#and actually this highlights my whole frustration with the conversation around mental health just about anywhere

[edge-oftheworld]

when I was in high school there was a tendency whenever there was an attractive boy to simply fan over him. in a way that talked over everything he might say for himself and created a narrative that completely ignored, the fact in some cases, that he was really struggling—or if he was struggling, to pin all the blame on the girl he’s dating and completely ignore the thousands of other factors (no it can’t be mental illness or unaccommodated disability or systemic abuse or exploitation and if he is in an abusive relationship we won’t ever consider the factors that put him at risk for that)

and I’m not saying this fandom is like that. I get the need for privacy around some things and how in public conversations sometimes it’s a lot more respectful to stick to the positives (everyone who does that, I admire you) or even the struggles that are talked about publicly, show respect by not reading too far into them. there’s a time and place for that. but sometimes I feel like our only options are shitty and ableist gossip or totally ignoring the systemic and structural issues we know exist in something like the music industry until someone dies and then we’re looking for someone to blame. friends, there is a point where the respectful thing is to listen to what someone says and come together to make things better. and you can learn how to have that conversation respectfully. please do

[therewrites]

We Are Who We Are Overall Thoughts *spoilers*

This review will be discussing briefly some of the episodes so far, so SPOILERS

So I started watching the HBO original series, We Are Who We Are, and I am conflicted. When I initially watched it, the dialogue made it hard for me to enjoy it so I stopped. Then after a couple of weeks after its airing, I thought, what the hell? And this time, I was pleasantly surprised. I always maintain the belief that pilot episodes are either boring, messy, or just bad so I try to push past it in order to get to the good shit. The pilot for We Are Who We Are was...I’m not sure how to explain...different? It certainly wasn’t bad and it made an impression on me, but this show as a whole is hard to limit by just a few words. It’s really something that you should watch and experience yourself.

It was only after the first 3 episodes that I began to understand the tone and mood that Luca Guadagnino was trying to convey. A lot of the time, the dialogue is abrupt and choppy and can make no sense. It can be frustrating, especially when you have two characters that aren’t communicating effectively. But I think that was the point. Guadagnino is a very realistic director, he captures the most realistic elements in a film. A lot of the conversations between characters is meant to emulate real life. Like, what the hell do you say when a conversation becomes awkward? Well, nothing sometimes.

While Guadagnino’s typical cinematography may suggest whimsy, in WAWWA’s case the small structured and synthetic model of the military base is juxtaposed to the very concrete characters. When I started to view the show less as simply a televised airing of fictional characters and problems, and instead looked at them as people, I began to really enjoy it. 

Take the main character of Fraser, played by Jack Dylan Grazer. Fraser is meant to be seen as an extremely complex and troubled kid, but the difference between him and every other teen in a coming-of-age drama is that he isn’t polished. His drinking and drug habit isn’t framed as romantic or beautiful, in fact most of the time it’s portrayed as his weakness of sorts. In the first episode, Fraser has one of his mothers drive him home after getting pretty wasted and Luca graces us with a direct shot of him throwing up. And before that, Fraser is stumbling on a bridge when he drunkenly falls and cuts his face. Everything the character does is messy, uncoordinated, yet extremely real and relatable. Hell, in one shot you can clearly see him do a Naruto run!

Caitlin/Harper is a character that I enjoyed watching, as well. Jordan Seamon did a fantastic job and I really connected with their character. Initially we see Caitlin as this mysterious girl, and in the pilot we are meant to assume that their relationship with Fraser is supposed to develop into a romantic one. This is not the case as it seems that Caitlin is trying to come to terms with who they are. The biggest shift in Caitlin’s character isn’t their friendship with Fraser but probably when they get their period. 

This was a moment that even I related to, even though I am cis when I first got my period I didn’t tell my mom until the day after. The possible confusion and shift in their reality that Caitlin felt was only heightened with the conflict of their boyfriend wanting to be more physically intimate, and Fraser’s eventual discover of Harper. I would have like to see exactly why Fraser seemed drawn to Caitlin. I’m assuming viewers were supposed to think that Fraser is attracted to her, or something. But both Caitlin/Harper and Fraser are queer coded and their respective sexualities are alluded to not being straight. It would’ve made their standing as platonic friends more clear if this had been established stronger. 

I definitely think the writer could have devoted more time to giving certain characters proper conversations. It would’ve given more development to certain characters and better context for things. However even without that, there is a lot that the audience is showed that can’t be told through dialogue. The power struggle between Sarah and Richard being one. So far, there hasn’t been any explanation as to why they have a such a volatile relationship other than Richard being a homophobe. 

Through deeper inspection, I was able to interpret it as: Richard may heavily resent the fact the Sarah was promoted to Colonel and not him. It is never made clear who has the better credentials, Sarah or Richard, but assuming that she was the one promoted it is a safe guess. This may be highlighted by the fact that Sarah is a women, and also gay. Even before episode 7, it was clear that Richard did not respect her authority. I also interpreted it as Richard being upset that and openly gay women was promoted instead of him, a black man. 

Of course this is just based on my own personal knowledge of how the U.S. military can be towards people of color and LGBTQ+. Regardless, the competitive tension between two parents is palpable without needing dialogue to explain.  

When conflict happens, I can kind of figure out which characters are going to react and which one’s will stay silent. I think the show is trying to accomplish a drastically realistic and raw series. It took me while to adjust to it, but by maybe the 2nd or 3rd episode, it starts to grow on you. Despite not liking a good majority of the characters, I was very surprised by how invested I was in them. 

Like, Danny is my least favorite character because he displays very abusive and explosive tendencies, and doesn’t seem to care about the world around him. However, getting glimpses into his character and seeing how Richard ignores him for Caitlin/Harper, his suicidal thoughts, and how he is trying to reclaim his cultural and religious background makes me empathize with him. 

Even though I hate his character, I can see that he is struggling. I appreciate the way that this show freely shows dark skinned black boys dealing with mental health issues, and personal development. Rarely are issues like suicide talked about in the black community, so seeing Danny talk about it and Craig offering(admittedly poor)comfort was touching. This is a general vibe that I get from nearly all the characters on WAWWA. I also appreciated the how Danny is actively trying to convert to Islam. In shows, rarely is Islam ever portrayed in a positive manner. Especially when female characters are shown to be struggling with their religion, Islam is shown as this barrier that prevents them from living life. Hopefully it goes without saying that the “taking off the hijab” as a way to show that a female character is “liberated” is overplayed and does not offer any respect to the countless Muslim women who choose to wear hijabs. 

Now I think the pacing of some of the storylines could have been handled a bit more gracefully. Like how we jump from Fraser and Harper being kind of enemies(not really but you know what I mean), to just them hanging out in Richard’s boat was jarring. I would have at least liked to see the scene of them talking on the rocks at the beach. It would’ve given more insight on Caitlin/Harper’s character and also on Fraser too. Also how quickly Maggie and Lu(Jennifer but I love the name Lubaba, it’s my aunt’s name)jump into a physical affair. I just would have liked to see a build up of tension between all these characters but I don’t think this entirely ruins the plot. 

I was very iffy when I learned that the show would be focusing on trans identity and gender and sexuality, but not actually hire a trans male actor. I was afraid that the show would completely botch the experiences of being transgender, and honestly I don’t have the authority to speak on whether or not this affects the quality of the show. I am cisgender, and only can empathize with this particular situation as much as I can. But I would like to hear to the opinion of someone who is trans and elaborate on the ways that they did/didn’t like Jordan Kristine Seamón’s portrayal. 

Now at the time I’m writing this, the season finale has yet to come out. But I’d also like to briefly discuss the most recent episode and how it developed Jonathan and Fraser’s relationship. I was VERY worried that Guadagnino was going to take their relationship in the direction of inappropriate. While nearly all the depictions of Jonathan and his actions have been trough Fraser’s pov, it didn’t stop me from side-eyeing some of the interactions they shared. Of course after it was mentioned that Jonathan was supposed to be in his late 20s, nearing 30 I was immediately uncomfortable with the very flirty behavior he exhibited. 

So when the scene of Fraser going up to his apartment after Craig’s death, I was very on edge. If Guadagnino had gone the extra mile to show an even larger age gap then I would’ve been pissed. While I enjoyed Call Me By Your Name, the implication that sexual relationships between barely legal teenagers and adults well into their 20s was sensual is something that I see as very weird now that I’m older. So seeing Jonathan as the object of Fraser’s affections made me extremely warry. 

And honestly, I’m still surprised that the scene even happened in its entirety. I’m sure that Jack was not in any danger of being exploited but there were definitely points while watching I thought, what the fuck is going on? I was very worried that it would escalate, but I was happy to see that Fraser was the one who stopped it from going further.  It made sense to me that this scene took so many liberties to be as graphic as possible without being too graphic, in order to show why a situation like that would be scary and confusing for Fraser. It wasn’t lost to me that Marta and Jonathan were the one’s initiating all the sexual advances. They held all the power in that scenario, even more so because Fraser is younger and has the tendencies to not make the best decisions. Though it seemed that Fraser was trying, he knew that the situation was fucked up.

I’d like to hear what JDG felt and thought doing this scene. What was his character’s thought process?

I’ve seen a lot of people compare the show heavily to CMBYN, which is fine. Besides certain cinematic parallels that people pointed out, I don’t see the clear comparison. CMBYN is more of a love story and it’s more polished than WAWWA. Now when I say tat, I don’t mean it as a negative. Rather, We Are Who We is obviously more devoted to realism and its characters. I appreciate the inclusion of more LGBTQ+ people and black main characters with development, something that CMBYN lacked. And for some people who didn’t like the show based solely on the fact that it wasn’t a CMBYN tv show, I suggest just going into it with no expectations and enjoy the mess. 

And I’d also like to take a moment to commend Jack Dylan Grazer for his job in We Are Who We Are. All of the main cast are amazing actors and actresses and did a really good job bringing their characters to life. Though, I had always associated JDG with supporting roles that, while highlighted his acting talent, only put him in a one-dimensional light. As good as It 2017 was, JDG’s role of Eddie is only meant to be seen as a comic relief. In WAWWA, I was able to forget that he was teen actor, Jack Dylan Grazer, and really see him as Fraser. It’s worth mentioning that in a GQ interview, Grazer also mentioned how this role made him reevaluate is approach to acting. 

And after reading an interview he did with a Interview Germany, with him saying he spent months in Italy reading the script and trying to perfectly craft this character, I was immensely impressed. I hope that he knows that all his hard work payed off and made a really dynamic and interesting character. I really hope that in the future JDG continues with more mature or multi-dimensional roles because he displayed that he has the talent to do so. Him being so young makes me optimistic in knowing that he is definitely going places in his career. I also hope that there will be a season 2 of WAWWA because despite having hour long episodes, the show still felt way too short. There is a lot about Fraser’s character, and all the others’ characters, that I want more information and analysis on.

[dropintomanga]

Attack on Titan's Ending - We're Now All Free

So this was finally it, huh? A manga that debuted in 2009 which became an anime/manga phenomenon in 2013 and would later still have a significant place in manga history ended this month. Hajime Isayama's Attack on Titan was a title that I liked a lot and while there were some great moments in its final arc, the manga seemed like it tried a bit too hard to emphasize the complexity of human beings. Then again, maybe that's been the whole point of the series.

Spoilers abound after the jump.

I got to read up on the chapters that made up Volume 34. To be honest, it felt like somewhat of a mess. The whole backstory about Ymir Fritz confuses me a bit. I know that I will need to re-read the entire series to get a clearer idea. I got that the series became some kind of commentary on how people are always finding ways to divide one another via their differences.

It's just that I missed the old days, pre-basement. Attack on Titan was labeled as a horror action manga to a certain degree. I recently was reading an article about CM Punk (a former WWE wrestler who was very popular, but left the business after frustrations with management) and he talked about a horror movie he was cast in. Punk was asked about his love of horror and he said:

"I grew up on it, you know? I grew up on it because it was taboo. When things are taboo and you’re told you’re not allowed to watch it, what do you do? You watch it! You watch a lot of it. As you grow older, smarter and get some wisdom about the world, you realize that horror is the genre that tackles, before any other movie genre, the hard-hitting issues. Dating all the way back to George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead tackling racism. I love a great slasher movie, right? Jason Voorhees and some camp counselors. Just let them loose."

As many fans who follow Attack on Titan will tell you, the story takes a huge shift from the days of Titans eating humans and the mystery surrounding them to a world where humanity is actually thriving and politics are a big reason why the events of Attack on Titan are the way they are. I know some people dropped the series after that. I don't blame them because to be frank, the series loses some of its unique appeal as most fans have seen stories of the latter quite often. There were still horror elements (albeit very few), but the tension delivered later on in most scenes weren't ones that gave readers chills down their spines.

I wrote a lot about Attack on Titan. I wrote about Mikasa, Hange, Annie, Eren's stress, Levi's past, etc. But once that time-skip happened, I never felt compelled to write about Attack on Titan much. There was some good exploration about Reiner's guilt about his actions early on. But nothing was super-compelling to talk about honestly to me. I think the time-gap between the 1st and 2nd anime seasons didn't help and so many exciting series (mostly from Shonen Jump) were coming out around that time period.

I did think the ending was okay. I do believe that Isayama was trying to point out that bringing real change in society comes from talking to one another in person despite differences. This was reflected in a campfire scene before the final battle where all of the "good guys" and the "bad guys" sat together to hash it out. You don't have to like one another, but never let differences become radicalized to the point of no return. I'll admit that this isn't easy and these things never are. Plus, talk should mostly be a starting point to get rid of injustice.

What I've learned from my own experiences is that I sometimes get anxious over certain conversations with people that I may not agree with. But once they happen in a safe environment and no one's shouting, I actually learn something and so does the other person. I can't assume everyone who disagrees with me is an awful person. I will never, ever suggest social media as a way to have those kinds of conversations because some people are either too awful or just say well-intentioned things without thinking about the person's true feelings.

And about people I truly dislike, I just look at them with pity because I know they're just being brainwashed by grifters/scammers/cult-like leaders.

Having those kinds of perspectives really benefited my mental health, so I guess I can appreciate Isayama for highlighting what it means to live among people who I don't always feel comfortable around.

I also love the Ackermans (Mikasa and Levi) for being the ones to take out the end-game threats. They're a family known to be Titan-killers, but there's also some Asian blood within them. I got a funny sense of Asian pride in seeing Mikasa and Levi wreck shit and getting respect for it.

While the ending felt similar to Code Geass, I kind of understand the view point on being the world's enemy to bring the world together. It's just a bit too naive. Even after all that, people are still at conflict with another only without Titans around. Maybe that's the whole point - the fact that self-sacrifice isn't a panacea to life's complexities. Martyrdom is sometimes worshipped a bit too much and there's a good number of disenfranchised young men who fall in love with that idea.

To end this post, I think back to how Isayama came up with the idea of Attack on Titan. He said that the story came to him after seeing a frustrated customer grab him by the collar while working at an internet cafe. Isayama noted how scary the person was and it was hard to communicate with him. The whole point of Attack on Titan is not just freedom, but getting past communication barriers with other people we fear.

When it comes to freedom, a lot of people seem to have a naïve and/or child-like sense of it. I see this a lot during the COVID-19 pandemic. They think freedom is basically the right to do whatever you want and not be punished for it. However, true freedom involves doing as you please and having the ability to be responsible to yourself and other people.

I know this viewpoint irks people, but the whole ending gives off that vibe. I have to respect Isayama for that.

I think that's all I have to say about Attack on Titan. This series played a big part in helping the anime and manga industries post-2008. It also made me see the possibility of a mainstream shonen hit that wasn't from Jump. I was one of the first people to pay attention to the series before it was licensed in English. I even got praise from Kodansha folks saying that I played a huge part in bringing the series over.

So I have a lot of fun memories. One of my personal favorite memories was during NYCC 2013 where a huge gathering of Attack on Titan cosplayers at Kodansha Comics' booth and Japanese news programming was there to film it. I got to witness all of that interaction between Americans and Japanese. I left the gathering thinking that things were really on the up-and-up for anime and manga perception over in the U.S. We're now in a golden age of anime/manga and Attack on Titan deserves credit for bringing us to it.

So thanks, Hajime Isayama, for showing the world what Kodansha stories are all about - inspiring impossible stories.

[professorspork]

i know I always say this, but, last night REALLY WAS the BUSIEST OF DAYS in the Reaper War

before I get into yesterday’s gameplay, I realized I forgot to react to the fact that Jacob got Brynn pregnant, which -- again, I suppose that wraps up everything about his backstory in a nice little bow, lad of the bad dad gets to be good dad, but like... it still gives like they gave his character incredibly short shrift. so. humbug to that.

but I have bigger fish to fry (ha ha, literally, see what I did there?) because ALL OF THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE, AND ALL OF THIS WILL HAPPEN AGAIN. I rescued Ann Bryson, and learned that -- shocker -- she had a bad relationship with her dad. I uh may have condoned her getting a bit of a nasty nose bleed in order to track the Leviathan to Despoina, where as ever I got to read a bunch of people’s weirdly specific sad diaries. my jump into the depths was very cool and scary (does no one get the bends in the future???) and I enjoyed my The First-style body swapping conversation with the Leviathan in which I tried to prove I’m ~special and this time is ~different. on the one hand, I don’t know why I expected the origin of the Reapers to be anything other than yet another story of AI gone wrong, but this whole cinematic parallels thing is starting to edge out of “everything matches up and is of a piece” territory and into the murkier waters of “we kind of only had one idea, actually.” to reveal that the Reapers’ plan is just stray AI code to ‘preserve life’ is at once very chilling and a bit of a let down; when I think back to when I talked to Sovereign for the first time and I had my initial “GOD IS A MACHINE THAT WANTS TO KILL US” freak out, I was in fact very on board for an evil plan too broad and complex for a human mind to fathom. for it to be this feels kind of predictable and pedestrian.

that said, watching the Leviathan take down a huge-ass Reaper capital ship with its pulse signal was very satisfying.

oh no this is going to get very long, now that you’ve had this fun teaser i’m gonna put the rest under a cut

then we kicked it on over to Thessia and I highkey traumatized my girlfriend. I feel like I should have seen the reveal that the asari were more advanced because they were hoarding prothean tech coming, but I didn’t. hearing and seeing all the asari commandos helping me get wiped out was a real gut punch, but didn’t hold a candle to my frustration at the confrontation with Kai Leng. I’m not mad that the game wouldn’t let me beat him, per se (though I still think it’s ridiculous that I’ve taken down a Reaper by myself and I’m supposed to be afraid of a dude with a knife), but I am pissed that it all happened with combat cut scene magic. this game has given me difficult combat before! if, in fighting Kai Leng, I’d genuinely felt outmatched, I think I would have tolerated it better -- or if the combat had been me fighting the Harvesters and then Kai Leng sneaked around me because that’s what he does, he sneaks. but to have such a relatively easy combat sequence with him that felt very much like winning just to have it snatched away from me... maddening. WHY CAN’T I BEAT THIS ONE GUY AND HIS KNIFE? I don’t want to be all “Kai Leng is a Mary Sue” but like... he got to murder Thane and then beat me in overtime, and his entire vibe is I exist to sell action figures even though that’s not, as far as I know, any part of Mass Effect’s profit model. so it’s just frustrating. and for them to then rub salt in the wound and have him EMAIL ME to be like “lol snowflake r u triggered” was just. MY PATIENCE IS THIN, ME3. DON’T PUSH ME.

seeing Shepard have to admit to failure was a gutting scene, though, and a necessary one. and watching Liara fight with Javik was highkey satisfying, too. 

so anyway, because i was BIG MAD at Cerberus I tracked them first to that one N7 communications mission-- 

(Sample dialogue: Helen: Why aren’t you using cover? You’re going to die! Use cover! Me, jumping out of cover and rushing Cerberus goons trying to melee them to death: BECAUSE I’M MAD)

-- and then to Sanctuary, and HOO BOY WAS THAT A LOT OR WHAT. from the second I heard Oriana’s voice I had a pretty good idea of what was going on here, but seeing in in practice was still creepy af. and like. i’m just gonna go out on a limb and say INDOCTRINATION BAD. I AM NOT A FAN. shout out to that one capitalist volus on the Citadel who was like “lol sanctuary is a scam don’t waste your money” i guess

additionally, last night was significant because I picked not one but TWO ENTIRE renegade convince options, because I saw no reason to be nice to terrorist daddy the illusive man or actual terrorist daddy Mr. Lawson. after I got through all that, Helen explained to me how difficult it apparently is to keep Miranda alive by the end of that confrontation, so I got to do some WHAT LIKE IT’S HARD? preening at how Nice Sheps Finish First sometimes. 

but as usual, the real highlight is getting to know my crew better and talking with them. I finally got some prime flirting in with Liara during Leviathan. it was VERY cute when she was like “man what’s with you rescuing damsels from dig sites? if you end up teaming up with her to save the world and bring down the shadow broker i’ll be very jealous. ... and concerned” and WEIRDLY CUTER when she was like “hey the only tentacled alien who gets to mess with your brain is ME” because Liara is like 115 by now considering how slowly i’m getting through these missions and she still does not know what romance is. 

[no but seriously, Liara does not know what romance is. half the time I’m still going WE’RE STILL DATING, RIGHT? every time she refuses to talk to me. and even after Thessia, when everyone was like “go talk to Liara, she needs you” and even JAVIK of all people was like “you’re dating Liara, right? it’s so obvious” our interactions did not feel particularly... romantic? it’s a tricky needle to thread, obviously, I’m not looking for sloppy makeouts right after millions of her people died, but it still reads as very odd to me. anyway.]

Javik’s story about how he once had a ship like the Normandy and a crew of friends like mine and they all ended up indoctrinated and he had to personally slit their throats went way harder than I ever expected it to. even just the IDEA of having to do that as my Shep upsets me. i’m legit enjoying getting to know Javik, even though i’m still GuessWhoJustGotYelledAt.jpg every time I leave his room. I HAD ENOUGH OF THAT FROM KREIA, JAVIK, YOU’LL NEVER PUSH ME AWAY.

I was surprised by how hard Tali took Miranda’s successful challenge of Mr. Lawson, though in hindsight it makes sense -- with the geth war still happening on top of everything else, I don’t think Tali ever did get the chance to process her anger at her dad being a war criminal and all. and her whole “emergency induction port” bit about the straw was cute as hell tbh. her friendship with Garrus over the comms continues to give me life. 

(in other quarian news, I AM SAD ABOUT KAL’REEGER.)

and jeff. JEFF. after Thessia i literally ran to the bridge and said aloud “Jeff, make me feel better” as I clicked interact with him, and then he made that dig about asari dancers, and i was like NO NOT LIKE THAT. (I mean, what Shep literally said was “now’s not the time for jokes” which is ironic considering she, unlike me, still calls him JOKER) but then he was all DAD ANDERSON SAID I’M SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR MENTAL HEALTH, I’M SORRY, I’M DOING MY BEST and like. what a fucked up little family we are. he feels guilty that I died saving him, still! apparently he asks EDI about my stress levels and they are BAD and he feels BAD! im crey. OH AND ALSO THE FACT THAT PTSD ASARI LAURA BAILEY WAS TALKING ABOUT HIS FAMILY ON TIPTREE AND I CAN NEVER TELL HIM BECAUSE THE GAME DOESN’T LET ME DO THAT???? V UPSETTING.

and then of course EDI had to TRIPLE DOWN on all these feelings i was already having by telling me about human resistance and selflessness on Earth and how she wants to turn off her self-preservation code because she’s not about that. I’M SUCH A TOASTER FUCKER HALP.

Garrus being all “well sometimes your best friend gives you a pep talk” speech was cute as hell, and I was strangely charmed when Kaidan was like YOU CAN TELL I’M EXTRA MAD BECAUSE MY VOICE HAS GOTTEN SO DEEP grumbling.

next up: shore leave, and then going after Cerberus will trigger act 3! i may one day finish mass effect after all!

[therealdaveofdaves]

Season Four Thoughts and How It (may or may not...) Impact Maze

Well hello there, Mazers! ‘Bout time I posted over here, no?

So, it’s been just over a week since Season Four of ‘13 Reasons Why’ premiered, and, yes, I did binge watch it in one day, and yes, I have....thoughts. Let’s get right to it. 

The Good: 

First and foremost, CHARLIE AND ALEX. Yes, please, this was the couple I didn’t know I needed, and I did a little squee of happiness. Or, a lot of squees. Either way. I know the Zalex fans are perhaps a bit upset, but I mean, c’mon....they’re just too cute together. Everything about these two characters made the season for me, and I’m a huge Clay and Justin fan, so that’s saying something.

Clay’s mental struggles finally being addressed and therapy sessions - something that was much needed and long overdue.

I...didn’t hate Ani this time around? I got the feeling that the writers learned from some of the criticism last season and deliberately wrote her in a lessened role here. I did like a little of her friendship with Jess, although it got a bit over the top at times. 

Tyler’s continued recovery was also nice to see, and even he gets a happy ending, also much needed.

Graduation and the reception, both highlights.

Drunk!Clay is hilarious.

The Bad:

The lockdown. While the conversations and characterizations themselves were good and (for Clay and “Bryce” and “Monty”) much needed, I’m sorry, I don’t know of any school - not where I am anyway - that goes to such an extreme with shooting blanks, etc. Way over the top.

The riot, sorta. Again, I don’t know of any school or police department that would have let things go that far. Well acted, and the message was important in the context of racial profiling and turning our schools into armed camps, but still.

Winston. Meh. Not that huge of a fan the more I think about it. 

Diego. Meh. Could have done without him. 

They ever gonna explain what happened to Sheri? Huh. Guess it’s too late, now. And a passing reference to Jeff, not even by name?

The Ugly:

Yeah, we know where I’m going with this. Justin deserved so much better. While I have seen some of the interviews and such trying to justify how his story concludes, it really felt like a slap in the face when it comes right down to it, to say nothing of heartbreaking. Kudos to Dylan and Brandon in that last episode, because they did a tremendous job. 

And yet...

It is entirely plausible that Justin could have/would have contracted HIV during his time on the streets. Okay, I concede the point. But there was such a huge opportunity here and a teachable moment that could have played out parallel to Clay’s storyline. HIV is not the death sentence it once was, and this could have been done so much better, while giving Justin the happy ending he deserved. 

As a gay man, and with this being Pride month, this really felt like a punch to the gut. If you want to kill off Justin, okay (well...not, okay, but still...), why not have it be something heroic to close his arc, or for that matter related to his addiction, as horrifying and painful as that would have been to see? It was the most frustrating aspect of this whole season, left a bad taste in my mouth, and it was the wrong damn decision. 

Justin deserved better.

So. Maze, Ye Writer?

Glad you asked. You did, didn’t you? Okay. Good.

I try to keep my little world of fanfiction as close to canon as possible, albeit as an AU. Last year, after Season Three, I got upset as you’ll recall, because the events there punched all kinds of holes in my work at that time and where I was going with it. But, after some thinking about it and introspection, I was okay with it all, and my AU became even more so. No big deal, as it turned out. I figured out ways to incorporate things into my stories, and have even plotted out my version of “who killed Bryce” into it all.

Season Four, on the other hand?

Honestly, I can’t see myself taking too much and incorporating it this time around. Clay’s mental health? Probably. In fact, that’s a major theme of my stories to begin with. Charlie? Oh, yeah. I want to work him in more now (and figure out a way to break up Alex with Cyrus....sigh...). But for the rest? Well, let’s put it this way, if you’re a faithful reader you know where a lot of the characters wind up in my world. Actually, I’ve been thinking about writing some more of Future!Maze. So, needless to say, Justin is alive and well in the Mazeverse, and while I am thinking about incorporating an HIV diagnosis into the storyline, I haven’t made any firm decisions yet. 

I have a lot more to come and a lot more to write, and I think....and hope...you’ll all enjoy with what I’ve got cooking. I enjoy making you laugh, cry (but, like, in a good way!), and hopefully put a smile on your face with what I do with the 13 Reasons Why characters, and I hope to continue doing so for a long time to come.

So, there we are. Let me know your thoughts, hope to see you over at AO3, and as always....stay tuned! Clay and Justin and Alex and Jess and Sheri and Tony and Zach and Cyrus and the parents and Tank and Clay’s Psyche and Camden and Charlie and a whole lot more will be coming to you very soon.

Take care!

[thepapergirlandthespiegelman]

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: Initial impressions

Titles can be deceiving.

CW: child abuse, childhood trauma, mental illness, depression, anxiety

I think I can recall hearing about Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality at some point in the fairly distant past, though I can’t be sure. What I can say with relative certainty is that if I did encounter it, I probably wasn’t very likely to read it. I probably assumed that HPMOR was one of those obnoxiously misguided and pedantic critiques of fiction by scientists who neither know how to utilize suspension of disbelief, nor understand the basic nature of symbolism. At best, I might have imagined it to be a piece attempting to discover or construct a coherent logic from the magic within the Harry Potter universe, just for the pure amusement value, the absurdity of attempting to apply logic to that which defies it. I could see the appeal of that, but probably not 122 chapters worth of it.

After actually reading the first ten chapters of HPMOR, however, I can say that my first guess was incorrect, and my second guess was insufficient. HPMOR does capitalize on that humorous absurdity, but that’s hardly the core of the story.

One major reason for my misperceptions was a lack of familiarity with the difference between science and rationality. In layspeak, we often use these terms near interchangeably, and while they do go hand-in-hand to some extent, they’re not the same. Science is a method of obtaining knowledge. Rationality is an approach to living life, which dictates utilizing philosophy and science to obtain desired outcomes. You can be a scientist and be completely irrational, which actually reflects back on my initial concern; there are some scientists who will attempt to use the theory and language of science to denigrate works of art, completely ignoring the point of art.

HPMOR itself deals with this problem, not only the conflation of science with rationality, but the conflation of science and rationality and aptitude and general intelligence. The very first chapter highlights how AU Harry’s (Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, HJPEV for short) father is a professor, knowledgeable about science, presumably quite intelligent, and yet behaves incredibly irrationally. Rather than attempting to settle the dispute about the existence of magic objectively, he refuses to entertain the idea on principle, saying, “Magic is just about the most unscientific thing there is!”

And here’s where the real story begins to unfold. What makes HPMOR hit hard, at least for me, is not the discussion of science and rationality in the abstract, or even the very useful, illustrative scenarios, but the emotional struggle of trying to be a rational person in an irrational world, especially when you’re a child. In so many ways, HPMOR is a story about the trauma of growing up as a so-called “gifted” child. Almost every chapter that I read was painfully reminiscent of my own childhood:

Seeing my parents speculate and argue endlessly over things that could be proven;

Attempting to reason with them only to be shut down;

Having my value in their eyes dependent on their perception of my intelligence and academic performance, being praised for when I was perceived to have succeeded in these matters, while at the same time having my perspective completely ignored when it came to anything that mattered;

Being mocked relentlessly for things I did when I was younger, ignoring the incredibly rapid growth that defines childhood;

Constantly feeling as though, as HJPEV puts it, I was being treated as “subhuman,” my feelings, thoughts, and opinions all invalid because of my age;

Feeling so, so frustrated that the people who were supposed to protect me were so absurdly, ridiculously, unfairly, woefully, tragically ill-equipped to do so.

I became hopelessly isolated from my parents, and my self-esteem became self-degrading. Being told over and over again how what I felt or thought didn’t matter because I was only a child made me doubt and disrespect my own emotions and doubt my very sanity. I don’t think that my parents meant to gaslight me, but that’s exactly what they did. For years, and years, and years, and it hurts. so. much. It...I cannot express how much it hurts.

And I am left with all of this damage, these lines of irrationality programmed into my brain, this obsessive need to to be perceived as intelligent in order to believe that I could be loved, in order to merely function, this irrationality that I hate so much because it hurt me so much is now encoded into my very being and it fills me with existential horror to this day.

It was difficult for me to get through as much of HPMOR as I did, and I genuinely wonder if it would be detrimental to my mental health to go on. It triggers both the suffering that comes with remembering past trauma as well as the compulsions that have resulted from that trauma. Hearing HJPEV list all the books he’s read sends a bolt of anxiety down my spine, knowing that I will never measure up to people like him, I will never have read enough, I will never be smart enough, I will never...be...enough—

Enough. I know when to stop torturing myself.

I was shocked to see how quickly HPMOR itself comes to the conclusion that what HJPEV has endured is a form of child abuse. It took me years to become comfortable using the words “abuse” and “trauma” to describe my experiences, and HPMOR introduces the word “abuse” in Chapter 6! I give HPMOR’s McGonagall much less credit than HJPEV does, but even so, it’s kind of astonishing to me to see an adult pick up on the existence of abuse in a so-called gifted child, even in fiction. I find myself wondering how I might have turned out differently if I had had someone like McGonagall in my life, or someone better than McGonagall in my life, who had told me in no uncertain terms, “What is happening to you is abuse, it is not okay, it is not your fault, and while I’m unable to legally extricate you from your unfortunate circumstances, I will do everything in my power to protect you.”

Because that didn’t happen. No one told me that I was abused or damaged. They told me that I was “smart,” “gifted,” “advanced,” or “mature”; and if they noticed anything odd about my behavior, it was because I was just “quiet,” “shy,” “introverted,” or “diligent.”

I also find myself wondering if I might have been a little different if I had read HPMOR when I first had the chance. But then again, I don’t know if I would have understood it as I do now, after years of studying psychology and working to heal myself.

God, seeing it all laid out so starkly, things I worked years to understand, in a few short chapters of someone’s fucking fanfiction*...I sure do feel like an idiot.

But then, this whole conversation has primed me to feel those feelings.

I must not undervalue myself. I am not playing that game. That game is the problem.

One thing does irritate me, though. Putting aside my misconceptions about HMPOR specifically, there’s this huge barrier to entry to the rationalist community in general. I think people perceive (correctly, as far as I can tell) that it is a community of highly intelligent people, who are highly skilled in STEM disciplines, particularly math. The one friend who could have introduced me to all this was someone who I saw as hopelessly more intelligent than I, and that perceived disparity made it incredibly difficult to approach him even as I admired him, envied him, and desperately needed the things that he could teach me. (I don’t know what things were like on his end. I still don’t.)

We’ve already seen that someone can be highly intelligent and completely irrational. I wish we could take that logic a step further and really make clear that rationality is not something that requires high intelligence. As with learning anything, intelligence helps, but intelligence can’t be a prerequisite for this skillset, because literally everyone should have it. I guess this might be controversial, but so far as I can tell, rationality is just the best way to go through life. And of course, knowing the best way to move forward is especially critical for those of us leaving behind dark pasts.

For fuck’s sake, this doesn’t have anything to do with quarks or discrete math or machine learning. It has everything to do with reducing human suffering.

And I wish...I really wish that there was a way to share this world with my friends. The only reason that I made it here is that I’ve constantly existed on the borderline, wavering around the threshold of what is broadly considered intelligent, attempting mastery of both STEM and humanities, science and art. As much as I doubt and denigrate myself, I am able, if I really want to, under certain favorable circumstances, to convince myself that I belong here. Not all of my friends have the same privilege. I have friends who have lived their whole lives believing that they just aren’t that smart, or that they aren’t any good at math or science. Maybe they decided early on that that stuff wasn’t for them, or maybe they tried and felt like they failed. I know that, for many people, academic language is frustrating, triggering, or otherwise completely inaccessible. I know that many people will find HJPEV absolutely insufferable and most of what he says incomprehensible.

And I’m really not sure what to do about that. I’ve not sure how to convince people that striving for rationality is both possible and worthwhile for everyone, and if I do convince them, I’m not sure what to actually show them that will make any sense to them.

I don’t know. Maybe it does have a bit to do with math. Because a lot of what I get from rationality, I can get from other places, be that art or psychology or witchcraft, but the stuff that is unique does tend to be the mathematical and statistical thinking. And philosophical thinking, academic thinking. Talking about things with precision...That’s always been my problem with trying to translate the academic into ordinary speech, it feels like all the precision is being lost. To be precise, you need unique words, and unique words tend to be obscure, and people find obscure words upsetting.

Obviously, this isn’t a problem I’m going to solve in this blog post. But it’s something to think about.

So, I guess that’s my review of the first ten chapters of HPMOR, if you can call it that. If one of the purposes of fiction is to unlock a bizarrely intense cocktail of existential horror and unadulterated wrath deriving from the wrongs of one’s childhood—and I certainly believe it is—then HPMOR succeeds spectacularly.

*Edited to add: In my unfortunate compulsion to drag myself down, I often drag down other things or people too. I shouldn’t trivialize the value of fanfiction. And, quite honestly, I really shouldn’t be surprised that it could be a source of profound insight. After all, writing fanfiction has been one of my own ways to cope with and sort through my emotions and illnesses for a long, long time.

[imnotinclinedtomaturity]

Love Yourself (Chapter 27)

title: Love Yourself summary: A lot of things about Dan’s life are pretty great. He gets to make the music he wants, he’s got a great fanbase, and his manager is his best friend. A few things about his life suck a bit more. He’s currently lacking inspiration, he’s rather lonely, and he’s stuck in a rut. Dan’s been going to the same coffee shop for years. It’s quiet, it’s quaint, it’s near his home. Most importantly: none of the employees give a shit that’s he a world-famous singer. Things change when he meets the new barista. chapter words: 8.8k story words: 219.6k (so far) chapter: 27/? rating: m warnings: language, alcohol, sex mentions, some bi/homophobia, eventual explicit smut, some depression genre: singer!dan, coffee shop au, barista!phil, slow burn [[ao3]] [[first chapter]] [[previous chapter]]

a/n: thank you to everyone for being the best audience i could hope for. i appreciate how patient y'all have been, how understanding you've been that i needed time time off because of Adulthood and Mental Health. i'm not feeling particularly articulate right now, but know that i love and appreciate you all. back to our regularly scheduled programming now! updates should come every 1.5 weeks-ish again :) also, a massive thanks to @auroraphilealis as always, not just for editing, but also for being a great best friend and a wonderful cheerleader. ily xx

Loud, persistent buzzing pulled Phil sharply from his sleep. It took a few sleepy seconds before he registered that the buzzing was his phone on his bedside table — and it was apparently ringing. Still half asleep, Phil waited until it stopped vibrating before reaching for it. It was too damn early to actually talk to anyone, but curiosity was still getting the best of him.

He pried an eye open and looked at the screen, instinctively flinching away from the bright light. Without his glasses, he was too blind to see who had called, but he could just barely make out the time — half past seven.

Nearly an hour before his alarm was due to go off.

That was nearly an hour of sleep that someone was trying to take from Phil. And after the whirlwind of last night’s date, Phil wanted nothing more than to sleep in. It wasn’t like Dan was here to give him a reason to get up.

With a stubborn, tired sigh, Phil rolled back into his pillow. Whoever had called could wait — at least until he was ready to get out of bed.

Just as he was drifting off again, though, his phone rang again. Grumbling, Phil pushed himself onto his elbows and held his phone close enough to his face that he could just barely make out PJ’s name.

PJ? Why was PJ calling him? PJ rarely called Phil. They skyped, sure, but those calls were usually scheduled and were always in the evening.

No, if PJ was caling at this hour, he must need something. And, unfortunately, Phil prided himself on being the Reliable Friend who always answered when his friends needed him.

Reluctantly, Phil swiped on PJ’s name, immediately putting the call on speaker so that he could fall back into his pillow.

“What the hell do you want, Peej?” Phil grumbled as soon as the phone call connected.

“Did I wake you up?”

“It’s not even eight in the morning,” Phil complained. “Of course you woke me up.”

“Mmm,” PJ hummed dismissively. “Are you with Dan?”

“No, I dropped him off after our date last night.” Phil stretched slightly, his hands reaching up under the pillow and hugging it closer to his face.

“Oh… have you, er, talked to him since?” PJ didn’t sound curious, and didn’t sound like he was trying to get information out of Phil about his date. PJ sounded… worried.

Growing concerned by PJ’s tone, Phil pushed himself back onto his elbows. “No, why? What happened?”

“I take it you haven’t been on the internet yet?”

“No. Get to the point, Peej,” Phil huffed impatiently.

“Dan — well, I thought maybe he’d’ve talked it over with you. I mean, twitter’s — fuck, how —“

“What the fuck happened?” Phil demanded, cutting off PJ’s rambling.

Even through the phone, and on speaker, Phil could hear PJ’s deep sigh, could feel his hesitation, before he finally spoke. “You need to look at Dan’s instagram. He sort of… made a big announcement in the dead of night.”

Phil felt a wave of dread wash over him. He certainly wasn’t sleepy anymore. A jumble of incoherent, panicked thoughts were battering at Phil’s brain, but he did his best to push them aside. Worrying wouldn’t do any good right now.

“Hang on, I’m pulling it up.”

Phil hit the home button on his phone with a bit more force than necessary, and was finally confronted with a frankly obscene amount of notifications given that he hadn’t done anything online since the day before yesterday, really. With a concerned huff, Phil swiped his glasses off his night table and shoved them onto his nose, the red dots on his iphone icons coming into focus.

Four hundred and twelve notifications from instagram.

One thousand, two hundred, and ninety from twitter.

Six emails in his work-only account.

And seven text messages.

Despite PJ’s urging to look at Dan’s instagram, Phil opened his messages first. There were three from PJ, which Phil ignored since Peej had clearly gotten ahold of him. Below PJ’s thread, there was a message from his mother and brother each. And finally below them were two messages from Dan.

The preview of their conversation showed that Dan’s most recent text — and we should probably talk — had come in at 3:34AM. That message alone made Phil’s heart pound against his chest.

“You there, mate?” PJ asked.

“Yeah,” Phil confirmed with a strangled gulp. “He texted me.”

“Oh?” PJ sounded interested.

Phil didn’t respond. He didn’t open the text. He didn’t breath. He didn’t do much of anything, really. He was frozen, trying to process what we should talk might mean, trying to convince himself it didn’t mean something horrible.

“Well?” PJ prompted when the silence drew on for too long. “What’d he say?”

“Right,” Phil mumbled as he forced himself to click on Dan’s message, to see what his previous message said. To see if it could make sense of whatever the fuck seemed to be happening this morning.

Phil’s eyes skimmed over his own four messages — he’d somehow blocked out the fact that he’d quadruple-texted Dan last night — before reading what Dan had said.

Dan [3:31 AM]: before you look at your twitter and instagram and whatever notifications, you should probably look at my instagram

Dan [3:34AM]: and we should probably talk

Together, the two messages did absolutely nothing to quell Phil’s anxiety. In fact, Phil’s heart was just thumping louder and more aggressively.

“He just said to look at his instagram.” Phil swallowed roughly. “And that we should talk.”

A quiet hum was PJ’s only response — another thing that didn’t help to calm the panic in Phil’s veins. Phil didn’t like the thoughts racing around his head, didn’t like that the first place his mind had gone was Isabella — and Dan getting back together with her.

Not that Phil really thought that was a risk, but still. The insecure part of his brain liked to remind him that Dan’s last partner had been a model, even if she was a bitch.

With a steeling breath, Phil tapped on the instagram icon.

It seemed to take a million and one years for the app to load, and when it finally did, it opened to a picture his brother had posted of his girlfriend.

Not helpful.

Not wanting to waste time scrolling through his feed, Phil tapped the magnifying glass. Dan’s name was at the top of his recent searches, a small “one new post” written below his username.

Quickly, but shaking with apprehension, Phil clicked on Dan’s profile.

It seemed to take forever for the page to load, but when it did, the first thing Phil saw was a picture of Dan’s scribbly handwriting, made all the more difficult to read by messy highlighting.

For a second, Phil was annoyed at the highlights, frustrated that Dan had obscured his writing even further than his nearly-illegible handwriting. But then the colors of the highlights sunk in — pink, purple, blue.

They were the bi-pride colors.

Phil knew, obviously, and he was certain Dan’s audience would know that, too.

By this point, Phil knew Dan well enough to know that Dan didn’t do anything unintentionally. Not in his music, not on social media, and not in real life. If he’d gone out of his way to highlight whatever he’d written and posted — well, the colors of the highlights were deliberate.

Phil bypassed the words in the picture and flickered down to the caption, hoping for a quick and easy explanation.

the majority of this album is being written thanks to one person. this is the song that started the whole concept of this album and i think it deserves a bit of an update after he took me out on the best first date of my life tonight. he might not have agreed with the timing of when i decided to rewrite it, though ;) xx

“Oh shit,” Phil muttered, dumbfounded, when the gravity of Dan’s caption finally sunk in.

“Yeah…” PJ murmured, his voice carefully neutral.

Phil glanced back up to the picture and scanned over Dan’s messy handwriting as fast as he could. From what Phil could tell, it looked like it was, well, about him. If the caption didn’t convince him, the let’s stop running from love and the fact that Dan confessed to rewriting something because of Phil last night…

“He came out,” Phil mumbled, unnecessarily pointing out the obvious.

“And took you with him, mate,” PJ grumbled.

Phil cocked his head to the side, his brows furrowing as he read and reread Dan’s post, trying to pinpoint what PJ was referencing. Nowhere did it mention his name or even anything identifying. The most telling piece of information was the he — but that pronoun could apply to a large portion of the world.

“How do’ya figure?” Phil asked.

“Mate, you and Dan haven’t been very subtle. Look at twitter.”

Even without opening twitter, Phil knew what PJ meant. Him and Dan had been, well, flirting for weeks now. There really wasn’t any other way to describe their online banter.

But upon skimming through his twitter notifications, Phil realized just how confident their audience was as they jumped to the albeit somewhat obvious conclusion.

Tweet after tweet had responded to Dan’s instagram post, all tagging Phil, all speculating on exactly who the he in Dan’s post could be.

And every tweet Phil saw guessed it was him.

And every tweet Phil saw was right.

“They all know anyway,” Phil mumbled flatly. He was supposed to be feeling something right now — surely he was. His boyfriend had just come out, his entire audience was — correctly — guessing that he was in a relationship with a famous singer, his own mum had probably texted him about it. And yet, Phil couldn’t wrap his mind around what he was feeling.

He just felt… surprised.

“Yeah. Are you okay with that?” PJ asked gently.

“I…” Phil tried to process all of the new new new as fast as he could. “I guess it was never that secret that I liked guys. I mean, how many times have I mentioned finding male celebrities attractive?”

“That’s true,” PJ agreed. “But I also know that hinting and confirming are two different things.”

“I mean… yeah,” Phil finally relented.

“But you didn’t know Dan was going to do this?”

“No…” Phil chewed on the inside of his cheek as he thought through all of the conversations him and Dan had had about their public image. “He made it sound like he didn’t want to come out at all.”

“What changed?”

“I don’t know,” Phil responded tersely.

He should know.

“Do you think he wants people to know that you’re the guy?” PJ pushed.

“I don’t know!” Phil snapped

He really should know.

There was a beat of silence on the other end of the line.“Sorry,” PJ muttered, clearing his voice before he spoke again. “What do you want?”

“I… don’t know,” Phil finished lamely.

Turns out he didn’t know much of anything.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” PJ offered softly.

“I…” Phil tried to think about it, he really did, but his mind kept coming back to why why why. At the end of their date, Dan had pulled Phil into the bloody loo to kiss goodnight, presumably because Dan hadn’t wanted the waitstaff to see, and then just a few hours later, Dan had gone and done that. “I need to talk to Dan. To know what the fuck happened.”

“That’s fair,” PJ agreed. “Can I do anything to help?”

“No, I’m just… gonna call him.” Phil pushed his glasses onto his head and roughly rubbed his face — an attempt to both wake up and alleviate some stress. “Thanks for letting me know.”

“Ring if you need me, okay? And let me know how it goes.”

“I will. I’ll text you later,” Phil promised. “Bye Peej.”

Needing to cancel his ten o’clock meeting with his manager, Phil opened his work email to send off some excuse, only to find that Marianne had already emailed him. Along with three people from the BBC. And every single subject line contained the name Daniel Howell.

How the hell had all of these people been up and about and reacting to social media already?

Phil ignored the multiple emails from the BBC, but opened the one from Marianne. He skimmed through the message, where she basically just pointed out what he already knew — that his audience had drawn some pretty big conclusions based on something Dan had posted. At the end of her email, she suggested they “review possible responses” during their meeting that morning.

Not fucking likely, Phil scoffed.

Quickly, Phil typed out the most adult version of sorry for the late notice, but I need to cancel our meeting because my brand-new boyfriend went off the walls in the middle of the night and I have no idea what’s happening. He didn’t bother to read it over again — now wasn’t the moment for proofreading — and immediately dialed Dan as soon as the email was sent.

The phone didn’t ring though, and instead went straight to voicemail. “Dammit Dan,” Phil mumbled in aggravation, hanging up before Dan’s voicemail could start recording.

Chewing on his lower lip, Phil thought through his options. If Dan’s phone was off, then no amount of texting or calling or facetiming would do any good. It was frustrating to have no way to contact Dan after he’d dropped such a massive bomb.

Except, well, that wasn’t quite true, was it?

Dan had put Phil on his permanent visitors list, so theoretically Phil could just… show up. Which might be a bit of a rash move but…

But nothing.

Phil was confused and caught off guard and felt like he deserved an explanation. Despite the early hour, Phil threw off his blue and green check comforter and pushed himself out of bed with steadfast resolution.

He wanted an explanation and, goddammit he’d get an explanation.

On shaky, tired feet, Phil riffled through his drawers for suitable trousers while kicking off his emoji pajamas. No human being — especially not his fashiony, hot new boyfriend — needed to see him in those. The first somewhat acceptable option Phil’s hand landed on were a pair of rather tight joggers, but he couldn’t be arsed to care at that moment. They’d have to do.

He kicked all the way out of his embarrassing, yellow pajamas and pulled on the tight sweatpants in their place. His loose Friends shirt would have to do, because he didn’t feel like wasting the time to find a suitable replacement, and it wasn’t that awful of a shirt.

Phil’s hair was probably a right mess too, but he couldn’t be bothered to deal with that either at the moment. All in all, this was definitely the least effort he’d ever put into his appearance when he knew he was going to see Dan, but he was growing impatient. Doing anything other than pulling on a jacket and shoes felt like it would waste too much time.

Even the three minute wait for the uber felt like too much time, and Phil had to refrain from just starting to walk over when he got downstairs and the car wasn’t there yet. But the car arrived before Phil could do anything rash, and Phil climbed in with only the briefest of smiles to the driver. His five star rating might take a hit, but he didn’t particularly care at that moment.

On the drive to Dan’s flat, the impatience in Phil’s stomach grew into something… more desperate. The more time he spent longing for an answer, the more he felt like he should already have one — like he should have known about what Dan was doing before he’d done it. And of course, of course, it was Dan’s decision if he wanted to come out — and hell, Phil was downright ecstatic for him — but Phil couldn’t help feeling like…

Feeling like he should have been part of the decision if Dan was going to so nearly pull Phil out of the closet, too.

Not that Phil was hiding in the closet, persay. But as PJ had pointed out, there was a big difference between hinting and confirming, and what Dan had just done was suddenly pushing Phil to confirm. And that Phil couldn’t quite wrap his head around.

He wasn’t against it. Not quite. But — fuck. He really would have liked to have been a part of the decision.

The process of getting into Dan’s building was the easiest yet, this time. All Phil had to do was tell the doorman his name and that he was there to see Dan before he was getting ushered into the lift, the seven button already pressed for him.

The ride up to Dan’s apartment felt shorter than normal — so short that Phil didn’t have time to collect his courage and figure out exactly what he wanted to say. When the doors opened to Dan’s flat, Phil hovered uncertainly in the lift, suddenly worried that it was incredibly rude to just invite himself over to Dan’s flat. Maybe Dan’s phone had gone straight to voicemail because he’d turned it off so he could sleep. Maybe Dan wasn’t ready to tell Phil about what he’d done.

But no, that wasn’t quite right. Dan had texted Phil, had told Phil to look at his instagram and had even said that they needed to talk. So it wasn’t absurd that he was here, now.

The lift doors started closing, the sudden movement pulling Phil harshly out of his spiral of anxious thoughts. Phil’s body, for once, was a step ahead of his mind, because his arm flew out to catch the door before he processed what was happening. He hurried out of the lift and into the foyer before the door could start to close again.

Dan had put Phil on his permanent visitors list. This was fine. It wasn’t insane that Phil was here right now.

Determined, Phil pushed his way further into the flat, walking quietly towards Dan’s room. He only made it as far as the lounge, though, before he ran smack into someone.

Someone much shorter than him or Dan.

“Phil?”

Surprised, Phil’s eyes scanned down and he took in the young woman standing in front of him — he certainly hadn’t been expecting anyone else to be here, and now he really was feeling like just coming over might have been a dick move.

“Louise?” he asked tentatively, nearly positive that he recognized her from Dan’s instagram and pictures he’d shown him of Darcy and her mum.

“Yes!” Louise greeted, her voice hushed. “I’m glad it’s you, when I heard the lift ding I thought —” She cut herself off, glancing back over her shoulder into the lounge. “Well, nevermind. Tea?”

“Oh, er…” Phil glanced over her head, his eyes drifting back towards Dan’s room. As much as he knew that Louise was definitely someone that he should be trying to make a good impression on, Phil really didn’t want to sit down for a cuppa right now. His mind was still reeling from the whirlwind of this morning, and he could barely think straight, much less talk coherently to a stranger.

But regardless, he knew how important Louise was to Dan — and how much Louise’s opinion mattered to him — so Phil pushed back the swirling confusion muddling his head and forced himself to smile pleasantly. “I might just look for Dan if you don’t mind.” Anxiously, Phil rubbed the back of his neck and hoped that his smile wasn’t coming out too much like a grimace.

Louise’s eyes flicked behind her. Her tense shoulders and skeptical eyes gave Phil the feeling that she wasn’t sure if him seeking Dan out was a good idea. “He’s asleep at the moment,” she said, pursing her lips and staring at Phil thoughtfully, like she was trying to figure him out. “You sure I can’t interest you in tea? He’ll probably be asleep a while.”

“I…” Phil’s eyes darted around as he searched for an excuse out of socializing. Much to his dismay, he couldn’t easily find one. He opened and closed his mouth as he desperately tried to find a polite way out of making small talk with Louise — this certainly wasn’t the first impression he wanted to make on Dan’s best friend.

“I’m not really up for tea, right now,” Phil blurted out abruptly, settling on the truth and cringing at his bluntness. Phil shifted his gaze down to his feet, unable to continue meeting her eye. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “This morning’s just been a lot already, and…”

Louise sighed, and shot Phil an unsure look. Phil watched as her arms came up, and she crossed them over her chest. “Dan had a late night last night.”

“I know,” Phil admitted, anxiously shifting back and forth on his feet. “But I need to talk to him.”

“And you can wait until he wakes up,” Louise said with an air of finality, her arms still crossed in front of her.

Phil sighed and tugged on his sloppy quiff, aggravated — not quite at Louise, just more at… the situation in general. His phone felt heavy in his pocket, and he was hyper aware of all of the emails and texts that he needed to respond to.

Emails and texts that he didn’t know how to respond to because Dan hadn’t fucking talked to him.

“Look,” Phil said, keeping his voice as steady and calm as he could. “I kind of woke up to a PR nightmare this morning and —”

“Oh god, are you not out?” Louise interrupted, her eyes growing wide in panic.

“I — mostly,” Phil hesitated, unsure how to phrase it. The being out thing wasn’t exactly his main problem here. “Never in crystal clear words, but it was out there.” Phil shrugged that particular concern off. “But, like, I hadn’t told my manager — or even my mum — that I was dating Dan yet, and now they definitely both know because they aren’t idiots.” Phil gestured around wildly, his arms trying to convey how absolutely insane the situation was so that he didn’t end up shouting, despite his frustration. “I’m not sure who’s going to be more upset about not knowing. And I can’t even respond to them, because I have no idea what to say because I have no idea what the fuck happened. We haven’t even discussed if we want our relationship to be public or how to handle the media or anything!”

Phil’s arms fell to his sides, limp and useless, as his rant came to a sudden, frustrated end.

His little tantrum must have done some good, though, because Louise looked a bit more empathetic now.

“I get it,” she sighed, sounding resigned. “I’m a manager. And a mum.”

“Thanks,” Phil smiled tersely. “So then you won’t mind if I…?” he gestured vaguely over Louise’s shoulder.

Her eyes traced over him slowly, carefully appraising him. “Fine,” she relented after a minute. “Just… try not to be too hard on him, okay? I’m sure he’ll be in a touchy mood when he wakes up.” Despite her understanding words, Louise still looked wary.

Phil wondered how many stories of hot-tempered, passionate fights Louise had heard over the last year.

“I promise I won’t be a — I won’t be like Isabella,” Phil offered, hoping that the heavy, sincere weight of his voice would convince Louise that he was different.

Louise’s eyes grew wide, her jaw falling open just a hair — she looked surprised, but maybe also a bit… pleased? The tenseness in her shoulders melted — at least some — and she looked less wary. The assurance that not only he knew about Isabella, but was also determined to be different seemed to matter to Louise.

“Good. Because you’ll have me to report to if you hurt him,” Louise threatened, but there was a humorous glint in her eye and a hint of a smile ghosting her lips.

“I won’t hurt him, but that’s a deal.” Phil smiled weakly with an emphatic nod. “So is it okay if I…?” Phil pointed vaguely over Louise’s shoulder, trying to ask her to let him by as gently as possible.

Louise nodded, stepping around Phil towards the foyer. “Yeah, I’m going to nip out then. Tell Dan to text me at some point today, and be nice.”

Phil was tempted to make a sarcastic comment, but didn’t want to risk Louise’s trust. He couldn’t help feeling like he was on a very short leash as it was right now. “I promise I won’t even scream or anything, okay?”

“Good,” Louise said with a smile before heading for the lift. Just before she got to the foyer, she spun around to face Phil again. “Good luck with your mum. And manager.”

“Thanks,” Phil laughed with a genuine smile. “I think I’ll need it.”

Phil waited for the ding of the lift, wanting to make sure Louise was well gone before he sought out Dan, before gathering his courage and carrying on down the hallway. For a split second, he hesitated outside of the closed bedroom door, not completely certain that it was acceptable for him to just burst into Dan’s room and wake him up.

But the memory of the literal thousands of notifications was fresh in Phil’s head, so he pushed open the bedroom door anyway.

The bed, however, was neatly made, and there was no Dan in sight.

Weird. Louise had definitely said that Dan was still asleep. Maybe the guest bedroom?

Confused, Phil stepped backwards and turned back down the hallway, peeking his head into the next room. No Dan in that bed, either.

Phil couldn’t imagine that Dan would be in the music room, and he wasn’t sure where else to look other than the lounge. Phil made his way back, tentatively looking around the lounge entrance before entering.

Curled up on the sofa, still in his tight studded sweater from the night before, was Dan. Despite Phil’s confusion and anxiety, his heart melted. Dan’s hair — and the entire lounge, now that Phil was really looking — was a complete wreck.

There was glass on the floor, both large chunks and shattered shards, that Phil had to navigate around on his way to the sofa. The table — which Phil was accustomed to seeing in a pristine state — was covered in papers and — oh god was that the lube? — on one end. Dan’s notebook was open on the floor, surrounded by a hodge podge of markers. Phil had to bite back the urge to flip through it, to see what else Dan was working on, to pry just a little.

That wasn’t what was important right now, though. Phil turned his back on the mess and properly took in Dan’s lanky body curled up tight on the sofa.

Looking more carefully, Phil’s eyes lingered on where Dan’s trousers were riding down, a soft pale patch of stomach poking out. Dan’s hands were cradled near his face, and his phone was dangling from his fingertips. Phil hovered above Dan, rocking back and forth between his feet as he tried to decide if he really should wake Dan up.

Phil knew Dan had been up late — close to four, at least, and that was assuming he’d gone to sleep straight after texting Phil. Letting Dan sleep a little longer was definitely the nice, selfless thing to do.

But Phil was too anxious and desperate for answers to be selfless right now.

Before Phil could lose his nerve, he reached out and poked Dan’s shoulder.

The poke, however, didn’t seem to be enough to rouse Dan from his sleep. “Dan?” Phil tried, his fingers rubbing into Dan’s bicep a bit harder. “Babe? Wake up?”

“Mmmh,” Dan grumbled. Even in his sleep, Dan seemed reluctant to be roused.

“Please babe? I really need to talk to you,” Phil pleaded. He switched tactics and grabbed ahold of Dan’s shoulder, gently shaking until Dan started stirring.

“Louise?” Dan mumbled, nearly incoherent, without opening his eyes. “Wha’ d’ya want?”

“No, it’s Phil,” Phil corrected.

“Oh.” Dan’s eyes fluttered open, slowly drifting upwards to meet Phil’s.

They were red. Much redder than they normally were when Dan woke up.

The rawness of Dan’s eyes, and the way he rubbed at them, made Phil wonder just how late of a night Dan and Louise had had.

Blearily, Dan’s gaze fell from Phil’s, scanning the room before landing on his phone. Without saying anything else to Phil, he tapped the home button, only to sigh when it wouldn’t come on. “What time s’it?” Dan asked blearily.

“About eight thirty,” Phil guessed without actually checking a clock.

Dan nodded, his eyes drifting back to his phone. “Hang on,” he said, “Lemme plug this s’in ‘nd get some coffee.” Dan pushed up off the sofa, stretching slightly and making his sweater ride up even further. “Want some?” he asked, eyes bleary as he glanced at Phil before turning to leave.

Phil’s brows furrowed, bewildered that Dan was so casually offering him coffee.

As if nothing major had happened since they’d last seen each other.

“Wait—” Phil said as he reached out and caught Dan by the wrist, preventing him from going anywhere. “Are you not even going to acknowledge it?” he asked, annoyance starting to creep into his voice.

Dan raised his eyebrows, but didn’t say anything.

Phil blinked back rapidly, baffled by Dan’s lack of… well, anything.

“Oh come on, don’t play dumb,” Phil groaned, irritated. Dan’s eyes grew wide and he held Phil’s gaze for a fleeting moment before flickering off to the side. In the brief seconds that Dan had looked at him, Phil could see entire pools of emotions — emotions that he wasn’t quite sure what to make of. There was sleepiness, but there was also worry and… something else.

Something that Phil really wished Dan would just share with him.

“Your texts? Instagram? The internet?” Phil prompted, his voice growing more and more pointed with each suggestion when Dan didn’t say anything.

Dan ran his free hand through his hair, grabbing at the ends of his curls and tugging. His eyes drifted back to Phil’s, and he stepped minutely backwards, his hand nearly coming out of Phil’s grip. “I know, I know,” Dan finally sighed, sounding defeated “I just really need some fucking coffee first. I had a long night.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve had a long morning,” Phil countered; his fingers wrapped more tightly around Dan’s arm, his nails insistently digging into the soft underside of Dan’s wrist.

Dan flinched back, his hand yanking backwards out of Phil’s grip and curling protectively against his chest. “I suppose that’s my doing, then?” he asked meekly as he stared down at the space between them.

Phil shot Dan an unamused look, not that Dan was looking up to see it. A part of him was itching to reach out and force Dan to look up at him, but Dan didn’t look like he’d be okay with Phil touching him just now. “No, I normally wake up to thousands of notifications after a nice quiet day away from social media,” Phil quipped, unable to keep a sarcastic edge out of his voice.

Dan’s eyes clamped shut, and he drew in a sharp breath. His arms shifted to cross in front of his chest, his entire body crumpling in on itself. “Just… hang on,” Dan begged softly without looking at Phil. He sounded so small, so young. Guilt washed over Phil — he was responsible for making Dan look so vulnerable. “Let me get a cup of coffee. Please.”

Phil drew his hands back to his side, shoving them in the front pockets of his joggers as a silent promise that he wasn’t going to try to stop Dan. “Of course,” he nodded, trying his best to keep his voice soft and even. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

With a small shake of his head, Dan teetered away from Phil cautiously and backed out of the room without ever turning fully away. At the last second, Dan spun around, narrowly avoiding running into the doorframe as he exited the lounge.

It was an odd reaction, one that gave Phil the sense that Dan was afraid to turn his back on Phil. Self-defensive reactions like that weren’t usually natural — they were learned.

Phil swallowed thickly, suddenly wondering how deep Louise’s fears ran. Dan’s movements were shaky, guarded, and he seemed to be fighting the urge to not look over his shoulder. Not wanting to make Dan more uncomfortable, Phil trailed behind at a distance as Dan led the way.

In the kitchen, Dan went straight to start the coffee and Phil came to a rest at the opposite counter. Dan still wasn’t meeting Phil’s eyes — hell, he wasn’t even looking up — but Phil could tell that Dan knew exactly where Phil was by the wide berth he gave Phil’s spot along the counter.

The entire kettle shook when Dan filled it with water; his hands were trembling, but his jaw was set, rigid. “Coffee?” Dan murmured without glancing over.

“Sure,” Phil accepted quietly. He made an effort to keep his voice as soft and gentle as he could. “Milk —”

“And two sugars, same as your tea. I know,” Dan interrupted quietly. If something weren’t so clearly wrong with Dan’s behavior right now, Phil would have been touched that Dan knew how he took his coffee. Instead, Phil was hyper-focused on Dan’s shaky movements and watched carefully as Dan rummaged through the cupboards, finally pulling out a ceramic soup bowl that was nearly mug-like and — oh. Phil had forgotten that Dan only had one functioning mug.

Because Isabella smashed the rest. In a fight. A fight unlike any fight Phil that had ever had.

Regardless, Dan poured milk and sugar into the proper mug, adding only the smallest spoonful of sugar to the makeshift mug. That was so typical Dan — putting others first, always striving to make others happy. Phil’s lips twitched for a second, nearly quirking up into a smile at Dan’s persistent thoughtfulness.

Phil waited in silence for the kettle to boil, knowing that he wasn’t likely to get anything useful out of a sleepy Dan. Plus, he hoped that a bit of quiet — and space — would help calm whatever Dan’s fears were.

It felt like it took the coffee maker ages to brew their coffee. Phil was growing well anxious, and Dan didn’t seem to be in much of a better state. Eventually, though, Dan was pouring two cups of coffee, passing the polka dotted mug to Phil, and hugging the soup bowl close to himself.

Dan took a large gulp of his coffee, only lowering it a few centimeters when he was done. The mug was held up high, nearly obscuring his face, and his gaze was focused on the black liquid inside. Dan’s arms were tucked into his chest, and his shoulders hunched up. Again, Phil was struck by how small Dan looked.

“Well? Let’s hear it then,” Dan whispered without looking up.

“Hear what?” Phil asked, head cocked, confused.

“You’re mad at me, so let’s just… get the part where you yell at me or whatever over with.” Dan’s eyes flicked up, just barely landing on Phil, and looked back at his coffee so quickly that Phil would certainly have missed it if he wasn’t watching Dan so closely.

Phil’s heart plummeted into his stomach as Dan confirmed his dreaded speculations — all of this, all of Dan’s current behavior, had something to do with how fights had gone in the past. Phil opened and closed his mouth, sputtering stupidly like a fish as he tried to figure out what to say.

“I didn’t come over here to yell at you,” Phil tried his best to placate his boyfriend, even though he didn’t really know how. Not right now, not with this new, scared Dan.They’d only had one tiff since meeting, and then it’d blown over because Phil had dropped it. But it wasn’t a lie — no matter how desperate and confused and frustrated Phil was, yelling at Dan was never his intention.

“But you are mad,” Dan said simply, still addressing his coffee more than Phil.

“I’m not mad, I’m… in shock, I guess.” Phil blew on his coffee, stalling for time as he grappled for a way he could express his frustrations without unnecessarily startling Dan.

“Call it whatever you want, but I can tell you’re not happy with me,” Dan mumbled.

“Okay, fine,” Phil relented, swallowing his trepediations and deciding to speak his mind. “I was shocked when I woke up to thousands of messages on my social media talking about you coming out and speculating about us.” Dan nodded — a microscopic, subtle movement — but didn’t say anything, so Phil continued. “And I’ll admit that I was a bit miffed when I realized that Louise was here but you didn’t even try to contact me last night.”

“Louise is my best friend,” Dan pushed back, a hint of anger in his voice.

“And I’m your boyfriend now!” Phil insisted. “In order for a relationship to work, we have to communicate, Dan.”

“You’re not my fucking boss,” Dan barked. “I can talk to whoever the fuck I want to. And if you’ve got a problem with Louise, you can just leave now.” There was a harsh edge to Dan’s voice, but beneath it, Phil could just barely tell that it was shaking — shaking with what, he wasn’t sure. Anger, maybe. Or fear.

“I don’t have a problem with Louise,” Phil argued. “It’s just — I texted you four bloody times last night. You could have talked to me if you needed… I don’t know, help, or whatever.” Phil waved his hand in frustration as his words failed him.

Dan sat his mug down on the counter, a loud clack filling the kitchen as the ceramic made contact with the granite countertop. “Look I just spent a fucking year with someone who didn’t like Louise and hated that I went to her for stuff, and if you’re gonna be that way too, then just fuck off already,” Dan spat out harshly.

If Phil wasn’t already leaning against the opposite counter, he would have jumped back at that. As it was, his lower back dug into the counter as he recoiled from Dan’s words.

“Don’t fucking compare me to Isabella!” Phil snapped, disgust and horror holding tight in his stomach. “I don’t give a rat’s ass that you go to your best friend instead of me sometimes, but when you end up doing something that all but confirms that you and I are dating, yeah, I’d like to be a part of the decision!”

“You can’t control me Phil.” Dan’s shoulders drew up impossibly closer to his ears, his voice growing high pitched. “I can’t take the time to get written permission from you every time I want to say something about my album.”

“And I’m not asking you to!” Phil retaliated. “But couldn’t you have waited, like, a day so that I wasn’t completely blindsided by you basically outing me when I woke up this morning?”

“No,” Dan huffed, an edge of stubbornness cutting into his defiance.

“No?” Phil asked incredulously.

“No,” Dan repeated, his voice even more forceful this time. “You couldn’t have talked me out of it.”

“I wouldn’t have tried to!” Phil exclaimed before he could process what Dan had said — before he could process that Dan seemed to think that Phil would try to control him. In some ways, at least. “I get that given… your album…” Phil trailed off as he grappled for the right words, words that would capture how Dan’s album affected Phil’s life without him sounding ungrateful or overly important.

He took a deep breath before continuing. “I get that your album is going to take away some of the privacy and control over my image that I’m used to having online, and that’s fine. But couldn’t this have waited, like, a day so that we could talk about it first? And I could… I don’t know, tell my family we were properly dating first?”

Dan shook his head forcefully, his curls flopping down into his face. “You don’t understand Phil. There wasn’t time. It had to be now.”

“What is that even supposed to mean?” Phil huffed, his free hand lacing through his hair and pushing it further back.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Dan snapped, his arms crossing hotly in front of his chest.

“I’m sure I would if you would stop being defensive for five seconds and actually explained yourself!” The words flew out of Phil’s mouth before he realized what he was saying. They were harsh, yes, but they were true. It felt like all Dan was doing this morning was be overly contrary for no discernible reason, and he wasn’t fucking listening. Phil didn’t want to be angry right now, he really didn’t. It was just hard when Dan was acting like this.

Dan appeared to have heard that, though, if the way he flinched backwards was anything to go by.

“Excuse me?” Dan challenged. He sounded positively outraged, his tone just this side of livid. His shoulders were shaking, and Phil could see anger flaring in his eyes.

And something else, too. Something like… hurt.

Phil put his own mug down on the counter, dragging his hands down his face in exasperation. This wasn’t the conversation — well, fight, at this rate — that he’d come over here to have this morning. Phil hadn’t been wanting to argue, he’d just wanted to understand.

“I’m just trying to talk to you, Dan,” Phil pleaded, his voice coming out whiny and needy “I just want to know what the hell happened last night.”

“Right,” Dan laughed bitterly. “You want to know all about the part where I almost outed you, but you don’t seem at all concerned about the part where I actually came out.”

“That was your choice!” Phil insisted, voice raised.

“No it wasn’t!” Dan bellowed back.

Phil froze, his eyes snapping up to meet Dan’s again. Dan had pushed off the counter, and crossed almost half of the kitchen. He was standing rigid, his body leaning forward, his hands in tight fists by his sides. Dan’s eyes were blown wide — he looked shocked by his own words.

Phil certainly was.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Phil asked slowly, warily. Something happened last night — something big — that much was clear. What wasn’t clear, though, was why Dan hadn’t called Phil last night.

They could have talked about it. Phil could have helped.

“It means — it means —” Dan stuttered, before abruptly giving up. The tension melted out of Dan’s shoulders as he crumpled in on himself, retreating back to lean against his countertop. “It doesn’t mean anything. Can we just move on?”

“No we can’t bloody move on,” Phil huffed, his frustration growing. He’d passed impatient, passed needing answers; now, he was downright desperate. “Can you just tell me what the fuck you mean, already? What happened last night?”

Phil stared at Dan with pleading eyes, silently begging him to explain what he’d meant. For a moment, Dan just stared back at Phil. A loud silence overtook the room, neither of them saying anything else.

Finally, the tense silence was interrupted by a sharp sigh from Dan. Dan’s gaze fell from Phil’s, turning down to his own feet. An agitated hand ran through Dan’s hair, tugging on his curls.

A brief wave of relief shot through Phil, certain that he was about to get an explanation for Dan’s weird behavior. Phil pushed away from the counter, debating whether he should go to Dan, maybe tip his head up and kiss his forehead. Something small to make Dan feel more comfortable talking.

But then, Dan was crossing the kitchen in three big strides, coming to a halt right in front of Phil. Bewildered, Phil searched Dan’s face, trying to figure out what the hell Dan was doing. Dan’s eyes were wild, frantic, a panicked gleam shimmering in them. His cheeks were flushed red, his mouth drawn in a tight line. He was so, so close, so afraid.

And then he was gone.

Phil blinked rapidly, confused and unsure where Dan had disappeared to. One second he was there, and then poof he was gone.

Unsure, that was, until a sudden waft of cool air washed over his upper thighs.

Phil’s attention snapped down, finding Dan again. Dan’s hands were on Phil’s joggers — joggers that he’d managed to tug down to Phil’s knees before Phil had even realized where Dan had gone. He was still tugging, trying to wrestle them over Phil’s knees now.

“Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan,” Phil gasped, his voice coming out rushed and urgent. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Dan didn’t look up at Phil. Instead, his hands abandoned Phil’s joggers, leaving them wrapped around Phil’s bony knees, and latched onto Phil’s boxers. His hands pulled insistently, frantically — too frantic to be particularly effective, mercifully.

“Dan!” Phil implored. The shock of the situation finally wore off, and Phil finally launched into motion, his hands flying out to catch Dan’s and prying them away from his hips. His boxers were awkwardly a bit low now, but Phil didn’t risk letting go of Dan’s hands — Phil was worried that Dan would just reach back to pull them all the way over his arse. “Look at me!” Phil ordered forcefully.

Slowly, painfully, Dan’s eyes drifted up and came to rest somewhere around Phil’s neck.

Phil took a deep breath, calming himself down, before he hooked his fingers under Dan’s chin and coaxed his head the rest of the way up. “Dan, sweetheart, what are you doing?” Phil asked, careful to keep a gentle tone to his voice now that he had Dan’s attention.

“Making the fight go away,” Dan responded. His voice was small — so, so small — and he still wasn’t quite meeting Phil’s gaze.

Phil stared blankly, his eyes trailing over Dan’s scared face, as he tried to figure out what was happening.

Suddenly, Phil was assaulted with the image of Dan covered in hickeys and scratches, embarrassed and ashamed as he admitted to Phil that they were from angry sex — angry sex that came from a fight.

Phil’s jaw dropped.

It didn’t shock Phil to know that Dan and Isabella dealt with their problems through sex, but he was a bit astonished to find the effects so lasting, to realize that Dan still seemed to think that angry sex was the proper solution to an argument, even with Phil.

Phil shook his head forcefully — both in attempt to tell Dan no, and also to shake himself out of his head and into action.

“Babe,” Phil whispered. Looking down at Dan’s vulnerable, submissive stance, Phil felt his heart breaking. Desperate to make them feel like equals again, Phil sunk down to his knees, too. He let go of Dan’s wrists, reaching up to brush back his unruly curls from his face. “Blowing me isn’t going to make the fight go away,” he whispered softly..

“Oh,” Dan muttered, voice small. His eyes trailed down between them. Phil couldn’t see his expression, but his body language spoke volumes. “It’s well and truly fucked then, huh?”

Dan sounded so scared, so distraught, that Phil wasn’t sure what to say for a moment. Dan sounded like he genuinely believed that it — they — must be fucked if a blowjob wasn’t going to fix their fight.

Phil’s shock turned to horror when he saw tears leak down Dan’s face.

“Oh, baby. No, no,” Phil cooed. His hands flew from Dan’s hair to cup his cheeks, his thumbs swiping under Dan’s eyes and smearing the tears away. “No, nothing’s fucked baby.”

Slowly, Dan tilted his head up to look at Phil. “It’s — it’s not?” he hiccupped, his voice coming out higher and more crackly than normal.

“Of course not,” Phil promised, rushed and confident. His eyes were wide in horror at the very idea of them, this, their relationship, being over so soon. His brows were furrowed in confusion at the idea of Dan being concerned that this was over — that they were over. “But the way to make the fight go away is to tell me what’s going on, tell me what you’re thinking.”

Dan sniffled loudly, his eyes fluttering closed again. He was quiet for a moment, with the exception of a few residual hiccups, but then he nodded slowly, his eyes still closed.

“Yeah? You’ll talk to me this time?” Phil asked hopefully.

Dan nodded again.

“Without getting defensive?” Phil prompted, half teasing, half trying to encourage Dan to act more rationally this time.

“Yeah,” Dan agreed meekly. He fell forward, Phil’s arms wrapping around and catching him on instinct. The second Phil’s arms were around Dan, Dan burrowed into him, melting against his chest. Dan’s hands were smushed between them, crooked at an awkward angle, but Phil didn’t mind.

Silence settled between them as Dan calmed down. Slowly, gently, Phil started tracing his fingers up and down Dan’s spine, his fingers catching on the studs of Dan’s sweater.

After a moment, Dan mumbled, “Can we sit down?”

Phil pulled back and pressed a lingering kiss to Dan’s forehead. “Lead the way, sweetheart.”

Dan minutely leaned into Phil’s lips, pushing his head into the kiss for a moment before pulling back. He pushed up to his feet, and immediately offered Phil a hand up. Dan’s gaze trailed over Phil as he climbed off the floor; Phil felt his cheeks heat up in embarrassment as he remembered the state of his clothing.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Dan muttered, his eyes meaningfully flicking down to Phil’s half drawn joggers.

“It’s okay,” Phil murmured back softly as he stood up with Dan’s help. Phil’s spare hand flew to his joggers, pulling them back up his hips as he stood. He tried his best to swallow down his embarrassment, to make his cheeks go back to a pale white; he didn’t want to call any more attention to Dan’s rash advances than necessary. Not right now.

For the first time that morning, Phil was thankful that he’d only been able to find the tight joggers that morning — anything looser would likely have slipped straight down Phil’s thin legs and likely made the whole situation more awkward.

Dan dropped Phil’s hand to turn and collect their coffees from their respective countertops while Phil fixed his pants and joggers,. “Come on,” Dan muttered, cocking his head out of the room.

Phil obediently followed Dan out the kitchen and towards the lounge, nearly smashing into him when Dan came to a sudden halt in the middle of the hallway.

“What?” Phil asked, alarmed.

Dan spun around to face Phil. “I don’t wanna be in the lounge.” His words came out rushed, his voice high. “It’s a mess.”

“I don’t mind,” Phil assured him, “But we can go wherever you want.” Phil stepped backwards, moving closer to the wall so that Dan could navigate around him and lead them somewhere else.

“I need something from in there, though,” Dan insisted; his words were vague, but his tone was determined. He thrusted their coffees at Phil without much more of an explanation. Phil grabbed the coffees in silent shock, his fingers barely wrapping around the mugs and steadying them before Dan let go.

“I’ll meet you in the bed,” Dan said with a note of finality.

Dan only made it a few paces down the hallway before he stopped and spun back around to face Phil. “If that’s okay, I mean,” he said quickly, his voice high and rushed. “It’ll be more comfortable than the music room and I swear I won’t, like, try anything again. Like, I promise I’ll talk, I’m just really tired and I —”

“Dan,” Phil interrupted gently. “The bed’s fine. Get whatever you need. I’ll be there waiting for you.”

[sarcasticshutter]

Man, a lot happens in a year: Number 2020

Started these yearly reviews back when I was in high school lol, and def haven’t done it every year (or if I did they’re not all on tumblr. Who knows, cause I feel like I’ve done more than I’ve found here) but I’d like to reflect on 2020 because wow. It obviously feels to everyone like a lost year where all you did was sit around at home and mourn all the normal things and the plans and the big life goals that have been fully stopped in their tracks thanks to a little (ongoing) global pandemic. 

Hello to future me, hope things are well. Shit sure is strange and tenuous at the moment lol. But it’ll all get unstuck again and the world will start turning soon enough. You know that. Anyway from where I’m sitting right now, it’s kind of hard to remember anything that’s happened this year. It feels like I’ve blinked and a year has been omitted from my life, aside from the first three months of 2020 where I was still very much out and rolling on my life-momentum and doing exciting things. So I just want to convince myself that things *have* happened this year, and actually they haven’t been so bad, and to reflect on life going on despite the odd flavor permeating everything this year. I’m glad that’s all I have to complain about because I guess feeling stuck isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a person. I digress. Here’s the highlights I’ve meandered through this year with my eyes closed apparently lol. Please enjoy them with me as I remember them again:

Travelled to Belize, Mexico, Jamaica, Haiti, the Cayman Islands, St Thomas (and probably more) Caribbean islands on the final months of my ship contract

Got to live through the distinctly odd and certainly once in a lifetime experience of being stranded on a cruise ship as the world shut all of its borders in March to reduce transmission of a global pandemic. Feels surreal to think about all the stuff I was seeing as it happened and how that’s probably a very small percentage of people on this planet who were...forgive me...in that boat at that moment in our collective history. So eerie, but with the calm of knowing you don’t know how bad it actually is out there. The self awareness that this is bigger than you can comprehend yet. Eye of the storm type feeling

St Patricks day party on that cruise ship when the rest of the world had ground to a halt and we all were stranded out there isolating as one sealed off covid pod of crewmembers, because if one of us on the ship had it we were all gonna have it. So no use distancing among us at that point. We had no guests left on board and had a huge end of the world party on the pool deck with full use of the guest pools and bars lol

Came home and life slowed waaaay down in march/april. Hiked with mom and dad, saw a lot more of the cats, had a wholly uneventful zoom birthday in early April for my 26th. A weird birthday for what felt like a strange age for me. 26 just fit weird as a number, I’m much more switched on for 27 for some reason. This one coming up feels more right somehow

Spent time in the pool, and doing a lot of yoga which has carried me through this whole year as a constant mellower of things for me mentally. A repeated exercise in re-grounding

Visited Alex in Flagstaff! Got to see meteor crater and spent a cute weekend in a little air bnb with my family, and did some aspen-y hiking as well

Bought my first car with my own money outright, that I’d been saving for the whole time I was in NYC. Been learning to be comfortable driving since I’ve never felt that way in my life lol, but I do think I’m less stressed behind the wheel now than I’ve ever been. Has been so nice to finally be combing through that anxiety. Finally was ready for it I guess

Started a (very long distance) relationship with a friend from the ship. He’s been a huge relief as far as someone to lean on through this year and a great sounding board for frustrations/lifeline to some feeling of sanity a good number of times. Shit is weird but taking this step still feels right, so we’ll see where tf this relationship is going haha

Moved to Tucson with a bff from college. A gigantic help for my sanity as far as getting a feeling of self reliance back and feeling like I have my own space. Soso grateful to be able to be sharing her home with her

Got a part time job so I could not feel so helplessly tied to the clusterfuck that has been unemployment insurance this year. Still have a lot to sort out with that... Glad to be earning my own cash, and glad that the weird little ragtag group of coworkers I’ve found myself with are actually a group of good hearts 

Pumpkin carving and a night hike up in Phoenix with my family for Halloween. And made sure I dropped off my early voting ballot to see that fucker out of office lol

Sweet god, Biden’s horrendously way too close presidential win. Can you imagine the other outcome... This is maybe the biggest relief of 2020 that he didn’t scrape out a second term

Outdoor attempt at a covid safe thanksgiving with my parents and my grandparents on my moms side in Phoenix

Finally had the balls to schedule a scary doctors appointment I’d been using covid to avoid going to. Got back the clean health news I had been anxious I wouldn’t receive. A huge weight off my chest that had been sitting there in the back of my thoughts since last year

Outdoor attempt at a covid safe christmas at my dads’ parents’ house in Sun City, and some cinnamon rolls and peanut butter ball making with my parents. Drove through a huge neighborhood of christmas lights and did a small mom and dad christmas gift opening on christmas eve night

Virtual new years game nights with SASH and the Joneses. Didn’t see a single firework or leave the house (heard em though) and felt surrounded by my closest friends safely even without seeing them in person

None of this stuff is all that flashy and a lot of the normal holidays or events, or even everyday things, were so much more low key and quiet this year. But it was still nice to at least have found a way to celebrate in a stripped down, sort of back to basics way. Glad to have been able to see my family so much more this year. Glad to have had countless meaningful text conversations with my friends who have had the same issues as me as far as having our entire industry unable to function for the last 9 months with no end in sight. The candidness of speaking about the difficulties everyone has had this year, but specifically sharing that weight of the arts being particularly suffocated, and having all of our young career momentums snuffed out for no reason of our own, has been soothing to commiserate about. It’s been a mentally taxing year in the hardest to describe way. But I’m glad that as hard as it is to find kind words for this year, at least it’s just boring and stuck and frustrated that are the things I’m feeling. Because I’ve managed not to lose anyone close to me, or have anyone dealing with any serious illnesses at the moment. 

(I believe) I’ve worked through all of the absolute bullshit I had on my plate in 2019. This year has been easier for me than last, as nuts as that sounds with every thing going on in 2020. I’m out of a suffocating relationship that had become very wrong for me.  Left the city that was killing me to remain stuck in. Had the courage to take this cruise job that I’d been curious about since graduation. Got to travel the world and meet amazing people I otherwise would have never known.  Met a new guy I’ve felt so much more effortlessly in sync with than I ever did in the last relationship. And that’s in an LDR lol, I can’t believe how comfortable that’s been given the ludicrous circumstances of seeing a guy from a different continent, 8 time zones away, during a global pandemic where our borders are shut to foreign visitors and we still at this moment don’t know when they’ll reopen. 

This year I’m just coasting in a house with my friend. Going to work at an easy job that covers my bills. Having the health and freedom to drive *my* car two hours to see my family way more often than I’ve seen them in the past four years. I’m feeling a lot more appreciative of my relationship with my brother, my parents, my grandparents. I’m feeling better about maybe returning to live where I’m from instead of seeing it with a chip on my shoulder. So in a lot of ways 2020 has been less of an emotional mindfuck for me than 2019 was. Or it’s at least been the landing pad to detangle everything from 2019.  I’ve been learning that maybe gathering a bit closer to a support system isn’t a weakness, but a comfort instead.

So this isn’t the tour de force bucket list I’ve grown accustomed to watching myself tackle in each year since undergrad. It’s a retracting of arms, and a regrouping to center. Being forced into looking inward at small details I hadn’t been interested in seeing lately. May be nice just to collect my feet underneath me again and take in all this chaotic crash course learning I’ve been doing the last few years before stepping back out of the plane. Time will tell if 2021 is another time of building and reflection, or a time to start taking a few shaky steps back out into whatever comes next.

What a year.

[wayward-marvel-sommer1196]

Mentally Unstable

Pairing: Jensen x reader (platonic till the end), Jared x reader (platonic)

Trigger warnings: mental illness, slight depression, anger outburst, language, very little spn canon violence, self loathing (I guess. Basically the reader doesn’t like herself), bad traffic (yes that’s a warning), reader being bitchy

Word Count: 3131

Summary: You wake instantly knowing you are going to have one of your “bad” days meaning your emotions are going to be a mess. Sure enough angry outburst start your day when you nearly kick the crap out of a guy in traffic and nearly bit off Jared and Jensen’s heads. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like this will be going away any time soon. How are you supposed to keep it hidden from people who are practically your family and how will this affect the major scenes you must shoot? That’s right you are an actress on Supernatural, but can you keep your emotion in check long enough to get through the day?

A/N: Hey y’all first I want to say I have no fucking Idea where this came from. It wasn’t planned at all. It’s basically word vomit on a page because I had a really crappy day in which some of the things in the story actually happened to me. So, I guess writing some fluffy J2 helped me get over my shitty day. I also wrote the reader based off myself in a way because these emotional issues are ones I face and today was one of the “bad” days for me. Literally wrote this between the times of 8pm and 4am so there’s barely any editing done and I apologize for any mistakes. Its currently 4:30 and I have no ambition to check. Any who, I know I had more to say but I forget, oh well enjoy. P.S. This is my first RPF so be easy on me please. As always feedback is appreciated and wanted and hate will not be tolerated.

***Italics are scenes being shot for the show***

“Damn it!!!!” You screamed as you burnt your hand on your hair straightener for the third time this morning. It was now 8 am and you had to be on set in an hour. You were barely half ready and it took you 45 minutes to get to set.

The whole morning just wasn’t going your way. From the moment you woke up you knew, just by the mood you were in, that it wasn’t going to be a particularly good day. You really didn’t need a cycle of bad days right now, but it looked like your head had other plans.

It started with your damn neighbors at 1 o’clock this morning banging on the walls and their furniture skidding across the floors. You could only assume they were fucking their brains out. However, their two hours of bliss really cut into your sleep time. If that wasn’t bad enough your alarm decided to not go off this morning. Which made you an hour late getting ready.

Now here you were hair half done, make up barely applied still in your PJ’s and having to leave in like 10 minutes.

“Fuck it!” you said as you threw the straightener down on the counter and through your hair in a messy bun. The little make up you had on, you wiped off and headed to your closet. Noticing all your jeans were dirty, you huffed and grabbed a pair of sweats, an oversized t-shirt, put your converse sneakers on, and grabbed your sunglasses to head out the door.

While driving to set, of course you’d have the good fortune to run into traffic. These idiots simply didn’t know how to drive. It was really starting to piss you off. Cars were weaving in and out of lanes, stopping abruptly, and paying no mind to anyone else around them.

“Are you fucking kidding. Thanks for cutting me off you idiot,” you shouted to the black Prius that decided it was ok for them to cut in front of you. This prompted them to flick you off after which you had to take a dozen deep breaths to stop yourself from getting out of your car and beating the shit out of them.

After the horrendous traffic, you finally made it to set at 9:05. Five minute late. You went to run to your trailer when you ran into a huge solid figure and fell on your ass muttering “Shit” to yourself.

“Hey there speed racer. Why the rush? Jensen said as he gave you a hand to help you up.

“Oh, you know running late,” you responded with a bit of anger in your tone.

“Damn (Y/N), you look like crap.”

“Why, thank you Jensen. That’s what every girl wants to here in the morning,” you said with a scowl on your face and a viciousness in your voice.

“That’s not what I meant. I mean- “

“Let me stop you there. I don’t have time for this right now. I have to drop my stuff off in my trailer and go to straight to hair and make up to get this mess figured out.”

“(Y/N), what’s up with you this morning. I’ve never seen you act this way before?”

“Having a bad morning,” and with that you turned away and went to your trailer.

That wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either. You tended to go through periods of good days and periods of bad days. Your mental health was a bit unstable to say in the least. It’s been like this since you were in high school and you have just kind of dealt with it since then. Although, it’s been getting harder to hide. Usually your bad days started around hiatus or right before a long break, but now it’s happening more often during filming.

You had been working on Supernatural for two years now. You loved it. Your character’s name was Natasha and when she first met the boys it was right after the events of season 8, so the beginning of season 9. She was badass and could fight better than the boys most the time. However, she was a demon, which proved to be troublesome with Sam getting possessed by Gadreel and all. Her issue was she wanted the boys to cure her from being a demon. So, it led to an interesting story line.

Working with Jared, Jensen, Misha, and even Mark was the highlight of your life. You loved them like your family, hell they were your family. You didn’t have anyone else. Your parents died when you were young and you had no siblings so you were pretty much on your own. Until now. That’s what made keeping this secret so hard. The only person that knew was Jared and that was only because he caught you in the middle of a breakdown on one of your particularly bad days. He sat and talked with you telling you his experience with mental illness. You begged him not to tell a soul, and even though he disagreed with your choice he promised to keep your secret.

That brings us back to the present. You were in the hair and make up trailer, with Janine the stylist, with your hair just about done, when Jared walked in with a concerned look on his face.

“Hey (Y/N). How are you feeling this morning?” Jared asked.

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” you replied with anger filling your voice.

“Easy there. Don’t bite my head off. Jensen came to me and said you acting a bit off and basically chewed him out. So, I thought I’d come check on you.”

“Sorry Jar, it’s just been a hell of a morning and I didn’t get much sleep.”

“And it’s one of your “bad” days.”

“Yeah that too. I’ll apologize to Jay later it’s just today I’m more off than usual. Like I’m tired, depressed, pissed, and annoyed all at once and it’s making my head spin.”

“I get it. You know I do. That’s I think you should tell the others, especially Jensen.”

“I can’t Jar.”

“Yes, you can. I did and actually helped a lot and still does.”

“I want to tell him and the others. I really do. I just…. I just don’t know.”

“Look, I think you should, but I’m not going to pressure you. It’s your choice. Do what’s best for you and that pretty little noggin of yours. Just know, I’m always here if you need to talk, no matter what.”

“Thanks Jar. Really, it means a lot.”

“Look, I heave to head back to set to finish a scene with Jensen, but at least think about it. Love ya. See you soon,” he said as he kissed the crown of your head, earning him a scowl from your hair artist, and out the door he went.

Janine finished your hair quite flawlessly considering what she had to work with and quickly applied your make up, Natasha didn’t wear much so it was always quick, and you headed to wardrobe.

For this episode, they had you back in your all black demon style. For a bit, there you were in relaxed jeans and a flannel like the guys, but this episode had you facing off with some old demon buddies. So, you had to look the part with the skinny leather biker pants, leather biker jacket, lace up combat boots, and even a bullet belt as if you couldn’t look any more badass. Despite the result of the outfit, which was always hot as hell, it was a major pain in the ass to put on. Leather tends not to cooperate or breathe, if you know what I mean. But, none the less it was now on and you headed to Stage 3 to do your scene with the boys.

“Hey (Y/N), about earlier, I’m sorry if I stepped on your toes. I didn’t mean t- “Jensen started to say but you cut him off.

“Don’t worry about it Jay. It’s good. Like I said it’s just been a really rough morning and you just caught me in a bad time that’s all,” you replied with a slight smile on your face.

“You feelin’ better now, (Y/N)?” Jared asked as he came running over.

“Yeah, a little. You, on the other hand, better be careful and not mess up that hair or you won’t be once Janine’s done with you.” Jared laughed shaking his head knowing you weren’t kidding. Janine would get so frustrated with him because he could never sit still for her to finish his hair and then 10 minutes later it was all messed up.

“Alright places people. We need to start the next scene. We’re wasting precious minutes here,” Bob singer shouted and you all ran to your marks. “And ACTION!”

“Look Dean, I know these guys. You could say we were chummy back in the day. I know how they operate,” Natasha said.

“Yeah, well, you were “chummy” back when you were still a demon, but now you’re not.”

“They don’t know that.”

“What do they think you’ve been up to?”

“Treason to the king maybe, but they’d never expect this. So, I just play the part. Act like I used to.”

“What happens when they throw their demon powers at you and realize you can’t throw back?”

“Then I fight. I haven’t lost my skills. And let’s not forget who kick both yours and Sammy’s ass just three days ago.”

“CUT!” Singer screamed. “(Y/N), sweetie, I need more emotion from you. Need more snark and that last line I need that famous snarky grin that you do so well.”

“Got it boss,” you quickly replied.

“Alright let’s pick up at ‘Then I fight…’ and ACTION!”

“Then I fight. I haven’t lost my skills. And let’s not forget who kick both yours and Sammy’s ass just three days ago.” You said nailing your grin.

“Yeah, well I still don’t like this plan. Too many unknowns. It’s dangerous.”

“DUHH!! It’s dangerous. Everything we do is dangerous. It’s the job. And since when do you care about unknowns? That’s like your calling card ignoring all the unknowns and kick down doors.”

“It’s not gonna be easy Tasha.”

“Never said it would be Dean-o.”

“You sure about this?”

“Yeah totally. Like 90% sure. OK like 85%. Maybe 70%. Stop me now it’s not getting any better.”

Just then Sam walked through the motel door and said, “There here.”

“CUT! Awesome job guys. Take five while we set up for the next scene,” Singer said.

“That was great (Y/N)!” Jensen said.

“Yeah you did good,” Jared agreed.

“Plus you look totally hot in all that leather so that helped,” Jensen said with a smirk on his face.

“Dude, really?” Jared said.

“For real Jay, I think your Dean is showing,” you said making both men laugh.

“You may be right, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true,” Jensen said.

“Well, Dean is a notorious liar, so is it?” you couldn’t help but smile at yourself for that one. Jared even gave you a half hug for that.

“I can’t win, can I?” Jensen sarcastically asked.

“Nope. It’s best you learn that know, Ackles. The woman always wins,” you responded. At that time, you were all being called back to set for the big demon fight scene. You weren’t going to lie, you were nervous. This scene had you doing a lot more stunts then you’ve done in the past. Also, you’ve never been on one of your “bad” days for a big fight scene so that just added to the problem.

You finished the fight scene, which took two hours longer to shoot than it should have. You kept messing up and making dumbass rookie mistakes. Every time you messed up you’d have to start over. With every screw up, it made you angrier and angrier at the same time depressing you. After a while Jared and Jensen started to goof off to try and make you feel better and while you appreciated the effort that only put you further behind and made you more upset. But, finally after 5 painstaking hours, yes 5, you finished and you were all fake bloody.

Next up was your emotional scene with the boys but more focused on Dean than Sam. You weren’t sure you were going to be able to get through it but you had no choice.

Natasha laid in the corner of the room, beaten, bloodied, unable to move. Dean went running towards her and laid her in his lap.

“Tasha, hey, come on, open your eyes,” Dean said.

“D-Dean,” Natasha sputtered. “Sometimes I wish I was still a demon. This would hurt a lot less,” Natasha said with a smile forming on her face.

“Really?? A joke? Right now? I don’t think this is a time for jokes Tasha.”

“Hey, lighten up will ya? It’s not like I haven’t died before. I mean technically I’m 540 years old. So- “Natasha started coughing up blood.

“That’s not funny. You’re human now. I knew this show down was a stupid idea. Look at you. I don’t even know where to press down because your bleeding from everywhere,” tears started to roll down Deans face. “What are we going to do without you? What am I going to do without you? I need you here.”

With those words coming out of Jensen’s mouth and the fake “real” tears pouring out of both of your eyes, you lost it. You don’t know what happened but your fake tears became real signaling the “bad” day intervening again. You couldn’t stop it so you got off Jensen and apologized to the rest of the cast and crew and ran to your trailer with the tears still flowing.

You were sat in the corner between the couch and TV with your legs folded to your chest, when you heard a knock on your door. “Not now Jay,” you said.

“It’s not Jensen, it’s me and I’m coming in,” Jared said as he entered your trailer and sat next to you. “What’s going on in that confusing head of yours?” he asked.

“That’s just it Jar, I have no fucking clue. And the fact that I have no clue makes it even worse.”

“I know but think something had to have set you off.”

“All I know is that I was looking into Jensen’s eyes as he was saying Dean’s words to Natasha and suddenly the fake tears weren’t so fake anymore.”

“That’s what I thought. I’m sure you’ve noticed, because I have, that these “bad” days, as you call them, are happening more frequently.” You just nodded your head. “Well, I’m thinking that the stress of keeping this a secret is what’s provoking it to happen more.”

“I guess that makes sense. But I just don’t understand how I go from majorly pissed of one moment to crying my eyes out the next.”

“That’s the human brain for ya sweetie. No one can really explain why it does what it does.”

“Your right. It’s just this fuck up of a day has had me reeling on edge and got in my head.”

“Happens to the best of us. So, you gonna tell him?” You nodded yes. “Good because he’s waiting outside. Jensen come in!”

You mouthed a thank you to Jared as he walked out the door and he gave you that ‘don’t mention it’ face he always does.

Jensen came and sat next to you. “What’s going on?” he kindly asked.

“Look Jay, there’s something you don’t know about me. Well more like a few somethings that have a lot to do with what going on with me.”

“I’m listening.”

“Well, when I was a kid my parents died so my grandparents took care of me and after a few months they started to notice a change in me. I guess losing my parents messed with my head so much that it kind of left me mentally unstable.”

“OK, what exactly does that mean?”

“It means that I have these periods of bad days and periods of good days. I’m usually able to keep them hidden from most, but lately it’s been happening more and I guess it got to be too much. Thus, the angry outbursts and out of nowhere crying.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Because I’m embarrassed by it and honestly its usually something that sends a person running for the hills. Anytime someone says ‘mental illness’ or ‘mentally unstable’ people assume the worst and actually make them worse. So, it’s always been in my best interest to keep it hidden.”

“I get it. But you do realize you are in the one place where no one would care? We would all support you. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I just am ashamed I guess, but I can’t hold it back anymore because that’s making it worse.”

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of. We all support you. I support you. It’s gonna take a lot more than a mental illness to send me running for the hills.”

“I really appreciate that Jay. You have no idea how much that means to me.”

“No problem. And look you can come and talk to me anytime you need. Any hour of any day. Call if you must. I’ll pick up. Your health is more important.”

“Thank you.”

“Your welcome. But I have a question. How come Jared knew?”

“Because he found me in the middle of one of my break downs about 6 months back and I swore him to secrecy.”

“That sounds like you,” Jensen said with a smile on his face. “Now why don’t we go and finish this scene and kick it in the ass and then grab a couple beers to top the night off?”

“Sounds good to me.”

Jensen helped you off the ground ad you both returned to Stage 3 and knocked that scene out of the park. You both portrayed that raw emotion with such intensity it was hard to believe it wasn’t real. Those were Bob Singers words not yours. Turns out Natasha didn’t die, right before she drew her final breath Cas swooped in and healed her mostly because he still had a little wear and tear. But she lived and spoiler alert her and Dean ended up together. Many times that night, in fact, much to Sam’s annoyance. So, a good episode.

After that you did go out and get those beers with the guys and had a wonderful rest of the night. Cracking jokes telling stories, it was a hell of a time. Maybe a little too wonderful considering you woke up in Jensen’s bed with his t-shirt on and him wearing nothing but boxers. 

@jensen-jarpad 

[your-move-scherbatsky]

Casualty S31 rambling

OK so this is definitely a bit early, given that the series finale  isn't for another nine days, as I write this, but the past few days I've had various different conversations about the 30th anniversary year of Casualty and it's made me realise I have a lot of thoughts. So here goes... [maybe...I might not even have the confidence to post this anywhere]

I went into this series really struggling as a viewer, not because I had suddenly fallen out of love with my favourite show, or my favourite group of cast and crew, but because  my two favourite characters arguably of all time had just left within three months of each other, I think that would prove difficult for most people in all honesty, and trust me when I say if it had been any other show, I probably would have just given up. This was never an option here though!

I always love the start of a new series, because it feels all sparkly and new, but the start of S31 really did feel like reset  after  how brutal S30 was for me. It absolutely didn't disappoint, from the minute Iain crashed to earth in the helicopter [yes that was literally the defining moment for me] and I spent the remainder of  the episode thinking they were going to 'pull a Patrick in S16' and he was going to drop dead at any moment, and Lily was going to find him slumped in a corner somewhere, and wanting to scream that this wasn't fair, I knew it would all be OK.

The levels of nostalgia for me this series have been pretty intense too. The return of Duffy is the perfect exampe of this. Duffy was 7/8 year old Kirsty's favourite character, and 7/8 year old me was so sad when she left first time around. I wasn't overly fussed about her returns over the years, but having her back this time around has made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I don't know it just feels different from before. Duffy marrying Charlie was also a massive highlight of this series for me [and I hardcore shipped Baz&Charlie back when, I mean COME ON Everlasting Love], it just felt so right, and actually Duffy brings out a side in Charlie that I didn't really see before and I like it. I've also loved the returns of Josh, especially  the most recent one , when he brought up his family dying in the house fire, the history of this show has become so important to me these past 12 months! Incidently my favourite scene in the whole of the anniversary episode, is Charlie,Duffy and Josh standing on the stairs blocking Jacob's way. Whenever I say that to people who know me they always question me, and I get it, I mean I'm normally more likely to say Noel and his ice sculpture or Lily relentlessly persuing Iain to make sure he's  OK, but that scene in context is absolutely iconic. I just love it so much. I hope we can have Josh back on a bit more of a permanant basis cos honestly I'd love to see him in the ambulance with Iain.

I can't write this  without mentioning Lily&Iain. I walked into the anniversary episode a Lily&Ethan shipper, I walked out of it wanting nothing more then Lily&Iain to live happily ever after!It was like being slapped round the face by their obvious chemistry and countless times since I've wondered why I never saw it before. I can't believe there are two episodes left of this series, and apart from a very brief hook up they are still not together. I have loved all the almost moments so much though, from Gem  saying that they're obviously going to get together, and Iain flat out denying it, to Iain sitting at Lily's bedside telling her that if she survives they're going to be something special. Iain she survived, I am still waiting for you two to be something special, I believe they will be eventually, I don't want to think I wasted a year of my life invested in something that was only ever going to last two  episodes, as great as that hook up was! Some say it was inappropriate, I say they were just being more Cal! 

Whether together or seperately, there is no denying that Lily and Iain have been my absolute favourite thing about this series..I'll start with Iain... I've never actively disliked him, I mean he's pretty inoffensive as a character [if we forget the Rita stuff, and I really try to in all honesty], but in that moment when the helicopter crash landed with him in it, I realised just how much I loved the character, and how much I needed him to not be dead! I have absolutely loved getting to know more about his backstory this series, adding Gem as his little sister was an absolute highlight for me, and then when his mum arrived a couple of episodes later. It had never occured to me how little we actually knew about him until this happened. I hope we get to see both Gem and Kim again because there is definitly unfinished buisness there. Plus I want to know that Kim actually got the help she needed!As for Lily the evident character progression that has emerged this series has been one of my absolute favourite things of recent years, yeah I loved her from the moment she arrived, purely on the basis that I thought she was hilarious, but when you stop and think about it, and there have been several episodes this series where I really have done just that, she is basically the definition of character progression done right, and really subtly over time. The most defining moment  for me was when she told Iain that 'life doesn't run on plans'. This coming from the woman who when she arrived had a very definite five year plan, and nothing was going to deviate her from it.I have truly loved seeing the growth in Lily and long may it continue.#

Equally I can't write this, without mentioning Cal's death, I'm not sure that by the time it happened anyone was surprised it was  him, but the way in which it happened was pretty shocking. The episode was totally set up to make you think it was going to be Lily, and then BOOM Cal. I could never quite make up my mind about Cal, sometimes I really liked him, and sometimes I really hated him, but his death got to me way more then I thought it would, I think it was the other characters reactions though. Obviously Ethan [but more on him in a second], in the same way that I will never forget Dixie screaming Jeff's name when he died, I will never forget Ethan seeing Cal led there. Elle really got to me aswell though, I honestly don't think she gets anough praise as a character, her standing there telling Cal he would be OK and stroking his hair even though she knew  it probably wasn't going to be OK, broke me more then anything else apart from Ethan, and nobody ever really talks about that, which makes me sad.

So yeah Ethan, I spent a lot of this series kinda frustrated with him, mainly because I thought he deserved better then Alicia, who knew how he felt about her and still thought it was OK to go off with Cal, and I couldnt understand why he'd still want her after that, but the minute Cal died that all kinda went out the window. It's been nearly three months and I still can't imagine how Ethan is meant to live without his big brother, they didn't always have the best relationship but still. It's broken my heart seeing him so set on revenge, and oddly enough despite not really shipping it at all until this point, I was so very glad that in the beginning he didn't shut Alicia out,he let her be there for him, which I wasn't expecting. I hope she doesn't give up on him, because he needs someone.I really hope in S32 that Ethan can find some form of peace, I hope he gets justice in the right way for Cal, I REALLY hope he doesn't do anything he can't come back from in Saturday's episode.

Another storyline that really got to me this year was David's mental health issues, and the Robyn stuff that happened as a consequence of it. I thought it was so well done. David&Robyn are one of my favourite friendships on the show, and the  'graveyard episode' and Five Days are two of my favourites of the series. Watching the build up to David's breakdown was like knowing that a car crash was about to happen and being powerless to stop it, obviously as a viewer but also I think for some of the characters. One of the scenes that got to me the most was in 'It Starts with the Shoes', when David's son can see what's about to happen, but can't do anything about it, and David can see what's about to happen too, because he says something like 'next time I see you I'll be wearing the most boring shoes.' that really got me. We need his son to come back now. I also really love the end scene when Dylan talks to David, and basically asks him to go for treatment for him. Sometimes Dylan really surprises me and that was one of those moments. As a side note, I've really loved the Dylan&David friendship that's blossomed from that, and as much as Dylan is helping David 'to live', I like the role reversal that's gone on since Dylan has been struggling in the wake of Cal's death. As for Robyn, I'm so glad that she's finally back, but the episode Five Days is one of those episodes where you could cry from beginning to end if you wanted to! At the time I was convinced they were going to kill baby Charlotte [how glad am I that I was wrong], and that it would be  three thousand times more devastating because of the kind of character Robyn is, she's so sweet and innocent, and doesn't really mean any harm whatsoever, obviously it would  have been devastating for any character but I feel like she would have been the least equipped to  ever be able to come to terms with it, thankfully they didn't, and the very last scene had me actually sobbbing happy tears, with them all sat watching the video of Charlotte, they're such a family unit!

One of the other things I have truly loved this series, has been seeing Noel getting more stuff to do away from being sat behind reception all the time. I genuinely don't think I have ever laughed as much at something  in Casualty, as I did when Noel got so drunk on Charlie's stag night that he genuinely believed his name was Leslie!! It was getting towards the end of the episode though and I was also getting quite concerned that no-one was actually going to call him Noel again! In complete contrast though, It made me really sad for him when he thought he was going to lose his job and the machines were going to take over! I can't imagine a Casualty where Noel isn't there, and I hope I don't have to for a very long time in all honesty.

I'm going to end  with, I'm pretty sure that if I was writing this after the 29th July I would be including the One shot episode in this, but I wanted to write my thoughts down while I was feeling 'ALL THE THINGS' about Casualty. I always love my favourite show but just lately it feels more intense. I'm going to blame the 30th anniversary...

[queenofthewaste]

Hi it's 3am (by the time I finished this it was in fact closer to 5am) and I'm so tired and I don't care anymore and this is literally my blog so if I can't be emo here then where? (A diary, I suppose, but shutup)

To preface this, mutuals, whatevs you've seen me go through fandom after fandom and then become a pseudo aesthetic blog so you can handle me angsting a bit. IRLs on the other hand, if you read this I would appreciate you not ever acknowledging this in anyway shape of form bc like. Emotional vulnerability bad (ง'̀-'́)ง

Up until a few months ago I was in a relationship with someone who I cared about very deeply. The relationship itself was not perfect but I was pretty happy, and best I can tell, so was she. Ultimately we broke up because of the fact that she felt she couldn't come out to her family. This wasn't fun for me or anything but its something I was aware of as a possible end so y'know. Whatever.

Unfortunately this break up wasn't even remotely clean. She continued to talk to me, not seeming to get my requests for space and eventually we went back to cuddling and other forms of emotional intimacy that are far oustide of my platonic wheelhouse. At this situation's worst she made some pretty specifically romantic moves towards me, which I would call almost actively callous. Eventually after a few months of going back and forth on whether or not we were talking we (I) actually were firm about it. This was on Halloween, and the following week or so was basically "great" insofar as I didn't have to think about her.

Unfortunately the next week it was my birthday and she turned up on my doorstep after my party upset I had invited some mutual friends, and I helped her with her emotional distress and then walked her home. Then I had no contact. For about a month.

A month later she messaged me on Twitter. Then a week later she turned up somewhere she knew I was going to be (this is somewhat debatable but ultimately I still felt stalked and in a weird way kind of betrayed).

Then nothing until Christmas day when I received an anonymous "I miss you" on this tumblr. Not provable as her like who else misses me lol? (All the creepy men who I keep rejecting but I don't they have my tumblr). Then on NYE she messaged my housemate about me. Then a few days later she does the same.

Ultimately my feeling about all of this are;

I’m sad about the circumstance of the break up. It feels like a waste of something good, but I could probably deal with it better if either of us seemed even remotely happy since it.

I think it’s fucking heartbreaking that someone I cared so deeply for would so quickly become someone I desperately wanted to avoid, the extent to which I want to avoid her is actively depressing in and of itself 

She’s clearly not been doing okay since we broke up (or for a while before we broke up but she’s been more noticeably dysfunctional since we broke up) and it’s so frustrating to watch her feel alienated from her friends (and to an extent have actually alienated her friends) and to engage in self destructive behaviours etc, and have no room, or even right to do anything. 

As an addition to the previous point, I am usually cold to a fault, so I hate how I have been unable to switch off here. I hate that I still care about her the way I do when everything she has done in the past four months has had an active detrimental affect on me.

This is probably the least “valid” feeling to have about the dissolution of the relationship, and I actively consider this to be deeply petty but here we are - I think it’s unfair that she is telling my housemate that she misses me. I think its unfair that she was the one to do romantic things during the messy period post break up. I think it’s unfair that she made a choice and now seems to want to have the sympathy of the person who was “left” or “dumped” or whatever. Fuck you that’s not fair. I haven’t made my feelings about this known. I didn’t message her fucking housemate to tell him I miss her. Of course I fucking miss her but I’m also not a fucking douchebag.

I also feel betrayed by how willing she was to hurt me and mess me around post-break up. She told her friends things she had promised she wouldn’t and generally handled things shittily. Honestly I just want to know why? I didn’t do anything fucking wrong. We didn’t break up even due to shitty behaviour what the fuck did I do to deserve all of this 

I still want to talk to her. I sort of feel like there’s nothing left to say anymore, but I do 

Running concurrently to this is the fact that last year I was voted in to be the president of the Comic Book Society (club) at my university. At the time I was pleased and looked forward to it. One of the people who would be running it with me was a guy I was good friends with. Then he (probably) sexually assaulted me, and (definitely) became super creepy about his feelings for me. I low key told him to fuck off and didn't speak to him for the summer. During which time he got therapy and seemed to improve, and because I didn't want to have to do paperwork I figured I would let him stick around. Of course then he continued to be creepy so I had to tell him to fuck off properly.

The break up I had just gone through, and the fact I had to fire 1/3 of my exec did not make running the society easy, but ultimately neither of those things were the actual problem. 

The problem instead was that my members just. Wouldn't talk. No matter what. I did everything I could. I know I'm often somewhat intimidating but I also know I'm reasonably funny and decent at conversation in general. But over three months these people remained mute and it was infuriating. They wanted a weekly lecture about comics and I'm just not doing that. So I've allowed the society to fold.

Ultimately about this I guess I feel

Sort of betrayed by the guy who was into me, obviously I suppose I shouldn’t have forgiven him after the (possible) sexual abuse, but I was tired and thought maybe it would be fine. But ultimately he was a guy who claimed to care about me/ know me well, and everything he did belied the opposite which is such a fundamental kind of gross that it’s sort of upsetting.

About my society failing? I take on the responsibility personally, even though every piece of evidence suggests there wasn’t much I could really have done to increase turnout, bar become more general interest (Like talk about the movies more) which ultimately defeats the point of the fucking society so. No. Basically, lol, I feel like a total failure for failing to run a society that was clearly doomed to failure from the beginning

ALSO I’m twenty one. Due to issues with my mental and physical health during my A levels I had to spend an additional year in college. I then failed to get the grades I wanted to go the uni I really wanted to go to. As a result of this I came to uni and was a bit “behind” where I wanted to be in life. Then, naturally, of course, I managed to fail a module of my course, meaning I had to resit the whole year. Making me a Twenty One year old First Year. I haven’t told any of my friends about this, meaning I’m consistently lying a bit about what I’m doing. (I did tell my now ex, and am sort of paranoid she may have told someone but whatever) Oh also one of my housemates is resitting his first year, which arguably makes my extended deception worse, because it’s not helped with his self perception. Oh also multiples of my friends are getting engaged now 

I guess the way I feel about this mess of shit is 

Failurex1000

I feel extremely “behind” some idea of where I feel I should be in my life, which is ridiculous because I’ve never had a clear picture of where I want to be and when, so there’s no plan to be behind on 

Failure Failure Failure

I feel somewhat guilty about not informing said housemate bc he’s insecure about resitting, and also insecure about me being arbitrarily “better” than him, but also I have a crippling fear of being seen as weak or stupid and he’s not my fucking responsibility.

Again, the friends all getting engaged thing makes me feel weirdly lagging so. yay

ALSO I live with three boys currently. I say “boys” because despite their status as legal adults, the juvenile term is really more appropriate. One of whom has had a crush on me for a relatively extended period of time now. He claims to be over me, but his behaviours consistently belie that he is not. Another is just generally a bit immature, and screeches down his headset playing shit video games in the middle of the night (this is in fact why I am currently up and writing this) The third is technically fine but he contributes to the general mess and skid marks on the toilet with the seat always fucking up and the hair all over the fucking bathroom dear fucking god 

Summing up this one too;

I have already decided to live alone next year, and have made the arrangements to do so, Though this means I will basically be broke re: disposable money

If I ever see another fucking toilet seat up I’m going to scream

I nearly stabbed my housemate today for waking me up. And now five hours later nearly I have been unable to get any sleep. 

Alot of my complaints about my housemates highlight two specific things for me 

My upbringing required me to be more independent from a younger age. I’m grateful for the relative competence this has provided me earlier on, but also I think I’m becoming resentful, or jealous, of these people who got to be children until even now? I cannot imagine being 19 and behaving the way these boys do (or twenty one and behaving the way my ex does) and I can’t help but wonder about the kind of coddling they must have had relative to my life.

I need my own space. I have had little control of my life and living arrangements for quite some time now (even having spent three months or so technically homeless last summer) and this is potentially my only opportunity to get that so

Finally, Alot of how I’ve reacted to stuff the past few months has made me feel concerned about my mental health? Several years ago I went to a psychologist for an extended period of time (I was forced to lol) and toward the end of the time I was seeing her she mentioned cluster B personality disorders to me. Obviously being a sixteen year old who thought she was fine this made me balk, I started lying to seem neurotypical or whatever the word is now, and then eventually managed to get out of having to go, but now I think there was probably some stock in what she was talking about and am now going to try and pursue this, so I get to dally with the NHS’ adult mental health services.

Summing up

I don’t actually want a diagnosis and on some level think I’m fine but also line up with the DSM of two of the cluster B’s relatively well and am clearly not doing well so my belief that I’m fine is unhelpful

In the end, it is clearly my pride that’s gong to lead to my death. 

Thanks for reading, anonymous internet person or person I know irl stalking my blog/ignoring my request for this to be ignored if you know me irl :I

[aracecvliwest]

Design Like a Teacher

In 2014, the clinic where I served as head of communications and digital strategy switched to a new online patient portal, a change that was mandated by the electronic health record (EHR) system we used. The company that provides the EHR system held several meetings for the COO and me to learn the new tool and provided materials to give to patients to help them register for and use the new portal.

As the sole person at my clinic working on any aspect of user experience, I knew the importance of knowing the audience when implementing an initiative like the patient portal. So I was skeptical of the materials provided to the patients, which assumed a lot of knowledge on their part and focused on the cool features of the portal rather than on why patients would actually want to use it.

By the time the phone rang for the fifth time on the first day of the transition, I knew my suspicion that the patient portal had gone wrong in the user experience stage was warranted. Patients were getting stuck during every phase of the process—from wondering why they should use the portal to registering for and using it. My response was to ask patients what they had tried so far and where they were getting stuck. Then I would try to explain why they might want to use the portal.

Sometimes I lost patients completely; they just refused to sign up. They had a bad user experience trying to understand how a portal fit into their mental model of receiving healthcare, and I had a terrible user experience trying to learn what I needed to do to guide patients through the migration. To borrow a phrase from Dave Platt, the lead instructor of the UX Engineering course I currently help teach, the “hassle budget” was extremely high.

I realized three important things in leading this migration:

When people get stuck, their frustration prevents them from providing information up front. They start off with “I’m stuck” and don’t offer additional feedback until you pull it out of them. (If you felt a tremor just then, that was every IT support desk employee in the universe nodding emphatically.)

In trying to get them unstuck, I had to employ skills that drew on my work outside of UX. There was no choice; I had a mandate to reach an adoption rate of at least 60%.

The overarching goal was really to help these patients learn to do something different than what they were used to, whether that was deal with a new interface or deal with an interface for the first time at all.

Considering these three realizations led me to a single, urgent conclusion that has transformed my UX practice: user experience is really a way of defining and planning what we want a user to learn, so we also need to think about our own work as how to teach.

It follows, then, that user experience toolkits need to include developing a teaching mindset. But what does that mean? And what’s the benefit? Let’s use this patient portal story and the three realizations above as a framework for considering this.

Helping users get unstuck

Research on teaching and learning has produced two concepts that can help explain why people struggle to get unstuck and what to do about it: 1) cognitive load and 2) the zone of proximal development.

Much like you work your muscles through weight resistance to develop physical strength, you work your brain through cognitive load to develop mental strength—to learn. There are three kinds of cognitive load: intrinsic, germane, and extraneous.

This type of cognitive load ... is responsible for ... Intrinsic Actual learning of the material Germane Building that new information into a more permanent memory store Extraneous Everything else about the experience of encountering the material (e.g., who’s teaching it, how they teach, your comfort level with the material, what the room is like, the temperature, the season, your physical health, energy levels, and so on)

In the case of the patient portal, intrinsic cognitive load was responsible for a user actually signing up for the portal and using it for the first time. Germane cognitive load was devoted to a user making sense of this experience and storing it so that it can be repeated in the future with increasing fluency. My job in salvaging the user experience was to figure out what was extraneous in the process of using the portal so that I could help users focus on what they needed to know to use it effectively.

Additionally, we all have a threshold for comfortably exploring and figuring something out with minimal guidance. This threshold moves around depending on the task and is called your zone of proximal development. It lays between the spaces where you can easily do a task on your own and where you cannot do a task at all without help. Effective learning happens in this zone by offering the right support, at the right time, in the right amount.

When you’re confronted with an extremely frustrated person because of a user experience you have helped create (or ideally, before that scenario happens), ask yourself a couple questions:

Did I put too much burden on their learning experience at the expense of the material?

Did I do my best to support their movement from something completely familiar to something new and/or unknown?

Think about your creation in terms of the immediate task and everything else. Consider (or reconsider) all the feelings, thoughts, contexts, and everything else that could make up the space around that task. What proportion of effort goes to the task versus to everything in the space around it? After that, think about how easy or difficult it is to achieve that task. Are you offering the right support, at the right time, in the right amount? What new questions might you need to ask to figure that out?

Making use of “unrelated” skill sets

When you were hired, you responded to a job description that included specific bullet points detailing the skills you should have and duties you would be responsible for fulfilling. You highlighted everything about your work that showed you fit that description. You prepared your portfolio, and demonstrated awareness of the recent writings from UX professionals in the field to show you can hold a conversation about how to “do” this work. You looked incredibly knowledgeable.

In research on teaching and learning, we also explore the idea of how we know in addition to what we know. Some people believe that knowledge is universally true and is out there to be uncovered and explored. Others believe that knowledge is subjective because it is uncovered and explored through the filter of the individual’s experiences, reflections, and general perception of reality. This is called constructivism. If we accept constructivism, it means that we open ourselves to learning from each other in how we conceptualize and practice UX based on what else we know besides what job descriptions ask. How do we methodically figure out the what else? By asking better questions.

Part of teaching and learning in a constructivist framework is understanding that the name of the game is facilitation, not lecturing (you might have heard the cute phrase, “Guide on the side, not sage on the stage”). Sharing knowledge is actually about asking questions to evoke reflection and then conversation to connect the dots. Making time to do this can help you recall and highlight the “unrelated” skills that you may have buried that would actually serve you well in your UX work. For example:

That was an incredibly difficult stakeholder meeting. What feels like the most surprising thing about how it turned out?

It seemed like we got nothing done in that wireframing session. Everyone wanted to see their own stuff included instead of keeping their eye on who we’re solving for. What is another time in my life when I had this kind of situation? How did it turn out?

All of this is in service to helping ourselves unlock more productive communication with our clients. In the patient portal case, I relied very heavily on my master’s degree in international relations, which taught me about how to ask questions to methodically untangle a problem into more manageable chunks, and listen for what a speaker is really saying between the lines. When you don’t speak the same language, your emotional intelligence and empathy begin to heighten as you try to relate on a broader human level. This helped me manage patient expectations to navigate them to the outcome I needed, even though this degree was meant to prepare me to be a diplomat.

As you consider how you’re feeling in your current role, preparing for a performance review, or plotting your next step, think about your whole body of experience. What are the themes in your work that you can recall dealing with in other parts of your life (at any point)? What skills are you relying on that, until you’ve now observed them, you didn’t think very much about but that have a heavy influence on your style of practice or that help make you effective when you work with your intended audiences?

Unlearn first, then learn

When Apple wanted to win over consumers in their bid to make computers a household item, they had to help them embrace what a machine with a screen and some keys could accomplish. In other words, to convince consumers it was worth it to learn how to use a computer, they first had to help consumers unlearn their reliance on a desk, paper, file folders, and pencils.

Apple integrated this unlearning and learning into one seamless experience by creating a graphical user interface that used digital representations of objects people were already familiar with—desks, paper, file folders, and pencils. But the solution may not always be that literal. There are two concepts that can help you support your intended audiences as they transition from one system or experience to another.

The first concept, called a growth mindset, relates to the belief that people are capable of constructing and developing intelligence in any given area, as opposed to a fixed mindset, which holds that each of us is born with a finite capacity for some level of skill. It’s easy to tell if someone has a fixed mindset if they say things like, “I’m too old to understand new technology,” or “This is too complicated. I’ll never get it.”

The second is self-determination theory, which divides motivation into two types: intrinsic and extrinsic. Self-determination theory states that in learning, your desire to persevere is not just about having motivation at all, but about what kind of motivation you have. Intrinsic motivation comes from within yourself; extrinsic comes from the world around you. Thanks to this research and subsequent studies, we know that intrinsic motivation is vital to meaningful learning and skill development (think about the last time you did an HR training and liked it).

This appears in our professional practice as the ever-favored endeavor to generate “buy-in.” What we’re really saying is, “How do I get someone to feel motivated on their own to be part of this or do this thing, instead of me having to reward them or somehow provide an incentive?” Many resources on getting buy-in are about the end goal of getting someone to do what you want. While this is important, conducting this as a teaching process allows you to step back and make space for the other person’s active contribution to a dialogue where you also learn something, even if you don’t end up getting buy-in:

“I’m curious about your feeling that this is complicated. Walk me through what you’ve done so far and tell me more about that feeling.”

“What’s the most important part of this for you? What excites you or resonates with you?”

For the majority of patients I worked with, transitioning to a new portal was almost fully an extrinsically motivated endeavor—if they didn’t switch, they didn’t get to access their health information, such as lab results, which is vital for people with chronic diseases. They did it because they had to. And many patients ran into a fixed-mindset wall as they confronted bad design: “I can’t understand this. I’m not very good at the computer. I don’t understand technology. Why do I have to get my information this way?” I especially spent a lot of time on exploring why some users felt the portal was complicated (i.e., the first bullet point above), because not only did I want them to switch to it, but I wanted them to switch and then keep using the portal with increasing fluency. First I had to help them unlearn some beliefs about their capabilities and what it means to access information online, and then I could help them successfully set up and use this tool.

While you’re researching the experience you’re going to create around a product, service, or program, ask questions not just about the thing itself but about the circumstances or context. What are the habits or actions someone might need to stop doing, or unlearn, before they adopt what you’re creating? What are the possible motivators in learning to do the something different? Among those, what is the ratio of extrinsic to intrinsic? Do you inadvertently cause an inflammation of fixed mindset? How do you instead encourage a growth mindset?

Where we go from here

Ultimately, I hit the target: about 70% of patients who had been using the old portal migrated to the new tool. It took some time for me to realize I needed to create a process rather than react to individual situations, but gradually things started to smooth out as I knew what bumps in the road to expect. I also walked back even further and adjusted our communications and website content to speak to the fears and concerns I now knew patients experienced. Eventually, we finished migrating existing patients, and the majority of patients signing onto this portal for the first time were new to the clinic overall (so they would not have used the previous portal). To my knowledge the interface design never improved in any profound way, but we certainly lodged a lot of technical tickets to contribute to a push for feature changes and improvements.

Although this piece contains a lot of information, it essentially boils down to asking questions as you always do, but from a different angle to uncover more blind spots. The benefit is a more thorough understanding of who you intend to serve and a more empathetic process for acquiring that understanding. Each section is specifically written to give you a direct idea of a question or prompt you can use the next time you have an opportunity in your own work. I would love to hear how deepening your practice in this way works for you—please comment or feel free to find me on Twitter!

http://ift.tt/2nscVgF

[jeanshesallenberger]

Design Like a Teacher

In 2014, the clinic where I served as head of communications and digital strategy switched to a new online patient portal, a change that was mandated by the electronic health record (EHR) system we used. The company that provides the EHR system held several meetings for the COO and me to learn the new tool and provided materials to give to patients to help them register for and use the new portal.

As the sole person at my clinic working on any aspect of user experience, I knew the importance of knowing the audience when implementing an initiative like the patient portal. So I was skeptical of the materials provided to the patients, which assumed a lot of knowledge on their part and focused on the cool features of the portal rather than on why patients would actually want to use it.

By the time the phone rang for the fifth time on the first day of the transition, I knew my suspicion that the patient portal had gone wrong in the user experience stage was warranted. Patients were getting stuck during every phase of the process—from wondering why they should use the portal to registering for and using it. My response was to ask patients what they had tried so far and where they were getting stuck. Then I would try to explain why they might want to use the portal.

Sometimes I lost patients completely; they just refused to sign up. They had a bad user experience trying to understand how a portal fit into their mental model of receiving healthcare, and I had a terrible user experience trying to learn what I needed to do to guide patients through the migration. To borrow a phrase from Dave Platt, the lead instructor of the UX Engineering course I currently help teach, the “hassle budget” was extremely high.

I realized three important things in leading this migration:

When people get stuck, their frustration prevents them from providing information up front. They start off with “I’m stuck” and don’t offer additional feedback until you pull it out of them. (If you felt a tremor just then, that was every IT support desk employee in the universe nodding emphatically.)

In trying to get them unstuck, I had to employ skills that drew on my work outside of UX. There was no choice; I had a mandate to reach an adoption rate of at least 60%.

The overarching goal was really to help these patients learn to do something different than what they were used to, whether that was deal with a new interface or deal with an interface for the first time at all.

Considering these three realizations led me to a single, urgent conclusion that has transformed my UX practice: user experience is really a way of defining and planning what we want a user to learn, so we also need to think about our own work as how to teach.

It follows, then, that user experience toolkits need to include developing a teaching mindset. But what does that mean? And what’s the benefit? Let’s use this patient portal story and the three realizations above as a framework for considering this.

Helping users get unstuck

Research on teaching and learning has produced two concepts that can help explain why people struggle to get unstuck and what to do about it: 1) cognitive load and 2) the zone of proximal development.

Much like you work your muscles through weight resistance to develop physical strength, you work your brain through cognitive load to develop mental strength—to learn. There are three kinds of cognitive load: intrinsic, germane, and extraneous.

This type of cognitive load ... is responsible for ... Intrinsic Actual learning of the material Germane Building that new information into a more permanent memory store Extraneous Everything else about the experience of encountering the material (e.g., who’s teaching it, how they teach, your comfort level with the material, what the room is like, the temperature, the season, your physical health, energy levels, and so on)

In the case of the patient portal, intrinsic cognitive load was responsible for a user actually signing up for the portal and using it for the first time. Germane cognitive load was devoted to a user making sense of this experience and storing it so that it can be repeated in the future with increasing fluency. My job in salvaging the user experience was to figure out what was extraneous in the process of using the portal so that I could help users focus on what they needed to know to use it effectively.

Additionally, we all have a threshold for comfortably exploring and figuring something out with minimal guidance. This threshold moves around depending on the task and is called your zone of proximal development. It lays between the spaces where you can easily do a task on your own and where you cannot do a task at all without help. Effective learning happens in this zone by offering the right support, at the right time, in the right amount.

When you’re confronted with an extremely frustrated person because of a user experience you have helped create (or ideally, before that scenario happens), ask yourself a couple questions:

Did I put too much burden on their learning experience at the expense of the material?

Did I do my best to support their movement from something completely familiar to something new and/or unknown?

Think about your creation in terms of the immediate task and everything else. Consider (or reconsider) all the feelings, thoughts, contexts, and everything else that could make up the space around that task. What proportion of effort goes to the task versus to everything in the space around it? After that, think about how easy or difficult it is to achieve that task. Are you offering the right support, at the right time, in the right amount? What new questions might you need to ask to figure that out?

Making use of “unrelated” skill sets

When you were hired, you responded to a job description that included specific bullet points detailing the skills you should have and duties you would be responsible for fulfilling. You highlighted everything about your work that showed you fit that description. You prepared your portfolio, and demonstrated awareness of the recent writings from UX professionals in the field to show you can hold a conversation about how to “do” this work. You looked incredibly knowledgeable.

In research on teaching and learning, we also explore the idea of how we know in addition to what we know. Some people believe that knowledge is universally true and is out there to be uncovered and explored. Others believe that knowledge is subjective because it is uncovered and explored through the filter of the individual’s experiences, reflections, and general perception of reality. This is called constructivism. If we accept constructivism, it means that we open ourselves to learning from each other in how we conceptualize and practice UX based on what else we know besides what job descriptions ask. How do we methodically figure out the what else? By asking better questions.

Part of teaching and learning in a constructivist framework is understanding that the name of the game is facilitation, not lecturing (you might have heard the cute phrase, “Guide on the side, not sage on the stage”). Sharing knowledge is actually about asking questions to evoke reflection and then conversation to connect the dots. Making time to do this can help you recall and highlight the “unrelated” skills that you may have buried that would actually serve you well in your UX work. For example:

That was an incredibly difficult stakeholder meeting. What feels like the most surprising thing about how it turned out?

It seemed like we got nothing done in that wireframing session. Everyone wanted to see their own stuff included instead of keeping their eye on who we’re solving for. What is another time in my life when I had this kind of situation? How did it turn out?

All of this is in service to helping ourselves unlock more productive communication with our clients. In the patient portal case, I relied very heavily on my master’s degree in international relations, which taught me about how to ask questions to methodically untangle a problem into more manageable chunks, and listen for what a speaker is really saying between the lines. When you don’t speak the same language, your emotional intelligence and empathy begin to heighten as you try to relate on a broader human level. This helped me manage patient expectations to navigate them to the outcome I needed, even though this degree was meant to prepare me to be a diplomat.

As you consider how you’re feeling in your current role, preparing for a performance review, or plotting your next step, think about your whole body of experience. What are the themes in your work that you can recall dealing with in other parts of your life (at any point)? What skills are you relying on that, until you’ve now observed them, you didn’t think very much about but that have a heavy influence on your style of practice or that help make you effective when you work with your intended audiences?

Unlearn first, then learn

When Apple wanted to win over consumers in their bid to make computers a household item, they had to help them embrace what a machine with a screen and some keys could accomplish. In other words, to convince consumers it was worth it to learn how to use a computer, they first had to help consumers unlearn their reliance on a desk, paper, file folders, and pencils.

Apple integrated this unlearning and learning into one seamless experience by creating a graphical user interface that used digital representations of objects people were already familiar with—desks, paper, file folders, and pencils. But the solution may not always be that literal. There are two concepts that can help you support your intended audiences as they transition from one system or experience to another.

The first concept, called a growth mindset, relates to the belief that people are capable of constructing and developing intelligence in any given area, as opposed to a fixed mindset, which holds that each of us is born with a finite capacity for some level of skill. It’s easy to tell if someone has a fixed mindset if they say things like, “I’m too old to understand new technology,” or “This is too complicated. I’ll never get it.”

The second is self-determination theory, which divides motivation into two types: intrinsic and extrinsic. Self-determination theory states that in learning, your desire to persevere is not just about having motivation at all, but about what kind of motivation you have. Intrinsic motivation comes from within yourself; extrinsic comes from the world around you. Thanks to this research and subsequent studies, we know that intrinsic motivation is vital to meaningful learning and skill development (think about the last time you did an HR training and liked it).

This appears in our professional practice as the ever-favored endeavor to generate “buy-in.” What we’re really saying is, “How do I get someone to feel motivated on their own to be part of this or do this thing, instead of me having to reward them or somehow provide an incentive?” Many resources on getting buy-in are about the end goal of getting someone to do what you want. While this is important, conducting this as a teaching process allows you to step back and make space for the other person’s active contribution to a dialogue where you also learn something, even if you don’t end up getting buy-in:

“I’m curious about your feeling that this is complicated. Walk me through what you’ve done so far and tell me more about that feeling.”

“What’s the most important part of this for you? What excites you or resonates with you?”

For the majority of patients I worked with, transitioning to a new portal was almost fully an extrinsically motivated endeavor—if they didn’t switch, they didn’t get to access their health information, such as lab results, which is vital for people with chronic diseases. They did it because they had to. And many patients ran into a fixed-mindset wall as they confronted bad design: “I can’t understand this. I’m not very good at the computer. I don’t understand technology. Why do I have to get my information this way?” I especially spent a lot of time on exploring why some users felt the portal was complicated (i.e., the first bullet point above), because not only did I want them to switch to it, but I wanted them to switch and then keep using the portal with increasing fluency. First I had to help them unlearn some beliefs about their capabilities and what it means to access information online, and then I could help them successfully set up and use this tool.

While you’re researching the experience you’re going to create around a product, service, or program, ask questions not just about the thing itself but about the circumstances or context. What are the habits or actions someone might need to stop doing, or unlearn, before they adopt what you’re creating? What are the possible motivators in learning to do the something different? Among those, what is the ratio of extrinsic to intrinsic? Do you inadvertently cause an inflammation of fixed mindset? How do you instead encourage a growth mindset?

Where we go from here

Ultimately, I hit the target: about 70% of patients who had been using the old portal migrated to the new tool. It took some time for me to realize I needed to create a process rather than react to individual situations, but gradually things started to smooth out as I knew what bumps in the road to expect. I also walked back even further and adjusted our communications and website content to speak to the fears and concerns I now knew patients experienced. Eventually, we finished migrating existing patients, and the majority of patients signing onto this portal for the first time were new to the clinic overall (so they would not have used the previous portal). To my knowledge the interface design never improved in any profound way, but we certainly lodged a lot of technical tickets to contribute to a push for feature changes and improvements.

Although this piece contains a lot of information, it essentially boils down to asking questions as you always do, but from a different angle to uncover more blind spots. The benefit is a more thorough understanding of who you intend to serve and a more empathetic process for acquiring that understanding. Each section is specifically written to give you a direct idea of a question or prompt you can use the next time you have an opportunity in your own work. I would love to hear how deepening your practice in this way works for you—please comment or feel free to find me on Twitter!

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[nguyenlisahx333]

December 12, 2017

Ever since the summer, I’ve noticed that my depression and anxiety symptoms were getting worse, and that my suicidal thoughts were getting stronger. I am fragile, and I am filled with hopelessness, guilt, and anger. The idea of killing myself gets more and more tempting each day. -I stopped taking my medications for about 3 weeks now. My therapist asked why? I told her because I was tired of feeling numb and that I wanted to feel the emotional pain that I deserve.(The things that goes on in my mind is very hard to explain.. I mean, I can’t even explain it myself. Shit, I don’t even understand half of the things that goes on in my head. I have trouble talking about my thoughts and feelings and it makes me so angry because it stops me from getting the help that I need...)There is a pounding in my head thats making me go insane by the second. It’s like a ticking time bomb.... and there’s a voice that keeps telling me to do it. “Just do it! Kill yourself.” “It’s okay, kill yourself” “you’re a joke, just do it!” “You’re stupid, you can’t do anything right please do a world a favor and kill yourself!”And the thing is, I’m afraid to actually tell someone that I want to kill myself because I don’t want anyone to stop me. I’m afraid of judgement, and being viewed as crazy or overdramatic.I’m hard to love. I’m always fucking up every opportunity I have in my life. I hate myself. I’m a burden, disgrace, & an embarrassment.

- On december 12, 2017

My therapist reported me for having suicidal ideation.I was sent to the hospital against my own will.It all started when I told her the ways I thought about killing myself, and how I already packed my belongings and given some things away. But before I “left” Nazareth, I wanted to paint a mural for my friend Nick. I want to paint a mural in the tunnels at Nazareth to emphasize the importance of mental health and suicide awareness. 

---I have melatonin and alcohol in my room. I planned on getting drunk then overdosing on a bottle of 180 pills of melatonin 5mg.When my therapist reported me, I was angry and frustrated because I didn’t want to go to the hospital. I lied and told her that everything was a misunderstanding and that i don’t intend on doing it all, but they are simply just thoughts. She wouldn’t listen. 

- she told that I had the option between going to the hospital or speaking with the mobile crisis team who would meet me on campus. From my understanding, I was told that if I met with the mobile crisis team, I wouldn’t have to go to the hospital.They lied. Because right after I met with them there were a bunch of cops outside waiting for me to take me to the hospital.No matter how many times i told everyone that it was misunderstanding they wouldn’t listen to me.. The police dropped me off at the emergency center at strong hospital and signed me in, and then right after, I was on my own. I was in a busy room of doctors and nurses running around with sick and angry patients. I was terrified. No one acknowledge me, and I was sitting there just thinking of how i shouldn’t be there. My anxiety told me not to move. I felt that everyone was judging me for some reason, even if they didn’t know the reason why I was there. A patient care tech, then told me to go sit by the elevator where someone will assist me to the psychiatric floor. I waited about half an hour.They took my jacket, shoes, keys,phone, and socks. And scanned me down. Once i got to the psychiatric floor, the lady that dropped me off told me that I can only walk around this floor and was not able to leave and then she left.I started crying because I wanted to talk to someone and no one was there. All the doctors and nurses treated me like another number. They didn’t treat me nor look at me as a normal human being.Every patient on the floor was totally out of it. I felt like I was the only sane one there. The kid to my right was crying non stop.. I guess because someone close to him committed suicide, and he wanted to do it too but he’s there at the hospital.The guy to my left likes talking to girls and touching them inappropriately.. He kept staring at me. There were no clocks on the wall and I couldn’t tell what time it was, which made the time go by slowly........ When it was finally my turn to follow up with the nurse, he was being extremely rude and judgmental. He definitely saw me as a another sick patient and didn’t give two fucks about me. It was almost like he was waiting to clock out because he’s tired of everyone “bullshit”.After, I was left back out into the hallway again waiting for who knows how long for the psychiatrist.Time went by very slowly, and I honestly felt like I was going insane. I kept walking back and forth in the halls because I couldn’t stand the loneliness and empty  feeling i had. I needed to do something and I needed to talk to someone but I didn’t because I couldn’t..? No one acknowledge my existence there except for the really creepy guy who likes talking to girls..........He eventually came up to me and tried to talk to me. He asked if I was married, and how old I was.. And you know, just like creepy questions. But in that moment, I was really desperate for a conversation so I kept talking to him. Eventually one the nurses came out and yelled at him to get away from me and thats when he went crazy and started yelling profanity, hitting doors and walls. I was pushed into a small room and was locked in for a few minutes because the staff feared for my “safety”. I never saw that guy again that night. I was let out in the hallway again with nothing to do. I eventually started crying because I felt alone and scared. I felt like I was never going to leave that shitty place. I didn’t know how long I was crying because there were no clocks. I eventually pulled myself together and went over to a different corner and sat there thinking about my life until one of the really nice psych techs stood next to me on his phone. And I asked him if he was busy, and he responded 

“no, why? did you need something?”

 - “No, I just need someone to talk to.”

We started talking, and he told me about his family and how he was really proud of his two daughters for making it into the medical program at the university of rochester. He talked a lot about his culture and what his favorite foods were. It made time go by. And for a minute I felt normal again. Again, I didn’t know how long we were talking because there was no clock around, but it didn’t seem too long before the psychiatrist came out and pulled me into a room.The psychiatrist was nice....but that was it. I feel like he didn’t genuinely care about my mental health and that he just wanted me to tell him whats wrong and he’ll just decide if he’ll discharge me or not and then move on to the next patient. I waited hours just to see the psychiatrist for 10 minutes.. I basically bullshitted my way out to going home. He eventually told me that I could go home, and let me out into the hallway again where I waited hours again.My experience in the hall way was much better this time, because I made a friend. His name was Justin. He was really nice, and was the highlight of my whole experience at the hospital. 

-He was in there for the same reason I was. We got to know each other pretty well, and I connected with him a lot.  I’ll never forget Justin. We shared a lot of stories, and i feel like i learned a lot from our conversations.I wish him the best, and I hope life gets better for him. I hope he doesn’t kill himself.it was about 10:45 when I got discharged from the psychiatric floor. The nurse gave me directions to the emergency room where I had to wait for an hour for a cab..... I made it back on campus.

---my mind is all of over the place. I was just typing whatever came to mind. Im not good at telling my experiences. This is a post just to post.

[s0023329asfilm]

Post G. Initial Ideas

MACRO CONCEPTS

Representation

My Textual Analysis Sequences - As my Textual Analysis Essay question was ‘Explain how the theme of coming of age is portrayed in the both films as unconventional teen films’, they are both challenging the stereotypes of not only typical teen films but also teenagers themselves. While teenagers are commonly portrayed as characters who mainly just care about their school life or sexual / romantic problems, in my chosen movies the story line focuses on how the teenage characters address their perceived imperfection and instability in order to mature, rather than following normal rites of passage. In these movies, the narratives get developed concentrating on highlighting a negative space, which is the biggest difference from other typical teen films. 

My Short Film - In my short film, the main theme that I’m going to show is a mental disorder of a teenager. The protagonist gets raised being exposed to the domestic violence from his father, and therefore his hidden desire of aggression ends up making another personality in his mind that can release the anger that he has. I chose this theme as I wanted to focus on something that not that many teenagers would’ve gone through but still is a very serious problem, both individually and socially. .

MICRO CONCEPTS

Cinematography:

I’m planning to have quite a lot of medium shots in my short film since it is one of the best shot to show character’s emotional status and what the character is doing at the same time. In this example, we can see Augustus’s face clearly so we know that he’s feeling embarrassed by being physically helped, and we also can notice that Hazel is trying to carry him.

Some close up shots would definitely be necessary in my film as well. It’s good that it shows certain props more obviously and emphasizes their significance so that audience can remember them or understand what the props represent or symbolize. In the example shot, Hazel is opening a lid of a champagne and it represents her positive attitude towards what they are facing, most importantly death.

My short film is going to have many shots using a camera movement of following. Following is a good way to let audience feel like they are with the character in the same place and make them more focus on what the character is about to do in the next moment. In the example, the camera follows the car that Sutter is in and therefore we feel like we are actually heading somewhere with him and become more curious where his destination is.

Dim lighting is the last cinematographic feature I will explain about. Since I got some scenes that mysterious atmosphere should be created, I’m going to use dim lighting for them. It makes the scene seem more serious, dark, and subtle. In the example shot, the lighting symbolizes Sutter’s inner conflict and confusion, also helps audience expect what would follow after the scene.

Mise en scene:

While Hazel is wearing jeans and jacket which seem to be a normal teenage girl outfit, Augustus is wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants with a woolly hat in order to keep himself warm and we immediately can notice that he’s a patient from what he’s wearing. It directly represents their health status, especially how sick and depressed Augustus is compared to Hazel.

While they’re talking to each other, the tank and the wheelchair keep being shown in the frame and they remind us that those two kids are sick and different from other ‘normal’ teenagers. It’s important in relation to the theme because they’re medical assist devices that directly show us incompleteness of the characters.

Since the frame is quite dark overall, the yellow colour of the traffic light, traffic sign, the car’s headlight and rear light seems to be very conspicuous. In this case, the colour yellow represents negative images such as cowardice, egoism, and madness. It implies what kind of emotions that Sutter will express in the following shot, which can be considered ‘warning’, another important symbolization of yellow.

The kitchen represents Sutter’s mom since she’s the only person who generally uses it and the fact that he’s crying in her area symbolizes that he’s wanted to rely on her, express his feeling and show his weak inside to her. It also means that he finally got to merged into the family since a kitchen is occasionally called the ‘heart’ of the home.

★Plans for my film : In my film, the protagonist will only wear one costume throughout the whole film since the picture just shows one day of his daily life routine. He will wear navy colored jacket, slacks and a hat showing his uncomfortable mind status. As it’s all about his daily life, the locations would be quite plain and easily accessible as well, such as a bedroom, street, classroom, bus, cafe, and a bookstore. Significant props would be glasses and a book since they are very important points that imply his dissociative identity disorder. I won’t put too many key props though because I want the movie to be simple and not too incomprehensible. The cast would include only two people, one who will act Julian, the protagonist, and the other one who will act an young version of the protagonist. 

Editing:

One noticeable editing skill of my chosen sequences is that they followed 180 degree rule during the montage very well. It not only maintains continuity of the scene but also helps showing argument between the characters with more tension and intensity. It cements the realism of the films and therefore immerses the audience in narrative as well. Also both of the sequences use shot / reverse shot during conversation, and it helps us to see the characters’ reactions to each other, especially Augustus’s and Sutter’s, since they keep venting their stress and negative emotions through their verbal and facial responses.

However, unlike the two chosen sequences, my film won’t be able to have shot / reverse shots or follow 180 degree rule because there will be only one character in one scene. Therefore I’m more interested in putting transitions between scenes than cuttings. I'm planning to put dissolve and fading out in the bridge of several scenes to heighten the on-screen tension and create suspenseful mood.

Sound:

In the two chosen sequences of my Textual Analysis, there are only very small amounts of sound techniques contained. It’s mostly just dialogues between the characters and several soundtracks. Both of them have a piece of background music at the beginning of the scene and at the end. The beginning ones  function as a factor that gives the scene serious and almost a bit depressing atmosphere and the end ones change the mood more delightful and hopeful. The dialogues are quite similar to each other as well, they are both about how much the protagonists are being loved from their close friends and family and how valuable their lives are even though it seems like there are only adversities out there. 

In my short film, the main story will be developed with voice over as a main feature. There will be two parts of voice over, the first one would be a narration of Effie and the other one will be a inner voice of young Julian. A couple pieces of soundtrack would be also included, one that conveys sad and nostalgic mood and one that changes the mood more serious and mysterious. I will effectively use sound perspective as well to portray some scenes that sound effects need to explain what is happening.

SYNOPSIS

13 year-old American girl EFFIE moves to England with her family. At her new school, she meets a boy named JULIAN whom everyone wants to be a friend with. However, she realizes that he’s actually hiding his secret and wearing his mask. Effie decides to help him to find what he really wants and get to know him more.

When Effie first saw Julian, what she immediately though was ‘why is he smiling like an idiot’. Although he was the one who everybody loved and wanted to hang out with because of his infinitely kind personality, she couldn’t understand that he can smile at anything so spinelessly. He never got angry or show his negative feelings, and it was definitely not what 13 year-old boy would normally do. Effie was the only one in the class who dislikes him. Sometimes she couldn’t even bear anymore and directly tell him that he’s so indecisive that it’s almost frustrating. Julian didn’t turn nasty. Instead he almost seemed to be happy when she says those things. Effie thought maybe he needs someone to tell him that he can do whatever he wants. They slowly got closed to each other and finally became best friends. 

CHARACTER PROFILE

The protagonist of my short film is an young man named Julian. He’s 23 and goes to a university in England. He wears stuffy glasses and only wears clothes of dark colors such as navy, black, or gray. He never really talks that much and always hangs around by himself. He definitely is a diligent person in the university but no one in his school actually knows him that well. It seems like he’s such a antisocial guy and he certainly is but before he lost his girlfriend who was also his best friend, he used to be a kind and generous person whom everybody loved. The narration of his dead girlfriend explains what kind of person he was in the past and why he was so mild and meek. He had been exposed to domestic violence since he was an infant. His dad had assaulted him and his mom for a long period of time and as his mom didn’t want him to resist and raise the problem, he learned how to tolerate pain and conceal his feelings. The anger got piled up inside of him since he never expressed it and it got bigger and bigger and eventually his unconsciousness made up another personality inside of him who can deal with all those hidden emotions. He was called Christian.