut for Josie’s sake. This is followed by Penelope overtly needling both girls, even though she normally pushes Lizzie's buttons, int this instance we are led to believe that she is really talking to both of them (the double cupcakes don't hurt).
• I'm Josette Laughlin, almost Saltzman. No. Jo Laughlin is dead. I'm well aware. It's not every day you get murdered at your shotgun wedding. - This was perfect. This is Mystic Falls. I'm not exactly the first person to be brought back from the dead. Yeah, well, things have gotten a little complicated around here lately. … So I know this must be a call back to something else that happened in TVDU and probably not a throw-away line. I like that Josette says this because she would have this history closer to the front of her mind unlike Alaric, but also if she says it then a viewer can ignore it if they don’t get the reference as just something Josette says, but if Alaric said this; I feel like I would have to have some explanation otherwise the line would feel really important and yet unfinished.

ACT II:

• She couldn't compel a pilot and hop on a private jet? - Well since I didn’t know before now; I certainly know that Caroline is a vampire. Otherwise this wouldn’t be possible.
• [daube I think is what they say to unlock Alaric’s office. But I don’t know why they didn’t say “dissero” for undoing a physical lock, “dissera portus” for unlocking a passage with locks or chains, or even aperta for open, which they have used before too. they seem to be making up things now as I have no idea what daube might mean or come from]
• I want to point out one thing here that I really enjoyed. Watch Josette’s actions while Josie gets the picture and looks at it with Lizzie. First she raises her hand to her mouth and gasps, then she gets a distant look on her face, then she has a realization these are her kids and she almost starts to cry. This acting while other things are happening and not really in focus is something I complained about with Rafael in the pilot and goes to the experience of Josette. This is making use of your camera time while not in focus to add to the story and not just stand there waiting for your lines!
• How do you know all this stuff? One of my aunts has been around for more than a thousand years. This kind of thing is her jam. - It’s about time they at least MENTIONED Hope’s family is basically eternal and that she learned SOMETHING from them. Not quite what I would hope they say she learned, but I’ll take it for now. Also Rafael things that Lizzie having a quinceanera and being taught how to survive the rules of 18th Century Spain is Sheldon Cooper levels of boredom.
• The look at Hope gives Rafael after he says he slept with her… I’m not sure if that’s shock, amusement, what’s with the open mouth agape thing? Also the fact that Raf basically says he he honor bound to do this because he slept with her – when ordinarily that wouldn’t necessarily mean this – when really he SHOULD have said because I made a deal about Landon, is more Rafael being Arthurian evidence.
• Oh, that was just for Lizzie, who is taking Rafael as her date instead of you. So why are you doing all this to try and make her party perfect? 'Cause a man's got to shoot his shot. Oh, my God. No. I can't take it anymore. As your friend, I demand that you retrieve your little MG's from Lizzie's grip. Not when I can taste victory. - MG common dog, stop it already.

ACT III:

• Dorian is surprisingly good at research… how would he know what book to get that even had pictures off something so innocuous as “being yanked back into being?” I mean I’m good, I’m not that good - I guess the power of television intelligence strikes again.
• Also “yanked”, “resurrected”, bodies attacking a village without memory… does this not scream necromancy to anyone?
• I saw a chance to make Lizzie suffer and, uh... I shot my shot. - Nice of Penelope to use the same language as MG from earlier. I’m guessing this would not be part of her regular vocabulary otherwise!
• See? You have crawled so far down the co-dependence rabbit hole that you think taking care of yourself is selfish. But it's not. So when are you gonna take care of you? I take care of myself just fine. Oh, really? Party starts in five. It's a shame you spent all of that time helping Lizzie get ready. - I’m still a huge fan of Penelope because I think she speaks the truth as we the viewers get to SEE the world unfold even if it’s contrary to the words/actions that happen amongst the characters. I’m not sure if this is Penelope really poking at Josie, when other times it’s clear she is trying to hurt her, so much as Penelope showing she actually does have a heart and does like Josie, but in her own twisted view, this is her way of showing it.
• The mirror reflection of zombie mom while she reads the book and NEVER sees it is great. Really helps the viewers to see what’s coming and that she is a zombie, but never sacrifices this for the sake of the show. I love it when the use of the visual medium allows for context clues without betraying it within the show.
• Since when did Hope suddenly grow up and become full of wisdom and actually share relationship advice with people? I mean it’s nice to see, but it seems atypical for her; unless she is comfortable with Rafael, which I guess being locked behind a barrier spell for 12 hours would do.
• I really like how when Jo gets to far from the school she falls down and suddenly the music and entire tone of the show changes. We went from a party to something ominous/scary. Then Josie stops when Jo stands up and turns to see Jo suddenly have “super zombie speed”. (so this would be a later adaptation of zombies as earlier zombies were slow and feeble looking for brains whereas later versions were smarter, faster, and stronger than normal humans)

ACT IV:

• Family is always and forever. Yeah, you're right. He's not my blood, but he is my brother. - Hope throws that saying around, which sucks considering what I’ve been told she is up to currently. I also like how Raf talking about friends and family with Hope really got to her. It’s almost like you can start to see cracks in her shell, but only when she talks to people she thinks she can trust.
• Sorry, no time for bitchy banter. Actually... I could use your help finding Josie. - What happened? - Apparently, her possessed biological mother buried her alive in the cemetery. - Hope shut that down hard… but realizing she needs help stops; this seems like growth for her not doing everything herself. The line “possessed biological mother buried her alive in the cemetery” is a mouthful and yet oddly I like it.
• ♪ Everything she does just turns me on / Even though my life before was tragic... ♪ I like how they split the dance across multiple acts here and as the song only plays during the dance compared to the different theme altogether with Hope/Penelope/MG. I also like how they use the song and Raf being honorable together to tell a story. The ending of “where’s my sister” and then the cut to MG in the woods was really nice visuals. Like Lizzie feels heartbroken and she finally realizes she needs Josie, but she hasn’t been around since the beginning.
• Make quiet things heard. - Oh man if this isn’t the perfect symbolism for a necklace for Josie to wear. I like this and all the sub layers it implies.
• Hope and Raf dancing to a cover of men without hats: safety dance… common now that’s just great.

ACT V:

• ♪ I wish that I could stay / Forever ♪ The song that’s playing while Jo gives advice to the twins and they gets siphoned is a really nice touch here.
• “be good to each other, fight for each other.” this could have been the basis for a resolution to the thing that happens when they turned 22… it could have been an epic tale taking an entire season I was so disappointed.
• A dark figure appears just as Alaric described. The necromancer (probably the best character in the show besides Hope appears). - also called it :p.

This episode was great, the filming of the zombies was really nice, all the scenes with Josett were really well done and really conveyed a feeling of loss and the dual role she finds herself in. I think my scene of the night was the ending scene where Josett consoles Josie and Lizzie. I also really liked how they transition back and forth between the upbeat dance and the life-or-death zombie rescue of Josie. Overall the episode gets a 6/10, but the scenes with Josett get an 8/10. Next time we get to delve into the mind of a necromancer, I bet this should be awesome.
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Now a question: Do you guys still like me releasing these, are they interesting, do you want me to talk about different things or maybe less commentary? Let me know so I can focus the time - value! - Arvar

I've been stalking these subreddits for a while and I thought just reading people's stories would help me. Or If I found someone with a similar situation and I could see how they did it, but I guess my situation is unique. So here we go.
First, let me be clear. I don't care if you think this is fake. I don't care if you want to rip me a new one after I vent. It already happened. I thought I was okay. I thought I moved on, but after last weekend. It all came back and that anger I had back then just came in full force and even though I'm back home with my fiancé. That anger towards my ex just won't go away. I spent years in anger management for what she did and the situation that was created and I thought I was okay. Right now I just turned 39. I was 18 when I met my ex Marisol. During that time, I was a gangbanger with the Latin Kings. I was in a member since I was thirteen and always in and out of trouble.
Marisol was a church girl. my grandmother dragged me to Sunday Mass and when I saw her, to me, it was love at first sight. I asked my cousin, who was a friend of hers if he could introduce us, but he refused. He didn't want me to mess with her. He didn't want me to "ruin" her. Have you ever met someone that you wanted to make yourself better to be with? Wanted to be that man who would walk the right path? That was her. When I found out that she was going to church almost everyday, I hung out by the steps, talking to her. I always walked her to and from church. She made feel like I wasn't worthless. One thing led to another and we were dating and I felt great. For a year and a half I pushed myself away from the gang life, got my GED, became a regular church goer and was thinking about the future when I got unintentionally pulled back in.
I was at a store and ran into someone that I used to have problems with. They were running their mouths and I tried to ignore it, I swear I did. I just let them talk and I walked away, but then I got stabbed in the shoulder blade and I lost my mind, I beat the shit out of him. I got arrested and suddenly it was like the shit I did to make my life better vanished. Marisol was pissed at me, my grandmother kept bringing up my past mistakes and my cousin was telling me that he knew that I wasn't going to change. My public defender saw me trying to better myself and by the grace of God, got me off after a month in lock up. Despite being angry with me Marisol did visit me almost daily. A month after I got out, I found out I was going to be a father and I didn't want my kid to have a dad that was dead or in jail.
We eloped, I went to a trade school to become a mechanic and I busted my ass for my future family. When Luna was born, it was almost the worst day of my life. Marisol wouldn't stop bleeding. She went into shock and they had to give her a double hysterectomy. She was in the hospital for months and Luna became my world. I wanted her life to be the best, I wanted to give her the world. When Marisol was released, I promised her that our daughter will have a life far better than ours and for years I kept that promise.
I saved enough money to move us to the suburbs, became homeowners, I was girl scout leader if you could believe that. I made sure Luna went to private school, made sure she knew how to defend herself and always made sure I was the perfect husband. I didn't know my parents. Didn't have a positive male role model in my life, so I didn't know what a healthy relationship looked like... that's a lie, T.V. dad's were my male role models and I mimic them and the marriage they had on T.V.
As the years went by I owned my own garage, my cousin became a Pastor, my grandmother was still a pain in my ass, my relationship with my wife was stronger than ever, I made sure I kept my prison body, but Luna... Luna hated me. Since she turned thirteen she just started hating me. She didn't want me to hug her. Rolled her eyes every time I told her I loved her. Ignored me when I ask her about her day in school. It hurt me and Marisol saw it. She told me that she's a teenager and that I should just let it ride. She will come back to me. For two years it was like that. So for her Quinceanera, I wanted to go all out. Got everything she wanted and she was still disrespectful and briefly the old me almost came out just to put her in her place but instead, I went to my cousin, vented my frustration and doubts about being a good father and he told me to just let her be and he said a prayer for me.
I wanted a slide show for the father-daughter dance. I got a chunk of the the pictures of us together, but I realized I didn't have any recent pictures of us. She didn't want to take any. The last time I had pictures of her and I smiling with me was on her thirteenth birthday and those were on my daughter's broken tablet. I took that tablet, went to a repair shop and I didn't care the cost. I needed that tablet fixed. After a day and three hundred dollars. The tech fixed it and I was happy. I knew her passcode, but I never bothered invading her privacy. I just wanted those pictures and when I opened that tablet and looked in the gallery, there they were. My little girl, smiling and happy to be with me. I felt great. Then the instant messages appeared. It was my daughter talking to my wife. It was a long banter that she didn't want me to dance with her and it did hurt, but like my wife said, she's being a teenager. Then she said something that destroyed me. She texted why she had to do the father-daughter dance with me since I'm not her father.
I felt my heart stopped, I got dizzy, my mouth dried up and I needed to sit down. My wife responded that I raised her, I loved her, and that's makes me her father. But Luna responded by saying that my cousin is her father and she can't wait for her to turn eighteen so she could tell me the truth and she could live with her real dad. That she hated me, that she thanked God that I'm not her father. Marisol began cussing her out. Saying that it was a mistake for my cousin to tell her the truth two years ago and the more they talked, the angrier I was getting. My wife lied to me for fifteen years. My cousin whom I confide my issues about Luna and my fears about being a bad father not only fucked my wife, but had me raise his child. I wanted to hurt them. I felt a mixture of anger, sorrow, grief. I wanted to scream, cry, and die at the same time if that makes any sense.
I went to a dark place and so I wouldn't do anything stupid, I told Marisol that I needed to focus on work so I could pay the Quince and instead I drove to Manhattan and saw my old public defender who wasn't a low level attorney anymore. He had a nice expensive firm near Midtown East. I was surprised that he remembered me, but apparently, I was his first case as a public defender. We sat down and I told him everything. Gave him the tablet and when he turned it on, the messages just kept coming. Only this time, Luna was talking to my cousin, her real father and he was telling her to give me a chance. How I was always there for her, but Luna told him that so was he. How it makes sense that they have so much in common and even called him Papi multiple times in their conversation and he responded and told her that she was his little girl. We went through our options and he asked me what do I want to do? and I told him that I wanted to go full scorched earth. I wanted to poison the well and he asked me several times if that is what I wanted and nodded. I also told him that everything had to be filed before the Quince in two weeks.
So we sat down and spent the next twelve hours on what was needed to be done and I followed his instructions to the letter. I secretly placed my business for sale. Called the private school and told them that I will not be paying for next year. Closed the college accounts, and the savings that I had for Luna and prepared to place my house for sale online. No one was the wiser. I followed his instructions perfectly. There was only one thing I deviated from. The day of the Quince.
That day went off without a hitch. The whole family was there. Luna was smiling, having fun. Marisol kept asking me if I was okay and I lied to her. It was hard lying to her, from the moment I met her, I never lied to her and during those two weeks, every time, I kissed her, held her, made love to her. It was hard not to scream at her. It was hard not to hate her. She knowingly let me raised another man's child. She slept with my cousin, a man who saw as my brother, the godfather of my child, the best man when I eloped, my confidant. So the rage was hard to suppress to say the least.
When it was time for the father - daughter dance, I called her to the center of the stage. She looked annoyed, but walked over. I had the music playing and she smiled and it tore me apart, seeing her smiling at me. For years I wanted to see that smile again and now I didn't want it. As we dance, I had the slide show playing. Pictures of the two of us and towards the end of the song, screen shots of her text messages with her mother and real father.
Needless to say this didn't bode too well. Marisol looked like she saw a ghost, Luna just kept staring at the large screen and my cousin just stared at me with fear. Marisol ran to me and told me that she could explain and I told her that I filed for a divorce. That she could explain it in court. She grabbed my arm, begging me and I pulled back. I told Luna that I busted my ass to give the world, and now she doesn't deserve it. I began to walk out, but not before telling my cousin that every time I see him, I'm going to knock him out, then I knocked him out.
The aftermath was harsh. Marisol and Luna was at my grandmother's apartment. Her family was shocked and disgusted with her, they wanted nothing to do with her. Her father actually apologized to me. I don't know why. He never liked me despite turning my life around. That man hated me, but now I was the perfect husband and father, but just a few days prior I was the "former piece of shit." My grandmother had to audacity to tell me about the story Abraham and how when came back from battle three years later, his wife had a one year old child and he raised him as his own and how I should be like Abraham, so I told her to get the fuck out of my house.
Marisol came a few days later, crying as soon as she saw me, telling me that it was an accident. That when I was arrested she was so angry at me and my cousin was there to console her and one thing led to another and they had sex. It happened only one time and she was faithful to me ever since. She was willing to take a lie detector test to prove it. So I asked her how long she knew Luna wasn't mine and she started crying more. That look she gave me just told me that she knew from day one and asked her to leave. She wanted to go to counseling, telling me that I'm overreacting and we could make it work. It was in the past and I needed to get over it. That I am Luna's father, despite what happened and I allowed my temper to get the best of me. I must've repeated "get over it?" over a dozen times at full volume while grabbing her shit and tossing it out the door. I called her a lying whore. I told her that I didn't want to see her fucking face ever again, and I told her that this life that I built, no longer belongs to her before shoving her out the door.
A couple of weeks went by and she kept blowing up my phone. Not once Luna tried to reach out to me. Marisol was shocked to learn that I sold my business. Even more so when she learned that I had an open house. She came in screaming, telling the viewers to get out of her house and pleading with me to seek help. That I was ruining our marriage. That I had no right to sell our home. The home where we raised out child in and I told her that this house is full of lies. It's a house where I raised another man's child and when I sell it, I will give her half and ordered her to get out before I called the cops. It was a bluff, all she had to do was play the victim and I would've been arrested, but she didn't, she complied. Shortly after this my cousin came to talk to me and I knocked him out, dragged him outside and closed the door.
I refused mediation, Marisol wanted to reconcile, but I didn't. I wanted a divorce and my attorney filed for a fast track divorce and in three months we were in the Nassau county courthouse, I barely spoke to anyone during that time, I read horror stories about the court system, especially during divorce proceedings, but I didn't have that. I had a female judge who was very fair. My attorney took care of everything. First, Marisol's lawyer tried to talk about my past when I was in a gang, as if my past barred a reason for me to be a terrible husband and father, but my attorney quickly smacked that down and the judge reprimanded her attorney for trying to shame someone who turned their life around.
My attorney presented all the evidence and offered a lump sum alimony payment with the pending sales of the house, and business. At first Marisol kept asking me to reconsider, but I ignored her and when she finally realized that I'm not budging she agreed. Yet the real surprise happened when it came to child support. My attorney presented all of the text messages from Luna's conversation with Marisol. Showing that not only Luna knew, I am not her father, but she cannot wait to be with her real father, saying that she no longer has to live a lie. Marisol was completely caught by surprise from this. Then my attorney filed a motion to have my name removed from Luna's birth certificate, have my last name removed as well as not being responsible for any child support since all parties agree that my cousin was her father. Marisol was shocked by this. She yelled at me, begged me not to do this to Luna that I am her father because I raised her and as pathetic as I may sound right now, but if Luna didn't act that way towards me. If she didn't say those things, I would've agreed. There were moments that I wanted to reach out and try to make it work, but then I would look at Luna's continuing text messages to her friends, her real father and mother and I refocus on my resolve.
'Til this day, I don't know what hurts the most. Being lied to by a woman who you thought was the love of your life or having a child who you tried to make their lives better, to give them the world, just toss you aside like trash.
The judge was quiet for a long while reading page after page after page of the text messages. In the end, she agreed. I was not financially responsible for Luna and my name could be removed. My attorney also file a motion for the courts to go after my cousin to pay for child support and a motion to sue my cousin in civil court for all the money I have spent raising Luna. The private schools, dance classes, girlscouts, horseback lessons. Everything I have ever spent on that child and after my attorney explained to the judge that my cousin committed fraud for knowingly allowed to me to raise his daughter and not offer any financial support or assistance. It was a hail Mary, and the damn judge agreed.
I didn't bother looking at Marisol when the judge made her decision. I didn't bother listening to her as I walked out the courthouse. I didn't care as I heard her cry. Her telling me that she only cheated one time and was faithful ever since. I just didn't care anymore. A few weeks later my ex called me, shocked that I stopped payments on Luna's private schools and all of her activities, and told her to call her baby daddy before hanging up. Even Luna called me, first time since this entire ordeal and she fucking calls me crying that she has to go to public school, that they were moving to the old neighborhood and how scary it was and how she wanted us to be a family again. I told her to go to her real father, the man who she truly wanted and ask him. I yelled at her, told her that not only she knew for years, but I read all the text messages, the back and forth and from her own words, she was thankful that a hoodlum like me wasn't her father, even though I haven't been a hoodlum since the day I found out I was going to be a father. I hung up on her after that.
I thought about ending it countless times. Thought about ending my cousin, but I made him pay. He had to pay me a half a million dollars. A half a million that was all mine and not one cent belong to my ex because she agreed on the lump sum. I didn't care that the money came from the church. I was hurting. I left New York shortly after, went to Idaho, as furthest away from New York as possible. I just picked a random state and city and just left. Opened up a new shop, got a house, but for two years I had trust issues. For two years, I saw a therapist, anger management, I went to rage rooms. It was difficult. Until I found myself going back to church and ironically that was where I met my fiancé.
Joslin is wonderful, she just turned thirty at the time and we just hit it off. I told her everything that happened to me. I explained to her that I'm going to have trust issues and she understood. A year later, she told me that I was going to be a dad and insisted that for me to have a DNA test, just so I can have peace of mind. I forgot what it felt like to be happy again and when my son was born, I was overjoyed. I called my grandmother for the first time in years. She cried, and when I told her about my son, she insisted that I come to New York so she could meet her great grandchild. Guilt tripping me by saying that she's ninety and would like to see me one more time and I agreed.
We flew to New York, rented a car and drove to Bushwick. The one thing I dislike about the hood. You only need to see one person from your past and the whole fucking neighborhood knows that you're back. My grandmother saw my son, met my fiancé, made an offshoot comment in Spanish about her being white and I just yes her to death. I was planning to spend the week, do the tourist thing for once. It was Joslin first time in her life in the big apple and I wanted to make it special. Damn it, nothing works out as planned. First my ex shouted my name from down stairs. I looked out the window and was surprised how fat she got. My grandmother told me in Spanish to talk to her and Joslin agreed.
I went down stairs, was awkwardly silent for a minute and that anger just came back like a flood. Marisol told me that I look good and said that she looked like shit. She told me that she missed me, that she never been with another man since the divorce and I ignored her. She even had the audacity to tell me that I'm a grandfather and I gave her a look. Apparently Luna got with a decent guy, and got knocked up at eighteen. Her baby daddy joined the Marines to support them and Her father wanted nothing to do with her, just pays the child support and refuses to acknowledge her. He's no longer a Pastor and is working at the Banco Popular two blocks over. Then told me that Luna named the baby after me and I couldn't stand looking at her.
Marisol wanted me wait because Luna was on her way over and I just walked away. I went to my grandmother's house and I didn't have to tell Joslin anything. She just knew and we left. In the elevator I told her what happened and she smiled and told me everything was going to be alright. The look on Marisol's face when we left the building. She was looking at my Fiancé like she was the other woman and Joslin without missing a beat introduced my son to her. Well she said "I would like you to meet his biological child." that was a knife twist, but she knew my pain.
Marisol kept trying to stop me from leaving. Telling me that Luna felt bad about what she did and Joslin wanted me to make amends, but I was so angry. I hopped into the car. Ignoring Marisol's pleads and Joslin told me to extend an olive branch, so I gave her my number, so Luna could call me and left. At the red light I saw my cousin by the cuchifrito stand and I don't know what came over me. I got out the car, ran up to him and beat the shit out of him. Joslin was screaming, telling me to stop and when we locked eyes, I could see the fear. I spit on him and left.
I'm back home. Working, being a dad, and a good fiancé to a beautiful woman. Yet since going back, when I'm alone with my thoughts he anger comes back. Luna did text me with a picture of her smiling with her son and telling me that she was sorry for what she did. Yet, I don't know if she's sorry that she missed me or if she's sorry because the man she wanted to be her father wasn't the man she thought he was. I'm so confused and I'm scared to reach out to her. I want to get past this. I want to move on. My family was my everything, my daughter was my world. Even after these years it still hurts, it still makes me angry, but I know I need to move on, but it's hard. I want to reach out to Luna, but I'm so scared. I have people telling me to let her back in, but all I could think about are those text messages and the lies. The constant lies. I need help and my usual methods are not working.
Thank you for reading this, I needed to vent. Like I mentioned, I don't care if you think this is fake. I really don't give a rats ass, but your help is appreciated.
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Update:
I'm waiting for the mods to approve this, it's been a while and yesterday was father's day. Luna tried calling me several times and I looked at the phone. I wanted to answer, I didn't, but all that kept lingering in my mind was those messages. What she said to her mother, to her real father, her friends. So I ignored it, eventually I listened to her voice mail and she sounded so cheerful, she briefly apologize for her actions, but to me, it didn't sound sincere, just passive. Maybe I'm overthinking it. She mentioned about her son, her finance and asked me to call her. Simple requests and I became infuriated. My grandmother and my fiancé are telling me to give her a chance, but when I asked my grandmother if Luna or Marisol ever asked about me in the four years I left, she said Marisol did, constantly, but not Luna. So in my twisted mind I think Luna wants me in her life to her child would be taken care of. Or maybe she wants to milk me and that made me so angry.
Even Marisol tried calling me constantly and I'm already thinking about changing my number. So I spent the majority of my father's day in the gym, hitting the heavy bag and I have an appointment today with an anger management group. Maybe they can give me an outside opinion. If this ever gets published by the mods. I would like to get your opinion as well. In the meantime, I'm just figuring this out on my own.
Update #2:
I would like to thank luigionfigi42 for his advice on sending an email as a start. I sent a small email to Luna that simply said "what do you want?" didn't expect the multi-paragraph response. She started the email profusely apologizing for how she acted. She said when she found out I wasn't her father, she was angry. She confronted her mother and she cried, making her promise not to tell me. Since she felt "lost" she began to talk to my cousin, her real father more and more. He told her of my violent past, the things I used to do, things that I kept a secret from her. This made her angry and the more they spent time together, the more she pulled away from me. She said she felt bad from time to time, but my cousin would reinforced her feelings towards me.
The day of the quince she said while we were dancing, she realized how stupid she was acting. She realized how much I loved her and then her messages appeared on screen. In the days that followed she was told by my wife's side of the family to give me space. To not call me and she listened. She said she was watching her family fall apart because of her and she couldn't do anything to fix it. She told me she understood why I did what I did. Yet she wanted to reach out. Her grandfather kept telling her that I loved her, that I raised her, and despite what I saw through her messages, I will do the right thing and she believed him. During the divorce her mother fell in a dark place. Not talking to her, barely eating, she was just existing.
When she found out that my name was removed from her birth certificate, she said she had a panic attack. Her mother told her that they will have to move back to Brooklyn and when she asked about her life and school. Her mother told her "That was the life your father gave you, and he's not your father anymore." so she called me, begging and I cursed her out then hanged up. She cried for days. She tried to reach out to my cousin who pretty much ignored her. She even went to the church and he told her to leave. Called her a "mistake". Her mother refused to talk to her, basically locked herself in a room, only leaving to use the bathroom or take a shower. She begged her grandfather to take her to see me and when they came to Long Island, she learned that I moved. Her grandfather told her that he will talk to my grandmother and find out where I went.
for the next two years, according to her, it was hell. The entire neighborhood knew what happened to her and her mother. Her "father" avoided her at all cost and tried not to pay child support. It took her grandfather to threatened him to start paying. In the meantime, her mother didn't talk to her. She was just locked in her room. The few times they did spoke, she called her a ungrateful girl and she was the reason why she lost the love of her life. Her grandfather had to put her mother in her place by telling her that her infidelity was the reason why she lost the love of her life and she locked herself back into the room. So Luna barely stayed home and that was how she met the father of her child.
He worked in the corner bodega, they were the same age and after a few months of "talking" one thing let to another and she ended up pregnant. Her grandfather was furious, but when her boyfriend insisted that he would marry her, that cool things down. Luna said her pregnancy was a blessing in disguised. Her mother began talking to her again and even began leaving the room to be by her side for every check-up. Being a senior in High School while pregnant was cliché but she made it work. A month before the baby was born, she graduated, and her boyfriend joined the Marines. He wanted to elope before leaving, but she wants a wedding.
Her boyfriend had no issues naming his son after me. Apparently, his father was absent and the fact he was a junior was a reminder that he shared the name of a man who didn't want him. When she heard I was in town, she got a speeding ticket trying to get to my grandmother's apartment. She wanted to see me. Wanted to apologize, wanted me to see her son. She just wanted to see me. However, she was late and she cried. When her mother gave her my number, she wanted to call me immediately, but the entire neighborhood was talking on how I beat her "father" up, so she waited. Her mother was sad to see that I moved on and have a son. Luna was happy to know she had a little brother, but her mother became a little more depress. I felt sorry for Marisol.
After I read the email, I called Marisol and asked her if this was true. That she refused to talk to Luna for years and blaming her for our divorce. She confirmed it and at first I yelled at her, but I regained my composure when I hear her crying. I told her to move on. Find someone else, but she said no. She told me that I was her husband and I will always be her husband. It broke my heart a little. I then had my grandmother go see my cousin so I could talk to him. The second he heard my voice he began to cry and begged me to forgive him. I just asked him why he didn't be a father to Luna? Why he poisoned her against me and he said it was envy. He was in love with Marisol and I took her from him. When I was arrested, he console her. Manipulated her, and barely last a second with her and she realized what she was doing and shove him off of her, but he already came.
When she found out she was pregnant, he knew the baby was his. They both knew. It was supposed to be a secret. Marisol took her double hysterectomy as God's punishment for her infidelity and deceit. When Luna turned thirteen, he was drunk. Seeing my life, and envy was the one sin he couldn't shake. So he wanted to ruin it... and he did. I told him when we see each other again in Hell, I will be his eternal torturer and hung up on him. Joslin was there for me, she told me that everything will be okay.
Luna and I commented through email. I spoke to her on the fourth, she spent over an hour crying while talking to me. I even spoke to her boyfriend who asked me permission to marry her. I thought it was funny, but honorable. My wedding is next month and Joslin wants me to invite Luna. At the same time, Luna wants me to give her away for her wedding in November. My future father-in-law sat me down and told me that he couldn't grasp my situation, but respect the road I took. Because the road save his little girl, gave him a handsome grandson, and a future son-in-law that he would kill for. That made me laugh. But he told me that I need to let go of the anger and start forgiving, but never forget. He's right.
So we gave Luna an invite to my wedding, even offered to pay for the plane ticket, her boyfriend or should I say fiancé said that he will work it off at my garage when they arrive... I kinda like him. As for me giving her away. I don't know yet, let's see how the wedding happens first. Thank you again for the advice and the few DM's. No one was rude or disrespectful. You guys helped me so much. I'll update if something happens, but for now, I have to get things ready for my wedding next month.
Might be my Final Update:
A lot has happened in such a short window. Again, I would like to thank the large number of support within the DM's. Of course there were hate messages, but all I could say to those people, what you would've done and what I did are two different mindsets; and until you go through the same situation or something similar - don't tell me how I should've felt. Leading up to the wedding I was already on eggshells. Joslin was the happiest I have ever seen, my in-laws were freaking due to the number of people that were coming. I swear, I think the whole town came. While all of this was happening, I was an hour and a half away in Boise waiting for Luna and her family at the airport. In the days leading up to her visit, we spoke. A lot. Her mostly crying, apologizing and me just listening. When she couldn't speak anymore, I was talking to her fiancé who is more down to earth.
When their plane landed, I was so scared. Not for seeing her again, but I was afraid due to my anger. I was afraid that I would lose my temper. The second she saw me at the terminal, she ran to me, crying and for a split second, I saw my daughter when she was seven. I was weird, picturing a child in my mind. She ran screaming Daddy and the second she hugged me, she began to cry loudly. It was like a wail that caused so many people to look at us. She just kept saying sorry over and over. Asking me to forgive her and I just held her for over fifteen minutes. She refused to let me go. It took her fiancé and I to convince her to do so. It was as if she felt the second she let go, I was going to vanish. After she composed herself, her fiancé properly introduced himself and then they introduced me to their child. I won't lie, I cried. I wasn't angry, but I cried holding this infant. Luna was also the splitting image of her mother when she was nineteen, which made made me wonder about Marisol.
During the drive home we talked about her fiancé's boot camp, how he's going to be a career man, how Luna was going to college online to learn accounting, mostly catching up conversation. When we arrived at my house, Joslin and her family has a spread ready for them. Since we've been together, Joslin learned how to cook Spanish foods, but the week leading up to Luna's visit; she went a little overboard. Yet I get it, she wanted to make an impression. Her and Luna just hit it off, every few minutes Luna would walk towards me just to give me a quick hug and go back to Joslin. I was just holding my son and my... grandson.
While Joslin was introducing Luna to her family, I put the babies to bed and I went to the porch for some fresh air. Luna's fiancé was standing by foot of the yard, staring at all of the bisons roaming around. For a moment I wanted to give him the dad talk, but I felt that it wasn't my place. Instead I asked him how he liked the view and he was awestruck. I know the feeling, living in the city the majority of your life, wide open spaces is a marvel to take in. After a minute or two he looked at me and told me how regretful Luna was. "I've been with your daughter for three years and not a day goes by when she mentioned how much she misses you and regret what she did." out of everything he told me, that single sentence constantly replays in my mind. Her fiancé's name is Roberto for a man who is only nineteen years old he acts and talks like a man in his thirties. That tells me he had a rough life to mature so quickly. I know the feeling.
The following day, I had to go to the shop and Luna practically jumped in the car with the baby. Even Roberto told her it was okay and to enjoy herself. Luna looked like she was going to hyperventilate and I told her that we'll work a half day and I'll spend the rest of the day with her. That seemed to do it and I slowly began to realize how traumatized Luan was. During the drive I asked Roberto how bad was she? she has severe abandonment issues constantly afraid that he's going to leave her, despite him telling her that he will never. She calls him a lot, a bit clingy at times, and in the beginning, afraid to do be herself in fear that they will break up. He had to reaffirm his love for her just so she could let her guard down a little. This was my doing. I know that, but he doesn't blame me. He told me he completely understood why I did what I did.
Allow me to say that Roberto is a terrible mechanic. He knows nothing about cars, so I had him clean up to the shop so he could 'work off' the plane tickets. We closed early and when we arrived, Luna practically ran towards me. She looked unhinged. I told her that I'll be back and she went to her fiancé, when I walked into my house, Joslin told me that Luna needs to be reminded that everything is going to be fine. That I won't leave her again. I didn't know what to say, but Joslin grabbed my hands and told me that Luna is hurting and she needs her father.
For the next couple of days I spent all of my time with Luna. Getting reacquainted with her. I took her to my in-laws ranch and showed her the Bison's, the Elks, and took her on a hike. Two days before the wedding I apologize to her for leaving. I apologize for the way I acted, apologize for the actions I took. She didn't want to hear none of it. She told me that there's nothing that I should apologize for, she said she knows she was the reason why it all fell apart, that she knows it was her fault and I had to stop her. I began to cry, I told her that it wasn't her fault. I was angry, I was hurting and despite what happened, I should be the one who should apologize. We both cried and just held each other.
Luna appeared to be slightly better, on the day of my wedding she was happy. In the last minute, Joslin made her into a bridesmaid and Roberto a groomsman. The wedding was beautiful, during the reception I asked the deejay to play the song from Luna's quince and I asked her to dance with me. She was crying the entire time, holding on to me for dear life as we danced. I haven't felt this happy in a long time. I let Luna and her fiancé stay in my house, taking care of her little brother while I went to Hawaii for my honeymoon. When we got home, she was happy. She hugged us it felt great. Roberto told me that he's going to Camp Dwyer in Afghanistan and would like to know if Luna could stay near us. He would pay for an apartment near us, until he could buy a house. Of course I said yes. They went back to the city the day before yesterday.
Like I said, it's been eventful. Luna's wedding is in November and Roberto is leaving in December. Roberto sent me what constitutes as a years rent for a townhouse community three miles away from my house. However, Joslin suggest we should put a double wide on our property for Luna and let her save her money to buy a house when Roberto comes back. Marisol has been blowing up my phone and based on the messages she left, she's not happy that Luna is moving. Right now, my focus is my family and to mend my relationship with my daughter.
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