#btw lol it's an orig post so

[tanasha-not-yet]

get greylocked

YYYYAYYY GREYLOCK HII

[spaciebabie]

finally working on this one post that has been bouncing around in my head since june. here's a sneek peek ig idk lol.

it was orig gonna b a comic but i realized that in order for the joke ta hit the way i want it ta there needs ta b audio sos...video it is (there's no audio on this one tho)

that's the kid from the sun kiss comic btw lol

[sugarfile]

Hi, thank you for all the Kellex content!!!SO, which games have the most Kellex moments? You mentioned Denmark, anything else? Your tags sometimes mentions the games other times they don't..!

okay HERE. WE. GOOOOOOO. 

My #FAVE Kellex Games! -with links! (to as many as I could find)

SO I’m going chronologically instead of numbering them by favorites, so without further foreplay… let’s get this bread

1. WNT vs China PR (closed match) - a ridiculously fun and sort of unseen game where Kelley takes a shot on goal and Alex is there to make sure it actually goes in lol

you can literally hear Alex yell, “KEL!” for the ball and it adds a few years to my life

2. WNT vs Canada (Olympic Semi Final Match) - a classic for OBVIOUS reasons, we got the super soft injury/no water break from Alex

and then thiS post game mess

WHERE KELLEY SAYS WHAT WE’RE ALL FEELING (caption is thanks to an anon submission about this btw!!)

3. WNT vs Australia (First KEllex Goal WOO!!!) - yeah that pretty much sums it up actually…

4. Portland Thorns vs Sky Blue FC (NWSL) - DEF one of my all time faves, because after being super chippy and rough during the game Kelley STILL makes sure Alex is okay when she’s fouled…

(and tbh any time they play against each other is LiT)

5. WNT vs China (WWC 2015) - THIS. GAME. so underrated! It was the only game in the 2015 WWC where Kelley and Alex got to start together and they were giving off some SuperBFF vibes (I don’t have a link to this unfortunately but if you can find a place to watch it I would recommend!!)

6. WNT vs Costa Rica (THE BOOB GOAL™) - LOL CAM specifically told me not to forget this and I could nEvER 😂 it’s the goal where Alex scores with her chest and you KNOW Kelley was teasing her for that…

(HONORABLE MENTION match): The Bachelor! - i’m interrupting this post to say that everyone should go watch Kelley and Alex be coaches on the bachelor because first of all watching their ‘coaching’ style is hilarious…

AND when Alex’s team won she tweeted Kelley this:

competitive kellex = S T A N 

7. WNT vs Trinidad and Tobago (Concacaf Qualifiers) - the ORIG jump hug on a goal that they didn’t even score together lmao what

8. WNT vs New Zealand (one of Kelley’s 100th Cap Celeb games) - this is also a favorite just because Janice was scoring all these goals for Worms change my mind

9. WNT vs South Korea (Kellex Goal 2!) - hard to say no to them finally scoring again after 5. YEARS. 

10. WNT vs Denmark (Kellex Foul #1) - a hilarious insta-justice moment when Captain Alex basically decided that the ref was wrong and took matters into her own hands

rekt. 

11. WNT vs France (SheBelieves Cup, Kellex Foul #2!!!) - okay this one is seriously SO intense Kelley gets REAL pissed when France doesn’t kick the ball out for Alex’s foul

(5 seconds later)

but what makes it better too is that BelieveThatWe tweeted the gif of Kelley walking away from this foul and Alex replied to it

SASSY. WORMS. 

12. Utah Royals vs Orlando Pride (NWSL) - literally ANY time they play against each other guys… it’s a rollercoaster

13. WWC 2019 - Thailand and France - NO LINKS to these games sorry guys, but obviously Thailand gets a huge mention because of the 3rd Kellex Goal:

AND France is an amazing (and actually kind of hilarious) game for them and then it ends with this instant classic:

ANYWAYS HAVE FUN WATCHING SORRY THIS POST WAS 8 YEARS LONG!

[himynameis4]

This post ended up being much less headcanon-y explaining tartarus RIP—i just… i started talking ab Bianca & it took on a life of it’s own. I figure it makes sense to give insight into HOW i arrived at my conclusions ab her perspective tho, the way i present it in the orig post—i WILL post ab tartarus & elaborating on that tho!!!!! Bc ik that’s what you originally asked ab @bottomlessabyssposts, this just… well, took on a life of its own.

(Hi again @chiquitablanquita! Not sure if this type of post is your speed lol—definitely a different format than the last on/original post, but figured i might as well share it anyway! Again, seriously No Pressure to read—same goes for you @bottomlessabyssposts btw!!! Also @chiquitablanquita your tags made me giggle—I chose to take it as a compliment, if that’s alright with you, though i apologize for any emotional distress?)

Okay. So. This is more text-analysis-y—both in the way i write it & in the presence of the pages themselves, LOL. These are some of the pages i reference when trying to understand Bianca’s character, because we get so little of her, and how i interpret them. The highlighted sections are, like, the important bits, so even if you do wanna read the post you don’t have to read the entire damn page (this post’ll be long enough as it is RIP). Like i said—very different format than the original, so please don’t feel obligated to read both/either if it’s not to your taste!

This is an image of a page from The Titan’s Curse. Here, Nico’s about to watch the orientation film, and he asks Grover about the rating of the film, saying that Bianca’s “kinda strict,”—essentially, it’s one of several examples we have indicating that Bianca acted as a parental figure for Nico, including restricting what media was “appropriate” for him. The fact that Nico asked about the rating indicates that he cares about Bianca’s restrictions… but his excitement at pushing the boundary & watching the “PG-13” video hints that he probably wasn’t the most obedient.

This is a picture of a page from the House of Hades. Highlighted is Nico saying that Bianca was the only one who accepted him, and she died. This is post-Nico being outed by Cupid in front of Jason, and he and Jason are… calmly chatting ab that lol. (Jason’s trying so hard i love him. He just… he’s trying). In the context of their conversation, Bianca’s “acceptance” of Nico could be related to the whole, children-of-Hades-treated-like-sewage thing Nico mentioned earlier, but it seems to be more related to Nico’s sexuality, given the overall situation, which is an interpretation I think others have as well & the one i take. That interpretation informed my understanding of Bianca in the first post.

This is Bianca in The Titan’s Curse, as she’s learning the greek gods are real, after Dr. Thorne’s attack. Highlighted is her snapping/getting frustrated at Nico while she’s overwhelmed. She understands the gravity of the situation, whereas he’s naively acting excited, and she lashes out at him in response. Note also her response to his mythomagic game, & how she minimizes it. I keep in mind that Bianca’s dealing with A Lot in this scene, including having just been attacked by a monster/her principal, almost trafficked by said monster/principal, attacked by a mortal helicopter with guns, rescued by a mythical gang of girls for stories, witnessed a girl fall off a cliff rescuing them… so it MAY not be a perfect gauge for how Bianca reacts when generally frustrated/overwhelmed… BUT it’s the only one we’ve got, because we don’t get a whole lot of time with her. (There’s another scene, earlier, of her scolding Nico that supports this interpretation imo, tho.)

This is another page from the Titan’s Curse. Artemis is in the process of convincing Bianca to join the hunt. To counter Percy’s protests—Percy is bringing up Nico, saying that Bianca shouldn’t leave him behind, basically—Artemis informs Bianca that Nico will be taken care of at camp, that she’ll still see him, but he won’t be her responsibility. While it is a direct response to Percy’s protests, keep in mind that Artemis has centuries of experience recruiting girls—she’s making this argument because she thinks it’ll convince Bianca. Note that the phrases Bianca repeats are not “taken care of” but “a new family” and “free of responsibility”—Bianca is allowing herself to be selfish. Those are the things she wants for herself, not for her brother. Still, this and later information indicate that it’s important to her that her brother be taken care of, which informed my understanding of her.

This is another screenshot from The Titan’s Curse (surprise, surprise, since it’s the only book where Bianca’s alive). Highlighted is the “twelve years old” & “wanted assurance” because… like. She’s twelve, guys. She hasn’t had anyone to lean on before now. She craves friends & a community & guidance. She knows what’s best for her, but she wants the support to be able to pursue that. In a perfect world… she’d be able to do so without the added guilt/complications/impact on Nico (nevermind her death), but the situation isn’t so simple here. We get another indication that she wants Nico taken care of, for people to look out for him. She trusted/got… not attached to, but admired? Relied on? Percy very quickly, which is something I noted & will talk more about in… another post, i guess? Because I’ve decided i’m doing these? *sigh* i just want more bianca content ok???? While i have my interpretation(s) of why she latched on to Percy so quickly, one could also take this to mean that she was looking for a reason/assurance to take that leap & leave her “parental” role in Nico’s life. Percy, in this interpretation, simple gave her the assurance/excuse she needed. (That’s not exactly my interpretation, though. One thing that’s interesting is that these passages/quotes have multiple layers/meanings/clues within them on Bianca & who she is as a person—rn I’m just exploring the aspects that are relevant to the interpretation of Bianca I presented in the first post, there’s plenty more to talk ab lol).

This is literally the page just after the last image (fighting the urge to say “screenshot” so hard rn bc they’re NOT they’re literal pictures of physical pages and YET). Highlighted here is the stuff on Bianca raising Nico, and the reasons she gives Percy for her leaving Nico & joining. She wanted her own life & friends—she even says, point blank, that is was a selfish decision. Bianca is a self-aware person… she made the decision she felt was best for her. (& tbh CHB may not have actually been a better choice—nvm ill talk ab that later). The being a big sister “24 hours a day” is important—she could be talking ab how being a sister consumed her/subsumed her identity, she could be exaggerating… while I think both of those possibilities are valid conclusions, I also think she means this in a more literal sense, which i’ll come back to/elaborate on—in a different post.

This is a page from the Battle of the Labyrinth, when ghost!Bianca finally responds to Nico’s summons. This is what I drew from when I spoke about Bianca ignoring/numbing herself a bit to Nico’s upset in the first post, although that’s not exactly what’s happening here—like i said, there’s a lot of layers to these scenes—it is AN aspect/conclusion one could draw from this. She was avoiding him. She was hoping he’d give up. She was waiting out the storm. Bianca was sad, she’d dreaded encountering Nico/facing his emotions (…& facing her own guilt?).

This is literally the page just after the last page we talked about. A few important things here. 1) we see Bianca, again, being reflective & calm in the face of Nico’s upset. She’s talking him through what he’s feeling, sort of spoon-feeding him (& the readers) the answers/insight… in the process, she’s also talking over/for him a bit, & projecting her own understanding/interpretation of the situation onto him. She could be totally right (she’s partially right) but that’s just something I noticed about this exchange. One of the things in my original post was that Bianca talked Nico down from his big emotions (that is, when she didn’t ignore his big emotions because she didn’t have the capacity to deal with/help him with them). This is kind of where i drew that from. Something that’s frustrating, though, is that we almost NEVER see the di Angelos in their “natural state.” We just catch glimpses of their dynamic as it was, and because of the extreme/unusual circumstances we see them in (rn Bianca is a literal ghost who’s been stalking her brother & helping/making another person spy on him via iris messages… Nico has been homeless in a death maze with an evil ghost for company while mourning his sister & planning murder…), we can only speculate as to how they were. Still, I think the way Nico sought Bianca’s ghost for guidance (another screenshot—i keep getting off track, i’ll talk about that in a later post) indicates that “talking him down” was something she probably did. It was a part of their dynamic before demigods & monsters came in & stuff went to shit, basically.

Okay. Now. Still on this screenshot. The second thing i wanna talk ab is Bianca’s fatal flaw. This is where I think Bianca’s understanding of her brother & his state of mind becomes more inaccurate. Bianca tells Nico that children of hades hold grudges, it’s their fatal flaw. A) i don’t think fatal flaws are universal among demigod siblings/siblings period, potential trends aside, snd B) holding grudges is NOT Nico’s fatal flaw. There’s a really good post about it i saw somewhere, but for the purposes of this argument let’s agree that grudges aren’t his fatal flaw, even if we do see him “hold grudges” (& even then there’s room for debate lol).

So where did bianca get this information, & why does she believe it? She COULD’VE learned it from her dad, but probably NOT—nico throws the whole “holding grudges” thing into hades’ face when he’s trying to get Hades to fight on the gods’ side in The Last Olympian, and Hades did NOT seem particularly convinced. She could’ve learned it when her soul is being judged, and she gets sent to Elysium, but… we’ve seen a “soul sorting,” Hazel’s, in fact, & they didn’t get into personal fatal flaws, much less trends for fatal flaws of an entire bloodline (NOT that Hazel’s experience is dispositive, this is certainly still a possibility, we have a sample size of exactly 1). Maybe, upon becoming a ghost, Bianca is simply… wiser to the ways of the world. Has ~magical ghost insight~. (Can you tell how convincing i find that explanation? 😅). Maybe she met another child of Hades.

All possibilities, but I think it’s more likely that she learned the information as a ghost from someone she trusted, and then internalized it because SHE related to it—& then projected that onto Nico. If Zoë, for example, made a comment about Hades children holding grudges/that being their fatal flaw, Bianca would likely trust her—but she’d believe her if the information sounded true for Bianca herself. Essentially, the information would sound true if Bianca herself has a tendency to hold grudges—hence, my interpretation of Bianca having a grudge against Nico, and then projecting that onto him a bit when she tells him his fatal flaw is grudges & that he’s mad at her for leaving him. (There, she’s projecting her own guilt and anger at herself, a bit. Doesn’t mean she’s totally wrong about NICO’S feelings, but her perspective colors her understanding).

Whether or not BIANCA’S fatal flaw was grudges is ALSO up for debate, but fatal flaws are weird in the pjo universe, and Bianca, at the very least, likely believed it was a flaw of hers. So yeah.

I… hope the formatting works on this RIP. Working with the photos was a trip. If anybody has like questions or was confused or has a different opinion feel free to ask/counter—idk how “awake” the pjo tag/fandom is atm, but this is like, my ever-present hyperfixation lol. I love discussing this shit. I had to hold myself back from getting more photos of pages/talking about/explaining Every Little Thing, bc there are so many Things to think about/explain, & i am incapable of brevity. But this is my very long/drawn out explanation of the thought process that goes into some of the ways I interpret/understand Bianca di Angelo. I just… i love her sm. One of my favorite things ab her is how flawed she is, she’s just—she’s twelve. She’s so human. I adore Nico, & i wish we could’ve seen more of her outside of who she was to her brother, because all she wanted was to be a person/exist outside of what she was to him, and since her death/in the pjo fandom often that’s all she gets to be. AND ppl are so mean to her and i just—she deserves better idk. So yeah.

I will never shut up about her, & nico, & the di angelos. Like ever. 😅

@bottomlessabyssposts hiiiiiiiiiii! I have. So many things to say ab Bianca but I wanted to share at least a lil bit even if i cannt write them all down??? The thing is, like, MOST of it is written down but not necessarily in a way that’s coherent to anyone except me RIP, so i’m going through & looking for snippets that are like. Easiest to understand, y’know? & also with the spot i drew from from canon to arrive at my headcanon—this is sure as shit not “analysis,” exactly, but there’s so much blank space left in the riordanverse (& don’t get me started on rick constantly contradicting his own work—i’m obsessed w/canon compliance or at least canon adjacency so he drives me BATSHIT bc his stuff DOES NOT MAKE SENSE IN THE UNIVERSE HE MADE—)

(Also! Hi @chiquitablanquita! We haven’t interacted much yet but i figure pjo is a shared interest so might as well tag you in this??? 🤷. Still getting the hang of tumblr friends/etiquette/mutual-ship lol. This is a no-pressure tagging zone!!!)

Okay. Bianca. I adore her sm. I’ll have to make a series of posts ab her probably to write all my di Angelo headcanon stuff down but I figure—I’m not sure if i should start w/her in Tartarus, her pre-the books, or my headcanon for what happened to Maria that’s soon to be jossed RIP.

I think i’ll start post-move to america, Maria’s death & casino era, & not delve into pre-move to america headcanons just yet? Yeah, that makes sense. Might dip my toe into headcanons for her powers/potential powers tho!

First thing you have to know, i think? Bianca’s fatal flaw is holding grudges. Bianca’s—not Nico’s. Obviously that’s not what killed Bianca in the end… (except, it kind of is. Running from that parent of herself, acting in accordance with it… except that wasn’t the only factor influencing her). So many think her flaw relates to responsibility, accepting it, evading it, etc. But Bianca herself feels her fatal flaw—or at least, one of her major flaws—is holding grudges. Being resentful. Being resentful of her brother, specifically.

She loves Nico. She loves him so, so much. He’s her world. And she hates him. No, wait, of course she doesn’t hate him—he’s her little brother, and she loves him, and it’s not like he’s doing anything wrong, it’s just—it’s the little things. (This bit draws a bit from the preview—just that Bianca & Nico shared a bed in the Lotus Casino according to Nico’s nightmare/memory dream sequence, which tracks for me in terms of sibling dynamics). He’s just… he doesn’t get it. How dangerous things are. She protects him from it. And he’s always around, always needing her, wanting to her play his game and help him with homework and hold his hand and—she never gets a moment to breathe. To bond with her classmates, not that she’d been making much headway on that, anyway.

She resents him for getting to be young and innocent and letting her worry about the big stuff and depending on her and following her rules and not following her rules. She tells him not to go watching the pg-13 movies and he’ll listen, mostly—but how are you supposed to parent a kid through making friends? How are you supposed to parent, period?! She knows she snaps at him too much, lashing out—she knows she’s not what he needs, and she feels guilty as hell for it, but also resents the hell out of him for putting her on the pedestal, shoving her in this role. Then she hates herself for resenting him, he’s only ten, and she loves him, he doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve her, and all her messy, frustrated love, but she doesn’t want this role. She doesn’t want to be a mother. She’s only 12. And there’s no one to talk to, it’s only him, and he can’t listen to her cry or he won’t listen to her, she needs to be the adult for him, their teachers are next to useless.

It’s worse when he tries to help, not better. When he’s sweet and protective and gives her space…. Because then she’s angry at him for not being able to be enough, to be all she needs, because she doesn’t have anyone else either, and he doesn’t even give her the chance to find others, clinging to her like—like a goddamn boa constrictor. And then she hates herself for putting him in that position, of having to take care of her—she’s the big sister, and he’s so little, and he needs her, and then she’s back to resenting him again, and it makes her want to scream. (Or rather, to run.)

Nico’s different. She knows it. She watches his cheeks bleed red, regaling her of conversation after conversation with a boy in his grade (she’s seen them together. The boy doesn’t seem interested in talking to Nico, but is too shy to tell him so. Her heart breaks for her brother, even as she empathizes with the other boy, but all of it is so… numb. Detached. So she listens and nods and doesn’t say a word). She’s not sure if he knows, if he remembers… but she does. And she doesn’t know how to protect him. She doesn’t know how to help him. Is loving him enough? Can it be? When it’s her messy kind of love, cutting and protective and distant at once?

She ignores him, sometimes. He’ll be having a bad day, or a hard day, or a restless night, or a violent one—it’s written over his face, every time, he’s always been so easy to read (for her, at least). A coiled ball of energy and rage and fear and pain, unable to process it, any of it (is it because she hasn’t taught him how? (How could she, when she’s barely learned herself?)). He lashes out at her, too, you know, for all she lashes out at him, for all he’s young and innocent and sweet and doesn’t understand—she lets him rage and lets him storm off and lets him cry and doesn’t feel a thing. Or—feels dull, dreary, waiting it out like a thunderstorm as opposed to reaching out, asking what’s wrong, asking how to help.

She’s not sure if this makes her an awful person or not. Does she not care? He’s her brother, her world, he’s hurting, and she just—

But it’s also a matter of survival, she knows. Nico feels things, and they fill up a room, they don’t leave space for anything or anyone else. Numbing herself to it is how she gets through, how she can stay calm, talk him down from it… on the days she talks him down from it. But she can’t afford anything else, or else he’d fill her up inside, and she’s have no room left for her.

She needs to be selfish to survive. If she doesn’t survive… she doesn’t know what happens to him, if she doesn’t survive. Her messy, selfish, flawed love is all he has, the shield between him and the rest of the world. So she lets herself be selfish, for her own sake, for his. And she tries to make it to the other side.

[guitarsun40-blog]

Cozy Gingerbread House

Cozy Gingerbread House

Adventures, Cookies, Desserts, DIY, Holiday, The Holidays

Did you ever have a Barbie Dream House? I think I asked for one for my eighth birthday (if I remember correctly) and I imagined myself being a grown-up in it. I had dogs (of course), I had a husband (Ken) whose head I shaved because I thought his blonde hair was ugly (I dunno) and a few kids who were ok. But most importantly, I had a pool with a slide and a trampoline. I also had a siqqq car that was bright pink that I’d use to pick up my friends so we could go to the movies and Disneyland.

When I got the insane idea that I should built a gingerbread house, I started to think: What should it look like? What should it include?

I remembered my Barbie Dream House and decided maybe that should be my inspo? I decided to leave out people because I don’t think I can make realistic versions of gingerbread humans.

Let’s start from the beginning.

The first step to making my gingerbread house was planning the dimensions like the architect that I AM NOT.

I started crunching numbers and decided on making the doors , the sides and the roof

Amazon boxes and an XACTO knife are golden!

I ended up using old Amazon boxes that were in the recycling for my templates. And XACTO knife comes in real handy in this instance.

Gingerbread Dough Erin McDowell’s recipe is by far the best. I thought about developing my own but I was short on time and honestly, hers works wonderfully, no surprise there.

I happened to have shortening in my pantry because of these biscuits and it ended up making life SO much easier. I love that recipe. Her tips, btw, are absolutely brilliant. She overbakes her gingerbread to make it sturdier. I did the same.

Windows I decided on having a few windows on the sides of the house.

I filled a few of the windows on the side and in the front with crushed up Jolly Ranchers. It ended up melting in the oven and making the prettiest pink windows.

Roof If you’re interested in a true zen experience, glue on a million perfectly slivered almonds for two hours. Truth be told, I actually enjoy these types of things. I mediate and zone out and think about my life. Sometimes I even cry—it’s fun!

Pool I made the pool outside from gingerbread that I cut out. I filled it with a piece of foil and crushed blue Jolly Ranchers to replicate the look of frozen water. I added a diving board because that’s what I would want in my own backyard.

Amelia’s Dog House Amelia’s Dog House is obviously just for show because she wouldn’t think of ever sleeping outside. She prefers to sleep on beds and pillows. But it is cute. I used this gingerbread mini house cookie cutter.

Amelia’s Body I ended up being inspired by this cookie cutter but instead made a much smaller version so I made a template.

Trees I decided that we needed some foliage so I made some trees of different sizes. I didn’t want to fuss with making a template so I just freehanded it with my Xacto knife.

I decorated them with an array of black sprinkles and some green sage royal icing.

Snow + Border I used coconut flakes to replicate snow and in order to create a border around the property, I hand painted some small marshmallows. I used a little bit of vodka (it dries easily) and a teeny drop of brown food coloring gel.

Some Other Items include an Andes mint pathway to the front door. Some mauve mini candy canes and a whole lot of royal icing that I colored a mauve pink. I used these Wilton sprinkles that were black. Honestly this is sort of the color palette of the den (which you will see soon! lol).

What do you think?!

December 18, 2018 by Adrianna Adarme

Adrianna Adarme

A Cozy Kitchen is a blog written by Adrianna Adarme. Adrianna likes corgis, pancakes and cute things.

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Hi! This is my lil’ corner on da internets called A Cozy Kitchen. I live in Los Angeles, California with my husband Joshua and my corgi Amelia.

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Source: https://www.acozykitchen.com/cozy-gingerbread-house/

[yesadanlerma]

Have a Great Friday & Weekend Everyone! I’m Taking a Few Days Off, Well, Kinda 😊

Have a Great Friday & Weekend Everyone! I’m Taking a Few Days Off, Well, Kinda 😊 - New blog post from Felipe Adan Lerma .

My wife does take great shots of our grandson & me, lol! For more bio pics like this, see my Selfie Gallery @FineArtAmerica — those are water cannons we’re holding btw 😊 —

So, Why, Kinda?

I do have two poetry and one eBay posts I’m actively working on, but wife and I had the first chance to have the youngest grandchild over since my gall bladder surgery, and the buoyancy of both the pool and…

[sarasa-cat]

 Those strange and nauseating moments when life as a part-time fiction writer crashes into the brick wall of reality at 100 mph...

There was one particular original fiction novel I have long since shelved -- the one that stopped being 2minFromNow speculative fiction with a polisci + info/tech/compsci scifi twist the moment the american voters took a hard turn off the global superhighway to crash into the crazyweeds. (btw, I see a ditch full of toxic waste and fire ants right ahead. america, perhaps take ur foot off the gas? plz?)

(except that isn’t the brick wall my first sentence alluded to...)

Anyhow. Various parts of that novel are forever scrapped. Some may come back in new forms. One ... one ... sigh ... one part was run through a composting system and used to fertilize an “I promise I’ll really start posting this” novel-length piece of fanfic -- FFVII: Even the Littlest Monsters (Cast Shadows Long and Tall).

I think it goes without saying that women in STEM and women in politics in, for instance, america, have:

(1) ridiculously absurd hurdles that they are forced to jump

(2) are punished merely for existing

(3) succeed in spite of the system -- a system set up to reward other people (particularly, in america, white men)

(4) are viewed as threatening a world dominating power merely by sitting at the table (it’s all about the benjamins...)

Not saying anything we don’t know over in my tumblr follower land.

So..... soooooo....

Since March I’ve puked out over 100k words of Highly Unorganized draft text for Monsters and too much of it is crap (bittersweet fluff, wrongship angst smut, and pure comedy gold) but all of it lays foundations for the EPIC LENGTH NOVEL I’m now trying to organize so I can just turn the crank and barf it out chapter by chapter bc I feel a mighty need and idek. call it a vacay from my Real(tm) writing. srsly, idk. i no longer care to know.

Actually, in a sense, this treatment is far more focused than the pre-composted orig novel. (switching to a world where race/ethnicity/religion is handled differently actually helped reduce-change-improve the variable set.) The current treatment involves two major plot lines in a multi-plot novel and, based on what I have so far, it is very blunt yet beautiful in its treatment of how women in stem and women in political arenas are lucky to find situations that work for them because mostly they’re in a world that wants them gone.

The woman-in-STEM plotline is an unambiguous tragedy, albeit with a tiny little silver lining that is full of grossly belated posthumous heartwarming (sadface realism), and despite any of my OMFG crudetalk on DW, when I say it is a massive composite of RL things (not necessarily my life, let me be clear, despite me growing up in STEM (and poli) and working in STEM (and poli) so the research is also a hella lived experience), while the social clusterfuck aspects are things I’ve seen, the clever reader with an eye for the history of science will recognize real women who were snubbed for various STEM nobel prizes that were instead awarded to men.  (lol, I think I snark-named it the shinra prize in one of my 100 word drabbles). The tragic death (the died too young and too obscure and oh so conveniently forgotten... until rediscovered a generation++ later by women) is all part of it. It is there for a reason and the story isn’t the same story without it. In fact, it is these easily ignored throw-away lines BY FEMALE CHARACTERS that are way more interesting to me than the tragic male angst fest that is the main canonical plot (those in the know, know who and what I’m speaking of).

.... there’s a huge part of me that groans loudly at the fact that the obscure piece of forgotten-and-lost paradigm-shifting science performed by a woman is walking around as a angstfest of a man ... and maybe my ladies just need to lampshade the living fuck out of this. 

YES. MY LADIES NEED TO LAMPSHADE THE LIVING FUCK OUT OF THIS. LAMP SHADE IT SO HARD.

;D

After the events this week in Great Episodes of Sexism in STEM, I feel ... like I either have to write this story or I just want to set everything on fire. Let’s talk about brick walls, shall we?

The woman-in-political plotline is a metaphoric death by a thousand papercuts perseverance story. When I say politics, I don’t necessarily mean the first thing that comes to mind for many people: being an elected or appointed political leader. Instead I’m playing off of all-but-throw-away lines in said canon regarding the political nature of public health (from policies to clinics) and the political nature of the military-industrial(-intelligence) complex. Worlds where women can be successful and behind-the-scenes powerful if they work smart & hard, STAY INVISIBLE, and toe the line. :|  always a fucking catch, isn’t there. ...idk what I wanted to say here other than radically composting an old orig idea such that it was broken down to its atomic elements and then taking only some of that and putting it together with a nifty piece of fandom canon has transformed what was originally (pre-fanfic, when it was something very different but the same theme, with ladies, in orig fic) ...well, a very cynical thing that in this reincarnated very very different form is something idk. maybe hopeful is the word. goodhearted? tbd. 

And About Those Ladies.  The now-defunct orig novel mentioned way above featured an ensemble cast of women who were pretty similar in age (plus or minus 10 years) but very diverse in identities and, frankly, some of their beeswax got a little catty like girlgang, even though it was towards things that are deserving to be called out but ... anyhow. As I said, compost pile.

OTOH, the Ladies in Even the Littlest Monsters are the exact opposite. They are a pure cinnamon roll fantasy land of multi-generational women who do not rip each other down (see: it is a fantasy story despite me calling it a mix of psychological realism and magical realism. HA!). It’s nothing but love and support. Thus, the ladies in Monsters are nothing like the original fic now dead, despite being so similar in so many ways. ...this decision was one of those latent needs I didn’t know I had until I binged read a million words of fanfic that had FAR TOO MUCH CATTY JEALOUS BULLSHIT and a couple pieces of disturbing fanart and far too much yucky shit in let’s play vids/blogs. But the moment when a fanfic writer violently described the fridging a 9 year old girl all to make way for the new girlfriend (and then sweep the horror under the rug) and did this within the first 300 words of a novel-length story, I almost threw my phone against the wall. But then I remembered I didn’t want to buy a new phone just because people are stupid. So fic. Fic will fix the shit fandom writes. Canon is fine. The canon is absolutely fine. IT IS THE FANDOM WHO BREAKS IT. More fic will fix. 

oh god.

...

And as for the structure mess. What a mess. The act of writing forward means cleaning up the MESS OF 100k words. How do I fix this story?

I need a beta.