#but I wrote a research paper on this in my first semester

[algolagniaa]

Hi, what do you mean about natural birth methods?

I mean home birth/freebirth. ik there’s a stigma but hear me out

the way we understand birth, culturally, is very medicalized, and as such it’s very standardized. we tend to trust doctors and assume that the way hospitals do things is for our own good but tbh the medical world is shit to women and birth isn’t any different. a lot of the ways hospitals handle birth aren’t really for the mother’s benefit but for the doctor’s. even something as simple as women giving birth lying down in a hospital bed - it’s done because hospitals have beds so it’s more adapted to the medical setting, and because it’s easier for the doctor to do whatever if the mother is on her back (actually the practice started because king Louis XIV had a fetish but w/e). but for most of history women gave birth squatting, which helps the baby come out easier and is easier on the mother’s pelvis. also iirc it’s less painful and makes labor shorter.

home births, whether attended by a midwife or not, allow women to take charge of their own birth experience and give birth in the way that feels most safe and comfortable for her. they’re associated with a lot less maternal complications and interventions (like epidurals C sections etc) and less pain during childbirth too. birth is a natural process for every animal and generally when a woman gives birth she knows in her body what she needs to do, and home births give her the space to Do That in a comfortable environment rather than being stressed out and prevented from doing what she needs when she’s in a vulnerable position. a lot of women who give birth at home look back on their birth experiences a lot more fondly than women giving birth in hospitals tend to because of this.

[silaswritesthings]

What kind of name is ‘Hat guy’?

Summary: You’re stressing over exams and Hat guy offers his assistance. There’s small banter here and there.

Starring: Wanderer/Scaramouche/Hat guy (whatever you prefer)

Genre: I hate college (this should be a genre), fluff

Warnings: Edited ONCE (I have an exam on Thursday 🧍‍♀️)

Author’s note: I’m alive. I haven’t posted in ages and I just needed to write something so I sat down and wrote 800 words in two hours when I can’t finish a 2k word essay for school in two weeks… (The curse of creativity.) Another thing, if you wish ti send asks please do so! I’ve run out of creative juices and well that’s it. I won’t guarantee masterpieces because well… college and all, but i’ll try my best to answer all of them because my brain is drying up and I need inspiration! likes, comments, reblogs and new followers will always be appreciated!

Word count: Roughly 800 words

It’s not enough.

It’s never enough.

You leaned against the tree behind you, the wind flicking your research papers in every direction as you stared hopelessly at the grass.

It had been a month since you had started your recent semester and with a big exam coming up, at first, you were prepared for it mentally. How hard could it be? So many people have been able to keep up with the academia’s standards and you rarely hear people complain about being unable to keep up with their work but archons, this was hard…

“I truly am incapable.” You mumbled to yourself.

“You are.” A voice tuned in from right beside you. In a moment of panic, you glanced to the side only to come face to face with a familiar pair of feet.

What? There was nothing odd about being acquainted with Hat Guy’s feet- well, to be more specific, his shoes. Most people in your class had already been subjected to being under said shoes many times. The man in question described it to you as a showcase of his superiority.

In all honesty, his research papers were enough to make the sages sweat so what other show of superiority would he need beyond that?

You’ve never had the courage to ask. You’ve never had the courage to approach him about anything, which was odd considering how often you two spoke with each other. Every conversation begun with him. At times he’d prod and poke at you as a way of getting more than just affirmative phrases, such as ‘mhm’, ‘yes’ and ‘I agree’, from you. It was quite endearing.

That is a lie.

It was very endearing, but now was not the time to dwell on that.

The hat guy, you used to call him ‘Wanderer’ because you were sane unlike everyone else who could call him ‘hat guy’ without a glimmer of hesitation. What kind of name is ’Hat guy’ anyway? Despite this, you never failed to notice the way his gaze would soften whenever he was addressed by that name. Was he insane too? Was this insanity contagious? It seemed so, because whenever you used his odd name he would smile. It was barely there but it was not something you could miss.

The rustling of papers gave you the motivation to glance up at him, and would you look at that. He was watching you with bemusement, as if you tried to convince him that he was made out of cotton wool or something.

“Even a child knows not to allow their work to be blown away so carelessly by the wind.” He spoke as he organised your notes. The wind that caused your papers to struggle in his hold made his hair dance atop his head and over his forehead.

“Unfortunately that topic isn’t in my exam syllabus.”

He scoffed before taking a seat beside you and handing you your notes. Wordlessly, you took the papers and filed them away in your folder.

“It’s not very clear.”

You blinked in surprise before turning to look at Wanderer (You’d use that name just this once…) who had his gaze fixed on the cloud-filled sky. “What?”

“Your research design. It needs to be revised a bit, especially the part concerning your data analytics.” His eyes turned to you, leaving you thoughtless.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” You both looked ahead of you at the same time, silence settling between you as the wind blew around you, picking up leaves as it went by.

Hat guy sighed. “You’re much harder to talk to than me, and that’s saying a lot since I actively avoid people.”

“I’m not very good at starting conversations.”

“You’re not good at maintaining them either.”

“I’ve heard.”

Your gaze remained on the sky, it was grey. Bleak. Depressing.

Should cloudy days come with a trigger warning for academics?

During your internal struggle, Hat guy’s gaze had shifted to yours and you were so lost in your own world that he should have found it pathetic. Oh but he did, the problem was he wished your thoughts lingered on him instead.

He frowned as he gazed to the side and cleared his throat. This caught your attention but when you looked at him, his face was hidden from your view when he spoke. “I could help you with your work, if you’d like.”

Your eyes widened. “Why?”

The wind was relentless as it continued to blow, his hair dancing with the breeze as the corner of his lips shifted upwards a bit.

“I like to show off.”

You smiled. You were still upset about your shortcomings but having someone be there for you for this one moment made the weight on your shoulders drift away with the wind.

Why was the wind so persistent today anyways?

[nodalstudies]

recent updates <3

i finished my first school session of the year last week! i got an A on my anatomy and physiology final 🥹 i’ve become more efficient and resourceful with studying now that i’m used to my program’s structure. love that!

other developments: i had free time after my session ended and literally wrote a research paper on how i’ve been exploring my sexuality/relationship dynamics using marvel names (peter, shuri, mj) LOL a girl has hobbies!

looking forward to the session ahead <3 it’s my last semester of doing gen ed. excitedddd

[bagalois]

First day of classes (ft free books)

Pictured: free books from the math department! These were just the ones I ended up taking home, but the department had a huge shelf's worth of these.

Below the cut is a summary of my day. Fair warning, it's a bit long.

Hi hi,

I started the day with a mental breakdown in my tumblr drafts because I missed half of my first class ;;; I didn't learn my lesson from orientation obviously and parked on the other side of campus again to walk 20 minutes to the mathematics building. Why do I do this? I honestly don't know. I just hope I don't do it again on Friday, or else I might actually self-combust.

By the time I showed up to linear algebra, the class was in the middle of a quiz (???) Three questions on one side of a single sheet of paper, and everybody looked hard at work. That was just when I arrived, already 20 mins late, and everybody was thinking hard on a three-question, beginning of class quiz...? Intimidating.

I was handed my quiz. Confidently, I wrote an incomplete answer for the first question. It was: how many 2x2 solutions for X are there for X^2 - I = 0? I answered at least 2, but there are actually infinitely many (for example, any reflection matrix will satisfy). I left the other two questions blank. I don't remember what they said.

My textbooks this semester are Axler's "Linear Algebra Done Right," Munkres' Topology, and Folland's Analysis.

I used Axler's and Munkres' text for my undergraduate linear algebra and topology classes (respectively) too. And here I am, doing it all again because I didn't properly retain the information I was supposed to have learned as an undergraduate.

When I reflect on how little I've grown mathematically since high school, I realize just how stupid I actually am. On the bright side, if I'm at the bottom then the only way to go is up. Fortunately this graduate program is proof that there is still salvation for somebody like me in research/academia. I'm optimistic that the rest of the semester will go more smoothly since I'm familiar with the reading material. Moreover, I have high hopes for my linear algebra professor's teaching style - apparently, he hopes to teach us "methods of mathematical inquiry" (aka ways to think about mathematics?) that I've always wanted to better understand but never knew how to ask.

Okay so I've yapped long enough. Classes only ended at 1pm and I did a whole lot more than just attend class today. Here's a summary:

First day of classes

Submitted my voter registration form

Attended the analysis seminar organizational meeting

Ate math department cookies (FREE COOKIES EVERY WEEKDAY)

Napped in a student lounge while reading about planar duality and space duality from the geometry concepts book (second photo)

[finnlongman]

hi, I just found your blog :)

If I may ask, how in the world did you manage to write entire books while also being a PhD student????

Is there a way to not let your PhD consume every waking hour of your life?? :') please tell me your secret

Heh, well, the first thing to note is that I'm in the first year of my PhD, and traditional publishing is slow. So the books I'm talking about right now -- Moth to a Flame and The Wolf and His King -- have been in the works since long before I started my PhD. I originally wrote The Wolf and His King in winter 2019, when I had a full-time job; I originally drafted Moth to a Flame during my full-time MA in 2020. So the PhD is only the latest thing they've had to compete with for my time and attention!

I've always been writing alongside everything else -- I wrote my first novel at 13 and I was writing the whole way through my school years, despite doing a million extra-curriculars. Honestly, I have no idea where I found the energy, but it got me into the habit of writing during lunchbreaks or in short bursts whenever I had the time, and while that's not my preferred way to work these days, it sure did teach me a lot. These days I've got two sets of edits and promo and admin, and the PhD, and my occasional side-gig as a bodhrán player in a couple of trad bands, and whatever other casual work I pick up (today I was invigilating exams), so it's always a balancing act.

But specifically, with these next two books: Moth to a Flame was largely finished before I started my PhD in October, with structural edits done; I was partway through line edits during the first month of my PhD, and then copyedits and proofreading after that. I was doing copyedits over Christmas, including on my phone during a family visit on New Year's Eve. I've been editing The Wolf and His King more recently, with structural edits also happening mainly over Christmas (working on Christmas Day, my favourite) and line-edits happening right now.

Balancing TWAHK with my PhD, or The Butterfly Assassin with my MA (since I sold it at the start of my second semester and that wasn't the best timing), has mostly been about speed and prioritisation. I'm lucky to be a fast writer and a fast reader, so I can get 7k of academic writing on paper in the course of a day or two and therefore keep the wolf (my supervisor) from the door while I run off and do line-edits. Doesn't mean I should, but it happens more than I care to admit. Likewise, I can (and regularly do) edit/rewrite a novel in the space of two weeks, even if that is also not sustainable.

But it's also about being open with my editors (and supervisors) about my deadlines -- e.g. we pulled line-edits for TWAHK forward to March, even though I only submitted structural edits at the start of February and there's often a longer gap, because I'm going to be super busy with PhD work in April ahead of a deadline at the start of May, so I knew I needed to get the bulk of the work out of the way. That means right now, I'm spending more time on writing, but next month, it'll be nearly all academic work.

On really good days I can do both, and usually write for 1-2 hours in the morning, work all afternoon, and then write again in the evenings (this is what I was doing in December with structural edits), but with chronic pain/fatigue and a changeable schedule, that's harder.

Mostly, though, I'm lucky that my adult books and my PhD are very closely related, so a lot of the research I'm doing for the books also feeds into my PhD, and vice versa -- meaning that a lot of the time, I'm multitasking. It was much harder when I was juggling The Butterfly Assassin and my MA, since they had nothing in common; I would basically just focus on one or the other at a time, and was very grateful that we got a slight extension for our thesis submission deadline because of covid or I don't think it would've been in on time.

Oh, and I also don't have a social life (thanks covid + disabilities) so there's that, too. And my house is a mess and I don't eat enough vegetables. But I don't have any caring responsibilities or dependents, and at the moment I don't have fixed hours/work obligations, so that's something.

As for how I used to write when I had a full-time job (and disabilities) (and a social life)... honestly I was definitely writing at work sometimes. And not just on my lunchbreak. 🤫

[thefirstempress]

Some background on The First Empress

So the following excerpt was going to be my original foreword for The First Empress. Last October, however, I was informed in a rejection letter that the foreword was too long (among other, more homophobic reasons for rejecting it). Then, when I looked up how to write a foreword, I found out that, at least in fiction, it's customary to have someone else write it for you. While Matthew Keville (@matthewkeville) was kind enough to write my new foreword, I kept the original foreword, and at a beta reader's suggestion I think I'm going to use it as an "About" page for my website. Content warning for background and personal history.

I think it was fall semester of 2002 at Boise State University. During one of my literature courses, the professor was highly impressed with my reading responses for Homer’s Iliad, particularly in regards to my observation that the story is in no way a conflict between good and evil. And I liked that about it. I liked that there were noble and ignoble characters as well as likable and unlikable characters on both sides of the conflict. In his notes on one of my responses, Professor Jim recommended that I read Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War, which began my interest in ancient history in general and Classical Greece in particular. One of my college friends owned a lovely little coffeehouse/used bookstore for several years, and I bought many volumes out of her ancient history section.

In the late ‘00s, I developed acute depression/anxiety while working on my Master’s Degree in Literature. Though I somehow managed to complete my degree, my depression became so severe that in 2011 I had to step down from a teaching job I loved beside colleagues I liked, because I couldn’t function well enough to fulfill my duties outside the classroom. I decided it was horribly unfair to my students that they couldn’t count on me to do my part, so I walked away. I made the most painful decision I’ve made in my life and stepped down from a job I’d spent three years studying and training for.

My first successful step toward recovery came when I started writing for myself again. No more thirty-page theses, no more ten-page research papers written over the weekend, no more feedback on forty-to-sixty student papers. I typed up some story concepts and revisited some old stories that I hadn’t looked at in a decade. I started a blog, and then a side-blog, and then a Tumblr page to go with the side-blog. I even started a fan-fiction account that features mostly The Legend of Korra novellas and Star Wars one-shots.

During the summer of 2012, I wrote several chapters of a young-adult fantasy novel in a high- to late-medieval setting, featuring a young, somewhat Mary-Sue heroine whose wizened mentor was named Zahnia, the Chronicler—an immortal historian trapped forever as a nine-year-old girl. As I started to flesh out Zahnia’s character, I decided I wanted to explore her origin story, tying it in with the creation of the Tollesian Empire, where the story takes place. For National Novel Writing Month 2012, I began work on the first draft of The First Empress and spent over ten years tinkering, expanding, and revising in my free time. But the more I worked on the story, the bigger it got. George RR Martin once described a spectrum of writers, ranging from architects who outline and design the structure and foundation of their story before they start writing, to gardeners who plant the seeds of the story, then let it grow, expand, and develop organically. I’m very much the ­garden-variety writer.

And so the story kept getting bigger, both in my head and on paper. I fell short of the original 50K word goal by over 10K, but felt like I had a pretty solid start. By the end of that first NaNoWriMo, I knew that it was probably going to be multiple books, so I narrowed down what I wanted to include in Book I and started focusing on those story lines. The original story was to be two separate stories that converge at the end of Book I, with the main story focusing on the title protagonist, Queen Viarra, and the first year of her rise to power, while the background story focuses on Zahnia, the curse of her immortality, and her escape from her captors. In the original outline, Book I would end with our characters first meeting.

Even in the early stages, however, it was extremely difficult to reconcile the two stories. Viarra’s story was over twice the size of Zahnia’s and, for the most part, more exciting for my beta-readers. Zahnia’s scenes often felt like unwelcome interruptions, rather than interesting interludes, and were difficult to intersperse side-by-side with scenes happening in Viarra’s story. At some point in the process, I stopped trying to intersperse them and made Zahnia’s scenes separate chapters. While this worked better, there could be as many as four or five Viarra chapters between Zahnia chapters, and some of my readers pointed out that they sometimes had to go back and reread previous Zahnia chapters to understand what was happening in the latest chapter. I occasionally thought about taking Zahnia’s story out altogether and making it its own novel.

I made my ultimate decision on the matter in July of 2021 when I finally finished the first complete draft of The First Empress. The draft weighed in at over 206K words—which I knew was a lot, but I didn’t grasp the full size until one of my readers pointed out that in paperback format, that’s over eight-hundred pages! I decided almost immediately that the best option was to split them up into three books. Books I and II now deal entirely with the first year of Viarra’s rise to power, meeting Zahnia, her future chronicler, at the end of Book II. Book III is instead mostly about Zahnia’s origins, including her curse of immortality and her daring escape from the madmen who cursed her. This worked out wonderfully as it allowed me to break the revision process into smaller chunks instead of attempting to revise 800 pages in one go.

Though Zahnia isn’t physically present for Book I and only gets a single scene in Book II, I make sure she’s still present in spirit throughout both books. In homage to classic fantasy stories like Frank Herbert’s Dune or Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, I include epigrams written by Zahnia at the beginning of each chapter. Additionally, all footnotes and appendices are also by her. Despite her unavoidable sidelining in what was supposed to be her origin story, Zahnia became something of an alter-ego for me, and I want readers to understand that she is still a foundational character in the series.

While brainstorming leading up to that first NaNoWriMo, I decided to put my studies of Ancient Greek history to use, basing the setting and culture on the late-Classical, early-Hellenic Aegean Sea and the surrounding regions. The culture, politics, and technology—both in how they begin and how they advance as the series progresses—are intended to feel similar to the cultural, political, and technological changes occurring in the wake of the Peloponnesian War through the rise of Kings Philip II and Alexander the Great and beyond. Indeed, Philip and to a lesser degree Alexander were both inspirations for Queen Viarraluca, my title heroine.

(That being said, I don’t tend to view any of my characters as being an equivalent of X figure from Greek history. I drew inspiration from many historical and fictional characters for my cast, but I don’t have a story-world equivalent of Socrates or Pericles or Leonidas or Sappho or Olympias or whoever.)

The setting, though, is less intended to feel historically accurate and more about feeling historically authentic. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a hobbyist historian who hasn’t taken a history course since early in my undergrad studies. Thus, all of my reading and research is unguided, and I have no idea how well my understanding and analyses align with contemporary views. Ultimately, The First Empress is an ancient-world period-fantasy that’s inspired by rather than entirely representative of late-Classical Greece.

Throughout the process, I loved playing with the ancient-world world-building and found perverse enjoyment in taking pagan gods’ names in vain, portraying ancient inventions as new and exciting technology, and treating pants as an unusual and barbarian garment. But as a fantasy, I of course included plenty of embellishments. Sometimes world-building is brainstorming how an intelligent warrior queen and her officers would attempt to adapt a hoplite-centered army to fighting in forested terrain, generally considered unfavorable to phalanx warfare. Sometimes world-building is giving a society based on the Ancient Greeks access to tea, despite zero evidence that the Ancient Greeks had anything similar to tea, all because my warrior-queen protagonist seems like a tea-drinker.

I tried as well to include neighboring cultures inspired by those the Classical Greeks had contact with. The Tollesians are inspired by Classical Greece—the Empire Pellastor and its allies being akin to the Attic and Peloponnesian Greeks while the Hegemony of Andivel and their allies are more like the Ionian Greeks. The Illaran League was originally inspired by the Ancient Illyrians but evolved into more of an Illyrian/Macedonian hybrid. The Gan are inspired by the Gauls. The Venarri are Phoenician. The Artilans are Achaemenid-era Persian. The Kossôn are Achaemenid-era Egyptian. The Wattasu are inspired by Classical-era Nasamones. And the Verleki are largely inspired by the Ancient Scythians. I want to emphasize inspired by, as I’m not an expert on any of these ancient cultures. I have no illusions that I didn’t make mistakes or misinterpret things. I also eventually hope to include cultures inspired by the Samnites, Germanic tribes, Kushites, and possibly even cultures as distant as the Han and Mayans.

Experimenting with ancient-world cultures and in particular with ancient-world sexuality has been some of the most fun I’ve had writing. The Classical Greeks were an openly sexual culture, openly bisexual and often polyamorous. Rather than gloss over their sexuality like a coward, I chose to let my characters embrace it in the story. In doing so, I quickly decided that authors who only write monogamous, heterosexual relationships are missing out on all kinds of wonderful and fascinating relationship dynamics. Queen Viarra is a lesbian, and nearly all of the other characters fall somewhere on a pan- or bisexual spectrum. Zahnia, meanwhile, is asexual, as is one of Viarra’s ambassadors. I have a transgender hoplite officer, as well, and I have other characters in mind for future LGBT+ representation. As bisexuality was normal and even expected in Classical Greek culture, I try to treat it as something normal in my stories as well.

Though so far only one person has asked me why I’d include LGBT+ characters when I’m not LGBT myself, my answer to them and anyone else is that positive representation is important. Louie, my therapist, shared an anecdote during one of our sessions back in 2021 and gave me permission to share with readers. He was hosting some friends of his family for a few days, including his childhood friend who is a lesbian. His copy of my manuscript was lying around, and he started telling them about my lesbian title protagonist who’s also a strong ruler and a formidable warrior queen. His friend was very curious and asked smart questions about the character and story-world. Louie told me that she almost teary-eyed asked him to thank me for writing the characters as gay. She apparently was thrilled not only at the gay representation from the leading couple, but also at the bi representation from other characters.

When a gay woman in her late forties gets teary-eyed at the inclusion of a lesbian couple in a period-fantasy novel, I think it’s a sign that this kind of representation is absolutely necessary.

On the other hand, there were other aspects of Classical Greek culture that I wasn’t as keen about attempting to portray. The Greeks at the time were notoriously misogynist, for example. Much of Greek culture viewed women as property. Athens in particular had all kinds of laws restricting women, including a truly heinous law specifying that female slaves’ court testimonies were only valid if they testified under torture. I did away with a lot of that in my story-world. Scythians, Illyrians, Nubians, Sarmatians, Lusitanians, Suebi, Gauls: plenty of ancient cultures had traditions of skilled huntresses, warrior women, women pirates, influential queens and noblewomen, and successful businesswomen. Philip II of Macedon’s first wife was warrior queen, and he allowed their daughter and granddaughter to be trained in the same manner. That the Classical Greeks couldn’t get with the program is frankly their loss.

As this is my story-world and my tale to tell, I saw no particular reason to carry on that tradition. Queen Viarra isn’t the only powerful queen in the story, nor is she the only woman-warrior in hoplite’s panoply. Though a certain level of misogyny exists, it’s on the level of individual characters or communities, rather than a cultural norm.

Why?

Because it doesn’t have to be a norm! It’s fiction! Misogyny and sexism don’t have to be normal! Racism doesn’t have to be normal! Homophobia and transphobia don’t have to be normal! I shouldn’t have to create a hateful story in order to meet some mouth-breathing neoclassicist’s concept of historical accuracy. One of the best things I learned from reading Effie Calvin and Garrett Robinson’s novels is that truly excellent and inclusive stories with engaging characters, world-building, and conflicts can be created without some need to incorporate real-world prejudices. And when these prejudices do show up in The First Empress, I try to set them up as criticisms of ancient society, rather than something I lazily included for some pretense of “historical accuracy.”

At least three of my beta-readers compared The First Empress favorably to George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. (To paraphrase one of my Tumblr readers, any fantasy with historical inspiration and more politics than wizards will draw Game of Thrones comparisons.) Even so, not only would I never assume to be in the same league as an award-winning fantasy author whose stories have sold countless millions of copies and gotten their own popular television adaptation, I don’t feel like Martin’s goals as a storyteller are at all similar to mine. His stories seem to place the most emphasis on shocking readers—and he’s unparalleled at it! My goal is to give readers a lot to think about. Hopefully I pull that off well.Plus, if readers can handle A Song of Ice and Fire… I think The First Empress might seem a little mellow by comparison.

Thanks so much for your interest in my book, folks. I hope you find my story and characters entertaining, interesting, thought-provoking, or at the very least enjoyable to read. Thanks for reading and take care!

[fennthetalkingdog]

I don't know if I'm in the minority on this, but I love writing essays. The feeling of choosing something that seems fun, getting to research it, organizing what you've learned in a neat and tidy way, and now having a random pocket of knowledge that stays with you for the rest of your life is something that I can hardly ever replicate elsewise. Some of my favorite hyperfixations have come from essays and other research projects that I had to do for school (like when I learned about LSD for a biology project on cell communication, or when I wrote a speech on neopronouns for a public speaking class)! And I miss so much having a class where I can just... do what I love, for credit! I haven't had a research class since my first semester and I'm feeling it 😔 One of my friends asked me for advice about choosing a topic and I got so excited at just the mention of a research paper that I started happy stimming hard, lol. I really should just write a paper on my own time, but then I'd need some executives to function for once, *sigh*.

[study-with-aura]

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

This is the fastest update I have made in maybe forever. I am currently eating my dinner, and in a few minutes I will have to get ready for dance and then my brother will drive me and then I will get home around 9pm. I forgot how fast Wednesdays were, even last semester!

I had my first robotics class session today, and I really enjoyed it! We are learning how to program robots and we will even design our own robots by the end of the course! It's eight weeks long. There are some who are enrolled that are slightly younger than me and then three of us are around the same age, which is nice. My best friend enrolled in it with me, and so we are utilizing it for our Senior Robotics badges.

In other news, I forgot to pull back my top throw blanket before taking the photo, so you will see the throw blanket I have on top of my unicorn blanket. Sometimes I get extra cold at night, and it helps to have it.

Until tomorrow studyblr community! I hope everyone is having a great start to their semester!

Tasks Completed:

Geometry - Reviewed arc measures + learned about chords + practice + honors work

Lit and Comp II - Reviewed vocabulary + finished writing my paper + read the news

Spanish 2 - Copied vocabulary on the body

Bible I - Read Numbers 36

World History - Researched and completed the Enlightenment Thinkers chart

Biology with Lab - Read more about genetics + watched a video lecture on genetics and Mendel's experiments

Foundations - Read more about love + did my daily workout on Lumosity + wrote the body of my "how-to" speech

Piano - None today (these will be Mon, Thurs, Fri, Sat, and Sun)

Khan Academy - None today (more than likely will not be doing KA on Wednesdays as I'm short on time) :(

Duolingo - Completed at least one lesson each in Spanish and Chinese

Reading - Read pages 137-170 of Chaos Theory by Nic Stone

Activities of the Day:

Ballet

Variations

Extracurricular class on programming robots (which I can also utilize as part of the requirements for the Senior Robotics badge set for Girl Scouts)

Journal/Mindfulness

-

What I’m Grateful for Today:

I am grateful that my brother is still here because he is leaving so very soon, and I do not want to think about it yet.

Quote of the Day:

Life is a book and there are a thousand pages I have not yet read.

-Clockwork Princess, Cassandra Clare

🎧Lyric Pieces Book X, Op.71 - 4. Peace of the woods - Edvard Grieg

[cheeriecherrymain]

Incorrigible Flirts And Besweatered Men [Chapter 5]

Pairing: TA!Viktor x fem!Reader Rating: T Warnings: Descriptions of anxiety and stress, i wrote this without my adhd meds so, good luck you lot :S Proofread: no beta we die like men Chapter Summary: You officially start your career as a musician, and it’s nothing like you thought it would be; thankfully Viktor is kind, and does what he can to care for you, even though you feel like you don’t really deserve it.

On Monday, you finally find the energy to send an email back to the studio; apologizing for the delay and explaining that you’re a full time student. You thank them for the opportunity, and agree to set up a time to meet - whenever they’re available, of course, and you’ll do your best to work your schedule around it.

The professionalism and anxiety pretty much destroys your mood afterwards. You’re barely able to pay attention in class that day, too full of nervous energy to absorb the lecture.

Thankfully, Viktor texts you later and offers to send you a recording of the lesson.

—

On Tuesday, you’re able to recover a little bit. The only class you have that day is in the afternoon, and you’re thrilled to be able to sleep in for once; not as late as you’d like to, but waking at ten was still better than waking at seven.

You run into Viktor after your class, and the two of you end up grabbing coffee while he’s on his break. You talk for a little while, telling him about the meeting you had coming up on thursday and expressing your worries about everything.

He, as usual, encourages your skill and capability.

But the mood shifts when a couple of your classmates walk into the small cafe, and find seats not far from you. Viktor doesn’t seem to notice them - or if he does, he pays them no mind - and continues telling you about one of the most recent papers he’s read.

You, however, are unable to ignore the dirty looks being shot your way.

—

On Wednesday, you take the first test of the semester. There are seven of them in total - according to the syllabus you’d been given at the start of the course - worth twenty percent of your grade, and not including your final exam. 

Part of you is grateful that most of your grade relies on your ability to absorb information; as opposed to having to write, source, and properly format a multitude of academic papers. Sitting for hours while scouring through books and internet pages wasn’t your favourite way of learning, and more often than not it had you getting sucked down wikipedia rabbit holes that had nothing to do with the subject you were supposed to be researching.

Though you also kind of miss being able to add things to your bank of useless knowledge.

In any case, the test goes well, and you’re pleased with your performance. It had been challenging enough that you really had to think and apply what you’d learned in class, but still straightforward in its wording, and not purposefully convoluted as a means of confusing you.

—

On Thursday, you have your meeting at the studio.

You get lunch with Viktor beforehand, going over the prior days’ test and talking about which concepts you fully understood, and which ones you maybe had a little more difficulty with. He seemed to be fairly confident in your grasp of the course so far, going as far as revealing that you were among the top three students in the class.

“I would not be surprised if you get an invite to one of the winter galas,” Viktor had admitted, much to your surprise.

“I thought those were only for the faculty and university sponsors?”

“Typically, they are,” he’d explained, going on to tell you about the singular event at the end of the year where certain students could be invited to attend and talk about their experiences with the school.

“So it’s basically to get more funding?” you’d asked, and Viktor had nodded with a smile.

You were thankful that he’d been able to take the time to sit with you for a little while before your meeting, his presence temporarily mitigating your ever-present anxiety. You didn’t tell him that, but you weren’t sure you needed to; his hand on your shoulder and a gentle encouragement as you departed suggested he already knew how stressed you were.

Now, you’re waiting in a small lobby. Waiting to be called back into an office to discuss the next five years of your life. You poke idly at your phone, playing some silly, repetitive game that didn’t require any skill or thought, but it had cute cartoon cats in it, so it automatically held your interest.

Kind of.

It keeps you entertained for all of thirty seconds, before your thoughts start wandering. What would it be like to work with an actual studio? Would you have to write your own music, or would you have help? Thus far in your life, you’d gotten on by mostly playing covers - some with lyrics, some not; you’d only ever written a couple pieces, and none of them had words. God, how were you going to do this? You didn’t know how to write! You were a physicist in training, not a songwriter-

You ball your hands into fists, so tightly that your knuckles turn white and your nails bite into your palms, and you force yourself to take a deep breath. Wait a couple seconds, breathe out, says Viktor’s voice, in your mind. Again. That’s it, good girl.

You try not to think about how much the sound of his voice flusters you, instead focusing on the little encouragements and praises he’d give you: kind words, a pat on the shoulder. Maybe even his hand wrapped around yours, thumb smoothing over your skin, like he had done the weekend prior.

Your anxiety eventually recedes, though the fluttering in your chest remains. At least the palpitations aren’t from fear, you think, and slouch back in your chair.

—

Four hours later, you meander through the doorway of your home, dragging your feet and overwhelmed with exhaustion. The toe of your boot catches on the lip of the entrance, causing you to topple forwards. You barely manage to catch yourself on the way down, twisting so most of your weight lands on your knee instead of your face; and you still end up sprawled out on the floor surrounded by loose books, but at least you don’t have a broken nose.

You lay there in the front hallway for a few minutes, unmoving and unmotivated to get up. Even when the cold air starts coming in through the screen door, you remain frozen.

Disappearing into the woods sounded like a really good option.

You know that you’re just being dramatic, and that nothing particularly terrible had happened, but that’s not really the point. The point is that you know you’re going to be stressed in the coming weeks, and you’re not looking forward to it.

You’d gotten through your appointment without much issue - you’d talked through the contract with your new boss, and been honest with him about the fact that you were a full time student. You’d met your mentor, a couple of other people you’d be working with at some point, and gone over what would be expected of you should you sign with the studio.

Everything had been thorough and friendly, and it had been written into your terms that your schedule would be modified to fit your student lifestyle.

In theory, there was no reason to be anxious.

Yet here you were.

On the floor.

Seriously considering running into the woods to become a mushroom.

It would be easier than writing an entire album in six months, you think, finally gaining the willpower to push yourself up into a sitting position. You gather up the books strewn around you, carefully sorting them into little piles before sliding them back into the bags you’d carried them in. 

While the meeting had gone well, and everyone you’d been introduced to had been kind and understanding, you’d still been…criticized, to some extent. Or rather, you’d been told that at least two thirds of your first album needed pieces with lyrics.

“Your instrumentals are fantastic,” your new boss had said, pairing a couple more praises as you went through the CD you’d sent in weeks ago. Then, he skips ahead to one of your more impressive covers. “Your voice, though? That’s a gift not many people have.”

He’d been somewhat disappointed when you’d admitted that you’d never actually written lyrics before, and even moreso when you and your mentor had tried to come up with something on the spot.

It was obvious that they were looking for well-rounded musicians - not necessarily traditionally educated, but with at least some kind of natural talent that could be built upon. And you were certainly what they were looking for in most areas: you just…didn’t have a way with words. You couldn’t take your feelings and turn them into sung poetry.

Which was apparently a detriment only to you.

You’d left the studio with a modified contract - instead of five years, you were cut down to six months. If you could produce a worthwhile album in that amount of time, then the longer deal would be reextended and you’d officially become one of their artists.

And if not?

You didn’t want to think about that.

Your mentor had been kind enough to catch you on the way out of the studio, offering you a list of resources that you could look into to start learning how to write lyrics, as well as a few words of encouragement. You had thanked him, and exchanged numbers in case you had any questions, and he’d disappeared back into the building.

You’d stopped at a couple of bookstores on the way home, picking up as many of the recommended books as you could afford, and…well, now you were on the floor in your front hallway.

One of your cats chirps at your side, pressing up against you and knocking her head on your arm.

“You have no idea what kind of nonsense the world is,” you tell her, trailing your hand over her fur. She - as expected - says nothing, and begins to purr.

—

Your life gets a hell of a lot more hectic after that.

Every moment you’re not studying for class, you’re studying what it takes to write a decent song. Beats and syllables, word shapes and styles that are pleasing to the ear, how to breathe properly, what to avoid; it’s maddening, and not in a good way.

You knew that it would take longer than a week to grasp concepts that were entirely new to you - it had been years since you’d studied a subject that you didn’t already have some base knowledge of - but that didn’t do much to lessen the frustration you feel each time you try to write something, only to scribble it out minutes later because it sounded wrong.

You’d hardly had enough time to keep up with your classes before, but now?

Now you can hardly pay attention.

You’re tired, your sleep schedule is a mess, you’re stressed. Each time you walk into the lecture hall, you feel like the entire room is staring at you with malice, and yet you can’t find the ability to care, because all of your energy is being put towards spongeing up information.

You feel like you’re learning so little about music, that you even start bringing your books to class: you figure you know enough about physics to get by for a couple of days, a fact which proves true when you’re called upon to participate in some discussion taking place around you.

You can tell that Heimerdinger doesn’t quite believe you when you say that you’re ‘just distracted by writing everything down’, but he doesn’t press you on the matter, which you’re grateful for.

Viktor, on the other hand, is less gracious.

He wanders up to your seat once the lecture is finished, and finds a spot beside you. He doesn’t say anything while you pack up your things, but you can feel his gaze boring into you - you worry you’ll find disappointment if you look at him.

“Is there something on my face?” you ask, keeping your tone lighthearted. Viktor sighs.

“Are you alright?” he wonders quietly, making guilt well up in your stomach.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” you reply, but you know your resolve is slipping: and Viktor’s hand on your shoulder is the last straw.

“You’ve just started a very demanding job, and you’re still in class full-time,” he says, and then taps a finger against the cover of the book you’d been reading out of. “That, and I don’t think poetry is part of the curriculum.”

You cease gathering your things up, and slouch back in defeat. “I don’t know what I was thinking,” you mumble, “I’m in way over my head. I thought I knew so much about music, but now I- I’m learning entirely new concepts, and I have no idea how to apply them!”

Viktor quietly slides the thin textbook towards himself, glancing over the cover and opening it to take a look at the table of contents.

“I’m sure you didn’t always understand physics, either. Learning takes time, Y/N.”

“I know that,” you cry, “but I don’t have time! I have to make an entire album in six months! Less than that, really, because I’m spending so much time studying and not enough time actually writing, and a good chunk of the time I have is going to be spent recording so the writing needs to be done by then, and-”

A pair of warm hands cupping your jaw draws you out of your anxiety spiral.

“Darling, breathe.”

His thumbs stroke over your cheeks, giving you something to focus on while he helps you monitor your air intake: you’re amazed you don’t start crying, with how tenderly he cares for you.

It takes a couple of minutes, but finally, you sigh.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Viktor’s hands drop from your face, to your shoulders.

“We are going to head to the library, to go over what you missed in class today.”

“But-”

“No buts. We’re going to go over the entire curriculum, and we’re going to see which parts you need to study, and which parts you already understand. Then, we’re going to make a schedule around that.”

You cast your gaze away from him, anxiety beginning to claw its way back into your thoughts. “I’m not going to be able to change your mind, am I?” you ask, though you already know the answer.

“No,” he says, with every ounce of warmth and kindness he possesses. “But I could perhaps be convinced to stop for a snack on the way there, should you desire one.”

You perk up slightly. “But the library doesn’t allow food.”

Viktor smiles then, giving your shoulders a reassuring squeeze. “We can sit elsewhere while we eat,” he promises. “And maybe you can tell me more about ah…poetry and songwriting, is it? We could work it into your study schedule.”

[gutterpede]

Thinking about my modernisms art history class and how for the final we had to create some sort of map detailing any part of the material discussed in class, and submit it with an essay explaining and detailing your work. And even though the essay counted for like 2/3 of that final grade, I decided to collect aspects and details from the entirety of the curriculum and amass them into one massive unreadable map, to showcase how interconnected and complex history is.

Anyways here’s how I did it first I went over every unit and gathered names of artists, movements, historical events/conditions, and other influences, wrote down all of them and how they connected to one another, and made four different webs on transfer paper that layered one another

PS this is by no means meant to cover all aspects of modernisms or art history this is just what we looked at that semester. Also I miss research and learning with others. I guess I miss school. Whatever

[starblue2406]

Every year, the Colegio de Bachilleres in collaboration with ESRU organizes an essay contest. It consists of you doing a scrutiny based on four topics that they give you. Three of these topics are research topics and the fourth is to write some narrative writing.

In short, I participated in my last semester of high school, I had already planned to compete in order to leave in style, but it was my teacher of the subject “language and communication” who reaffirmed my desire to compete by giving a test to the whole class where we had to write a minimum of 10 lines on three topics that he wrote on the blackboard. He explained to us what each of the themes of the contest consisted of, in the last one, we had to write about something that had happened to us and relate it to a teaching that would help us as people.

He also offered us that if we participated, we would not have to do anything more than hand in a 250-word paper per week and write our text in the classroom. Basically I would get a free 10.

Everyone handed in their text and then revealed that this was a test, because the topics were the same as in the ESRU competition, which had only exempted the topic of “my story”.

Shortly thereafter, he had us do another activity and was calling one by one students who he considered had the potential to participate in the contest. One of them was me, he offered to be my tutor and encouraged me to participate in one of the 4 categories. I, of course, said yes.

The awards are exquisite. At each site there is a first, second and third place, as well as an overall first place for all sites.

First place overall wins an all-expense paid trip to Spain.

For each site, first place is a computer, second place a tablet and third place a speaker (to be honest, it's a little disappointing, unless it's a very good quality speaker or a good brand).

I of course even finished my text quickly, in a previous year I also wanted to participate, but I still had deficiencies with my writing, I didn't have a clear idea of what to write and there wasn't a tutor who really wanted to help (it was necessary to have a tutor, not only to help you with your work but also to enroll you).

On this occasion, I was crystal clear about what I wanted to tell, a story based on a personal tragedy and the Oscar nominated movie “Robot Dreams”. It is a story written as a fable.

My teacher was very helpful, even the text is written with the “sandwinch” structure (as we call it), which was to join my story told in the style of an essay that talks about friendship, but without having to explain all the allegories to the reader.

Yesterday the winners were announced on the official Colegio de Bachilleres website, I was excited, I handed in my work until the last day, June 14, (mostly because my teacher took a while to help me in the last revision since he was also participating in the teachers' category with his own work and that of other students) and finally, September 2, we see the results.

And look! I've been a winner on my campus. I don't know any of those classmates, it makes me sad not to see the name of a great friend of mine who also competed, but I won this prize for her too.

Don't get confused, everyone is sorted in alphabetical order, but they still don't say who came in what place, that will be known until September 30, where there will be an awards ceremony, where the winner of the trip and the winner of each place per campus will be announced.

Quote from the call for entries: “The jury may or may not assign three winners for each site, according to the quality of the work.

The names of the winners from each campus will be published in alphabetical order on the Colegio de Bachilleres website on

Colegio de Bachilleres website on September 2, 2024.

The overall first place winner will be announced at the Awards Ceremony. The

Award Ceremony will be held on September 30, 2024, at a venue to be confirmed.

At this event, the place obtained by each student will be announced, the corresponding prizes will be awarded and the name of the winner will be announced.

and the name of the overall first place winner will be announced.”

It is the first time that I put my writing to the test like this, I feel that this was the right time to participate and I am proud of my result and excited to know the great truth. Of course I will upload everything that happens in relation to this at a later date, including the award ceremony.

When it is September 30, I will tell everything that happened and I will also publish my writing so that you can know the text that has been the first of many steps in my journey as a writer.

[regina-bithyniae]

So I'm considering whether to go to grad school for econ. Could you offer any suggestions for, like, (classic) papers to read for an advanced undergraduate, the reading of which might help discern whether one has the aptitude/interest sufficient to go to grad school? esp. like, The Papers You Should've Read in Undergrad type papers

Starter warning: I did a masters of economics, not a full PhD. But I did strongly consider the PhD for a while and did research, and know people who did one (@powermonger please chime in), classmates who are doing one now, or dropped out of one.

I'd actually say you are looking at it the wrong way. Econ grad school is first a boot camp of Math/Microeconomics/Macroeconomics/Econometrics. My MA had this for one semester, in a PhD it's a year. This is not fun, and was where I decided I didn't want to go onto the PhD. I could handle the cycle of 10-12 hour workdays and then getting wasted on Fridays, but I didn't have any singular topic that I loved enough to commit myself to 2 more years of this plus research, and then the grind for tenure over.

The number one filter here is math. In undergraduate you'd need multivariable calculus, linear algebra, several courses of statistics (some of these should be part of any bachelors in econ). Econ grad school actually prefers math/engineering majors to generalist econ.

After the death grind, you move on to field-related coursework, which is more related to your specific area of study. This corresponds more towards reading papers and writing your own, delving into the datasets and doing your own causal research. This is more fun. After this comes writing your thesis proper - summer semester for me, or the later years of a PhD.

If you want to see what modern economics research looks like, check out the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and see the papers that go up. You can also try the Journal of Economic Perspectives (JEP) for more general-public readable introductions to research.

Noah Smith is a guy who got an economics PhD to be better at arguing online and has some pages:

Also check out /r/badeconomics and /r/askeconomics:

[vera-dauriac]

I see some of my college and grad student mutuals stressing about school lately, and I keep thinking back to the Anon I got from someone worried about doing poorly on a test, so I’m going to be an Insufferable Adult™ for a few minutes and offer a few pieces of practical advice about how I got through college and grad school and manage stress in general to this day.

Anxiety and stress

For me, it has always been about finding my anti-anxiety music. Listening to music allows me to lower anxiety while working, because taking time away from work in order to do something that’s supposed to reduce my anxiety would only make me more anxious about the fact I’m not doing work. In grad school, it was Mozart violin concertos. Today it’s Goldberg Variations and Corelli Concertos. Whatever works for you, but here’s Spotify links to what works for me.

Mozart

Bach

Corelli

Getting work done

Most of the time in school, I didn’t have to come up with a schedule or anything to make due dates. I was just able to get stuff done and still have a social life and do fun stuff. (I do remember asking for an extension once, because sometimes that just happens.) But one semester in grad school, life got in the way, and suddenly I had three long papers due in two weeks and hadn’t started reading any of my sources or planning the papers. And that’s when I learned that sometimes you just have accept that schoolwork is going to be your life for a while. (Yes, if you had to live that way all the time, it would be awful, but for a couple of weeks, you just have to do it.)

So, I figured out how much I had to read from my sources every day and how much I had to have drafted by when, and I wrote out a schedule on a dry erase board on my fridge where I had to see it all the time. For example, on Monday I had to read the first three articles for Paper 1, the two long articles for Paper 2, and chapters 1-4 for Paper 3. Until that was done, no TV, no leisure reading, no bar with my friends, no going to bed. (Thank goodness this was the era when the Internet was merely a research tool I had to go to the university library to use, but for all of you, this means no tumblr, etc.)

In the final week, I pulled three all nighters, and after I turned in my last paper, I went back to my apartment and cried myself to sleep. This is not a schedule I would recommend, but if there’s no other option, it can be done, but only if you keep yourself to a schedule. (For me, it helped to remember that the insane scheduling was temporary--I wasn't going to have to live like that forever.) This was also the time when I started thinking of the structure of my papers differently. Rather than planning my arguments and outlining them and then finding citations to support them, when I was doing my initial reading, I marked the things I found citation worthy, and I structured my papers around how to get from one citation to the next. It really sped up the process.

And that’s just a little advice for when things get tough at school. Feel free to ignore the annoying old lady, though.

[mattspeak]

Langblr Reactivation Challenge

Week 1, Day 2

Day 2: Write a list of goals you have for your target languages. Make both long term and short term goals. An overall goal could be to have the ability to talk with native speakers with ease and a smaller goal would be to finally learn that difficult grammar point that’s been plaguing you for ages. How will you achieve them?

I went ahead & dedicated space on the first page of my notebook for goals.

Long-term, I want to:

-Speak with native speakers

-Read research papers (regarding Central Asian politics & economics as well as linguistics)

-Read Uzbek news

Short-term, I don’t have much since I’m brand new. That being said, I want to:

-Introduce myself

-Learn sentence order

-Learn 30 common words

Overall, my goals with Uzbek lie in academics. I became interested in the language during a Central Asian history course I took last semester as part of my Asian Studies certificate program. I wrote a research paper surveying economic development in Uzbekistan during & after the Soviet period, which exposed me to the language and opened me up to learning more about Uzbekistan. Basically, I’m mostly interested in learning Uzbek so I can have access to more research & writing surrounding Central Asia (& Uzbekistan, of course).

Link to the original challenge post

[fouralignments]

For the “get to know your writer” ask game - 3, 13, 20, 27, 74

Describe the creative process of writing a chapter/fic

I get sparks of inspiration. I get bad dry spells as well, so it comes and goes. Often times I make little outlines on my phone with checklist features; to give me a sense where I want the conversation to go and what plot points need to be in there. From there I write, I usually like setting the scene with descrubtion to get my audience emerses. Sometime even though I have an outline, when I'm writing its more about finding where it all goes and letting it develop organicing or trusting my story of what and where it wants to go and where it wants to stop.

Sometimes, I have to step back and look at it from a different angle, for the answer to come to me, but its always been there, I just needed to find it. For example in chapter 7, I had this conversation between Peter and Sabah Nur and I need a transition between the next point because real conversation doesn't follow smoothly.

But when inspiration hits me rather that be from the podcasts that I listen to or film analysis or reading; I rework what they said and put them into the word doc. Sometimes I get ideas and have to write them down in my note section of my phone or even phrases that slip into my mind.

I go back on work on sections or move past trouble areas to work on the next point in the outline and go back and worth between them. Rinse and repeat until I feel its done. But, I have the bad habit of editing as I go and chasing rabbit holes thus increasing my chapter length. I sometimes worry that my audience will not like the length will skip over what I have wrote

Then check to see if everything makes sense. It takes me an entire day to upload, I go into word and type out the summary and whatever else is needed on ao3 and just copy/paste on there.

what’s a common writing tip that you almost always follow?

(It should be noted that I have never EVER taken a creative writing course at the university level) Sometimes your writing has to catch up to your artistic eye.

It has three level:

1: you gotta get your basics down for technical wise like your sentence structure, word choice, using the correct punction etc. Like you gotta know the rules, before you know when break them and bend them when it comes to creative writing.

2: This is best summed up by Glenn Hetrick in the tv show Face Off said multiple. You need to have a reference library of shows, tropes, to see what came before and build on top of it. Understand why tropes, different readings of a show of movie, work the way that they do. Sometimes its better to watch and observe and analysis what went wrong on terrible show than a good one. Just engaging with the text

3: Read shit. Read on topics that you don't know about. Read think pieces.

I took classes on women studies, did survey course on the middle east, read 18 books on semester ranging from populism, poverty, 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état and 28 Mordad coup d'état. First you get exposed to ideas that can inspire you and depending on what your reading word choice, sentence length, I could go on. It helped me greatly better than my previous university did in teaching me how to write. I also started re-reading more writing how to books that I bought sometime back and took their advice seriously. This. helped me develop the language I needed to describe what was in my head. Also the power of the semicolon, run-on sentences I fear you no more!

I have to tell that I use to SUCK at writing, but in the process of having to write short essays and even a couple research papers per semester. It forced me to get better. Really get things down. The professors took the time to tell what I did wrong in papers.

Have you noticed any patterns in your fics? Words/expressions that appear a lot, themes, common settings, etc?

DOMESTIC SHIT

Its been pointed out to me that I write vulnerable moments between the characters rather that be between Erik and Peter, or Erik and Charles, or Peter and Sabah Nur.

What do you mean its not political?

Lots of food porn.

DADS

father-son relationships

For Erik:

I try my best to highlight his Jewish background and even in stories where it isn't apparent.

He does metal art like mystical menagerie of Ziz and leviathan, that do make an appearance in some of my fics.

Give my protective Dadneto any day; he's just so vulnerable around his son. He often sees his mother's eyes in Pietro.

Only Erik calls Peter, Pietro

His beard is called fuzzy. I find Fassy's veiny arms sexy and attractive.

He's very witty and sarcastic, but very worldly.

SHARKS

Yeah yes, Charles swimming with Erik in Shark form!

His singing and breadmaking, just him cooking is described as soulful. As a ritual for both himself and Pietro to help with establishing routine they sing Modeh Ani and Elohai Neshamah for the morning or blessings over food.

For Charles:

I've called his hair fluffy and feather-like mane many of times. He's associated with lavender, which is medicinal as he wants to heal both Erik and Peter but its also calming; also with pastel, lighter grays. His hands are soft and scholarly; I play up that aspect of his character. Shortbread and tea. I associate him with the spring, wildflowers, gardening.

Balancing out Erik in the parenting department. He's very motherly.

For Peter:

I associate him with hummingbirds. When describing his hair I often look up different slivery elements; I was very pleased with the tolkin reference in my Assassin Creed one-shot with Mithril.

Often described using celestial bodies and space, and metals.

He's neurodivergent and he flourishes under a patient teacher like Charles. He is very caring and kind, but suffers badly from self doubt and self esteem issues, a common problem in my fics. However, he doesn't think through things, but he's smart no dumb Peter here. He's trying to figure himself out and who he is.

For En Sabah Nur:

I've tired to my best to ignore or even re-imagine how Sabah Nur looks, so I focus on his eyes because Oscar Isaac has gorgeous eyes. For the character since he compesned with his eyes, voice and hands; I think why a lot of people didn't realize it was him was becuase in post ESN had to be dupped he really changed his voice for the role making it sound old.

I based much of his mannerism off of Oscar Isaac and if you see like him with Pedro Pascal or behind the scenes photos the dude gives good hugs and physical affection.

I also have given the nickname of En Sabah Nur giver of good compliments. Those are his two love languages that he primary uses.

I tired highlighting the milky prophet eyes. layered of his voice

Though surprisingly, I don't write the bite down on his lower lip tick that he has.

Though that may change in the future for the human less blue version in the future.

I am also giving him a fucking hobby, have it planned out, but he enjoy pottery. It turns out that yeah um Ancient Egyptians had pottery wheels. He also has an architect eye. With his powers it would probably help knowing material engineering, metallurgy, and chemistry.

What is your most and least favorite part of writing?

My least favorite part of writing is the first draft and actually getting over the hump of writing enough where I all I want to do is finish it and write glore.

When I am in the zone and the words flow through I feel like I can write for days; I stay up till 1 to 2 o'clock in the morning just being in that moment, while listening to ambient music that helps me get there.

You’ve posted a fic anonymously. How would someone be able to guess that you’d written it?

My descriptive language and just how I write the characters, its very disincentive. See answer above.

[thinkingisadangerouspastime]

2022 Writing Year in Review

thank you for the tag @northerngoshawk!! 💕

1. Number of stories posted to AO3: 18

2. Word count this year: 172,404 words! we could get really technical and subtract the word counts for the fics i technically wrote in 2021 but typed/posted in 2022, but that’s a lot of work i don’t feel like doing lol

3. Fandoms I wrote for: ATLA, Law & Order, MCU (+ Venom), Monk, and Medium. not sure i want to know what that says about me...

4. Pairings: petermj (mcu), allison/joe (medium), kincoy (claire/jack from l&o), zukaang (atla), tylara (atla), mjflash (mcu), and kataang (atla). a nice mixture!

5. Stories with the most:

Kudos: Walls (my mj&flash friendship fic) comes in first with 114 kudos

Bookmarks: Walls comes out on top again with 29 bookmarks!

Comment threads: this thing of darkness (i acknowledge mine), my mjflash + venom!flash fic, has the most comment threads by far with 47, the result of a small but loyal following of readers who made my day every time they commented 💛

Word count: by a hair, The Wrong Note (my monk x medium crossover) has the highest word count at 37,630 words! this thing of darkness (i acknowledge mine) has 37,011 words

6. Work I’m most proud of (and why): im proud of all my works for different reasons! today i shall spotlight my children will listen series, consisting of two waterbending-centric fics narrated by kanna and katara respectively; both stories explore cultural loss and intergenerational trauma. i’d never written companion pieces prior to that point, so im proud of how i was able to construct those parallel narratives! i also had a blast reworking one of my favorite shel silverstein poems to weave throughout the story

7. Work I’m least proud of (and why): ?? this is a silly question. fanfic is my hobby, im not writing it for journal publication. onto the next one!

8. Share or describe a favorite review you received: literally Every review i got on the children will listen series; i had no idea how impactful those fics would be or how many people would relate to it, but im so glad i ended up writing and publishing them! i also have to shoutout ocean’s review on time apart, time together (the tylara fic i wrote for her bday 💛) bc she truly Understood that story through and through, and i am equal parts delighted and relieved that she did (since it was written for her 💕)

9. A time when writing was really, really hard: i mean, im a college student. i almost never write fic during the semester, lol. i Literally haven’t written fic since,,,, august 2022. (technically i could have written some fic these past few weeks BUT it’s the holidays so i’ve been spending time with family + revising my research paper + loosely working on some original writing)

10. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you: BRUH all of my law & order fics surprised me 😭 come on, babe (why don’t we paint the town?) contains Thee sexiest scene i’ve ever written; find a flask (we’re playing fast and loose) is written SOLELY from jack’s pov (a 50-year-old white man, how low have i fallen); and it was more than worth it (my kincoy magnum opus) was my first foray into nonlinear storytelling. all in all, 2022 was quite an experimental year for me!

11. A favorite excerpt of your writing: i’ve talked to death my favorite excerpt from it was more than worth it, so instead i’ll spotlight an excerpt from if memories could fade away (my mj birthday fic):

Ned sticks his tongue out at her, and MJ responds in turn before opening the door anyway, because he’s Ned and she’s MJ and it’s always been just them, the two of them, eight years going on eighteen.

“Damn, girl, you live like this?” Ned says as he enters, watching where he steps so he doesn’t trip over one of her many piles of everything—textbooks, clothes, journals, old CDs too scratched to use that will soon become the basis of MJ’s next art project: voices we no longer hear.

She remembers getting each CD, starting with Let Go on her tenth birthday, back when she lived in New Orleans and always kept her curly brown hair in symmetrical cornrows or cropped at the base of her neck because of the suffocating humidity. She remembers taking each CD and ripping the music to her computer so her dad could move it onto her tiny red MP3 player for the long, long ride to Queens that began the next day. She remembers two CDs breaking during the drive and one CD breaking when they arrived because she threw it at the wall of her empty new room, angry, so angry she’d been ripped from her home like music from a shiny silver disc and it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair—

“You see, guests usually stay downstairs,” MJ teases, pushing aside a pile of clothes so Ned has room to sit on her bed. She takes a seat at her desk, spinning the chair around to face her dearest friend. “If I’d known you were planning to invade my personal space, I might have considered making my living arrangements more presentable.”

Ned snickers. “Considered, and then not done a damn thing about them?”

MJ winks at him. “You know me so well.”

Ned has known her so long, known her messy room, known her impenetrable walls, known her since she was thrown into a new school in a new city expected to make new friends when Michelle knew even at ten that would never happen, not that year, because 5th graders had already chosen their loyal companions five, six, seven years ago and there was no room for a Black girl to fit into a white noise machine that already hummed along without her.

Her parents sent her to school anyway. She must not have been persuasive enough.

MJ MY BELOVED!!! 🥺💛 i enjoyed playing with sentence length/rhythm and metaphors/similes in this fic, and i think this excerpt in particular captures that experimentation

12. How did you grow as a writer this year: hmmmm well i tried my hand at some action sequences in this thing of darkness (i acknowledge mine), which probably counts for something. and like i already mentioned, it was more than worth it was my first foray into nonlinear storytelling (and a lot of people told me they enjoyed it!) + if memories could fade away involved stylistic experimentation. in other words, i think i grew as a writer simply by letting myself try new things, from how i told stories to what content i included within them!

13. How do you hope to grow next year: i just want to write more, honestly. the more i write, the more i can try, and hopefully the more i’ll grow! to be more specific, i want to try my hand at some sci-fi/near-future dystopian original stories (à la kazuo ishiguro’s klara and the sun)

14. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc): probably ocean and ambi! they always put up with my fic-related ramblings, are wonderful to bounce ideas off of, and by virtue of their existence (and enthusiasm) remind me why i love writing fic in the first place 💛 in terms of non-tumblr influences, haha, reading the promise by damon galgut was a GAME CHANGER for me. third person omniscient with no quotation marks?? the entire story is an allegory for post-apartheid south africa?? a stylistic and thematic MASTERPIECE. i can only dream of writing a novel with such artistic daring

15. Anything from your real life show up in your writing this year: lol this thing of darkness (i acknowledge mine) is packedTM with shakespeare references and milton jokes; if memories could fade away explicitly mentions one of avril lavigne’s albums (seen in the provided excerpt); won’t you hang a picture? references nancy drew; and Walls involves a whole project about the picture of dorian gray. when narratively appropriate, i never hesitate to sneak in my own interests 😂

16. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers: write for fun! write what you love! don’t be afraid to experiment! listen to the incredibles soundtrack while you write! read, read, read! write with a cat on your lap! never delete anything! write when you’re inspired and write when you’re not! if it brings you joy to create, then what you create is good enough!

17. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year: honestly, i want to focus on my original writing and my research more, so i may not have as much time for fic. that said, i hope to write:

a sequel to this thing of darkness (i acknowledge mine)

the next part of my mcu medium!au

ml fic in general

atla fic in general

time will tell!

18. Tag some writers whose answers you’d like to read: i know a lot of people have been tagged for this already, so apologies if im bombarding you or if you’ve already done this! i’ll tag @justoceanmyth, @ambivalentmarvel, @seek--rest, and @shifuaang :)