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singofsolace · 5 years ago

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Madam Spellman 2020 Challenge Masterlist!

Many thanks to everyone who participated in the Madam Spellman 2020 Challenge! Over five weeks, we created thirty-four, I repeat, THIRTY-FOUR fanfics, and five pieces of gorgeous fan art. A grand total of 73,530 words were published to the collection on Ao3. I am in awe of how much content was created, and over the moon at the response this challenge received.

Since this masterlist is going to be very long, I've decided to put it all under the cut! Check out the 39 pieces of fanwork below!

Week One Prompt: New Year’s

a year has fled o’er heart and head by Singofsolace (@concreteangel1221)

Summary: Mary Wardwell has never been kissed on New Year’s Eve. Zelda seeks to rectify this grave injustice.

A Mortal Tradition by lady_needless_litany (@lady-needless-litany)

Summary: Even though months have passed since Blackwood’s massacre, everything’s still up in the air. Zelda’s barely hanging on - and now she can’t even kill Hilda as a form of stress release.

Remembered Footsteps on Old Roads by brokenmemento

Summary: Lilith asks Zelda to take a little trip, one that will prove difficult for her to do.

Happy New Year darling, for whatever is in store by Saturn_Silk

(@saturn-silk)

Summary: Mary and Zelda spend New Year’s Eve together at the cottage.

this gorgeous fanart by @bainelland

Art Description: A polaroid picture from the Spellman’s album. Taken on a New Year’s Eve night by Sabrina who accidentally walked in on a quiet moment between Zelda and Lilith. Illuminated by the Solstice Tree, with Ella Fitzgerald’s “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” playing in the background. It’s one of Zelda’s favorite pictures in the whole album.

this stunning fanart by @miss-spellman (aka @asterleaf and @moon-rise )

Art Description: Zelda Spellman and Lilith stand, wrapped in an embrace. They are kissing as confetti and streamers fall around them. Zelda has one hand wrapped around Lilith’s waist, and the other is precariously holding a glass of champagne. Lilith’s hand is placed on Zelda’s cheek.

Piece of My Heart by sweetdreamsaremadeoffish (@claire-de-macarune)

Summary: Yes, Lilith, I love you. Yes, Lilith, this is your home now. I could never deny you. Yes, Lilith, I want you to stay.

Week Two Prompt: Road Trip

Strangers by brokenmemento

With the coven in shambles and the Academy without a sense of direction, Zelda finds a place to start rebuilding and settles on asking an unlikely person to aid her in her mission.

this will be our year (took a long time to come) by sweetdreamsaremadeoffish ( @claire-de-macarune )

Mary’s keys in the ignition and her head lolled back on the headrest, Zelda blew a last, elegant kiss out the back windshield to her family and trundled the old Ford down the drive, onto the passing road. They disappeared in a wink of distance rather than magic.

Road Trip by AlexusOnFire ( @alexusonfire )

Poetry, written from Lillith’s perspective.

wrestling with the wind by Singofsolace ( @concreteangel1221 )

When Lilith, the skateboarding, tomato-stealing lesbian meets Zelda, the elegant, willful daughter of a mortician, sparks (and motorcycles) fly.

this sweet fanart by @moon-rise

Zelda and Lilith take an impromptu road trip and stop at a little witch friendly café. Zelda orders her black coffee and Lilith orders a coffee with 4 creams and 7 sugars. Zelda hates the colour scheme of the room but the romance of it grows on her as the sun sets and lights up Lilith’s impossibly gorgeous blue eyes.

Pulp fiction for Zelith by @jyou-no-sonoko19

(please show your support for this fabulous edit by reblogging from the original source!)

~~~

Week Three Prompt: Winter

Breathe by sweetdreamsaremadeoffish ( @claire-de-macarune )

"I think you have what it takes. It’s completely reasonable for you to have some support, but this needs to work. I need this to work. We both do,” Edward said, under his breath. “It’s this or go back home. You know that.”

Chasing Out The Chill by Jyou_no_Sonoko ( @jyou-no-sonoko19 )

After the fall of the Church of Night and its ceasing to worship Lucifer, Zelda in her new role as self-appointed High Priest has to transition them to the Church of Lilith. And while she believes in her Patron, it is a difficult adjustment to make. Lilith grows concerned for her and plans a little getaway.

Dance Under the Winter Sky by TommorowNeverCame ( @its-a-goode-day )

A year later, the coven has a winter ball. Zelda decides it's time for her and Lilith to be happy.

Double Black Diamond by Singofsolace ( @concreteangel1221 )

When Zelda Spellman gets driven off the ski trail by the Judas Boys, Lilith (the snowboarding lesbian) comes to her aid.

Fire and Ice by Saturn_Silk ( @saturn-silk )

Lilith really wants to go ice skating, and eventually, Zelda caves in and takes her.

Their Heart Grew Cold by stellastellaforstar ( @stellastellaforstar )

She looked beautiful, Zelda could tell even through the haze of snow. Her glasses were foggy and her nose was red, but every snowflake seemed to land so beautifully on her head.

These Winters Can Be Maddening by brokenmemento

Winter through the eyes of Zelda Spellman at three points in her life.

Winter by AlexusOnFire ( @alexusonfire )

a lovely winter poem!

winter and hard earth by CallmeCordelia

Zelda observes the Winter Solstice. Lilith observes her.

~~~~

Week Four: Alternate Universe

Like a fool, I fell in love with you by Saturn_Silk ( @saturn-silk )

Zelda Spellman, Greendale’s local coroner, needs a date for her sister’s wedding and who better than her colleague Detective Lilith Morningstar. Will they get away with it? Or will it turn into something more?

Lady Justice by Singofsolace ( @concreteangel1221 )

Lieutenant Lilith Demos had spent the last twenty years investigating New York City’s most sensitive crimes. She was intimately familiar with the worst humanity had to offer, but getting justice for rape victims made everything else worthwhile. There was no case too perverse or too delicate for her to handle; she always remained coolly professional, no matter the situation. But that all changed the day Zelda Spellman walked into her squad room. Bringing Zelda’s abuser to justice proves to be her most difficult case yet, and it doesn’t help that Zelda is extremely uncooperative when it comes to the investigation.

The Muse by AlexusOnFire ( @alexusonfire )

Zelda Spellman attends an art class. Lilith is her muse.

No Man is an Island by brokenmemento

Zelda and her roommate Lilith have been fighting with this thing for five years. With the rain comes absolution. AKA the Madam Spellman as Grace and Frankie AU.

Vying Off Course by Claraon ( @sheep-in-space )

Her eyes stop in their track, surprised at spotting the eldest member of the Spellman family sitting at the bar. Her frock is modest enough – a pale linen thing with a simple blue lacing, and her strawberry hair is tied back in a conservative bun – but she somehow manages to look at once regal yet perfectly at home among the buccaneers and other shady characters crowding the place.

We Lost the Sea by bainel ( @bainelland )

Their eyes locked for a second across the room, and Lilith felt her breath catch in her throat. She felt as if the whole room had faded away. For a fraction of a second, they were the only two people in the inn. But then the bartender placed a glass of amber liquid next to the redheaded woman. She turned away, towards her drink, and the moment was over.

Lilith gets dragged into a series of events that will lead her into one of her greatest adventures yet.

Wild with Adventure by stellastellaforstar ( @stellastellaforstar )

It’s a wild west AU, y'all! Sheriff Zelda and Outlaw Lilith.

Your Song by sweetdreamsaremadeoffish ( @claire-de-macarune )

Songwriter AU

And you can tell everybody this is your song It may be quite simple but now that it’s done I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind That I put down in words How wonderful life is while you’re in the world

The Spelldelaire Children by @claire-de-macarune

(please show your support of this fabulous fan art by reblogging it from the original source!)

~~~~~

Week Five Prompt: Fix It! (the list is in alphabetical order)

a little death (une petite mort) by Singofsolace ( @concreteangel1221 )

Mambo Marie intervenes when Zelda Spellman denies Lilith sanctuary. This changes many things, but not all things. Lilith proposes that the only way that the three of them will survive the wrath of both the Dark Lord and the Pagans is to perform an incredibly intimate ritual. Mary Wardwell stumbles upon this ritual, with gun in hand.

An Offering of Trust by paradox_n_bedrock ( @paradox-n-bedrock )

Zelda and Lilith try just a little harder for each other. They’re lucky Marie has an emotional intelligence greater than a potato.

Forever…(is a long time) by brokenmemento

After the events of Part 3, things are still left hanging in the balance. Lilith forges an unlikely alliance with the least likely of suspects.

From Her Beacon-Hand by CallmeCordelia

Lilith seeks asylum, but what will she find?

home in the heart of hell by sweetdreamsaremadeoffish ( @claire-de-macarune )

And all shall fade The flowers of spring The world and all the sorrow At the heart of everything

I Was Housed by Your Warmth by daisygrl ( @asterleaf )

Something about the other witch pulled her ever closer, made her ache inside. It was the strangest sensation: two parts nostalgia and one part pain. If she had lived lives other than this one, she would have sworn that they had met before. Perhaps their souls had passed one another by as they swam in the primordial muck.

The Witch’s Lullaby by marla_black ( @marla-black )

With Lilith pregnant with Lucifer’s baby, she is in need of a midwife, and who better than Zelda Spellman, the witch who has never lost a child in her life.

~~~~~

Many thanks to everyone who reblogged and commented on all of these pieces! You were as much a part of this challenge as the writers and artists!

#madam spellman 2020 challenge #zelda spellman #lilith #madam spellman #spellwell #mary wardwell

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scoundrels-in-love · 5 years ago

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Tagged by sweet @aviss a whole week ago, but to be fair, I’ve worked 6 out of 7 of these days, so I have Excuse.

What is the colour of your hairbrush? Black with slate blue back. Name a food you never eat: Raw meat and some seafood, like oysters. No snails, everrr. Are you typically too warm or too cold? Too cold, tooo fucking cold. Or way too hot. Almost no in-between ever. What were you doing 45 minutes ago? On brink of crying, grief reasons. I think. What is time? What’s your favourite candy bar? Don’t have one, whoops. Have you ever been to a professional sports game? No, not really inclined to go either. What was the last thing you said out loud? Thank you, have a peaceful evening to cashier at the store. I never wish good one, because idk, it’ll be good if it’s peaceful, and then you can go home sooner where it can be Good. What is your favourite ice cream? Don’t make me choose, literally changes to whatever I’m eating at the moment right now. Though anything with mangoes always own... And that raspberry one straight out of my childhood that used to be favorite... Mmm. What was the last thing you had to drink? Skyr yogurt drink with salted caramel flavor. Do you like your wallet? Yes, but the little leaf cut-outs have worn through and look shabby now so I am waiting for a new one, but with pandemic, it’s in transit for some fucking 3 months now. What was the last thing you ate? Fresh cabbage and carrot salad Did you buy any new clothes last weekend? Not weekend, exactly, but last day off, yes... What’s the last sporting event you watched? Good question. Winter Olympics 2018 skating stuff? Might’ve been sports dancing championship in same year, later. Not sure. What is your favourite flavour of popcorn? Mm, haven’t really tried any of them. Don’t have option to make it at home, buying at cinema is waaay too expensive. Who is the last person you sent a text message to? My avon contact, more than a month ago, whoops. Ever go camping? No, but I’d like to, with right company. Do you take vitamins? Yeah, a whole bunch, by doctor’s orders. Do you go to church every Sunday? Oh nooo. Do you have a tan? I am few, barely noticeable shades darker in scaling pattern on my arms from last summer, but no real tan and sunshine is a myth this spring & as is free time so I wouldn’t have time to even try for one. (not that if I ever do.) Do you prefer Chinese food or pizza? Never had Chinese food, it’s just not a thing here in my town at least, so pizza (which is recent try-out too) wins by default. Do you drink your soda through a straw? Soda? Nooo. What colour socks do you usually wear? Black, almost black gray or blue will do, too. Do you ever drive above the speed limit? This queer can’t drive. What terrifies you? Thought of being unlovable at my very foundations, of only bringing unhappiness to others. Of not leaving anything behind. That I will always struggle like this. Heights. Look to your left. What do you see? Bottle of aforementioned yogurt drink. What chore do you hate most? All of them, but anything that gets my asthma acting up via dust is the worst. What do you think of when you hear an Australian accent? Hmm, nothing in particular? What’s your favourite soda? Fanta. Do you go in a fast food place or just hit the drive-thru? Again, can’t drive so drive-thrus don’t apply, but I’ve sworn off fast food places anyway now and didn’t frequent them often as is. What’s your favourite number? 9. Who’s the last person you talked to? Cashier at the store. Or my co-workers before that. Favourite cut of beef? I don’t even know them or the differences. Last song you listened to? Red Moon by Kim Woo Seok. Last book you read? Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski Favourite day of the week? Whichever fucking day I have OFF work. Can you say the alphabet backwards? No, no I don’t think so. How do you like your coffee? Bold of you to assume I like it at all. But black, maybe some sugar. I’ve had plain coffee with milk I enjoyed exactly once, I will never know what magic he used. If I have to go for coffee on enjoyment level, then something fancier like pistacchio or peppermint latte or moccachino. Favourite pair of shoes? Either my trusty, ancient leather sandals or my trust, old winter boots. Time you normally get up? On my own? Not before 10. Sunrises or sunsets? Sunsets. How many blankets are on your bed? One regular, 2 throw ones. Describe your kitchen plates. Mismatched and well worn from varying decades. Describe your kitchen at the moment. You don’t want to know. Do you have a favourite alcoholic drink? Apple cider. Raspberry beer is also nice and Moscatel wine gets stamp of approval. Do you play cards? Nooo. What colour is your car? In my dreams? Purple. Do you know how to change a tire? Nope. Your favourite state? Michigan, for frivolous reasons. Favourite job you’ve had? None. How did you get your biggest scar? Being beyond exhausted after work around midnight, coughing my lung out with what turned out to be acute bronchitis 3 days later, and trying to peel ginger with new and sharp knife. Sliced top of my left thumb right open, almost all the way to muscle and got 4 stitches, though you can see marks of only 3 now clearly.

Tagging @it-may-be-dull-but-im-determined @nire-the-mithridatist and whoever else would like to do it, but has not. <3

#rainy rambles #tagged in #tagging games #about me

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melonkooky · 6 years ago

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spring love [kim namjoon]

requested

word count: 3256

genre: hints of angst, mainly fluff, suggestive

warnings: implications of love making, if ya know what i mean

author’s note: i hope this was okay!! i kinda had a lot of fun writing it. prompts: 49. “is something wrong with me?” 53. “ask for permission.” 54. “why did you say ‘daddy’ in your sleep?”

please do not copy my work. but please like and reblog it. thank you!!!!

the day was nice and bright and sunny. with winter finally transitioning to spring, warmer weather was rolling in, trees and flowers were blooming once again, days were long and bright; spring was your favorite time of year. it was when the earth was most peaceful and beautiful.

however, today did not go quite as planned. you mentally screamed as you were handed back your research essay for a college history class you were being forced to take. you were so close to graduating with a degree in [college major], and yet it felt so far. plus, you were doing quite well in the class until mr. song decided to decide when you would die. in other words, he assigned a major essay. the requirements were not normal. they were almost too challenging, but just enough to where it wasn’t impossible. you tried your very best, as you did on all major assignments, but that damn professor just didn’t think it was good. and now, he had handed back your research paper, demanding that you rewrite it. this is why you wanted to scream and flip a desk. you had woken up earlier; the sun was rising, the weather was due to be warm, you were in a good mood, nothing could stop you. well, or so you thought.

“i’m sorry, y/n.” mr. song apologized as you glanced at your paper.

no, you’re not, you thought to yourself. “it’s okay, mr. song. i understand.” you replied.

he looked at you and nodded, signalling for you to leave. you held onto your breath, just until you were out of the large classroom. you sighed heavily, your hands clenching tightly enough to crumble the edges of your essay.

“hey, y/n.” you heard to your right.

you pried open your heavy eyelids, looking down the hallway in the direction of where you had heard your best friend’s voice. there he was, the oh-so-perfect, kim namjoon. he was known to be the smartest student at this college. this can be backed up with his iq score of 148, a number so high, not even the tallest people could reach it. luckily, you and him had been best friends long before college. and since you and him were so close, he always helped when you needed it most.

but there was one little secret that even sometimes you were scared to admit to yourself: you were in love with your best friend. he was just so perfect. namjoon has the smarts, the looks, everything that made a man attractive. your attraction towards your best friend only begun recently. and although you haven’t found the exact reason as to why or how your crush developed, you’ve tried your best to deal with it. but at each passing day, your feelings grew stronger and hardly to hide.

“hey, namjoon.” you replied monotonously.

namjoon stood in front of you, concern written on his face. “are you okay?”

your heart skipped a beat at the question. you shook your head while presenting your paper, the one that had the gigantic, bright red letter f in the right hand corner. namjoon winced. “damn, really? but you sacrificed so many hours to work on that.”

you sniffed, feeling yourself on the verge of having a mental breakdown. “is something wrong with me?”

namjoon sighed, bringing his hand up to your shoulder in an attempt to comfort you. he squeezed slightly. just namjoon being there for you was reassuring. “y/n, nothing’s wrong with you. it’s probably just the teacher being nit-picky about the essay. why don’t you come to spend the night at my apartment tonight?”

you looked up at the man in front of you. you had seen him multiple times today, but something was different now. you didn’t know why. namjoon looked nice in his casual outfit, but then again, he always looked nice. you started to shake your head. “but i need to-”

“you should take a break first, y/n. trust me, it’ll do you some good.” namjoon smiled.

you returned his smile. “i guess that would be fine. but will you help me next week?”

namjoon scoffed, “of course. you don’t even need to ask.” namjoon adjust himself so that his arm was now wrapped around your shoulder. he began leading down the hallway in the direction of the exit. thank the lord it was friday. you don’t know how you would go through another day or two after such a traumatic experience with mr. song. however, namjoon easily took mr. song off of your mind when he wrapped his arm around you. with his body close to yours, you were able to feel his skin and his warmth. you couldn’t help but blush at the action, while namjoon didn’t even realize the effect he had on you. you inhaled and exhaled deeply, praying that your reddened cheeks wouldn’t be noticeable by the time namjoon looked at your face again.

on the way to namjoon’s apartment, you and him stopped by a convenience store to stock up on food and drinks for the very fun night ahead. it was a short commute from the college to namjoon’s apartment. he followed you into the building as well as the elevator. standing so close to him in such a small space made your stomach flip nervously, like a bunch of butterflies in a tight box. you had never felt this nervous around namjoon. he was your best friend, for god’s sake. you had no reason to be nervous.

namjoon sighed as the elevator ascended quiet slowly. “is there anything in particular that you want to do?”

you shrugged. “i don’t really care, as long as it takes my mind off of mr. song and my essay.”

namjoon laughed breathlessly, causing you to smile. finally, the doors opened and you stepped out first, namjoon following closely behind. namjoon silently watched you as you walked in the direction of his apartment. it wasn’t necessarily in a creepy way, it was more that he had nothing else to admire. but he couldn’t help but smile to himself. the idea that you were spending the night with him and hanging out with him pleased him. he felt closer to you than ever.

you stopped at his door, moving out of the way so that namjoon could unlock the door with his key. he finally pushed the door open, going inside first because he had been carrying the bags of food and drinks the entire way. namjoon insisted because he was a natural and polite gentleman.

after namjoon walked into his apartment, you followed, closing and locking the door afterwards. “namjoon,” you called. “do you remember if i left spare clothes here?” you asked, trying to recall any instances where you’ve left clothes all the other times you’ve stayed.

namjoon momentarily stopped unloading the plastic bags in order to think for a second. “not that i know of. but check my bedroom, in the closet. if you don’t find anything, then just choose one of my shirts and pants.”

despite namjoon speaking so casually as if it was normal, his words had done a great deal of damage to you and your heart. you would be wearing namjoon’s clothes. you had never done that before. you entered namjoon’s bedroom, trying to decide if you wanted to find your clothes in there or if you wanted to borrow some of namjoon’s clothes. however, when you looked in his closet, there was no sign of your clothes. you must’ve brought all of them back home, probably to do some laundry. you sighed nervously before reaching for a t-shirt and finding a pair of sweatpants on the floor. you quickly changed into them, finding that they were too large for you, but they were extremely comfortable. men’s clothing was always more comfortable.

you left the bedroom after. you walked out into the living room and found that namjoon had arrange all the snacks on the coffee table, and had the television turned on. he looked up at you as he placed the drinks down. namjoon’s own heart skipped a beat. the sight of you wearing his clothing almost put him into cardiac arrest, because you looked so damn cute, or hot (depending on perspective). you blushed as namjoon practically gawked at you, falling into a trance. you nervously messed around with the edge of the t-shirt, feeling the butterflies in your stomach again.

namjoon cleared his throat, turning into a stuttering mess. “s-sorry. let me g-g-go change into my pajamas and then i’ll come back with blankets and pillows.”

you nodded. you watched as a red-faced namjoon hurried around the couch, almost hitting his hip on the corner of his piece of beige furniture on his way. you laughed lightly, seeing his reaction to you. perhaps, he liked you too. but you waved away the thought just as quickly as it came. “no,” you mumbled. “it’s too good to be true.”

you found a spot on the couch. it was on the very end, so that namjoon could have room on the other side. plus, there would be room for the both of to lay down if necessary, although it would be a tight squeeze. in theory, one of you might be falling off the couch later.

you leaned forward and grabbed a handful of popcorn from the big bowl on the coffee table, popping each individual piece into your mouth just as namjoon came onto your mind. you sighed. you were amazed that you were overall keeping things together. you are still nervous around him, especially because of your feelings, but you have been managing them well - or at least you hoped that you were.

moments later, namjoon was back, and was pretending as if nothing had happened. he smiled sweetly at you, blankets in his arms. he gave you half of them and sat down on his side of the couch. you laid the blankets on top of your body, waiting for them to warm up your body. you made sure you were comfortable before reaching for the entire bowl of popcorn.

namjoon got himself situated, before grabbing the remote on the coffee table. “so,” he began, “what do you want to watch?”

you hummed in thought. “maybe an action movie, perhaps a comedy, i don’t really mind.”

namjoon chuckled lightly. “that helps.”

you rolled your eyes. “i’m sorry, i don’t care. you choose the movie.”

namjoon smiled before turning on the tv. he scoured the television, looking for a movie to watch. eventually a movie was chosen, and it was one you wanted to watch. you paid attention to the entire movie, while eating the entire bowl of popcorn. three movies later, you were finally feeling it. your eyelids were beginning to feel heavy, and your body began to sink into the couch. it felt like you were laying on a large pillow. you adjusted yourself so that you were laying down, instead of sitting up. namjoon noticed this, and he himself was feeling tired as well, so he had done the exact same thing. despite being so close each other and the tight space on the couch, it was comfortable and warm.

it wasn’t long before you finally drifted off into a deep sleep. a few minutes after you had fallen asleep, namjoon peeked over at you. he had noticed the change in your breathing pattern, it had slowed down. he noticed that you were asleep, and felt a bit relieved. you were getting some rest after a long day. namjoon sighed himself, heaving himself up from the couch in order to turn off the tv. the lights were already turned off since you and him had been having a movie marathon. so once the room was enveloped in both a peaceful silence and darkness, namjoon adjusted himself on the couch and laid down. then, he too fell asleep.

----

“[inaudible mumbling].”

“[more inaudible mumbling].”

a moan.

namjoon heard something suddenly. the unknown noise was like an echo in his head. at first he thought that it was some kind of weird dream that he was waking up in. but it couldn’t have been that. so namjoon’s next thought was that it was the tv. he forced himself to open his eyes, finding that the room was still dark, and that no television was on. slightly confused, namjoon waited silently, waiting for the sound again.

“[even more inaudible mumbling].”

namjoon felt your leg kick slightly after you mumbled something he didn’t understand. he cautiously sat up on the couch, making sure that he wasn’t going to wake you up. he sat there for a few seconds, watching you carefully. namjoon was confused, and it didn’t help that his brain was still hazy from sleep. and there you went again, only this time, namjoon was able to make out what you were mumbling. “namjoon.”

namjoon’s eyes widened in shock. his cheeks immediately flushed deep shades of red. he didn’t know how to react, or even what to think. why were you mumbling his name? what could you possibly be dreaming? obviously it was about him, but it was just a surprise to namjoon.

namjoon was curious as to what else you were going to say. he was slightly intrigued. but the next word that escaped through your lips was much more surprising than you saying his name. “daddy.”

namjoon’s face burned with embarrassment. he could feel his heart beating, its pounding echoing in his eardrums. “what the hell?” he whispered into the dark.

namjoon shook his head and decided that he needed to go to the bathroom. his brain was much to scrambled in the moment. he carefully removed the blanket from his body and swung his legs around, planting his feet on the floor. he stood up, trying to get around the coffee table and escape the living room quietly. but it was too late. it was hard to see in the dark.

there was a loud bang, the sound that followed after namjoon’s shin collided with the corner of the coffee table. all the food and glasses on top of the table slid slightly after the collision. you had woken up from the noise, as well as namjoon’s trying his best to keep quiet as he stroked his shin, attempting to rid of the pain. you opened your eyes, not knowing what was going on. when you sat up, you could see namjoon standing on one leg while holding the other.

“namjoon?”

namjoon gasped. he looked in your direction, flashing a sheepish smile. “ah, did i wake you up?”

you turned around and found a lamp by the couch. you turned it up, wincing at the sudden light. you blinked a few times before turning back to namjoon. “are you okay?”

namjoon seemed nervous, and you couldn’t understand why. namjoon set down his leg, shaking it out a bit. you noticed the bright red spot on his leg. “yeah,” namjoon replied. “i was getting up to just use the bathroom and i didn’t see the table, so my leg just got caught on the corner.”

you smiled slightly, “that’s what that loud noise was.”

namjoon nodded. “sorry to wake you.”

you shrugged. “it’s fine.”

there was a moment of silence for a second, almost awkward. you didn’t understand why namjoon was acting like the way he was. you looked around the apartment for a minute, not sure how to break the silence. but namjoon cleared his throat, before sitting down on his side of the couch again. “i-i have a question.”

you crossed your legs under you, pulling a blanket into your lap. you stared into namjoon’s eyes, waiting for his question. “why did you say ‘daddy’ in your sleep?”

your eyes widened and you felt your body flinch. “what do you mean?”

namjoon’s cheeks reddened. “you were talking in your sleep earlier.” namjoon explained. you were shocked. you didn’t even know you did that.

“and you had said my name once. but afterwards, you said daddy.”

that’s when you remembered the type of dream you were having. you chuckled nervously, bringing a hand up to push back your bed(couch)-head. “did i?” you felt your face burn.

namjoon stared at you, “yeah. what were you dreaming about?”

you gulped hard, “well, it’s not important.”

namjoon shook his head, his voice raising both in volume and in tone. “but i need to know! you were mumbling my name. and you called me daddy. there’s no reason to hide it now. it’s easy to determine what you were dreaming about.”

you glared at him. “then why did you ask?”

“i don’t know!”

you sighed sharply, “i’m sorry, okay? just forget i even said any of that.”

namjoon thought to himself for a second. perhaps this was his chance to admit his feelings for you. except, he was also scared, and he was starting to second guess himself.

you didn’t know what to do with yourself other than sit on the couch and be silent. you were embarrassed that you had such a dream, especially when it was with your best friend. not to mention that you were laying right next to him as well, and for him to hear you sleep talking...you wanted nothing more than to disappear.

namjoon sighed while his mind was filled with conflicting thoughts. he glanced over at you, noticing your sad gaze at the blanket down in your lap. he shook his head. screw it, he thought.

namjoon scooted over along the couch. you were confused as you noticed him getting closer to you. you were scared to look up. however after namjoon got closer to you, you felt his hands on your cheeks. he stroked your cheekbones and tilted your face up to look at him. with a worried look on his face, he leaned closer. as he closed the distance between you and him, you could feel your heart begin to beat uncontrollably, and the butterflies in your stomach made you even more nervous than ever. before you knew it, namjoon’s lips were over yours.

but unlike what you were - rather un - expecting, it wasn’t just a kiss. it was something more. the kiss was soft and gentle at first. but it soon turned rough and hard, and it turned you on. it was like the very dream you had, of course with some minor changes in detail. when namjoon pulled away, your lips throbbed and felt swollen. you breathed deeply, as if gasping for air. you were still so bewildered as the change of events. you had never expected your sleepover with your best friend (is he still your best friend?) to end up like this. you stared at namjoon attentively, who could not take his eyes off of you. you narrowed your eyes at him, before saying, “ask for permission.”

“permission for what?”

you smiled mischievously, “you know what...”

namjoon let out a light laugh, red hues in his cheeks. “permission to move things into the bedroom.”

“that was weird coming out of your mouth, but i’ll take it.”

---

things drastically changed between you and namjoon. no words had to be said between you two, because both you and namjoon both knew that there was something much, much deeper that had developed. although you hadn’t expected it, you were delighted at the way things had turned out. ever since that night, when love literally blossomed in the bedroom, you and namjoon have been closer than ever.

#bts #bangtan #bangtan sonyeondan #bts kim namjoon #bts namjoon #bts rm #kim namjoon #namjoon #rm #bts one shot #bts imagine #bts scenario #bts fluff #bts suggestive #kpop #namjoon one shot

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loneberry · 6 years ago

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Flowers for Eternity

What is the alphabet of funeral flowers that appears everywhere in my work?

Below the cut is “Flowers for Eternity”—my favorite chapter from Stephen Buchmann’s book The Reason for Flowers—on the relationship between flowers and death, and the use of flowers for funerary and religious rituals.

Flowers as the enshrinement of wayward souls

Flowers as an olfactory mask for decomposing corpses

Flowers as memorialization

Flowers as emotional salve in the face of loss

Who knows why, when a life is snuffed out, a bouquet sprouts in the void.

In the end, we all will become flowers

Ruderals in the cemetery of lost dreams

Flowers for Eternity They are love’s last gift—bring ye flowers, pale flowers! —Felicia Hermans It’s a cold February morning in Orange County, California. My family, and our relatives and friends, gather on a green lawn, in the Garden of Contentment, an older area within the sprawling Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, California, the largest cemetery in the United States. A friend has given the eulogy for my father, Stanley, who has died at age fifty-seven. Our family walks to the open grave hand in hand. My father’s sister carries a bouquet of flowers. One by one, we come forward, adding colorful bouquets atop the metal coffin. Floral wreaths rest next to the gravesite on tall stands. Earlier that morning, several hundred friends, family, and relatives paid their final respects during a funeral service in the flower-filled First Congregational Church of Buena Park. Now, our family and a few others remain graveside among the floral tributes before the casket is lowered. Such earthen burials in cemeteries are repeated about six thousand times each day in the United States and many more times around the world. Much of the florist industry is based on these services and other floral tributes. With their beauty, flowers comfort us; they make us smile and ease our grief. They help us to heal and recover from losses and emotional wounds. This has always been true. Our ancestors used cut flowers as grave offerings since the time spiritual beliefs first stirred in humans. Archaeological excavations of ancient burial sites in Iraq and Israel, along with tombs of Egyptian pharaohs, such as Tutankhamen, provide us with glimpses into the burial customs of these ancient mourners, and flowers for eternity. Buried with Flowers Deep within the Zagros Mountains of northern Iraq is the famed Shanidar Cave. Early humans, Neanderthals, lived here seventy thousand years ago and buried their dead. Excavations in the 1950s by a Columbia University archaeological team unearthed ten Neanderthal skeletons buried along with an assortment of stone tools. At least one individual may have been laid upon a bed of stems of joint pine (Ephedra, shrubs that make no flowers) and also adorned with bouquets of flowers. Pollen from twenty-eight flowering species was identified from the gravesite soils. Pollen-grain concentrations were higher within the grave than in the surrounding areas of Shanidar Cave. This sensational discovery was widely reported in the media and sparked debate. Did the family group of Neanderthals have ritualized burials? Was this the first evidence of floral grave offerings? Or, as has recently been suggested, was it merely interred pollen brought into the cave by generations of gerbil-like rodents hoarding grasses and wildflowers? For now, the story is unclear. Not as old, but far more scientifically convincing, is a twelve-millennia-old gravesite inside Raqefet Cave on Israel’s Mt. Carmel studied by archaeologists at the University of Haifa. Here, four graves from the Natufian culture (radiocarbon-dated to be 13,700 to 11,700 years old) were lined with flowers at the time of burial. In one grave, an adult male and an adolescent were buried together atop a thick bier of floral offerings. Judaean sage (Salvia judaica), along with other unidentified mints (Lamiaceae) and members of the snapdragon family (Plantaginaceae), were used. Interestingly, Judaean sage has been a ritual plant since ancient times. It has commonly followed Mediterranean peoples from cradle to grave, like rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) and true myrtle (Myrtus communis). Myrtle remains entwined and is used with one Jewish holiday, Sukkoth, the Feast of Tabernacles, still celebrated each autumn. Archaeologist Dr. Dani Nadel spoke with me about the Raqefet Cave ancient graveyard, explaining that the inner grave surfaces were plastered with mud, capturing imprints of the delicate stems and finest floral impressions at the time of inhumation. Based upon the types of local wildflowers used, these may have been spring burials. Perhaps flowers were offered as grave goods not only for their beauty but also for their intense scents, which would have masked the odors of decomposition. Sages, along with mint stems and leaves, are especially fragrant, used to this day in cooking and burned as incense. A visitor to the Mt. Carmel hillside today walks among Judaean sage, a plant as common there now as it likely was millennia ago. The Natufians were possibly the first people to transition from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to permanent settlements with agriculture, animal husbandry, and true graveyards. Honoring the Dead or Appeasing the Gods? From the earliest times, humans have displayed two interrelated behaviors using flowers. We have buried them with our dead, but we have also adorned statues of deities with garlands or left blooms on sacred altars to propitiate the deities. Why is it that something as ephemeral and delicate as a flower took on this new role in the theologies of so many divergent cultures? How could a flower provide comfort for grieving mourners if we evolved from fruit-eating ancestors? Why not use something else? Shouldn’t we be decorating sarcophagi and coffins with fruit, luscious red ripe grapes, apples, or figs? Perhaps it happened because the blooming of flowers around the world proceeds in a predictable, seasonal pattern. Flowers of the dry season are replaced by flowers of the rainy season in the tropics. In cooler-milder zones, three or four seasons offer a diverse but revolving carousel of buds that open and wilt at appointed times. Catastrophic destruction by unexpected droughts, wildfires, or floods interrupts annual climate cycles but not forever. Given time, the flowers return. Early humans certainly noticed that when their kin were buried in shallow graves, these sites were later colonized by blooming, opportunistic, short-lived wildflowers ecologists call ruderals. This mode of natural renewal had been noted by most generations of poets, regardless of era. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Laertes offers the then-widespread belief that good flowers spring from the grave of a good person. He hopes that violets will spring from his sister Ophelia’s grave, although her death was a suicide. Thus, Mt. Carmel hides more than one ruined necropolis in plain sight. On warm days in January a trained botanist can show cyclamens, red anemones, winter narcissi, and mandrakes poking out between the tips of the half-buried ossuaries. Bouquets, Mummy Garlands, and Floral Collars On a far grander scale, death rites and religious worship were intertwined in the Egypt of the pharaohs. Flower arrangements were used in festivals and for special occasions. Most popular were the spike-topped papyrus reeds, and flowers of sacred blue and white water lilies. Bouquets were presented to deceased relatives at the time of burial and on various festive occasions and anniversaries at the necropolis and mortuary temples. Beautifully designed fresh-flower arrangements were also worn as broad neck collars (wide necklaces) by participants at Egyptian funerary rites and their associated feasts. Bouquets were brought to burials, and papyrus stems played an integral part since these abundant, aquatic reeds symbolized the resurrection of the deceased. Bouquets and persea (Mimusops laurifolia) branches were found inside King Tutankhamun’s multiroomed royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings (ancient Thebes) when it was first opened by Howard Carter in 1922. Ancient flower collars and dried-but-once-fresh flowers are found on mummies and draped on statues placed within tombs. When nineteen-year-old pharaoh Tutankhamun was buried in 1323 BC, many floral garlands were placed as offerings on his three nested, gilded coffins. A small wreath of olive leaves, blue water-lily petals, and blue cornflowers (Centaurea) surrounded the symbol of office, the vulture-and-serpent motif above the king’s brow. The floral decorations on Tut’s innermost coffins were especially elaborate. Here, layers of wrapped linen were crisscrossed by four bands of long floral garlands. The plants used in the garlands have been identified as olive leaves, cornflower, willow, lotus (Nelumbo), and celery leaves. A one-foot-wide floral collar encircled the king’s sculpted, solid gold funerary mask. When fresh, before the sarcophagus was sealed, this brilliant floral collar resting on the golden innermost coffin lid must have been a lovely sight. Unlike the previous garlands, this collar contained blue glass beads, lotus petals, more cornflowers, the scarlet berries of deadly nightshade, along with yellow mandrake fruits and the yellow-flowering heads of yellow hawkweeds (Picris). The royal mummy of Rameses II (1290 - 1224 BC) had thirteen rows of floral garlands, along with single blue flowers of water lilies under the bands sealing the mummy wrappings. This king, along with others, was found in a “mummy cache,” likely placed there a century later (c. 1087 BC) by Egyptians to avoid the rampant tomb robbing of that time. The garlands of persea leaves and blue and white lotus on the mummy wrappings of Rameses II might have been placed there reverentially during his hasty reburial. Northwest from Egypt, on islands of the Aegean, the Minoan peoples traded with the Egyptians, who coveted Minoan saffron (Crocus sativus) as a spice and a dye. These people also enjoyed an elaborate vision of death, flowers, and deities, but it seems more cheerful. Amateur botanist and historian Hellmut Baumann has addressed the relicts of this civilization, and its Greek invaders. The Cretans, for example, decorated their sarcophagi with motifs depicting the flowering stems of native dragon arums (Dracunculus vulgaris) and related members of the philodendron family (Araceae). They also painted the glorious white and wonderfully scented sea daffodils (Pancratium maritimum) on these baked clays as it was a favorite of their goddesses. These deities were believed to favor wild lilies, including the white-flowered species we today call the Madonna (Lilium candidum), and the Cretans protected the mauve flowers of the saffron crocus. One sculpted goddess wore a crown made of the fat round fruits of opium poppies. The Minoan Empire came to a violent end around 1570 BC when volcanic eruptions and tsunamis devastated their islands and left the survivors vulnerable to waves of invasion from the Greek mainland. The invaders brought in a new, male-dominated pantheon. The mighty Minoan goddess became Crete’s nymph under the name of Britomartis or Dictynna. She was a dutiful daughter of Zeus and a virgin. Classical Greek religion believed in gods who loved flowers. As they were immortals, their worshippers decorated their temples with “immortal” arrangements of everlasting daisies (Helichrysum), as they hold their shiny yellow color and sun shapes when dried. Sacrificial oxen were adorned with flowers of wild carnations (Dianthus) and rose campions (Lychnis). Greek priests and poets insisted that their gods had sacred plants, and some of these bore beautiful flowers. The first Olympian gods invented floral wreaths at the wedding of Zeus and Hera, weaving together wildflowers such as primroses, candytuft (Iberis), leopard’s-bane (Doronicum), and mouse-ears (Cerastium). Pindar (522 - 443 BC) wrote odes associating Apollo and Aphrodite with sweetly scented violets of the field. Flowers followed a Greek woman through the most important rituals of her life. Virgins wore garlands of wild, white-flowered species at their weddings, typically incorporating crocuses, white snowflakes (Leucojum), white storax (Styrax), and snowdrops (Galanthus), according to season. The modern fashion of the pure white bride’s bouquet derives from these sweetly scented garlands and wreaths. But the wedding bouquet of classical Greece was more likely to contain garlic and other pungent herbs to drive off jealous wandering spirits! The citizens of ancient Rome picked up many Greek wedding customs but seemed to prefer colorful, scented flowers including violets, wallflowers (Cheiranthus), and stocks (Matthiola). The Greeks also favored roses (sacred to Aphrodite), but the Romans so expanded the wedding fashions that they may have used the flowers of four or five different Rosa species. Wealthier Romans also tried to turn their wedding nuptial chambers into a fertile garden of flowers and greenery. As a matron, the mature Greek woman celebrated the summer rites (Thesmophoria) sacred to the grain goddess, Demeter. This included sleeping on makeshift beds sprinkled with the blue-purple flowers of the chaste tree (Vitex), to keep them faithful to their husbands and to increase their fertility. These flowers were sacred to Demeter, Hera (goddess of marriage), Aphrodite (goddess of love and fertility), and even Asclepius (god of medicine). At a woman’s death, a purple iris might be planted on her grave, and funerals in ancient Greece were elaborate rituals lasting several days. At the moment of death, the soul (Psyche, portrayed as a winged deity or butterfly) was believed to leave the body through the mouth as a puff of wind. By law, the decedent’s body was prepared at home (the prothesis), usually by elderly female relatives. The corpse was washed, anointed with fragrant oils, and dressed. Then it was placed on a bed of wooden planks and adorned with a crown of tree branches and flowers. Romans adored their floral crowns but also decorated the funerary couch with many fresh flowers. Once burial was complete, both Greeks and Romans scattered flowers on the grave (violets were popular tributes), and both cultures believed that planting herbs and sweet flowers around the burial site purified the earth. Urns containing the remains of the deceased could also be cleansed using offerings of cut flowers. A Passion for Lotuses

Even as the peoples of Crete, Greece, and Italy abandoned their old pantheons less than two thousand years ago, flowers continue to play a living role in the cultures and countries embracing the various branches of Hinduism. Indians still celebrate rites wearing garlands of flowers, and they give them away as gifts. Their use of flowers is associated with sexuality, one of the aphorisms of love, for example, in the Kama Sutra by Vatsyayana. The ancient Indian text is not just about erotic love and sexual positions; it also contains information on the sixty-four arts, including flowers, especially fashioning flower carriages and artificial flowers, the adorning of idols with rice and flowers, decorating couches or beds with flowers, stringing necklaces, making garlands or wreaths, and the simple pleasures of gardening. In their worship and portrayals of deities, Hindus are infatuated with flowers. The name of the Hindu worship ritual puja is translated as the “flower act.” Among Hindus, the Indian lotus flower (Nelumbo nucifera) is their foremost symbol of beauty, fertility, and prosperity. According to Hinduism, within everyone resides the spirit of the sacred lotus flower. The lotus symbolizes purity, divinity, and eternity, widely used in ceremonies, where it denotes life, especially feminine beauty and renewed youth. In the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu text, humans are admonished to be like the lotus, holding high above the water, like the flower itself. In hatha yoga, the familiar lotus sitting position is used by practitioners as a way of striving for a higher level of consciousness. In Hinduism, the lotus also represents beauty and nonattachment. The aquatic plant produces a large, beautiful, pinkish blossom, but it is rooted fast in the mud of a shallow pond or lake. Its stiff leaves rise above the water’s surface, neither wetted nor muddy. Hindus view this as an admonition for how we should live our lives, without attachment to our surroundings. Several Hindu deities are likened to the lotus blossom. Krishna is described as the Lotus-Eyed One in reference to his supposed divine beauty. Deities including Brahma, Lakshmi, Vishnu, and Saraswati are also associated with the lotus blossom. The “wooing” of Hindu gods is normally done with adorning clothing, jewels, dances and music, perfumes, betel nuts, coconuts, and other foods, but especially with vermilion dusts and many flowers. During Holi, the festival of colors during the spring, worshippers paint their faces with brilliant vermilion powders. Flowers are everywhere on display for Holi and Diwali (the festival of lights, celebrated in India and Nepal). Colorful floral displays called rangoli are created for indoor or outdoor use by the celebrants. The Diwali holiday marks the victory of good over evil (Lord Rama’s victory over the demon-king Ravana). Villagers commonly paint the faces of sacred cattle with vermilion and drape their necks with long floral garlands, using marigolds, and red-purple makhmali (flowering heads of long-lasting amaranths) in Nepal. In an interesting form of what may be considered cultural diffusion with flowers, Hindus prefer the fat, hybrid heads of marigolds (Tagetes), apparently unaware of their earlier association with bloody human sacrifices performed by Aztec high priests. In India, yatra are the pilgrimage festivals celebrated at Hindu temples. Idols are carried aloft in a special procession on a palki (sedan chair). These ceremonial platforms are highly decorated, festooned in colorful live flowers including marigolds and makhmali. Cremation is mandatory for most Hindus. In India, after the elaborate cremation ceremonies performed by male family members, the deceased’s ashes are gathered and usually scattered on the waters of the sacred Ganges River (especially at Allahabad), or at sea. Mourners often place floating bowls containing the ash remains and flowers in the river. They also scatter flower petals and whole flowers on the waters as part of this ritual. Buddhism originated in northern India. Although often considered a spiritual path or way of life, rather than a formal religion, its many followers use and admire flowers in their rituals and daily lives. The lotus is often stated to represent the most exalted state of man and is the symbol of knowledge and the Buddha. Legend has it that wherever the Buddha paced to and fro in meditation, lotus flowers sprang up in his footsteps. In most Buddhist art, the lotus flower symbolizes the Buddha and transcendence to a higher state. The lotus is also thought to represent in Buddhism four human virtues: scent, purity, softness, and beauty. In contrast, some Hindus and Hindu offshoots, such as Jainism, eschew flowers. Orthodox Brahmans and Jains oppose using flowers because, although no blood is spilled, a “sacrifice” is made by cutting the stem of the plant, which kills the flower. Allowances are often made and flowers are used by these groups in worship. However, the very best flowers, as offerings, are those that fall naturally to the ground so their lives were not taken by picking. India’s Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948), made famous by inspiring nonviolent acts of civil disobedience among his followers, avoided the use of floral garlands. Gandhi preferred garlands made of cotton or necklaces of plain sandalwood beads. Flowers of Bali The Hindu use of flowers is most vibrant and lavish on the island of Bali, in the Indonesian archipelago. The ancient Sanskrit word bali means “tribute” or “gift,” especially surrounding temple ceremonies and the use of flowers. Wandering the streets of Ubud, you see minipalettes, three-by-three-inch woven-palm-leaf trays filled with colorful flowers of frangipani (Plumeria; a relative of our milkweeds), ylang-ylang (Cananga odorata; related to custard apples), and Impatiens (the same tropical weeds we grow as summer shade-garden annuals). These offerings are called banten in Balinese. Incense tops the vibrant offerings, adding its wisps of fragrant smoke to appease nature spirits, and the numerous gods and demons of Balinese Hinduism. These miniature offerings in Bali take on many different forms. They always contain flowers, but may include cookies, cigarettes, rice, or money. The offerings are not always contained in the plaited-palm trays. Often, they are merely small piles of colorful flower petals. The items used in the offerings seem to be less important than the act of creating these tributes. Balinese women spend a large part of each day creating and placing these ritualistic offerings along roadways and paths, often perched where you least expect them. The offerings are everywhere, sitting atop walls, planters, and stair steps. Individual flowers and garlands adorn stone statues, such as those of Ganesha. This beloved elephant-headed god of wisdom and art is often depicted holding—you guessed it—a lotus blossom. In Bali, the sweet floral scent of frangipani and ylang-ylang perfumes the air of courtyards, homes, and temples. Early every morning, before most tourists have risen from their guesthouse beds, the Balinese are out on the streets. They sweep away the previous day’s now-wilted floral offerings and wash down the streets and gutters. The offerings are daily devotional gifts, repeated acts of faith, cornerstones of their belief system. The slightly darker side of the practices is that the offerings are meant to appease and disperse demon spirits who might be hanging around one’s home or a nearby street corner. These are far more than simple street decorations for foreign tourists, which I’m sure most foreign visitors believe they are. Many of the country’s religious ceremonies are conducted within Hindu temples. Odalans are temple ceremonies lasting three or more days. During these observances, the temple walls are covered in colorful golden thread fabrics. Offerings of bright fruits, flowers, and rice cakes are carried balanced on women’s heads, then placed around the temples. The Hindu gods are believed to take the essence (sari) from these food offerings, which are later brought home and consumed by the worshipping families. On Bali, flowers play as important a role in death as they do in life. The dead, inside their coffins, are placed inside large, elaborate, gilded sarcophagi made of papier-mache. These often take the form of bulls or the demonic Bhoma guardian with a fearsome, openmouthed head, staring down at the onlookers. They are impressive works of art accompanied by flowers. The black and gold sarcophagi are highly decorated with real and paper flowers. Floral garlands (chrysanthemums) adorn the necks of the impressive mythical beasts. During the funeral ceremonies, everyone wears bright costumes, and village women prepare food offerings to be eaten by the mourners during the festivities. The distinctive ringing tones of gamelan music are an integral part of Balinese culture and their funeral traditions. Finally, the ornate funeral pyres with their garlanded animals are set ablaze with added gasoline for good measure. After the flames have done their work, the family separates the ashes and bones of the deceased from the remaining residue. The cremains are tenderly placed inside folded white and yellow cloths along with flowers and buried twelve days later, after a final purification rite, again augmented with flowers. The “Conversion” of Flowers When trade brought the lotus to Egypt around 500 BC, it displaced the blue and white water lilies used in worship. Favorite flowers find new religions, and it’s a never-ending circle, with Mexican marigolds and frangipani used extensively by Hindus in India and on Bali. Therefore, it should not surprise us that the goddesses of the Mediterranean basin gave their grandest white flower to Christianity, recognizable to most as the white Madonna lily (Lilium candidum). In the United States, this is the omnipresent potted Easter lily. In early Christian liturgy, Mary’s tomb was filled with these white lilies after her assumption into heaven. The Madonna lily also figures in Renaissance paintings of the Annunciation. Its white color represents her presumed virginity and immaculate conception. Today, flowers taking on similar Christian symbolism include the lily of the valley, the snowflake, and the snowdrop, once worn by Greek brides. White, the color of purity and innocence, and red, Christ’s sacrificial blood, represented by roses, have been emblems of the Virgin Mary. They were also sacred to Venus and Aphrodite in earlier times. Ironically, the earliest practices of the Christian church largely avoided ceremonial uses of flowers as they were associated with former but often appropriated pagan rites. These restrictions were modified over time, so now Christian services and funerals seem incomplete without flowers. For Catholic services, floral arrangements are usually placed on shelves, the gradines, behind the main altar. Although white flowers are most often used, even red flowers are allowed, along with ferns and other greenery. Often an attempt is made to match flower colors with those of the clerical vestments. In the Catholic Church flowers are used in moderation during Advent but are often “given up” for Lent. Historically, rosary beads used in Catholic prayers were formed from dried and compressed rose petals instead of the wooden, glass, or plastic ones commonly used. In Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance certain flowers were associated with Christian saints and used during the saint’s day and other celebrations. Saint Valentine was associated with crocuses or violets. The tradition of giving violets on Saint Valentine’s Day was common in the United States, persisting in New York City at least until the early 1960s. Christianity, though, is both messianic and missionary. As the Spaniards introduced it to our American Southwest and Mesoamerica, the use of flowers in the old religions mixed with the new. Anthropologists studying these hybridized beliefs note that the worshippers often speak of a Flower World, a spiritual place where humans might contact spirits or ancestors through rituals or by ingesting hallucinogenic plants. The belief in a spirit Flower World is common throughout Mexico, other Latin American countries, and the pre-Hispanic southwestern United States. These flower beliefs seem to have been widespread among ancient Amerindians speaking a common language (e.g., Uto-Aztecan). In an earlier chapter we were introduced to Aztec rituals utilizing flowers. Flowers for the Aztecs, especially true marigolds, signified a spiritual-afterlife paradise world, but also universal creation and the blood of human sacrifices. Knowledge of the Flower World was traditionally passed to each succeeding generation in song. We also find exquisite depictions of flowers on Mayan textiles, the pottery of the modern Hopi, and in the ancestral groups of the Mogollon, Hohokam, and Anasazi (ancient Pueblo) cultures of Arizona, New Mexico, and Sonora, Mexico. In their minds, the Huichol people of west-central Mexico “visited” the colorful Flower World in their peyote-cactus pilgrimage ceremonies. In the northern Mexican villages of the Mayo and Yoeme (Yaqui) tribes, leading up to and during Easter week children throw flowers at dancers dressed as evil spirits, the fariseos and chapayekas, who symbolically attack the Catholic Church. Flowers, real and paper ones, and colorful confetti are used as adornments. Altars, churches, village buildings, and homes are decorated profusely with colorful paper flowers. The Yoeme concept of flowers (sewam) has been treasured in legends and songs for many generations. Today, flowers are associated with the Virgin Mary, and flowers are believed to have miraculously sprung from the spilled blood of Christ at his crucifixion. Prior to their religious conversion, flowers were spiritual blessings, important in the native religious beliefs of the Mayo and Yoeme. I have attended the elaborate Yoeme deer dances of the Pascua Yaqui tribe in my home city of Tucson, Arizona. Flowers are important symbols in these rituals. Masked pascola deer dancers, dressed in white, wear wide belts with jangling deer hooves or brass bullet cartridges. Their ankles are festooned with tenevoim, pebble-filled cocoons of giant silk moths (Rothschildia cincta). Their stomping feet sound like alarmed rattlesnakes sounding their warnings. Atop their heads the dancers wear a large real or paper flower, usually red. Yoeme and Mayo funerals are mixtures of Catholicism and traditional cultural beliefs. For the Yoeme, their world concept is a mix of five worlds; the desert world, a mystical world, the dream world, the night world, and the flower world. Flowers are also viewed as the souls of departed family or tribal members. Sometimes older Yoeme men may greet one another with the phrase Haisa sewa? (How is the flower?). These ancient Aztec-speaking groups not only traded goods north and south but also their religious ideas and beliefs. Thus, we have clues that the Flower World concepts traveled north out of Mexico, to Chaco Canyon in the eleventh century, and to the Hopi mesas in Arizona by the 1400s. In the Mimbres Classic period (1000 - 1130), mortuary rituals, using symbolic flowers, eased the passage of individuals into the spirit world. Caches from archaeological excavations reveal the presence of painted wooden and leather flowers, likely worn by performers, just as modern katsina (kachina) dancers wear flowers, later left as grave goods. Flower worlds are depicted in fifteenth-century murals inside sacred kivas. Hopi, and other Southwestern, pottery show symbolic representations of flowers. According to Hopi traditions, butterflies are “flying flowers” and in various forms are associated with the underworld, with spring and renewal, and with the direction south. There is strong evidence that modern pueblo and ancient Mesoamerican iconographies are intertwined, historically related via trade routes and intercultural exchanges. Flowers, either real or depicted in art, formed a large part of the myths, legends, and daily life of these Southwestern indigenous cultures. Christian and native flower cultures merge vibrantly but positively during Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations. In the final days of October, before the American holiday of All Hallows’ Eve (Halloween), Mexicans prepare for their own traditional holiday for the dead, but in a different way from the commercialized trick-or-treating holiday Americans know. As the days grow shorter and the nights grow colder, villages and towns all over Mexico come alive with renewed energy and anticipation for the coming festivities. On November 1 and 2, Mexicanos come together to celebrate DÃa de los Muertos, their traditional Day of the Dead celebration. Across the country, families honor the memories of deceased loved ones around family burial plots gaily decorated with real and paper flowers, lively paper streamers, glowing candles, and offerings of the decedents’ favorite foods. To appreciate the modern Day of the Dead celebrations, we recall Aztec beliefs. Aztecs didn’t fear death, or Mictlantecuhtli, their god of death, as much as they dreaded the uncertainty of their brutally short lives. Mictlantecuhtli would not punish the dead. A dead person’s role in heaven was determined not by how he lived, but by how he died. Exalted warriors were believed to fly around the sun in the form of butterflies and hummingbirds, as were women who died in childbirth. Dead infants fed at the milk-giving tree. Everyone else just faded away to Mictlan, like a quiescent dream on their road toward final death and nonexistence. The ferocious Aztec sun god, Huitzilopochtli, demanded the most precious fluid of all, red human blood, spilled in sacrifice, amid garlands of golden marigolds, to slake his never-ending thirst. The beating hearts and blood of human victims were exchanged for abundant crops. Death paid for life in the Aztec world. An Aztec “war of flowers” ensued, tournaments in which neighboring tribes were forced to compete to the death, adding their bodies to the ever-growing demand for sacrificial victims. Flowers have always played a crucial and significant role in the Mexican Day of the Dead. On All Hallows’ Eve, the spirits of dead children return home, but must leave by midday on November 1. Bells ring out all afternoon on this day from churches, announcing the arrival of adults, the “faithful dead,” returning to their scattered villages. Candles burn on flower-filled home shrines and altars chock-full of marigolds, other flowers, candy skulls, and family photographs. The sweet fragrance of burning copal incense (from ancient Mayan and Aztec traditions) fills the air inside the homes. Often, trails of scattered marigold petals lead to doorways, meant to show wandering spirits of the dead their way back home. You can also witness many of these same customs on the streets and cemeteries of mountain villages in northern Guatemala. Marigolds are the foremost flower among these ceremonies and are native plants of Mexico. However, in Oaxacan and Cuernavacan markets as elsewhere, celebrants also buy the cloudlike floral sprays of baby’s breath (Gypsophila paniculata), a domesticated plant that grows wild in its native Russian steppes. Mexicans also use the brilliant flamelike heads of cockscomb (Celosia) to decorate their shrines, church altars, and graves. Once a religion includes flowers in its worship or mourning, the original distribution and mythology of an attractive bloom is no barrier to its acceptance among new rites in other distant locations. The Flowering of Roadside Memorials Whenever I drive the roadways of Sonora, Mexico, or those in southern Arizona, spots of color vie for my attention. Are they flowers in the desert, even during the winter when all the grasses are withered and brown, when nothing should be blooming? No, these little gardens of grief are roadside memorials, shrines honoring the dead, called descansos in Mexico. They mark places where someone died in an automobile crash. The memorials usually have a white cross, and often a saint’s figure and a votive candle, but invariably flowers, plastic ones, or fresh flowers refreshed on anniversary dates and holidays. Occasionally, I stop out of curiosity to read their names, or to admire the decorative floral arrangements. I’m reminded of the sidewalk and roadside floral tribute gardens that stretched for miles following the September 6, 1997, funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. Whether permanent roadside shrines or a single flower left in an open jar, they are omnipresent reminders of the immensely powerful social customs and values of flowers as memorial tributes. Victorian Funeral Customs In contrast, the use of flowers in contemporary American funerals seems a bit restrained. To understand our relation to flowers and death we need to cross the Atlantic and study our Victorian forebears as they established the funerary customs we still use or prefer to avoid. In particular, before twentieth-century embalming practices took hold in the funeral industry, stately, large wreaths and immense bouquets of flowers composed of strongly fragrant white lilies and hybrids of the so-called Oriental lilies (derived from Lilium speciosum) masked the odors of bodily decomposition. Along with burning candles, flowers served the role of air-fresheners. English Victorian-era funeral processions were grandiose and expensive social events. A prominent English family planned and arranged for a stylish processional costing twenty to fifty British pounds sterling, equivalent to the purchasing power today of about $5,000 (I chose the year 1850). For most of the Victorian era, a pound sterling might buy $100 worth of goods today. The processions were led by foot attendants, pallbearers with batons, a featherman holding tall ostrich plumes, pages, and mutes who dressed in gowns and carried wands. Stylish carriages transported family members, and relatives followed behind. The glass-sided hearse had elaborate black with silver and gold decorations. It was covered with an ornate canopy of black ostrich feathers and pulled by six black Belgian horses, each with its own black-plumed headdress. The ornate, draped coffin inside was clearly visible, and the interior of the hearse was jammed with a wide variety of flowers. Several hundred mourners might attend such a lavish funeral. After the services, most of the flowers were returned home and became part of elaborate home-parlor memorial shrines. Queen Victoria sent primroses to the funeral of her favorite prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli. Large floral arrangements surrounded photographs of the deceased, and the room was often decorated with one or more stuffed white doves, holding a red rose in their beaks. The British, during Queen Victoria’s sixty-three-year reign (1837 - 1901), were the last society to truly celebrate death with great pomp and circumstance, as had the ancient Egyptians. In the Victorian age, people welcomed the dead, continued to bring their dead, in open coffins, into their parlors and homes (the origin of the modern funeral parlor). In death flowers led the way. Victorians had their own flower superstitions, gleaned from older traditions in British folklore. For example, if the deceased had lived a good and proper life, then colorful flowers would supposedly grow and bloom on his or her grave. If people had lived otherwise and were deemed evil, then weeds would assuredly grow unattended and bloom profusely above them. If anyone noticed a roselike scent in the home, and no roses were nearby, then someone was about to die. A single snowdrop (Galanthus) plant found growing in a garden also foretold a death in the family. It was considered extremely bad luck to mix red and white flowers in a vase, especially inside a hospital, as a death would surely follow. Proper mourning etiquette was essential. Widows grieved for two years and wore solid black clothing with no trim, and bonnets with long, black face veils. No flowers were used. Their veils were shortened during the second year, and white or purple flowers were then permissible as decorative adornments to their plain black bonnets. The Modern American Way of Death: Flowers and Dying Today, Victorian practices have evolved further into an immense, nearly $21 billion US funeral industry, whose customs vary widely depending upon ethnic background, religious beliefs, region of the country, and socioeconomic stratum. Some people will not grow or bring scented narcissus (Narcissus tazetta) into their homes because their fragrance reminds them of embalming fluid. However, a little-known change in the treatment of the dead—the use of formaldehyde and other embalming fluids to prolong “viewing life” (the time available for an open-casket ceremony during a funeral or memorial service)—has occurred. Unknown to most, unless you are a mortician or are employed in a modern funeral home, is another surprising use for floral fragrances: dead bodies are being perfumed like real flowers. The new practice is not altogether unlike those of nineteenth-century America, when home parlors were jammed with large and fragrant floral wreaths, of white lilies and other flowers, to mask death’s telltale scent. Today, the unmistakable nose- and eye-stinging scent of formalin (aqueous formaldehyde) has changed. New, milder-scented embalming fluids are used, and even the Civil War - era formalin has been modified to assuage modern sensibilities. Now, embalmers typically add strong floral-based scents to their embalming fluids. The sweet fragrance of white lilies has been chemically synthesized and is sold to funeral parlors as an additive for their embalming solutions. Flowers have come to our rescue. To paraphrase the famous marketing phrase of a modern chemical-manufacturing giant, perhaps now we also have “better dying through chemistry.” It’s my impression that flowers now used at funerals are less fragrant than previously. Those pale gladioli, now in vogue, have no scent at all. Is it a coincidence that the beautiful, large, white, durable, and waxy white blooms of the nearly odorless calla lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica) from southern Africa seem perfect for placing in the hands of a corpse during an open-casket memorial? I don’t think so, but it’s perhaps ironic that these blooms belong to the same family of arum lilies the Minoans used to decorate their sarcophagi. While fresh flowers seem such ever-important elements of modern US funerals, their use dwindles as their costs rise. In the United States today, floral arrangements might comprise roughly 10 to 20 percent of the total cost of a modern funeral averaging $8,000. We want and expect to see flowers during our times of grief. Flowers lift our spirits. Even with the recent “in lieu of flowers” practice where friends and family are asked to make cash donations in the memory of the deceased to a favorite charity, flowers and flower-giving have not gone out of fashion. A significant portion of the $34.3 billion (in 2012) florist-industry revenues are spent on cut flowers, potted plants, and wreaths supplied for funerals, memorial services, and placement on graves. The more than twenty-two thousand funeral homes in the United States stage more than 2 million funerals annually, about six thousand each day. Returning to that February day of my father’s funeral, I have vivid memories of honey bees alighting to drink nectar from the sprays of white flowers draping his silver-blue casket. It was a chilly Southern California day with a few cumulus clouds. The sixty-degree morning temperature was barely warm enough to get bees out of their hives, up and flying, in their continual quest for flowers. My eyes watched as those softly buzzing bees visited every blossom, drinking their sweet nectar. At the time, I was a twenty-two-year-old graduate-school student. Throughout my career as an entomologist, I’ve studied bees (melittology), along with their biology, and floral interactions, the science of pollination ecology. I don’t believe the bees were any kind of spiritual omen, but seeing them visiting my father’s graveside flowers reminded me of happier boyhood times spent together. The flowers and their bee visitors helped ease my grief on that somber California morning four decades ago. Now, we leave the rituals of death and dying behind and move to the showiest of them all, flowers (dahlias, roses, lilies, sunflowers, and more) bred for their spectacularly vivid colors and sex appeal. Gardeners enter flower shows hopeful that their prize blooms will win a coveted Best of Show ribbon, along with accolades from their gardening peers. We enter the high-stakes world of technology-dependent, commercial plant breeding—the creation of unnatural blue or brown roses, and black petunias, in the laboratory and field. Gardeners are cautioned that modern flower breeding, especially its newest hybrid creations, may reduce pollinator-attracting floral scents, along with pollen and sweet nectar—essential foods for bees and other pollinating animals. Pollinator gardens may appear bountiful, yet can in reality be unrewarding nutritional deserts. The pomp and circumstance of London’s one and only Chelsea Flower Show is revealed with its phantasmagorical artificial environments, new floral introductions, dream merchants, and fanciful exhibits. Step into the verdant exhibit booths. On with the show.

#flowers #death #mysticism

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ohohpierre · 6 years ago

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it’s 2019

this is going to be a long one, a reflection on the last couple of years. lend me your ears and eyes for a few minutes please.

i joined tumblr either late 2012, early 2013, i can’t quite remember, and i can’t find my archive anymore to be sure. at the time i joined, i had long hair. i was in eighth grade, and i used to browse tumblr on the school-provided iPads in history class. i still identified as a girl. it’s been a long time. now that i am actually thinking about it, it’s been six years. a very long six years.

i first joined because i was looking for more content on a very specific fandom, and i couldn’t find it anywhere else. that fandom was marble hornets. yes, the very first slender series that started in 2009. i remember joining at a time where everyone was attempting to code break a video, and i hopped in and tried to help. i didn’t help much, but i tried, and made friends along the way. i cosplayed for the first time, first as jessica (as i had the hair for it), then as tim as i realized i might not be a girl (but also because tim is cool as fuck). the photo set i made in my tim cosplay got somewhat popular for its time (not too much in the grand scheme of things), but i remember being immensely proud of it.

being on tumblr then exposed me to everything it had to offer, the good and the bad. i am no longer ashamed to say that i was part of the superwholock crowd for a while, and i indulged in my fair share of fanfics, off of fanfiction.net. writing that sentence out makes me feel incredibly old.

i started writing more. i had always been interested in writing and art. i made sideblogs, hoping that something would take off, but for about two years, nothing happened. at this time, i wrote for marvel - specifically stucky - and sherlock - johnlock. i remember the first time i got a work of mine on a list of recommendations. it was my “caught making toast” fic for stucky, only about 200 words, and definitely not my favorite to write. but hey, i felt so proud to be included in something for once. then, one summer, in a moment of boredom, i made several gifsets of stucky situations that passed around for quite a long time.

i found several partners through tumblr. i made so many friends. i got kicked off a stucky blog, and i’m still pretty bitter about it. i learned a lot, unlearned a lot, and then re-learned a lot when i learned the world wasn’t fucking only black and white. i lived through the mishapocalypse, in fact i contributed to it at the time. i had thought it was hilarious. now it feels like a war flash back. i’ve been here for quite some time.

there were also many times that i posted as if the world wanted to hear me. maybe it did at one time, but it definitely doesn’t anymore. there is more than a handful of sad posts in my #personal tag on my blog. i was incredibly sad. i nearly died in 2014, several times, and there are posts that document it.

i’ve been on tumblr quite literally through thick and thin. i used to follow self harm and eating disorder blogs and compared myself to them in vain. i went through some pretty bad break ups on here. i felt abandoned and lonely.

the transition into 2019 is still incredibly fresh. i’m 19 now, nearly 20 years old (i will be in march), and things feel like they are starting over again, but in a much more mature and insidious fashion. i am still writing, in fact, i’m taking a break from writing two drafts for a fic and the first chapter of my novel to go through this. however, once five years clean from self harm, i cut myself december 30, 2018, and i felt like a 13 year old all over again, desperately pulling down the sleeves of my shirts so that my parents don’t worry. i’ve smoked a bit and i am trying to step away from that before it gets too bad. i entered 2019 with scars on my arm for the first time in five fucking years. things are kind of bad.

i graduate from college in may. i will have an associates degree, and i will be transferring somewhere new to finish my bachelor’s degree. i am still unsure of my path in this life, and it feels like god has abandoned me in this journey.

six years i’ve been here. six long years where i’ve seen myself grow, repress, and then flourish once more. this winter has been especially cruel, but the spring isn’t too far away. this reflection, while more for myself than anyone else, i can only inspires at least one person. inspires them that who you were several years ago is most certainly not who you are now. being here for so long can shift things out of perspective, keep you in a perpetually loop of endless blue scrolling where the outside world can’t see you.

this year is 2019. i know many of you may be in similar situations to me, but i want you to know that i never forgot about any of you. i’ve never forgotten about any of my partners, my friends, my no-longer-friends, myself. this winter has been rough, but stoke the fire and wait for the spring. let 2019 be the year of reflection, and let it be one of growth.

#personal #but i would be grateful if you clicked to open that read more #the length may be intimidating #but i have something to say #i would appreciate your eyes for a few moments #i was tempted to tag people in this #but decided against it

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stompsite · 6 years ago

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Dreaming Of Another World

It was all Narnia’s fault.

I grew up in a deeply religious family, one that eschewed ‘worldly’ media for the religious variety. I remember Dad dragging us out of a showing of the Lion King one rainy September day--I think we’d gone to one of those theatres where the tickets were cheap and they only showed movies that had been out for a long time because my family was thrifty like that--because he was furious. Some time later, he explained to me that Disney was trying to brainwash us with “New Age Philosophy,” and he was angry at the spirit that tried to do it to us. Not a great birthday memory for me.

But Narnia? It had magic and monsters and demons and werewolves, and for whatever reason, we were allowed to watch it whenever we went to Grandma’s house. My parents drove us up to Independence, Missouri every few months for something called Enzyme Potentiated Desensitization, where we would stay with grandma and watch Narnia. EPD was an experimental allergen treatment that was banned in 2001.

I remember drinking water with bismuth in it and eating an awful meal that had the consistency of literal shit. This was supposed to help us get over our allergies, but I think the treatment was far worse. We weren’t allowed to eat many things, and most of what we could eat was disgusting, so most of the time, we laid around, sick, feverish, and vomiting, and we ate reheated french fries from Wendy’s (McDonald’s wasn’t allowed due to the oil they used), and we watched all of Grandma’s old movies.

My favorite one was The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, a movie about kids who escaped the horrors of World War II by traveling to another dimension where it was always winter and a cruel, monstrous witch ruled with an iron hand. Eventually, thanks to the help of the Christ-like Aslan, they overthrew her.

It was a dark movie, a far cry from the generally happy, low-intensity religious movies Mom let us watch. Aslan died, y’know. It was, to 8 year old me, the most incredible thing in the world. Later, I read the rest of the books, and I loved them too. My favorite was The Silver Chair, the darkest and least hopeful book of all. No one book had more of an impact on my artistic sensibilities than The Silver Chair. Real stakes! Real pain! Hope! Triumph! All the good stuff.

When I was 10, I found Digimon.

I was hanging out at Hyram’s place watching The Magic School Bus, a show that we weren’t allowed to watch at my house because of the magic. Hyram’s family, being Mormon, had a more enlightened--so it seemed--outlook on the world, being okay with sci-fi and fantasy stories that my parents forbade us from seeing. So there we were, watching The Magic School Bus, and the commercials came on, and Fox Kids aired a commercial for Digimon (Adventure 01, Episode 28, in case you were wondering--the one with the ferocious Devidramon).

Digimon was even darker than Narnia. It’s villains were literally Satan and a Vampire. There’s an episode where one of the kids is told her mother doesn’t love her and as a result, she’ll never be able to help her friends. There was drama, self-doubt, pain, misery, and, in the end, the kids overcame the darkness that opposed them and triumphed.

Over the years, I found increasingly creative ways to catch my Digimon fix, going to the church next door with a cable I’d found to connect to the TV so I could just barely catch Fox 24 when it was broadcasting. When Digimon stopped airing, I desperately searched for a way to download the show online, which led me to IRC, which took me to roleplay forums, which led me to Kotaku comments, and finally Twitter, which is where I know most of you from.

I realize this may all sound very self-indulgent, and I’m sorry for that, but I feel it’s important to establish the personal context here. I love these stories about going to other worlds and experiencing things that our worlds could never give us. The stories acted as a kind of meta-transportation, a way of letting me escape the frustrations of my own life.

When I finally made the transition from cartoons and books to video games, everything seemed to snap into place. Games were the closest thing I’d ever found to actually visiting Narnia or the Digital World. My friend Robert introduced me to Halo in his trailer home. My parents gave me Microsoft Flight Simulator, and it was like being able to fly planes in real life, so much so that when I eventually attended flight training, my instructors told me I flew like someone with thousands of hours under his belt.

Games let me go places.

Games let me see new things.

So, one day, in early 2007, I found a copy of PC Gamer with Bioshock on the cover in the Wal-Mart magazine aisle. I remember furtively browsing the issue, making sure Mom didn’t suddenly round the corner and catch me reading it. The game looked incredible, but I was focused more on roleplaying forums at the time, and I forgot about it until that fall, a few weeks after it came out. CompUSA was going out of business and was selling off their games. I couldn’t game at home--our computers were old Boeing surplus and ran the Half-Life 2 Ravenholm demo like a slideshow--but with a portable hard drive I’d purchased and hid in the ceiling tiles of my bedroom, I could play them at the university I was attending.

So I did.

First person games appealed to me because they let me experience the game worlds as though they were real experiences. It was the closest thing to going to another world; third person games didn’t elicit the same response, so I didn’t play them as much. I was a big fan of the Age of Empires: Rise of Rome demo that came with my copy of Microsoft Flight Simluator, though. But it was the first person games, the ones I found on Maximum PC demo discs, that really mattered to me. I’d played hundreds of hours of Unreal Tournament 2004, Call of Duty, and even Far Cry.

When I played Bioshock, everything changed. I had to get my own computer. Had to. I moved out in late December to go learn to fly at K-State Salina. Got really sick that spring--my illness was just starting to reveal itself--and I flunked most of my classes. I was so sick most days I couldn’t leave the house. Got diagnosed with severe social anxiety disorder later. Only left the house at night unless I had classes, when I could make it to them at all. I’d earned enough money the previous fall to build myself my own computer.

I played games.

Bioshock had led me to System Shock 2. I pirated a copy of STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl because I’d seen the disc at CompUSA (alongside Blacksite: Area 51) but only had the cash to buy Bioshock and The Orange Box without my parents noticing. I played FEAR and its expansions. All the Half-Life games. Crysis. Call of Duty 4. It was a great time to experience a lot of amazing first-person games.

System Shock and STALKER were the biggest influences.

When I moved back that summer, I scrounged and saved and used the last of my savings to buy STALKER: Clear Sky and Crysis Warhead. I played them while living in the unheated camping trailer my parents used to own (it was cheaper than paying for dorms whenever we attended church camps). It was cold. I could see my own breath most days. I got a job at Office Max and used it to buy a copy of Far Cry 2. A few weeks later, I picked up Fallout 3.

If you’re familiar with these games, you’ll notice a lot of them have things in common. They do interesting things with the game world. Many are heavily systems driven compared to their contemporaries. STALKER’s world especially feels completely alive. System Shock 2 does a bangin’ job of making you feel like you’re really exploring an abandoned spaceship. Far Cry 2’s systems-driven gameplay is fascinating and influences designers to this day. Fallout 3 has one of the best ecosystems in a video game, with enemies who you can wound and terrify and allied characters who will come to your aid.

Even Blacksite: Area 51 was a fascinating game. It had this cool morale system that had your soldiers responding to your commands and combat prowess in ways that, at the time, felt believable and awe-inspiring. In Crysis, if you dropped an unconscious man in a river, he would die because he drowned. Incredible. It felt real.

The games that shaped my experience took me to other worlds, shaping my perception of what games could be in a very specific direction. As someone who’d grown up reading the old Microsoft Flight Simulator tagline “As real as it gets,” I felt right at home.

I tried other games, like Nintendo’s platformers or controller-centric spectacle fighters like Devil May Cry 3, but I didn’t like them. They were too obviously games. You got points. Everything was abstract. I was playing. I wasn’t going anywhere.

As my health declined, the importance of traveling to other places increased. The mark of a good game for me became one where I could forget about the world I lived in and exist in another world. I’m reminded of Lord Foul’s Bane, a book in which a writer with leprosy is transported to another world where he is healed of his leprosy. Games provided me that escape, especially the immersive ones.

Ah.

Right.

That word.

Immersion is nothing to be afraid of. Some people say that any game can be immersive, because one of the meanings of the word is roughly analogous to “engrossed,” but the English language is weird and tricky and sometimes two words share the same meaning in the dictionary but mean very different things.

To be engrossed in something is to have your attention completely arrested by it. To be immersed in something, well… when you’re immersed in water, you are literally, physically inside of it. You are a part of the water, as much as you can be.

I was seeking out immersive qualities in games without really understanding it. I would learn that some of my favorite games in the genre were literally called “immersive sims.” Some people will argue that they are not engrossed by those games, so they cannot possibly be immersive, but I’d argue that when you’re immersed in something, it surrounds you, you’re inside it. Whether or not it grabs your attention is up to you.

When a game is immersive, it might not grab your attention, but it’s doing its best to create a living, breathing world. When you drop an unconscious man in water, he drowns because that is what would happen in real life. When you perform well in combat, your allies rally around you. When you shoot an enemy in the leg, he limps.

An immersive game is one that does its best to represent a cohesive reality.

If you don’t believe me, go listen to Paul Neurath, a founder of Looking Glass, a studio that made games like System Shock and Thief, talk about why they made the games they did. Look at the cool attempts at simulation elements in games made by LGS alumni, like Seamus Blackley’s Jurassic Park: Trespasser, or Warren Spector and Harvey Smith’s Deus Ex. Emil Pagliarulo got a job at Bethesda and has a senior role (I forget what it is, exactly, sorry) on simulation-heavy games like Fallout 3 and Skyrim.

Heck, the Sega 2K Football games were praised as having some of the most sophisticated and realistic AI in sports games before the NFL decided it wasn’t cool with yearly games being priced at a sub-premium price point. Marc LeBlanc worked on the AI for those.

The way I heard it, Looking Glass made flight simulators with realistic physics (I believe that was thanks to Blackley’s background as a physicist). At some point, the folks at Looking Glass thought it would be cool to take Dungeons and Dragons style tabletop and make a game out of it, but instead of building something like the isometric Ultima, they’d apply the flight simulator logic to it. The whole thing would be first person, and you could treat it like you were really there. Their publishing partner decided this new game should be an Ultima game, so Ultima Underworld was born.

After that, Looking Glass made a mix of flight simulators, golf games, and weird first-person games that took you to other worlds. System Shock put you on a space station. Thief let you do exactly what it said on the cover. Terra Nova was… well, read this piece on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. All of these games were fascinating and transformative, even if they had weirdly inaccessible control schemes.

Eventually, the studio died. Sony and Microsoft passed on buying them, Eidos made some poor financial decisions and couldn’t pay them. Talent moved off to other studios. Eventually, they shut down.

A few developers tried to carry the torch. Ken Levine’s Irrational games released Bioshock, which was like the bro shooter version of System Shock. Ion Storm Austin produced Thief 3 and two Deus Ex games. Bethesda’s work has become increasingly Looking Glass-influenced over the years. Clint Hocking’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Far Cry 2 clearly learned from Looking Glass’ games as well.

Over in France, a guy named Raphael Colantonio founded a studio called Arkane. They made a game heavily inspired by Ultima Underworld called Arx Fatalis. Then they made another one, called Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, using a Ubisoft license.

As game tech got better, simulation elements became more pronounced. The German Yerli brothers unsuccessfully pitched a neat dinosaur game, but eventually managed to convince Ubisoft to publish Far Cry and EA to publish Crysis. Their games are mostly known for their graphics tech, but I’ve always been fond of their intriguing stabs at realism; on its highest difficulty, Crysis’ enemies speak Korean, making it difficult for most players to understand their callouts. Crysis lets players use the game’s physics to enhance its combat, collapsing buildings on enemies or leveling foliage to give them access to easier sight lines. I wrote about one of my favorite levels here.

Bioshock brought the attention back, though. Even though it wasn’t very simulation heavy, it gave players that sense of presence that so many had been craving. Some developers stumbled; Far Cry 2 is beloved by game designers but wasn’t the critical or commercial success Ubisoft hoped. STALKER was one of the buggiest commercial games I’ve ever played, capable of crashing if you so much as blinked, so it didn’t sell as well as THQ would have liked, and GSC Game World sought a new publisher for Clear Sky, then shifted to yet another publisher for Call of Pripyat.

Fallout 3 had more simulation elements than most of its contemporaries and, I’d argue, did a better job presenting a living, breathing world than any other game of its generation, but people were too busy being mad that it wasn’t a classic isometric RPG to notice.

So, this is where my head was at when I entered into the world of immersive sims. I was fascinated by simulation elements, in love with the idea of exploring other worlds, and, most importantly of all: I needed an escape from my health. Immersive games, some of them sims, some of them not, provided the escape I craved.

In 2011, I downloaded the leaked demo of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I’d been mowing the lawn and was going to take a shower before sinking my teeth into it, but it was so engrossing that, before I knew it, five hours had passed and I’d played the entire thing. As soon as I scraped the cash together, I bought myself a copy. It was the first game I’d been able to afford in years.

I loved it.

The next year, Arkane roared back to life with Dishonored, which was one of my favorite games, not just because it’s really fucking good, not just because the world is fascinating and creative, not just because Harvey Smith, the man responsible for Deus Ex and Blacksite (he deserved better treatment from his publisher on that one; if they’d had more time, I think it would have been rightly hailed as a masterpiece; as it stands, it’s a fascinating thing that I love to pieces), partnered up with Arkane to make it, but because it helped me get my first writing gig.

If you wanna read my thoughts on Dishonored, check it out here.

And yet…

Something felt off.

Not about Dishonored, but about the conversation surrounding immersive design. I’d read posts by people who talked about the importance of design, who placed a weird focus on systems-driven design, who seemed to think that immersive games were stealth games and nothing but.

Before Dishonored and Human Revolution, I recall reading one of the foremost voices in immersive design discourse proclaiming the genre was dead because Looking Glass and Ion Storm had shut down. He argued, while Fallout 3 was selling millions of copies, that immersive sims were dead because they weren’t commercially viable. Many agreed with him.

After the apparent sales failings of Prey (Arkane), Dishonored 2, and Mankind Divided, I’ve heard those conversations picking up again.

I think they’re wrong, and I’d like to try to explain why.

I think a lot of the people who talk about immersive sims, focusing on immersive design and talking about what these games should be, tend to get hung up on Very Specific Details without looking at the bigger picture. Go watch the Underworld Ascendant Kickstarter pitch video, and you’ll hear Neurath talk about how important it is to solve problems logically. Go listen to a lot of the immersive sim fans talk about games, and you’ll hear them talking about… well, other things.

One thing I feel like I see a lot is an emphasis on stealth mechanics. That’s great! I love stealth games. But I’d argue that stealth is not an important part of immersive games. Some people have told me that they don’t think Bethesda games are immersive sims because the stealth in those games is nowhere near as in depth as Thief. Maybe, maybe, but here’s the thing:

I think you could make an immersive game where you’re 12 years old and you’re visiting your grandparents at their farm on an island somewhere, and the entire game is just about being a kid exploring a little seaside town and making new friends. I think you could catch fireflies and go to the library and go fishing and do all sorts of things on an island that feels just as alive as STALKER, without actually doing any stealth.

But if you go play Dishonored or Deus Ex: Human Revolution, or the Thief games, or whatever, you’re going to have the immersive sim community types talking about how important stealth is. Thief is good, but get over it. It’s just one manifestation of a broader genre. Stealth is GREAT. Dishonored so good I will buy any Dishonored game sight unseen. I would kill to get a job working for Arkane, even if it was like… as a janitor or something. I love those people and I love their games.

I think the emphasis on stealth is part of the reason a lot of these games have failed. I love stealth games for the same reason I love horror games; they’re high-intensity, high-stakes games that, when you play them well, make you feel like a real master. I’d also argue that stealth is exhausting. Maybe I’m more attuned to this than most due to the whole chronic fatigue thing, but like…

In a stealth game, success can feel like failure. You’re constantly feeling the pucker factor. If you are seen, you fail, even if the game doesn’t actually have an instant failure state. When I get seen in Dishonored, I have to fight. Fighting is really fun, but getting caught means I wasn’t able to do what I wanted to; I messed up. I’m a failure. A lot of stealth stuff ends up feeling like constantly being on edge and failing because you had to kill like 5 dudes who saw you. I played Hitman last night and every time I killed or choked out someone who saw me, I just wanted to start the whole thing over.

I’d argue that most people feel this way when playing stealth games. They don’t like the stress. A little stealth is nice, especially in a game like Far Cry 5 where you can approach a base with a sniper rifle and take out like 6 dudes without them noticing you, but getting into a firefight afterwards feels fun and purposeful too, so you get a nice mix of occasional stealth and action. I think that’s probably why Far Cry 5 is the best-selling video game of 2018 so far (Red Dead releases tomorrow).

I love that we’re making stealth games with immersive elements, but I think we’re making a mistake when we assume that immersive games must be stealthy ones. There are so many games that claim to learn from immersive games--Mark of the Ninja, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Wildfire, Quadrilateral Cowboy--and they do, but they’re also so very focused on stealth (the ones I’ve played are all among my favorite games, by the way! Please don’t think of this as a knock against them!). I can’t think of any game that claims to be influenced by immersive sims that doesn’t have stealth.

Stealth is a verb (short version: game design speak for ‘thing you can do’). It is not the genre.

Then there’s the whole “design” thing. Mario games are exceptionally designed. Each level is a unique, bespoke challenge, stacking mechanics on top of mechanics and helping you develop your mastery over the experience. This design comes at the expense of… well, I’ll get to that later. For now, I’ll just say that Mario Feels Like A Game.

That’s not a bad thing, but, like, you’ve got this for, so you know what I’m about. You can see why that might not appeal to me personally.

Buuuuuuut… a lot of the newer, like… I don’t know, it’s weird to call them “design-focused,” because all games are designed, a lot of these newer immersive sim type games seem focused on that kind of immaculate design. Walk into the bank in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and you’ll see The Person You Can Talk Your Way Past If You Have That Skill, you’ll see The Lasers You Can Sneak Past If You Can Turn Invisible, you’ll see The Vending Machine You Can Lift If You Have The Strength Ability, and you’ll see The Air Vent You Can Crawl Through To Get To The Computer You Can Hack If You’re A Hacker.

Mankind Divided will give you The Most Experience Points for playing this without being detected and without killing anyone.

Suddenly, you are incentivized to treat the game like a game because it is objectively better for you to approach all objectives in a specific way. Heck, in Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, after you’ve nonlethally subdued everyone in a room, you can hack all the computers (even if you have a password) and crawl through all the vents (though there’s no reason to) for Maximum Points. It… it makes no sense. You’re not trying to be a part of the world. The game rewards you for engaging with it on a level that must recognize the game as an illusion.

It’s not the only game. I loved Prey, but I got the sense that I was being graded as I played, which meant I started playing more to the game’s expectations of me rather than how I felt I ought to act. Look, I grew up in a family environment where people were sneaking up on me to see if I was acting righteously. I grew up in a church where I was paraded in front of two hundred kids and told that I had The Devil in me because my pottery had shattered in their shoddily-built kiln and destroyed most of the rest of the pottery. I am so fucking tired of being judged, so exhausted of having to act a specific way to avoid being treated like garbage, I don’t want games to do it to me too. I just want to act in a way that feels appropriate.

In Eidos Montreal’s immersive sim games (and most immersive games, for that matter), I felt like I was running into The Metroid School of Design, in which a player is unable to progress through a level without the right tool, with one key difference: there are multiple tools you can use to progress. Four routes into the same room, every room, all the time.

This creates a sense of artifice. When I see a bunch of chandeliers and mysterious, architecturally suspect vents that show me an obvious route through a map, I see the designer’s hand. I see that the designer has planned all these routes for me. They have planned for any eventuality. They want me to sneak my way through this room, regardless of the skills I have at my disposal.

I can play their game in just one way. I can ghost-stealth it perfectly and get The Good Ending, or I can Violence Through It and get less progress points and The Bad Ending. If I am a hacker, there will always be a door to hack. If I am a fighter, there will always be a man to fight.

Oh, sure, the best games will give you a dozen tools that can be combined in really interesting ways, but someone has figured out what all those tools are and designed each level to perfectly accommodate every. Single. tool.

Every level is a puzzle, and puzzles are designed by a human with the intent to solve them. You don’t need to be creative--heck, sometimes, being creative is actively discouraged--because all you need to do is figure out what the designer wanted you to do and do it. Ah, I have tools X, Y, and Z? I know exactly where I’m supposed to deploy them. See, there’s the path you can blink through and the door you can bypass with a specific tool or the fish you can possess to swim through.

And… I cannot stress this enough:

It’s not bad.

It’s good.

It’s very good. I fucking love these games. They mean the world to me. They do.

But can you see how that might not be what I was looking for, and how I feel that’s… quite a long way removed from what Looking Glass was trying to do? Instead of solving solutions in a natural way, these games have created very nice puzzle worlds. As someone who loves puzzles, this is wonderful, but as someone who loved what Looking Glass and STALKER were doing… I can’t help but feel my own needs and interests aren’t being met.

I mentioned I was playing Hitman. I love it. I love it to pieces. I just did a Suit Only, Silent Assassin run and it was thrilling. But, like… I knew the route the guy would take. I knew The Device that I could interact with to take him off his path. I didn’t feel like I was improvising; instead, I was looking at one of several dozen ways the designers had very carefully placed in my path.

I can see you, designer. I know you’re there.

I couldn’t see the designer in STALKER. Everything felt natural to me. I woke up in a bunk. I met Sidorovich. He asked me to run a job for him. On my way to the job, there were dead animals and a wounded Stalker. He asked me for a med kit. I gave him the med kit. He became my friend. I joined a few Stalkers and we took out a bandit camp.

This will happen in every playthrough. It has been designed. I get that. But it wasn’t like a designer came in shouting PLAY YOUR WAY, ALSO THIS IS A STEALTH GAME, right? I could take out that encampment however I wanted. The more I play, the more tools I find. Sometimes, they randomly pop out of an anomaly. Other times, I find them on the corpses of people who died in a brutal gunfight. In Clear Sky, the gun you wield in the opening cinematic can be found right where you left it. It’s broken, but you can find a man to repair it, and later, you can get ammo for it by eliminating high-level enemies.

If someone says “hey, please help me take out this facility,” that’s all the direction you have. How you take it out is up to you. Stealth it? Sure. Lead mutants to it? Absolutely. Come in under cover of night or rain? You bet. STALKER’s verbs might be limited, but the game itself is so much more flexible. Sneak in through a crack in the wall or charge the front gate.

You play your way, but “your way” doesn’t mean four skill trees, it means “here’s a real, tangible space, with no hint of the designer’s hand. This feels real, like it actually exists in the outskirts of Chernobyl. There are bad men inside. Go get them, using whatever tools you have available to you.”

STALKER feels natural.

In fact, if there was one word I’d use to describe my ideal immersive game, “natural.” Would be that word. When I play Far Cry 2, I am playing a Designed Game. This is the Friendly NPC Zone. There are no friendly NPCs outside it. You can safely kill everyone because they’re bad. Everyone hits hard, so it’s best to snipe them. Make sure to go to the safe house, which looks exactly like all the other safe houses (and has the exact same supplies plus one unique bonus gun) to engage The Buddy System™, recharging your Buddy Meter® so your Buddy® will come to your aid when you go down One Time. If you go down a second time, he will die. This is how it always happens. It will never deviate.

In STALKER, I was caught finding bandits when a man named Edik Dinosaur passed by. He and I had met on occasion on the road. Edik Dinosaur fought valiantly alongside me, because he hated bandits and he liked me. I accidentally shot him during the encounter. He died because of me. That was way more impactful than Far Cry 2’s Super Obvious Buddy System, you know?

It was like I was there. I had to grapple with a sense of guilt at shooting blindly into the brush after a fleeing bandit.

I remember a story of someone playing an old Zelda game, I think it was Ocarina of Time, when their mom walked in and asked them what they were doing. They explained that, to cross a bridge, they had to get some item to unlock it. “Why don’t you just chop down a tree to cross the river?” came the reply. The storyteller said they rolled their eyes at this and thought their mom was crazy, but later, they were like “actually, yeah, why can’t I do that?”

Breath of the Wild let players do just that. It was hailed as a brilliant new Zelda game and seems more beloved than… basically every Zelda game in decades? This is a game where you can shoot a fire arrow, watch the grass catch fire, and use the updrafts to fling yourself into the sky, which lets you drop down on top of your foes for a powerful melee attack.

I have my complaints with the game, which you can read here, but I’m fascinated by the way its overworld avoids just outright telling you how to play and letting you figure out how to solve the problems it presents to you. Instead of being A Puzzle Game, Breath of the Wild’s overworld feels like a stylized yet real space. Its people are alive. Its spaces are not clearly designed to be exploited by specific mechanics. The Designer’s Hand is invisible.

This brings me to Bethesda.

Yes, sure, if you’re an RPG fan, Bethesda probably isn’t going to make you a happy camper. The writing can be stupid at times. They let you do anything, even though the narrative acts as though you’re on an urgent mission. The modular system design makes the world feel super artificial, and you can exploit the game’s systems in dumb, unrealistic ways, like putting a bucket on a person’s head (the AI has no sense of personal space and doesn’t mind) so he can’t see you steal things, or you can craft a million daggers so you can be The Best At Blacksmithing or whatever.

But… the thing is, when I hop into a Bethesda world, it feels relatively real. While you have a lot of skills that make you better at playing specific ways, like Unarmed or Melee or Rifles or Handguns or whatever, you’re never walking into a fight and seeing Five Specific Tool-Driven Routes and deciding which tool is The Best One For The Job.

I feel like too many immersive sims are specifically stealth-driven games with immaculate designer-driven puzzles that give you a dozen different tools to use How You Want (but, hint hint, there are a few very clear routes).

Bethesda games give you a billion tools and let you loose in the world, much like STALKER does. You can shoot someone so much they become afraid of you and run away, but some people are less afraid than others and will fight you to the death. Take out a guy with a good gun, and his buddy will run over, pick it up, and use it against you unless you can get to him first. Approach this fort aggressively, sneak in, talk your way in, do whatever. It’s going to depend as much on who’s in the fort as it is on you. Heck, I think in Skyrim, if you’re wearing Imperial gear, you can walk into an Imperial fort without anyone realizing you’re not an Imperial.

Bethesda games let you play how you want in the moment.

They let you formulate a plan based on what you feel like doing, and sometimes, you’re going to find places you can’t take on because nobody bothered to design a way for a specific character build to attack. Come back later or get creative. It feels more natural than most immersive sims because it’s trying to be a real place, rather than an artfully designed one. Yeah, Bethesda games have rough edges. They do!

And yet… they are immensely successful, and I think it’s because they’re actually trying to send their players to other worlds. They’re not demanding you play stealthily, they’re not giving you the same routes so that every player can play One Specific Play Style. They’re bringing a world to life and letting you live in it. In Skyrim, I can go save the world and become the boss of the Magic College, or I can be a simple elk hunter, peddling my wares.

I guess where I’m at is… we saw one studio trying incredible things in games, and they went under through little fault of their own. Their successors didn’t find the smashing success that the enthusiasts think they deserve, but I think that’s because… well… a lot of the enthusiasts are just looking at one or two games on the spectrum and refusing to make anything else. I think so many of the genre’s fans have a very limited, very specific view of what the genre can be, which is why none of them have managed to recapture the glory of Looking Glass; they’re not making the kind of games Looking Glass was, no matter how much they claim that they are.

There’s too much artifice in the inheritors.

Bethesda’s out there making billions of dollars because their games live up to the Looking Glass ideal more than anything else out there. These other games, this other design philosophy, it’s great. I love it. It’s wonderful and beautiful and fascinating, but when I see people arguing that “nobody wants immersive games,” because those games didn’t break sales records, I want to scream “how would you know? You’ve made something else!”

STALKER sold like 6 million copies. Skyrim’s up at like… what, 20 million now? Breath of the Wild has sold a bajillion copies. Red Dead Redemption 2 is poised to be the second best-selling game of 2018 after Black Ops IIII. Grand Theft Auto V made a billion billion dollars and it’s got some of the most sophisticated immersion elements in video games. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is one of the “could this realistically work?” games out there and it made a ton of cash. When you make a game that’s really about existing in a living, breathing world, you can make a shitload of cash.

When you make a stealth game with a lot of Specific Tools and Obvious Routes, you’re making a great video game, but you aren’t making an immersive one. That’s okay, but please don’t argue that we should stop making immersive games because your model didn’t work. The immersive model is thriving. You just made something else.

I just want to escape to other worlds.

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mydarlingfelix · 7 years ago

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Get to know me tag(s)!

Tagged by: @hyunjinh @felox-the-great @jaeffreyy @squishywoojin @welcometochanskitchen @dabkingfelix @mosquitofelix

Hi! I’m Summer btw (Ik it’s not in my bio), but I just go by Sum or other nicknames lol *I also just put multiple “get to know me” tags in 1 lol THIS IS A SUPER LONG POST IM SORRY However thank you for tagging me!! I Love you all soOoOo much!

Bold Thingy Tag

1ST RULE: tag 9 people you want to get to know better

I think everyone done this already fkjdjgb

2ND RULE: BOLD the statements that are true.

APPEARANCE: - I am 5'7 or taller - I wear glasses - I have at least one tattoo -I have at least one piercing - I have blonde hair - I have brown eyes - I have short hair (idk it’s growing) - My abs are at least somewhat defined - I have or had braces

PERSONALITY: - I love meeting new people - People tell me I am funny - Helping others with their problems is a big priority of mine - I enjoy physical challenges - I enjoy mental challenges - I am playfully rude to people I know - I started saying something ironically and now I can’t stop saying it - There is something I would change about my personality

ABILITY: - I can sing well - I can play an instrument - I can do over 30 pushups without stopping - I am a fast runner - I can draw well - I have a good memory - I am good at doing maths in my head - I can hold my breath underwater for over a minute - I have beaten at least 2 people arm wrestling - I can make at least 3 recipes from scratch - I know how to throw a proper punch

HOBBIES: - I enjoy sports - I’m on a sports team at my school or somewhere else - I’m in a orchestra or choir at my school or somewhere else - I have learned a new song in the past week - I exercise at least once a week - I have gone for runs at least once a week in warmer months - I have drawn something in the past month (Lucy wanted to be drawn for her bday and I did a watercolor portrait thing ig? for her) - I enjoy writing - Fandoms are my #1 priority- I do some form of Martial arts

EXPERIENCES: - I have had my first kiss - I have had alcohol- I have scored a winning point in a sport - I have watched an entire TV series in one sitting - I have been at an overnight event- I have been in a taxi - I have been in the hospital or ER in the past year - I have beaten a video game in one day - I have visited another country - I have been to one of my favorite band’s concerts

MY LIFE: - I have one person that I consider to be my Best Friend - I live close to my school/work - My parents are still together - I have at least one sibling (I have like 5)- I live in the United States - There is snow where I live right now - I have hung out with a friend in the past month - I have a smart phone - I own at least 15 CDs - I share my room with someone

RELATIONSHIPS: - I am in a Relationship - I have a crush on a celebrity (?) - I have a crush on someone I know - I’ve been in at least 3 relationships - I have never been in a Relationship (not a healthy one at least)- I have admitted my feelings to a crush - I get crushes easily (It’s disgusting, wtf is wrong with me. I don’t need feels) - I have had a crush for over a year (Umm kinda he’s just really really cute. I talked to Dain about this before) - I have been in a relationship for over a year (but not currently) - I have had feelings for a friend

RANDOM: - I have break-danced - I know a person named Jamie - I have had a teacher that has a name that is hard to pronounce - I have dyed my hair - I’m listening to a song on repeat right now - I have punched someone in the past week - I know someone who has gone to jail - I have broken a bone - I have eaten a waffle today - I know what I want to do in life - I speak at least two languages - I have made a new friend in the past year

Alphabet Soup Tag

A: Age - “I’m 19, you fight me?” B: Birthplace - Cali C: Current time - As I’m during this 1:26pm D: Drink you had last - Water, but also Thai Tea Boba E: Easiest person to talk to - F: Favorite song - None G: Grossest memory - My cousin’s and I were doing a auntie and niece day and went theMall and I saw this girl throw up on the second floor in Forever 21. I felt sorry for the workers... H: Hogwarts house - G I: in love? - nah, never gonna happen J: Jealous of people? - It’s only a human aspect, you’re only truly horrible if you do something nasty to others because of that feeling K: Killed someone? - Not yet lmfao L: Love at first sight or should I walk by again? - No thank you M: Middle name - Summer N: Number of siblings - 5 O: One wish - None P: Person you called last - My mom Q: Question you are always asked - Idk tbvh R: Reason to smile - Idk things make me happy S: Song you sang last - The Unit No way (I dont remember the unit colors) T: Time you woke up - 6:43am U: Underwear color - White V: Vacation destination - South Korea, Japan, & idk the other one, but honestly my goal is to visit all my mutuals before I died lmfaooo W: Worst habit - Not caring, sleeping in, getting distracted easily, being anixious all the time. X: X-rays - Teeth Y: Your favorite food - I have a lot... Z: Zodiac sign - Gemini

🥛 Colour(s) I’m currently wearing: Black... Just a lot of black (I need to stop wearing sm black omg) 🍥 Last band t-shirt I bought: I don’t ever buy clothes for myself, idk when was last time? Maybe during the Got7 concert? 🥛 Last band I saw live: Got7 (Fly In LA: Day 1) and Paradise (A Hmong Band) 🍥 Last song I listened to: Rn I’m listening to The Unit’s Cherry on Top 🥛 Lipstick or chapstick: Idk... I wear lip tints. 🍥 Last movie I watched: Ever Wonder? (idk it’s a true story about the creation of wonder women) 🥛 Last 3 TV shows I watched: Wanna One Go, Wanna One x Aimgo TV, and The Unit 🍥 Last 3 characters I identified with: Kora, Steven Universe, & Ken Kaneki (idk for this part, I never thought about this fkdfdkgd) 🥛 Book I’m currently reading: Books for my classes njfdkjd

What’s my name? (Imma just put my initials)

M. S. L.

What’s my nickname?

Sum, SumSum, SumShine, Summahh Girl, Tsumdere, Chee,

How old am I?

“I’m 19, you fight me?”

What got me into Kpop?

SJ- Sorry Sorry, but Got7 made me offically stay and learning everything about the kpop fandom

What’s my favourite Kpop group?

Rn W1 (the most)

Who’s my ultimate bias?

Park Jihoon

What groups/artists do I stan?

Too many to count, you all can ask my personally if you want lol

What groups/artists do I casually listen to?

A lot, I try to be diverse, but what’s good music is good music to me. Feel free to suggest me some :D

What artists do I listen to that aren’t Kpop?

Ahh I’m lazy, but just good sounding music. Calvin Harris just popped up in my head. fknfkjskfnj

Who’s my bias and bias wrecker from my ultimate group(s)?

Omfg

Wanna One: Park Jihoon & Kang Daniel

JBJ: Kim Donghan & ??? (They’re all messing me up rn)

SK: Felix & I think Hyunjin? Idk

What’s your favourite song(s) to sing/hum?

It’s recently been Chungha’s roller coaster lol and The Unit songs

What are your favourite flower/tree/plant (all 3 or whatever you have an answer to)?

I really love plants and flowers in general, however Peonies are one of my many faves!!

Favourite colour(s)?

Pink, blue, purple, black, white, and gray

What do you always doodle (if you ever do)?

Umm yeah I always doodling, but I try not to because I want to be able to focus in class haha.

How do you take your coffee/tea? If you don’t like those what’s your fav warm drink?

It probably like 20% coffee and 80% french vanilla cream nfksjfgsbjg sometimes I add a lil milk too

Favourite candle scent?

Anything flowery, but i really like sweet pea smell lol. I don’t any candles yet, so I don’t quite know which I like more yet. Soorrryy

Sunrise or Sunset?

Sunset! The colors are soo pretty and like it doesn’t require me to wake up from my sleep lmfao. The transitions of day and night it just so beautiful! and the stars that start peeking through the dark sky!

What perfume do you wear if any?

I don’t wear perfume? I have them at home but in my opinion I feel like if you’ve showered and smell nice why try to mix more scents onto you?? and I don’t really need it? DONT WORRY I AM CLEAN NFJSNJF idk if I make any sense

What’s your go to dance move when you’re alone?

Favourite quote?

“The moon is friend for the lonesome to talk to.” ― Carl Sandburg

& “We ran as if to meet the moon.” ― Robert Frost

& also

“The moon and stars just for you my love” - Me lol

Favourite self care thing(s) or routine(s)?

Umm... Drawing. Showering and putting a face mask afterwards. Painting my nails. It’s more like small things, especially like painting my nails and drawings are things I can’t do often because I try to focus on school, because ik I’m bad at focusing. Sleeping and reminding to just eat, when I get too busy and focused I tend to skip meals. njfkdsnfj s

Fuzzy socks or House slippers?

OMFG BOTH THAT’S LIKE THE BEST COMBO! I have these pinky and purple house slippers I got aND IT’S FUZZY KSFJ SK IT’S SOOO CUTE OMG!! I love. nfjdnfd

What colour are your eyes?

Dark Brown

What’s your favourite eye colour on others?

Hazel, black, and gray

Favourite season? why?

Autumn and Winter (Ik contradicts with my name) but I love the rain! and cloudy weather! The sound of rain is calming and being inside while hearing the rain is nice. I really love Spring too when the flowers begin to bloom and like it’s a fresh type of feeling when spring hits lol.

Cheek, neck or nose kisses?

SJFNKFS Honestly depends on my mood (´•/// ω \\\•`) but I like cheek kisses because softtt

What does your happy place look like?

My room on a rainy day with my fairy lights flickering

Favourite breed of dog?

YO OKAY SO I SAW THIS FB POST ABOUT THIS DOG BEAR AND I WANT A DOG BEAR IDK WHAT THEY’RE CALLED JKFDFHKSF. My dad is a dog breeder as a side business, so I grew up with pitbulls, pocket pits, american bull dogs, frenches, and now ‘exotics’ are the trend atm.

Do you ever want to be married? If so what colours would you pick for your wedding theme?

Umm yes and no? I’m not sure. If I have an American wedding I like to stick to a traditional white with maybe a peach and light pink here and there, but for sure I would love to do a traditional Hmong wedding.

Silk or Lace?

Silk feels nice, but I like lace too :)

Favorite weather?

SF type of weather

#tag game // done #get to know me tag #omfg i have sm tags to do jfdkgf dkg #this has been long over due #nbfjdkbgfjd #sorry

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aryanarecords · 7 years ago

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INTERVIEW WITH KO NARTER

I met Ko Narter during my NYU summer program (shocking, I know. I’m not sorry that I got to meet some of the coolest most artsy people over the summer, though. Even better, I can show them to my readers, which is so dope.) I had just moved into my dorm and I was about to unpack when Ko and a few other girls knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to hang. That was such a relief because I didn’t know what I was going to do until class the next day. I was planning on sitting in my room?? Lol. I thought that was really nice of her. Anyways, I guess it was her cool Bay Area aura or the fact that she tried to break a world record for wearing Paul Frank shirts for 187 days in a row in the third grade, but Ko and I have very similar tastes in music, and our writing styles are very similar, so we connected pretty fast. It wasn’t one of those famous jam seshes without her! When it came time for our student showcase at the end of the program, another girl in our group and I were paired up to harmonize with Ko for her song “Remnants,” which is actually on her brand new EP! Unfortunately, I lost my voice and didn’t get to perform with her, but every time I listen to “Remnants” it reminds me of NYU. Anyways, here is my interview with Ko!

Give us some basic facts about yourself !

Birthday: 1/24/2000 Zodiac Sign: Aquarius Favorite Food: Carne Asada Burrito from Cactus (sad because I am a recent vegetarian) Favorite Color: to wear - black, to look at - some sort of forest-y green Currently Based: Oakland, CA Nicknames: Ko is a nickname! My full name is Koyuki which means “little snow” in Japanese! Fun Fact: My high school has a bird calling contest, and I won 2nd place in both 2016 and 2017.

How and when did you start making music?

When I moved to California in 2006, a lot of the friends that I made were in choir, so I decided to try it out. That’s really where my deep love for music began. I seriously started making my own music in middle school, when I joined a band called “the Bystanders” that some of my friends had started. Throughout middle school and into Freshman and Sophomore year, we transitioned from doing mostly covers, to writing our own music. Throughout the course of the band, I went from drummer, to lyricist/lead vocalist. I didn’t write my own completely original song until Freshman year, when I had just recently learned G Em C D on guitar, and ran with it. That first song I wrote is now “You’ve Already Won” off my EP.

Who are some of your musical influences?

A huge part of my creative drive is seeing artists around me create music. There are some other artists and bands at my high school, and though we have completely different styles, I love supporting them and seeing people my age trying to do what they love doing, just like I am. As for some bigger musicians, right now I’ve been listening to Maggie Rogers, Khalid, Gavin James, Daniel Caesar, Stephen Day, and SZA. Some long time faves are Sylvan Esso, Kodaline, and Childish Gambino, and Us the Duo. My music taste is pretty eclectic but I really value strong vocals and lyrics which seems to be a common thread among most of my favorite artists. My all time favorite band is Thirdstory. If anyone reading this has never heard of them - you MUST check them out. I have cried listening to their music a couple of times because I am so blown away by the emotion and thoughtfulness that emanates from their music.

You’re also in a band, Power Beez, how did you guys get together?

My bandmates, Maggie and Kay, were also in that band “The Bystanders” in middle school, so we’ve been friends since middle school, and have been making music together since middle school. We really became a trio when we all took Dance PE during our Junior year, and spent a lot of time together either choreographing or just hanging out. We are also all in the student run a cappella group in our town, the Troubadours, so when someone asked for performers at a charity event at Dress Best For Less, we thought we’d take a crack at it. It all started with us covering “Who Says” by Selena Gomez, and “Fireflies” by Owl City, but as we arranged more music, we found that we had such a special sound, and because we had been making music together for so long, we knew what sounded good in each of our voices and how to divvy up parts. Our love of tacky 2000s Disney bops and passion for three part harmony really solidified us as a group.

What’s the story behind your band name?

Maggie, Kay, and I all took Dance PE, as mentioned in the previous question, and for our winter dance concert we were trying to think of a title for our dance. All the dances in the show seemed to be about power or puppets so we were toying with names with the word “power” in it. We were sitting in the theater when our dance teacher kind of blurted out “what about Power BEEEES” and said it in this very comical voice. Honestly our entire dance class career was a meme. Our first dance was called “Power Beez,” (“z” instead of “s” for comedic effect) our dance for our April dance concert was “Power Beez: the Squeakquel,” a la Alvin and the Chipmunks, and our final dance was called “Power Beez: Road Chip” (or maybe Chipwrecked - I can’t remember). When we started performing as a vocal trio, we were going to perform at our first official gig and when asked for a band name I guess “Power Beez” was the only thing that really made sense. What all started as a joke has now become our trio’s official name.

What was your inspiration for your new EP, KONA?

I don’t know if I should name drop in this because who knows who’s reading so - this EP is almost entirely about one person, with a few lyrics being inspired by frustrations I was having in other relationships in my life. The easiest way to describe my relationship with this one person between Freshman through Junior year is “it’s complicated.” I mean we are still tight to this day but between being tight 4 years ago to today, our relationship has changed a lot, and you can hear the relationship shift on the EP. In chronological order, I wrote You’ve Already Won spring of Freshman year, and it’s about how I was foolish to think anything could last between the two of us. After our fleeting fling, we remained friends through my Sophomore year. In the summer between my Sophomore and Junior year (his summer before college) we worked at a summer camp together, and afterwards had another fling, but this fling was definitely much more emotionally involved and we were much closer. When he left for school, I had a lot of sadness and frustration, but we still talked even though we were no longer romantically involved. When I started seeing pictures of a girl on his Instagram, I wrote Her vs Me about how this girl was obviously more his type than I was. As I got deeper into Junior year, I wrote Remnants when people kept bringing him up, and all I was trying to do was forget him. I go to a small high school in a small town, so Continent of Conquests is about how he left me with nothing whereas he got to dive into a new city and new school and got to move on much faster than I did. Dead End was a bit of a backslide, when I realized I was always gonna hold a special place in my heart for him, and lastly Expiration Date tells the story of how I finally moved on, but also analyzing and criticizing his actions in our relationship. To get back to the question you actually asked, I don’t know if it’s fair to say he was the inspiration for the EP, but without him I wouldn’t have been able to write and create the way I did.

How long did it take you to write and produce KONA?

I wrote the music in a span of a few years, from Freshman to Junior year, arranged the music with Kay and Maggie (from Power Beez) in a few three hour rehearsals, and then recording took 15 hours and mixing probably took another 10 at least. My dear friends Kay, Maggie, and Emmett all volunteered their time, talent, and equipment to make this all possible.

What was the production experience like?

I learned so much through making this EP. There was always another bump in the road whether it was having to re-record a guitar part, or getting sick and not being able to record. Everyone I worked with is a teenager like myself, and we all still have so much to learn in the music making world. For example, Emmett had mixed all the music and I was reviewing it for upload, when I realized that all the songs had been mixed in stereo, and the harmonies were coming through different sides of my headphones. I’m glad Kay and I caught the mistake, because that is not the way I had intended on releasing my music, but it was an artistic choice that Emmett had chosen. Not that stereo is wrong in any sense, but it wasn’t what I was going for. Little miscommunications like that definitely made the process longer, but I have a much more solid grasp on what I want my sound to be, and I know how to direct people to help me get there.

What’s the story behind your cover art?

This one’s kind of funny. The guy that all the songs are about also did the cover art! I sent him a text that straight up said “would you be willing to do album art for an album about you?” and he was totally down. I love that we are still homies, and he was so chill about it.

What’s your favorite song off the EP?

That’s like making me choose a favorite child! I guess I will always have a special place in my heart for You’ve Already Won. It was definitely most fun to record. Kay, Maggie, and I recorded the three-part harmony bridge live, unlike most of the harmonies on the EP in which we recorded tracks one by one and layered them in production. There is nothing better than locking in on some SICK three part harmony, and getting to put that on the EP was super special. It’s definitely not the most complex song, but there’s something about those lyrics and harmonies that continue to resonate with me every time I listen to it or perform it.

Can we expect new music?

Yes! This EP is actually half of an album, “Kona,” that I wanted to release, but I decided to divide the album into two EPs: “Pt. 1: You,” and “Pt. 2: Me.” It made sense for me to divide it this way because “Pt. 1: You” is all about how this one person (and a few others) affected me, and really is more about them than it is about me. “Pt. 2: Me” however, is much more introspective, and though I reference other people in the songs, it is definitely centered around my internal monologue and my thoughts on friendship and leaving for school next year.

What’s your dream venue to perform at?

I would say the Fillmore in San Francisco, and then the Fox Theater in Oakland. I have seen shows at both of these venues, and the Fillmore is pretty spacious, but definitely super intimate. Anywhere in that room has a good view, and I feel as an audience member that it is so easy to connect to artists at the Fillmore. The Fox is a way bigger stage, and eventually I would love to be playing to as many people who will listen, but for now I’ll stick to a more intimate and dedicated audience.

What genre would you define your music as?

Uhhhhh maybe Alternative? Easy-Listening? Is that a genre? I feel like my music isn’t necessarily happy or sad, but it is good in any mood. It’s definitely not super hype as in there isn’t a pounding bass or an intense beat drop, but it’s very calm music with a bit of a sarcastic/sassy kick if you listen to the lyrics :). Good for studying, good for a good post-breakup cry, and good for a just chillin’!

Anything else you want to add!

I tell this to everyone I know that likes music, but making music is SO EASY and there is no risk at all! I’m not saying writing, arranging, recording, producing, and releasing music is easy, but who is stopping you from jamming out with your friends to some song that you all know the lyrics to? Who is stopping you from posting a Soundcloud cover of whatever artist you have been listening to recently? Who is stopping you from writing lyrics that you may not have a tune for until months later? I always encourage people to create and to collaborate because it has been so joyful and gratifying in my own life, and I wish for everyone to have such a great experience with music as I have.

You can listen to KONA on Spotify and Apple Music!

Rock On,

Aryana

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tsgaustintexas · 5 years ago

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Wellness Wednesday with Rejuvenate Austin

Dr. Jessica Wright, photography by Paige Newton

While January may come with extra emphasis on wellness - #DryJanuary, #NewYearNewMe - we’re looking to carry our initial New Year enthusiasm with us through the entire year (and decade!). We sat down with a few of our Volume 7 experts to talk about their approaches to health + wellness.

Meet Dr. Jessica Wright, owner of Rejuvenate Austin and the Volume 7 member who keeps us young - or at least looking like it! Dr. Wright began her career as a trauma surgeon in Baton Rouge, which paved the way and laid the foundation for her success in aesthetics. While we had many questions for the fabulous Dr. Wright, we wanted to start off the new decade by talking about the treatments she recommends for patients at every decade.

TSG: First things first, what made you make the transition from trauma surgery to aesthetics?

Dr. W: I began to consider transitioning away from trauma surgery because of the demanding lifestyle. I’d also recently gotten engaged and was looking forward to one day starting a family! And finally, I had just switched to wound care in the trauma unit and, to be honest, I didn’t feel passionate about what I was doing. A dear friend of mine invited me to come work with him in aesthetics and I fell in love. Aesthetics offered the perfect balance and allowed me to use my medical expertise to empower patients.

TSG: What has the transition been like? What aspects of your work as a trauma surgeon have translated to your practice at Rejuvenate Austin?

Dr. W: The combination of owning a business, parenting, and marriage can be stressful, so when life gets hectic, I am able to detach a bit - a skill I quickly learned in trauma surgery. In the midst of a stressful day, I can continue to treat my patients as if there was nothing else in the world going on. I am also very confident in my ability to safely and effectively treat patients because of my medical background. Knowing anatomy is a crucial part of both my job in trauma surgery and in aesthetics today. Ultimately I’m very grateful for the transition in that my day-to-day is calm. I get to go home to my family, sleep well and enjoy a 9-6PM job. I’m not answering pagers in the middle of the night, so no matter the hustle or frustration of my day, I am always grateful for this new role. I’ve been on the other side and I don’t take it for granted!

TSG: Congratulations on opening a new location Rejuvenate Austin practice! What can we expect from your downtown location?

Dr. W: Customers can expect an expansion of services! We plan to bring in even more cutting edge technology in 2020, as well as continuing to refine our skills in our current services. We are also expanding the Rejuvenate family/staff members and ensuring they are a perfect fit! And with more treatment rooms, we will be able to expand our availability. Plus, we are in such a fun neighborhood! Go hang at Better Half for a cocktail after your treatment!

TSG: What should potential clients take into consideration when choosing a procedure and a Med Spa?

Dr. W: First things first, you should always talk to a medical professional (a doctor, a nurse, or physician’s assistant). You want to make sure the treatment you have in mind is low-risk and high-gain, as well as understand what a good “before and after’’ are and your final results. There is no reason to take BIG risks for a “good before and after.”

When choosing a Medical Spa, make sure a doctor and the owner + operator are on-site. If a physician is not present, you are taking an additional risk - and there is no reason to take additional risks in this life. Complications can happen and the ability to enact treatment the second a complication arises is much better than being diagnosed after the fact and treated days later. You also want to find a Med Spa that has a “good vibe” and where the employees look good to you. If you walk in and all the employees have an aesthetic that doesn’t align with what you are looking for, then that Med Spa is probably not a good fit. If you want a natural, ‘done’ look than Rejuvenate is your Med Spa.

TSG: Are there certain times you should or should not get treatments? For example, we know the results of cool sculpting take 2-3 months to develop, so we should be thinking about it ahead of Spring and Summer…

Dr. W: Absolutely! With Coolsculpting, you need at least 8 weeks to get results. If you’re thinking about it for Spring Break, then you should schedule the treatment in December or January at the latest. With laser treatments, you need to restrict sun exposure before and after your laser treatments. For example, if you’re thinking about tackling brown and red pigment on your face, the treatment should be done in the wintertime. In fact, most laser treatments should be done in the winter. Your stage of life should also be taken into consideration. If you’re pregnant or breast-feeding, we suggest you take a break from all aesthetics. And be cognizant of healing - if you just had surgery, you should allow your body to have all the energy to heal where it needs to heal rather than be using energy to stimulate collagen. These are all judgment calls best left to medical professionals!

TSG: Rejuvenate Austin offers a wide variety of treatments - from injectables to cool sculpting to laser treatments - is there one that’s more popular than another?

Dr. W: Botox is hands down our most popular treatment! Everyone is getting Botox - young and old, women and men, preventative and reactive. It’s very popular with all generations! People are also thinking about collagen stimulants, laser treatments and Coolsculpting treatments.

TSG: You also offer amazing skincare products - do you have any current favorites for winter weather?

Dr. W: For Winter weather, I love Senté Dermal Repair because it is a moisturizer that trains your skin to hold onto moisture. This product actually repairs your skin’s ability to moisturize your skin from the inside out, instead of putting a greasy moisturizer on your skin.

TSG: What treatments should women in their twenties, thirties, forties and fifties be considering?

Dr. W:

Twenties - In your twenties, you should consider micro-needling, because at this age you have an amazing ability to create collagen. It delivers big results and helps with anti-aging.

Thirties - During the late twenties, early thirties are when most people start Botox, so at this point, you should probably consider it. In your thirties, you can also consider IPL Photofacials to help with pigments and redness.

Forties - Your forties are a great time to start Ultherapy, laser resurfacing, Botox, Fillers, IPL Photofacial - hit it hard! You still have the ability to make collagen, but your rate of aging is starting to speed up.

Fifties - In your fifties, you should consider the same treatments from your forties and add in laser resurfacing.

Sixties - In your sixties, continue all of the avenues to stimulate collagen and maybe schedule your facelift with your plastic surgeon ;)

TSG: Speaking of your treatments, what was the motivation and inspiration behind your sexual wellness offerings?

Dr. W: I wasn’t interested in sexual wellness until I hired our Physicians Assistant, Dana Kirk, who is nationally certified in the O-Shot and P-Shot. She educated me on this! At first, we started offering the O-Shot and P-Shot, and I had so many patients with life-changing experiences. It’s a low-risk service with a high return. After I had children, I too, understood the struggles of post-pregnancy changes. After success with the O-Shot and P-Shot, we introduced the Juliet Laser, which is also used for facial rejuvenation. Ultimately, my goal is to treat insecurities - at Rejuvenate, we can help customers directly assess and change these, which has far-reaching results in their life.

TSG: Are there any misconceptions or taboos around aesthetics that you’d like to address and set the record straight on?

Dr. W: YES! One thing I hear is “my husband is super worried that I will come back and look crazy!” This is misinformation. This is completely in the hands of the injector. We ensure that you could do everything offered on our menu of treatments and still look natural because we have invested in good lasers, good technologies, good product and a staff well-educated in natural results. Men often think of this whole industry as just for women -- but no, it is for everyone! Everyone looks better rejuvenated as opposed to au-natural.

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gothify1 · 5 years ago

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I've admitted before that even though I might not be the most efficient shopper , when I do make a purchase, I commit—wholeheartedly. This is probably why countless friends, family members, and colleagues are always amazed by the must-have products I've discovered over the years on Amazon. You see, even though I loathe the crowds of Fifth Avenue in NYC (or the mall back home in suburbia), I am not so secretly a wizard when it comes to finding the best products lurking within the behemoth online retailer. And, of course, while I prefer to shop small, there are just some items that are more efficient and affordable to purchase online. So keeping the keyword "affordable " in mind, I pulled together a list of 31 random things I've found on Amazon that people always ask me about. From fashion basics and trendy accessories to nicely priced beauty must-haves and even a few tech gadgets and wellness essentials , all of the below products are easily sourced on Amazon and can be added to your cart with just a few clicks. Even better? Every single item on this list clocks in under $50. Still skeptical? Keep scrolling—you're bound to be pleasantly surprised. Barrettes are still a big trend this year, and buying them in a 10-pack ensures you'll always have one handy in a bag or coat pocket. I wore these tights to a chic winter wedding and was pleasantly surprised not only by how they kept me warm when walking from the ceremony to the venue but also how durable they were on the dance floor. I also acquired this for said wedding. I needed a little sparkle to enhance my all-black ensemble but didn't have time to shop around for a splurge. This simple tennis bracelet did the trick in a pinch—and got me so many compliments! It has been said that these Amazon Essentials tees are comparable to the fashion-girl favorites from Madewell. They say you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince. You also have to try on a lot of leggings before you find the perfect fit. Go ahead—take these for a spin. You might think that you don't need to opt into the shearling trend this season, and you would be wrong. At this price point, this is a cozy coat you can feel good about buying now (and probably wearing every day until spring). Cuticle oil wasn't even on my radar until I interviewed several nail professionals last year, but after using this top-selling Amazon product, I'm hooked (and so are my mom and sister). No joke, I hand these zit stickers out like candy. My boyfriend and best friend are also big fans. I've waxed poetic about the Wet Brush before, but this product has single-handedly saved my fine hair from serious breakage. I have multiple that I stash in my bedroom, bathroom, and suitcase. I am so 2000 and late on this, but after speaking with several skincare pros, I got turned onto this toner. It was a simple step to add to my routine, but my skin has never felt cleaner or looked better. I used to think that I was so diligent about taking off all of my makeup before bed. A few swipes of this MakeUp Eraser and I realized how much residue was actually getting left behind (ew, gross). Try it and you'll see for yourself! Everyone at Who What Wear who has experienced this magical Revlon machine is hooked. It works great on different hair textures, and at this price, it is absolutely worth buying now. I'm all about setting achievable goals in 2020, and maximum hydration is at the top of my list. This is a low-lift way to do the most for the delicate skin around your eyes, especially during the winter months. Hydration and moisturizing go hand in hand, so you know I am slathering myself in this classic CeraVe cream after every shower. So you want healthy skin, some anti-aging action, retinol, a slight tint, and SPF? How's this for an affordable skincare solution? Not only does this Korean hand treatment feel luxurious, but it also forces me to put down my phone for a few minutes and be in the moment. Win-win. I live in New York City, which means I rarely get to drive anywhere. However, I discovered this product when I was at home for the holidays and immediately purchased multiples to give to my parents and car-owning friends. The universal design works in any type of vehicle and uses magnets to hold up the phone instead of a clunky contraption. Even better? Two come in a set, so you can keep one and give another to a pal. Because I live in NYC and don't drive, I like to keep my MetroCard handy. These pocket stickers are super durable and adhere to a case or caseless phone. I bought these ahead of a long-haul flight to South Africa last year, and have no idea how I traveled without noise-canceling headphones before. They're cheap enough that you don't have to beat yourself up if they get lost in transit but also durable and work great. Unfortunately, I did lose my AirPods on a flight recently. I sucked it up and purchased a new pair along with this bright silicon case—so far, so good. Is it just me, or are these things always in short supply? I like this 10-foot power cable and find it charges faster than the one that came with my phone. So you want to test out a few essential oils but aren't sure where to start? Here, start right here. And get this diffuser, too. I have one at home and another at the office for maximum zen. If taking a gummy vitamin can help me avoid getting sick, why not? These are a top seller on Amazon. You know you're getting older when you actually start singing the praises of dietary supplements. Curious about collagen peptides? This Vital Proteins powder is easy to integrate into your morning routine. I have been taking biotin for years. While some pills can taste chalky or bitter, this brand is totally palatable. This sleep stick is the gift that keeps on giving! Well, I keep giving it to people, and then they give it to someone else, and so on… I used to live in a really bright, eastern-facing apartment and wore this sleep mask religiously. (I am not a morning person.) Now, I mostly keep this sleep mask on hand for flights. It is very soft and helps me relax. These resistance bands are easy to stash in a suitcase for workouts on vacation—and take up way less space than running shoes. Ready to start your plant collection? Succulents are an easy way to add greenery to your home—you'll become a plant person in no time. As I said, hydration is key, but single-use plastics are a definite don't. I like to keep this big water bottle at my desk and refill it at least three times a day. Up next: 82 Random But Essential Items We're Buying Right Now on Amazon

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longwoodstudents · 7 years ago

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Student Spotlight: Lauren Kope, Professional Gardener Student

Hello, my name is Lauren Kope and I am a recent transplant from Virginia. Prior to my enrollment in the Professional Gardener program, I worked in both agriculture and horticulture. In 2010, I graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in Agricultural Science, concentrating in biology and entomology. In the first few years out of college, I worked mainly within agriculture, farming both in rural and urban settings. While I loved both and learned an immense amount in those years (much outside the scope of agriculture), I was starting to notice how much I enjoyed plant aesthetics. I was ecstatic when I was offered the opportunity to work as a member of a four person team managing a 140 acre estate. I found immediate joy working in established landscapes and by the end of my first season my focus on horticulture as a career was steadfast. By the end of my second season, all ornamental plantings were maintained under my supervision. The entire estate was designed and managed to support ecosystem health and it was nothing short of magical to be immersed in that richness on a daily basis. That place and time will always be so special to me, but in an effort to lean further into the field, I knew applying for the PG program was the right choice.

What is your favorite plant?

Some of my favorites are Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota), Serviceberries (Amelanchier), and Smokebush (Cotinus coggygria). I’m also a sucker for orchards: functional and gorgeous, especially on a foggy morning.

What is your favorite Garden? What is your favorite part of Longwood?

Hmm that’s a tough one… Instead of picking one, I will say my favorite gardens are where the plants look at home. Maybe they are happily self-seeding, leisurely spilling over a wall, or popping out of nooks unexpectedly; the garden takes on a personality. It’s refreshing to see a well-conceived garden where the plants are comfortable and play well with each other. While I definitely enjoy the art of a good pruning and the contrast of hedging, I enjoy the quirks of naturalized plantings.

My favorite gardens to visit at Longwood are the Meadow, Hillside Garden, and Waterlily displays. But daily, I see little moments at Longwood that make it come to life: the shadow of a palm leaf behind a window, a tiny mushroom growing in the carnivorous plants, ferns and moss growing out of the brickwork.

What is the best part of being a student?

Working and learning alongside so many passionate and skilled horticulturists. I enjoy seeing the diversity of interest within the field. Rotations offer a unique perspective into the inner workings of a public garden; an opportunity I can’t imagine is often available elsewhere. Additionally, I love having personal space to create a garden and grow vegetables.

What is your background in horticulture (or whatever field you are in)?

I graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in Agricultural Science. After working in agriculture for several years, I was interested in trying horticulture. I worked as an estate gardener for four years and enjoyed creating and working in naturally artful landscapes.

Why did you want to come to Longwood and what do you think helped you get the position?

I came to Longwood to meet people and learn not just how they do their work but why. I wanted to see their craft and passion and develop my own further. I think horticulturists are often dedicated beyond their job; they are often interested in environment, art, and context. I enjoy seeing how people interpret those values through plants.

I’ve been super lucky to work with and for people who genuinely cared about my growth and supported me in my decision to continue pursuing horticulture. They made themselves available to answer questions, told me I was being an idiot when I needed it, and gave me trust and the freedom to try and to fail. I hope to apply that knowledge here.

What do you do at work? Highlight your favorite project or what you do day-to-day.

The days vary a lot month to month and even week to week. The first three months I rotated in outdoor display, grounds, and conservatory. The rotations are a peek into “A Day in the Life Of…” and help chip away at what aspects of each position are most and least attractive to me. My favorite project so far at Longwood has been working the prescribed burn. I participated in burns at the estate and so I was eager to see how the burn would be organized at Longwood. There are so many sensory details associated with a spring burn and such a distinct transition at a time when spring often hasn’t shown itself yet. It is a catharsis from winter and a harbinger of spring. We are just finishing up our first semester of classes. I can’t believe it has been six months but I finally feel like I have my feet under me. It has been incredibly fulfilling to learn in an environment that keeps horticulture directly in focus. Sometimes you lose that in a large university setting even if you are learning a related subject.

What are your future plans or what is your intended career path?

I have my ideas of what I’d like to do, but that could definitely change over the next couple of years. I still think that I would like to work in public horticulture. I would love to restore a garden but ideally work in a space where people can simply enjoy being in the landscape. Education and outreach are vital to our field, but it’s also nice to go into a space and appreciate it and take from it what you will. I do plan to always keep learning and sharing what I can.

I love that horticulture is an appreciating skill. There is an astonishing amount to learn: Longwood has an entire library of books written on the subject. A person and their experience in this field become more valuable over time instead of obsolete with the times and veterans in the field have invaluable knowledge. In that way it is reassuring to see how far you’ve come, imagine where you could go, and wonder who you will meet along the way.

A prescribed burn at Longwood.

Digging out vegetable rows at The Row, our residential area.

Plant Walk for Continuing Education class.

Potting up Victoria's during Conservatory Rotation.

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justalittlebluetiefling · 7 years ago

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Chapter 49: Sometimes I Can’t See Myself

Rating: T Fandom: The 100 Pairing: Bellamy x Clarke Chapter: 49/68 Word Count: 2930 Words

Chapter Summary: The one where Clarke has an unexpected guest while she’s trying to study.

Also on AO3; Start from the beginning on AO3

Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve. – Earl Grollman

Clarke was alone again for the night. Octavia was at Lincoln’s, Lexa was busy for the third night that week, and Bellamy hadn’t texted her back. Hell, they had all been so busy that Clarke hadn’t told anyone that she decided to apply to med school.

Winter quarter had been hard and it looked like spring might not be much better. As she laid her MCAT books out on the coffee table, Clarke made a mental note to google time management skills, because hers were still severely lacking. There had been a small argument with her mother when she cut back on her volunteering for the quarter. It would have gone better if Clarke had admitted that she was cutting back so she could study for the MCATs. That argument plus the fight they got into when Clarke mentioned the master’s program in art didn’t exactly encourage her to share.

All of her friends were still all busy with their own schedules. Wells was stressed over his impending LSATs, Harper helped him when she had time, and Miller’s application was due to the police academy in a few weeks. She hardly saw Jasper outside of their Biochem class and any time she was able to grab coffee with Monty, he said that Jasper had a new girlfriend even he hadn’t met yet. Any time she managed to get Jasper over to study, he was suspiciously quiet if Clarke started asking questions, so she assumed it was serious. Raven was in the final stretch of her senior year, so most of her free time was spent figuring out what she would do after the quarter was over. Octavia had been elected the next captain of the dance team, so any night she wasn’t at Lincoln’s, she was with the current captain going over the transition.

The one that bothered her the most, though, was Bellamy. It sounded like Wells still saw him more than she did. Any time she had free time and Lexa was busy, he was either busy with homework or hanging out with Gina. She occasionally went to hang out with them both, but it was easier to spend time with them separately. She wasn’t sure why. Ever since the bowling alley, they hadn’t gone a day without talking. That, at least, had improved.

Clarke decided to take advantage of her empty apartment to play loud music and run through a few practice tests while eating an obscene amount of junk food. She was halfway through the first one when she thought she heard something. Instinctively, she reached over to turn the music down a little and immediately regretted it when the noise turned into a knock on her door. Whoever it was would know she was ignoring them if she didn’t answer the door, but she stayed firmly planted in her seat.

When they pounded on the door again, their accompanying shout was muffled by the door. “Clarke, I know you’re in there. O doesn’t listen to that shit.”

Bellamy? She checked her phone. There were no texts from him.

“Claaaaaaaaarke!”

She slid her MCAT books underneath the couch and then jumped up to open the door. Bellamy was leaning heavily against the doorframe. If his disheveled hair, half-buttoned shirt, and bloodshot eyes weren’t enough to give it away, it smelled like he had bathed in a bottle of tequila. He stumbled his way past her and she took a step back. Make that two bottles of tequila.

“Jesus, Bellamy, what are you doing here?”

“Octavia!” He shouted as he leaned back against the couch. “Nice to see you, too, Princess.” Bellamy tried to stand, but slipped and had to steady himself again. “Where… where’s my sister? I need to talk to her.”

Clarke crossed her arms. “She’s staying at Lincoln’s tonight.” It was apparently the wrong thing to say, because he pushed himself up. All she had to do was slide over a couple steps to lean against the door, which didn’t stop him from trying to open it. It ended with her awkwardly pinned between him and the door, one hand on his chest, the other gripping his shoulder. “Damn it, Bellamy, just stop! Your sister is a grown-ass, independent woman in a loving relationship. Just deal with it.”

He looked down at her and it felt a little like all of the air left her lungs, because he was pressed up against her and it felt… she didn’t want to think about how it felt. “You’re not my girlfriend, Clarke. You can’t tell me what to do.”

He grabbed her hand and she thought he was pulling it off his shoulder, but he held onto it. His thumb moved in slow, small circles over the back of her hand and she swallowed hard. “Yeah, Bell. Not your girlfriend’s apartment, so not your girlfriend. Why’d you come here?”

“I didn’t want to talk to Gina. I wanted to talk to you. Or Octavia.”

Her heart twisted in her chest. “How did you even get here?”

“Don’t worry, Princess, it’s not like I drove. I….”

He trailed off, staring at their joined hands. Clarke cleared her throat and yanked her hand away. The back of her hand burned and he frowned down at her and it was clouding her head. All of it was… it was fucking confusing. She turned him around and he let her push him toward the bathroom. He leaned against the sink as she turned on the shower.

“Take a shower. I can call Gina to come—”

“No!” He cut off a strangled shout. “I don’t want her to see me like this.”

Clarke sighed and rubbed her eyes. Things were already strained with Lexa over their friendship. She didn’t want it to affect his relationship with Gina, too. But in the end, he had come looking for Octavia. He needed someone, so everything else was less of a problem than finding out why he was falling apart again.

“Fine. Just get in. I think I have some stuff that might fit you.”

“I don’t want Finn’s leftover shit,” he said as he finished unbuttoning his shirt. Which he was not wearing anything under.

Clarke spun around and practically jumped through the door, slamming it shut behind her. “Get in the fucking shower, Bellamy. It’s not Finn's.”

She waited at the door until she heard the shower curtain pull back and then rushed to her room to dig through the bottom drawer of her dresser. The thought of letting someone else wear any of this stuff had never seemed like a possibility, but it was her only option in the moment. Bellamy's clothes smelled too much like alcohol and she couldn’t have a naked Bellamy anywhere in her apartment. The thought of naked Bellamy was really unnecessary.

The shower was off when she got back to the bathroom, so she knocked on the door. “You decent?”

He groaned what might have been a ‘yes’ and she risked opening the door. He was standing where she had left him, leaning against the sink, but in only a towel. It was dangerously close to falling off his hips, so she shoved the t-shirt and sweatpants into his arms and rushed out of the room again.

She barely managed to choke out her words. “I’m going to make up the couch for you.”

By the time Bellamy stumbled back into the living room, she had mostly recovered. The couch was set up with extra sheets and a pillow, she had set water and aspirin on the coffee table, and she was most of the way through making macaroni and cheese. He fell back onto the couch.

“You okay?”

“I drank too much.”

“I know.” She finished stirring the fake cheese packet in with the noodles. “Why’d you do that?”

“This girl in my class… she wants to teach home ec, because her favorite memory from growing up is sewing her own clothes with her mom.”

He didn’t say anymore, but it was enough to break Clarke’s heart all over again. After a couple disastrous attempts with a sewing machine, he had left it at her apartment with explicit instructions for her to get rid of it. He refused to even look at it. It reminded her of how she felt after her father's death. The sewing machine in question was sitting in the back of her closet, waiting for him to be ready to take it home. She pulled herself together while she poured the food into bowls and covered his in just a little more sriracha sauce than her own. There wasn’t anything right to say, so she tucked two water bottles under her arm and took the food out to the living room.

Bellamy smiled sadly, his eyes red and puffy when she pushed the bowl into his hands. “You’re not going to make me eat alone, are you?”

Clarke rolled her eyes and sat down next to him carefully. “Um, do you know me? I didn’t make macaroni and cheese for you.”

“Yeah, because I didn’t show you the light. Macaroni and cheese is the best drunk food.”

“Macaroni and cheese is the best food.”

He smiled again, but they were both quiet while they took their first few bites. Clarke tried to figure out the right way to phrase her next question, but couldn’t concentrate when her phone beeping on the table. She smiled apologetically as she reached over to grab it.

Lexa <3 11:15pm Done with my study group earlier than I expected. What are you up to? 11:21pm Are you up? You don’t usually go to bed this early.

Clarke 11:23pm I’m up for a few more minutes. What’s up? Thought you were studying till you drop?

Lexa <3 11:24pm I’m getting ready to head home now. I thought I might swing by. I hate the idea of you going to bed mad at me.

Clarke froze, not sure how to respond to that. Lexa had cancelled dates right and left the past couple weeks and Clarke had been upset earlier. The texts looked like an olive branch, but there was no way she could let her come over. She had two choices. She could admit that Bellamy showed up drunk on her doorstep or she could hide it. Bellamy always said she was a horrible liar, so she was sure the truth would come out eventually.

“Everything okay?”

Clarke glanced up at Bellamy and forced herself to smile. “Yeah, it’s fine. Lexa’s just saying goodnight.”

The look on his face told her that he didn’t believe her, but it didn’t matter. He was her biggest concern at the moment. She wouldn’t put it past Lexa to show up on her doorstep if she said Bellamy was too drunk to go home, so she made up her mind.

Clarke 11:32pm No, don’t worry about it. I’m seriously about to pass out. I’d probably be asleep by the time you got here anyway.

Lexa <3 11:35pm You can’t even stay awake for another 20 minutes?

Guilt flooded through Clarke as she set her phone down. It buzzed again once. Twice. A third time. She swallowed hard and looked up at Bellamy, who set his bowl down on the table.

“She’s pissed I’m here, right? I can call Gina. It was stupid of me to come here. I don’t want to fuck things up for you.”

“Hey, no. You need to stay. Please.” She leaned over to push the bowl back into his lap, but noticed it was mostly empty, so she took it and hopped up. “You need more food in your system.”

“Clarke, really—”

“Bellamy, really.” He frowned at her from his seat while she filled up his bowl again. It was obvious he was still too drunk to actually argue, which was a good thing. She didn’t have it in her to argue. “You and I haven’t been able to hang out, just the two of us, in a couple months.”

The frown disappeared from his face as he accepted the second bowl of food. “That is true. We’ve both been pretty busy. School and girlfriends.”

She smiled at him as she settled back onto the couch. “You feeling a little more normal after eating?”

“Oh, I’m still drunk. But I’ve come down a lot.” He shoved a bite of food into his mouth and she rolled her eyes. He swallowed and smiled weakly. “I didn’t come here to see O, by the way. I’m not drunk enough not to say that.”

Clarke’s eyes flickered down toward her phone as a new wave of guilt washed over her. “Then… why?”

“I just….” He hesitated and set his food down on the table. “I need to know how you do it, Clarke. You told me that your dad is the reason you wanted to pursue art. How do you hold onto that? How do you do it and it doesn’t hurt you every day?”

“Oh.” Any remaining guilt rushed away. A tear rolled down his cheek and she surged forward to pull him into a hug. He buried his face in the crook of her neck. “Oh, Bellamy. Hey.”

“I don’t even know how to sew, Clarke. I tried. We both I’m horrible at it. I don’t have this daily reminder that I shared something with her. I don’t even know how I would handle that.”

“My dad gave me my first sketchbook when I was four after I ruined one of his blueprints. He set up this little desk next to his drafting table and I would sit there for hours and draw next to him while he was working. He converted that room above our garage into a studio for me when I was fourteen. I couldn’t touch any of it for at least six months after he died.”

Clarke pulled back and ducked her head down to look him in the eye. She wiped another tear from his cheek.

“One day, I woke up and I had this idea for a painting stuck in my head. I tried to ignore it, but it was there every single day for two weeks straight. I finally ditched school one day and went up to that room and I lost myself in everything. Every single stroke of paint was… cathartic. It felt like every single bad thing I felt was pouring out of me and I cried and it hurt, but… it was a good hurt. I decided I couldn’t ever let that go again. I mean, maybe I latched onto the idea of the major a little too hard, but you know me. As soon as I realized my mom thought it was a bad idea, I needed to do it. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it, but I do know that nothing will stop me from being an artist ever again.”

“What if I don’t know what I’m supposed to hold onto?”

“If you want to learn how to sew, we can go back to those tutorials on Youtube.”

A laugh bubbled up from his chest. “We both know how well that went last time I tried. You really want to deal with that again?”

“I think it’s an option, if you want it to be. The sewing machine is still in my closet.” She smiled at him and tugged on the sleeve of the t-shirt he was wearing. “We should try to make some emergency pillowcases for you out of some of her old clothes. It might help. I wear this stuff when I’m having a really bad day.”

Bellamy’s head snapped down so fast it was almost comical. He ran his hands along the shirt and then the pants and looked up at her reverently. “I thought these belonged to Wells or something.”

Clarke shrugged. “I keep them tucked in the bottom drawer of my dresser for emergencies.”

“I can’t believe you’re letting me wear these. Isn’t that kind of… weird?”

It didn’t feel weird to her. It felt… intimate. The word floated through her mind. She forced it away. “I don’t think so. If anything, the next time I feel like I need to put these on, it’ll kind of be like you’re there with me, too. I’ll just think about the incredibly stupid conversations you would have had with my dad. It would have been awful, by the way. He would have loved you.”

Bellamy scratched the back of his head and looked down for a moment as he flushed up to his ears. “What makes you say that?”

Clarke grinned at him. “You two have the same stupid, sarcastic sense of humor. The jokes would have been out of control.”

He grinned back. “You definitely got stuck with that sense of humor, too. I don’t think we’d be friends if you didn’t.”

They talked about their parents for hours. Bellamy wanted to hear more about her dad and she wanted to hear more about Aurora when they were children, before she was diagnosed with cancer the first time. By the time they were both yawning more than they could control, it was almost four in the morning. It finally felt like their friendship was back to normal and Clarke went to sleep racking her brain for ways to keep it that way.

#bellarke fanfiction #bellarke #modern au #sometimes i can't see myself #my work #bellarke au #erin writes

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idolizerp · 6 years ago

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LOADING INFORMATION ON ATLAS’ MAIN RAP NO GUNWOO...

IDOL DETAILS

STAGENAME: Gun CURRENT AGE: 24 DEBUT AGE: 20 TRAINEE SINCE AGE: 16 COMPANY: KJH SECONDARY SKILL: Music production (hip-hop and r&b)

IDOL PROFILE

NICKNAME(S): gun pd and dj gun (both from his two main career interests, producing and radio hosting), 단호건/danhogun (a play on his name and danhobak, because he’s stern/decisive), 총우/chongwoo (gun in korean + the second syllable of his full first name), 노센스/no sense (play on his surname and the fact that he has no variety sense), 건담/gundam (play on his name and a popular character that he has a moderate collection of) INSPIRATION: several older hip-hop groups and artists that he started listening to back when he was younger, most notably epik high and tiger jk and a plethora of western artists. he says he felt really connected to the music and wanted to make his own that other people could connect to as well. SPECIAL TALENTS:

freestyle rapping

playing songs on piano by ear (simplistic versions)

good at random games like 딱지/ttakji, 공기/gonggi, and 제기차기/jegichagi (he attributes this to the fact that his little sister always wanted to play them)

NOTABLE FACTS:

prior to atlas’ debut, he released a few solo tracks and mixtapes that were moderately successful in the local underground scene

can play the piano, has learned it since he was six, mostly self-taught with a few lessons here and there

he’s very handy, can assemble and fix a lot of random furniture/appliances and things of that nature

his moderate collection of gundam collectibles started due to fans gifting them in the beginning, but he started buying them on his own after as well and has them in display cases in his studio

IDOL GOALS

SHORT-TERM GOALS:

after his solo debut as atlas’ gun essentially flopped a few years back before they really blew up, he wants to attempt another solo release. now that there are a lot more eyes on them, he really wants to show off more of his personal work. in addition, he’s always wanted to be a radio dj and after hosting a few as a special guest, he wants his own radio show in the near future.

LONG-TERM GOALS:

funny enough, despite his short term solo goal, gun’s love for performing live has been fading the more popular atlas gets. getting on stage and hearing screams is still one of his favorite parts of the job, but the side-effects that it comes with (the lack of privacy and stalker fans, the public scrutiny and pressure, the insane work hours and ridiculous amount of traveling, the way his career has become his entire life, etc.) are starting to outweigh all the positives. so, in a way, his long term goal is to get away from all that once atlas is done. he still wants to work with music, but he’d much rather be behind the scenes as a producer and lyric-writer, as opposed to an active performer.

IDOL IMAGE

no gunwoo -- no, gun, is atlas' stone, atlas' rock in more ways than one.

he is: rough around the edges.

they tell him not to lose his daegu accent, not entirely. to let it slip on purpose more often than not. to not let people forget that he's just a country boy at heart who had a dream, a passion for music and risked it all by coming to seoul to pursue it. they say not to censor himself too much, either, let a cuss word or two slip every now and then, let his face betray all his emotions sometimes, even negative ones when he's annoyed or angry or confused or sad. if you're feeling down, post some thoughts on the fan café, maybe go live. obviously, they say not to do it too much or at the wrong time, but just enough to give off the feeling that he's genuine, unpolished, not some cookie cutter idol. he won't be relatable by any means, but real. believably flawed like anyone else. just a daegu boy who happens to rap because he wants to.

he is: stubborn. or, in nicer terms, strong-willed. immovable.

he's the poster boy for 'if you just work hard and take risks you can do anything you want'. from the country to seoul, from no one to someone, from giving up his artistic integrity for the first few years of their career to risking his entire life to get it back and not backing down, not caring who he threw under the bus. in the end, gun seems to have gotten everything he's wanted and they leverage that, too.

of course, atlas as a whole stands for hard work making the dream work, but gun's inherent stubbornness is played up just that much more. like when they tell him to talk about how long he takes to produce tracks sometimes because he won't let it go until it's exactly how he imagined it. or to talk about how he couldn't dance worth a damn and almost got kicked out of the tentative lineup, but, well, look at him now. he still can't quite dance anywhere near as well as the rest of the group, but that's fine, they say. that's all part of it too, because now his ability to follow choreography as well as he can is the product of pure hard work with no natural talent to back it up.

he is: foundation.

when it comes to atlas' music (post 2015), gun is a large part of the foundation it lies upon. he's not the only one, of course, but he is often the one they turn to when questions about their music come up. about the concept. about the lyrics. about the meaning behind it all and the process with which they came up with it. they tell him to go all out, go ahead and answer with technical terms to show he has a deep understanding. this is what he threatened to leave for, after all, so he may as well make use of it. show the people that there was good reason kjh yielded, that he knows what he's talking about. that atlas' music is good because "of course, the members helped write the lyrics" or "of course, the members helped produce it" or "as expected of self-producing atlas~"

he is: well grounded.

with gun, what you see is what you get. he is confident sometimes veering on cocky, he is decisive often veering stubborn. he is real, genuine, flawed, human, just with a particularly strong passion for music. at least, that's the vibe they want him to give off. a real, serious musician.

it's a precarious image, to say the least, still manufactured in its supposed genuineness. an image he has trouble balancing because sometimes he's not quite sure anymore where gun ends and gunwoo begins.

(if he begins anywhere at all anymore).

IDOL HISTORY

FATE PANN TITLE: WOW THEY 'RE REALLY GONNA LET THIS GUY DEBUT? ㅡㅡ

let me start with my proof: i went to school with this b*stard, here's my school id and here's my picture in our yearbook and here's no gunwoo's picture. he looks exactly the same ㅋㅋ

anyway, wow i heard he ran off to seoul but i didn't know it was so that he could train to be an idol... f*ck, this guy used to curse at idol groups all the time and now he's going to be one? ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ i hope his group f*cking flops

he was just annoying? he always made stupid jokes during class and would get so pissed when he actually got in trouble for it. he cleaned our classroom almost all year round because he really got in trouble that much. and he was just such an a*shole so he got into fights a lot even though he was so skinny ㅋㅋㅋ

but yeah that's all i have to say for now~ i just thought it was annoying that someone who cursed at idol groups so much is now becoming one because ah... i still remember when he spilled his water on my precious midnight album ㅡㅡ

no gunwoo is born in daegu in the middle of winter and spring and this sets the tone for his childhood.

he is the middle child, the awkward transition, the unwanted and accidental. the classic case of the second child of three. he's born when his parents are hoping for a daughter after already having a son, and that foundation of disappointment never seems to disappear as he grows up. everything he does pales in comparison to his hyung of 2 years if his parents have anything to say about it, and this quickly takes a toll.

everything becomes a competition and he's already two years behind. so he just tries that much harder, at least in the beginning. his grades are good, and at six he picks up the piano after minwoo picks it up too. none of it matters, though, because minwoo is first in his grade and can play their mom's favorite classical music while gunwoo's stuck in the middle once again and his little hands can only do so much on the piano keys.

even when gunwoo rises in class rank and bikes back home to their little farm on the edge of the province excitedly to tell them, minwoo's already there with an award for some math competition and a sign-up form for another one waiting for their signature. even when he's now eight and has practiced piano at his grandparent's house for the past year almost every evening to play his mom's favorite songs, minwoo's already there telling them about a recital he's been asked to play at.

he's always two years too late and his parent's don't expect anything from him. gun is ten years old when he learns how to accept that.

he stops studying in the library after school and explores the city with friends instead. his street smart grows while his grades drop, and his parents just act like they've known it all along, that they're just proving him right, that, as expected, he can't amount to anything anyway.

soon enough, anger replaces his desparation for their approval.

he acts up in class and comes home late, he starts fights and comes home with cuts and scrapes and bloody bandaids, he finds hip-hop music that sounds like what he feels and the seed is planted, watered every day until it blooms later in his life.

the only thing that stays constant is his love for piano and his little sister. jiwoo, at least, has always been the light brightening up the shadow behind minwoo he stands in. the only one whose eyes sparkles when he plays her favorite songs for her, who congratulates him when he comes home with good news, who is happy, proud even, to be his family. he's just three years older, but he likes to claim he's raised her as much as his parents have, has protected her more than they have (if the guy that ended up with a damn near broken nose has anything to say about it).

and so jiwoo is the reason he still holds onto the name gunwoo to this day, but it's also jiwoo who helps him become gun.

FATE PANN TITLE: DOES ANYONE ELSE KNOW WHO THIS GUY IS?

i went to hongdae this weekend and saw this guy busking there, he looked really young but i was so impressed with his rapping??? i waited around until he was done to talk to him a bit and i found out he's a kjh trainee! his name is gun and he's seriously so impressive for his age.. i was shocked when i found out he's the same age as my seventeen year old little brother... ㅠㅠ

anyway, if anyone else wants to listen to his music he has a soundcloud and he's posted a few of his tracks on there! i'll link it here ~ soundcloud.com/n0gun

when gunwoo is fourteen, the seed blossoms. his love for hip-hop evolves into something more than just an interest in the music, but in an interest for the process of creating it, too. performing it, writing lyrics, producing the beats.

he spends the time he used to spend studying and playing piano penning his own lyrics to already made songs. he picks up odd jobs from his neighbors and from the grandmas he’s gotten to know in the city to pocket as much under-the-table income he can come by and buys second-hand music equipment he can then call his own. he uses free online tutorials to teach himself how to use the software then just goes at it. he creates and creates and creates.

it's all rough, of course, but it's something. it's his and his only. it's something his brother's never done before and it's something he loves, something he's done for his own personal interest only, something he wants to keep doing.

he's sixteen when jiwoo shows him a way for him to keep doing it by way of a kjh audition flyer. he resents the idea of becoming an idol, but after one particularly bad argument with his dad gets all of his hard-earned music equipment thrown out the window and broken beyond repair, he bikes into the city, into an audition he’d been subconsciously been preparing for for years.

when they present him with an offer, he signs right away.

when he presents the same to his parents, they sign even quicker.

to get him out of their lives, he assumes. but not without one last comment about how he would probably fail this too, anyway.

he tries to forget their words when he moves up to seoul, tries to ignore it, but it stays with him for years

otherwise, the move to seoul is just as difficult. miles away from all his friends and jiwoo and the city streets he knows by heart, the river, the isolated farm, he feels more alone in the most populated city of the country.

so he throws himself into training. they all do, of course. but for the second half of his teenage life, it is almost all he knows. the company makes it clear that their next group will have a heavy focus on their dancing, and gunwoo is anything but a dancer. what takes others minutes takes him hours to learn. he gets frustrated easy, remembers those words he keeps trying to forget, and it's the anger that boils every time he remembers them that motivates him to never stop. he practices in the tiny dorm until others tell him to shut up. he sits outside the doors, the windows of dance classes provided at other dance studios that he can’t afford and tries to mimic them on his own time. he stays up at night with his stomach grumbling and his eyes heavy producing song after song after song to show the company that he has something to bring to the group, despite his weakness.

it never gets easy, but it becomes routine and seoul is no longer scary. no longer lonely. he finds friends, he finds his passion in music like he’s never done before and with proper equipment and training at his disposal, he prospers.

he busks at hongdae, he performs at café open mic nights, he throws together a soundcloud account and gives himself the stagename gun. he posts tracks whenever he can and when he posts his first mini mixtape at eighteen, the response is more than he expects. it’s nothing much in the grand scheme of things, but it gets passed around a little, and when he requests to book performances, some organizers recognize his name, his music. it’s euphoric, getting on stage and hearing a few people sing along to his lyrics. his music. his work. it fuels him, drives him to release another mixtape the following year to the same amount of moderate success, drives him to train, train, train because if this is what it feels like to be on stage, to make everyone know your name, then so be it.

he’ll be an idol.

he'll be gun. if gunwoo is fated for failure, at least gun doesn't seem to be.

FATE PANN TITLE: DO YOU GUYS REMEMBER THIS GUY FROM THOSE PICTURES OF VIXEN?

i heard from my uncle's friend that he's a trainee at kjh and he really did date one of the members. i can't say which member, but i'm sure everyone can guess which one~ apparently, aside from the main rapper's mess... another reason kjh dropped vixen was because of all those pictures and rumors about him dating that vixen member.

kjh is about to debut his group soon and they wanted to make sure his name's not attached to someone like her ㅋㅋ so they're just getting rid of the group entirely ㅋㅋ kjh is really sly... i bet they made them break up too or something like that~ it's funny though, this guy's already making trouble and he hasn't debuted yet... kjh is really a mess right now aren't they

that is, until he makes a bit of a mess and even gun is at risk of failing.

he does as he's always done and breaks the rules. specifically, he dates. and not only that, but he dates one of the company's active idols. his own debut is right around the corner around when they're caught and vixen is already in a mess of their own. there's talk about dropping him from the lineup entirely, but they do the opposite instead. all the rumors about him and the vixen member are just that anyway, rumors with blurry photographic proof that can easily be denied and they'd already been on the verge of disbanding all of vixen.

so, they take this chance and do. they keep gun on track to debut (with a tighter leash around him now) and try to drown out all his rumors, then disband vixen instead.

this is the first real taste he gets of the company's stronghold on him and his anger starts heating slowly within him again.

he stays, though, because what else does he have?

FATE PANN TITLE: CAN YOU GUYS BELIEVE KJH WENT FROM VIXEN TO THIS?????

i was a fan of that gun guy's old mixtapes before so i was looking forward to his debut but... what is this sh*t... ah, why did he have to debut as an idol, what a waste.. the group seems so f*cking try hard...

maybe because i knew of him before but gun especially made me cringe, he was trying too hard to seem cool but ㅋㅋㅋ his chain necklaces look like they weighed more than him....

after the mess is cleaned up and atlas debuts, he gets to keep his stage name because it fits their image at the time and with his moderate success at least around the hongdae scene, they think it may bring in some fans.

they're wrong.

when he sees their debut concept, he’s –

well, he’s upset. but he’s an idol, so what can he do but go along with it?

the seeds of doubt have already been planted, though, and they only grow the more they prep. the choreography is hard, the styling feels gimmicky, and the music video does too. it feels like everything he never wanted to do, it feels like tarnishing what he’s done so far as gun underground, and it just feels. miserable. he feels miserable.

useless, too, like his father always said. because nothing he suggests gets taken into account, waved off instead. because he’s just a prop, or at least that’s what he feels like and everything in him sinks.

they debut the day after he turns twenty to little fanfare but plenty of criticism, those who were fans of his mixtapes commenting he’s sold himself out, that they’re not looking forward any longer. he agrees.

but he’s an idol.

he performs on stage because that’s his job, but the euphoria isn’t there like it had been underground. replaced instead with some sinking feeling he doesn’t know how to define at twenty years old. doesn’t know how to get rid of except with anger, with alcohol.

his drinking starts with just a shot or two of soju upon returning to the dorms, snuck into his room and hidden from their managers. then shots turn into bottles, and dorms turn into convenience store fronts. then his anger bleeds into his work environment and some staff leave blind items about him on pann.

no one ever guesses his name, though, because who is atlas anyway?

two years into their career and the public still refuses to respond well to their releases. two years, and the company still refuses to listen to his, and the other atlas members’, ideas. and so two years is how long it takes for gun and the rest of atlas’ rap line to band together and threaten for what they’ve wanted the most, what gun has always dreamed of: having more creative control with the group direction.

it’s a huge risk, he and the other boys know this. going behind the other half of the group’s backs, risking their contracts, their livelihoods, their chance in this industry because if they fail they know there’s no chance in hell anyone will take them in anymore. but it’s a risk they’re willing to take, and one that pays off massively, because to their surprise: they get what they want.

and the public loves it too.

suddenly, they’re thrust right into the spotlight.

suddenly, there’s more responsibility shoved onto his shoulders.

but gun loves it, thrives in it. the stage feels better, now, the feeling he’s missed from all those years ago returning in full force. the music feels good, too, the lyrics. because they’re now actually his in part, songs he can proudly put his name on, songs he will gladly ramble on and on about on vlives and interviews.

there’s a crack in the atlas infrastructure, but gun thinks it’s all been worth it. even if they are running a marathon now, and have been for three straight years. it’s not without consequences, of course. what used to just be small pann rumors and blind items of some nobody idol being an asshole to work with, or of some nobody idol supposedly dating around the stylists and flirting with fans, with other idols and every girl he ever collaborates with are now rumors of an idol everyone in the business knows and have become very real threats to the image he and atlas have built up.

now the pressure and stress keeps building and building, weighing heavier with not only the threat of those rumors blowing up, but now also with every new milestone reached, every comeback, ever growing expectation.

and so slowly but surely, the euphoria fades again, replaced with worry, with burden, with feelings of not being able to meet impossible expectations. with his parents words from all those years ago resurfacing and reminding him that he's never good enough.

now, it’s only a matter of time before gun cracks, because even atlas shrugged while holding the weight of the world.

#id.bio #id.atlas #id.kjh #id.min yoongi

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houseofmind · 8 years ago

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2 Year Anniversary PD Update

A lot has happened since I last brought you up to speed with my life and academic endeavors. Given that my last update post was over 2 years ago, I wasn’t sure where to start. With that said, this post has been opened and worked on (and opened and worked on, and so forth) so it’s a long one :X If you’re new, welcome! Also, please be sure to check out the list of things I learned during my PhD.

Spring/Summer 2016

Briefly, I moved to Pittsburgh about a week after that update post. I crammed as much of my stuff as I could along with Fausto (my cat) into a rental car and drove to my new place amidst a snowstorm. I made it there safely (although I had to make an overnight stop that I swear gave my cat anxiety). My new home exceeded my expectations (2 bedroom, living room, kitchen, basement, washer/dryer, short commute < $1,000), but leaving NYC and most of my friends was bittersweet.

I went into lab the next day after arriving in Pittsburgh. THAT felt really weird because it was when reality hit. New job, new role, new boss (and new style), new techniques, new approaches, new life basically. My first challenge in the lab was learning the “bread and butter” technique: in vivo extracellular recordings of VTA dopamine neurons. Initially, this scared the shit out of me because I had 0 electrophysiology experience so I was worried about how long it would take for me to be decent and start collecting good data. I was trained by the RAP in the lab; I shadowed her for a week and copied down as much as I could. Then, I did an animal every day for a month. That’s about how long it took for me to get comfortable. (Side note: if you move to a lab and need to learn a new technique, my advice is to attack it aggressively until you learn it!). At the beginning I encountered problems such as having my animal bleed too much, giving too much anesthetic, taking too long (a whole day for just one surgery), making bad electrodes, not being able to find dopamine neurons, etc. The really cool part was seeing myself get better: not making the same mistakes, being able to correct mistakes when they happened, becoming faster and more efficient, optimizing my procedure. It was a great reminder of why I love doing science and that I am capable of learning new things :]

Then came the part where my advisor asked me to think of projects related to his prior work and funding. Call this my second challenge in the lab. He suggested a “safe” project and a “pie in the sky” project. I really appreciated his flexibility and willingness to have me choose projects and questions that I cared about, while also offering his guidance and steering me in better directions. After I pored over his grants and (then still in press papers), I came up with 2 ideas and presented my experimental design to the lab. Next, I got to work! During this time I received funding from a T32 program within the Psychiatry at Pitt, which would cover my stipend until I was able to secure my own funding (more on this in Fall 2015).

Work was interrupted for a couple of days in May that I took off to attend my graduation in NYC. My parents and one of my brothers were able to fly in from Puerto Rico and I was really pleased. I am the only (and first!) PhD in either side of the family so I could tell that this was a big deal to them and that they were really proud of me. Obviously, this made me feel proud of myself :D

Here is a pic of me on graduation day:

After I came back, it was time to get down to business. My first cohort of “real animals” was ready for all the single unit dopamine (DA) neuron recordings I had to do. Even though I had only been doing this technique for ~2 months, I managed to get some interesting preliminary data that my PI was enthusiastic about, he suggested I write an F32 (NIH postdoctoral fellowship grant). For the August deadline, meep! Most of June and July was spent working around the clock to not only gather and analyze the data, but also write the proposal. IT WAS INSANE. During this time, I also traveled to San Sebastián in the Basque Country (within Spain) for the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology (ISDP) meeting. It was my first time out of the country since 2013 and it was quite exciting because I was awarded their dissertation prize! I was only there for 4-5 days but I managed to hang out with my PhD advisor and conference buddies, gave a talk on my dissertation research, meet some pretty cool people from all over, take in some breathtaking views, eat pintxos, and go to the beach. I guess you could call this my “vacation” over the summer. Finally, the last exciting thing to happen over the summer was that I received an invitation from the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) to attend their annual meeting in December (more on this below).

Fall/Winter 2015

After submitting my grant, I continued to perform experiments related to my F32 proposal project. I also started generating animals for another project in which I would look at the effects of chronic mild stress (i.e. depression model) in a neurodevelopmental model of schizophrenia-like deficits. I also got the grant score for my initial submission, which I knew was not within funding range so that meant resubmission in the spring. What can you do? During this semester I participated in the weekly career and research development (CARD) seminar, which is oriented towards helping postdocs gain the skills necessary for transitioning into an independent research position. This was required for me to get the T32 $$$, but I would strongly advise anyone who has access to these types of programs to attend! Topics covered included but were not limited to: how to negotiate, conflict management, how to prepare a job talk, authorship, mock K review process, etc... There is also a writing block portion of the seminar in which participants are divided into topic specific mini groups and get feedback from at least 2 other faculty on a weekly basis before grant submission. Besides being able to cultivate a positive and professional relationship with my T32 director, I’d say that the CARD seminar was the best thing about participating in this T32 program.

In terms of travel and meetings, I attended the SfN 2015 conference in Chicago and I’ve got to say that my experience there was so positive it even made me change my mind about Chicago!!! It was the first time I was attending this meeting without having a poster so I focused on trying to meet the dopamine/electrophysiology folks and attending all the socials I could fit in :D Right after SfN, I went to NYC to visit some friends still in grad school over Thanksgiving. I cannot stress how important it is to keep in touch with your friends and make time for them. Anyhow, I got back and then it was time to fly down to Florida for the ACNP meeting. This was my first official presentation as a PD so I was really nervous (also presenting a new technique, new project, new everything!) but my boss was really supportive and the people that came by my poster were kind, insightful and encouraging. The location is also superb and the science top notch, I think this has dethroned Gordon Amygdala as my favorite meeting (most of those people were here anyway!) and I will definitely keep applying for that travel award for as long as I have to. After ACNP I flew home for Christmas and got an invitation from my advisor to co-author a review paper w/ another PD in the lab. This paper has been published already and can be found here.

Spring 2016

I basically spent the spring working on additional experiments for my main project that I thought were necessary after presenting at ACNP and getting feedback (i.e. extra controls, increasing n, diff stats, etc...). This was a good thing because I also used some of that data for my F32 resubmission, which was due in April. As I wrote that sentence I remembered that this time was particularly busy for me in the lab as the cohort of animals for my other project (MAM-CMS) was born and I was running 2 behaviors + recording all of these animals (8 group total). It was so crazy busy (yet productive) that I swore to myself never to schedule that many experiments for the same couple of months ever again.

Summer 2016

I presented a new and improved version of my main project poster at the Society for Biological Psychiatry in Atlanta. This was very cool because I had never been there (omg the aquarium!) and I got to reconnect with a lot of people I had met during my PhD but had not seen since the start of my PD. Apparently they really like this meeting and it is one of their go-tos. One of these people was my PhD advisor, whom I worked with on trying to wrap up and expedite my remaining PhD papers. Another person was another female minority graduate student that I knew during my PhD at NYU. It was great catching up with her and hearing about all the great science she will be doing in her PD lab and how the transition was for her. I remembered thinking that there are many paths that can lead to the same outcome, and feeling at peace. 2 interpersonal crises later, I received the score for my F32 resubmission and it was so good I A) almost fell off my chair and B) started crying (like, really). If you’re anything like me, you probably already know that you cannot have it all. It always feels like either I’m great in my personal life and so so at work or I’m killing it at work and everything else has gone to shit. To me, the score meant funding was pretty much a given, so it tipped the scales back to the killing it at work scenario and I settled for being happy with that and harnessing what was left of my happiness into that new positive direction. You can read about my F32 project here. I spent the rest of the summer celebrating my birthday, good fortune and prepping my first PD paper for submission. Also, I GOT A CAR! For the first time in nearly 7 years since I did my PhD in Manhattan and lol cars in NYC.

Fall 2016

Remember that slump I mentioned I was in at the beginning of the summer? I decided to get over it by taking a solo trip to Thailand :] That is a post in itself (which will likely not end up here) but it was truly a once in a lifetime trip. I liked that it was hard (+16 hours to get there), new (first time ever in Asia) and was something totally out of my comfort zone. I met people from all over the US, rode elephants, visited UNESCO world heritage sites, learned about Buddhism, bar-hopped in Khao San Road and the red light district, shipped in a professional masseuse from the temples for a full body massage, ate weird food, etc. etc. Some of these pics can be found my scrolling down in my IG. I feel like everyone should do something like that for themselves, at least every once in a while. I also learned that culture shock is funny because it can happen once you get back from your trip. I had a soft meltdown upon arriving at JFK and spent my first night back talking to a friend/processing everything I had witnessed. Can’t wait to go back and this time make it to Krabi or Phuket!

During this semester, I also submitted my initial paper for my main project and added experiments to my secondary project. In more exciting news, I published a first author PhD paper on the effects of early life stress on social behavior and neural activity in cortical and limbic areas. You can read it here. I also got a travel award to present this work at the Society for Social Neuroscience in San Diego jus prior to SfN 2016, where I presented my first SfN poster as a PD. I was overwhelmed by the positive response and I got to do a podcast w/ Deb Budding from Neurocurious. Even though I was dead tired and delirious from my poster session being immediately before, it was SO MUCH FUN <3 I just checked and its still not up but will link it here when its available! SfN 2016 was followed by ACNP 2016 (first time presenting my MAM/CMS data, now DEFINITELY my favorite meeting), although I flew down to Florida early so I could make it to Art Basel (basically a conference, but for art!). I had such a great time that I almost forgot that my paper was rejected :( When I got back to Pitt, I focused on collecting data for the last experiments in yet another (small) project (that I have not mentioned previously yet). Then I went off to Puerto Rico to spend NYE w/ my family and friends :D

Winter 2016-2017 (aka where am I now)

I published another PhD paper. This one is a co-first paper and I’m really proud of it because it represents an effort by our group to incorporate techniques used in humans to facilitate translation of findings between animal models and humans.

I revised and resubmitted my previously rejected paper. System says it’s still under review so we’ll see what happens...

I submitted a grant based on an idea I had last fall that ties in nicely with my current work (pitched the idea to advisor at SfN 2016, luckily he agrees it is interesting/worth the shot).

Collected prelim data for above-mentioned grant.

Organizing the outline for a review I want to write that’s related to my grant. A colleague/mentor gave me the idea to do this since it’s a good chance to get a publication of all that lit search you did anyway!

Put in 2 travel award applications (1 no, 1 still waiting) to present my work

Nearly done collecting data for that random project 3 that slipped my mind for most of this post. I think this is because it’s not my main project and its a follow-up of someone else’s project. Presented this data at lab meeting and got some feedback about graphing/analyzing data. Working on this and aiming to submit by early summer.

Traveling to Boston in 2 weeks to present in the Poverty and the Brain symposium at the Eastern Psychological Association meeting

Accepted a position as an ad hoc member of ACNP’s minority task force in order to help increase the participation of underrepresented minorities (URMs) in the college and to help retain them

Accepted a position as Review Editor in the Editorial Board of Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience

WHEW. I finally got it all out. There you have it, what I’ve been up to since starting my postdoc and why I haven’t been more active on Twitter/here. Hopefully it goes someways in attenuating my I-should-be-posting-more-guilt :P

Also, please feel free to write if you have any questions about PD life, the grad to PD transition or anything else you have read about here : ) In case you didn’t know, I started this blog as a grad student who DID NOT think they were going to make it in academia so the fact that this blog is still alive and so many of you still follow it/engage motivates me to keep it going for as long as I can. Maybe one day I’ll have a job and can look back at everything that led to that there. That’s the dream. Until next time!

xoxo

Dr. M

#science #neuroscience #outreach #scicomm #scilife #lab life #women in science #stem #life of a scientist #me #academia #flashbackfriday

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