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palimpsessed · 5 years ago

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The Welsh Red Dragon, Kurt Vonnegut, and Social Activism

The inspiration behind Shepard’s pins

(original post with full artwork here.)

So, I spent A LOT of time thinking about the kind of pins our good friend Shepard (from Omaha, NE) would have on his denim jacket. Like a lot. Like an obsessive amount of time. I made a list, which seemed appropriate for this fandom. And because I’m a nerd and this sort of thing really interests me, and I’m proud of what I came up with, and because I think some of these items open up the possibility for some good, good literary analysis, I decided to make a whole post dedicated to Shepard’s pins. You’re welcome.

First, a little bit about my thought process. How did I decide what kind of pins to give Shepard? Well, he’s a guy full of stories. Stories that he can’t wait to tell anyone and everyone. And stories that others (mostly Maybes) have told him, once he’s earned their confidence. So, I wanted his pins to tell a story, his story in particular. What is the story that Shepard wants to tell about himself? More precisely, what is the story he wants to tell his new magickal friends on a disastrous summer holiday? The story is that of his own magickal credibility. His journey to magic (his come to Crowley moment, perhaps?) (I’d apologize, but I’m not sorry…) and his trustworthiness as evidenced by all of the Maybes he’s met along the way. He’s gotten drunk off dandelion wine with a creek dryad, given a toothbrush to a Sasquatch. spilled the tea with a jackalope, midwifed a centaur foal. Shep’s journey is just as impressive as Simon’s, and while Simon has been collecting notches on his dead dark creature bedpost (that’s a weird fucking metaphor…) (and now I’m thinking about dark creatures and Simon’s bedposts…so, you’re welcome, Basilton), Shep’s been collecting notches of the friendly variety. (Shoutout to @adamarks who did some super lovely analysis on Simon and Shep as mirrors here: https://adamarks.tumblr.com/post/188046272067/ok-so-when-shepard-said-he-was-cursed-the-first). So, I decided that I wanted to use Shep’s pins as a way to show the notches on his bedpost, so to speak. (Okay, I’m really losing this metaphor, but I think you’re still with me.)

Let’s dive in!

(I’m working my way down one side of his jacket at a time, for those following along at home.)

RIGHT SIDE

Welsh Dragon: I made this one very large, and easy to spot on his right shoulder. Of all of his accoutrements, this one felt like the most important. Mainly, because of Simon. Simon is, after all, half-Welsh. (The Mage, may he rest in pain, came to Watford from Wales.) And, of course, Simon, just like the Welsh Dragon, is a red dragon. (Or in the process of becoming one? Or a half-dragon? Or a dragon kitten?…) And the dragon that Simon and Baz fought on the Watford lawn, when they first worked together, and first shared magic, was a red dragon. Of course, the actual dragon in question here is Margaret. Shepard would absolutely have a pin to commemorate his friendship with her. And since I was going to give him a pin with a dragon, I knew I was going to have to use the Welsh Dragon because it would perfectly capture his burgeoning friendship with Simon, as well. Now, I want to go on a slight detour here (this blog post will be its own Odyssey) and talk more about the Welsh Red Dragon. I took the design for the pin from the Welsh flag, which is the thing that first made me think more about Simon’s Welsh connection. I’m not really making a point here, I just think it’s fascinating! There’s a lot of Welsh lore about the Red Dragon (and Margaret herself calls Simon “Great Red” - that ‘R’ is capitalized, by the way, so this seems to be a proper name for the kind of dragon that she thinks Simon is). Full disclosure, I am not Welsh and I am not a scholar on any of this by any means. That being said, a cursory, and super academic, perusal of the Wikipedia article on the Welsh Dragon led me to a few different history websites that linked the symbol of the red dragon with Merlin and King Arthur (son of Uther Pendragon, literally dragon head). Merlin, one of the most well-known magical figures and Arthur, one of the most well-known Chosen One figures in literary tradition. I know very little about Arthurian legend, and Welsh history, and dragon lore, though, so I’m going to just say, do a little research on your own when you’re bored and feeling nerdy!

Resist!: Shep is a young black man (and reasonable human being) living in the U.S. during the [redacted] Administration. I should hope this one is self-explanatory.

Hoover Dam: At some point in his visits to see Blue, I’m sure Shepard stopped off at the gift shop and bought himself a souvenir pin to mark the incredible experience he had making friends with an actual river. (This pin design is based on an actual souvenir pin of the Hoover Dam I found on Google Images—along with most of the other pin designs. I think it’s vintage, which just felt even more like Shepard to me, because he’s the kind of guy who would appreciate stuff that’s got a past.)

Deathly Hallows: I mean, IF the Harry Potter books/movies exist in the Simon Snow universe (which hasn’t been confirmed, as far as I know, by our Queen) I’m sure Shepard would have been totally into it as a kid, and probably would have found greater significance in its magical lore once he discovered that ACTUAL MAGIC EXISTS! So, he would have a pin to show his belief in the magickal world, and maybe also as a nostalgic reminder of when magic was still just something fictional he could turn to for escapism (and not something that would result in being cursed by a demon…).

The Truth is Out There: So, I know virtually nothing about The X-Files (my sister was obsessed with it to the point that she wanted to become a FBI agent for a few years, but I never watched it), but I’m sure Shepard is a fan. If nothing else, the sentiment is awfully apropos.

So It Goes: This one is very hard to see. It sort of looks like a black teardrop with a bar on top of it (it’s supposed to look like a bomb). The pin I based this off of reads “So It Goes”, which from my very superficial research, is a line repeated in Vonnegut’s anti-war novel Slaughterhouse-Five every time someone dies. I don’t know anything more about it, other than that it is a Kurt Vonnegut-inspired pin available for purchase on Etsy, and Shep mentions that he wanted to get a Vonnegut quote tattoo, even though “everybody has those.”

Green Alien Head: You will never be able to convince me that Shepard does not 10,000% believe in the existence of aliens. If he were still in the U.S. during the Area 51 Raid, I’m sure he would have stopped by, just, you know, for science…(I’m thinking he was probably still in the UK, but I guess we’ll see in AWTWB.)

Centaur: This one is also hard to see, but I took the design from a pin I found of one of the centaurs (the blue-haired, blue-bodied one, if that rings a bell for you) from Disney’s Fantasia. (Fun fact: I was super into Fantasia as a littlun, and I attribute my lifelong love for classical music in large part to the centaur sequence and my latent lesbianism—I mean, it was ludicrously erotic. Watch it sometime and tell me it would not make an impression on a sapphic three-year-old.) Midwifing a centaur foal was probably a very emotional and formative experience for Shepard. Buying this pin would be his way of remembering that experience, and the excitement and gratitude he likely felt to have been entrusted with that kind of acceptance from the centaur(s).

Jackalope: It doesn’t help that this pin is almost the same color as Shepard’s jacket, but it’s based off a design of a jackalope’s head that, again, I found on Google Image search (honestly, I don’t know how I ever made art without it). We know that Shepard once got some gossip from a jackalope, who vented to him about magicians calling “themselves ‘magicians’”, like “they’re the only ones with magic”. (This is totally irrelevant, but I always think of Americans when I read this. I am an American, by the way. America is a continent, but those of us living in the U.S. calls ourselves Americans, like everyone else living in America doesn’t matter.) Anyway, the jackalope offered Shepard some valuable insight into the political workings of the magickal world, so it gets its own pin.

LEFT SIDE

Pansexual Pride Flag Pin: I mean, technically, canonically, we don’t know what Shepard’s sexuality (or asexuality) is, but I just get some vibes from him. Plus, if we take him as a mirror for Simon (who is somewhere on the bi-plus spectrum), it’s not a far cry to imagine he also identifies somewhere on that spectrum.

Pentagram: This is another symbol that I chose based on my interpretation of Shepard’s character, and not so much on a Maybe or a story that he mentioned. The pentagram, or pentacle, is typically associated with the occult and witchcraft, which is something that could potentially also be said of Shep.

Sasquatch: You don’t go backpacking—or not backpacking—and introduce a Sasquatch to the benefits of dental hygiene without getting yourself a souvenir of the hike.

I [heart] Mystery Spot: The Mystery Spot is a weird sort of phenomenon in California (my home state). It’s a place outside the beach town of Santa Cruz that boasts of a “gravitational anomaly” on its website. I went once, years ago, and while you’re there, it can feel pretty convincing. (Also, I was probably like 10, so…) People outside of California will likely never have heard of this place, but driving around here (at least in the Bay Area, where I am, which isn’t that far from Santa Cruz) you’ll see yellow Mystery Spot bumper stickers on cars everywhere. I’m not really sure what the thing is with the bumper stickers. Like, I’m sure not that many people actually think it’s legit, and maybe it’s like one of those things that Californians just do (like freak out and forget how to drive when we feel water falling from the sky). But yeah, these bumper stickers are everywhere. Anyway, Shepard drives around a lot. He knows about the Vampires of Las Vegas (how is that not an indie rock band?) and the Katherine Hotel, and the Next Blood. So, he’s probably made it past Nevada and into California before. And while he was there, it’s not a great stretch of the imagination that someone who chases after magic wouldn’t wind up at a place called the Mystery Spot and get himself a pin while he was there. (And maybe even a bumper sticker.)

Black Power Fist: Unfortunately, this one is also hard to see, because the fist is black and I didn’t have anything to go over the outlines of the fingers with, which I sort of didn’t think about when I colored it. This one also feels self-explanatory. Shepard is black. Blackness has long been treated in itself as a crime by non-black members of law enforcement, and just the general racist population of the U.S. Young black men are especially vulnerable to racially motivated violence. I’m sure Shep, who drives all over the country by himself and gets into high speed chases at night in the middle of nowhere Nebraska while hunting super shifty rando Maybes has had a run-in or two. Stay safe, Shep!

Every Pronoun Belongs Here [Trans Pride Flag background]: Also, super hard to see because the letters are too small to read. I found this exact pin in a basket by the register at my local bookshop. (Support local bookshops, people!) They were being sold as a fundraiser for a LGBTQ club at one of the high schools, and I loved the idea that I could help them raise money and add this pin to my own growing collection to show off my support for trans rights. (Support trans rights and trans people, people!) I decided to give Shepard this same pin, because I could imagine him having an almost identical book buying experience in a dozen other towns that he’s probably visited. And I love the simplicity of the message, because it’s one of belonging, which EVERYONE is desperately seeking, no matter who they are or how they identify, and Shepard, and every character in this picture, is no exception. (Plus, it seemed like a cool way to connect my pin collection with Shep’s. Maybe I should have mentioned the fact that I’m also a pin person at the beginning? I walk to work and on my lunch breaks, so I carry all of my stuff in a backpack. And I proudly display my random pin collection on my backpack. Including several Simon Snow-related pins.)

Don’t Panic: This was based off a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy pin. I don’t really know anything about the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (including if it’s okay to abbreviate it as HGG? THGTTG? whatever), even though I did watch the movie years back when it was on TV and I still lived with my parents who had a TV. But the sentiment felt appropriate, and Shepard is a sort of magickal hitchhiker. Apart from managing to hold down a job at Dick Blick, he appears to lead a somewhat nomadic lifestyle. He tells Penny, “the road is my teacher”, and if that’s not a hitchhiker slogan, I don’t know what is. (Ass, gas, or grass?)

Black Lives Matter: They do. Just sayin’.

Magic Troll Doll: When I was growing up, the Troll doll was all the (nightmare-inducing) rage. Trolls are one of those magickal creatures that are continually mentioned in the series. Shepard talks about lonely trolls under bridges. Simon talks about killing trolls. Agatha would rather kiss a troll. And Baz was kidnapped by numpties, who are sort of like trolls. I couldn’t not include a troll. And the Troll doll specifically felt perfect, because the full name was Magic Troll Doll. You can bet if Shepard had to pick a troll-related pin, it would be a magic(k)al one.

[Asshole]: This is another Kurt Vonnegut pin. It looks like a messily drawn asterisk (*), but it’s actually meant to be an asshole (taken from the preface of Vonnegut’s novel Breakfast of Champions, and drawn by Vonnegut himself). I just thought, why the fuck not? So, here. Have an asshole pin. (I should have put it on a buttonhole…)

HONOURABLE MENTION

Shepard’s Phone Case: Remember that line I quoted earlier, about Shep wanting to get a Vonnegut quote tattoo? Well, when I was trying to figure out what to put on his phone case, I thought that seemed like a reasonable place to start. So, I googled Vonnegut quotes, to see if I could find one that I thought Shepard would like. Here’s the quote: “a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” I just loved that for Shepard.

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surveys-at-your-service · 4 years ago

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Survey #303

“if i can’t be loved, then i’ll be hated”

What color are your glasses, if applicable? Black. Candy corn or conversation hearts? They're both gross, don't make me pick between garbage. Do you own a lot of earrings? Not really after I weeded them out before moving. What did your backpack in high school look like? I dare say I had the dopest backpack of them all. It looked like a massive Ouija board, and the zipper was the planchet (sp?). Have you ever been to a rave? Nah. What is your favorite art medium? I have a particular fondness of oil paintings. They tend to look so smooth, and you can achieve incredible realism with them. How far away is the nearest hospital from you? Not even five minutes, I think. Who was the last person you visited in a hospital? My mom. What is your favorite car color? Pink, duh. How did you learn to type? We actually had a class specifically for typing in middle school. What style of wedding dress do you want? I don't have that set in stone yet, but I really do love ballgown dresses with long trains as well as a-lines with a moderate train. I love a lot, except really for mermaid dresses. Do you fit into any stereotype, or are you non-stereotypical? I don't know if I fit perfectly into any and really don't care. Would you want your first child to have your hair color? ???? I don't care about their hair lol?????? It would depend on the hypothetical father, in which case I'd probably find it cute, but this is so, so unimportant. Do you enjoy writing in cursive? Yeah, it just feels good and flowy to me. What is your favorite hair color? Natural? Probably blonde with natural darker undertones throughout. I like blonde hair because it's far easier to dye, haha. Now, if we're including DYED hair, rose gold or pastel pink is *chefs kiss* What is your favorite eye color? Sapphire blue, probz. Would you put your birthday on a different day if you could? Nah, it's fine where it is. What holiday is your birthday closest to? Valentine's. Do you vent on social media a lot? NOOOOOOOO. I barely post ANYTHING about myself on social media because I feel like I'm being annoying, self-absorbed, find anything I do actually interesting, or don't want people to think I'm a whiner. All I ever really do on social media is share or reblog funny shit, things I love, stuff I find relatable or inspirational, educational, important for whatever reason, etc... Do you have abusive parents? I am very thankful to say no. Is your house haunted? Doesn't seem like it. What's your favorite thing to watch on YouTube? I'm in a real WoW-related phase lately... Watching my favorite streamers, gold farming guides, and other various aspects of the game. What are five health problems that you have? I talk about the mental issues enough, so I guess I'll talk about physical stuff here. Uhhh I have very low blood pressure (it's a med side effect), I have extremely weak legs following muscle atrophy, I have bad tremors, especially in my hands (amplified by medication once again), maybe TMI but we're adults here and it's a legit issue that I have chronic and severe conspitation, aaaand then of course I have hyperhidrosis (excessive sweating) to a fucking outrageous and also humiliating degree. Ooooonce again as a prescription side effect. This answer made meds sound kinda bad, I know, but really, I'd rather have the will to live and just have to deal with these than want to die everyday and not. Do you have surgery coming up? No, let's keep it that way until I lose enough weight and when I am 110% getting loose skin removal. Which family member(s) do you look the most like? My sisters, ig. People say my mom also, but I honestly don't see it. Have you ever cried while watching a YouTube video? Yeah, usually just in let's plays, but it's happened for other reasons. Are you missing a website that just shut down? Nah, none that I know of. NO. FUCKING WAIT. So, when my laptop was fixed, a LOT of shit was wiped from it, and that included all of my goddamn Lightroom editing presets. The site they were from no longer exists, so I had to use a different, pretty sub-par one to install at least a few because it helps me get a start on editing the photograph and leaning towards the "vibe" I want before spending like 15+ minutes tuning it myself. Would you be a barefoot bride? No. Which would you rather name your daughter: Eliana, Echo, Emerald, or Ellery? Ohhh, I like these. I think I prefer "Eliana," but "Echo" is a close second. "Ellery" is nice, but it sounds too much like "celery" to name my kid that lmao. Which would you rather name your son: Maverick, Matthew, or Moses? Ugh, none, honestly. But "Matthew" wins. When was the last time you gave a speech? Like a *legit" speech? Probably not since uhhh... I guess when I argued my disability case at court? Does that even count? Have you ever been in a stampede? Well, never seen this'n in a survey before, so good job, lol. No. If you were a fairy, what color would you like your wings to be? It would depend on what I wore, really. And my hair. But probably light pink. Would you rather name your son Storm, Skylar, Sorin, or Solomon? "Sorin." "Skylar" is SO Southern, and "Solomon" sounds like the creepy kid all his classmates avoid and I ain't putting my kid through that. Did you read a devotional this morning? Not my jam. Would you rather be named Arizona, Alaska, Cali, or Georgia? Hm... "Alaska" is actually kinda cool???? And I'm white as fuck so lol????? I wouldn't mind to nickname of "Ally," anyway. Are you repulsed by ugly reptiles? lololol bro get out Did all your friends know about your first crush or was it a secret? I was definitely secretive and shy about it when I first started getting crushes. Do you ever feel insecure about going out without makeup? I feel insecure either way, so... How many different natural hair colors are there in your immediate family? So, this is a hard question to answer. My mom was born with brown hair, but it darkened to almost black; only her daughter Katie inherited that. By some genetic magic, Dad had blond hair as a kid, but it also turned black. Like... how?????? I was born with dirty blonde hair like him, and mine turned an average brown with age. My immediate sisters have always had brown hair. What is your favorite online game? World of Warcraft is ballin'. Would you ever want to be famous and sign autographs? Ha, the idea of signing autographs is awful... I can't physically write very long without my carpal tunnel flaring up. Do you like your shirt to be loose or tight? LOOSE. Especially as a bigger person, tight shirts are just really uncomfortable. What is your favorite Spanish name? I don't know nearly enough to answer this. Would you rather visit Asia or Europe? I think Asia is, in general, more interesting and prettier as a whole, but I guess I'm drawn to European culture being more like my own and there are specific locations I'm interested in, like Germany or Scotland. So to answer the question, I guess Europe wins. Are there any Asians in your family? I don't believe so. Have you ever had colored braces? Haha yeah, I did that when I had them. Do you take birth control pills? Yes, just for period cramps. Without them, they can be immobilizing for me. If you live in the USA: do you feel free and safe? Ha, no. Well, not *entirely*. Have you ever been sick on your birthday? I was recovering from the stomach virus, if that counts. As in I still got sick the day before and felt iffy on my actual bday. 17th, I think? Is talking about your past painful for you? Yes. Are you a member of any support groups online? I'm a member of The Mighty site, if that counts. When I'm feeling very, very sound of mind and helpful without all the negativity being a detriment to myself, I do like going on there and trying to help or comfort people. Have you ever called a suicide hotline? Yes, and the line was busy, and that's when I decided I was a goner. Do you ever fantasize about revenge? I uhhhhh... sometimes. What's a movie you would recommend to someone who never watches movies? Ohhh, that's hard. I don't really watch movies either, and I'm trying to think of one that essentially anyone would like, so hm. Oh, Coco is absolutely a possibility. That movie touched me so, so deeply and is high on my favorites list. It's impossible to not feel the emotions. Do you want to have grandkids? Hell, I don't want kids. Do you want to be an aunt or uncle? I already am one, and I love being an aunt. Who was your favorite Spice Girl? I don't remember their names or characters in general. Did you make a lot of home videos growing up? I mean *I* didn't, but Mom filmed quite a few. Do you enjoy babysitting? NO. What's an unpopular opinion that you have? Avoiding some political ones, uhhhh. OH. HERE'S ONE. THE SCENE AESTHETIC IS FUCKING CUTE AND NOT CRINGEY AND YOU CAN FIGHT ME ABOUT IT. Are you attracted to the opposite gender, same gender, or both? Both are A+. Was your first crush on someone of the same gender or opposite? Opposite. As a kid, I didn't even fathom the concept that women could date women. What is something you'll never eat again? Why? Brussel sprouts. Fucking disgusting. What is currently happening that is scaring you? Besides the very obvious answer of "Covid," I worry about my mom a lot. She's so weakened after all the chemo and meds and can do literally less than I can without heavily breathing and sweating. I just worry a lot that cancer will return sooner than we hope; I don't want it to EVER come back, but doctors say it is very, very likely at one point or another because she was so very close to Stage 4. What would be your personal hell? Being completely and entirely isolated forever while somewhere hot and humid, lol. And play one of my trigger songs on repeat eternally. What made the "weird kid" at your school weird? There was this poor guy named Alfred that was VERY clearly depressed out of his mind, and I heard him speak maybe once through all of high school, and the entire class couldn't believe it. He always sat way in the back and never smiled. I wonder how he is nowadays. What is a word you personally find offensive? "Retarded" personally offends me the most when misused and spoken as an insult. What instantly puts you to sleep? Now that is HARD to do; I have a ridiculously hard time going to sleep. The easiest way though would probably be me being drained from an emotional breakdown. That is so exhausting that I'm capable of crashing pretty fast and hard. What song is in a language you don't speak, but you love it anyway? I adore Rammstein, so there's plenty. I'll probably say "Donaukinder" is their best. What is something you would like to do if you weren’t judged for doing it? I keep that I RP a complete secret in my "real" life for this reason unless it's like, pried out of me. What's a movie you think everyone should watch? Why that one? Johnny Got His Gun. See how goddamn disgusting war is. What was the most unexpected good thing that's ever happened to you? Ha, realizing I was bisexual after once being homophobic. What is the funniest fact you know? Oh man, I know a lot of random trivia shit, really, so it's hard to say. Maybe that quokkas throw their offspring at predators to distract and escape from them... As awful as that is, c'mon, you gotta admit it's funny and shocking with just how adorable they are. What was your 'mic drop' moment? Oh, I don't know. Possibly when I publicly came out as bi on Facebook and made it abundantly clear that I gave no shits about some homophobic friends and family & I was beyond willing to let anyone's ass go over it. What's the kindest way a stranger has treated you? I remember as a kid at McDonald's, the woman in front of our car paid for our food; apparently seeing a mom, dad, and three kids in a van was enough that she wanted to just be kind and give us a smile. We have no idea who she was, never saw her face or anything, she was just a sweet woman. What is the biggest design flaw of your body? Okay, I'm going to let go of all hatred for my body weight-wise and just think of this as from a strictly natural design perspective, in which case I'd say my toes are too small. What age are you afraid of turning and why? 30, because I'm terrified of getting there and seeing I've possibly gone nowhere. What is the strangest thing you have ever felt? I'm keeping this question in just because I think there could be some interesting answers for others, but I'm witholding my answer because nobody wants or needs to know lmao. What makes someone immediately unlikable? Acting better than others and belittling. Who's a villain you sympathize with and why? D A R K I P L I E R because of his origins and overall purpose and just simply existing. What is something you regret to NOT have done? I have this oddly weird regret of not going like, all-all the way with He Who Shall Not Be Named????? Idk why though????? Considering I loved him way too much and I was a reckless and impulsive person who probably at some point would have wound up accidentally pregs????? What a fuckin trip that woulda been. What movie changed your life for the better? None have really "changed my life." What book you think should be directed as a film? Oh, idk. Most I can think of have been. Of all the decades you've lived in, which one have you liked best? The 2000s, probably. A carefree kid. How are you doing today? I'm exhausted. While out with Mom and my sisters yesterday, we got behind a van whose driver was obviously drunk or high off his goddamn ass, and he was swerving EVERYWHERE, nearly shoving so many cars off the road. Mom called 911 to get in contact with highway patrol to report his dumb fucking ass in. I was having an absolute panic attack and cried quietly like the entire 45 or so minute drive home. I was just so, so upset because this is why I don't fucking drive, and I felt like I'd made my sister (who was driving) mad because she had to firmly tell me I had to calm down (I was hyperventilating and talking to myself to try to calm down) if she was going to focus and keep us safe. She later ensured me she wasn't mad, but I still wasn't the same the entire rest of the day. Anyway, I slept hard last night but had two nightmares, so I'm still really tired today. I'm trying to keep myself really distracted. What's something your relatives don't know about you? A whole lot really, considering beyond my very immediate family, I see almost nobody because they live many states away. What's something your parents did, which you have sworn never to do? Mom would spank us or slap an arm pretty hard if my sisters or I misbehaved or "disrespected" her by "talking back." I'm not having kids, but I would never, ever, ever, put my hands on them in any way that isn't loving. You do not teach children via inflicting fear. I also have this probably overly strong aversion to beer because that's what Dad always drank as an alcoholic. I'll probably never try it, not that I really want to because it smells awful. What's the most annoying thing your pet does? I feel like "annoying" is the wrong word for this, but Roman (my cat) can be incredibly demanding of attention and to lie on me when I'm on the laptop in bed, and sometimes I just want space and be able to clearly see the screen, haha. He will legit meow like a baby and gently swat my arm sometimes if I try to keep him back. Heeee usually gets his way. As for Venus (snek), she does nothing "annoying" either, but rather a bit concerning to a snake mom: she is usually very slow to find and strike her food. I feed her frozen/thawed mice, and she will first slither around her entire cage, tongue flicking and clearly looking for her food, even though I always place it atop the same spot on her hide, and she can have her head RIGHT beside it and still do nothing. She ultimately generally eats (as a ball python though, she's a picky eater and will occasionally reject a meal), but I of course wonder why she's odd about dinnertime... As a champagne, she does have the notorious "spider gene" in her, which can cause neurological issues, but idk if something like this could be related.

#survey #surveys #questions #lyrics: ''rise rebel resist'' by otep

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lastoneout · 3 months ago

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Context, I got called the other day by a company that SAID they worked for my health insurance offering to like, come to my house? and asses if there's any resources they think I need and help me get them, and that sounds kinda nice upfront but they immediately asked when I was avaliable rather than asking if I was okay with that or if I even wanted this sort of help which...yeah, bad vibes. When I said that they couldn't come to my house(I said it was because my fiancé works from home but in reality this was throwing up some scam red flags and I wanted out) they offered to meet me at a nearby coffee shop, and tbh I was really tired when they called annd I have a bad history of fawning so I said sure.

However, later I got a call from a representative who I've been in contact with for a while that I know for a fact does indeed work directly for my insurance and helps me access resources I need for an update on something she'd helped me with before, but while I had her on the line I asked her about it she was like "uh yeah I have no idea, I've never heard of them" and internally I was like "haha SUSPICIONS CONFIRMED" and decided to call my insurance on Monday and ask what was up and/or potentially inform them of this scam. In the mean time I googled the suspected scam company and their website was not only kinda broken and full of the kind of corporate jargon word salad that means nothing, but the two most recent google reivews said they were a scam and one of the only good ones was from an employee who worked for them?? which I don't think should be allowed, talking about how great it was to work there, so I was like yeah no this is weird, I'm not meeting up with them, and now I'm kinda worried about them having my personal information, how tf did they get it.

I forgot to call my insurance until today because I'm an ADHD disaster, but I did and was like hey, have you heard of these people or is this legit a scam? And the lady I spoke to said that they did contract with the company, but that if I was uncomfortable with them at all I didn't have to agree to their services or even talk to them, and said she'd put a note of that in my file. I was like, okay well at least I don't have to worry about scam artists having my personal information but being contracted doesn't mean they can't be predatory, so I called them and was like "I don't need this service, I'm canceling my appointment, goodbye" and to their credit the person I spoke to was chill and said everything was handled.

BUT THEN a few hours later, I got ANOTHER call, which bothered me because I figured the note the my insurance put on my file was a "don't call me" one, and the convo basically went like:

Predatory Company Employee, fake concern dialed up to 500%: "I heard you canceled your appointment and declined services out of nowhere so I just wanted to make sure you were okay, is everything alright?

Me: "I'm fine, I just looked into what you guys offer and I don't need any help getting my prescriptions or transportation to appointments or anything like that, I do have health problems but all my needs are met."

PCE: "I understand, but we don't just do healthcare stuff! We can help you get appliances for your house or with rent and bills if you need that."

Me: "I appreciate it but I have stable housing, the appliances I need, and my fiancé can more than cover our rent and bills."

PCE: "Well, just so you know, the enrollment period is ending so if you do change your mind and need help later we won't be able to do anything for you, like if you need help with applying for benefits?"

Me: "I have never had any difficulty applying for food stamps or health insurance, I can more than handle it myself."

PCE: "Okay, well thank you for your time, [Generic Polite Parting Message], goodbye."

And like WHOO boy that was SCUMMY AS FUCK. Like refusing to acknowledge that I have repeatedly declined their services was bad enough, but putting time pressure on me?? That's scam shit. Idc if you're a legit company, pulling the "well this is a limited time thing..." card is the fastest way to get me to bail. They might be a legit company, but I do not trust anyone pulling that shit with me. Predatory as fuck, goodbye.

So I called my insurance back and was like "Hey so this company you guys contract with is being really pushy and weird and I would really like to remove my information from their records if possible, or just have some guarantee that they will no longer contact me" and the person who answered—who was super sweet, this wasn't their fault—did their best to look into everything, but eventually let me know there isn't anything they can do from their end, and if I want to be put on a "do not contact" list or have my information purged I would have to call the company themselves.

Which is bullshit but not surprising, and tbh I am probably going to call my insurance back later and be like "Okay well can I at least file a complaint with you about this company because the way they're treating people IN YOUR NAME is fucked up and I think y'all should reconsider working with them" but for the time being I just want my info OUT of their records but I ALSO do not want to call them again and have to deal with a someone ignoring me and pressuring me to join their program, and tbh I don't think they'll remove my information from their records if I ask anyway...

So yeah. Gonna be looking into it myself, but if anyone knows if there's a way to get my stuff out of their hands or am I just fucked I would love the input. Cuz this is bothering me a lot. I didn't consent to them getting ahold of my info, and I don't trust them with it.

Eugh. I hate capitalism.

Anyone know a way to get a scummy ass company to purge your information from their database, preferably without having to speak to them over the phone again?

54 notes · View notes

spn-safeandsound · 5 years ago

Text

12. Long Distance

Safe and Sound

Dean Winchester x Original Character

Episode: 1x17; Hell House

Word Count: 7,182

Warning(s): Mature language, canon violence + gore, sisterly antics

Author’s Note: Enjoy! Let me know what you think! Make sure to reblog and like!

Masterlink in Pinned Post!

Julia anxiously watched the printer in Beth and Taylor's study, her lips quirking into a smile as the professional cursive was inked onto the expensive paper that Beth insist she get for her diploma. She had finally graduated from Stanford and, although she didn't get to attend graduation, she was very proud of herself. Her double major in Religion and Linguistics had been received simply because she was too meticulous and stubborn to let her education go waste.

But now that education was over and she couldn't lie and say she wasn't happy about it. Sixteen years in school was a long time—even though she went two years less than other people she graduated with—and she was glad that part of her life was over. She just wished that her mom and Levi were still here to witness this. Still, she knew they were watching up in Heaven and that was the best she was going to get.

Once the printer spit out her diploma, she carefully set it on Beth's desk so the ink could dry without any smudges. She was just taking a seat in the desk chair where her open laptop was sitting so she could continue working on the case she found for Sam and Dean down in Texas when her cellphone rang.

She wasn't surprised that it was Dean; he had been calling her every couple of hours to check up on her. He wasn't happy that she didn't want to hit the road just yet after Levi's death but he understood and was supportive anyway. He just made sure she knew that he and Sam would check up on her and the rest of the Petersen family. That was sweet and everything and Julia appreciated how supportive the Winchester brothers were being but sometimes there was such a thing as too many calls. She couldn't believe that Dean accused her of talking too much.

Beth and Abby thought it was the cutest thing ever when she'd have to leave the room to talk to Sam and Dean—though it was mostly Dean as she and Sam communicated through a text thread—and not return for a half-hour. Beth and Abby weren't the ones who had to assure a very worried Dean every couple of minutes that they were safe and feeling a little bit better. Usually Julia was the mother-hen but, apparently, in her absence, Dean took up the title.

Julia sighed and flipped her phone open. "Hello?"

"Hey, it's Dean."

"Yeah, I know," Julia rolled her eyes, glad that he couldn't see the obvious look on her face. "What's up?"

"Well, Sam just woke up with a spoon in his mouth," Dean chuckled, sounding satisfied with himself. "and I took a picture to send to you."

"Yeah, it's real funny, Dean," Sam grumbled.

Julia shook her head in amusement; Sam and Dean's prank wars were always a hit with Dean, even if Sam didn't enjoy them as much as his older brother.

"Where are you guys?"

"A few hours outside of Richardson," Dean answered her. "Give me the low down on this case you found."

"Okay," Julia pressed the space button on her laptop, waking it up, and clicked on the folder of information she collected. "About two months ago, a group of kids went poking around a local haunted house."

"Haunted by what?" Sam wondered.

"A misogynistic spirit, I guess. Like we need any more of those in the world," she hummed in disapproval; Sam chuckled in agreement. "Anyway, the legend goes that it takes girls and strings them up in the rafters."

"Okay, so what happened with this group of kids?" Dean said, getting her back on track.

"They saw a dead girl hanging in the cellar."

"Anybody ID the corpse?"

"The body was gone by the time the cops got there," Julia clicked on the police report in the file. "The police think that the kids were playing a joke on them."

"Maybe the cops were right," Sam suggested.

"They could be but I've read some of the first-hand accounts from the kids involved," Julia sighed. "They seemed pretty sincere about the whole thing."

Dean sounded skeptical when he spoke next. "And where did you read these accounts, Junior?"

Julia took a beat, glad that he couldn't see the flush rising in her face. "I might have surfed through some local paranormal websites."

"Mmhm," she could hear Dean's disapproval even though he hummed. "and what's it called?"

Julia sighed as she read the website from the file, "Hell hounds lair dot-com," she heard Sam laugh. "Hey, it could be legit!"

"Most of those websites wouldn't know a ghost if it bit them in the ass, Julia," Dean sighed.

"Hey, you wanted a case, I delivered," Julia defended herself. "If it's nothing, that's fine, but it doesn't hurt to check it out."

"Especially since we let Dad and Luke take off," Sam backed up Julia.

Julia frowned, still bitter about that. She wasn't mad at Dean and Sam by any means. No, she was angry with her dad. He didn't come when Julia was dying or when Levi actually died but he was fine following John Winchester to Chicago just to see the failed trap the girl who killed Levi set up for them.

It wasn't like his daughters were only a half-hour away, mourning the loss of their older brother or anything. It wasn't like his only son was killed.

"Fine," Dean gave in when he heard Julia's silence. He had been the one to tell her that they saw Luke with their dad and it was heartbreaking to see the expression on her face. He hoped he'd never let her down like Luke did. "We'll check it out. How have you been doing, shortcake?"

"I'm fine," Julia twisted her lips. "I got my diploma today."

"Wait, are you serious?" Sam exclaimed. "That's great, J! Congratulations!"

"I'm proud of you, Julia," Dean added sincerely.

"Thanks, guys," Julia's chest swelled with love. She was so glad that Sam and Dean Winchester were in her life.

"Send me a picture."

"I will," she agreed to Sam's request. "Well, I'll let you go—"

"Wait, wait," Dean stopped her from hanging up. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Dean..."

"I mean, you can talk to us."

Julia quirked an eyebrow. "I thought you didn't do chick-flick moments?"

Dean cleared his throat awkwardly. "Yeah, well..." he changed the subject. "How many times have you watched Dirty Dancing since we left?"

Julia hesitated; Dirty Dancing was her go-to movie to watch whenever she was sad. It was her mother's favorite movie and Julia grew up watching it a lot. She absolutely adored Patrick Swayze, the dancing, the music, and the love story that made up the film. It made her happier.

"Jules?"

"I've watched it every night, okay?" she confessed. "Leave me alone, I'm delicate."

"All right, all right," Dean gave in; Julia could tell that he was worried about her and that was sweet but watching that movie was her coping mechanism and it hadn't let her down so far. "We'll talk later, shortcake. Stay safe."

"I will," she promised. "You guys be safe, too. Love you."

"Love ya, too, J," Sam called. "Bye."

"Bye."

Julia closed her phone and set it down on the desk beside her laptop. She pulled up her internet browser and started doing more research for the case, hoping that any information she pulled would help the brothers out.

Dean and Sam walked into the record shop, looking around for the guy that the witnesses said sent them to the house where they saw the dead girl. As they passed by the first table full of records, a worker came out from the back with his hands full of more merchandise to put away.

"Gentlemen, can I help you with anything?" he asked them.

"Yeah, are you Craig Thurston?" Sam asked him politely.

"I am," the worker confirmed as he put a record in place.

"Well, we're reporters with the Dallas Morning News," Dean told him. "I'm Dean and this is Sam."

"No way," Craig's face lit up. "I'm a writer, too. I write for my school's lit magazine."

"Ah, good for you, Morrison," Dean chuckled as he began to look through the crate of records in front of him. He completely missed the confused look that Craig gave him but Sam noticed and cleared his throat.

"Um, we're doing an article on local hauntings and rumor has it you might know of one," Sam smiled at Craig, wishing that Julia was here to get the information out of him—she was much better with the guys than he was.

"You mean the Hell House?" Craig asked.

Dean nodded, looking up from the records. "That's the one."

"I didn't think there was anything to the story," Craig said avoidantly.

"Why don't you tell us the story."

"Well, supposedly, back in the thirties, this farmer named Mordechai Murdoch used to live in this house with his six daughters," Craig told them after a moment of hesitation. "It was during the Depression, his crops were failing, and he didn't have enough money to feed his own children. So, I guess that's when he went off the deep end."

Sam raised his eyebrows. "How?"

"Well, he figured it was best if his girls died quick rather than starve to death, so he attacked them," Craig stated. "They screamed, begged for him to stop but he just strung them up, one after the other. And, when he was all finished, he just turned around and hung himself. Now, they say that his spirit is trapped in the house forever, stringing up any other girl that goes inside."

Dean pressed his lips together; the story Craig was telling sounded just like that. A story. His words were something out of a dramatic novel, not a true story. And what parent would just kill their kids instead of trying to do whatever it took to make sure they lived?

"Where'd you hear all of this?" he asked Craig.

"My cousin, Dana, told me. I don't know where she heard it from. You gotta realize, I didn't believe this for a second."

"But now you do," Sam assumed.

"I don't know what the hell to think, man," Craig shrugged. "You guys, I'll tell you exactly what I told the police, okay? That girl was real. This was not a prank. I swear to God, I don't wanna go anywhere near that house ever again."

Dean shared a look with Sam and then nodded at Craig. "Thanks."

A half-hour later, Sam and Dean were walking through mud to get to the so-called Hell House. It was creepy looking, they had to admit, but not anything less creepy than the things they saw everyday during their job. It was just a little run-down house, not much else.

"I can't say I blame the kid," Sam sighed, his eyes searching the grounds around the house.

"Yeah," Dean agreed as they got closer to the house. "so much for curb appeal."

Sam took a look around the perimeter of the house while Dean pulled out the EMF meter. It whirled like it usually did when there was anything unusual around but the way it started up as soon as he pressed it on, made him think that something was off.

He tapped the device, frustrated, as Sam came back over to him.

"You got something?"

"Yeah, the EMF's no good," Dean looked around, the powerlines above the house catching his eye.

"Why?"

Dean nodded at the power lines. "I think that thing's still got a little juice in it. It's screwing with all the readings."

Sam sighed heavily. "Yeah, that'd do it."

"Come on, let's go."

They entered the house, finding that it was unlocked in its abandoned state. They started in the front room and then moved onto the living room where a fireplace lined with various candles was. The walls were covered in spray paint, a bunch of different symbols that didn't really even go together scattered randomly around the room.

Dean whistled sarcastically. "Looks like old man Murdoch was a bit of a tagger in his time."

"And after his time, too," Sam muttered, eyeing a symbol of an encircled cross. "That reverse cross has been used by Satanists for centuries but this sigil of Sulfur didn't show up in San Francisco until the sixties."

Dean gave Sam a long took, wrinkling his nose. "How do you know that?"

"I listen to Julia when she talks about this kind of stuff," Sam said pointedly, knowing that Dean checked out whenever something that required a little brain power was brought up.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Shuddup," he walked across the room, looking at more of the symbols on the walls. He stopped in front of one that looked like an upside-down question mark with two little lines on either side. It looked kind of familiar. "Hey, what about this one? Have you seen this one before?"

Sam studied the symbol and took a picture of it with his phone. "No."

"I have...Somewhere," he couldn't place it, though.

Sam cautiously reached toward the symbol, rubbing it with his fingertips. "It's paint," he studied the slight stain that it left. "Seems pretty fresh, too."

Dean sighed and turned away from the symbol. "I don't know, Sam. You know I hate to agree with authority figures of any kind but the cops may be right about this one."

"Yeah, maybe—"

A loud noise cut off Sam's agreement. The brothers instantly went on alert and followed the noise to a door that led to another room. They stood on either side of it; when Sam nodded, Dean whipped open the door and stepped into the room.

He was immediately attacked by bright beams of lights right in his eyes and two groans of horror. When the flashlights flitted away, he could see that there were two guys in front of them, around his age with camera gear.

The brunette groaned. "Oh, cut. It's just a couple of humans," he told his companion, who shut the camera off. "What are you guys doing here?"

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Dean countered.

"Uh, we belong here," the ginger guy with the camera drawled. "We're professionals."

"Professional what?"

"Paranormal investigators," the ginger reached into his pocket and pulled out a card to give to them. "Here you go, take a look at that, boys."

Dean took the card and read it. He groaned in realization, "Oh, you gotta be kidding me."

"Ed Zeddmore and Harry Spangler? Hellhoundslair.com," Sam read over his shoulder. "You guys run that website?"

Ed, who was the ginger with the camera, nodded. "Yeah."

"Oh, yeah, yeah, we're huge fans," Dean said sarcastically as he passed Ed and Harry to check out more of the kitchen.

"And we know who you guys are, too," Ed said.

Dean and Sam turned to face him sharply. "Oh, yeah?"

"Amateurs," as soon as the words were out of Ed's mouth, Dean pursed his lips and turned away once again. "looking for ghosts and cheap thrills."

"Yep," the other guy, Harry, agreed. "So, if you guys don't mind, we're trying to conduct a serious scientific investigation here."

"Yeah?" Dean noticed a gadget that they must have brought with them on the counter; he picked it up to inspect it. "What do you have so far?"

"Harry, why don't you tell them about EMF?" Ed prompted his friend.

Harry hesitated. "Well..."

"EMF?" Sam played dumb and Dean saw that he was trying not to smile.

"Electromagnetic field," Harry told him as though he was an expert. "Spectral entities can cause energy fluctuations that can be read with an EMF detector," he pulled a EMF reader out of his canvas vest. "Like this bad boy right here."

He turned on the EMF, causing it to whirl angrily. "Woah, woah," he exchanged an excited look with Ed while Dean smirked at Sam. "It's two-point-eight MG."

"Two-point-eight," Ed repeated excitedly. "It's hot in here."

Dean whistled mockingly while Sam tried not to laugh. "Wow."

"Huh," Dean clicked his tongue. "So, have you guys ever really seen a ghost before?"

"Once," Ed looked back to where Dean was standing by the counters. "We were, uh, we were investigation this old house and we saw a vase fall right off the table."

"By itself," Harry added needlessly.

"Well, we didn't actually see it, we heard it," Ed corrected himself but grew serious again. "And something like that...it, uh, it changes you."

"Yeah, I think I get the picture," Dean crossed his arms over his chest and walked over to Sam. "We should go, let them get back to work."

"Yeah, you should."

Dean nodded at his brother and then the door. "Sam."

Sam followed him out of the kitchen and they left the house, not wanting to deal with the kids who wanted to enter the big leagues.

Julia kneaded the sugar cookie dough on the counter in front of her, humming along to whatever Disney song that the radio that was playing throughout the kitchen. Lizzie was on her side of the island, cutting out cookies with a heart-shaped cookie cutter while Beth and Abby were on the other side, decorating some of the finished cookies with colorful icing.

Once that song was finished, a familiar one started, making her smile.

"Oh, I love this song!" Abby exclaimed while concentrating on the flower cookie she was creating. "Let's get down to business to defeat the Huns!"

"Did they send me daughters when I asked for sons?" Beth joined in.

Julia sang next. "You're the saddest bunch I ever met but you can bet before we're through..."

"Mister, I'll make a man out of you!" Lizzie finished loudly, making Julia, Beth, and Abby laugh.

They continued singing along to the best song that Mulan produced while making cookies. When Lizzie was finished with the rest of the heart batch, Julia slid the tray into the oven. Once she set the timer, she gave Lizzie the last batch of dough, allowing her to cut out some dinosaurs.

"I'm done with the dinosaurs, Momma!" Lizzie announced once the dough was gone.

"Good job, cutie," Beth smiled. "Why don't you go wash your hands?"

"Okay!" Lizzie climbed off the stool she was standing on and ran out of the kitchen to the nearest bathroom.

"Use soap!" Beth called after her; once she was sure her daughter couldn't overhear her, she turned to Julia. "So..."

Julia pursed her lips, knowing what was coming. Since Dean and Sam left four days before, Beth had been waiting to talk to her about something. She had that look in her eyes where she wanted girl talk and it also occurred every time Dean called her. It didn't take a genius to put two and two together.

Julia sighed and started wiping the excess flour from the counter. "So what?"

Beth smiled coyly and Abby shook her head impatiently. "She wants to know about you and Dean."

"What about me and Dean?"

There was no her and Dean, no matter how much Julia wanted that. She had moments recently when she and Dean spoke—especially when Sam wasn't joining the conversations—where she thought Dean might have the same romantic feelings that she had but she wasn't sure. Dean cared about his family and he considered her and the rest of the Petersen family his family. It wasn't like he was pining after her the same way she was pining after him.

"Oh, stop deflecting, Julia Ruth," Beth scolded her. "There's something going on with you and Dean and I—" Abby cleared her throat and Beth corrected herself, "—we want to know."

Julia scoffed and threw her washcloth into the sink. "There is nothing going on. Trust me."

Beth and Abby exchanged skeptical looks. "But you want there to be, don't you?" Beth guessed; she gasped loudly when she saw Julia scratch her cheek. "Oh, my God, you do!"

"No, I don't!"

"You scratched your cheek, you liar," Abby pointed out with a laugh. Julia scowled at her. "We're sisters, Jules. Sisters talk about this stuff."

"I've never talked to you about my boyfriends before," Julia protested.

"That's because by the time you had an actual boyfriend you were at Stanford," Beth reminded her. "and you did use to talk to me about boys. Remember that guy you liked when you were in high school?"

"Ugh, don't remind me," Julia groaned; Abby and Beth gave her expectant looks. "Fine, I like Dean. Happy?"

"Extremely," Abby smirked. "He sucked you back in, huh? How old were you when your crush on him finally went away?"

Julia blushed. "Fourteen."

Abby snorted in amusement. "Yeah, now I remember."

Julia sent her a glare while Beth slapped her arm. "Abby, stop," she scolded her before turning back to Julia. "Ignore her, Jules. It were cute."

"A fourteen-year-old crushing on a guy who was twenty? Yeah right," Julia scoffed. "And that's the problem, isn't it? He's almost seven years older than me. He doesn't see me as anything but a little sister."

Abby calmed her laughter. "Jules, Dean doesn't look at you like a sister," she told her baby sister. "He looks at me and Beth as sisters. He looks at you like you're sex on legs."

It was Beth's turn to giggle as Julia's cheeks darkened further and she ducked her head.

"And Sam says that he always checks you out," Abby added.

Julia looked up sharply. "He did?" Abby nodded. "Since when do you talk to Sam?"

"Since he grew up to be a hottie with a body."

Julia rolled her eyes so heavily that it hurt. "No one actually says that, Ab."

"Since when were we talking about me?" Abby protested as Beth laughed again. "my point it that Dean wants to fuck you."

"Okay, the five-year-old is going to be back any second so let's not use that language," Beth smothered her laughter as they heard the faucet cut off in the bathroom. "But, seriously, Julia, he likes you."

"What we're going from sex to feelings now?" Julia asked incredulously. "Sex, I get. I'm hot and Dean loves sex but feelings? Are we talking about the same Dean Winchesters, here?"

"I wanna talk about Uncle Dean!" Lizzie chirped as she ran back into the kitchen. She climbed back onto her stool and looked eagerly at her mom and aunts. "Are you talking about the crush he has on Auntie Jules?"

Julia gaped at her while Abby pointed enthusiastically. "See? Lizzie sees it too."

"That's because Beth's poisoning her mind."

"No," Lizzie protested innocently. "I heard Uncle Sammy and Auntie Abby talking about it."

"Well, I'm so glad that my love life is so interesting to you guys," Julia huffed with warm cheeks. She glanced at the oven, wishing the timer for the cookies would go off so they could change the subject.

"Look," Beth sighed. "Dean calls you multiple times a day, every day just to see how you're doing. Do you think he does that to anyone else who isn't Sam?"

"He's checking up on me."

"Don't give us that sh—crap," Abby shook her head, correcting herself before she could cuss in front of Lizzie. "You're scared that you'll put yourself out there and get rejected."

"Because it's Dean!" Julia exclaimed, frustrated. "Dean, who doesn't do relationships. So what if I want to protect myself? That's good."

"It's good to protect yourself," Beth agreed and grabbed Julia's clenched fists. "but you and Dean...you should see each other. You look at him when he's not looking, he looks at you when you're not looking. You move even an inch and he's shifting toward you. The way I see it, is this isn't a passing fancy."

"You're together every day, you fight along side each other, you protect one another," Abby continued. "You trust each other and that's rare in our profession, Jules. Even I can see that you guys have something special."

Julia wrinkled her nose thoughtfully. It was nice hearing her sisters say these things but she couldn't tell Dean about her less than platonic feelings for him. He was too important to her and she didn't want to lose him, even if it meant she had to get over her feelings. Dean didn't do relationships and she had tried the one-night stand thing and it didn't go well for her. Maybe it wasn't meant to be.

As if the universe was disagreeing with her, her phone rang from the counter by the fridge. Lizzie eagerly climbed off her stool again and raced toward the phone, flipping it open.

"Hi, this is Lizzie!" she chirped before gasping excitedly. "Uncle Dean, we were just talking about you!"

"Lizzie!" Julia lunged toward her niece, ignoring her flour-covered hands to grab the phone from her. She pressed it against her ear. "Uh, hey, Dean."

"Hi there, shortcake," Dean's voice was coy. "Heard that you girls were talking about me. Are there gonna be pillow fights next because, if you want, you could—"

"Okay," Julia hurried interrupted him, waving frantically at her sisters as they laughed at the mortified expression on her face. "We were, um, we're making cookies actually, so...yeah."

"And I just so happen to come up in the conversation?" she could practically hear the smirk on his lips.

"Uh, yeah, because," she walked out of the kitchen and into the bathroom next door, shutting the door firmly behind her. "I was telling Lizzie that you liked pie instead of cookies."

Dean perked up. "You guys are making pie?"

"Uh, yeah, sure," Julia agreed even though they hadn't really planned on it. "So, what's going on down there?"

"Eh, we got some more information," Dean sighed, becoming serious again. "Some kid told us that a guy named Mordechai Murdoch killed his six daughters during the Depression but what Sam found didn't quite match up."

Julia frowned. "Well, what did he find?"

"That the guy's name was actually Martin and he had two sons instead of six daughters," Dean informed her. "There's nothing to say he ever killed anyone."

"Huh," Julia wrinkled her nose. "Anything else?"

"Yeah, I talked to the police and there's no missing persons, either," Dean paused for a second. "Jules, we dug like you wanted but we don't think there's anything here."

"Well, that's good, then," Julia said. "No spirit, no dead people, right?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Well, on your way back, you can stop in Houston," she suggested. "I, um, I got that NASA tour for Levi, remember?"

"Jules, we can't—"

"Yeah, you can," Julia insisted. "I don't want it to go to waste and you love that kind of stuff, Dean. You and Sam deserve some fun once in a while, you know?"

Dean was quiet for a few seconds. "All right. We'll check it out."

"Good," she smiled. "I'll email Sam the information about the tour and hotel."

"Thanks, shortcake," Dean's voice cheered up a little. "I'll call you later when we head out, okay?"

"Okay, talk later. Bye, Dean."

"Bye."

Julia snapped the phone shut and sighed, pressing it to her chest. She was glad that she got to the phone before Lizzie could spill on what they were really talking about. Dean was already insufferable when he knew they were talking about him but if he knew that they were talking about feelings and sex and all that, his ego wouldn't be able to fit in the Hancock building.

She slipped her flour-covered phone into her apron pocket and quickly washed her hands before heading back to the kitchen.

Before Sam and Dean could even leave town, they got a call from the detective Dean spoke with the day before. The sun was still setting when he called, telling them to get to the Hell House as soon as possible. When they arrived on scene, a body bag was being carted to the coroner's van. The detective informed them that a girl had hung herself in the house, which sounded just like the Mordechai story went.

They went back to the Hell House around midnight and dodged the cops when those nerds, Ed and Harry showed up. Mordechai ended up attacking with an ax and was immune to rock salt, which led them to more research.

Dean sat on his bed, drawing that familiar symbol on the notepad that the motel provided. "What the hell is this symbol? It's bugging the hell out of me," he looked up at Sam, who was researching at the table. "This whole fucking job is bugging me. I thought the legend said Mordechai only goes after chicks."

"It does," Sam said distractedly, focusing on his laptop.

"All right, well, that explains why he went after you but why me?"

"Hilarious," Sam looked away from the screen to scowl at him. "The legend also says he hung himself but did you see those slit wrists?"

"Yeah."

"What's up with that?" Sam shook his head. "And the ax, too. I mean, ghosts are usually pretty strict, right? Following the same patterns over and over again?"

Dean nodded. "This dick keeps changing."

"Exactly. I'm telling you, the way the story goes..." Sam typed in Ed and Harry's website and pressed enter, waiting as it loaded. His eyes widened when he saw a new article about the Hell House. "Wait a minute."

Dean looked up from his notepad. "What?"

"Someone added a new post to the Hell Hound site," Sam informed him. "Listen to this: They say Mordechai Murdoch was really a Satanist who chopped up his victims with an ax before slitting his own wrists. Now, he's imprisoned in the house for eternity."

Dean sat up as he stared at the symbol he had drawn, finally recognizing it.

"Where the hell is this going?"

"I don't know but I think I might have just figured out where it all started," Dean rolled off his bed. "Come on, we gotta go to the record store."

They entered the record store not long after, spotting Craig at the cash register.

"Hey, Craig," Dean called to him over the loud rock music playing through the store. "Remember us?"

Craig sighed. "Guys, look, I'm really not in the mood to answer any of your questions, okay?"

"Oh, don't worry," Dean waved him off as he stopped in front of the record crate marked with the second letter of the alphabet. "We're just here to buy an album, that's all."

He quickly flicked through the records in the crate and pressed his lips together when he found the one he was looking for. On the back of a Blue Oyster Cult record, he saw the symbol he had recognized at the Hell House.

He grabbed it and slowly walked over to Craig with Sam on his heels.

"You know, I couldn't figure out what that symbol was and then I realized that it doesn't mean anything," Dean told Sam conversationally, his voice hardening toward the end. "It's the logo for the Blue Oyster Cult. Tell me, Craig, you into BOC or just scaring the hell out of people?"

When Craig turned around to face him and Sam, he handed the Blue Oyster Cult album to him. He took it and flipped it over, eyes flitting over the cover art, which included the symbol that was spray painted at the Hell House.

"Why don't you tell us about that house," Dean suggested. "Without lying through your ass this time."

Craig looked up at Dean for a moment. "All right," he sighed heavily. "My cousin Dana was on a break from TCU. I guess we were just bored and looking for something to do. So, I showered her this abandoned dump I found. We thought it would be funny if we made it look like it was haunted so we painted symbols on the walls, some from albums, some from some of Dana's theology textbooks."

"Then, we found out this guy, Murdoch, used to live there so we made up some story to go along with that," he continued. "They told people, who told other people, and then these two guys put it on their stupid website. Everything just took a life of its own."

Dean blinked at him; something about what he said was familiar.

"I mean, I thought it was funny at first, but..." Craig shook his head sadly. "That girl's dead. It was just a joke, you know? I mean, none of it was real. We just made the whole thing up, I swear!"

Sam nodded. "All right."

As they turned away from Craig to leave the record store, Dean muttered to Sam, "If none of it was real, how the fuck do you explain Mordechai?"

Dean was trying so hard not to smirk as he watched Sam wiggle around in his seat, trying not to scratch at his crotch. While his brother was in the shower, he had sprinkled itching powder into Sam's underwear and now he was able to watch the whole thing unfold right in front of him.

If only shortcake was here, too, he sighed mentally.

Sam was in the middle of talking to Julia on the phone, telling her his thoughts about Mordechai being a tulpa when Dean interrupted him, "Dude, what's your problem?"

"Nothing, I'm fine," Sam said avoidantly.

"What's going on?" Julia's voice came from the speaker.

"Nothing," Sam assured her. "So, these tulpas...There was this incident in Tibet in 1915. A group of monks visualized a golem in their head. They meditated on it so hard that they brought the thing to life out of thin air."

"Okay, well, there are thousands of people on the internet," Julia said thoughtfully.

"Exactly," Sam nodded, wincing as he picked at his itchy jeans. "I mean, Craig starts the story about Mordechai and then it spreads and goes online where countless people believe in the bastard."

"Wait a second," Dean spoke up. "People believe in Santa Claus so how come I'm not getting hooked up every Christmas?"

"Cause you're a bad person," Sam opened his laptop, still squirming, and pulled up a photo of the sigil that brought tulpas to life. He showed it to Dean. "And because of this. That's a Tibetan spirit sigil on the wall of the house. Craig said they were painting symbols from a theology textbook. I bet they painted this, not even knowing what it was."

On the phone, they could hear a thump of a book and then pages being flipped. "Okay, this book says that the sigil has been used to centuries, concentrating meditative thoughts like a magnifying glass. So, people who are on the Hell Hounds website, staring at the symbol and thinking about Mordechai...would that be enough to bring a tulpa to life?"

"It would explain why he keeps changing," Dean answered her.

"Right," Sam adjusted his jeans and added, "as the legend changes, people think different things so the legend itself changes. Like a game of telephone. That would also explain why the rock salt didn't work."

"Yeah, because he's not a traditional spirit," Dean stated, choking back his laughter as Sam started wiggling more than he had. "So, why don't we get this spirit sigil thing-y off the wall and off the website?"

"I don't think it's that simple," Julia sighed as they heard more pages being turned. "Once a tulpa is created, they take on a life of their own."

"Great," Dean grumped. "So, if he really is a thought form how the fuck are we supposed to kill an idea?"

"Well, that's not gonna be easy with these guys helping us," Sam showed him the video Ed and Harry put up on their website. "Since they posted the footage, their number of hits have quadrupled in the last day alone."

"Huh," Dean clicked his tongue thoughtfully. "I've got an idea but we have to find a copy store."

"What are you thinking?" Julia wondered.

"We're gonna give these boys a story and change the legend," Dean told her as Sam forcefully stood up and did a weird walk to relieve himself. "Dude, what the hell?"

"I think I'm allergic to our soap or something."

Dean snickered as Julia spoke up, "What? We use hypoallergenic soap, Sam."

Dean's laughter increased as Sam did a weird lunge in the middle of the motel room. Sam immediately stood up to his full height and glowered at his older brother.

"You did this?!"

Dean couldn't talk, he was laughing so hard.

"You're a fucking jackass!"

Dean continued to laugh, standing up from his chair to dodge the attack coming his way.

As Sam chased Dean around the room, they didn't notice as Julia sighed, "All right, I'm gonna hang up now."

After Dean and Sam told Ed and Harry about this new legend that they found—in which Mordechai would be killed with a pistol and wrought-iron bullets—and a little prank Sam pulled on Dean—where he superglued his beer bottle to the palm of his hand—they headed back to the Hell House to kill the tulpa once and for wall.

They entered the house with their firearms drawn and slowly walked their way around, looking for any sign of Mordechai.

Dean winced as he tightened his hand around his gun. "I barely have any skin left on my palm."

Sam snickered. "I'm not touching that line with a ten-foot pole."

Dean pressed his lips together, irritated, and flashed his light straight into Sam's eyes until he flinched. Once he was satisfied that he got some sort of revenge on his little brother, he continued on through the living room and into the kitchen. "So, do you think old Mordechai's home?"

"I don't know," Sam pointed his gun at the door that led to the basement.

"Me either."

Sam and Dean whipped around at the new voice, pointing their pistols in Ed and Harry's faces.

"Woah, woah!" Ed shouted while Harry lifted his hands in the air to show he meant no harm.

Sam raised his gun away from them. "What are you trying to do, get yourselves killed?"

"We're just trying to get a book and movie deal, okay?"

Before either of the irritated brothers could say another word, a crash came from the basement door. They instantly went back on alert, aiming their guns back at the door.

"Oh, shit," Ed muttered from behind them, focusing his camera on the action. "Hey, guys, do you wanna—you wanna open that door for us?"

"Why don't you?" Dean dared him.

None of them even stepped closer to the basement door as Mordechai burst through, growling at them while waving his ax in the air. Dean and Sam immediately took their shots but Mordechai didn't falter. It was only after full rounds that he disappeared but not in the way they wanted him too.

Sam and Dean immediately left the kitchen to check the other rooms on the first floor.

"Wait a minute?" Ed said breathlessly. "He's gone? He's gone."

"Did you get him?" Harry asked him urgently.

"Yeah, they got him."

"No," Harry shook his head. "On camera. Did you get him on camera?"

Ed faltered. "Well, I..."

Harry grabbed the camera from him. "Let me see it, let me see it."

He flipped open the little screen but was pushed to the floor as Mordechai appeared, smashing the camera with his ax. Dean ran back into the room after hearing some loud noises and glared at them.

"Hey, didn't you guys post that bullshit story we gave you?" he barked at them.

"Of course we did," Harry answered, getting to his feet as Sam came back into the room. "But then our server crashed."

Ed nodded in agreement. "Yeah."

"So, it didn't take?" Ed and Harry shook their heads at Dean's question. "These guns don't work?"

"No."

"Great," Dean sighed and turned to his brother. "Sam, any ideas?"

Sam shrugged; no ideas. None whatsoever.

"We're getting out of here," Harry spoke up.

"Yeah," Ed agreed quickly. "Great idea."

They left the kitchen, only to run into Mordechai again. They screamed and ran for the front door but it was locked and they were unable to get out. They turned to see Mordechai and followed them to the front door and was slowly advancing toward them, raising his ax.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph."

"The power of Christ compels you!" Ed shouted at the tulpa. "The power of Christ compels. THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU."

Any other time, what Ed was saying would make Dean laugh so hard. But, alas, now was not the time for amusement. Sam ran up to the front door and shouted at Mordechai, getting his attention.

"Hey! Come and get it, you ugly son of a bitch!"

While Sam and Mordechai fought and Ed and Harry ran out of harm's way, Dean found some lighter fluid in the kitchen. He quickly sprayed it all over the floor and onto the cupboards before heading into the living room to spray it there, too.

"DEAN!"

Hearing Sam's shout of help, Dean quickly grabbed a bottle of spray paint and pulled his lighter out of his pocket before running toward his brother and Mordechai.

"Hey!" he shouted at the tulpa before lighting his lighter and spraying the paint at the same time, creating a homemade blow torch.

Mordechai let Sam go and disappeared; Dean grabbed Sam and helped him run back into the living room.

"Mordechai can't leave the house and we can't kill him? We improvise."

He showed Sam his lighter and clicked it out before throwing it onto the floor. The old wooden beams lit up immediately and Sam and Dean took off, knocking down the front door and jumping off the porch.

As they ran into the trees, Sam turned to Dean incredulously. "That's your solution?" he pointed at the flaming house. "Burn the whole damn place to the ground?"

"Well, nobody will go in anymore," Dean shrugged. "I mean, look, Mordechai can't haunt a house if there's no house to haunt. It's fast and dirty but it works."

"Well, what if the legend changes again and Mordechai is allowed to leave the house?"

"Well, then, we'll just have to come back."

Sam sighed at Dean's nonchalant answer and turned back to the house. "Kind of makes you wonder," he said. "Of all the things we hunted, how many existed just because people believed in them."

Dean didn't answer but he thought about what Sam said as he continued to watch the house burn. It did kind of make him wonder but he couldn't really consider that. No matter if a supernatural was real just because someone believed in them, they were still killing them and saving people.

It was the family business, after all.

(Gif is not mine)

#supernatural rewrite #dean winchester x oc #dean winchester x reader #supernatural #dean winchester #Sam Winchester #dean winchester fanfiction #supernatural fanfiction #dean winchester x original character

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astralkoo · 6 years ago

Text

Beautifully Misfit 2

SERIES: Hybrid BTS

‣ Genre: fluff, smutt, hybrid au

‣ Word Count: 3k

‣ Pairing(s): skunk!Jimin x reader, puppy!Taehyung x reader, bunny!Jungkook x reader

‣ Warning(s): strong language, angst, bullying, fighting (not graphic), some mentions of abuse and neglect, talks of euthanasia

‣ to be aware of: sub!jimin, switch!taehyung, switch!jungkook, dom!reader, some kinky ass future happenings, BDSM themes, some heavy angst, and triggering themes.

Summary: you never really saw yourself as a hybrid person. that is, until your best friend introduces you to his hybrid, and you suddenly find yourself craving the companionship. you only intended to bring home one. somewhere between the lines you ended up with three beautifully misfit hybrids who craved nothing but your love.

part. i | ii | iii | iv | v | vi (coming soon)

A/N; I promise I’ll introduce Jiminie and Kookie next chapter, I just wanted to get all the introductory stuff out of the way early on without making the chapters too long! Also, thank you so much for the positive responses on Beautifully Misfit part 1! It means a lot, and I hope you enjoy part 2!

“Are you sure it’s enough?” You asked for the twenty thousandth time.

“Y/n,” Namjoon sighed, “you practically bought out the entire store, I’m pretty sure you’re set for the next twelve decades.”

“But what if there’s something I missed?”

“Trust me, you’re not missing any of the general necessities. You don’t even know what breed of hybrid you’re going to get and somehow you’re already over prepared.”

You offered him a sheepish smile, rubbing the back of your neck. “I suppose, I might have gone a bit overboard?”

He laughed loudly, “what gave it away? The king sized bed you ordered or the five thousand dollars worth of miscellaneous items?”

Humming in thought, you meekly interlaced your fingers behind your back, swaying a bit in your step, “a bit of both?”

Shaking his head at your ridiculous antics, he let out a light hearted chuckle, pulling you into his side. “You are one of a kind, you know that?” You smiled brightly up at him, wrapping your arm around his waist.

“So I’ve been told.”

But the light aura surrounding you seemed to crack as you approached the building. A sudden bout of uncertainty and nervousness gripped at your heart and mind.

You were finally here. After weeks of preparing your home for your new addition, endless hours of researching, and having several mental breakdowns in the arms of your best friend, you had finally arrived at the hybrid shelter.

It was almost surreal.

And definitely terrifying.

The shelter itself had been difficult to find. Originally, you’d believed it was fine to just pop into any random hybrid shop, because there was pretty much one on every block. Hybrids were very common, especially in the area you were currently living in. One prominent change in society a few years back was the climb in hybrid normality.

They’d once symbolized wealth and high status, but as their population increased, their value dropped and therefore, they were within reach of the ordinary man and woman. Within a span of two years, they became normal to have in everyday households.

Back when you were in middle school, there was only one girl who’s family was wealthy enough to own a hybrid. And she made sure to rub it in everyone’s face every chance she got.

But now, one glance down a street and there were usually at least three within view.

Unfortunately, this sprout in population came with several prominent downsides.

It wasn’t rare to hear of underground hybrid fighting rings. Men and women used hybrids as a source of entertainment, their own twisted amusement. The death of a hybrid in those fighting rings was like some sick joke on the street.

It was also not unusual to hear of hybrids being used for… sexual activities. Whether it be the owner abusing their power over a hybrid and taking advantage of them, or a hybrid being sold by a new form of pimp for money and power. It was a messed up system.

There were organizations that countered these issues, fortunately. Organizations that were dedicated to saving and protecting hybrids, as well as finding safe forever homes for them. Like H4H, ‘Home for Hybrids,’ which was where Namjoon had adopted Jin from and where you were currently going to adopt your own.

It was one of the most well known Hybrid protection organizations in the nation, and one of the most well credited. Unlike many other hybrid ‘rescues’, H4H took good care of their residents, treated them fairly and without abuse, tending to each hybrids unique needs in the most effective way possible.

You may or may not have read that off their website home page.

But it seemed legit enough. Namjoon approved of it, and you trusted Namjoon. He was good at this kind of thing.

“What’s with that face?” He nudged you gently in the side, breaking you from your train of thought.

“Just a little nervous. But it’s nothing I can’t handle,” you nodded confidently, eyes flickering over the exterior of the shelter. It was big. Really big. You wondered how many hybrids were inside. Probably hundreds. Maybe even thousands. Okay, that’s be an exaggeration, but possibly close to!

That thought alone sent another wave of unease over your restless mind.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go in with you?” Namjoon asked, concern obvious in his tone. He knew how you could be in these types of situations. You know, with decisions and all that. Especially life changing ones.

You quickly shook your head.

“No! No, I’m sure. I can do this by myself. I want to do this by myself,” you said, determination burning in your eyes. Your best friend smiled down at you adoringly, nodding in understanding.

“Alright. Good luck, Y/n,” He pecked your cheek, before turning to leave, only to pause at the feeling on your hand on his wrist. He looked back at you with furrowed brows, nearly melting into the damn floor at the look on your face.

This meant a lot to you. It really did. There weren’t a lot of important things in your life at the moment, but this was important. So important in fact that you’d spent the last few nights damn near tearing your hair out in a nauseating mixture of raw terror and unbridled excitement. Which was more overpowering was debatable.

“How… how will I know?”

He smiled reassuringly, flicking your forehead gently. “Trust this old dusty thing. You’ll just know. Don’t overthink it and don’t force it. If it’s meant to be, it’ll come naturally.”

You swallowed. “Okay. Okay, I’ve got this.”

“Damn right you got this,” He egged you on, playfully shoving you towards the massive center, “now go before you chicken out and bury your regret in a gallon of ice cream.”

Whipping around you threatening raised a hand at him, but he just laughed loudly and scurried out of arms reach, waving encouragingly as he got into his car. “You’ll be fine! I believe in you!”

You only flipped him the bird, earning a few looks from passerby’s.

“That Kim Namjoom,” you grumbled under your breath in aggravation, in spite of the smile that touched your lips.

With renewed confidence, you squared your shoulders, raising your chin as you struck a quick power pose. “I’ve got this.”

Yeah… you don’t got this.

As soon as you entered the building, your mind went blank. The lobby resembled that of a five star hotel, wide and modern and absolutely gorgeous. There were at least fifteen other people, some working there, others on a similar mission as you.

“Hello.”

You let out a yelp of shock, whipping around to come face to face with an unfamiliar boy.

He was very handsome, with brightly shining eyes and the kind of smile that would normally have you swooning in seconds had it not been for your buzzing nerves.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. You just looked a little lost and overwhelmed. I’m going to assume that it’s your first time?”

You could only nod, cheeks warming faintly. Had you really looked that out of place?

The boy’s smile widened and he politely raised a hand for you to shake, “my names Jung Hoseok. I work here, as you can probably guess by the uniform and name tag. I’d be glad to help you out, if you’d like?”

“Y/n,” you introduced yourself, cringing as your voice cracked, “and yes, please. I’d really appreciate it.”

“Right this way, Y/n.” He took a step back, extending an arm to gesture at two large glass doors. Stifling any remaining unease, you allowed him to guide you through, immediately filling with curiosity. There was a hallway with three more doors, each with a large label across the top. The first read domestic, the second aquatic, the third exotic. “Any specific preference?” He asked, turning to you with another bright smile.

“Uh… domestic?”

“Good choice, I usually recommend exotic and aquatic hybrids for experienced owners. They can be a bit more of a handful and far more high maintenance, especially when it comes to their unique requirements. They can be quite pricy.” He explained with a playful click of his tongue that coaxed a soft chuckle from your lips.

“I don’t doubt that,” you couldn’t imagine the kind of home a person would need to own an aquatic hybrid, “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but do you have a hybrid of your own?”

“I do, actually! A grumpy munchkin cat hybrid, his names Yoongi. I adopted him from this very place four years ago. He’s actually the reason I became passionate about hybrids,” he gushed fondly, clasping his hands in front of him. His eyes shined as he spoke, betraying just how dearly he loved this Yoongi.

“Was he your first?” You questioned.

He nodded. “My first and only!”

Immediately any restraint you had on your curiosity burst like an overstretches rubber band. “What was it like? How’d you know that he was the one you wanted? And what was it like bringing him home for the first time? Did it just click or did it take time? You said he was grumpy, has he ever bitten or scratched you? Shit, none of these hybrids bite, do they? I don’t tolerate pain very well so I don’t know just how well I’d be able to cope with being bit or scratched or—”

You began to ramble off question after question, his eyes going wide as he tried to process your words as quickly as they came shooting from your lips. But his shocked expression quickly turned to a gentle smile. At the feeling of his hand resting gently on your shoulder, you quickly snapped your mouth shut, face heating as you realized your mistake.

Leave it to you to have the biggest mouth of the century.

Hoseok was quick to cut off the apology that was seconds from being spit from your mouth with soothing words, “you’re nervous. That’s okay, I was, too.”

“Really? I’m not just loosing my mind over nothing?” Your lips turned upwards sheepishly as your shoulders rose.

A bright laugh bubbled on his lips at that, quickly shaking his head. “No, no, not at all. You’re bringing an entirely new living being into your home. Someone that you’ll be responsible for not only taking care of, but loving and protecting to the best of your ability. If you do that, then they will show you that same love and compassion in return. It’s an relationship of mutualism, give and you will receive. Trust and you will be trusted.”

Trust and you will be trusted.

You stared up at the boy beside you in awe, amazed by his wisdom. “Shit, you really do know your stuff, huh?”

He playfully popped his collar, giving a modest shrug. “I try.” You laughed loudly, him grinning happily at having been able to ease a bit of the tension that had been weighing down your shoulders. “Now come on, its time to find you your perfect new family.”

Family. That’s right. Family. You liked the sound of it.

Excitement overwhelmed the previously buzzing nerves that now lay dormant.

You hovered close behind him, fidgeting as he swiped his key card over a recognition device, a low beeping sound filling the hall before a notable click. With one last smile shot in your direction, he pulled open the door.

And you swear to god, you damn near dropped dead at the sight before you (in the ‘it’s so fluffy you could die’ kind way).

Hybrids–fucking–galore.

It was like a little pet paradise. Toys for every species and massive bean bags adorned freshly polished hardwood floors.

And the hyrbids. Dear god they were adorable.

“Wow,” you murmured, heart warming at the sight of two young cat hybrids playing happily with a unwinding ball of yarn. There was a group of puppy hybrids wrestling in the corner, playfully batting at one another and rolling across the floor. You smiled, giggling quietly until a sharp yell of pain split through the upbeat atmosphere.

“You bit him!” One cried in shock.

“I–I didn’t mean to, it was an accident, I swear!” A dark brown haired boy with large eyes spoke frantically. He tried to reach for the one that had yelped only to be harshly shoved away, a growl tearing from his throat.

“This is why no one likes to play with you! Because you’re just a stupid mutt.”

“I’m sorry—”

“You should be. I better not get any of your filthy diseases.”

“I don’t have any d–diseases!”

“Liar, you’re a disgusting, diseased mutt. Why do you think no one ever wants to keep you?”

“Shut up!” The brown haired boy shouted, delivering a rough shove to the over boy’s shoulders, sending him flying to the ground.

“Tae!” Hoseok was quickly leaving your side, running over to the two as they began to fight in a much less playful way than before. You could only watch with wide eyes as he intervened, pulling the two growling pups away from each other. “Both of you calm down before you get your snack time taken for the next week!”

That shut them up real quick.

Crossing him arms over his chest, he glanced back and forth between the hybrid, a hard but concern expression on his face. “Would either of you like to explain what just happened.”

“Taehyung bit me!” The first and much larger boy was quick to bark out. Haha. Bark out. Get it because they’re both dog hybrids? No, okay. Moving on,

“It wasn’t on purpose!” Taehyung cried out desperately, “I tried to say sorry but he pushed me and started saying really mean things!”

“Did not.”

“Did to!”

“Hey! Stop that right now! You’re both acting like immature puppies, you know that is not how we behave.” They snapped their jaws shut obediently, heads lowering as they were scolded.

“I’m sorry, Hobi,” Taehyung whimpered, tugging at his sleeve meekly.

“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to, Tae. You need to apologize to each other.”

He looked far less thrilled about that, but spit out a soft ‘sorry’ to the other hybrid nonetheless.

The larger grunted stubbornly, turning away, chin held up pridefully. “Sehun, apologize to Taehyung. Now.” Hoseok voice was quiet but surprisingly firm. Sehun let out a low sound of frustration, eyes flicking back over to where they stood.

“Sorry.”

“Very good, thank you. But you both know the consequences of fighting.” The two canines quietly whined in protest. “Ah–ah… none of that. After lunch and dinner you’ll both be helping the staff clean up and wash dishes. Now back to your rooms for an hour, alright?”

Sehun shot one last sharp glare in Taehyung’s direction before stalking off, fluffy golden tail lowered. Taehyung bit his lip, worriedly looking up at Hoseok. “I’m real sorry, Hobi. Are you mad at me?”

Hoseok rested a hand between Taehyung’s dark ears, scratching reassuringly. “No, of course I’m not mad, Tae. I know it was an accident.” The dark haired hybrid whimpered happily in relief, nodding and scampering off. But for a brief moment, his eyes met yours. You could’ve sworn a blush touched his cheeks before he offered a welcoming wave and disappeared behind a set of doors.

“You handled that incredibly well,” you chimed.

Hoseok chuckled softly, “you learn how to handle situations like that after a few go arounds.”

“Who were they?”

“Sehun and Taehyung? Sehun is a German Shepard hybrid. He hasn’t been here for too long. But Tae…” he sighed softly, shaking his head, “he’s been in and out of this place since he was five.”

“Shit.”

“I know. He’s a good boy, he really is. He’s just been dealt a bad hand,” suddenly, he got this really sad look on his face, gnawing at the inside of his cheek, “listen. I’m not supposed to tell anyone this, but…”

“But?” You urged, taking a step closer to him as his voice lowered.

“There was talk of him being put down if it doesn’t get adopted soon.”

Horror. Absolute horror.

“P–put down?” You repeated, praying that he would say you misheard. He nodded sadly, lips tightening. “That’s… that’s horrible. I didn’t realize this was a kill shelter.”

“It’s not meant to be. They’ve never put a single hybrid down before that I know of. But the higher ups are saying that his quality of life will just keep declining if he continues to be adopted and sent back. Things like that take their tole on hybrids mental health, which subsequently affects their physical health. Hybrids that suffer from mental illnesses are ten times more likely to become ill and far less likely to recover from something as seemingly simple as the common cold.”

“I never knew that.”

“Naturally, hybrids seek companionship. We all do to some extent, but hybrids with their animal counterparts actually need it. It’s not a matter of what looks good for the shelter. It’s a matter of whether this hybrid will be driven to extremes.”

“Extremes?”

“It’s possible that he may become feral.“

You felt yourself stiffen.

You’d done enough research to know what feral meant. His animal instincts would take over his mind, all human aspects ground into dust. He would become a danger to anyone around him. And would more likely than not end up being put down.

But you couldn’t picture the sweet boy with the big brown eyes becoming something so vicious and inhuman.

“That’s awful,” you muttered, more to yourself than to the worker beside you. He nodded in agreement nonetheless. Suddenly, you turned to him, eyes wide, “I would like to meet him.”

His own eyes enlarged hopefully, “really? You genuinely mean it? Because I don’t think he can take being let down again—”

“I mean it, Hoseok. I want to meet him.”

You could see how he was trying desperately to stifle his blossoming excitement.

“I’ll take you to his room!”

818 notes · View notes

iesorno · 4 years ago

Text

We spoke to Adam a little while ago about his influences and inspirations and found his answers intriguing, so we decided to dive in and dig a bit deeper. We just kept on going with it all until we ended up with a mammoth interview going into every corner of his mind, from practice and accessing his creativity, to grafting to make a living outside of the norms of the mainstream.

I think it’s a fascinating look into the practice, experiences and the will to succeed that powers Adam, as well as a window into the wider world of underground creators.

WARNING – GORE and some SEX

You can find Adam here

webstore youtube facebook

ZL – Hi Adam! Thanx for agreeing to this interview, hope you enjoy it.

Let’s get introductions out of the way. For anyone that doesn’t know, can you tell us your name, where you grew up and where you currently live?

AY – My name is Mr. Adam Yeater. I grew up a swamp rat in Florida and traveled around a lot. I finally settled down in Arizona as a desert rat. I went from one Florida to another.

ZL – For a little bit more background. You clearly enjoy underground and mini comix, so how did you first find out about them and what were you interested in before you started reading them?

AY – I discovered zines through the early Death/Grind Metal scene in the 90s. There was no internet so everything was done via snail mail. I used to get so much great printed matter. Demo tapes, fliers for bands, albums and review zines. I eventually started my own zine called Subliminal Message. We lived in Ohio in a shit hole little town. Trying to get high, fighting, reading comic books, listening to Metal, Punk Rock, Hardcore Rap and skateboarding.

I was a very industrious broke ass 14 year old kid. I found a way to get some of the mainstream metal record companies to send me promo stuff for their bands for review. I was getting stacks of stuff in the mail. The record companies were mailing backstage passes to me! My mom thought I was running a mail scam.

I once did a phone interview with Chris Barnes when he was in Cannibal Corpse. Chris called for an interview and my mom picked up the phone. He was like “Are you a fucking kid? Holy shit! I usually do interviews with old dudes?” We talked for an hour and half about Metallica selling out. It was amazing. I idolized these weirdos and was getting to just hang out with them.

I did an interview with Cro-Mags right when the original singer got out of prison. I did an interview with Entombed for my high school newspaper! I even interviewed the Goo Goo Dolls when they were on Metalblade Records just for the hell of it. Those metal bands were my heroes. They treated me as an equal and I was this punk kid. They all encouraged me to keep at it. I was getting first hand knowledge of trying to make a living as a creative in American society from them. The good and bad.

ZL – What did it feel like the first time you ever spoke to one of your heroes? It must have felt pretty excellent, right?

AY – It was awesome talking to those bands, it was a real rush. I would get so nervous. I got to hang with some of the bands before and after the shows. All these dudes just embraced me as one of them. I am super tall, so I looked a lot older than I was. I was also a big nerd for the metal scene so I was turning them onto all this other new stuff I was getting. I think they saw me as an oddity. Then we moved to Tucson where there was no metal scene.

ZL – Is that why you stopped making your zine then, moving to Tucson?

AY – Yeah, moving from Ohio to Arizona. The scene was pretty lame in AZ. No bands would come through Tucson at the time. So I ditched the ‘zine and started a Grindcore band with some friends. We did pretty well for a local death metal act. We played shows with Napalm Death and smoked a ton of weed with Sadistic Intent, that was cool.

Lots of drugs and drama, bandmates stealing from each other. . . even more drugs. It was a very fucked up time in my life that I am happy to have survived.

ZL – At what point did you get back into zines and start to think that self-publishing comics was something you could do or that you were good at and wanted to do more with, to just keep going and going and see how far you could take it?

AY – After the band and metal zine I started printing my own mini comics and comic books. I really got into self publishing and art because I had nothing else really. My last “legit” job was as a janitor before I decided to do art and publish full time. I figured I would rather starve as an artist than starve scrubbing shit off toilets. Art is the only thing I have ever been really good at. So I just keep doing it.

ZL – Circling back to get a bit more from your background for a minute, what first turned you into a comic reader and from there, did you move to be a collector or fan, if that distinction makes sense!! And where in all of that did you start making your own comics?

AY- I was into comics a lot when I was young as a collector and fan before I moved into extreme music. I was keeping up with the medium but was focused on the death metal band I was in.

After the band. I was doing paintings and fine art for quite a while. I had also done comics on the side but my fine art was doing well. Then the housing market crashed and nobody was buying art for foreclosed homes.

Luckily I had been doing an extreme comic strip in the metal ‘zines and in the mini comics I was doing. I saw that a local comic convention had started. So I printed them all up and booked a table. I sold out of my first printing and a bunch of art. That is when One Last Day started.

ZL – How did that feel, selling out of books like that? I’m guessing it must have been quite a boost as you carried on and set up an online store! What was the convention like, if you remember at all, did you have a good time there chatting and meeting fans and creators? A lot of people talk about how much the community at a convention matters to them, was that important to you at the time?

AY – It was a real boost. From that little bit of seed money I have been able to keep the ball rolling and have kept printing comics ever since. The comics scene in Tucson in the early 90s was really small and bare bones. It was me and like 2 other indie guys actively printing their own comics. I have encouraged and fostered so many people to make their own comics since then. Many writers and artists from the Tucson scene are now in the mainstream and indie comics system.

The couple who started the Tucson Comic Con have been the best thing for our local comix and art scene. Rather than neglecting local and indie comics they embraced and promoted them. I was so lucky to be in a place where the local comic convention focused heavily on independent comic artists.

I see kids that I taught inking classes to that are now publishing their comics on Amazon. Kids that now give me their books and thank me for all the support and inspiration I gave them. It is humbling. Before the ‘rona I was leaving 1000s of mini comics all over town instead of fliers for the last 15 years. It has exposed people in this town and state to my art and a world of comic books they never knew existed.

ZL – Speaking of coronavirus, I’m wondering how much that has affected your income currently? Do you rely heavily on con sales or do you have a whole set of ways to get sales, which is a terrible way of asking that I’m really interested in how you generate sales for your work, what venues and sources and what sort of percentage of sales comes from them. Have you got a regular set of fans that buy everything, are you using email communications, just facebook?

AY – In today’s art and comics world every successful artist has to be a little bit Andy Worhol and a lot of P. T. Barnum. Otherwise nobody will give a shit about you. So I have a ton of different ways to move my stuff. The website is my main hub but I do small zine fests and shows whenever I can. I have been doing OK but had to switch gears during the crisis. My online sales picked up so that helped a lot. I also have new books coming out all this year. I think that helps too.

Comic conventions at one time were a really good source of income when I first started doing them. I was making great money. Every year it has become progressively less of a viable option for creators like me. The big comic shows are just pop culture festivals. The last few years a lot of the larger shows could care less about indie comics. Table prices and entry fees are way too high for a self publisher or upcoming creator to make any money. Especially out of state shows. Hotel, travel, etc. Because of this I was only doing smaller zine/comic shows and focusing on my online sales already. The virus was a great reason to really focus on my online presence.

ZL – I first saw your work through a facebook group, one of the indie comics groups that sort of specializes in small press superhero and space operas, and I was wondering whether you think those groups help the creators reach more readers, or whether they are all more community pages as in it’s all people that want to make comics and they’re all working to support their own bubbles? (Obviously I’m exaggerating a little, they often have horror and then there’s oddball work that pops up, but there do seem to be a lot of big boob bad girls and massive muscles in some kind of genre thing. )

AY- I look at social media differently than most. I talk shit about comics on it but I have never used it as a political soapbox or a place to talk about my “personal journey”. I post my art and comix. That is it. I speak through my art. I like to “post and ghost”. I feel I am a healthier person for it.

This year I have slowly been taking my art off all the platforms. They are not an unbiased purveyor of ideas. Like the original internet was intended for. Social media is making us all sick. Scientifically proven sick.

I have grown to hate the self imposed censorship imposed on social media by advertisers and cancel culture. We as artists should have the right to dictate our expression by taking risks. Without having to worry about some simp nerd in Silicon Valley shadow banning or blacklisting us.

These leeches profit heavily on ALL of us. Especially artists. They work to infringe on our rights and hinder our freedom to express. The platforms are privatizing our existence. Fakebook and the Twits are just digital emotional vampires.

They should be paying you a fee to use your content and sell it to their stupid advertisers. They make billions off you and you know what you get, a little dopamine for that “like”. Wow, sweet trade off. Not!!

We all need to stand up in some way as artists. Post fucked up art and weird shit all the time! I wanna see a sea of artistically drawn dicks and vaginas. Shitposts, and fucked up memes on my “news” feed. Random acts of artistic defiance. We need confrontational art more now than ever! I want to see original artwork that pushes against cultural dogmas and shitty societal norms.

Instead I see oceans of fan art and trash pop culture mashups. Useless e-rage and cat pics. Art without confrontation is just advertising at this point.

ZL – Now, that’s an interesting one, because there are two sides to the argument on this and I sort of flop wildly between the two without any great reason. I can see why social media is not going to allow seas of dicks – they are easy triggers to SEE, so they’re easy to switch off to maintain acceptability, it seems pointless to me, but is important to a lot of people, so… There’s also the issue of managing genuine freedom to express and people posting images of tentacles raping 6 year old girls and how you manage to monitor that, so it’s just EASIER not to try and figure it and blanket ban it all.

What I think calls bullshit on their motives for me is that they’ll censor that, but allow neo-nazi lies or channels where people openly spout homophobic, racist or sexist bile. There’s a stinking dichotomy there that calls a lie to their talk of community and keeping us safe from damaging content.

I certainly wouldn’t want to have to be the poor sod that sifted through all of this stuff to check it though!

Pippa Creme and the Pearl Necklace – Dexter Cockburn

Equally, with work like yours or – to call in someone else I follow who is always getting bumped from facebook – Dexter Cockburn – who does some great porn comics. I see these things as being completely ok and not deserving of banning, but seeing cape comics and how innately sexualised and soft porn like the women are made to look, that makes me feel very dubious, it seems wrong in that context, as it’s so pervasive and so unspoken and clandestine.

AY – Exactly. It is weird how the mainstream sexulizes it’s heroes. The guys look just as bad. It is a form of repressed erotica. I think it all looks so funny. Balloon shaped breasts or the massive man bulge. There is a big market for that stuff so more power to them.

It just seems erotica in comix is ok for some and not others. The censorship online is selective. Dexter is a comix friend of mine and a great example. The guidelines are so ambiguous and filled with jargon it becomes nonsense.

I totally get censorship for criminal reasons. That is a no brainer. What I saw was not that.

I saw the platforms actively destroy the online followings of some extreme horror artist’s I was following. Some of us had built large fan bases on Myspace and brought our fans over to FB with us. When FB started shutting accounts down it crushed a lot of those artist’s online communities and sales. A lot of artists had to start all new accounts with different names causing them to lose 1000s of followers. Some just gave up or stopped posting extreme art all together. They are still doing it to some of the Ero Goro artists from Japan. It is really fucked up.

ZL – That’s part of the curse and benefit of social media though, they give and then they take away when you’ve made them successful. I do wonder what we can do about that though, maybe they should migrate back to Myspace, maybe the whole retreat to mailing lists is the answer? I don’t know, we need community spaces but we need them to not go dark and end up being hiding places for crime or the dark web. What do you do about it, eh? Maybe you should start curating work into new mail lists and have link sites for different peoples’ interests!!

AY – I like that idea. I have always wanted to do a monthly brochure of underground creators. Like a double sided mailer. I might do one for the Smalll Press Express to hand out at shows. Getting the word out is why I do the YouTube channel. Nobody is shedding light on the best part of comics. The odd, voiceless, strange and marginalized. I think anything that promotes the underground scene and unites indy comic artists is good. I feel every little thing helps. We are all in this sinking ship together. The mainstream comics people keep poking holes in the boat. The indy creators have to keep bailing it out.

ZL – Moving on from that unanswerable conundrum… Is community important to you and comics? Is publishing and buying and communicating with other creators a way of building a place in the wider world for the kinds of things that you enjoy and the kind of things you want to make?

AY – What community. The comics community?

It just saddens me so much lately. The internet and social media had so much potential to dissolve physical, cultural and social boundaries to our communication around the world.

Instead most people have developed the attention span of a gnat. I doubt anyone will actually read all this. So I am just gonna lay it all out. How I see it as an outsider looking in.

There is a massive world of art and comics that is ignored in the west. It is where I exist as a creative. I work with toy making friends in South Korea and send comix pages to Artizines in Spain. Send instant messages to slap sticker artists in Japan. All in a few seconds!! This used to take weeks, even months via phone and mail. Many here just take this shit for granted.

I had a “stick poke” tattooist from Taiwan ask if she could use one of my mini comic images in her little shop. How sick is that!! I live for that!!

I have worked with 100s of the most creative and amazing artists from all over the world. I have had enough love and inspiration from the global art community to last me two life times!!

The American comics community is a weird story. My books sell well. My fans are awesome. First time readers always come back. I do really well at every comic convention I have ever done, even small ones. I have printed, sold or given away thousands of my mini-comics, floppies and magazines. All over this crazy earth.

Somehow I have largely existed as an outsider in Western comics. Other than a few supportive cats in the southwest comics scene like Brian Pulido. I feel like they largely just ignore my comics. I have had a few pros refer to my work as ‘zines’ as a sort of insult.

I started Blood Desert as a big middle finger to the whole corporate comics crowd. The main character is stuck with a permanent middle finger. Good luck co-opting that sucktards.

When I complete the World of Knonx series I wanna only make comics that are a massive fuck you to that whole unimaganitive self indulgent English centric corporate comics world. I wanna make comics for shitheads all over the world like me.

Most of the comics in the mainstream indie world are leftovers from that hokey auto-bio movement. All of them are still pining over Crumb and Pekar to this day.

Who knew making super boring comics about your masturbation habits and history no one cares about would be considered as works of high literary art. I guess it is an easy claim to make when the critics also work for the publishers of said high grade comic “art.”

That is just the indy crowd. At this point most people’s knowledge of modern comics comes from dopey stupor hero comics and movies that are made for mouthbreathers by ex-television writers.

These books are made by “Professional” comic book writers that get top billing over a bunch of lazy artists. These are the same “professionals” who waste their time all day on Twitter and YouTube race baiting each other and blathering nonsense about politics. Somehow they can never seem to get books out on time or any real work done. Go figure.

Can we all just agree that the comics Youtubers are totally obnoxious. Normal people do not care about all your dumb nerd drama. The “comics news” channels love to foment drama in the industry to make money off of more views. They live to promote division among creators. Mind numbing 4 hour live streams of inane political blather. Interviewing the same old industry jobbers about some dopey superhero comic they made 20 years ago. Effete dorks gushing jizz in their whitey tighties over their wonton nostalgia.

These formerly bullied nerds bully each other constantly online. Doxing, Blacklisting, Censoring, Attacking and Canceling each other. Bunch of grade school kid popularity bullshit. I want absolutely NO part of either side’s dysfunctional cult. These sad people must love to live in a heightened state of anxiety.

There are 100s of amazing prolific working storytellers chomping at the bit to talk about and sell their titles. Why not interview and promote these creators. Artists who choose not to engage in either side’s petty childish games. Those creators are largely ignored or admonished for not taking sides.

The industry seems to only want to dwell in nostalgia? A Nostalgia that actually hurts creators. I really wanna talk about Alan Moore.

Let’s all wax about the greatness of Watchmen ONE last time and finally let it go. Watchmen is the comic book Alan Moore won’t even have in his house because of the disdain he has for the American comics industry.

Comics culture could care less about Alan. They talk about his work gushing with praise. Then they call the man a nutter behind his back.

The majority of the comics press treated him like a clown and discounted his opinions at every turn.

Watchmen, the comic they keep in print just so Alan does not regain any of the rights back.

By promoting and working on Watchmen in any way they are all pretty much saying fuck you to Alan. It is just accepted by everyone. “Oh well! We should just keep screwing this dude cause we all really love those characters.” It is shameful.

Shall I go on about the other creators that were screwed by this “industry”. Seigel, Shuster, Kirby, Finger, Simon and so many more.

The House of Morons track record with creatives is just as terrible. It would take all day to list the Big two’s transgressions against their freelancers.

All their Editors in Chief make millions while their freelancers get crumbs.

Or maybe there is hope in the price gouging comic book store owners. They did nothing but complain about Diamond and the Big 2’s scams non stop for years. Then they still lap up everything they do or make like pablum. Accepting and still embracing this constant abuse. Over and over and over. I wonder if the majority of store owners are into BDSM?

Should I bother mentioning all the sex predators that the major comics companies have been covering for?

So now after a long career and all my hard work building a loyal following I am supposed to kiss ass and play nice as a potential artist for them. I am supposed to work on shit I don’t care about? I get to beg for a job doing interior pages for less than minimum wage and no healthcare? No thanks. I am busy building my own worlds not piggybacking on the stolen worlds of others.

The US comics “industry” is kind of a total joke to me at this point.

ZL – It sounds like you are existing as part of a community though, maybe not an American comics community, but an international underground art community, does that seem fair to say?

AY – I was actually becoming a big part of the community for a popular comics Youtube channel for a minute until I was excommunicated. The two creators that host the channel constantly espouse to be a bastion for indie creators. As Maury Povich likes to say…” that is a lie.”

The channel blacklisted me because of a mini comic I did showing cartoon portraits of accused sex predators and general jerks working in the American comics industry.

I am not part of Comicsgate or any other stupid comics cult. I am not a lecherous ogre who harasses women at comics shows. I am a boring family man who makes weird comics. I speak through my art not by posting constant drama online.

I made a mini comic that someone didn’t like. That was it. Instead of finding out my side of things related to the matter these hosts just booted the videos my comics were featured in off their channel. They also had admins remove my posts off other platforms related to them. I was blatantly censored by these “artists.”

So looking back I think it had nothing to do with that mini comic. They have featured sexually violent work like Vigil’s. My stuff is tame in comparison. I feel they were threatened by my output and my dopey little youtube channel. Which is laughable.

I have worked tirelessly my whole career to support marginalized creators in my community and around the world for over 20 years.

At this point I would rather work with the people who get what I do and dwell in quiet obscurity rather than work with these kinds of self-serving troglodyte hacks that are so prevalent in the medium of modern mainstream comics and the art world.

Most of these “pro comic artists” are just glorified fan artists with a little bit of stylized skill. I think that’s why all their books are so derivative of all the other stuff in the mainstream lexicon. They dwell in constant nostalgia and their work is proof of it.

I actually feel sorry for them. To have so little faith in yourself that you have to try to take down other artists is such a sad pathetic way to live.

One thing you can count on with some artists and comics creators. Their egos are as fragile as glass.

Comics culture in the US is steeped in all this kind of nonsensical dogma. It has become an idiotic cult of reactionary clones with Youtube and Twitter accounts.

ZL – Thinking about that wider world of community and how there’s always been an underground arts community and sometimes people travelled through them, often linked to universities or small art publications. Do you feel like that community is something that is now easier to achieve and to curate for yourself with social media, but it involves a lot of effort and commitment to do that and that’s why it takes those in a scene, those dug into that creative feeling, to do that kind of curation?

AY – I guess It is easier to find new stuff now, but there is a lot of oversaturation online. Lots of skilled but boring fan art. Way too much fan art online.

All the crowdfunded stuff is pretty boring and derivative of the mainstream comics they say they hate. Plus there is a high failure rate. Very slow/low delivery rate on those projects that nobody likes to talk about.

I kind of wish the companies cracked down on all the IP theft at shows and online the way they do obscenity. Before the pandemic the comic conventions in the states sucked for indie creators because of all the fanart.

ZL – Yeah, that seems to be a big issue all round, but it’s also tricky as a lot of indie creators make bucks doing commissions of existing mainstream IP. I also think that the move from mini comics and zines to pop-culture sources and attempts to be as professional as professional comics has done a lot of unspoken damage. Yeah, sure, you get a lot of a crowd, but how many are BUYERS?

AY – That is why I stopped making any kind of fanart about 15 years ago including commissions. I think fan art and commissions are a crutch for artists to lean on.

To me it shows a lack of ability to tell stories or have faith in their own creations. They are too afraid to go all in and only make and sell their own comics. They wanna draw cool spidey pin-ups not tell stories with art. There is a huge difference between the two kinds of artists.

The best Mangaka spend their whole careers telling these long form epic stories. We should aspire to that aesthetic not do a bunch of cool variant covers.

It is easy to draw an existing IP. The design and imaginative work was done for you. You are just a human copy machine. It takes a lot of time and faith to go all in on your own ideas. I think a lot of artists try it and just give up and fall back on selling fan art at shows.

I do great at shows without any fan art. You don’t need it. I think selling fan art actually hurts indie creators. They are selling books for our competition.

If you just offer people something new and different and work hard to sell that work they will buy it. I offer people something that is unique. Not just another Deadpool print or sketch.

ZL – Do you see yourself as part of a comics lineage, either style or approach wise? Do you feel it’s important to leave your own mark on the world, hence the making of items rather than posting online, or are you interested in building a space for now or are you trying to just get out what needs to be got out to keep your brain quiet?

AY: Comics lineage is less of a thing now because of oversaturation in the medium. Everyone can make and print their own comics now. So the key is to have your own style of storytelling. I don’t like the autobio comics genre but at least they know how to tell a story.

That’s why I think physical media is still very important. An artist is not curtailed by the formats of printing anymore. You can adjust your style to any kind of printing process now. It used to be the other way around.

Aesthetically I want my work to be as beautiful and be as prolific as Osamu Tezuka was. Dark and creepy as Hideshi Hino‘s. Confrontational and cooky as Mike Diana‘s. With a mad dose of the dark action of a 2000AD Magazine.

Boiled Angel – Mike Diana

ZL – I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember the Mike Diana obscenity case and the outcome of that ridiculous situation? It was big, even in UK comic magazines at the time. I remember them telling him that he wasn’t even allowed to draw AT HOME and that they would be coming in to check that he wasn’t drawing! So, I guess there’s that as a check to what we were saying about social media silencing creators, it’s not like it’s a new phenomenon, sadly.

AY – I started getting into making fucked up comics at the same time as him. I was making One Last Day which is nowhere near as extreme or pornographic as Mike’s stuff, but it was really violent. His case scared me into being real careful who I sent my books to.

ZL – When did you first encounter Mike Diana’s work, then and what’s so inspiring about it?

AY- I have seen more of his work recently. I like the absolute absurdity of it. It was so hard to get out here in the west coast unless you ordered it. I am not a big fan of pornographic or cheesecake comics. I do like some of the cruder stuff that is just too weird to be arousing. The work exists more as a piece of weird art rather than porn in some odd way. I have not gotten to read a ton of his stuff. He is actually a big fan of mine on Instagram. The punk rock kid in me loves seeing a block of “likes” by Mike. I have mailed him a bunch of my comix for trade.If he is reading this “Yo man! You gotta mail me some of your books!” Heh!

ZL – I’m also intrigued to know how you found out about 2000AD as my understanding is that it’s not well known over in the US. What’s your favourite strip from there?

AY: I got a huge run of the re printed 2000AD and Dredd comics from a comic store when I was 13. I really love the old Rogue Trooper strips the most. They were some of the best sci fi war comics made essentially. Those artists were all emulating those old Action war comics they were reading

Rogue Trooper – War Machine by dave Gibbons and Will Simpson

Rogue Trooper – War Machine is a work of comics art. It definitely inspired a lot in my Blood Desert series. “The Fatties” stories in the early Judge Dredd strips are some of my all time favorite comics. I have read them a hundred times. It is just so nuts. I love that line between absurd and gross.

The Fatties – Judge Dredd

ZL – Oh yeah, those early works were really UK punk as punk can be! I’m surprised you like Rogue Trooper more than Nemesis though, Pat Mills and especially Kev O’Niell’s art is extreme as extreme art gets in comics back then. You mention in many interviews I’ve read that Japanese comics, particularly horror comics, have been an influence. How much influence do you see from Japanese horror comics in small press and self-publishing circles, it’s something I see a lot of in the creators I follow for sure, but I’m wondering what your experience is?

AY – I follow the underground Japanese scene pretty well. I am pen pals/friends with some of the newer japanese horror artists. It is funny. They all wanna get published here and I want to get published there.

There are huge barriers in Japanese comics for Westerners. I would kill to get World of Knonx published in Japan. It is specifically designed and made for a world audience. It needs no translation. Manga publishers should be more open to Western comic artists the way we have.

I have grown very weary of all manga flooding the market lately. Most of it is just nicer formated versions of reprints of that older stuff I read in the 80s. It is not the weird upcoming stuff you see on the shelves.

The American publishers bend over backwards to reproduce a lot of Manga but largely ignore American artists working at the same level of productivity. It has become a one way street.

ZL – I see that a lot of publishers seem less inclined to have cartoony horror, they seem to have decide it must all be cheesecake or more realistic, I mean, you’re not going to see the likes of Shaun McManus on Swamp Thing art chores nowadays, which seems absurd because cartooning lets you play up emotions or gore without it getting all pornographic and seedy. I wonder if part of it is that as well, they want everything in that style. It’s also something that’s changed in horror as well. You think about something like Saw and how realistic those horror movie effects are compared to, say Friday the 13th, it’s changed what horror is. You could laugh at those things, not so much Saw, they’re far more EARNEST and wanting to show things REALISTICALLY.

AY- Yes! Exactly. I have been embracing the cartoon aspect of comics very heavily. Cartooning is dying in comic books not just in the horror scene. Comics have lost the ability to move the fans to a desired emotion.

I think it has to do with the industry’s reliance on writers. Artists are usually more creative and experimental than writers. Artists think in images and writers think in words. Writers can hammer out stories all day. The storytelling artist has to really think about every panel in a conscious way and how it will move the story. Images should drive comics not inane narrative. I should be able to understand the story in a comic by just looking at the art. If not then both the writer and artist have failed. Being able to type does not automatically make your stories interesting. Kirby’s cartooning made all those comics great not Stan and his stupid dialogue.

Personally I don’t wanna spend 12 hours drawing the perfect building in a panel that no one will care about. I wanna move the story. Cartooning creates a fluidity through the pages that perfect structure loses. Manga is great at moving you through a story in that way.

ZL – So, in all of the ways you make things and with all of your feelings about being a part of US comics and international makers, what place do you see your new youtube videos playing into what you do? Is it more boredom relief or is it a way of pumping up awareness of the community you enjoy?

AY: I do the YouTube channel for fun and to shed light on independent creators. I also wanna try to create a new narrative in comics. Not just regurgitate the one fed to us by reactionary corporate comix culture.

ZL – Why the trash talking of something at the end? I ask because I have this pet theory that there’s a strong link between people doing underground comics currently, especially over the top gross out ones, and wrestling and I’m wondering whether that’s a bunch of nonsense I’ve made up, or whether this is like the trash talk between wrestlers, a funny sort of way to make a point about something, to build some low stakes drama? Or, is it a way to disarm a serious point by making it funny!

AY: A little bit of both I guess. There is some carney action to all creatives who do it for a living. I think a long life as an artist hardens you.

Comic book artists could learn a lot from Tattooists. Talk to a hardcase who has been making money everyday drawing. The one doing it in your hometown the longest. That is someone who can teach you a lot. They have had to put up with so much stupid shit from customers and society. They have a confidence and respect for their trade few artists do. They have real confidence that is inspiring. They won’t even fuck with some stupid walk-in. They are not gonna deal with some kid who wants a shitty Mickey Mouse tat. Some hokey fan art commission bullshit. People pay them good fucking money for their original style, skill and creativity. Comic artists conceded all that when they settled for being what amounts to storyboarders for ex-TV writers.

Artists have to always remember Western society devalues you at every turn. You really have to learn to sell your art and self. Your skin better be real thick. You hear “no” and that “you will fail” constantly! You will work your ass off just to barely make it in most creative fields.

ZL – Yeah, that really comes with the territory, especially if you’re coming at it from an underprivileged background, art seems to still be a very middle class opportunity and still seems to need strong patronage to make a living, so if you’re aren’t populist or aren’t from the right background you need to get money from somewhere else or learn to live cheap.

AY – Starting out it is always a struggle in any field but comics has kind of embraced and even fostered failure among it’s creatives. A perfect example. No one with the talent level of Tim Vigil’s should ever be living in poverty. Which he pretty much is. If Tim started in tattoos he would probably be pretty set by now. Instead he chose to work in comics.

ZL – You seem to be really knocking out your comics and developing an amazing backlist. I remember sharing a video where, I think that you were drawing a page from The Lottery, where you were filling in your spot blacks with this chunky dip pen nib and that just seemed like it would take a long time to get work done! So, I’m wondering whether you’ve changed up a gear and started doing lots of work, or am I just in circles where I’m seeing you pop up and you’ve been constantly busy for a long time?

AY – I mainly use a brush for large areas. Sometimes a fat nib. I have had the same process for the last 10 years. I have always had a pretty good work ethic with my art but my tools are just that. Lots of trial and error for the first 5-10 years. I had no one to help or any training. I am a lot faster at inking with some modern stuff but it is still the same process it has always been. I try to only work full time M-F 9-5. I love creating so much I get addicted to it. I will draw 18 hours straight if I am not careful.

ZL – What inspired you to get making, not necessarily the style you make, but the actual circumstances behind you getting yourself together to put out comics instead of just sketching or posting online? What is the difference for you between posting online and publishing?

AY – Posting online is just a form of promo to me. Online is so ephemeral. I feel printed comics and animation is the best way to tell new stories and get them out. Period. It is hard to say what inspired me to start creating. I can tell you how I create though.

I have always hated the idea of needing drugs, a muse or constant inspiration as motivation. It is not a sustainable model. It is a crutch for lazy artists to lean on. We all can learn skills and borrow from influences to make pretty art but real creativity comes from our imaginations.

Clive Barker said it in interview after interview for years! He spoke of how fostering the imagination is being lost and even stifled in today’s world. He stressed the utmost importance for working artists and children to have an active and focused imagination. He is the greatest living horror artist of our age. The Poe of our time and everyone completely ignored him!!

Well I didn’t! I would meditate and do mental exercises daily for years to try and imagine whole working worlds. Clive was 100% right. I don’t get artists’ block or any of that shit.

This is gonna sound super new age but it is the best way to explain it. With short meditation techniques I can light the fire of creativity instantly now. It can keep me awake some nights if I let it. My mind’s eye fills with the most moving and colorful images you could ever imagine. I have learned to embrace it and snatch stuff from the ether. It’s like a true form of art magick. When I break into the astral plane of endless creativity it recharges my inner being and overwhelms my soul with love, and joy. I am flooded with new ideas constantly. The Buddhists actually have a name for this place but the name escapes me.

ZL – I remember reading that Moebius, Jean Giraud, the French comic artist took a similar approach, that he drew all his Moebius strips in a semi-conscious state of meditation, so it seems reasonable for you to do the same!

AY – Exactly! I have read that and felt a kinship with him. I think Jim Woodring works in a similar fashion as well.

ZL – Yeah, I’ve read that about Jim Woodring as well.

Looping back a second to The Lottery, I really admire the style of character design, the shapes you put down on the page, that I’ve seen in that. I’m guessing, from what you’ve just said, that much of these things arrive semi or fully formed? How much planning do you put into character design and story content and then could you give a general idea to how you approach a story and what you’re trying to achieve with your stories?

AY: Like I said prior, the initial ideas will come like a flood or in pieces. I will mentally “hang on” to my favorite ideas and build a story around them. Once I get most of it all sorted out in my brain I will do some general super loose thumbnails of a story or idea or the whole book. Sometimes I will start with a one shot style story and expand on it. The one shots will inspire more stories or ideas for other worlds as well.

ZL – I know we touched on this earlier, but I’d like to dig deeper into whether you’re making money and what sort of sales you’re achieving, because, you know, I’m just damn nosey! More seriously though, I think part of making and why people cease making is an unrealistic idea of what can be achieved within an arena. The amount of people coming into comics and underground comix all thinking they’ll end up on Adult Swim or bankrolling a comfortable life always saddens me. You know they will get worn out banging their drum to sell 10 copies and lose hundreds because they completely over print.

Which is a very tortured way of asking whether you make money from your comics or, at least break even? Are you happy to tell us numbers of sales and if not exact amounts of income, what sort of percentage of your income comes from your comic sales and for context, the kind of lifestyle you currently live?

AY: I grew up pretty poor. I was out on my own at around 17 with zero money. So it has not been an easy road for me in art and comics. I am not complaining, I have made good money off my comix.

I print modestly with print on demand services. I can print a few copies up to a few 100 at a time. It just depends on demand. You don’t need to have a warehouse of stuff. I focus on the stuff that does well.

It took a long time but I am in a great spot on my own. Because of the virus a lot of the mainstream crowd are kind of sitting around with their dicks in their hands. While I am hammering out stories. I am 100% owner of all my titles. I am not an LLC so a corporation can’t get my “creative content” without my direct consent.

Luckily I don’t really need them. I have done the math, I make way more per page and book then I ever would with a publisher. I can create, print, promo, mail and repeat. I have no need for censors, editors, publishers, stores, mob run distro or other middle men. They are all just standing between me and making the profit from my books.

No one will admit it, but the Cerebus model is still the best model for creators to sell their comics. If you are serious about ownership. More people should have the same faith in their work as Dave Sim does. Only without being a total jerk.

ZL – I’m guessing your politics don’t mesh with his, but I think Dave Sim is definitely someone who has lessons for self-publishers and creators alike. If you were going to pass on any of his advice, how would you summarise what you’ve taken from his example?

AY – His politics aside he was pretty cantankerous in most of his interviews but he was not afraid to speak his mind. Everyone is so afraid to speak up in fear of never getting or keeping that “sweet corporate comics gig”.

Dave was right about a lot of stuff. If you can’t stand up for your own work then who will? Before I started reading all his interviews I thought he was just a jerk but now I kind of get his anger. I could only imagine what the mainstream tried to pull back then when they saw he wouldn’t play ball. What’s worse is nothing has changed really. All the shit he was raving about in comics is the same or even worse.

I think he was really hated by the industry when he started speaking out about all the shadiness going on. It always felt the comics press started attacking his political stances after he started to state his opinions about the practices of some of these publishers. I don’t agree with him on a lot of stuff politically but he never backed down and stayed true to his ideals. I admire him for that.

Comics has a long sordid history of trying to silence voices they don’t want to hear. It has happened to me and many others still to this day.

ZL – How long has it taken to build up your back catalogue and what sort of tail end do you currently see on your titles, are we talking release and then forget it, sustained sales over months/years or occasional bumps when you get new titles out?

AY – It took 20 years to build the whole catalogue of large format stuff. I have printed 100s of different minis along the way. I now just mainly sell my larger format floppy and magazine stuff that does well continuously. I do have a goal to be able to fill a whole small magazine size comic book box with all my different floppy comics and mags.

ZL – And how far away from that goal are you?

AY – I have never actually checked. I would say I am well over halfway there.

ZL – How do your sales and income compare to where you thought you’d be when you first started making your comics or did you not really care about that, other than not losing money?

AY: It is a weird thing that exists in indie comics. It is like they are ashamed of making money.

You hear so much altruism in indie comics. “It is not always about the money man.” Tell that dumb shit to a career tattooist. They will laugh in your stupid face while they make $200 bucks an hour and drive off in their fully customized Dodge Challenger. While you stand there with a handful of comics and empty pockets.

We should look at indy comics like tattooing or a little like a one man touring metal band or rap act. People wanna buy my books for my nutty unique style. So, yeah I am doing better than I ever could have dreamed of in such a dismal backwards looking field. I would rather be like a Tech 9 or Frank Zappa in comics.

ZL – Last question, for you as a fan now, if you could get everyone in the world to read one of your books or series and a book or series by someone else, what would it be?

AY: Out of all my books I would say the World of Knonx series is my crowning achievement. I dumped every skill I have developed into one massive tale.

Park Bench – by Christophe Chabouté. It is one of the most amazing comics made in the last few years. It is one of the most beautiful comics ever made. It flows like water. It is the zen of comix. I cried the first time I read It.

Park Bench – by Christophe Chabouté

I only make silent or wordless comics. So that is mainly what I am into. It is more common in European comics. So I try to mainly follow works coming from there.

Comics should move us and excite us. Gross you out or move you to a new place emotionally. Not just be inane 80s TV sitcom serials. I am only interested in comics that exist and aspire to be comics. I have no interest in storyboards with dialogue.

ZL – Thanx for your time Adam!

AY- Thanks for this in-depth interview. It is not often I get to talk deeply about things in comix that I care about. I never really get to explain how I create or how I truly feel about the medium.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak my mind. To everyone who has ever supported me and my art. I truly frikkin’ love you all!!

all art copyright and trademark its respective owners.

Adam Yeater, underground comix creator, talks in depth about his practice, his work and how comics remains closed to many outside of mainstream companies #comics #horror #underground #selfpublishing #fantasy #inspiration We spoke to Adam a little while ago about his influences and inspirations and found his answers intriguing, so we decided to dive in and dig a bit deeper.

#comics #horror #illustration #interview #smallpress #zines

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lingthusiasm · 5 years ago

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Transcript Episode 35: Putting sounds into syllables is like putting toppings on a burger

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 35: Putting sounds into syllables is like putting toppings on a burger. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 35 show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: And I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about syllables! But first, Gretchen’s book is out now. If you haven’t bought it yet, you should buy a copy!

Gretchen: Yes! It’s very exciting to finally have other people being able to read the book and talk to me about memes, and emoji, and punctuation, and all of the internet linguistics things that I’ve been thinking about for three years. We are doing a very special Q&A episode for the book. This episode goes up on August 15th. You have until August 15, so you have some number of hours until it is no longer August 15th in any time zone. You can check ahead to Hawaii and maybe gain a few hours that way to send in your questions about things to do with internet linguistics, the book-writing process – and then we’ll do a very special behind-the-scenes bonus episode about that.

Lauren: I’m looking forward to everyone else’s questions. I have a bunch of questions about how the book-writing process went. I’m looking forward to that Patreon bonus episode. Also on the Patreon we have a new $15+ tier. Several people have been asking for a way to support us even more than the $5 a month for bonus episodes. At our $15 Ling-phabet tier you will receive your very own symbol of the International Phonetic Alphabet, which you can get through either a super scientific quiz or just merely saying that you have a favourite.

Gretchen: Then, we will add your name and symbol of choice to our Lingthusiasm Supporter Wall of Fame on our website. We’re happy to put your name or any other name within reason. If you want to give this as a gift to somebody, that’s also a thing you can do. And if you join this new level before August 15th – this is the same time zone thing that you’re running into right now – you can also get a signed book plate, which is a custom Because Internet sticker that you can stick into your copy of Because Internet, which I will sign for you and I’ll put your name or whatever name you want. You can stick it inside your book and then you have a signed copy of Because Internet. If you join that very soon, you can get that as well.

Lauren: Of course, even if you don’t listen to this episode within the first 24 hours of it going up, you can still buy Gretchen’s book from all good and bad booksellers – preferably good ones. You can also support us on the Patreon.

Gretchen: Yes. There are some other ways to get an actual, physical copy of the book signed, but this is probably the easiest one. Hopefully, you have a chance to do that.

[Music]

Lauren: Gretchen, I am going to test you. Everyone can play along. I’m gonna give you some pairs of words and I want you to tell me whether they sound like English words.

Gretchen: Okay. Sounds good.

Lauren: They’re made up – some of them. The first one is “blick” and “bnick.”

Gretchen: “Blick” sounds like a pretty reasonable English word. I don’t know what it means yet, but it could mean something. “Bnick” – I’m not so sure.

Lauren: I actually even have trouble saying it. I feel like I’m saying “buh-nick” – “buh” ... “nick” all at once.

Gretchen: /bnɪk/ – B-N-I-C-K. Not something I’d expect English to turn into a word – no.

Lauren: No. The B and the N together don’t really work that well. What about the word “copter” versus the word “pter”?

Gretchen: Yeah, “copter,” I mean, is an existing English word – could continue to be an existing English word. Seems legit to me. “Pter” – yeah, the P-T thing, again, not really doing it for me.

Lauren: Because that’s the – like when you say “pterodactyl,” I know that it’s P-T, but I can never say that P.

Gretchen: Or like the Greek “Ptolemy” is just /taləmi/. It’s not /ptaləmi/ even though that’s how they said it back in the day.

Lauren: In fact, “helicopter” is from Greek “heliko-pter” – “spinning” and “flying” are the two roots there.

Gretchen: It really seems like it should be from “heli” and “copter,” but it’s “heliko-pter.”

Lauren: Which is not how my English brain can divide that word up.

Gretchen: No. No. It really isn’t. But the Greeks are really happy to have /pt/.

Lauren: Okay. Next two are “fneeze” and “sneeze.”

Gretchen: “Sneeze” seems like it’s doing fine. But with the F – “fneeze”?

Lauren: I’m really glad that you recognized “sneeze” as a word. We’re doing well. Good work.

Gretchen: My vocabulary is really good. I know the words “helicopter” and “sneeze.” Yeah, “fneeze” – also not so much.

Lauren: “Fneeze” was the original way that English speakers said “sneeze.”

Gretchen: That is amazing.

Lauren: Then, when they started printing it, that "F" looked like that long "S" that you get in ye olde printing times.

Gretchen: And people started pronouncing it much more sensibly as “sneeze.” We don’t have any words in English that begin with /fn/.

Lauren: Yeah. We literally had, like, three of them. And two of them are now gone, and people turned “fneeze” into “sneeze” because it felt more like the shape of an English word. Okay. Next one is “sing” versus “ngiss”.

Gretchen: “Sing” – again, an English word. I recognize it. Seems very English-word-like. But “ngiss” – I don’t think we have any English words that begin with /ŋ/.

Lauren: No. But we do in languages like – a lot of Australian languages and also Syuba, the language I work on, has that initial /ŋ/ sound. Even though I know this, I really struggle to pronounce it because it’s not where it goes in English. We have it at the end of a word. I know I can make this sound. But I really struggle to make it at the start of a word.

Gretchen: You have it in Vietnamese at the beginning of words. And Cantonese, I think, sometimes you see it in people’s last names – but not at the beginning of words in English.

Lauren: The final pair is “heat” and “tih.”

Gretchen: “Heat” – also an English word. Seems like it works. “Tih” – with the "H" at the end, I can make it, but it kind of reminds me of when I was studying Arabic and I had to learn how to make words that ended with an "H" sound because that’s not where we’re used to saying it in English. Even if you write an H – like “Ahh!” – you write it with an H, but you don’t say /ahh/ unless you speak Arabic, maybe.

Lauren: H goes at the start of a word for English, /ŋ/ goes at the end of a word, and when you try and put them in the other spot, it’s really hard to say and it’s really hard to hear as well.

Gretchen: That’s something that I find really interesting because when we think of the sounds of a language, it’s easy to be like, “Okay, here’s a list of the sounds in this language,” but it’s not just about which sounds you have, it’s also about how you can combine them with each other – which ones can go at the beginning of the word, which ones can go at the end of the word. Not all languages let you do all possible combinations.

Lauren: That’s because different languages have different structures for their syllables and what sounds can go together in a syllable, which is like a chunk of sounds together.

Gretchen: A word is made up of syllables and that kind of determines what one you can do. If you talk about words that are just one syllable long, that kinda gives you the maximal picture of what sounds can combine in that language.

Lauren: What sounds can combine and what spots they can go in within that structure. In fact, the word “syllable” comes from a Greek word that means “goes together” or “what goes together,” which is a really nice – I kind of like that, that “syllable” means what can hang out together.

Gretchen: That’s very nice. Also, just to clarify, we’re not talking about signed languages here because signed languages don’t have sound-based rules for how they go together because they don’t have sounds.

Lauren: They’re not stuck with this narrow-minded problem of linear time in the way that sounds are when they all have to follow a string.

Gretchen: Sounds only exist in one dimension. Signs exist in two dimensions. They’ve got their own constraints, and we’re just not gonna get into them in this episode. Yeah! Different languages have different shapes for their syllables – different ways they like their syllables to be constructed. I like to think of a syllable as kind of like a burger.

Lauren: Awesome.

Gretchen: It’s a very delicious metaphor. I’m sorry if anyone’s hungry right now. You have your pieces that go together like the patty and the bun, and the various toppings, and cheese and so on that you might add to your burger. There’s various different kinds of ways you can do that when you’re looking at the syllable-burger as a whole.

Lauren: Different languages allow you to put different things in the burger and in different orders.

Gretchen: Yeah, and some people – there was a lot of controversy about the burger emoji a while back because people were annoyed that some versions of it had the cheese below the meat instead of on top of the meat. The order is important when you put things in a burger.

Lauren: And what you include and how much you can include in a burger definitely varies from place to place.

Gretchen: It can be political sometimes. I don’t know what you guys put in burgers in Australia that is different.

Lauren: Well, a classic Australian burger has beetroot in it.

Gretchen: Oh, okay. See, I would definitely not think of beets as a thing you put in burgers.

Lauren: It’s delicious.

Gretchen: It probably is. I’ve never tried it. Languages are also often faced with syllables that they can’t necessarily handle through their own internal resources. They have a couple options. One of those is to say, “Okay, there’s so much here that I’m actually gonna split this across two burgers” and another of which is to say, “Look, there’s so much here. I’m just gonna take some stuff out and completely discard it.” One very salient example to English speakers sometimes is when Spanish borrows a word from English. In English, you can start a syllable with a sequence of sounds like /sp/ or /sk/ or /stɹ/. You can have an S and then a consonant or some consonants after it at the beginning of a syllable in a sequence like “Sprite” or “school” or “scheme” or “street” or in a name like “Stephanie.” But in Spanish, this combination of S and a consonant at the beginning doesn’t work. You can have just S at the beginning, but you can’t have S and then a consonant at the beginning of a syllable. It’s just not something they’re keen on. The way that that they deal with this is they say, “Okay, if you try to put S and then a consonant at the beginning of a syllable, you’re gonna add a vowel in before the S.” Now, the S belongs to the previous syllable and the consonant belongs to the next one. You’ve split them across too different sorts of burgers. You get things like “Stephanie” becomes “Estephanie.” Or “Sprite” becomes “Esprite.” Or “school,” which goes back to the Latin root “schola” becomes in Spanish “escuela” rather than “scuela” or “schola.” In all of these cases, you’re adding the E at the beginning to kind of rescue this S and allow it to stay because otherwise it’s not something that works for speakers of that language to pronounce.

Lauren: Nepali speakers do the same. But instead of E at the start for their burger, they use an /i/ burger. So, it’s “/iskul/” instead of “/ɛskul/.” They don’t like S and K in the same burger, so they move the S over to another little burger with an /i/.

Gretchen: I like to think of the vowel in the middle as the meat or the patty or the portabello mushroom in the middle of the burger. Then, you have your consonants on the other side, which are kind of like the buns. It’s like “No, we’ve got too much bun. This bun is too big. We need to give it its own patty – its own vowel – by adding an extra vowel." Another example of this is – so Hawaiian, which is really – the largest syllable that it will let you have is just a consonant and a vowel all by itself. When the expression “Merry Christmas” was borrowed in Hawaiian, it got converted into “Mele Kalikimaka.” “Merry” becomes “mele” because they don’t have an R in Hawaiian. That’s pretty straightforward. And then “Christmas” – so that has a /k/ /ɹ/, /kɹ/, but that’s too much in Hawaiian, so you get “kali” rather than /kɹ/ to break up that sequence as well.

Lauren: Hawaiian is like when you choose to eat lots of individual, tasty, smaller cheeseburgers rather than one big burger full of stuff.

Gretchen: Yeah. It’s kind of like the sliders of syllables. Everything’s just a bunch of small, open-faced sandwiches.

Lauren: I think the important thing here is everyone still gets to eat plenty of burgers.

Gretchen: It’s interesting because there’ve been some studies that show that some languages have syllables that are smaller – that just have maybe, maximum, a consonant and a vowel, or a consonant and a vowel and a consonant and no more. Those languages tend to pronounce their syllables faster because there’s less information in them. Whereas, a language like English, the most dense-syllabled word in English is the word “strengths,” which has got three at the beginning S-T-R, and at the end it’s got /ŋ/ /θ/ /s/. “Strengths” – three at the beginning, three at the end.

Lauren: That is a very large and full hamburger situation.

Gretchen: It’s a very large and dense – there’s a lot of toppings and stuff on this hamburger. So you say those a bit slower because they’ve got more information in them. When you count by syllables, it seems like some languages are faster, but it’s because they’ve got smaller syllables. If you count by bit of information, they actually end up averaging out to about the same.

Lauren: I learnt Polish, which also is a language that allows a lot of stuff in a single syllable burger. But it allows different stuff to English. It took a long time to get my head around that. I know we don’t normally try and apologise for how badly we speak languages on the show but, like, I really do feel it’s been a long time since I’ve worked out my Polish consonant cluster mouth. A word like “wstrząs” which means “shock,” has multiple consonants before that vowel that we don’t normally put together in English.

Gretchen: Yeah. I don’t even think I can produce it – /vəʃɑnt͡s/ – yeah. I’m definitely dropping some of them just to –

Lauren: Just to try and make it fit within the kind of burgers that you’re used to.

Gretchen: One thing I could do if I was trying to say that is /vʃɑnt͡s/ – I’m gonna drop one. Or I could say /və-ʃɑnt͡s/ and try to add a vowel in between to split it up.

Lauren: A bit like Hawaiian speakers do with “Kalikimaka” for “Christmas.”

Gretchen: Exactly – add a vowel there. English speakers, sometimes we drop stuff. Sometimes, we don’t. You can see this in words that we’ve borrowed from other languages. Like with “helicopter,” you don’t need to do that there because it’s in the middle of the word. But in a word like “pterodactyl,” you just drop the P. Or “psychology,” you just drop the P there. Or “xylophone,” which was originally /ksɑɪləfoʊn/ because that’s what sound an X makes.

Lauren: Oh, yeah. I never thought about that. Most of you just get used to saying words how you say them.

Gretchen: Yeah, exactly. In French, for example, they’ve also borrowed these words from Greek, but French is more okay about saying those consonants at the beginning. In French, you say, “la psychologie” and “xyloph” – I don’t know if you do it with “xylophone” – /ksiləføn/. You definitely say /psikələʒi/ in French. You don’t say /sikələʒi/. Sometimes, in English we drop it. And sometimes, in English we add another little vowel to kind of rescue all of the consonants. In words from Russian, some English speakers can say things like “Vlad” and “Ksenia,” but a lot of times you’ll get /vəlæd/ or /kəsɛnjə/ in order to try to keep both of the consonants there.

Lauren: A bit like Spanish speakers and Nepali speakers with /iskul/. We move that initial /v/ in “Vlad” to its own /vəlæd/ syllable.

Gretchen: To try to say the whole thing. Japanese does this as well. In an English loan word like “picnic,” because in Japanese they don’t like consonants at the end of a syllable unless it’s an N or an M, so “picnic” becomes something like “pikuniku” because you wanna rescue those Ks by giving them their own vowel.

Lauren: The start and the end of a syllable have their own characteristics. We’ve been talking around the kind of burger part and what can go before or after the burger. But that can differ. With Japanese, you can only have an M or an N after that central part.

Gretchen: Exactly. I think this is one of the reasons I like a burger metaphor in particular because a sandwich also has a central part with the filling and two pieces of bread, but what makes a burger distinct is that it’s asymmetrical. You’ve got a top of a bun that’s different in shape from the bottom of the bun. Languages often let you do different things with the start of the syllable than they let you do with the end of the syllable. In many cases, at the end of the syllable, you can’t put as many consonants there. Sometimes, you can only put a few, like M and N, or you can’t put any, like in Hawaiian. Or in English, you can put the /ŋ/ at the end of a syllable, but not at the beginning. Or you can put the H – the /h/ – at the beginning of the syllable but not the end.

Lauren: Yeah. We definitely can’t put it at the end as we discovered at the start of this episode.

Gretchen: /ŋah/, / ŋah/, what a great word! “Hang” – totally good word. /ŋah/ – not a word.

Lauren: /ŋah/ for English is the equivalent of serving a burger with the bun upside down. An English speaker would just be like, “What is happening?”

Gretchen: “What have you done?”

Lauren: “What have you done with my burger?”

Gretchen: It doesn’t even sit on the plate. The top is curved, so it doesn’t even sit there. It just kinda falls over.

Lauren: It could be a perfectly good burger in many other languages – a very confusing burger in English.

Gretchen: Right. What you think of as something that belongs on the top, or what you think of as something belongs on the bottom. I think there’s also so room for some individual variation. Do you put the ketchup on the top bun or the bottom bun? I don’t know. In general, languages do have this asymmetric relationship between what can go before and after the vowel.

Lauren: The vowel being that really central – it’s hard to – a burger without the patty in the middle is a salad roll.

Gretchen: Yeah, if you have – I was trying to think about this as well, because you need to stress test your metaphors before you commit to them. I was thinking, back in the day, when I was a student and not very organised, and I was a vegetarian and I was trying to get enough protein, sometimes I would just eat a veggie burger with some carrot sticks or something, or a salad or whatever, because I wouldn’t have the buns. That’s something you can do when you’ve still eaten, by some definition, something of a burger. I think if I just had the bun by itself, I have not eaten a burger.

Lauren: No, you’ve eaten a roll.

Gretchen: You’ve just eaten a roll. You’ve eaten a bun. By no definition is this a burger. Whereas, if you just eat the patty, you have kind of still eaten a burger even though it’s a very small burger.

Lauren: Overwhelmingly, when people talk about syllables, the vowel that’s in the middle is a really central anchor point for almost all languages.

Gretchen: You need this anchor point of something to make the syllable. It’s generally a vowel, but it’s not 100% a vowel because there are some words in English, for example, depending on how you pronounce a word, like “bottle,” you probably say /bat-l̩/ and it’s just really just an L – /l/. You could say /battəl/, which might give you vowel there. You could just say /baʔl̩/ or /baʔn̩/ and that might just be /n/ – the N itself – that’s the second syllable and there’s no vowel to speak of.

Lauren: That N is the portabello mushroom of burgers.

Gretchen: Yeah, exactly. It’s kind of the centre of it, but you don’t normally think of it as a prototypical burger.

Lauren: As a vegetarian, I am really sick of portabello mushrooms as burger. But as a language speaker, I love syllable nasals and syllable Ls.

Gretchen: Well, I also kind of think of – so you have can have in the middle one vowel, but you could also have several vowels. You could have something like “bike” has /ɑɪ/, which is a diphthong, which is kind of two vowels smooshed together. So, maybe that’s kind of like a deconstructed burger – something that’s got multiple pieces inside of it.

Lauren: You can order two patties in a burger if you want a really meaty burger – yeah.

Gretchen: The other reason I really like this burger metaphor is that if that you wanna serve a burger with only one bun, you probably take the top one off because that’s the one that’s the weirder shape, and you can still leave the bottom part of the bun and the patty part on your plate. There’s also kind of a different relationship that this vowel has with the consonant or consonants that come after it versus the ones that come before.

Lauren: It’s a very fancy restaurant that you’re eating in if you have to use cutlery to eat a topless burger.

Gretchen: You can have an open-faced sandwich. People don’t often have an open-foot sandwich. What’s the opposite of an open-faced sandwich, where you only have the top?

Lauren: An “open-bottom sandwich,” which is, I think, why they don’t say it. It sounds ridiculous and it looks ridiculous, and it’s even more ridiculous to eat.

Gretchen: It’s very messy.

Lauren: Although, it totally works fine for syllables. So, we found, finally, the first thing where the metaphor really doesn’t hold.

Gretchen: Yeah, the metaphor doesn’t hold in the sense that you can have a syllable like /ba/, which doesn’t have a bottom thing. But there is this closer relationship that the vowel has with anything that might come after it, because when we talk about what are different kinds of poetic devices you can do with languages or what are interesting kinds of ways you can play around with sounds – so you can have things that rhyme, which means that the vowel and any consonants that come after are the same. Or you can have alliteration, which means that just the initial consonants are the same. You don’t often get something where the first consonants and the vowel are the same, but the latter consonants are different.

Lauren: As a poetic device. Obviously, we can do this, but we’re not as into it.

Gretchen: You have “bad,” “mad,” “sad,” “glad” – these all rhyme. It’s great.

Lauren: Excellent.

Gretchen: Or you can have “bad,” “big,” “Ben,” “brigand,” “boxes” – and all these begin with B. You could make some sort of “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers” sort of thing out of them. But “bad,” “bat,” “bag,” “back,” “ban” –

Lauren: They’re technically more alliterative because they all have B and A. But we don’t necessarily find them any more compelling than anything that was just a B at the start.

Gretchen: Yeah. The extra vowel doesn’t seem to gain us anything, as opposed to “bad,” “mad,” “sad,” “glad,” which is like, “Yeah! This is great! This is really doing something. Now we’re in a Dr. Seuss story.”

Lauren: So satisfying. We’re really into rhyming as a poetic device in contemporary English. But Old English was really into alliteration.

Gretchen: In Old English, it’s all about those initial consonant sounds, and they didn’t really care about the ends. This is a distinction that seems to be relevant in a lot of languages – the rhyming part of the syllable as compared to the onset part, which is just that initial set of consonant or consonants at the beginning.

Lauren: You need to understand how this rhyme part works, not overtly because obviously people can make rhymes without sitting there going, “Hmm, I must make sure that the vowel and the information following it is all the same in order to create a successful rhyme,” but you see even really young kids are great at understanding if something rhymes and also are really good at Pig Latin, which requires you to take the onset – so that top of the burger – off and then put it on the top of another, new syllable burger, which ends in A. I am terrible at Pig Latin.

Gretchen: Oh, I did it a lot as a kid. You have, like, “Pig Latin” becomes “Ig-pay Atin-lay.” That “ig” that’s left over is your rhyme. And then you’ve taken the onset – the P – and put it at the end. So, example, my name “Gretchen” and you put it into Pig Latin, it’s “Etchen-gray” because you’ve taken both the G and the R – because that’s the whole onset – and put it at the end.

Lauren: Having “Retchen-gay” would be very bad Pig – like, I would not be Pig Latin-ing correctly.

Gretchen: Yeah. That’s not how you Pig Latin. People are sensitive to this distinction even though most people don’t know the word “onset” or think about it in those terms. It’s something that is very intuitive from a language game. There’s also Latin games like “Ibbish” or "Obbish” where you put “ib” or “ob” in between the onset and the rhyme. In a word like – oh, I can’t do this one at all. In a word like “pig,” you would “pib-ig” or something like that – or “pob-ig.”

Lauren: This makes me so much happier to know that the kind of on-the-fly processing that you need to do for things like Pig Latin really are learnt behaviours because you can’t just immediately do it with another one.

Gretchen: I can do Pig Latin really fast, and the other ones I didn’t learn as a kid. You’ve gotta make sure that your kids acquire Pig Latin when they’re young enough because otherwise they’ll never get them.

Lauren: I missed the Pig Latin acquisition window, clearly.

Gretchen: I know. It’s terrible. I missed the Ibbish/Obbish acquisition window. This is something that people are really sensitive to. And yet, there’s not alternative version of Pig Latin where it’s like – I don’t even know how you would do it. You’d have to be like...

Lauren: P-A-/gə/.

Gretchen: Well, I’m trying to think – so what if you take the last consonant and you put it at the beginning – “gepi”? “Latin” would become “Naylati.” This is just not a thing that language games do.

Lauren: I never had much luck learning Pig Latin, but understanding how syllables work has made me much more aware of going learning other languages when it comes to – because we focus a lot on learning the sounds of a language, but it’s rare to be explicitly taught how to combine those sounds into syllables.

Gretchen: I think that was something that I noticed when I was learning Arabic that I had to learn how to make this H at the end of the word – when I was learning German – because they have not just /ʃtɹ/ but you can also do something like /ʃm/, which is less common in English except in a few loan words. Another interesting example of this is in Dutch where they have this combination of /s/, which is very straightforward, and /x/, like the German C-H sound – /x/ – but together it’s like /ʃx/ and I just can’t do it. I have tried a lot. There’s a city – and this is a very unique sound combination to Dutch – and there’s this city, which I’m gonna pronounce wrong, but it’s like “Scheveningen” – maybe. This was used as a shibboleth during the second World War to distinguish between whether somebody was Dutch or not. They would try to get them to pronounce this name because it’s really hard if you’re not Dutch.

Lauren: It’s a bit like when I was learning Syuba and other Tibetan languages that have that initial /ŋ/ sound. It was very frustrating to know I can make this sound. I’ve made it in English my whole language-speaking life. But putting it at the start of the word suddenly becomes a challenge for the shape of the mouth.

Gretchen: It’s the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The combination of sounds is an additional thing that can be really interesting about language even apart from the individual sounds that are there.

Lauren: Just like it’s fun to bring people to Australia and introduce them to burgers with beetroot in it, it’s really fun when you learn a new language to figure out what combinations of sounds it allows.

Gretchen: Yeah. Linguists have a lot of fun drawing diagrams to represent the information about – okay, what can go in the onset of this syllable? What can go in the rhyme? How can we divide the rhyme further between the nucleus, which is the vowel, and the coda, which is the consonants that come after? How can we represent this information in a way that makes it easier to talk about the differences and similarities between languages?

Lauren: Of course, diagrams are fun. But hamburgers are more fun.

Gretchen: Maybe linguists should draw their syllable diagrams as if they were actually hamburgers – new proposal.

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm, and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, IPA ties, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo.

Gretchen: I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter. My blog is AllThingsLingustic.com. My book about internet language is called Because Internet. To listen to bonus episodes and help keep the show ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Recent bonus topics include animals, unique words that you use with your family, and direction words like “right” “left” “north” and “south” in different languages. You can also sign up to the Ling-phabet tier where we will assign you your very own symbol of the International Phonetic Alphabet, based on our super-scientific personality quiz, and add your name and symbol to our Lingthusiasm Supporter Wall of Fame on our website. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life.

Lauren: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our audio producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our editorial manager is Emily Gref, our music is “Ancient Cities” by The Triangles.

Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

#linguistics #language #transcripts #episode 35 #syllables #syllable #sounds #phonetics #consonants #vowels #structure #because internet #because internet book

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thewayiremember · 5 years ago

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youtube

EPISODE 1

July 5, 7:20 PM – 4 DAYS AFTER THE INCIDENT

Nathaniel Blake is lying across from me. He’s 16 years old, 5.9, 154 lbs, has no allergies, and no chronic illnesses. At least that’s what his medical chart says. How I got access to that is not important. I don’t actually know the guy, but we’ve been practically inseparable for the last couple of days. Plus, even though he hasn’t regained his consciousness yet, I’m sure he complains as much as I do about being here. He just cannot express his frustration. I have it easy. I can roll my eyes and sigh as loud as I want to. But there’s no one to see it, so, what’s the point?

Nathaniel Blake was supposed to travel across the Pacific in a couple of days for his dream vacation in Australia. He has been preparing for that trip since last summer and it was kind of a big deal because that would be his first totally independent adventure. I know that because his grandparents lament about it every time they visit. He can probably hear you. It won’t make him feel better if you keep reminding him how sad it is he won’t be able to go. His left arm is encased with a cast. Luckily, the doctors said it should heal very nicely, and that he shouldn’t have any movement difficulties afterward.

I always pretend to be asleep when he has visitors, so I have a little trouble forming opinions about his friends. He has too many. They seem like good fellas, though. The guests usually come in the mornings, which works for me cause it’s easier to play dead when you’re still tired. I know they would feel a lot less comfortable talking to him if they knew I’m awake. Plus, I wouldn’t feel comfortable looking at their sad faces, either.

I talk to Nathaniel a lot. I feel a little guilty because I can’t know for sure he even wants me to talk to him, but the silence of this place really gets to me. So I made him my friend in spite of him being unconscious. He knows me really well. He can’t tell me to shut up, so, I never do. I try not to whine too much and keep it positive to cheer him up after all that sobbing he’s forced to listen to, but I can’t always help myself. My buttcheeks hurt from not really changing this half-seated position and the wi-fi dies on me every five seconds. I have plenty to complain about.

But he’s alive. And I’m alive. So, there’s that.

It’s nice to have a friend who listens so well, but I do hope he wakes up eventually. Keeping my fingers crossed.

There’s a TV hanging from the ceiling but I don’t know how desperate I’d have to get to turn it on. The ads play every ten minutes and they’re so loud it makes me even more hyper and annoying. We don’t want that. At least I have plenty of time to meditate. No… I don’t meditate, I just watch Netflix. Though I never realized staring at the screen all day could be so exhausting. Headaches are no fun. So I have to take brakes, and then I’m left with me, myself, and this beautiful ward.

And that is not sarcasm. It’s actually really pretty. Minimalistic, by budget, or design, who cares? We can see only whites, blues, and some pink-ish whites. And the light wooden window frames on the tilted wall complement those colors very nicely. There’s not a lot of space in this room, but in my opinion, it makes it cozier. We have our own bathroom that seems clean and doesn’t give you chills when you walk in. Not that we use it much, especially not Nathaniel. And for me getting out of bed is still very challenging so I try not to drink too much so I won’t have to go to the toilet too often. I have the smallest bladder on Earth.

The sun is setting and the whole mood starts shifting. I have a wide view of the lake when I look outside the window. The water reflects all the colors of the sky. A gradient of perfectly aligned hues is breaking through the clouds. It’s insane how sexy the sky can be. Lots of blues, yellows, and purples. Do you know what else has lots of blues, yellows, and purples? My chest. Not as sexy, though.

It’s been five days since I was brought to the hospital. I can’t tell if it’s a long time or not, but I feel like the recovery isn’t gonna be as difficult as I thought it would be at the beginning. When I first woke up in this bed I could barely breathe. It felt like my ribs were all shattered into pieces and my face was so swollen I couldn’t open my left eye. The bruises aren’t really fading away just yet, but I’d say half of the pain is gone. At least I can breathe, see and eat normally.

I used to be obsessed with watching medical programs. Plastic surgeries, body transformations, treating horrifying skin conditions, but they tend to be very repetitive and predictable, so I especially liked the ones when something went wrong along the way. Like that one time, the doctors were stitching up the patient’s toes and they couldn’t bring back the blood flow. And of course, it’s probably a little scripted for the sake of the show, but they did look genuinely terrified that the toes would turn black and fall out. That was exciting. Luckily, I didn’t need any surgeries. I’m pretty much just bruised up, I think. No internal bleeding, no broken bones, but they wanted to do some more tests on me and asked me to stay for a couple more days.

My parents come to visit once a day, but somehow they manage to make this place even gloomier than when I’m alone. I’m surprised they even care. Or maybe they just feel obligated to come. Like, we barely even talk. Why are you here? I mean, I DO get it. Not everybody has to like each other, not even people blood-related. And it’s fine. We’re just very different people. And if it makes them feel better when they come to check on me, that’s cool. I feel like I am understanding, but still, I’m not gonna lie, this whole situation is very frustrating.

I am aware that the problem is more on my side, cause most of the things they say wouldn’t bother me if they were said by somebody else. Today (like every day since I’ve been here) they asked me how I was feeling. Now, if any of my friends or nurses asked about it, I’d take it as an act of caring. But when the same question is asked by my parents, in my mind I go berserk. And how do you think I’m feeling? Have you looked at my face? Even though in reality I don’t feel that bad. I don’t know where that anger comes from. Maybe because they never cared before. Why now? But I just reply, as politely as I can, that I feel OK.

10:30 PM

I wear earplugs when it’s bedtime because once it gets dark and the rest of the hospital’s asleep, the heart rate monitor that Nathaniel’s still attached to, I swear, levels up in volume. I need something to occupy my mind. I just read 100 random facts on some website and did you know that by taking just one step you use over 200 muscles in your body? That means that today I used the same 200 muscles at least 20 times in three series while I had to use the bathroom. That’s a legit workout if you ask me.

There’s a group of friends skinny-dipping in the lake. I wonder how much time it will take for them to get in trouble. They are far away from any buildings, I can barely see them myself, and there’s a pretty dense forest spreading behind the lake, but that’s no less than half a mile away. Other than that, the space is quite open.

10:45 PM

I can hear dr. Gramm talking on the phone behind the door. I swear she doesn’t sleep. Or even go home, like, ever. She’s the one who takes care of me and Nathaniel. She and the whole staff… they really seem to care. It’s nice to see them coming in here so often to make sure that we’re doing OK. And here’s the thing, Nathaniel can’t complain, and every time they check on us, they make sure to adjust his body so that he’s comfortable. Sweet.

Since I can’t actually remember what happened to me and why I’m here, after long conversations and many check-ups on me to make sure there’s no any brain damage, dr. Gramm told me that thinking out loud makes your brain work more… efficiently. She must have read those 100 random facts on the internet as well. I’m pretty sure it was a fact nr. 48.

Well, I don’t know about thinking out loud. She probably wouldn’t be happy to hear that I traveled back in time. I think I’d be put in a different kind of hospital. So, I hope keeping a journal will do just fine.

#short story #journal #fiction #middle grade #young adult #story #lgbt #lgbtq #love #romance #diary #book #audiobook #youtube #gay #mistery #queer #time travel #mm #male romance

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aether--system · 6 years ago

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Arguments? In the DID Community? It’s more likely than you think

Don’t scroll away!!

Okay so I know this is Controversial Stuff, but please read this!

It’ll mean a lot to us.

And it’s not a mean post.

People change, and anger is reconciled. We’re now able to see this argument with more neutrality, so I’m just gonna analyze this situation, then give our opinion at the end.

The primary issue is between traumagenic systems and endogenic systems

Our definitions:

Traumagenic- comes from trauma

Endogenic- comes from within (ie, without trauma)

System- person with alters

The Traumagenics do not think the Endogenics should be in the same community as them, and should stay away from all System media. They think that the Endogenics should not exist since they claim to be trauma-free.

The Endogenics do not want to be isolated, and they continue to exist despite the Traumagenics’ displeasure. They do not know exactly how they came to be this way, but here they are.

People are starting to get real fighty about this, and it’s gotten boring and annoying, tbh. Everyone has said what they have to say, and now it’s just gone to name calling.

It’s made us (a Traumagenic) become detached from the community. A community we should feel proud of.

But now that means we can look in more on this argument and really pick at it from both sides.

So here’s our opinion; the opinion of a Liberal Arts 5th year undergrad specializing in art and psychology with a strong backing in biology:

Keep in mind, this is our opinion.

Our

Opinion.

As blunt and unusual as it is.

Not facts.

So don’t come trying to fight with us.

And for the love of Deities, don’t bring gender into this.

This is nothing like the topic of gender.

We need more research in Endogenics. Frankly, there’s no other way to put it. All we have about these people are some articles from religious hoots on a sketchy-ass website. Nobody is gonna listen to that!

I know that’s a hard pill to swallow, but we need real articles/research from people with real degrees and real credit in the field of psychology. That’s the only way that we will get both sides of this conflict to be resolved. Like a peace treaty.

We do not need more fights. Legit.

I know that there are really awful attitudes on both sides. There are extremists on both sides.

But now is a time to shut up and begrudgingly read the other’s side of the argument to learn about them. To try to see where they’re really coming from (thought pattern wise).

Additionally, we do believe that some Endogenics are actually Traumagenics who are in flippant denial of their trauma. They will come to that realization on their own and realize that they made themselves look like a total moron on social media. But, some Endogenics really do seem to press on and appear genuine. That’s made us curious. So now we’re going read some articles and websites on Endogenics to see what’s up with them. Try to gather information and stories to try to gain a better understanding of them.

And while we do that, we’re gonna be constantly hoping that a real psychologist does a real study of Endogenics, so that we don’t have to fucking do it ourselves when we get our Master’s degree.

Just stop this fucking fighting. You’re turning beautiful things ugly.

Are you wondering what you could do now?

Here’s our advice:

Traumagenics: Anger is a big part of this for you. You feel invaded, and made a joke of. Take a step back and breathe for a moment. Try to identify and examine what makes you angry, never stop asking why, even to yourselves. Once you’re sufficiently clear-minded, start to read up on the other side of this fight. See what makes them tick, but in a polite way. There’s nothing bad about looking at the other side of a fence. You can pretend you’re a spy for us, and that you’re sneaking around in enemy territory; that might make it more enticing. Please send us good articles you find!

Endogenics: I know that you do not see your alters as a disorder. However, neurotypicals do not have alters. There must be something unique in your brain that makes you the way you are! If you’re seeing a good therapist or open-minded doctor for other ailments, please consider bringing it up as a study proposal. Or tell your psychology friends to reach out to their sources! It’ll be awesome to have something solid for your side and believable for the other side of the argument. In the meantime, please understand this; these people are lashing out at you because they are angry. Try to see where that anger is coming from. People aren’t just aggressive like this, no matter how much they want to believe that they are. They’re hurting somewhere, really really badly. This is the only way they can get that hurt out currently. If you can identify that right off the bat, their anger just seems like nothing anymore. And if there are articles you know of/find, you can send them to us too! (Thank you to those who have- we like to hoard information like the dragons we are lmao)

Both: We’ve seen some serious venom on both sides, dudes. Knock it off please. Try to isolate your emotions from your logical thoughts. Irrational Trauma Anger makes everything get twisted up and weird. Remove anger from your thought equation, and you’ll have an easier time with everything. And that’s something you can apply to daily stuff too!

And please remember! You can be nice to someone you disagree with!!!! People are not completely defined by one thing they disagree on!!!

A trait you share is being “systems”. That doesn’t seem to be changing any time soon. You’ll have to coexist, even if it’s begrudgingly. We’re not saying we’re pro- or anti- anything. We’re 3rd Party on this. I’m gonna think of a really cool name for it.

(TW) Trauma Dump

And don’t you dare come at us with trauma minimization bullshit or calling us fake. We have vivid memories of being drugged and raped by our uncle when we were 3 years old. And don’t get me started on the psychological warfare of our parents’ lengthy divorce. We’ve been recognized and diagnosed by multiple medical professionals throughout multiple medical fields. We have pinpointed traumatic events that caused some of the central alters, and we are recovering from all this as we can.

(End TW)

TLDR; Chill out and try to see where your enemy’s heart lies. See who they really are; behind the anger and hissing. Learn about the other.

And don’t forget that we’re 3rd party and do not wish to fight either side here. We’re Switzerland in this! Neutral! Party! We literally will not be mean to you unless you’re mean to us! That’s a promise!

Lastly, we apologize of you’ve narrowed down which vent blog is ours. Some of us were just really angry. Nowadays it’ll mostly be just vent art that’s not proper for our main blog lol

And yes, we did write this when we were very stoned and very coconscious.

Thank you all SO. Much for reading all of this ❤️

We love you all and thank you for 2k subs on here 😍

-The Aether System

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nouveauweird · 5 years ago

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MEDIA INFLUENCES FOR MY WRITING (IN GENERAL)

I was tagged by Yah Yah of @fluoresensitive (thank you!). Since I’m not actively working on a single wip I chose some early and major influences for my work overall rather than just one project. These medias span from childhood to very recently!

As you can see I am very much influenced by the science fiction and crime genres. Some of these works I was introduced to through school, others through chance or recommendation, and they all left lasting impression. The following WIPs take the strongest influence from these medias: The Puppeteer Plague (sci-fi thriller), Of Rust & Redwood Lungs (space opera? drama), Define Vitality (post apoc drama), Hyacinth Stalks (crime thriller).

TAGGING: @bebewrites - @blossomov - @skeletongrrl - @glittcrpeach - @queenie-dragon - @halohidings - & anyone who wants to tbh

This got long so I’ll put all of this under a cut!

The Magic Treehouse series by Mary Pope Osborne. These were a childhood favourite of mine, a mix of science and fantasy and adventure that made learning something empowering for children.

The Pyx by John Buell. This pulp fiction has been lurking on my family’s bookshelves forever, since it’s one of my grandfather’s novels. I need to reread it to appreciate it properly because it’s been like 10 years.

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. I read this in grade 9 and fell in love with its subtle science fiction elements, its post-nuclear apocalyptic setting and the children who find themselves with tele-empathic abilities that make them a target of their hyper religious communities...

The Host. Probably read this midway through high school after the Twilight craze had died down, but have reread it about 4 times and it makes me cry every time. Say what we will about Smeyer and silly hetero love triangles but she did some really cool worldbuilding with this, and those ideas have followed me ever since. I probably think about this book every time I shower, don’t ask me why.

The Stand (expanded and uncut edition). My dad has a few favourites, and among them are this book and Dune. He convinced me to read it when we were stuck in a cottage for two weeks when I was 14. I got the name Perion from this book, which I gave to one of my most treasured original characters. I also take inspiration from some of the plague and post apocalypse elements but little else.

Level 26: Dark Origins by Anthony E. Zuiker. I watched way too many crime shows as a teenager, and though I think the CSI shows were not so bad, this novel written by the executive producer was real bad. I absolutely shouldn’t have read this at 15 years old it was so fucked up, but it was also the first book to immediately hook me in in the prologue and held me in a tight grip of suspense the whole way through. I’ve never been more fucked up by a book before. The sequel is pretty good too. It is actually media based, and has codes every few chapters that you can plug into the official website where there are short clips shot with real actors that provide additional subplot to the book.

Fringe (2008-2013). This was my favourite show which I was so invested in I recall my sibling coming in to console me during a particularly intense season premiere bc I was sobbing so hard. What they did with some of the science fiction in this blew my mind, and some elements have followed me into my work now.

Obscura by Joe Hart. I read this last year, and I’ve never really finished a book and wholeheartedly said that it deserved to have a TV adaptation. It’s narrative is suspenseful the sci-fi elements are compelling and the stakes are intriguing. It’s set in space, the main character is a mother, and the twist is fucking delicious.

Bloodchild by Octavia E. Butler. I read this for my sci-fi themed English class last year and was riveted. I haven’t read anything like it before. The whole class reacted strongly to it. I loved the alien species and I love the dynamics between them and the humans, who have become refugees on another planet, and a valuable resource too. Fucked up but in a very compelling way.

The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer. I started the first book at 9 pm before trying to go to bed, and got through the first 100 pages, I had to get up and go talk to by sibling Andy because I was so thoroughly skeeved out by the world Vandermeer had created. I put a lot of trust in this story, because the perspectives shift in the following books and I really wanted more from the Biologist, but ultimately it remains one of my favourite series and a huge influence for my science fiction work.

Alien (1979) & Aliens (1986). The first “scary” movie I was introduced to as a kid. The monster/alien concept stuck with me and I rewatch the first two films (we ignore every subsequent film). Puppeteer Plague pays homage to the Xenomorphs, and in another WIP (Mare Levest 40) I named many of the crew after Alien Franchise characters.

iRobot (2004). Another action/sci-fi I was introduced to as a kid. It still startles me even though I know the story and have watched it many time. The robots were fucking cool. Spooner’s prosthetics are a major influence in Of Rust & Redwood Lungs (which is a Mars Settlement political drama).

The Expanse (show and books). I only recently got into this series, but it’s become a big inspiration for me for my own space opera wip. I have taken influence from The Martian, The Space Between Us, Interstellar and many other space-based medias for this piece, but The Expanse was the one to really dig in deep with the worldbuilding and I have a lot of respect for it especially because of its diversity of characters, but also representations of various sexualities.

Runners Up: Panic at Rock Island for its plague themes, The Mentalist and Lie to Me for their unique approaches to crime, Terra Nova for its unique worldbuilding and for also making me fuckin sob during the finale (also shout out to the livejournal fanfic community I was in for that fandom, lmao, I gave Lt. Reilly the first name Laura and someone put it on the wiki), and Bioshock, The Last of Us, and Horizon Zero Dawn for worldbuilding elements.

I legit didn’t realise I had so many sci-fi influences, damn. You’re a trooper if you read this far.

#media influences tag game.#tag games.#my stuff.#my works.#about the writer.

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singledadchronicles · 5 years ago

Text

It’s an Introduction

Hello All Who May Someday Stumble across the Tumblr,

This is going to be my introduction. First and foremost if you feel like reaching out, you can call me M. I am currently 28 years old, divorced, and have a young child. I was married for just short of 9 years to someone who told me on her way out that she wished we never would have gotten married at all, it ruined her life. I am going to post a lot of stuff on this blog that I won’t even tell my family about. Real feelings I have had, do have, and day to day thoughts. I’m not usually one for introspection but I do find that I need to be to move on with my life.

I am also going to try and stay away from talking badly about my ex-wife. I loved her and even if for what ever reason she didn’t love me back I won’t speak negatively about her. I promised that to myself so that my daughter will not think anything less of her mother. So that extends to here on the off chance that someday she grows up and stumbles across this blog and begins to read about her dear ol’ dad.

I guess I can give some more information about me. I am from the Mid-West area of the United States of America. I am a Conservative leaning Libertarian. My blog will not deal with politics or anything in that realm so please don’t hold that against me. I am a veteran, having served just 20 days shy of my five year mark with the Worlds Greatest Navy, USN. I am a proud veteran and served with many great men and women during my time.

Better background now on why this blog will go on. I am a single dad. I know there are single dads who blog, vlog, tiktok, youtube, run websites, what ever. But I think for the most part my experience is unique. I married my wife when I was 19 years old, twenty two days after she graduated high school. She was 18, I was 19, and I knew from the first moment I kissed her that I was going to marry her. Maybe that was my mistake. We moved to the town where she would go to college and I worked for a pharmacy as a shift supervisor. Around September 2012, I was only making about $500-$600 a month and we couldn’t survive, I asked for a raise or to be trained for promotion two days before the company came out and said the max salary for a hourly employee was now only going to be $.50 more than what I was already making.

I was in a recruiters office the next day. My ex-wife and I were infatuated with one another. In March of 2013 I left for bootcamp and A-School. When I got my orders to my first duty station my ex left school and moved with me. She gave up her dream because I wanted to provide for my family. Of note, I begged for her to stay and complete her degree. Two years would seem like nothing if she could come to me with her degree and then we could both really work on careers we were enthralled with. She refused and moved. I don’t blame her or hold it against her, it is just what happened.

I will be honest about myself too. I am not an easy man to deal with. When I get angry or upset I need time to cool down so that I don’t say something I do not mean or something in a hateful way that was not meant in that vain. My ex-wife however is a get the problem over quick and get past it type personality so we clashed a lot. We NEVER laid a finger on each other. But we were not mentally good to one another. I can take my blame in that. I was a young guy and I did not have great control over my emotions. I still at 28 struggle (Part of putting this blog out here) to control my emotions. But through it all we fought for one another more than we fought with each other.

We struggled for three years with infertility, we tried to be a if pregnancy happens it is meant to happen couple so no protection was ever used after we got married. We found out in early 2014 that my ex had PCOS. We fought that battle together. She took injections and we had to have a schedule of when the best time to have a baby was. After three failed attempts of IVF (We got pregnant once but the baby was not a “viable pregnancy” and we lost that embryo after 8 weeks) we took a break. Again we said if it was meant to happen it would happen. So in late 2014 we told the doctor that we wanted to do an aggressive treatment, that this would be our last shot before we looked into adoption. IVF and infertitlity are much harder mentally than anything else and my ex and I were worn out. Thankfully that “Last ditch effort” paid off and my ex got pregnant. We welcomed my beautiful child into the world in 2015 and she has been the light of our lives sense.

In 2016 thought my own personal tragedy struck. On October 3rd of that year I was changing my child’s diaper at my parents house on leave from the Navy in between duty stations. I was transferring to a base close to home and was very excited. Suddenly I felt a pain in my stomach and asked my dad to take over the diaper change (he never changed grandbaby diapers) he saw something was up and jumped in as I took off for the restroom. I sat down on the toilet and next thing I knew I was on the floor of the bathroom looking up at my dad and he was asking if I needed an ambulance. My reply (according to my dad) “Yeah I think so cause I have no clue how I got down here”. I tried to get up but pain shot through my body again and next thing I knew I was surrounded by paramedics and they started to tell me to relax I was having a heart attack. To just keep breathing and that I was going to be fine.

I waited in an emergency room for pain meds, so long that I apparently got so frustrated I snapped one of the handrails off the bed. They refused to give me pain meds because they thought I was just a junkie trying to get my fix (It’s in my charts that the refusal for medicine was because I was showing physical signs of being an addict). At the first hospital I was treated until midnight (approximately 15 hours) like I had pneumonia. The doctors could not figure out what was wrong with me. I was taken to an ICU as my oxygen levels dipped and it was at midnight that the doctor on staff looked at what is called a lipase level and saw that it was over 13,000 (Normal lipase for an adult male is between 40-50) and had me medevac’d to a different hospital so that I could be taken care of.

What I actually had was Necrotizing Pancreatitis. Basically my pancreas was revolting against my body and trying to kill itself and take others with it. A massive revolt against my body. I remember only three things that happened next. Getting to the second hospital and having them not give me pain meds again until they assessed my situation, a doctor telling me that I could die and asking if I had a living will to take care of my wife and daughter, and that same doctor coming back and asking who had permission to make any calls on my behalf. The last part I raised my head what I could and pointed at my dad (who was with me this whole time) and my wife. They video recorded that so if anything happened they had evidence.

I spent the next 14 days in a medically induced coma. When they finally brought me out of it it took 9 nurses and two doctors to take out my breathing tube because I was fighting them so much. I can say I spent 90 percent of the next year of my life in a hospital. I missed my child’s first birthday and barely got out of a hospital in time for their second. Also during 2016 my ex-wife’s mother was diagnosed with cervical cancer. So my ex was not only dealing with me being in and out of the hospital but also her mother.

I’ll talk about her mother more in another blog post. She was an amazing woman.

It was at this time thought that I think my world really started to spiral. I was told I would no longer be able to serve in the military (right as I had really felt I was getting the hang of it and wanted it to be my career). My medical retirement took a little over a year to process and finalize and I was retired 20 days short of my five year mark in the Navy in 2018. That was the first time I felt really lost.

My ex-wife became an esthetician around this time and I became a stay at home dad. Anyone who knows me would tell you that this is not in my nature. Not that I don’t want to spend time with my child, but I have always seen myself as the provider, the patriarch, and the “Man of the house”. You may not like it but it was how I was raised and it’s a value I still hold. Fuck off if you don’t like it.

So I started a management job at a retail company and whenever my ex wasn’t working I was. This was probably the start of the deterioration of our relationship. We started seeing one another just long enough to argue, eat, or have sex. It was one of the three, period, the end. We went on like this for a little under a year.

In December of 2019, 7 days before Christmas, as my ex and I woke up to go to school (we had moved back to where she had started college so she could finisher her degree and I could do my degree as well) she looked me in the eyes and said “I don’t love you anymore...I want a divorce.” At that moment I felt like it was out of nowhere. I yelled, I cursed, I felt betrayed, abandonded, and hopeless... I went to class, took my child to school, and for the next three days came home to a woman who didn’t want to be with me anymore and wasn’t willing to let me try and fix anything. She had made up her mind, and had a million reasons why. Her biggest being that she didn’t love me anymore and she couldn’t put her child through to parents pretending to play house.

Now here I am, 6 months post divorce (we separated the weekend before Christmas and our divorce was finalized the first of January), trying to figure out dating as my ex wife begins her plans to move in with her new boyfriend and start her new life. I am still single, still depressed, and still not over her. I’m trying to be, and my ex and I have an exact split schedule for our child. We probably have the most legit 50/50 custody of a child ever and that’s really nice.

This blog is to help me move on, to express my feelings somewhere, where I don’t have to be afraid of telling the truth about myself and what I am going through. This was the introduction of what could be a very fun experience for me. Lots of stories and even some more background to come.

Thanks for Reading,

#single #dad #singledad #divorced #divorcedunder30 #depression #PCOS #USN #Navy #infertitlity #ex #problems #writer #student #father

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