#emigre writes

[mrghostrat]

okay but why does Gardner Crowley/ Lions club Aziraphale work so well. I dread having to do the bunnings sausage sizzle things for the club and yet considering helping at this weekends one for "research" Because like the inherent love you feel for someone when its 40 degrees out and you've been in that humid garden section for an hour and they hand you a $2 ice cold soft drink??? Crowley "tempting" Aziraphale but its just him trying to get Aziraphale to put the onions on top of the snags again while like Gabriel or whatever has his back turned. Azirahale in the bunnings straw hat??? Crowley in it?? I am so sorry. Is this how you feel whenever someone suggests something like the writer/editor thing because I havent stopped thinking about this since I read the post and like while I never ever write it the brain worms are there lmao

REN, TOGAS, GET YOUR ASSES IN HERE FOR AUSSIE AU.......

[mariocki]

got my first job interview in like 10+ years tomorrow, frantically cramming and writing down questions to ask etc wish me luckkkkk

[calcedon79]

Last Line Challenge

Rules: In a new post, show your latest line (artwork or written) and tag as many people as there are words (or as many as you like!)

WHY? BOLI WHY?

@bolithesenate why today of all days? You caught me in the middle of a particularly explicit project. I've only just started digging in the smut vein of the mines and (as a beginner in this difficult art) I'm far from finished.

So I'd better put the following under a cut.

He vaguely heard Yan howling above him, felt his friend thrust deep inside him one last time and filling him. Unable to hold himself up for even a moment longer, his body gave way and he slumped down onto his stomach. Sy felt sleepy, sated and wonderful. As terrible as the day had started, it had ended perfectly.

[capseycartwright]

to be irish is to leave -

i know this, i’ve always known this. i was raised on stories of emigration and of new dreams: american, english, australian, dreams of a house of your own, cities bigger than anyone could imagine, a career you’d never get to have at home. the songs sung at the end of the night in cosy pubs were always lamenting - songs grieving those who left and never returned, songs that told stories of what it means to be irish: to leave, to build a new life elsewhere, and to still be irish at your very core. because we leave, we do, but we never shake off our irishness, finding community in corners of the world filled with other irish people, thousands of miles from home but finding solace amidst your loneliness with the neighbour who grew up ten miles down the road.

it’s no country for women - that’s what they used to say, why they left. it’s no country for young people, now. we say it, over and over - with your family, as they welcome you home for christmas. with your friends, over christmas pints, the conversation always turning to emigration - she’s left too, you know, to sydney, and there’s a gang of them in london, and he’s gone to canada. our hometown is quiet now, a generation emigrating all over again. they say that leaving is in our blood but it’s not there out of a joy travel and a desire to see the world - not just that, at least. no, no, leaving is in our blood because this country we love so deeply doesn’t love us back.

this country raised me - the green fields and rolling hills and waves crashing against the shore are all embedded deep in my DNA, the very core of who i am. this country raised me, it shaped me, it’s one of the biggest parts of who i am - irish, i say, when i’m asked when i’m from, even though i haven’t lived here since i was 22, even though i have built a life in another country and i don’t know if i see myself coming back. we all feel it - raised to so fiercely love a country that doesn’t love us back. “i’ll never afford a house here.” “i didn’t think i’d be living with my parents this close to 30.” “it costs too much to build a life here.” “if i want my dream job - i have to go.”

i have to go, i have to go, i have to go - i knew this from the moment i settled on a dream: a career i could never pursue in ireland the motivation behind the one way ticket i booked all those years ago. i love this country - we all do. i fought for the betterment of this country, i marched and i led campaigns and i voted over and over for a better future for the country i love so dearly: and still, i ended up standing in the airport, suitcases in hand, and i got on a plane and left. because to be irish is to leave - and so i left. i left, and built a life elsewhere, gave that love and passion to another place, and the ache for ireland lessens, day by day, but i still ache for home, ache to be able build a life in the land i love so much.

ireland will always welcome you home, is the thing - with wide open arms, and a bright smile. this year marked the seventh christmas i arrived home to a choir, to news cameras, to a rapturous reception of carols and clapping, strangers happy to see ireland’s children return home. ireland will always welcome us home - but she waves us off just as enthusiastically. january comes and the airport is full again - tearful goodbyes, suitcases of presents and all the home comforts you never learned to live without, and the plane always leaves: taking you back to the place you’ve built your new life, ireland in the rearview mirror.

you learn to live with the homesickness, rugby matches in irish bars and monthly drinks with familiar accents a salve for the part of your heart that will always ache for home: because to be irish is to leave, yes, but to be irish is to leave and to always long to come home to ireland’s shores. and to be irish is to know you might never come home at all.

[indignantlemur]

You’ve talked about visual art a bit, but I was wondering what other types of art/creation Andorians might be partial to (for example: writing, music, theatre, ecc.)

(For writing: I know there’s a big importance in fairytales so I was wondering if they leaned more towards short stories, rather than longer novels or poetry)

(You’re incredible and your writing is amazing btw!)

Hello! Thanks for the ask - this is a great question! (Also: aww, thank you! <3 )

Andorians are huge on music and theatre. The Andorian opera is renowned across the Federation (and beyond) for its technical excellence and emotive storytelling. All Andorians are born with perfect pitch, which gives Andorians a beautiful talent for music in all its forms. Their orchestras are slightly less well known than the operas, but no less talented - and often lauded for their technical excellence. Additionally, while Andorian vocal chords are very similar to Human vocal chords, they do have small structural differences which allow for a slightly broader range of sound on average than Humans generally can achieve. Humans can absolutely perform Andorian operas, but some pieces are extremely taxing and require exceptional range. Also, every single mistake, no matter how slight, will be as loud as a fog horn to every Andorian in the audience so... no pressure.

Theatre and opera developed hand-in-hand for Andorians as a natural development from story-telling during the worst parts of the year where it was too dangerous to venture outside for more than short durations and only if absolutely necessary. From these roots came a deep love of adapting historical and mythological events into dramatic scenes, though it admittedly took a bit longer for fictional stories to catch on as viable sources of inspiration.

(Andorian theatre kids go hard - bodily harm is frequent and expected. The band kids are weirdly militant and treat rehearsal like it's actually life or death, no matter what their instructors say. The choir kids are absolute prima donnas - but the problem is, they actually have the range and talent to back their attitudes up.)

In terms of writing, the long tradition of story-telling gives life to this as well. Andorians have long, spiralling epics that follow the lives of the heroes almost from birth until death, but they also have short stories in the form of folk tales and mythology.

As Andorians developed as a society, writing fiction really took off as a medium for self-expression and, in some cases, a means of offering scrutiny and criticism around a facet of their society. Andorian murder-mystery novels are well known for their twists and turns, often featuring no less than three or four sub-plots revolving around the central plot (at least one of which is a red herring), and they all have painfully, exactingly detailed descriptions of procedure and processing. Andorian romances are either tragic or absolutely filthy - or both. They're not quite as big on fantasy, for some reason. No one can quite get a satisfactory answer out of Andorian authors on that one. Their science fiction is actually pretty interesting, but it tends towards Orwellian themes, usually handling moral quandaries centering around private personhood in a world of ever-encroaching technology and surveillance.

As for poetry, Andorians do enjoy poetry and produce quite a lot of it, but the subject matter tends to be (a) vibrantly colourful and full of visual cues, (b) modern stories modelled on ancient sagas, or (c) enigmatic and heavily veiled in metaphors. The lattermost are considered the most personal, and generally the meaning is only known to the author and, if applicable, the intended recipient(s). Often times, these pieces are kept private even after the author's death, and only very rarely will examples of this kind of poetry make their way to the general public.

Thanks for the ask! I hope I answered everything!

[hauntingofhouses]

i love being southeast asian.

despite whatever unhappy history, despite the rise of ethnonationalism and racism in our countries; despite the fact that most of us remain in the global south under the invisible thumb of western empires and conglomerates, exploited by rich expats and beg-packers; despite the conservatism, the bigotry, the pain and prejudice and the corruption.

despite all that, i love where i am from. this is my home.

my hands tenderly trace the lines of our history and find within it a colourful collection of influences that continue to shape us until today:

the native malays, javanese, sundanese, minangkabau, bugis, visayan, tagalog, and other dominant peoples.

alongside indigenous tribes like the iban, kadazan, sama-bajau, temuan, penan, jakun, and hundreds upon hundreds more ethnic groups.

all of us holding onto our ancestors' mysticism and spirituality and animism, the watchful gaze of legacy fixed on us as we move through an ever-changing and modernising world (and what is modernity anyway? isn't civilisation overrated?).

and then the chinese peoples. the hainanese, hokkien and cantonese and more, many of whom came here due to trade in the pre-colonial era, but then most arrived as the imported labour for the colonial powers.

but this is their home too. we live here together, and through them we all celebrate lunar new year and the mid-autumn festival. all of us give red envelopes during our many festivals. we give oranges that symbolise prosperity and ring in the year of the rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat. we hold lion dance performances in our malls and marks. we eat and exchange mooncakes.

and then the indian peoples, though mostly tamil indians from south india, but also sikhs, malayalis, and punjabis, who arrived and assimilated and spread their culture and beliefs much earlier before the pre-colonial era, causing the indianisation of southeast asia. then more indian peoples came during the colonial era, again, as imported labour, working our fields or donning the uniform of our common oppressors, kept walled away from us despite how alike we look and sound.

because truly we do sound the same. sanskrit remains an abundant source for a large chunk of our languages. i hear the vedic mantras and can pick apart words that sound familiar. hinduism and buddhism still leaves its traces in our cultures even for those of us who've shifted to islam.

and yes, islam. we're not what the west thinks of when they talk about the muslim world, but southeast asia has some of the largest muslim populations in the world. because through trade, since the medieval times, islam came here and with it brought so many arabic influences that has come to shape our languages and customs, with plenty of our cultures having since been morphed around islamic beliefs and ideas. in malaysia and indonesia and brunei (and perhaps even certain parts of the philippines) you'll find a mosque or a prayer room everywhere you go. and every ramadan millions of us fast, every eid all of us dress up and visit each other's houses for feasts and festivities.

then of course came european colonisation at the hands of the portugese, dutch, british (in malaysia and indonesia's case we got all three), spanish, and french their reigns lasting over 400 years. and from them we came european culture and more new languages, english quickly becoming a second language (or even a first language) for so many of us, missionaries building churches and spreading the word of jesus christ as the son of god; with their fair features they draw a line between us and them, between the civilised and the barbarians, between the light-haired light-eyed and the unruly dark-haired dark-eyed.

and then comes world war 2 and the japanese invasion, and for most it was so brutal and violent, and for the rest it was miserable, with famine and inflation but we were forced to sing songs in japanese anyway, to watch their planes fly in the sky towards their enemies, to swallow their ideas in our parched throats.

and then the war ended and wounds began to heal, and then came the 1980s until now with all its shiny technology: nintendo, panasonic, television and anime, and now we have leagues of people learning japanese language and culture anyway, except now it is done wholeheartedly, and as it turns out japanese isn't even that different from our own cultures anyway. houses on stilts made of wood with thatch roofs, making our living from the sea and coast, eating rice for every meal, our phonetics and theirs so alike.

and today we have waves of their expats migrating here because of course they do, we're the Global South™ and for them it's cheap and affordable, so we have little japans sprouting here and there and sometimes i go to a random street and find signs written in japanese and read bits of broken hiragana.

and it's beautiful, being able to move through this world and find the handprints we've all left upon it. it's a wonderful amalgam of so many traditions and colours and beliefs and language all mixing around in this huge bubbling melting pot.

and i'm not chinese or indian or arab or british but when i see them on tv, i'm also seeing a part of me, i hear the words in their tongue and i recognise them as mine, i eat their food and know them as intimately as my own.

but of course our politicians, our kings and our prime ministers (and the divide-and-conquer rule of colonisers now gone) continue to divide us and make us hate each other, fanning flames of distrust and fear of that-which-is-different.

it's such a shame too, because it's so special. it's what makes us us, our dozens of creoles, the way we can speak a sentence comprising vernacular from at least four languages and we all understand each other anyway.

we have a word in malay, "rojak", which is also the name of a dish that mixes a bunch of different ingredients, and is found in malaysian, indonesian and singaporean cuisine. but where i'm from, we also say "rojak" to mean anything that's an eclectic mixture of things, things that seemingly don't go together and aren't necessarily pleasing to the eye but still, somehow, it works, in fact it tastes good, spicy and flavourful and hearty.

and that's us: southeast asia, all of it, a beautiful rojak culture. and it's ours.

[r4mmsarah]

night xx

📌even i know from who those pictures are I won’t say her name cuz i fucking hate her so credit to the right owner;)

[creature-of-the-stars]

Weeds Among Stones: Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Wedding Bells & Warning Lights -> read here

Chapter summary: Letant and Edith spend quality time in close quarters, and Vreenak and Jo get troubling news.

No warnings for this chapter.

Tag List (please, let me know if you want on/off this list): @wafflingchemist, @starrynightgardens, @bigblissandlove1 @deepspacedukat @horta-in-charge @romulanhorsegirl @darkmattervibes , @indignantlemur

I forgot about how posting an announcement to tumblr was a thing, so sorry for the spam if any of you have already seen this come though via email (@starrynightgardens specifically, because I saw your review pop up in my inbox 🥺).

EDIT - Gif credit for Letant and Vreenak goes to: @deepspacedukat

[clavainov]

Finally starting Alastair Reynolds's Inhibitor Phase, latest in the book series that named me. It's taken a few years to hype myself up for this - I really though the Revelation Space series had been put to rest before Aurora Rising.

Revelation Space is so important to me. I was a lonely, precocious and neglected 10 year old when I started reading Redemption Ark. I had read texts relatively outside of my age range before, but Redemption Ark was by far the most difficult (and longest - at 258k words or 949 pages) book I'd read up to that point and my initiation into hard sci-fi and horror, now my two favourite genres. It was a big formative moment.

In part, this was initially done to try to connect with my distant mother and brother who enjoyed these books. But it became something just for me, a book people were confused that I wanted to read and enjoy. It was scientific and detail-oriented and complicated, but also undervalued. And later, when choosing a name for myself that I would later choose to carry throughout my life, I named myself after Clavain because I saw someone struggling to fit in to social systems and willing to upend them, and that was the shape I wanted to become.

[la-cocotte-de-paris]

The rural Irish experience is being 22 and feeling completely hopeless only to find out the 20 year old girl you befriended from a childhood choir is doing infinitely worse than you to the point all your problems (and there are Problems) are suddenly not worth complaining about anymore

[indignantlemur]

So many details, so few places to put them without screwing over my carefully laid out plot!

[ronikamerl]

Mal Du Pays

Nestled deep into the countryside in central France, hidden amongst green treetops, steep hills, surrounded by little streams and rivers, there stands the ruin of an old castle. Seven turrets race towards the sky, intricately built towers, still standing incredibly tall, perched on a cliff. Once upon a time, a flag would have flown from those towers: a foot-and-beakless blackbird on yellow. An emblem, a symbol, of a family. The name of that family? Merle. 

I have a long history, and quite the life. I’ve written about it often, and spoken about it even more. And while I have no connection to the rest of the Merl family anymore (save my brother, whom I speak to very sporadically), there has always been something in the name. 

So when I recently re-evaluated my life and the choices that led me to where I was (in a manor house just outside Dublin, strolling through a beautifully kept garden, chatting to the gardener), there was a call. Not of the “real” kind, more a call of the soul, really. And the call was to come home. 

I’ve been travelling. I’ve moved 11 times since 2022, and continue to not stay in a place for more than a few weeks. I love this lifestyle. It keeps me on my toes, it keeps me creative, and I do not fall into a routine. But I’ve always known that this is not a lifestyle I can - or want to! - continue for ever. 

However, Dublin is Dublin, and the housing crisis here is so severe that there is no real possibility for me to settle down without significantly sacrificing my quality of life, the choices I make, or my freedom. I do not subscribe to the hustle culture, and affording a place in one of the most expensive cities in the world is not really something I want to prioritise. 

So that was the thought that was ruminating in me as I wandered through this lavish garden, and returned to the old east wing of the house to bring some potatoes to the kitchen for the dinner. 

And the thought of going home came up again. I didn’t know where that “home” was. I’ve lived in a lot of places, and nothing has ever felt like home, really. So where was I going to go? 

Fernweh and Wanderlust have always been much, much more prominent than any Mal Du Pays. Chiefly because I don’t really have a home country. I’m not Indian, but I was born there. I am Austrian, but I don’t live there. I live in Ireland, but I’m not Irish. 

Where does one go when one wants to go home, and there is no such thing as that? If you emigrate, you then have 2 home countries. I could feasibly say that I have several home countries. I don’t really know if I can or want to live in any of them. 

But there is a hidden valley in central France. Seven Towers overlook a small village, and in the tourist information centre there are brochures that show an old crest… a blackbird on yellow. And the name? Mine. 

I shall go there. Because maybe, after all these years… I have finally found my way home.

[indignantlemur]

Director's Cut - ask for a writer's commentary on a chapter, section, line, or scene in their work, or send a ⭐for free-range rambles!

Fic Ask! - Pick a fic and I'll tell you a fact about it - or ask a question and I'll answer!

WIP Name Game - Pick a WIP title and I'll tell you a bit about it or post a snippet!

Writer Ask Game - send an emoji, get an answer!

[indignantlemur]

Incidentally, the Émigré side-story, Hoarfrost, is sitting at juuuust under 25k words and 50 pages.

I honestly, foolishly, thought I'd be done by now, but I guess the characters have a lot more to say than I initially anticipated. Wordy little bastards.

[rjnello]

The “Moving” Crowd

We gave away a set of old bunk beds via Facebook last week. The couple collecting them from our garage were from Sussex. They came all the way to Devon with a small truck capable of taking them and revealed they are going to use the beds in a guest room for their grandchildren. “They should be used,” I said. “We no longer have kids around who might use them and they are just sitting here and…