#but you know i am an outlier. generally speaking i think there are many reasons why people today dont have friends

[stinkrascal]

there was that time a few weeks ago where everyone on my dashboard was reblogging posts that were like “maybe you’d have some friends if you weren’t so fucking mean. the reason you don’t have any friends is because you’re just an asshole” and like yea to an extent i believe that is something that can happen but i think it’s really reductionist to claim that’s the only reason people don’t have friends in the year 2022 two years after a global pandemic forced millions of people inside lest they risk the safety of their health is because theyre mean, and this isnt even taking into consideration that disabled/chronically ill people who are homebound existed before covid did. the internet has made theoretically connecting with others and with communities a lot easier but with that its also killed our offline communities, nobody just goes outside and talks to their neighbors anymore, i mean i sure as hell dont, do any of you? most people in america live paycheck to paycheck, so they cant afford to go out to places where theyd meet new people and even if they could, most of them are working so many hours that they dont have the energy to go somewhere after work, and that limits their viable pool of friendships to their coworkers, who are stuck in the same position as they are. im not saying that post is wrong or even indicative of anything more important than, like, what op was feeling at the time that they wrote it, im just saying in a broader sense theres more to why our generation of people is as lonely as it is, so it just kinda annoys me to see the idea reinforced that it is your fault alone if you are friendless whenever there are so many systemic things working against your pursuit to have and maintain quality friendships. what i am trying to say is that capitalism ruins everything

[copperbadge]

Oh god I got a discussion of therapy all over that poor person’s post about ADHD.....did not mean to spill quite that many personal beans but I queued it when I was tired and it posted before I noticed it was inappropriate. 

I wanted to reply to the comments individually but I felt like I’d be disjointed about it and maybe some people don’t want their comment on one post blasted to 30K people on another post, so in a general sense... 

I know there are different modalities to therapy -- I have no idea what mine were but I doubt it matters since it was twenty-five years ago and I was a child. Part of the problem is that the modalities which are clear-cut in theory seem unhelpfully loose in practice. I’ll look through a directory of therapists and a half-dozen will give different modalities from each other but talk about the same handful of therapeutic techniques, or address the same family of issues, or both. And most of the modalities both in the clinical and practical sense seem extremely unpleasant, so that is perhaps a Me Problem. 

I end up asking myself, “What’s my goal in doing this?” and I picture myself sitting down with a therapist who asks what I’m looking to address, because that would help narrow down my options. But I never have a good answer. So I think, “That seems like an hour a week that could be spent doing something less expensive” and close out of the search window. Then a few weeks later I think “Well, that might be useful, I’ll look around” and the cycle starts again. 

There are so many good uses for therapy, but a lot of what people say they use therapy for, I've done on my own for years, or am working on now and don’t feel like I need help. I don’t really have any problems identifying therapists who aren’t going to work for me for one reason or another, but it’s an issue if I can only tell a therapist what I don’t want to do. Saying “I’m not interested in doing roleplays” is fine as boundary-setting but if I can’t say “Because I want to accomplish this different thing” then all I’m doing is insulting someone’s profession, really. 

So what’s left? Just the vague sense that other people I like and admire find it useful, and my experiences were very much outlier, so maybe I should try it again. But if I can’t identify why I should try it again, and if I’m going to be aggressively combative about it (which...I don’t want to be but I do know me) then all I’m really doing is paying someone to be insulted by me for an hour, and I can do that to people who deserve it more, for free, on the internet. 

niennanir

The thing with therapy, speaking as someone who was a counselor for a period of years, is that it is a tool that supposes a baseline function. Going to Therapy when you have ADHD is very similar to being handed a hammer and told to use it when you have no arms.  

I did want to respond to this comment specifically because a) that’s very validating and b) it means that if I do want to continue looking I guess a good place to start would be asking my meds psych, because he at least deals with adults with ADHD on the reg and can be like “Well, first we gotta get you some robot arms.” 

I just like the idea of having robot arms, really. The hammer’s a bonus! 

...my meds psych is a very nice man but he’s also super earnest and will probably not understand why I find the robot arms thing so funny. 

[buckybarnesss]

As a Teen Wolf Scholar, can you provide context as to why that Tyler Posey "bizarre and twisted" quote keeps getting pulled out almost a decade later as a reason to hate on him? Was it the first time someone involved with the show didn't continue to string along the Sterek fandom about it one day becoming canon? Did people take it very personally that he said we were watching the show for the wrong reasons? Or did people actually misinterpret it as him commenting on the idea of the relationship being twisted and not on the weird fact that the Sterek online fandom was overwhelmingly more vocal and visible than the general Teen Wolf fandom?

Every time I go back and watch that youtube interview, I can't read it as anything other than a slightly dumb but valid commentary on the fandom phenomenon but that's never the context people seem to refer back to it with.

so i've been sitting on this ask for a while and as with many things with teen wolf it's complicated and i'm probably way more diplomatic about it than others in fandom.

i just discovered there is a fanlore page about this called poseygate.

i don't particularly like to rehash this kind of fandom history. i am a firm believer in the fourth wall and that there should be boundaries between creator and fandom. teen wolf was popular around the time that began to erode due to the rise of social media.

it can be fun when an actor or creator engages their fandom and supports someone's ship but not every actor is misha collins. he is an outlier and even he fucks up.

dylan o'brien and hoechlin have always been rather diplomatic and positive in their responses to sterek as far as i know. hoechlin in particular adores stiles, derek's relationship with him and continues to radiate heart eyes when speaking about dylan.

i bear no ill will towards posey and i think he has a very complicated relationship with not just fandom but the show itself but i am not here to armchair psychoanalyze a person i've never met.

i can understand posey feeling a particular kind of way of being the lead on a show where fandom constantly pushes you out in favor of two white men they wanna see fuck. i can understand him being kind of weirded out by the age gap too. i am perfectly fine if people don't like sterek because of it but i don't like when people project that on others.

we have to remember dylan and hoechlin are his friends. they are real people with their own lives so it has to be weird as fuck to be constantly asked about the shipping of their characters.

that said was it a nice or respectful thing to say? no it wasn't. did he ever really apologize for it? also no. was it taken personally by people in fandom? yes. how could it not be? it's a thoughtlessly hurtful thing to say over something as inconsequential as shipping.

sterek once it became popular and dominated fandom received it's fair share of hate and derision. fandom is not known for it's chill, you know. people have said some really nasty things about posey and scott over the years.

the antis like to use it as a gotcha though to sterek shippers which is dumb. tyler posey finding sterek weird doesn't stop me from shipping it. like i don't care. it's nice when we do get validation and engagement from an actor or whatever but it's not needed.

besides in relation to teen wolf i'm way more interested in taking teen wolf creator, executive producer and man who doesn't know how time works jeff davis to task along side mtv for their queerbaiting and racism.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[autismvampyre]

ok so audhd rant/asking for advice

we had a psychologicist come to the class to explain autism and adhd today. the reason why is bc i have faced a lot of discrimination, ableism and bullying from my peers bc of my disorders. my teachers felt we should all learn what the words mean and why they should never be used as insults, and how that can affect someone, which is a nice sentiment.

the person they picked was recommended by my mother, which should've been my first warning sign, bc try as she might my mother does not understand the autistic community. she trusts the professionals which is good bc im not a doctor and they're qualified, i get it; but also i dont fucking trust professionals to understand me because not once did my doctors help me understand when i was diagnosed. i asked to meet her before she came to the school, but my mom insisted she was great so i held back and tried to be hopeful, because even if a lot of my experience with professionals has been negative doesn't mean they're all bad and ignorant

anyways, she was exactly like every other psychologist ever and explained everything in the most basic way ive even seen. she literally sounded like the people who explained my diagnoses to me when i got them at age 11 and those mf's were literally useless. it took me years to actually understand what my disorder meant and i only figured it out by talking to other people with autism and adhd instead of reading shit by professionals and autism moms. the way we are portrayed by psychiatrists is not my experience at all and they often use outdated language and speak in very broad terms and don't bring up any of the things that i find important. i know not everyone with adhd and autism is the same but i genuinely cannot relate to the way they talk about us at all. like, this psychiatrist didn't even mention executive dysfunction and kept talking about how it "isn't an excuse" and fucking everyone agreed.

i feel like almost an anti-vaxxer, claiming i know better than doctors, so i genuinely do try to understand and accept doctors but i just cant fucking stand it. am i wrong for thinking she's wrong? like she has a degree, but she also doesn't seem to understand me and idk if im just a weird outlier even in my neurodivergence or if im right and she doesn't truly understand. like im not a doctor, im just a person who has these disorders but i genuinely feel misrepresented and like all these explanations are for other people to understand that they have to put up with me. i feel infantilised and really fucking bummed. like, i knew she wasn't gonna be perfect bc she isn't actually in the community but the level of generalization and misinformation was so disappointing

i feel fucking crazy. cause who am i to disagree with her when she's the professional, yk?? im no one. they won't listen to me. my classmates can't empathize with me like they do each other, and so many of them think they get it bc they're white teenage boys with adhd that are low support(and im happy for them that they feel good about it!! genuinely! and not saying they aren't valid, but in my experience many of them tend to unknowingly invalidate other people with the disorder who are different than them/have higher support needs) and can't seem to understand that other people have different experiences and struggles with the same disorder. i also live in a very conservative city, and even if the school is more liberal, we are still very high in MUF(the moderate party's youth) and you can tell because everyone i know is either apolitical or conservative, except me and the three leftists. it's a hostile environment, and i feel like im rambling but whatever. i needed to get it off my chest

[lericekrispie]

Hello Hi, today I'm going to sell to you plus size Peter Sqloint

I've always drawn and envisioned Peter Sqloint as plus sized. For some reason, that's just how he appeared in my head. If you want to see how exactly how I envision him you can check out my art, OR, I have the fun little body visualizer I can show you.

I have the measurements in for 5' 4", 200 lbs, and quite a bit (10hr) of exercise, because you know they do be walking around a bunch.

This looks average! This looks like an average person you could just go out and see, and that's how I've been drawing him! And Peter's entire bit is being average or slightly below.

But I ran the BMI for this (BMI is a scam but people know the metric so I did it anyways), and this is OBESE? This looks like a normal person to me, and I know for a fact that you can be healthy, working a 9-5 service job on your feet all day sweating and breaking your back getting 15,000 steps a day and still look like this. I know because I work in the food industry (in the US) and a lot of my co-workers have bodies that are very similar to this, at least in weight.

Yet I find it hard to find media with people who look like this.

As a curvy man/woman myself, more than 200lbs, it's hard for me to find cute clothes that fit me. I'm so self conscious of my breathing, I've always been self conscious of my jawline, my arms, my thighs. It took me a long time to become happy with my body, but I think with the boom of body positivity on social media and the appreciation of bigger bodies and my own mental work, I was able to overcome my insecurities and see myself for the bad bitch I am.

Yet there is a lot of work to be done as a community.

I especially think that right now is the right time to be talking about these things, and to bring it to light, because there are so many more people who are speaking out about things, and so many more people who actually care.

Before we continue, I would like to say that in case you were worried, this is not a dig at JRWI, this is just social commentary. I would like to point out that my experience with this community has been leaps and bounds ahead of any other community I have ever been apart of, with body diversity, poc characters (at least headcannons ._.), and appreciating beautiful non-white standards. (like the headcannon Jay hooked nose) (I'm going to throw my hat in the ring and say that anime fandoms and fandoms that have 'twinkification problems' have this weak spot, please don't take this personally)

Plus size Peter Sqloint is important to me because I feel media, especially media that is ran off of fanart, prefer white beauty standards, even if it is sub-conscious. It's getting better, and there are great artists who are poc and body positive and amazing, but they don't always get the same attention as others. It's important for people to see themselves, especially if their body is A NORMAL AND AVERAGE SIZE! THAT BODY TYPE IS NORMAL! YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO FIND THAT! And not finding it sometimes feels like your the outlier, that you are unattractive, you are the weirdo.

And it fits so well with his story. with Peter growing comfortable in his skin, from being average to extraordinary, but it was in him all along, and he doesn't have to drastically change (like loose weight) for him to realize that.

Also I would like to point out how important it is for media to show big people getting loved!!!! For being considered attractive! How powerful it would be for someone like Rumi, the literal embodiment of perfection, tall, sleek, elegant, what the general beauty world would consider to be a drop dead gorgeous runway model, to fall head over heels for someone like Peter! Because big people are gorgeous, big people are attractive, big people are lovable! And especially a queer story as well?! Where they are not just both 'skinny twinks'? (nothing wrong with that, but there are more relationships than just that). I think that is a powerful under-the-surface story that Apotheosis could tell about Peter Sqloint, and they wouldn't even have to retcon anything except canonize Peter's weight. You can't tell me that the story couldn't be read that way, with this context! This is my sell to you, my sell for you to start seeing Peter Sqloint as a plus sized man, and see his story how I've seen his story.

TLDR: Peter Sqloint is a plus sized man because he is gorgeous and beautiful and it fits amazingly with his story and he deserves it :)

[funkymbtifiction]

Hello!! I wanted to ask about Fe 'fake' masking vs Fi tolerance.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but because Fe concerns itself with group values and following social norms (especially when higher in the stack), they are less inclined to see themselves as fake or might not care if they are being 'fake', as long as they are acting appropriately. If a Fe dom/aux disagrees with something, are they likely to try and frame it in a way to get the whole group on their side? Fe might not even know what they believe, but I've heard mixed things regarding that.

Fi might tolerate something they disagree with, but if the user is agreeable, they may stay silent or find a polite way to express their opinion (or alternatively have less of a problem being honest and forthright with how they are feeling). I've read that many Fi users loathe being disingenuous about their opinion, but that those with a 9 or 6 type are less likely to give a hoot. I know that not everyone is a hive-mind, of course, but I'm trying to look for telltale signs.

Is there anything you recommend I look for (or any prominent misinformation to be aware of) regarding this?

Thanks!

Fe generally knows what it thinks and is aware of how that goes with or differs from the popular consensus; their thinking is based in terms of total impact (how does this affect others?). Being fake is seen as politeness a lot of the time -- it's like in Emma, where she talks at length to Harriet about how much she dislikes Mrs. Elton for being insufferable and a know-it-all, but recognizes due to her social position in the neighborhood, if she doesn't invite Mrs. Elton to tea, "everyone will know how much I dislike her." Emma as an EFJ knows how others think and perceive actions taken by her -- and so she puts aside her own feelings to avoid making a declarative statement that would reflect badly on both of them. This is typical of EFJ. My feelings matter less than how acting on them makes a declaration to others of what I think or feel. Thus, if Emma chose to snub Mrs. Elton, she would do it on purpose, fully aware of broadcasting her displeasure or dislike FOR Mrs. Elton.

In terms of disagreement -- that differs. An EFJ may keep silent out of awareness that their opinion might be disruptive and make things unpleasant for others involved; or an EFJ may come out strongly, because they feel like they should act on behalf of others and "speak for them without a voice." But yes, there is a strong desire in EFJs to get everyone on board with their views and shape their thinking; they assume that if everyone is thinking the same direction, things will run more pleasantly and smoothly for everyone involved (including them). So they will be persuasive on the things they feel passionately about, in order to bring everyone to "the same page" (in their mind, it's how we create unity and get things done for the better). (In a bad EFJ, of course, it's how they control the environment, and they may recruit others to their side, or apply pressure to the outliers to change their thinking and conform to what is "appropriate" -- everyone agrees with this except you, what's wrong with you?).

A Fi is more likely to think "well, they have their reasons," and refuse to associate any more with that person or talk to them about it. They think less about their impact on everyone involved, and more about their own reaction to what is happening. They may be considerate and not want to make waves or things unpleasant for others, but it's less out of an instinctive awareness of what would make THEM feel uneasy or unsettled, and more from ME-based thinking (this is what upsets ME, so I want to avoid doing that to others; if I had that other point of view, and someone said THIS to ME, it would make me feel uncomfortable... so I won't say it, to keep the peace between us). Fi can keep quiet if it wants to, but it's a "me" choice (I don't want to cause trouble, make them mad, etc). Fi can also be militant in saying what they think, regardless of whom it might offend -- it just depends on the user, but it's not "I am speaking for those without a voice" (Fe) it's "I don't like this, and here's why!"

In the case of Mrs. Elton... if Emma were a Fi type and decided to "throw a party for her," it would come from a different place; it would reflect what others would think less, and be more about what *I* choose to do, which is aligning with what I prioritize in my life -- "I value my father and his reputation, so I won't snub Mrs. Elton, because it could hurt his standing." It's more specific, and less about what generally others might say; it's about ME and my relationship with MY father, and wanting my behavior to honor the person that matters the most to ME.

This can be very subtle at times, so if it's a real person, sometimes you may need to ask the reason for their decision and how they made it, as well as pay attention to the emphasis placed on why they made the choice they did. Whether it comes from "us," and "we" and "ours" and "what's best for everyone" or "me," and "mine," and "I."

As an example, the EFJs I know use extremely inclusive language as a way to establish closeness and support -- it's rarely "what are you going to do about this?" and more "what are we going to do about this?" "How are we going to manage this?" That's a clue that you and them are united in their mind, a process of "we" based thinking. It's us, not me. You don't find this in Fi users.

[box-dwelling]

So I rebloged this with stuff in the tags but there are people genuinely confused in the notes so I want to clear stuff up. First this is England not America. Second Tesco is large chain supermarket, they also do much smaller convenience store branches that tend to be located in town and city centres. It appears this is more I'm that vein. Third as someone else has said this is protestant not catholic, specifically Methodist. England's protestant churches basically all look like this, there are outliers of the more American variety but on the whole this is the vibe.

For context, there are a lot of abandoned protestant churches in England. And I'll do a read more to talk aboutbthe reasons I personally know for why this is

Church membership is down and as a result a lot of places are closing doors and merging congregations because these places cost a shit ton to run. My late mother was my churches treasurer and my dad is now their warden (basically he's legally responsible for the churches property and a lot of the day to day maintenance. It's a volunteer position and he doesn't actually own anything or put any money up it's just legally his responsibility) and as a result Ive learnt way more than I thought I should about church finaces and maintance. That being said this is all from my own experience, my mother was Methodist (though attended the same Anglican church as me and my dad), my father is Anglican, and may not speak to every church. I am also not a Christian and am pretty staunchly against the church as an institution. The Anglican church is basically just Catholic lite and had many of the same issues and also some different ones that are just as bad. This isn't a defense or a plea to save them. I just think it's interesting and explains why stuff like Tesco church exists.

So in the UK we have a thing called listed buildings. These are basically buildings of historic or cultural significance that are expected to be preserved. I'm giving a definition because I think a different term is used in other countries but if I am wrong I apologize. A good number of churches are listed as listed because they are old as shit and honestly the aesthetic goes hard. The issue is that a building being listed often means that certain repairs have to be done using materials that are either expensive or outdated or both. I know my church had a big issue around having to use lead to repair the roof which I remember my mother complaining was very expensive and also very prone to getting stolen because of how much it cost. As attendance declines so does the ability for the church to get the money to do these costly repairs and as a result sometimes it is just better to merge the congregation with another parish and sell the building to someone who can afford the upkeep.

Presently my dad's church doesn't seem to be at too great a risk of that because it is run by a bunch of "jesus is a socialist" types who are very active in the community and as a result make a ton of money by renting church property as venue space and also building an internet cafe that was purposely built to give local people, especially local unhoused people, access to the internet so they can get back on their feet because you need internet access to do shit like apply for government assisted accomadation or benefits in this country. I've yet to visit because I've only been back once since it opened and didn't have time but I've heard it does good cheap food and drink too. Genuinely that church is the only one I've ever interacted with that I actually can support and they have to circumvent a lot of the higher ups to do it. They also have a gay bible study, that was the first place I ever met a lesbian couple as a kid, and just in general I'm actually really proud of my dad for the work he does there.

But they are an outlier. My home town is littered with empty old churches that are occasionally rented out for events. The funniest of these was a rave. And fuck me if that must have been the experience of a life time. I can only imagine the trips some of those attendants must have had.

i feel like people need to know about the absolute decadence of that one weird tesco express in bournemouth

what the fuck is actually going on

[supertunanana]

I’ve debated writing this for a while, because who wants to read my inane thoughts on the matter? What are my opinions really worth in the grand scheme of things? I’m not so self important to think this will be of any value. But, I’m an extroverted thinker, so this might help my brain finally shut up, and that’s worth something to me. 

The hypocrisy surrounding Jikook. 

Are they a couple? Maybe. I legitimately don’t know. I don’t default into thinking they’re straight. I don’t default into thinking they’re gay. Every member is a blob, sexually, until they define themselves one way or another. Because honestly, I don’t care. That’s between them and their potential paramours. There’s nothing wrong with either option, heck there’s nothing wrong with both or none. Live a life, man... good luck! 

And I have no problems with shipping, to the extent it is done in a sane way and fans do not impose their ships onto the actual people. What I mean is, if you think Tae and JK look good together and you want to read stories or draw art of them as a couple and you want to explore their dynamic, you do you. However, it crosses a line when fans get mad when real people or real situations do not adhere to their fantasy. When they contradict footage and quotes and the feelings of those involved because it doesn’t fit into their little shipping box, that’s when it’s a problem. Be realistic. Have distinct lines between fantasy and reality, between what you might like and what is actually happening. 

It is this reason, that I think shipping generally innocuous and indicative of the shipper more than the celebrity, that I also don’t think the celebrities in question need to be defended against shipping. Because  if it is distinctly fantasy, then unless they express an opinion on the matter, most celebrities don’t really seem to know about it or care. It’s harmless. That defense, those hackles raised, again say more about the fans than the celebrities. When Xiao Zhan’s (XZ) fans got pissed off that some fanfic writer was portraying him as trans, XZ never weighed in on it. It wasn’t until those fans, in DEFENSE of their idol reported the writer and those of their ilk to the censors in China and got AO3 blocked on Chinese internet, that’s when XZ stepped in. And not to thank his fans for defending him, but to apologize to all the innocent Chinese fanfic writers who lost their work and their sanctuary because a handful of his fans had gotten the site banned. Again, the problem here was fans imposing their own beliefs on the celebrity, in this case thinking he would be upset by this and thus needed to be defended. They ended up causing more harm than good.

So the crux of this, what’s been kicking about in my brain, was the need for the fandom to “defend” JK from “shippers” the day after “hickey gate” and why these things only ever seem to focus on Jikook moments.

First off, “hickey gate” stemmed from footage that was a full, editorial choice to be shared on the part of Hybe and BTS. It was behind the scenes, closed set, pandemic lockdown footage edited together and released as official content, not some concert fancam or paparazzo on the street catching a private moment. They chose to leave in both Jimin and Jungkook on TWO occasions addressing the bruise/bite/hickey on JK’s neck, with the source being attributed to Jimin both times. Thus, people discussing this after the fact is a natural biproduct of it being shared. Is it even “shipping” when we are given the footage and the explanation? Is it not just a strange fact? This isn’t someone superimposing a fantasy onto them. This is the boys flat out saying Jimin bit JK and left a mark on his neck. I get debate over whether it was a bite or a hickey might lend itself more to “shipping”, with the latter being more shippy, but seriously, just looking at it would make anyone to question whether the BRUISE was more a hickey than a bite mark. What it says about the nature of their relationship is a whole other animal, but the fact is, it happened. And people are going to have THOUGHTS and FEELINGS about this. And that’s obviously something Hybe/BTS were ok with to share it in the first place (seriously, we would have never known, we DIDN’T even have a whiff of this until they put the whole thing on the DVD, so they were obviously OK with this leading to speculation, because how can a member saying they BIT another on the neck not?). All the content we are given of the boys snuggling, biting, ear sucking, tenderly addressing each other, etc.. is mostly a choice. And that choice will lead to questions and debates, and they’re obviously ok with it. It’s not wrong for people to be like, “huh” when they do questionable things and choose to give us said content about the questionable things. 

But, there always seems to be this backlash when it’s Jikook. We have to “defend” JK, a fully grown man, who brought up the bite himself on camera from people talking about the bite as he himself said it was given to him. No backlash to people saying Jimin claimed doing it to cover up JK’s secret girlfriend (uhhh, when homosexuality is a no-go in SK, that seems a weird choice, but sure, ok.... like just cut it from the footage and slap some make up on like they do during the concert, since none of us noticed it then, and move on if you want to cover it up). But that’s allowed supposition despite having NO EVIDENCE to support it. And what we are TOLD actually happened is not ok and “shipping”?!? 

Worse, when days later some innocuous “TAE AND JK WERE STANDING NEXT TO EACH OTHER OMG! THEY’RE IN LOVE” trends, where is the “save JK from shipping” rhetoric? That is CLEARLY shipping. I’m not saying Jikook shippers don’t do this, too, they do. And I laugh and shake my head at every little thing being dissected and offered as “proof”, but there always seems to be this backlash when it’s Jikook. ESPECIALLY when it’s undeniably... different. Neck biting. Ear sucking. “with JK at 4 a.m.” when they found out Dynamite got number one. Golden Closet Tokyo. These things are facts. Again, they’re... weird facts that do lead me to raise an eyebrow a lot, but they are facts and they were shared by the members as facts. I don’t think it’s necessarily shipping to think weird facts are weird and may lead to conclusions that don’t adhere to the THEY ARE ALL INHERENTLY STRAIGHT manifesto so many fans seem to have (and I think “straight until proven otherwise” is a shitty perspective anyone could have in any walk of life and again speaks to inherent or unconscious heteronormative perceptions in society - hurray -_-). 

But even the dumb shippy stuff that ALL other combos have, is always an ISSUE when done by Jikook. Their bond or interactions are downplayed by major accounts. They’re an outlier. Some shippers even try to make it out like they hate each other (whaaa? HOW?!?!).  Any odd interaction that really is just odd is deemed “shipping” and cast off into the no-no void, where it’s WRONG if you side-eye it. And I know WHY. I know it’s because they ARE different and they do do stuff people just don’t want to look too closely at because it makes them uncomfortable, so it’s easier to just deem it all “other” and “crazy supposition” and get rid of it. But it’s frustrating when it’s legit and it’s stuff they’re choosing to show and give us. It’s frustrating to be told you’re not allowed to go “huh, weird” because now you’re just a crazy shipper. 

And again, I’m NOT saying Jimin and JK are in a relationship, because again, IDK, but I’m also not saying they're NOT either. I’m going to keep side eyeing the fuck out of some of the stuff they do and just enjoy that they are 100% each other’s person in the interim. And if that makes me a crazy shipper, then I guess that’s what I am. 

[thetypedwriter]

All the Young Dudes Fanfiction Review

All the Young Dudes Fanfiction Review by MsKingBean89

So. 

This is a first. 

If you’ve been following this blog for some time, then you know I generally read young adult books and write far too lengthy reviews on them with the occasional outlier of adult fiction, mystery, sci-fi, etc. 

At any given time, I usually have both a physical book that I’ve bought from somewhere that I’m working on (right now it’s Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley) as well as a fanfiction that I reserve until before I go to bed (my treat for a day well lived). 

Fanfiction is something that I’ve mentioned copious amounts of times on this blog in varying degrees, but this is the first time I’ll be writing an actual review for one of them on this platform. 

The reason for this is myriad. 

One, this fanfiction called All the Young Dudes is a far-cry from your normal standardized fanfiction of 5-50,000 words-something I can easily consume in a few minutes to a few hours. 

Nope, this behemoth ends on a staggering 526,969 words and 188 chapters, not including bonus chapters and extra in-universe canonical content the author has also written and published. Roughly speaking, if this was actually published onto paper it would be well over 2,000 pages. 

2,000 pages. 

Yeah. And I enjoyed every single moment of it. 

Two, while I read a lot of fanfiction I generally don’t put any of it on this blog because while I’ve dedicated it to published novels, I also usually have very simple feelings about fanfiction. My thoughts run the gambit of: It was good, it was fluffy, it was a train-wreck, so on and so forth. 

Normally my reviews are so long and wordy because I have too many thoughts about the published books that I read and I need an outlet to let them loose. 

Whether because of its longevity or because of its content, All the Young Dudes is a story I find myself having a profusion of thoughts for. Hence, the birth of this review. 

If fanfiction isn’t your thing, feel free to skip this particular review of mine (although fanfiction is a gift to this world and you should really rethink your stance on it if you don’t like it, just saying). 

Third, All the Young Dudes is well written and rivals any actual published content. 

Fourth, because of how extensive this fanfiction is, it took me over a month to read it-time I generally would have been reading something else. Instead of leaving you all hanging for a few more weeks until I finish Firekeeper's Daughter (don’t hold your breath-the book is sort of a slog for me personally right now), I decided to just take the jump and write my first-ever typedwriter review for a fanfiction. 

Fanfiction has been a part of my life for the better part of almost two decades now. It was truly something I found by accident and in retrospect, it’s insane to me that it’s still something that brings me continuous joy and happiness. 

I discovered fanfiction when I was 11-years-old and deeply obsessed with the Harry Potter fandom. 

Now, as an overall disclaimer I completely disagree with J.K. Rowling’s stances of gender and biology and differ wholeheartedly with her views of trans and non-binary individuals. With that said, I still love Harry Potter as a story and while I no longer buy anything that profits J.K. Rowling directly, I still love the fandom and the people in it, including fanworks like All the Young Dudes. 

When I was 11, the seventh Harry Potter book had yet to come out and like many other people in this time period of agony while waiting for 2007 to roll around so that I could find out what happened, I discovered fanfiction as a way to fill in that ache I was so keenly feeling. 

I found myself suddenly immersed in this world of online fiction-both good and bad-but completely entrancing all the same. 

I never left. 

That is to say, I did eventually move onto other fandoms with their own fanfiction cultures, but Harry Potter was still my first in terms of fanfiction and introducing me to the concept as a whole. 

Specifically and maybe oddly, I never found myself curious for actual fanfiction about Harry or Hermione or Ron. In my mind, I already knew what had happened to them and reading about them in fanfiction was redundant. 

In addition, the first fanfiction I just happened to come across was a Lily/James marauder era fanfiction on mugglenet.com

This idea immediately intrigued me as fans as a whole knew next to nothing about the infamous Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs and while I knew everything I needed to about Harry Potter it was intoxicating to think that I could learn about a time before the series had existed and about characters who were important, but off screen. 

I was hooked and devoured as much as I could for most of middle school about the marauders and Lily and James’ romance in particular (I even wrote and published some of my own that will go unmentioned as they are truly really terrible). 

That being said, I haven’t read a Harry Potter fanfiction in years. I grew up and out of the fandom eventually thanks to Twilight and from there I’ve bounced from fandom to fandom as I’ve aged and consumed different things and fallen in love with different characters and different worlds. 

That isn’t to say I’ve forgotten though. 

I still remember my favorite marauder stories, my favorite Sirius Black/OFC (original female character), and my favorite baby Harry drabbles. They made such a huge impression on me and even though it’s been sixteen years, I still recall those stories with fond nostalgia and jubilation. 

Which is why it’s almost ironic that I would return to this particular time period of the marauders with All the Young Dudes. 

In a fashion that’s almost scarily full circle, I happened to be on Youtube one day and saw a recommendation video about this girl reviewing a fanfiction called All the Young Dudes. Now, youtube book reviews aren’t uncommon, but a thirty minute video for a fanfiction? Not your typical sighting. 

So out of pure curiosity, I searched All the Young Dudes fanfiction on Google and low and behold the overwhelming and top results were all for a marauder-era fanfiction by MsKingBean89. Piqued, I clicked on the link in ao3 and thought why not? 

While I’ve mainly been reading in other fandoms recently (BTS, some anime and manga, All for the Game) I had been in a little bit of a slump for finding a really good, really alluring story for some time and really didn’t think I had anything to lose by reading All the Young Dudes, especially as the more research I did, the more I found how popular it was-a plethora of videos on youtube, tiktok compilations, and dozens of fanart posts. 

Plus, it had been so long since I had read anything from my progenitor fandom and the thought of going back was strangely comforting.

Hence the journey of reading All the Young Dudes began and oh what a journey it was. 

Now, that this review is already five pages in, I should probably tell you what on earth All the Young Dudes is actually about. 

The whole story is a marauder-era fanfiction told from Remus Lupin’s POV from the summer of 1971 when Remus is 11-years-old to the summer of 1995 when he is 35-five-years-old. It is an in-depth portrayal of Remus’ time at Hogwarts from year one to year seven and then going all the way up to the start of the second wizarding world, ending around the time Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix begins. 

While already the scope makes this a massive undertaking, the author also includes all canonical content from the original series involving Remus, the Marauders, and the time period and incorporates it into her fanfiction-making it canon compliant from start to finish. 

While a very large portion of this story is not romantic, there is eventual WolfStar (Remus Lupin/Sirius Black) and if you have read the original Harry Potter series...well. You know things don't end up super dandy for these two characters in particular so you know how the story will end before it begins. 

This fanfiction left me speechless for so many reasons. 

The scope and length is frankly unbelievable. This fanfiction was published on March 2, 2017 and it was completed on November 12, 2018.

….how?

How did she manage that? I frankly have no idea, but I am in complete and utter awe at her ability to write content with such a magnitude and actually complete it. She gets an award just for that honestly. 

Not only that, but the fanfiction is actually superbly well-written. I won’t lie and say it’s the most poignant and beautiful piece of literature I’ve ever consumed, but it was consistent in its pacing, characterization, themes, motifs, and structure, which, for 2,000 pages, is an incredible achievement when you think about it. 

Speaking of characterization, everyone was So. Well. Done. 

Remus was such an interesting POV to read from and while he was compliant in every sense of the word-werewolf, prefect, bookish-MsKingBean89 added so much more to his character and fleshed him out so incredibly that it’s truly tragic that he’s not a real person. 

And to that extent, she does this with all of the characters. You see James’ optimism and leadership, Sirius’ arrogance and loyalty, Peter’s jealousy and chess skills. 

Every character was so well-rounded and real. She did an incredible job of taking the bits and pieces from the canon series and using that to build up her own flesh and blood people with motivations, likes, dislikes, dreams, and desires. 

That being said, she also had 2,000 pages to do it sooooooo it would be bad if the characters weren’t fleshed out by the end honestly. 

In addition, I really appreciated that she didn’t just focus on Remus, Sirius, James and Peter. Lily Evans played a critical role in Remus’ school life and after and so did the other Gryffindor girls like Marlene and Mary. 

Too often, the focus is on the boys and their close friendship and while that was a huge focus, we also get to see Remus develop friendships with the girls in his own right and other friends as well that were often OC’s of the author’s. 

Now. OC’s are generally something I dislike. I’m reading fanfiction to read about particular characters that I’ve sought after, not to read about some imaginary cast. However, just like any of the canon characters, all of the OC characters were well-developed and played crucial roles in Remus’ development-while either at Hogwarts or after-and I found myself not minding them in the least. In a few cases (Grant) I actually really loved them. 

The biggest draw for this fanfiction for me was Remus’ time at Hogwarts. It was so well-written and incredibly descriptive and I found myself thrust back into the world of magic so suddenly and seamlessly that it was like I never left. 

MsKingBean89 includes so many intricate details and builds up the world so beautifully that I’d recommend any Harry Potter fan to consume it, just to get some good Hogwarts material out of it. 

Another thing I greatly appreciate about this fanfiction was the slow burn. I’ve read slow burn before (All for the Game trilogy anybody?), but this truly took the cake. Sirius and Remus don’t properly get together until the end of year six going into year seven. That’s over 100 chapters in. 

100 chapters out of 188. 

Meaning that over half of this beast doesn’t have the main pairing even together. For some people, this could be a drawback. You might think to yourself: It takes how long for them to confess their feelings and stop being prats?

A very, very long time. 

However...it didn’t bug me. I like slow burn to begin with, but being along for the ride as Remus goes from being a child to an adolescent with unrequited feelings to being in a relationship with someone he loves is so rewarding and fulfilling that the 100 previous chapters are completely and utterly worth it. 

MsKingBean89 develops them so well and so carefully that the payoff is so sweet and satisfactory that it's enough to bring the tears right then and there. 

The last huge feat of this fanfiction for me was the author’s dedication to canon not just confined to Hogwarts and the Harry Potter books, but also to the time period. Either she lived through the 70’s and 80’s herself or she had done her due diligence when it comes to research because anything from London anti-gay laws to British slang was commonplace in her fic. 

I found it completely amazing how she was able to tie in real-time historical and cultural moments like famous singers and movies playing at the time alongside convoluted muggle politics warring with the wizarding ones. 

I was so blown away by the accuracy and genuine love behind this fic that it often brought me out of my own mind to simply ponder once again how much work this was and how well she was delivering it. 

Even unpleasant things, like homophobia and bigotry, are dealt with in a very carefully constructed way that is aligned with the time period in which the story takes place. 

Unfortunately, everything beautiful is not without flaws and All the Young Dudes is not the exception, although it’s flaws are nary compared to its achievements. 

The few complaints I have with this fic are honestly quite negligible. 

First, there are a few grammatical and punctuation errors. Very few, but I did notice some. 

Next, and again, this complaint is really just me whining, but...the end of the fic was really fucking sad. The end of this whole story took me so much time to complete simply because I didn’t want to read it. 

I know what happened during the first wizarding war and I also know what ended it (James and Lily Potter dying, Harry being shipped off to the Dursley’s, Sirius imprisoned for a murder he didn’t commit, Peter presumed dead) and in one fell swoop Remus lost everything and everyone he ever loved. 

After spending over 1,500 pages of Remus growing to love these people it is absolutely devastating and heart-breaking to see him lose it all. 

The last handful of chapters are just really, really sad and it makes me wonder why MsKingBean89 decided to write it in the first place. Frankly, I don't know why she didn't write about Remus’ time at Hogwarts and stop after graduation because we all know what happens after that and none of it is good. 

Looking back, I wish I could time travel and tell myself to stop at chapter 150. I truly didn’t need to read about the tragedies that happened after that and the hell that all of the characters go through. 

And while it does end on a….sort of kind of maybe positive (?) note with Sirius and Remus reuniting briefly once the events of Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban take place, it was really tainted and bittersweet for me knowing that in a year Sirius would die and Remus would marry his fucking cousin and have a child. 

Urgh. 

I just can’t. 

That being said, I understand it’s not the author’s fault and I’m not saying it is. She wrote a canon compliant fic to the end and it was my choice to continue reading. That being said, she said she ended it before the events of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix because Sirius and Remus are happy and back together and she didn’t want to write what was coming next if she continued. 

I truly, truly get that. 

But in the same vein, why even write the events of the first wizarding world to begin with then? I’m confused with that response as it doesn’t make much sense to me. I felt like ending it right then and there was not a happy ending. They’re together, yes, but at this point they are both shells of who they used to be. Both have severe trauma and PTSD and frankly I don’t even know if I agree with them being together just because they’ve put each other through so much. 

It’s just an interesting choice at the end of the day in terms of the author. 

Once again, however, I truly understand that she can do whatever she wants and that she doesn’t owe anyone anything, especially as she’s writing this for free and just because. So please keep in mind that although I’m complaining, I truly understand how fortunate we are to even have this fic in the first place. 

Okay. 

Secondly, my only other huge complaint is that MsKingBean89 made Remus gay. Not bi, not pan. Gay. 

You could argue that Remus just calls himself gay in the fanficiton as he didn’t know about other kinds of sexuality. You could argue that Remus’ sexuality changes and develops as he ages and experiences trials and tribulations. You could argue that it was a sign of times like so much else in this fic. 

I frankly just found it to be a frustrating choice as the fic is canon compliant and even though it ends before the events of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows we know that Remus eventually marries Tonks and has a baby son named Teddy Lupin. 

How does that make sense?

I tried very, very hard to come up with some sort of feasible explanation for how a gay man would have ended up with the love of his life’s female cousin and truly could not think of one that was not fucked up to some degree. 

Again. I know I’m being nit-picky, but it irked me that she made this choice regarding Remus’ sexuality and essentially ended her fic with Remus stuck in a corner regarding how the series actually ends. 

At the end of the day, all of the negatives are truly, truly not important. I’m just whinging to whine and to express my thoughts, but I do once again understand that MsKingBean89 isn’t profiting from this fic and that she can do what she wants as is her prerogative. 

I hope I was able to express that while I understand that, I can still be frustrated with some of the choices she made. 

To wrap this all up, All the Young Dudes is a masterpiece and is a must-read for anyone who loves Harry Potter, the Marauders, or Wolfstar. I was blown away by the sheer magnitude, the love and care she put into her craft, the slow and deliberate development of all the characters, the beautifully constructed love between Sirius and Remus, and the intricate world-both muggle and magic-that surrounded the story like a cocoon. 

I am so happy I found this fic and I truthfully am floundering at what to do with myself next. If you have any more current Marauder era fics that I’ve missed out in the past eleven years, please don’t hesitate to let me know. 

Recommendation: Go read All the Young Dudes. For weeks, you will cry, you will laugh, you will despair, and you will smile. This fanfiction will make you wish this was canon and in my mind, it now is. 

Score: 8/10

Links:

1. All the Young Dudes on ao3 

2. The Youtube Video about All the Young Dudes that made me aware of its existence 

[adventures-in-asexuality]

it’s been a shitshow of a year, really, both for everyone in general and for me; surviving it is easily enough to be proud of. there is one thing, though, that I didn’t really expect this year, and that I’m very proud of: how far I’ve managed to push my confidence.

I started a new role at work at the beginning of this year, and while I knew how the specific tasks would differ from my old role, I hadn’t realised quite how much it would affect how I interact with large chunks of my workplace. suddenly, my sphere of responsibility expanded to include other people’s work and support and wellbeing; not only do I have so many more meetings, but my role in many of them is larger; I have so many more emails and phone calls that I can no longer rely on carefully scripting every conversation, I’ve just got to react as best I can.

it took a lot of work and a lot of adjustment! but it has worked changes in my nonwork life, and vice versa, in a way that I didn’t expect, and that I’m delighted by.

for example, I started doing occasional tabletop games on voice chat this year, after avoiding that for years. It was terrifying, and I’m still not great at it, but it made me better at speaking up in meetings when I was now expected to do so, and speaking up in meetings more made me more practised at bringing up ideas in future games, and discussing those meant it was easier to bring up ideas in meetings... (and when I had to actually chair a meeting, all these skills grew exponentially!)

having to rely on instinctive affect to send emails and make phone calls was terrifying, again, because I know I sound weird; but I keep doing it and I keep doing it; and it’s easier to deal with important out-of-work stuff like emailing my letting agency or sorting out council tax or dealing with doctors. I practise giving off the impression that I’m a professional and you can trust me, even if I don’t sound neurotypical/straight/whatever - because a lot of my job is getting people to trust me, which makes it sound way sketchier than it is - and I end up automatically acting that way out of work.

I started playing ffxiv this summer, and ended up really submersing myself in it over a pretty awful autumn/early winter - and at first I was terrified to do group content because I would be bad and people would judge me! and I was even more terrified to ask friends for help because they’d know I was bad, and I care about their good opinion! but I kept at it and I kept at it and now I can usually laugh at myself if I’m messing up, and I have friends I really enjoy playing with - and all this practice acknowledging when I fucked up a mechanic or caused a wipe means that I’m better at acknowledging mistakes in both my work and nonwork lives without being so anxious about it that I can’t do anything to fix it. which of course then makes people react better, so that next time I will be even better placed to deal with a mistake, and when I do hit someone who is reacting badly for whatever reason, I am better able to weather it as an outlier rather than a reflection of my worth of a human being.

and, of course, all of this adds to my ability to hold conversations and be a decent friend. I won’t say I’m perfect. I will say I’m getting better.

this is long and rambling, but - it’s been a bad year globally, for most of my friends, for me, but I do think in this one respect I am significantly different from the Rowan of a year ago, and I’m proud of it.

I suspect I’ve linked this for past year-end posts, but it’s still apt: here’s the vibe for the new year.

[sakurasangcl]

Common micro aggressions i have faced as an autistic woman, or my autistic peers (like people i know irl) have faced.

(feel free to look at this post again to see if anything has been added. if you’re also autistic, feel free to lmk things to add!)

“You don't look autistic”

So what does autism "look" like? Can you describe it to me without sounding like a dick? The answer is no. There isn't a physical give of being autistic. While there are common and stereotypical traits such as rocking or flapping, not everyone with autism stims that way.

“You're too pretty to be autistic”

Read above. Once again, my appearance has nothing to do with this!

“But... you're a girl”

Once upon a time about 20 years ago, yes, autism was only diagnosed in males. Females are also autistic. Often times, it is significantly harder to diagnose. I believe it is similar with ADHD as well. May I kindly remind you of gender roles here? :)

“You can't be autistic, you show emotion and/or are empathetic”

While a lack of empathy is a common trait among autistic individuals, some of is are hyper empathetic, such as myself. There is also the issue where if something bad has happened, we just don't process the emotion until later. We can bottle it and save it for later, more so than some of our neurotypical peers. And then as for emotion, we may show it in different ways, but we definitely still feel them.

“Are you sure you're autistic?”

I was diagnosed by a psychiatrist and then later a specialist. So yes, I am sure. You are not my doctor, nor do you have any medical expertise. And likely, you hardly know the individual you say this to.

“Isn't autism only for kids?/ you'll grow out of it”

While autism is called autism spectrum disorder, it is impossible to cure (also no cure is wanted). Autism is the way your brain thinks, works, and is wired. You can't grow out of something like this. Its not like other disorders that can be cured or healed. The only way to cure it is to have a completely new brain. So I'll keep mine, thank you very much.

Autism is also considered a developmental disorder, as it can cause autistic people to learn things later, such as being potty trained or speaking. But again, it doesn't just "go away."

“Oh, so you must be super smart like a genius/have a special power or something you're super good at? You must be great at math!”

No. There is a huge myth that autistic people are geniuses like Einstein. Individuals like him (if he even was autistic) are outliers, not the norm. Not all of us are good at math. I'm fact, I seriously struggle at it. I have no "special power." I’m not sure where that comes from, except perhaps over-advocacy?

“Really? but you’re so normal!” or “wow, I never would have guessed!”

This just... really bothers me. the reason a good portion of autistics come off as “normal” is because we are masking ourselves daily to meet social expectations and behave “normally.” It is mentally and physically exhausting to hide ourselves. We are actively trying to hide who we are so we don’t stick out. I believe ABA therapy is meant to “help” us seem normal, and many autistics are against it. Regardless, “normal” is not something that exists. It is a social expectation created by neurotypicals (and generally white males). Being weird is okay. 

“Can’t you just... stop doing that?”

People will ask me to stop using stim toys, claiming them to be a distraction even if it is hidden on my lap and quiet. People rudely tell autistic people to stop flapping (a way we show excitement, btw) or to stop rocking. These are often compulsive behaviors that are hard to stop. We can learn to redirect it in a less distracting way because it makes you, the neurotypical, uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable for us to re-learn how to stim. Let us flap when we are discussing our favorite content, let us rock when we are anxious or super excited. We are not hurting you. 

and this is my least favorite. And yes, I have gotten this one more than once. 

“I’m sorry.” 

what. the. fuck. seriously. What the fuck? What are you sorry for? You aren’t sorry, you are expressing pity. It is incredibly demeaning and further serves to infantilize autistic people. I don’t want pity- I want acceptance and understanding. 

A really great thing to say instead when someone discloses that they’re autistic is “thank you for telling me.” 

And yes, this can and should be reblogged by neurotypicals and neurodiverse alike

[sgt-paul]

Paul McCartney Is Still Trying to Figure Out Love – The New York Times Magazine

By David Marchese, Nov. 29, 2020

Paul McCartney, like the rest of us, this year found himself with an unexpected amount of time stuck indoors. Unlike the rest of us — or most of us, anyway — he used that time to record a new album. The pandemic-induced circumstances of its creation may mark “McCartney III” as an outlier in the former Beatle’s catalog, but as its title suggests, it does have precedents: Like “McCartney” (1970) and “McCartney II” (1980), the album, out Dec. 18, was primarily recorded by McCartney alone, with him playing nearly all the instruments and handling all the production. “At no point,” McCartney said, “did I think: I’m making an album. I’d better be serious. This was more like: You’re locked down. You can do whatever the hell you want.” Which was a gas, as always. “What I’m amazed with,” McCartney explained, “is that I’m not fed up with music. Because, strictly speaking, I should have gotten bored years ago.”

It seems to me that working on music by yourself, as you did on the new album, might allow for some insights about what you do and how you do it. So are there aspects of “McCartney III” that represent creative growth to you? 

The idea of growing and adding more arrows to your bow is nice, but I’m not sure if I’m interested in it. The thing is, when I look back to “Yesterday,” which was written when I was 21 or something, there’s me talking like a 90-year-old: “Suddenly I’m not half the man I used to be.” Things like that and “Eleanor Rigby” have a kind of wisdom. You would naturally think, OK, as I get older I’m going to get deeper, but I’m not sure that’s true. I think it’s a fact of life that personalities don’t change much. Throughout your life, there you are.

Is there anything different about the nature of your musical gift today at 78 than in 1980 or 1970 or when you first started writing songs? 

It’s the story that you’re telling. That changes. When I first said to John, “I’ve written a few songs,” they were simple. My first song was called “I Lost My Little Girl” — four chords. Then we went into the next phase of songwriting, which was talking to our fans. Those were songs like “Thank You Girl,” “Love Me Do,” “Please Please Me.” Then came a rich vein as we got more mature, with things like “Let It Be,” “The Long and Winding Road.” But basically I think it’s all the same, and you get lucky sometimes. Like, “Let It Be” came from a dream where my mother had said that phrase. “Yesterday” came from a dream of a melody. I’m a great believer in dreams. I’m a great rememberer of dreams.

What’s the last interesting dream you had? 

Last night’s was pretty good.

What was it? 

It was of a sexual nature, so I’m not sure it’s good for the Kids section. Pretty cool, though. Very interesting, dreams of a sexual nature when you’re married. Because your married head is in the dream saying: “Don’t do this. Don’t go here.” And just to let you know, I didn’t. It was still a good dream.

You know, I was conscious of not mentioning the Beatles early in this interview, and you’ve already mentioned them a few times. So let me ask you: The band broke up 50 years ago. You were in it for roughly 10 years. When you’re not doing interviews or playing concerts, how central to your own story of your life are those 10 years from half a century ago? 

Very. It was a great group. That’s commonly acknowledged.

Generally speaking. 

[Laughs.] It’s like your high school memories — those are my Beatles memories. This is the danger: At a dinner party, I am liable to tell stories about my life, and people already know them. I can see everyone stifling a yawn. But the Beatles are inescapable. My daughter Mary will send me a photo or a text a few times a week: “There you were on an advert” or “I heard you on the radio.” The thing that amazes me now, because of my venerable age, is that I will be with, like, one of New York’s finest dermatologists, and he will be a rabid Beatles fan. All of that amazes me. We were trying to get known, we were trying to do good work and we did it. So to me, it’s all happy memories.

“McCartney III” will come out very close to the 40th anniversary of John Lennon’s death. Has your processing of what happened to him changed over the years? 

It’s difficult for me to think about. I rerun the scenario in my head. Very emotional. So much so that I can’t really think about it. It kind of implodes. What can you think about that besides anger, sorrow? Like any bereavement, the only way out is to remember how good it was with John. Because I can’t get over the senseless act. I can’t think about it. I’m sure it’s some form of denial. But denial is the only way that I can deal with it. Having said that, of course I do think about it, and it’s horrible. You do things to help yourself out of it. I did an interview with Sean, his son. That was nice — to talk about how cool John was and fill in little gaps in his knowledge. So it’s little things that I am able to do, but I know that none of them can get over the hill and make it OK. But you know, after he was killed, he was taken to Frank Campbell’s funeral parlor in New York. I’m often passing that. I never pass it without saying: “All right, John. Hi, John.”

And how about your perspective on the work you did together? Has that changed? 

I always thought it was good. I still think it’s good. Sometimes I had to reassure him that it was good. I remember one time he said to me: “What are they going to think of me when I’m dead? Am I going to be remembered?” I felt like the older brother, even though he was older than me. I said: “John, listen to me. You are going to be so remembered. You are so [expletive] great that there’s no way that this disappears.” I guess that was a moment of insecurity on his part. He straightened me up on other occasions. It was a great collaboration. I can’t think of any better collaboration, and there have been millions. I feel very lucky. We happened upon each other in Liverpool through a friend of mine, Ivan Vaughan. Ivan said, “I think you’d like this mate of mine.” Everyone’s lives have magic, but that guy putting me and John together and then George getting on a bus — an awful lot of coincidences had to happen to make the Beatles.

People always ask you about John. I’ve noticed they rarely ask about George, who of course also died relatively young. 

John is probably the one in the group you would remember, but the circumstances of his death were particularly harrowing. When you die horrifically, you’re remembered more. But I like your point, which is: What about George? I often think of George because he was my little buddy. I was thinking the other day of my hitchhiking bursts. This was before the Beatles. I suddenly was keen on hitchhiking, so I sold this idea to George and then John.

I know this memory. You and George hitchhiked to Paignton.

Yeah, Exeter and Paignton. We did that, and then I also hitchhiked with John. He and I got as far as Paris. What I was thinking about was — it’s interesting how I was the instigator. Neither of them came to me and said, “Should we go hitchhiking?” It was me, like, “I’ve got this great idea.”

Why is that interesting? 

My theory is that attitude followed us into our recording career. Everyone was hanging out in the sticks, and I used to ring them up and say, “Guys, it’s time for an album.” Then we’d all come in, and they’d all be grumbling. “He’s making us work.” We used to laugh about it. So the same way I instigated the hitchhiking holidays, I would put forward ideas like, “It’s time to make an album.” I don’t remember Ringo, George or John ever ringing me up and saying that.

How strange is it to share an idle recollection from your youth, as you just did with that hitchhiking story, and then have the person to whom you’re sharing it — in this case, me — know the memory? It seems as though it would be weird. 

It’s quite annoying, David. It’s like people at dinner yawning when I’m telling stories. This keeps happening to me.

I even know the details. You and George slept on the beach. 

That’s right.

Some Salvation Army girls kept you warm. 

Yes.

Then at some point you sat on a car battery and zapped your ass? 

That was George who did that! I have a very clear recollection. He showed me the scar. Let’s set the record straight: It was George’s ass, and it was a burn the exact shape of a zip from his jeans.

Do you remember the last thing George said to you? 

We said silly things. We were in New York before he went to Los Angeles to die, and they were silly but important to me. And, I think, important to him. We were sitting there, and I was holding his hand, and it occurred to me — I’ve never told this — I don’t want to hold George’s hand. You don’t hold your mate’s hands. I mean, we didn’t anyway. And I remember he was getting a bit annoyed at having to travel all the time — chasing a cure. He’d gone to Geneva to see what they could do. Then he came to a special clinic in New York to see what they could do. Then the thought was to go to L.A. and see what they could do. He was sort of getting a bit, “Can’t we just stay in one place?” And I said: “Yes, Speke Hall. Let’s go to Speke Hall.” That was one of the last things we said to each other, knowing that he would be the only person in the room who would know what Speke Hall was. You probably know what the hell it is.

Yep.

I can’t amaze you with anything! Anyway, the nice thing for me when I was holding George’s hands, he looked at me, and there was a smile.

How many good Beatles stories are there left to tell that haven’t been told? 

There are millions. Sometimes the reason is that they’re too private, and I don’t want to go gossiping. But the main stories do get told and told again.

Can you think of one now that you haven’t told before? 

Hmm. I will rake through the embers. Oh, I’ll tell you one! I thought of one this morning. It’s pretty good. I don’t think I’ve told it. You’re going to have to say in the article, “I forced this out of him,” because it’s a bit telling-out-of-school.

I am hereby twisting your arm. 

So when we did the album “Abbey Road,” the photographer was set up and taking the pictures that ended up as the album cover. Linda was also there taking incidental pictures. She has some that are of us — I think it was all four of us — sitting on the steps of Abbey Road studios, taking a break from the session, and I’m in quite earnest conversation with John. This morning I thought, I remember why. John’s accountants had rung my accountants and said: “Someone’s got to tell John he’s got to fill in his tax returns. He’s not doing it.” So I was trying to say to him, “Listen, man, you’ve got to do this.” I was trying to give him the sensible advice on not getting busted for not doing your taxes. That’s why I looked so earnest. I don’t think I’ve told that story before.

Tax filings — that’s some deep arcana. 

I have dredged the barrel.

I know that your goal with making music is to do something that pleases yourself. What’s most pleasing to you on the new album? 

I’m very happy with “Women and Wives.” I’ve been reading a book about Lead Belly. I was looking at his life and thinking about the blues scene of that day. I love that tone of voice and energy and style. So I was sitting at my piano, and I’m thinking about Huddie Ledbetter, and I started noodling around in the key of D minor, and this thing came to me. “Hear me women and wives” — in a vocal tone like what I imagine a blues singer might make. I was taking clues from Lead Belly, from the universe, from blues. And why I’m pleased with it is because the lyrics are pretty good advice. It’s advice I wouldn’t mind getting myself.

There’s a song on “McCartney III,” “Pretty Boys,” that is kind of unusual for you in how the music is sort of unassuming but the lyrics have an almost sinister edge. What inspired that one? 

I’ll tell you exactly. I’ve been photographed by many photographers through the years. And when you get down to London, doing sessions with people like David Bailey, they can get pretty energetic in the studio. It’s like “Blow-Up,” [the director Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film thriller about a fashion photographer, thought to be loosely based on David Bailey] you know? “Give it to me! [Expletive] the lens!” And it’s like: “What? No, I’m not going to.” But I understand why they’re doing that. They’re that kind of artist. So you allow it. Certain photographers — they tend to be very good photographers, by the way — can be totally out of line in the studio. So “Pretty Boys” is about male models. And going around New York or London, you see the lines of bicycles for hire. It struck me that they’re like models, there to be used. It’s most unfortunate.

“Lavatory Lil” is another song I was curious about. That’s quite a title. 

“Lavatory Lil” is a parody of someone I didn’t like. Someone I was working with who turned out to be a bit of a baddie. I thought things were great; it turned nasty. So I made up the character Lavatory Lil and remembered some of the things that had gone on and put them in the song. I don’t need to be more specific than that. I will never divulge who it was.

I have another bigger-picture question. In your experience, how is the love in a marriage different at different stages of your life and in different marriages?

I don’t think it’s different. It’s always a splendid puzzle. Even though I write love songs, I don’t think I know what’s going on. It would be great if it was smooth and wonderful all the time, but you get pockets of that, and sometimes it’s — you could be annoying. To Nancy I’m pretty complex, with everything I’ve been through.

In what ways? 

I’m some poor working-class kid from Liverpool. I’ve done music all my life. I’ve had huge success, and people often try to do what I want, so you get a false feeling of omnipotence. All that together makes a complex person. We’re all complex. Well, maybe I’m more complex than other people because of coming from poverty.

And how do you think about money these days? 

It has obviously changed. What has stayed the same is the central core. When I was in Liverpool as a kid, I used to listen to people’s conversations. I remember a couple of women going on about money: “Ah, me and my husband, we’re always arguing about money.” And I remember thinking very consciously, “OK, I’ll solve that; I will try to get money.” That set me off on the “Let’s not have too many problems with money” trail. What happened also was, not having much money, when anything came into the house, it was important. It was important when my weekly comic was delivered. Or my penpal — I had a penpal in Spain, Rodrigo — when his letter came through, that was a big event. When they had giveaways in comics with little trinkets, I kept them all. Some people would say that’s a hoarding instinct, but not having anything when I was a kid has stuck with me as far as money. You know, I’m kind of crazy. My wife is not. She knows you can get rid of things you don’t need.

You’re a hoarder? 

I’m a keeper. If I go somewhere and I get whatever I bought in a nice bag, I will want to keep the bag. My rationale is that I might want to put my sandwiches in it tomorrow. Whereas Nancy says, “We’ll get another bag.” In that way, my attitude toward money hasn’t changed that much. It’s the same instinct to preserve. One of the great things now about money is what you can do with it. Family and friends, if they have any medical problem, I can just say, “I’ll help.” The nicest thing about having money is you can help people with it.

Something that has been a constant for you musically is your ability to keep coming up with melodies. It’s there on the new album — the melodies all flow. Is your facility for writing a catchy melody ever an obstacle to getting the songs to be more than just catchy? Because a good tune by itself is not always enough to make a good song. “Bip Bop” would be an example of that. Do you know what I’m saying? 

No, I know. “Bip Bop” is not lyrically stunning. I was always embarrassed about that song. Literally, it goes, “Bip Bop / take your bottom dollar.” It’s inconsequential. But I mentioned that to a friend, a producer, a few years ago, and he said, “That’s my favorite song of yours.” So you don’t know what people like. It’s enough if I like it and enjoyed putting it on record and don’t particularly want to think of any more lyrics. I don’t want to sweat it. Sometimes maybe it would be better if I sweated it. Once or twice I tried to sweat it, and I hated it. It’s like, What are you doing this for?

Sixty-something years into writing songs, do you feel any closer to knowing where melodies come from? 

No. There is something with my ability to write music that I don’t think I’m necessarily responsible for. It just seems to come easier to me — touch wood — than it does to some people. That’s it. I’m a fortunate man.

[sardinesandhumbugs]

dude dude empty chairs at empty tables from les mis that line "oh my friends, my friends, forgive me that I live and you are gone" thats BADGER

A/N: asdlfjadslfjadsf your mind, nonny. This was meant to focus solely on Badger and his losing Rat Sr and Toad Sr, but then, naturally, this broadened out to Badger and grief in general.

For obvious reasons, trigger warnings for death.

(Also, yes, I am still working on these prompts, so if you are waiting on one, fear not! It will get written... just very, very slowly. @wolfiethewriter I snuck the hat story in!)

x

It had been a bitter winter that year. A selfish winter, taking so much and giving nothing in return.

And Badger is tired.

Toad Sr had been the first one to go – an impossibility to anyone who had known him, but, then again, life cared little for probabilities. It took the indomitable toad in a cascade of carriage wheels and snowblind storms and slick roads and Badger was left with nothing but a funeral to prepare alongside his mourning friend.

"It's how he would have wanted to go," Rat says in the twilight hours following the funeral.

(To many, Rat is now Rat Senior, but Badger finds the epitaph weighs heavily on his mind; it's a constant reminder that his friend (and he) are ever growing older while the generation below settle into the youthful energy that he and Rat had once enjoyed.)

"What?" Badger grumbles. "Dramatically?"

"No. Quickly." Rat sighs and readjusts the blankets around himself that are far too numerous for an armchair by the fireside, even in the bleak midwinter. "He would have hated to fade away slowly."

"One would think he'd much rather have not gone at all," Badger says.

"We must all go eventually, Badger."

"Maybe. But not any time soon. Not yet."

"We're not so young as we used to be."

"Neither are we so old as to welcome death as a familiar friend," Badger answers with rancour.

Rat gives a breathy half-laugh. "Even so, it seems like a long time since our first meeting. Do you remember it?"

"Like it was yesterday," Badger says, and he does not add that it is not long ago enough, not by half. Not by a long shot. "Toad invited us both for a meal at the Red Lion Inn. You looked like you thought I might eat you."

"Can you blame me? You were scowling at me something rotten." Rat chuckles sheepishly. "Truth be told, I'd never really met a badger before then – they always seemed to keep to themselves, and you're not the least intimidating of animals."

"I suppose we're not. We're not really Undergrounders or Wild Wooders, and we're certainly not Riverbankers." He hesitates. "We're just Badgers."

"Well, that never bothered Toad."

"No, it didn't."

A pause lingers between them, a silence for the animal who would have filled it within a heartbeat.

"Toad was the first animal I could honestly call a friend," Badger says eventually. The words sit heavily in his lungs, a truth he has been avoiding since the news came of Toad's demise. "A sorry state of affairs to reach at that age, but most other animals veered on the same opinion as you did," and he nods to Rat (not accusing nor bitter, only the lonely truth), "that we were a solitary type and best left to our own devices. And then he introduced you, his oldest and dearest friend, and I suppose some part of me felt..."

"Territorial?" Rat offers with a rueful smile.

"I suppose that is one word for it."

"And now look at us."

"How the tables have turned," Badger agrees.

Rat gives a breathy half-laugh. "We've had some times though. Do you recall the night Toad showed us the tunnels beneath the Hall?"

"I remember it, but I'm surprised you do. You were three sheets to the wind, and then some." His words are admonishing, but his tone is affectionately amused. "You and that blasted amphibian."

"If I recall correctly, you were singing as loudly as either of us."

"I wasn't the one who dove head-first over a wall in trying to catch his hat."

Rat snorts. "It was a low wall."

"Not low enough and there was a drop on the other side. I was prepared to climb over to fetch your hat back for you, but you just shouted–"

"'Grab my legs,'" Rat choruses with a chuckle.

"–and leapt head-and-arms over it without even checking to see if I was there, like it's an impromptu trust exercise."

"You did catch me though."

"A few drinks later and I might not have." Rat's humour is contagious though, and Badger finds himself smiling along at the chaotic memory. "I just turn to see a pair of legs rapidly sliding over the wall and all I can think is I'm not trained for this kind of thing."

"It was a good hat."

"It better have been one-of-a-kind for that stunt."

Rat gives a laugh that shakes at the edges and ends abruptly with a sharp, pained inhale. The smile returns quickly after, but it is watery and the carefree humour has faded.

(Badger makes no comment on the rattle in his friend's laughter, just as he has made no comment on the sudden breaths Rat takes between words, nor how the water rat has slipped quietly from captain to passenger aboard his own boat, relegating the rowing to the generation below.)

(Maybe, if he doesn't comment on it, it won't matter.)

(Maybe, if he doesn't comment on it, Death won't hear and will pass his remaining friend by.)

Rat's paw finds Badger's, and although his friend's has always been dwarfed by Badger's, it now feels frailer than before. The grip is tight though, and the fervour unnerves Badger.

"Don't retreat," Rat says. "When the time comes, don't hide back in your sett."

Badger cannot promise that. "When the time comes?" he echoes instead.

Rat smiles, but there is sadness in his eyes that tell he is not fooled by Badger's feigned ignorance. "First friends will always be special, but they're a beginning, not an end, Badge," and the smile does reach his eyes in that moment – at the nickname that had been so commonplace in their more youthful years. "And, whatever anyone else might think, you are not a solitary animal."

x

And then there is one.

Rat's passing had been as slow as Toad's had been quick, and that cruel winter had hemmed Badger and his fading friend and the barely-beyond adolescent Ratty in a house that stank of death.

(A blessing, said animals who didn't know better, that he eventually went; better for all that the suffering should finally end.)

And as he attends the second funeral in as many months, towering over the heads of the above-ground folk, he feels keenly the buffering that his riverbank-born friends had granted him. Animals who had once earnestly invited the trio for drinks now offer faltering commiserations with gazes that refuse to meet his, and there is more than the awkward shadow of grief that hound his conversations.

The Undergrounders see him as more Wild Wood than one of theirs (after all, his home is in the wood's depths; how much more Wild Wood could one get?) and the Wild Wooders regard him as one of the Undergrounders (they pay their respects, for his medical knowledge has helped more than one of their kind, but he is not one of theirs, he is of the earth) but it is the Riverbankers who break his heart the most. Their eyes flicker to the Wild Wooders, to the Undergrounders, and it is clear that he has been a visitor to their world; a tourist staying by the grace of his friendship, but that friendship is buried beneath the ground and he should follow suit.

He stays through the funeral, for respect to his late friends – and their offspring, who are too shattered to bear the brunt of well-meaning animals alone – and he stays civil, despite the keening anger that sits in his heart. Instead, he speaks in steady, unerring words of the Rat he had known, and he is too tired to correct the animals who mistake his dry eyes for detachment.

He is tired, and he is alone and his friends are gone.

So let the Badger who sung at Rat's wedding and danced at Toad's die alongside them, he decides. There is no room for that Badger anymore.

He packs up the part of him that begrudgingly endured society and the world lets him. Badgers had always haunted that sett; they are a somber, to-themselves kind of animal and the fact that the current badger had been an outlier is something comfortably and quickly forgotten.

x

Toad Jr and Ratty have yet to shed their childhood nicknames, but in time they will pick up the moniker mantels that their fathers have left in their wake – and Badger cannot watch it happen. There is already too much of their fathers in them – or perhaps not enough. In their sons are left uncanny valleys of the animals he had once known; ghosts that linger in rogue phrases and remnant gestures, echoes of a time that are forever lost to him.

And maybe there is too much of their fathers in him. For, in the wake of their fathers' passing, neither animal loiter on his doorstep for more than the acceptable allotted condolences, both given and received. There is no outreach of mutual mourning to tie them together; only the bitter memory of what has been lost to render each presence painful.

Barely beyond puphood, Badger finds himself thinking as Ratty (still Ratty, always Ratty. Rat was his father; Rat was his lifelong friend; Rat is gone) shakily takes the meal that Badger has brought. They both are grieving, but Ratty is young and hopeful and, even as the sickness had stolen more of his father away, he had never quite believed that it would do the unforgivable until it was too late.

But Badger has sat with his grief so long that it feels like well-worn slippers. Every time he had visited his friend's parlour for lunch, or by the fire with drinks, or smoked out on the jetty, his mind had whispered perhaps this will be the last time. So when he and Ratty share that meal and the conversation is a muted, disquieted thing, Badger accepts the truth that his grief has been promising.

Ratty is not Rat.

Rat is gone, and Badger remains.

When Badger leaves that once-cosy riverside abode, it is with the knowledge that he will not return to his late friend's home until its present owner comes to Badger's sett on his own terms. He will not darken Ratty's door with reminders of his grief until Ratty is ready.

(It doesn't occur to him that Ratty might be thinking the same thing; that he saw the flinch in Badger's stoic form as his turn of phrase cut too close to his father's, or the quickened breath as he for a moment – but, oh, what a cruel moment – mistook Ratty for Rat Senior.)

(It doesn't occur to him that Ratty might see his own absence to Badger's doorstep a similar kindness, or take Badger's retreat to his sett as confirmation.)

(And so the cycle continues.)

x

Badge becomes Badger becomes Mr Badger, and suddenly he is the old, intimidating animal that he had seen his grandfather and his father become. He is not quite Wild Wooder and not quite Undergrounder, and he had forgotten that in his time playing as a Riverbanker, but none have space for him now.

Rat is gone and a badger he doesn't recognise remains.

That is, until a lost mole and a water rat wander to his doorstep one cold autumn night.

There is so much of Rat in his son that, even now, the grief runs riot through Badger. Ratty is no longer the scruffy pup hanging on to his father's coattails, nor the gangly, grief-stricken adolescent shakily reheating a mourning meal, but an animal comfortably settling into adulthood.

There are differences, of course (there is a tension to Ratty that easy-going Rat had rarely possessed, and a sharpness to his words that betray a difficult time of it) but when he laughs, it is Rat's voice that Badger hears.

It is not the raucous fracas that Rat would employ (Toad Senior had laughed so loudly, so infectiously, that Rat had caught some of his careless volume) but there is enough of it. And so even when Ratty reintroduces himself as Rat, Badger can't help but stick by Ratty.

Still Ratty, always Ratty. Rat was his father; Rat was his lifelong friend. Rat is gone.

Rat is gone, but Ratty remains and he needs Badger's help.

There is enough of the Badger that once was that he rises to the occasion. He braces for that same uneasy grief he had met with in the aftermath of the funerals, but not for the almost-filial manner Ratty and Toad appeal to him with – nor for the fragment of something he hesitates to call paternal responding in kind.

It is different, but that's no bad thing.

For Ratty and Toad are not their fathers, but neither is Badger the Badger that once was.

He is different.

But maybe that's no bad thing.

[thequibblah]

⭐️ would love some commentary on that dancing scene (or really any commentary on the various parties thrown by the marauders) from the party happening next to the Potions Club party ⭐️

WELL WELL WELL

"This is...a lot of trouble to go to." "It's the Marauders. They love trouble."

i love writing party scenes (as i'm sure you all know lol) and one of the best/worst things w the marauders parties is striking a balance between their, uh, audacious plans, and what's realistically possible at hogwarts without getting caught. (aka literally why i made up the dodgy lodgings). i went back and forth so long on whether or not they could plausibly have managed that with slughorn's dinner next door, but then was like ah whatever the party has to happen for plot reasons so.... plot ex machina??

anyway, i love using parties to establish character — what a brilliant stage of teenage performance they provide. i love contrasting the hogwarts parties to, say, evan wronecki's — for instance, how lily and co. are more at ease in the former, as seventh years, with their classmates hosting, than they were at evan's nye bash

i also love that it gives me space to establish who is and isn't popular, so to speak, but also who acts or doesn't act the way we presume popular kids will act

doe, for instance, who is by all accounts a level-headed and non-wild person, has a more exciting time on net at marauders' parties than mary (drinking game, kissing remus), though she's not a big drinker and isn't really into parties. but she's comfortable in her own little social circle at a bigger event (like with michael at evan's) and so isn't bothered at all by the marauders' do, because...

She did, in fact, trust the Marauders. Her general belief in the inherent goodness of people notwithstanding, she didn't think they would do anything to harm their friends. Intentionally.

this bit always makes me laugh

as with many things, i feel very saddened that i didn't get to make more out of the fools' olympics (although one could argue that The Dance was a pro) — as in, i wish i'd been able to squeeze more of it into the story itself. i could probably come up with a list of tasks and who completed them LOL

WAIT OH MY GOD I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THIS it just might be my favourite part of this chapter

"How did you do that?" Gillian said, glancing between the other two girls. "Just — drink it without a second thought?" "Practice," said Mary. "Scottish — constitution," David said hoarsely. "I once drank some of Mrs. Skower's All-Purpose Magical Mass Remover," said Priya.

priya is all i aspire to be

can i say, too, it's hilarious to me how many people worried niamh would be a james love interest? i feel like you will not rest easy on that count until he and lily are together... but that is not where the danger lies babes

circling back to popularity/unpopularity, another fun outlier. gillian is first established, in 33, as someone with friends (we see her around sara and in the seventh-year ravenclaws' compartment) but she's not exactly at ease at the party either — recall how she hesitates when mary invites her. only later, in 38, do we realise that our opinion of her has been skewed by the narration (from doe, who naturally assumes any friendly, nice person must have a wealth of friends and be floating through life; and mary, who naturally assumes anyone she isn't bored by must have the social skills of a medieval noblewoman at court), and she's a bit of a pariah in her own house

david, on the other hand, is just flat-out not in his element. and not because of the drinking or the, er, general revelry (see: summer with mary!), even though he doesn't partake much in either. unlike doe, the company breaks rather than makes his enjoyment — he's acutely aware, the whole time, that his cooler, more liked brother is around:

"Not your scene?" "What gave it away?" said David drily. As one they looked at Chris...

...and mary has intuited as much too, even though she has a lot more in common, superficially speaking, with chris than david

so, i think while i was writing this chapter i made a post complaining about how, as much as i love juggling the constraints of historical fiction, i hate that music from the 70s limits me in terms of tracklists. i.e., when i say a certain record is playing i can't just hit shuffle and go somewhere entirely different to set the mood shortly thereafter

this problem was because i wanted, NAY, NEEDED, to have "martha my dear" playing in the aftermath of that mary and david interaction. of course, time passes in that section break, but since "come and get it," which they talk about it, is a sirius song (though it could be a mary song), and i feel too strongly about needle drops to let that conversation go without a soundtrack. germaine even correctly guesses the white album is on because of mary:

Apparently Mary got fonder of the White Album the drunker she was.

...and of course the song itself makes me squeal with how very mary it is — not that it is something she would listen to, necessarily, or identify with (it would hold up too close of a mirror, ha), but it sounds like it could've been written about her ("hold your head up, you silly girl/look what you've done/when you find yourself in the thick of it/help yourself to a bit of what is all around you," which really sums up the entirety of her portree holiday, lol)

BUT! if "martha my dear" is to play here, then i have some Serious Chronology Concerns. i knew germeline had to kiss and jily had to dance and ideally in that order. but what would those scenes be soundtracked by!!!! i was limited to side two of the white album!!!

so i did the healthy thing and panic-listened to the white album. "don't pass me by" was, right away, an easy lock for the dance, because it's danceable, but not in a way that would've scared lily off. lyrically, it feels GREAT for jily in this moment, on the cusp of lily's realisation ("waiting for your knock, dear [...] i don't hear it, does it mean you don't love me anymore?" vs OF COURSE "don't pass me by [...] 'cause you know darling, i love only you"). i feel about "don't pass me by" the same way as NYT critic nik cohn: it's "straight ahead and clumsy and greatly enjoyable, backed by a beautiful hurdy-gurdy organ," which, if that isn't everything i wanted to evoke with the dance itself!!!!!!

ok we'll circle back to this, but onward with the musical discussion

thus i had four songs to choose from, between "martha my dear" and "don't pass me by," for the germeline scene — "piggies," "blackbird," "i'm so tired," and "rocky raccoon." the latter is on my sirius playlist, so auto-no; "piggies" is, well, like that, so also a no. "blackbird" is a certified germaine classic that was written personally by paul mccartney for germaine, but it seemed too introspective for the moment. i don't think i'd ever listened to "i'm so tired" before this panicked searching, and honestly it must be some wild luck that it is. just SO RIGHT!!!! it's so lethargic and tortured and angsty and, well, a bit of a stoner song, so.... it's THERE

AND NOW for the dance! true story, i initially wanted jily to have a real conversation, after the party. i had the dance in there and then james would catch up with lily after to be like, "hey i was wrong actually, you should write to petunia." but then i realised i wanted james and sirius to have a conversation about the bike/money, and i wanted it to strike a different chord, tonally, than the jily conversation. then i realised it would be too much to have both and i'd need to condense that conversation into the dance. VERY nearly cut the dance in favour of the conversation but wow i am glad i didn't

The tinkling piano signalled the start of the next song; she extended a hand, very matter-of-factly, to James, "Come on, this is a good one."

not pictured: james having a fucking breakdown

obviously, i could have gone the route of a genuine dramatic dance, but as previously mentioned lily would have chickened out, and i wanted to have this be an experience she could look back on and pine about because of how fun it was and james totally doesn't like her back

Loath as she was to admit it, this most indelicate of waltzes suited the plodding chords of "Don't Pass Me By." And worst of all, once they had stopped stepping on each other's feet James started to sing, in the poorest possible Ringo imitation she had ever heard in her life.

by the way, attentive readers of blink three times will recall:

He finally starts to lead — thank goodness, because she’s not the one who was forced into formal dance lessons as a child...

so in 36, this is james being drunk, but it is also james being silly on purpose because not only is he JAMES and so he must take the mick, he also knows it will put lily at ease

okay, and this bit:

"Don't pass me by, don't make me cry, don't make me blue," they both shouted rather than sang, "'Cause you know darling—" Lily broke off, laughing, dimly aware that she had done so to avoid saying I love only you while staring right at him.

from the FIRST MOMENT i picked out "don't pass me by," i knew i knew I KNEW that lily would have thoughts about this line. at this point in the story if someone questioned her about it she would probably have a full-scale breakdown about her male friends vs her female friends ("but no... i suppose i wouldn't mind saying it to remus.... but that's different!" how is it different, lily? "it's different!")

anyway, the bottom line is she could NOT abide saying it. i enjoyed writing that because 1. same girl and 2. it felt like a nice bit of close foreshadowing for her realisation, which i knew was coming soon. so that's a really circular way of saying, i knew what it meant but ideally to readers it was just oh this will mean something far-off in the future!!! which is usually true for me but SURPRISE babey it was just two chapters away!!!

note btw that lily "falls for james"

Lily spun faster than she’d intended to. The room was a brief, kaleidoscope blur. Then there was James. “Jesus, Evans,” he said, steadying her as the next track began.

>:)

and after i thought tracklists would fuck me up, i turned them into my WEAPON!!

Huffing, she stepped out of his arms. (There were some songs you could sing along to with your mates, and “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?” was not one of them.)

(so, you know, keep in mind that for the rest of this conversation, paul is in the background howling "no one will be watching us/why don't we do it in the road?")

also:

"...I’m not drinking tonight, but I’d better get the royal treatment after we win on Saturday."

and then what happened <3

wait jesus oh my god i really went hard on this huh

She only saw its result: the easy grin had given way to an expression so serious it was almost sweet.

LILY??????

and hey, remember when:

...because in chapter 26:

Dex’s measured opinions about the wizarding world seemed more the result of upbringing and inexperience than ill will, but Lily had not expected a radical change of heart.

...but then in 36:

He was right, damn it. And a part of her had known all along, had sought him out expressly so that he would say the opposite thing to her. He’d gone and proven her wrong. She broke the staring match first [...] “What brought on the change of heart?” “It’s a long story, and I expect it’ll have an unsatisfying end if I told it to you.” Lily scoffed, but James had on that maddening grin that meant he would not budge. “Oh, all right.” Softer, she added, “Thank you.” He began to back away, towards the bar. “It’s give and take, Evans.”

in conclusion, i never forget, besties

[kuromichad]

different subject that’s heavy on my mind rn but since i’m already being harsh let’s get into it. i wish it wasn’t automatically presumed to be some kind of truscum attitude when someone tries to express that different parts of The Trans Community have like, different needs and different risk levels and different experiences and that we have the ability to talk over each other, harm each other, etc... like when i put it that way people generally are like ‘of course that’s true!’ but is it ever really understood in practice? a number of people (not a large enough number, but still) are able to loosely understand ‘you can be trans and transphobic’ when it’s applied to the matter of transmisogyny but when a trans person tries to express distrust of or frustration with afab nb people due to how common it is that that category of person will, despite being trans/nb, espouse bioessentialist, anti-medical-transition, radfem-adjacent if not outright cryptoterf rhetoric, suddenly ‘trans people can be transphobic’ gets applied to... the person with a complaint about transphobia. 

because he’s clearly an evil truscum man! regardless of if the person making the complaint is a trans man or trans woman, oops, lol. he’s a bad person who is attacking and invalidating and totally hatecriming the heckin’ valid, equally at-risk transgender identity of “an afab woman who isn’t a woman except when she pointedly categorizes themself as a woman because being afab makes them a woman who is ‘politically aligned’ with women but she’s not an icky unwoke cis woman because they don’t like being forced into womanhood although Really When You Think About It 🤔 all women are dysphoric because obviously the pathologized medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria in transgender people is something that equally applies to cis women just default existing under patriarchy 🤔, and no, equating these things totally does not imply anything reductive about or add a bizarre moral dimension to the idea of being transgender, whaaaaat, this woman who isn’t a woman doesn’t think there’s anything immoral or cowardly or misogynist or delusional about being transgender, they would never say that because THEY’RE transgender, except when she feels it’s important (constantly) to make clear that she’s Still A Woman Deep Down Inherently Despite Not Identifying As One, and none of this ever has any effect on how they treat the concept, socially and politically, of people who actually wholly identify with (and possibly medically transition to) a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth, be it ‘the opposite gender’ or abstaining from binary gender altogether or ‘politically aligning’ with the ‘opposite’ gender from their asab. never ever!”

and like maybe that sounds like a completely absurd and hateful strawman to you! but in that case you’re either like, lucky, or optimistic, or ignorant. i’m literally not looking at random nb people and declaring that in My Truscum Opinion they’re ‘really a woman’ just because they’re not medically transitioning or meeting some arbitrary standard of mine. i am looking at self-identified afab nb people, who most often use she/they because, y’know, words mean things, especially pronouns, so people who are willingly ‘aligned with womanhood’ typically intentionally use she/her (sorry that i guess that’s another truscum take now!!! that pronouns mean things!!! the bigender transmasc who deliberately uses exclusively he/him wants it to invoke a perception he’s comfortable with!), who actively say the things listed above (in a non-sarcastic manner). 

like, the line between a person who says “i don’t claim to really not be my asab because i know no one would ever perceive me as anything else” because theyve internalized a defeatist attitude due to societal transphobia, and a person who says that because they... genuinely believe it’s impossible/ridiculous/an imposition to truly be transgender (in the traditional trans sense, beyond a vague nb disidentification with gender) and are actively contributing to the former person’s self loathing... is hard to define from a distance! i think plenty of people who are, in a sense, ‘tentative’ or like ‘playing close to home’ so to speak in their identity are ‘genuinely trans’ (whatever that may mean) and just going through a process. they might arrive at a different identity or might just eventually stop saying/believing defeatist stuff, who knows. but there are enough people saying it for the latter reason, or at least not caring if they sound that way, that it’s like, dangerous. it is actively incredibly harmful to other trans people. and it’s fucking ridiculous that it’s so difficult to criticize because you’ll always get the defense of “umm but i’m literally trans” and/or “well i’m just talking about ME, this doesn’t apply to other trans people” when it’s an attitude that very clearly seeps into their politics and the way they discuss gender.

because it’s just incredibly common for afab nb people (most typically those that go by she/they! since i’m aware that uh, i am also afab nb, but we clearly are extremely different, so that’s the best categorization i’ve got) to discuss gender in moralized terms, with the excuse of patriarchy/misogyny existing, which of course adds another difficult dimension to trying to criticize this because it gets the response of “don’t act like misandry is real” (it’s not, but being a dick still is) and “boohoo, let women complain about their oppressors” (this goes beyond ‘complaining’). a deliberate revocation of empathy/sympathy/compassion from men and projection of inherently malicious/brutish/cruel intent onto men (not solely in the justified generalizations ‘men suck/are dangerous’, but in specific interactions too) underpin a whole fucking lot of popular posts/discussions online, whether they’re political or casual/social, and it absolutely influences how people conceptualize and feel about transness. 

because ‘maleness is evil’ is still shitty politics even when you’ve slightly reframed it from the terf ‘trans women are evil because they’re Really Men and can never escape being horrific soulless brutes just as women can never escape being fragile morally superior flowers’ to the tumblr shethey “trans women who are out to me/unclockable are tolerable i guess because they’re women and women are good; anyone i personally presume to be a cis man, though, is still automatically evil, and saying trans men are Just As Bad is progressive of me, and it’s totally unrelated and apolitical that i think we should expand the concept of afab lesbianism so broadly that you can now be basically indistinguishable from trans men on literally every single level except for a declaration of ‘but i would never claim to be a man because i’m secure in the Innate Womanhood of the body i was born into, even as i medically alter that body because it causes me great gendered discomfort.’ none of this at all indicates that i feel there’s an immense moral/political gap between being an afab nb lesbian vs a straight trans man! it says nothing at all about my concept of ‘maleness’ and there’s no way this rhetoric bleeds into my perception of trans women and no way loudly talking about all this could keep trans people around me self-loathing and closeted, because i’m Literally Trans and Not A Terf!”

again, if that sounds like a hateful strawman, sorry but it’s not. i guess i’m supposed to be like ‘all of the many people ive seen saying these shitty things is an evil outlier who Doesn’t Count, and it’s not fair to the broad identity of afab shethey to not believe that every person who doesn’t outright say terfy enough things is a perfectly earnest valid accepting trans person who’s beyond criticism’ but like. this cannot be about broad validation. this can’t be about discarding all the bad apples as not really part of the group. we can’t be walking on eggshells to coddle what are essentially, in the end, Cis Feelings, because in the best cases this kind of rhetoric comes from naive people who are early and uncertain in their gender journey or whatever and are in the process of unraveling internalized transphobia, and in the easily observable worst cases these people are very literally redefining shit so that ‘actually all afab women are trans, spiritually, all afabs have dysphoria, we are all Equally oppressed by Males uh i mean cis men <3’ because, let’s be honest, they know that the moment they call themselves trans they get to say whatever they want about gender no matter how harmful it is to the rest of us. and those ideas spread like wildfire through the afab shethey “woman that’s not a woman” community that frankly greatly outnumbers other types of trans people online, because many of those people just do not have the experiences that lead you to really understand this shit and have to push back against concepts of gender that actively harm you as a trans person.

like that’s all i want to be able to say, is Things Are Different For Different Groups. and a willful ignorance of these differences leads to bad rhetoric controlling the overall discourse which gets people hurt. and even when concepts arise from it that seem positive and helpful and inclusive, in practice or in origin those ideas can still be upholding shit that gets other people hurt. like, i don’t doubt that many people are very straightforwardly happy and comfortable with an identity like ‘afab nb lesbian on testosterone’ and it would be ridiculous and hypocritical for me, ‘afab nb who wants to pass as a guy so he can comfortably wear skirts again,’ to act like that’s something that can’t or shouldn’t exist. it’s not about the identity itself, it’s about the politics that are popular within its community, and how the use of identities as moral labels with like, fucking pokemon type interactions for oppression effectiveness which directly informs the moral correctness of your every opinion and your very existence, is a shitty practice that gets people hurt and leads us to revoke empathy from each other.

like. sorry this is all over the place and long and probably still sounds evil because i haven’t thought through and disclaimered every single statement. but i’m like exhausted from living with this self-conscious guilt that maybe i’ve turned into a horrible evil truscum misogynist etc etc due to feeling upset by this seemingly inescapable approach to gender in lgbt/online circles that like, actively harms me, because when i vent with my friends all the stuff i’ve tried to explain here gets condensed down to referencing ‘she/theys’ as a category and that feels mean and generalizing and i genuinely dislike generalizations but the dread i feel about that category gets proven right way too often. it’s just like. this is not truscum this is not misgendering this is not misogyny. this is not about me decreeing that all transmascs have to be manly enough or dysphoric enough and all nbs have to be neatly agender and androgynous or something, i’m especially not saying that nb gender isn’t real lmao or even that it’s automatically wrong to partially identify with your asab; this is not me saying you can only medically transition for specific traditional reasons or that you don’t get a say on anything if you aren’t medically transitioning for whatever reason, now or ever. i just. want to be allowed to be frank about how... when there’s different experiences in a community we should like. acknowledge those differences and be willing to say that sometimes people don’t know what they’re talking about or that what they’re saying is harmful. without the primary concern being whether people will feel invalidated by being told so. because these are like, real issues, that are more important than politely including everyone, because that method is just getting vulnerable people drowned out constantly.

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with MaybeAmanda

MaybeAmanda has been a longtime participant in X-files fandom. She has 29 stories at Gossamer, the earliest being archived there in 1998 and the latest in 2012. I've recced some of my favorites of her stories here before, including "Malus Genus" and "Snow in Alabama." Big thanks to MaybeAmanda for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

It does, in a way.  The feedback I get nowadays is either of the "I read this like 20 years ago and I just read it again" variety or the "I was too young back in the day but I have been watching the show in reruns/on XYZ streaming service/on the full-series of DVDs I got for $3 from the thrift store and I was THRILLED to discover fanfiction was being written even in the Dark Ages!" So it's a bit of a surprise, but it's a pleasant one. I answer every mail/comment because my mama raised me right!

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

It was great. It was fun. It was educational. It was a godsend. Even with the occasional bouts of back-stabbing and flame-throwing, it was mainly a welcoming, inclusive place to be. I made so many online friends who have turned into meat-friends (do they still call them that? Probably not).  During the first run of the show I had small children and we had relocated for my husband's job.  I had very little social life, but the fandom gave me a chance to meet and connect with people who liked what I liked. Then I discovered online fanfic, and it was even better!

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

ATXC I think.  A lot of email lists - 5 or 6 or 7 or so over the years. Gossamer, of course, Ephemeral when that came into being.  Haven discussion boards. My own websites.

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

More than anything?  I am a fangirl.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

I have always been partial to sci-fi and speculative fiction, but it rarely makes it to the screen - large or small - without being trite, clichéd, or just plain bad. It's easy to forget that The X-Files was groundbreaking - smart, scary, funny, insightful, intriguing, complex plots, on-going mythology. It looked great. It sounded great. David Duchovny was pleasant to look at, too, and damn! Gillian Anderson is/was one hell of an actress.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I found XF fanfic - somehow - probably by accident, or by way of a recommendation - and it blew my mind.  I had written fanfic (of a sort) with my friends in highschool, so I was familiar with the beast, but to find what amounted to excellent story after excellent story for free within (relatively) easy reach (because dial-up, right?) written by people who, for the most part, were thrilled you read their story and were happy to talk to you about it, about writing in general, about your shared obsession - that was amazing. As I am sitting here typing this I am feeling that thrill again - discovering Karen Rasch, Madeliene Partous, Paula Graves [Lilydale note: AKA Anne Haynes], Sheryl Martin and all the other early BNFs was, well, the only word is exciting. I felt like I was a member of a secret society and that I was sitting at the popular kids lunch table, all at once. (Don't forget, in the early days, shippers were considered delusional outliers - seriously!)

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

Good?   It's not as lively a place as it once was, but I haven't renounced my citizenship or anything. If I get a rec, I check it out. I know there are those who like to pretend they never had anything to do with the fandom, but why? I am still a proud XPhile.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

Angel (a teeny tiny bit) while XF was still running, but those fans were - I don't know the word.  Hardcore does not begin to do it justice. I wrote two short pieces at a friend's request then backed away slowly. Sherlock (a bit) - it is/was very LJ centred and that made it hard to find things. A lot of it moved to tumblr which made it harder, then to twitter, which - no.  I was involved in one of the less fashionable facets of the Sherlock fandom, so I was really a fringe-dweller there, too. It seemed clique-ier than XF, and they all seemed so young, and they all knew EVERYTHING about everything, and every damned thing was political, and, and, and... GET OFF MY LAWN!

But maybe I am remembering the XF fandom wrong. ;)

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

Like, all fiction? Mulder and Scully for sure. Arthur Dent. Sherlock Holmes in most of his incarnations. Spock. Winnie the Pooh. Why do I like them?  They speak to me, I guess.

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

I haven't watched an episode in probably two years (back when it was on regular tv).  Yeah, I think about them surprisingly often.  Story ideas, weirdly.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic?

I finished re-reading The Iolokus Series a couple of weeks back, so yes.  It's excellent comfort reading.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

Lots! But as far as authors go, I hate playing favourites. I will miss someone I shouldn't and feel like crap.  The Iolokus Series by MustangSally and Rivka T. is probably my all-time favourite fic because it's so very well-written, and so very fucked-up. Kipler's Strangers and the Strange Dead is also terrifically well-written and clever. For complex, interesting case files, you can’t beat syntax6 - pick any of them.

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Oh geez. Seriously? I wrote a lot of collaborations and I love them - and my co-authors - all!  Stuff I wrote on my own: Anniversary Waltz (first XF fic I wrote so it's sentimental.) Or Blue Patches. Or Epiphany. Or The Gifts of the Magi (On a Kaiser Roll). Or 221XF.  Gonna stop now.

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story?

Every time I thought I wouldn't, I did. I would never say never.

Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

Nothing finished ever went un-posted. All the unfinished stuff remains unfinished.

Do you still write fic now?

Haven't for a while, but it's not as if I have said "I SHALL NEVER WRITE FANFIC AGAIN!" I just have nothing in the works at this moment.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

With fic, it's usually from canon - some question unanswered, some road unexplored, some "what if?" that needs iffing.  With "original" fiction, damned if I know.  A snippet of overheard conversation, an interesting photo, something a random story generator spit out at me.  Sometimes things just click.

What's the story behind your pen name?

Okay so...many years ago I was on a (smallish) fic list with a friend.  There was a challenge posted - a bad fic challenge. We knew we could write some truly bad fic if we really tried.  One of the rules of the challenge was to post under an assumed name so no one would know who they were voting for. Well, my friend and I wrote something truly, painfully horrid and we were very proud of its ghastliness, so were brainstorming possible pseudonyms. She hated everything but had no real suggestions of her own.  I knew that she was a bit of a Trekkie (like me) and I said - What about Amanda Greyson and Joanna McCoy?  And she said  - What?? Huh?? Why?? And I said - Spock's mother and McCoy's daughter and she replied, "Maybe Amanda is Spock's mother but on Star Trek there is not a Joanna." By this point, I was SO DONE, and I became MaybeAmanda and she became NotJoanna. Really.

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

It took years for me to admit it, but yeah, they know.  They didn't entirely get it.  The reactions I most often got were:

"Ew! You write stuff without being forced?? Ew!!"

or:

"Is it smut? I bet it's just smut. You write smut, don't you? Pure filth, right? I can't believe you are wasting your time writing pornography! That's disgusting! You sicken me! Um, can I read some of it?"

And of course:

"If you are going to write anyway, why don't you get published and become fabulously wealthy?"

which is really two questions, neither of which is easily answerable.

Anyone who tracked my work down (because I told them I wrote, but not my pseudonym) usually said something like, "Hey! You're an okay/passable/decent writer! Why don't you get published and become fabulously wealthy?"

Yeah.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

Same old email (maybe_a@rocketmail_dot_com). Gossamer, my site, my LJ and probably some other places.  I can't lie - it's a bit scattered.

(Posted by Lilydale on August 4, 2020)