#PhD update

[prlssprfctn]

I know the fandom mostly agrees that Jason is that one always unemployed sibling in the family, but let me offer you a slightly enhanced concept - unemployed sibling Jason, who is the busiest sibling in the family.

No one can get hold of him. Like, ever. And it is not like he is lying, he is genuinely always has something else to do! Something random and unexpected, and, honestly, all his family can think is: what the hell?

Bruce, frowning: Remind me again, why the dinner in the circle of the family today doesn't suit your... schedule?

Jason, shrugging: I have a book club evening in the nursing home. We are discussing Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad tonight. Can't miss it. Also, Jennet-

Alfred, confused: Who is Jennet?

Jason: One of the old ladies in the nursing home, duh... Anyway, yeah, Jennet is having a birthday. She would be hella mad if her favourite grandson missed it, you know?

Bruce: ...Jason, you are not her-

Jason: (leaves)

Dick: Hey, wanna join me for tomorrow morning's training?

Jason, sighs: Sounds nice, but I have classes tomorrow.

Dick, confused: Classes? Since when you are enrolled in college?

Jason: Oh, no. I am a substitute teacher in one of the school's around.

Dick: WHAT-

Damian, calling Jason in the middle of the day: Can you pick me up from school? Others are busy, there is an emergency in the town.

Jason: Damn, sorry, kid, but I am not in the country right now. By the way, do you want to talk with your mother?

Damian: ...What that supposed to mean? Where are you?

Jason: I was planning to visit All-Caste, but first decided to meet up with Talia. I am kinda in Egypt right now, anyway.

Damian: ...

Tim, already used to Jason's constant busy status, sighing: I bet you won't agree if I call you on the lunch tomorrow?

Jason: Uh, no. I have plans. But if you tag along with me, we can get lunch together later.

Tim, surprised: ...Okay. What do you have tomorrow? Knitting club? A shift in library?

Jason: Nah, graduation ceremony.

Tim: Right, you are a substitute teacher.

Jason: No, no. My graduation ceremony. I am getting my PHD in literature.

Tim: SINCE FUCKING WHEN-

[finnlongman]

The joy of finding a queer reading of the lament for Fer Diad that

a) is recent b) I didn't already know about c) actually talks about queer theory beyond erotic potential d) engages with other useful theories like grievability

Anyway, it's Housley, Marjorie, '"The noble way you blushed": queering mourning verse in the Ulster Cycle' in Grief, gender, and identity in the Middle Ages (2022), pp. 142–164.

I take back what I said about there only being one article on this and it being from 2009. There are two!! And one of them is from this decade!!

[varnikareads]

The kid who was too scared to stand up and speak in class is now confidently giving scientific talks in a room full of PhDs and professors — it made me so happy that I almost cried. 😭

[just-anka]

Our new home! Wah a lot has happened over the past few months and I'm only just starting to process it all. We knew all along that we were leaving Zurich after I finished my PhD, and vague plans to move to the mountains have been around for years. In early 2023, we started talking about it more seriously and soon realised living IN the mountains (rather than in a town in the valley at the bottom of the mountains haha) would involve buying a house because there aren't really any rentals in the villages around here. We spent a lot of time that winter looking at different places to find areas we liked, and then a lot of time in the summer viewing houses and figuring it all out. We decided on a house in late August, thinking there would be plenty of time to get it all through before the end of the year, that I would defend and then we'd move. As usual, that didn't go to plan and instead we found ourselves driving the 3.5 hours to Valais to sign for the house 4 days before my defence 🤦‍♀️ not ideal and all the uncertainty around the buying and the move combined with the defence stress over all those months really did me in, I'm still exhausted now even though the pace of life has gone from 100 to 0 (okay maybe more like a 10 but still) in the past few weeks. And the house is definitely not without issues 🤣 some of which we knew about, some we didn't, so the actual move in process has also been more exhausting than anticipated. There's also a ridiculous amount of admin involved in moving canton in Switzerland, it's almost like moving to a new country, especially as foreigners. But we survived the first bits, we moved in properly in the days after Christmas, and it's all slowly coming together now, and I love it SO much already. It's so quiet and peaceful, there's a little forest right outside our balcony that has deer walking through it almost every day, they come up all the way to the front door sometimes. Skiing is 10 mins away. It's been pretty cold as we're still figuring out the heating but we have a wood stove and it's so cosy. I love walking down the stairs in the morning in my warm jumper and making tea and meditating and journalling, all the while looking out at the mountains. I'm so burnt out from the end of the PhD and the entire past year it's been hard to take it all in, and it doesn't feel real yet most of the time. But when it does I feel so lucky. And I have a lot of time now, because I'm finally taking that gap year I've been saying for years I will take haha. It won't be an entire year, probably, but it will be a few months at least. Lots of skiing for now and some time to write, finally, getting settled into the house, and then some travelling.

[thaumaturd]

as per my conversation with my therapist yesterday i will be spending the weekend playing wizard101 while doing homework and attempting to make bread. this is self care now

[urprofsqueermenace]

had no problem falling asleep 2 days in a row!! ...but both times I woke up before my alarm

[kaus-quietis]

Lav's All-smiles Problem-solving Roooooundtable ch108 edition!

Welcome, welcome! To Lav's BSD ch108 discussion! Delivered to you via my funky dove Eliott, acting as my mystic messenger. These are random thoughts I had after reading this brilliant chapter, which, writing-wise, made the best possible use of Fedya's character, expanding it even more without even betraying his backstory. Maybe a backstory isn't needed after all, just look at how much FUN he is right now. I am in BLISS

Putting aside the fact that he is literally carrying the plot at this point, come sit with me, I make you a delicious Chinese black tea with rose petals and casually share my thoughts. Hello there, dearest Kat, yes, "where is Lav when you need her?", I am here, I offer you a hug, and to all my friends here who share the sentiment, I hug you too.

A. Before you say ANYTHING about "oh but? maybe Fedya is telling the half-truth? or a half-lie? what if his ability really is the evil one?", my brothers and sisters in Christ, listen to yourself. This man functions almost on a meta-level of character consciousness: he changed his facial expression and aura so convincingly, his tone, his speech, his posture, even the shade of his eyes, fooling not only Sigma, but the readers as well. We are used to characters changing the shade of their eyes when they change mental states or have certain (new) decisions in mind, we as a community are so used to this, all it took was one panel from the Conjurer doing this trick for so many of us to actually believe him and start, yet again, to spiral down the "what if he is good but his ability is evil? what if he is two entities? what if?" rollercoaster. This is so amusing to me, and in a meta-sense must be amusing to Fedya too. While speculation can bloom again based on this, I wouldn't be putting too much effort into reading into his lines here. I take it as a trick. It worked splendidly, almost like it attacked the fandom's major concerns and theories about his character and weaponized them against everyone. That's a meta-kind of tomfoolery. Trolling, if you will. I LOVE that Asagiri made him bamboozle every reader like this. His character so far goes into the best direction, it cultivates and expands his traits and skills in the best way. But let's pretend Fedya really is telling a half-truth there, which is there being an opposition between him and his ability. I talked about this in my essay (see pinned post), there really seems to be a divergence at the core of his character, but it manifests subtly, not like what we saw in ch108. Then again, not even on that can we arrive at any conclusive statements, because if we remember that, of course, "crime and punishment are close friends", it could well be that he and his ability are partners, and you bet I imagine they would BOTH indulge in peak tomfoolery like this together, if that meant one of them switching in and the other out for a sec. Remember, dear souls: aside from his "higher mission", abstract as it still is lore-wise, Fedya's keyword is "fun" or "entertainment", repeatedly. And oh he himself is even more fun now~

B. if Fedya would have wanted to mortally wound Sigma, he'd have chosen a more suitable place to stab him; it looks like a abdominal, lower quadrant, lateral stab, a deliberate choice, I would say, that technically avoids critical, most vascular organs (kidney and spleen for example) and main veins/arteries. I am no doctor, but from what I gathered, Sigma won't bleed out fast at all, and if untreated might get a deadly infection in a longer time (not counting the possibility of septic shock if we assume the knife penetrated and heavily opened an intestine). Sigma needs a medic asap (our queen Yosano when?), but will likely be conscious and quite able to move around and whatnot. Like I argued in my essay, Fedya most likely does not want to kill Sigma, or anybody for that matter, because keeping everyone alive to fulfill various roles and see how their will tosses them in all kinds of directions is more fun for him, more entertaining, but also more useful. He is a long-term strategist, like Dazai. "Our beloved monsters" ❤

C. Fedya evidently exerts some serious mental torment on Sigma, by making him stand by his choices, his will, just like he always desired. The flip side is that Fedya takes his time, or should I say gifts Sigma his time, in which he teaches him the full lesson of what Sigma wants. The responsibility that comes with acting on your own, the terror of facing the consequences when choosing on your own: right now, to Sigma, this freedom is terror. But Fedya is never a one-dimensional character. It's most probable he calculated and devised strategies for both possibilities (a. Sigma with rekindled determination touches him; b. Sigma backpedals on what he decided and does not touch him). The irony is that both scenarios are an affirmation of Sigma's will, because, while the first decision can be seen like foolish bravery, the second one can also be seen as wise self-preservation, if the circumstances so demand it. BSD is not a black-and-white series, diving head-first into danger is not its definition of bravery or heroism. BSD was always about measured decisions, ones the characters take upon themselves willingly. It may be time Sigma does that too, in his own way, and Fedya wants to see that. Why? Well, my guess is because it's fascinating to watch humans grow, and Fedya lives for the entertainment that comes with it. It is actually more interesting if we remember his line from ch42 (“People can be so simple… They truly believe they are thinking for themselves. (…) They don’t want to think they’re being led by the nose”): the pattern is, Fedya puts others under harsh circumstances, and then, under pressure, lets go of them, waiting for their free decision, the true test and expression of their hearts, so to say (which could make a superb discussion if we make a parallel between Kunikida and Sigma, since essentially what happened to Kunikida is happening now to Sigma, except Kunikida did indeed break down, but thanks to healthy support from his comrades he slowly regained his sense of self, and stronger than ever at that time, however… Sigma is alone, isn't he? but what if he needs to be in order to finally get a hold of his own self?). Anyway, how much of that expression is free, or how much is guided or manipulated, is a debate in itself, since it implies relating the freedom to the individual vs relating the freedom to the external factors and possibilites.

D. I do need to underline, just like Fedya also underlined it: Sigma already made his decision, right there when he still tried to get the gun before getting kicked in the face. Fedya moved on to the next step: testing how strong Sigma's will is when an actual chance to act appears. Sigma already accepted the physical pain, but how will he face the mental anguish? That is more Fedya's territory, a "specialist" of breaking people by simply knowing them thoroughly and choosing the right words. But now we gained new info: even in close combat, apparently, Fedya is not to be underestimated. That was a rather strong kick, anyway. But more importantly, he completely turned the tables in a situation where he would be in a total disadvantage. * chef's kiss * that was very bungou stray dogs of him.

[queenerdloser]

i submitted my final grad school app today (excepting one school where i'm still waiting to see if i passed round one... if i do, that'll be my final app in february) and it feels both really good to be done and very weird. it's all out of my hands now!

[apigeonisapigeon]

okay arson and other fires update: here's a spreadsheet of all the bits i've written so far. i just started part 2C (titled spooky action at a distance). part 3 (idk how i'm subdividing it, that's a problem for future me) will be the last one.

[schizononagesimus]

oh yeah so life update, still suing my former employer with no news on that, i have to be out of the place im staying by this weekend and i dont have anywhere to stay on the 15th but i shooouuulllld be good after that?? im definitely good until the 23rd but after im not 100% certain, i still need to figure out not having an address? bc i need public food assistance so that's an issue, and i had a good interview this week w a followup next week :)) i also have psychiatry and therapy now wahoo!! but i um . Do not have money or a place to live so that IS a problem

[eclecticsophism]

applying to phd programs is scary u guys

[sunshowersanddandelionwine]

oh also! exciting news! i started my teaching certification course so hopefully in a year i'll be an english teacher :DDD

im so fucking excited you have no idea

[metamercury]

Once I'm finally done writing this fic, which is taking forever because I'm very tired, I'm going to go and rewatch tfa because i have been FEELING IT

And then it's all over for you guys. Or something.

[finnlongman]

Where are you definitely not doing a PhD at ?

Cambridge!

It was mainly a practical choice -- I already lived here, needed to stay in the same city for a while longer for health reasons, and also they have the money to fund people doing weird niche things that the AHRC doesn't seem to like enough to fund. Which is helpful when you are me, doing weird niche things that the AHRC doesn't seem to like enough to fund.

I've never really vibed with the Cambridge mystique and the whole "formals and superfluous Latin" side of things, though, and I had a pretty rough time here in undergrad, so I have complicated feelings about being back. But hopefully the excellent libraries, the funding, and the fact that I'm at a very egalitarian and no-nonsense modern college (and also, crucially, do not live in student accommodation but in my own place a couple of miles outside of the university "bubble") will make it a different and better experience this time around.

And if I am going to need to dress up fancy for stuff, I am going to milk it for all its worth. Although I only have the one suit, so my "gadding about in formalwear" photos will start to look the same very quickly.

[just-anka]

Hello tumblr! Once again it's been a while. I deleted the tumblr app off my phone a while ago (along with instagram) because I was spending way too much time and energy scrolling mindlessly, and I've been feeling a lot better that way. I do still occasionally check on people on the browser version haha but I miss posting on here and collecting all these little details of my life, so maybe I'll come back a bit more again. Idk.

Anyway, work is still a lot - I'm in the final six months of my PhD now and I'm really, really ready to get this thing done so I'm just working as hard as I can right now. It actually feels good to really put my focus into it and just do my best to take care of myself otherwise instead of always pushing everything at once. I do miss having more time and energy for other things, but when I try to work my hardest at work, skiing/climbing/cycling and writing all at once I just get burnt out, and after two years of essentially killing myself with all the things I wanted and did, it's been nice taking it a bit slower now. I haven't skied anywhere near as much this winter as I did the past two years, but that's okay. I'm finally starting to feel some psyche for running again - been a very long time since that fire has truly been there and I'm just enjoying it right now, even though I'm not running anywhere near as much as I used to. And I'm having a lot of fun climbing without trying to push too much. So it's all good.

Ben took three months of unpaid leave this winter to do a ski season and compete in freeride competitions, which was pretty awesome and I'm so happy he got to do that. It meant we spent most of the winter apart though, so when he came back last week I decided to take a few days off so we could spend some time together. All pretty last minute but we found this incredibly nice cosy airbnb chalet, in one of the most beautiful areas of our mountains that I've ever been to, and had a perfect mini holiday. Had lots of fun skiing and ski touring, but also resting and eating nice food and sitting by the wood stove and playing boardgames and catching up on time together. I came back feeling a lot better mentally, and more ready to give my all for work again.

[sweetandglovelyart]

Me, too busy with grad school to participate, watching everyone else in the Kirby fandom participate in the OC tournament and art fight