#And believe me i've needed that reframing for so fucking long because so many many things just feel so meaningless and trivial and cheap to

[psalmsofpsychosis]

okay real talk, one of the most radical conscious thought framework shifts i went through in my early 20s was to understand that everything belongs. Everything and everyone belongs, exclusion doesn't exist, it's not a thing; there's no phenomenon/person/tool/invention/idea/mental paradigm that "doesn't belong anywhere" and "should not exist", and this approach is preceded by the knowledge that life and in continuation of that nature is an extremely intelligent, intricate and efficient ever-evolving mechanism that makes no superflous and/or irrelevant, useless "parts". If something exists it's because it has a use, nature wastes no time eliminating what serves no purpose. So the question never is about "whether something or someone belongs", everything belongs. The question is when, where, and in what form, to what degree.

The second radical thought framework shift i had was, everything makes sense and has a functional, elegant system to it. If you think something is nonsensical it's because you have a very surface level superficial view of it and/or you dont have all the parts yet, you need to dive deeper, look for nuance, be patient and keep an open minded and a curious attitude; wait the wilderness out. Some knowledge takes years to reveal itself, it does not mean that there's no intelligent design to it and that it's random. You're just not equipped with the right tools to understand it yet.

And now, roughly 2 months to my 32nd birthday comes the third thought framework shift: everything has meaning and significance and worth. Meaning is not something bestowed upon you by some invisible almighty powers, and it's not a guesswork. "is this a meaningful worthwhile activity?" irrelevant pointless question; what you could say instead is "everything is meaningful; i just have to figure out to whom, when, where and in what shape."

[pagerunner-j]

Shit is BUSY but getting through it. Trying to fill my days with as much background noise as possible. LOTS of comfort animal crossing videos.

About fic stuff- idk what questions I have about future stuff but is there anything you’ve been excited to dive further in on or an idea that got cut you thought about incorporating.

Anyways- hope all is getting at least a little better on your end. Here if you need anything! And here’s some Mia for you being a little FREAK

Ooh. Quite a lot's been cut along the way, but usually because I felt like I needed to come at a scene from a different angle* or hold off on certain parts of it until later. So mostly you've read a version of it, just not the first one I wrote. Just tonight, I axed a Rose POV section halfway through writing it, because I realized she had a lot going on under the surface that needed to wait to be revealed. So I flipped it around and got the Doctor's perspective on things instead. Then, partway through the resulting conversation, I realized I needed to space that out differently, too, because it was still airing too much too fast. So I've got one chunk of it split out for the time being, which will eventually get reincorporated into a different conversation, and I'm rewriting the rest of the main scene a different way. That sort of thing's been going on all along. I'm kind of a bitch to myself about pacing.

Generally speaking, though, I haven't lost any major plot elements or big scenes. Believe it or not (she says, looking with despair at the total word count), I've been trying to keep things focused. That's also why the only major excision in recent chapters would have happened during Rose and the Doctor's first night staying in the TARDIS -- so, uh, you can probably guess what that implies -- because I had more important plot to deal with and it would be getting me off track. So if it does get written, it's getting reframed, it'll be after Rose's pregnancy instead of during, and it's going into Detours. (I swear I didn't intend for the side series to be this stacked with sex scenes, but it keeps happening, goddammit...) I have to get myself to the finish line on the main story before I indulge with that one, though. :)

As for things I want to get to later...oh, boy, did I set myself up for a lot. And I think I'm going to have to take a break to work on other things for a while first, because once I get started on this it absolutely will eat my brain for months on end. But suffice it to say: all those transmissions that the Doctor's been helping decode for UNIT?

They're about to find out what that's actually all about.

-

*One good example goes way back. The last scene of the first story in this series -- the one actually called The Long Road Home, before I borrowed the title for the entire series and fucked myself up for discussing that first entry forevermore -- went through several iterations. One version of it actually took place on the zeppelin. I got quite a ways into it, too. It didn't feel right, though, because it made the scene more about the zeppelin itself when the focus needed to be on the people, so I backed all that out and rewrote things so the important stuff happened at the terminal instead.

(And even that version took two tries. I was getting so fucking annoyed at myself for failing to properly end the damn thing. Eventually I think I made it work, though. Plus, this way I got to make a subtle little nod back to The Christmas Invasion -- I don't know how many people caught it, but part of Rose and the Doctor's conversation is blocked an awful lot like that last scene outside the TARDIS in the snow -- and I could throw in that stupid joke about Aladdin on a blimp, which still makes me laugh more than it should. And yes, I know there are distinctions to be made between zeppelins and blimps, but "blimp" is just a funny word and so I don't fucking care.)