#gently crafted together for each other by the narrative is IN

[lavenderhayes12]

me when fated soulmates

[alyrasturnz]

hiiii! sorry if i’m burdening but is it possible if you could write a pure fluffy fic abt matt where he sees the readers sh scars and he comforts her? sorry if it’s not descriptive enough, i hope i’m not burdening! i never see any fics like this and i really like your work x

 ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎CARDIGAN

❐ summary » matt revealed to you that your scars were not mere blemishes but the testament of a lifelong battle, each one a chapter in your story of resilience. he helped you see that these marks were not symbols of shame but emblems of your enduring strength and unyielding spirit.

❐ pairings » bf!matt x fem!reader

❐ warnings » ⚠��� this is not meant for everyone ⚠️ , mentions of self harm , scars

❐ a/n && w/c » oh this one hit home a lil 😬 • 2.50k

in the dimly lit room, you and matt were nestled together on the couch, the soft luminescence of the television casting an almost otherworldly glow upon your faces. your head found solace against his chest, the rhythmic rise and fall of his breathing providing a soothing cadence that matched the tranquil atmosphere.

your knees gently rested upon his thighs, creating an intimate entanglement that spoke volumes of your closeness. both of you were cocooned beneath a shared blanket, its warmth enveloping you like a protective embrace.

the quiet hum of the tv and the occasional flicker of light painted shadows on the walls, adding to the serene and almost magical ambiance.

in that moment, time seemed to stand still, the world outside fading into insignificance as you both reveled in the sanctuary of each other's presence.

his arm was intricately entwined around your waist, drawing you ever closer with a gentle yet possessive pull, as though weaving an invisible bond that tethered your souls together in an embrace that defied the ordinary.

you and matt have been together for two months now, and each fleeting moment has been a tapestry of joy and connection, weaving together a narrative of shared laughter, deep conversations, and the blossoming of a profound bond that seems to grow stronger with each passing day.

he embodied everything you desired and beyond in a man. his humor was like a balm to your soul, his gentleness a soothing presence, and his way with words an art form, crafting sentences that lingered in your mind long after they were spoken.

you felt a solitary bead of sweat meander down your torso, tracing a path of warmth as you shifted slightly, the motion culminating in the slow, deliberate removal of your hoodie, which you pulled over your head with a languid grace.

you then reclined against his chest, feeling the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath you, as he drew you nearer, his fingers idly toying with the hem of your shirt, each touch a tender whisper of affection.

he gazed down at you, bestowing a gentle kiss upon your head, his lips a fleeting caress. yet, as his eyes traveled, they came to rest upon your arms, lingering with a silent, unspoken contemplation.

his expression undergoes a profound transformation, shifting from a state of serene relaxation to one of acute concern. the once smooth and tranquil lines of his face become furrowed and tense, as if the weight of his thoughts has cast a shadow over his features, revealing the depth of his inner turmoil.

it was a subtle revelation, one that could have easily eluded his notice. yet, there they were, the straight and uniform whine streaks adorning your arms, silent witnesses to a deeper story.

he observed how some of the streaks overlapped, their intersections telling tales of repeated sorrow. his heart clenched at the sight, a visceral reaction that sent a tightening sensation through his lungs, as if the very air around him had grown heavy with unspoken anguish.

he bit down on his lip, the pressure a silent testament to the storm of emotions raging within him, each second of contact a desperate attempt to anchor himself amidst the chaos.

"hey," he murmured, his voice a gentle whisper as he slowly extended his hand toward your wrist. his movements were deliberate, almost reverent, as though he feared that a sudden motion might shatter the fragile moment.

"when did this happen?" he inquired softly, his fingers beginning their delicate journey along the lines of your scars. his touch was feather-light, tracing the marks with a tenderness that spoke volumes, each caress a silent promise of understanding and care.

you can see the worry etched in the depths of his eyes, yet there is no trace of judgment, only a profound yearning to comprehend and be present for you. his gaze, laden with concern, speaks of an earnest desire to bridge the chasm of your pain, offering solace through silent understanding.

you take a deep breath, feeling a tumultuous blend of vulnerability and relief wash over you. "it was a while ago," you begin, your voice a fragile whisper that barely stirs the air. "i went through some really tough times, and this was... how i coped." the words hang in the air, each one a fragment of the pain you endured, now gently released into the open.

matt's eyes remain steadfastly locked onto yours, his hand still resting gently on your arm as if anchoring you in the present. "i'm so sorry you had to go through that," he says, his voice imbued with a deep and genuine compassion. "i wish i had known. i wish i could have been there for you." his words carry the weight of unspoken regrets and a heartfelt desire to have offered you solace during your darkest moments.

you nod, a small, melancholic smile forming on your lips. "it's okay. it's in the past now. but... thank you for understanding." your words, though simple, carry the heavy burden of past sorrows now acknowledged and gently laid to rest.

"hey, it's okay," he said, his voice suffused with understanding and warmth. "you don't have to hide anything from me." his words, tender and unwavering, create a sanctuary where your truths can be unveiled without fear or reservation.

you hesitated, feeling a torrent of emotions surge within you. "i just... i don't want you to see them." your voice trembles, each word a delicate thread woven from the raw fabric of your vulnerability.

matt's eyes softened, and he took your hand in his, his thumb gently tracing the scars as if seeking to understand the silent stories they held. "these don't change how i feel about you. they don't change who you are." his words, tender and resolute, offered a sanctuary where your past pains could be acknowledged without altering the essence of your being.

his touch sent a shiver down your spine. to think that a touch as gentle as his was caressing the very spot where you had once traced the path of your cold, sharp blade was almost inconceivable.

the juxtaposition of his tender caress against the harsh, unforgiving memories of your past felt like a surreal dream, blurring the boundaries between pain and solace, reality and reverie.

it was as if his fingers were weaving a delicate tapestry of healing over the scars that once bore witness to your deepest anguish, each stroke a silent promise of understanding and acceptance.

the very notion that such tenderness could exist in the same space where darkness once reigned was both bewildering and profoundly moving, leaving you suspended in a moment where the past and present intertwined in an intricate dance of emotion.

tears welled up in your eyes, and you looked away, feeling the raw vulnerability seep into your very core. "it's just... sometimes it's hard to believe that." the words trembled on your lips, each syllable a fragile echo of the internal struggle that raged within you. the weight of disbelief and the yearning for acceptance clashed in a tumultuous storm, leaving you adrift in a sea of emotions where certainty seemed but a distant shore.

he cupped your face with his other hand, his fingertips tracing the contours of your jawline with a delicate precision, turning you to meet his unwavering gaze. his thumb gently brushed against your cheek, wiping away a stray tear that had escaped.

he leaned in slightly, his breath warm against your skin, as he spoke with a quiet intensity. "you are strong, and brave, and beautiful. these scars are a part of your journey, but they don't define you. you do." his eyes searched yours, seeking to convey the depth of his sincerity, while his other hand softly rested on your shoulder, grounding you in the moment.

the tenderness in his touch and the profound depth of his affirmation wove together a tapestry of reassurance, urging you to perceive the strength and beauty that lay within, far beyond the visible marks of your past.

his presence, a steadfast anchor amidst the storm of emotions, offered a sanctuary where you could begin to see yourself through his eyes, resilient and whole.

he pulls you into a gentle hug, his arms encircling you with a protective warmth that feels like a shield against the world. "you don't have to go through anything alone anymore," he whispers into your ear, his breath a soft caress against your skin. "i'm here for you, always." his voice carries a promise, a vow etched in the quiet strength of his embrace, assuring you that you are no longer solitary in your struggles.

you feel a weight lift off your shoulders, a profound sense of relief washing over you as you realize you have someone who truly cares. "thank you, matt," you say softly, your voice barely above a whisper as you hold him close. "that means more to me than you know." your words carry the depth of your gratitude, each syllable imbued with the unspoken emotions that surge within you, acknowledging the immense significance of his unwavering support.

matt pulls back slightly, his gaze locking onto yours with a sincerity so profound it makes your heart ache. "i mean it," he says, his voice steady and earnest. "whenever you feel like talking, or even if you just need someone to sit with you in silence, i'm here. you don't have to hide anything from me." his words weave a tapestry of reassurance, each one a thread that binds you closer, offering a sanctuary where your vulnerabilities can rest without fear.

you take a deep breath, feeling a sense of relief wash over you, like a gentle tide receding from the shore. "it's just... sometimes it feels like too much, you know? like i'm drowning and i can't find a way out." your words hang in the air, heavy with the weight of unspoken struggles and the suffocating sensation of being overwhelmed, as if the very essence of your being is submerged beneath an unyielding current.

he nods, his eyes reflecting a deep understanding. "i can't pretend to know exactly what you're going through, but i want to help in any way i can. even if it's just being here with you, letting you know you're not alone." his words are a balm, soothing the raw edges of your turmoil, offering a presence that promises unwavering support and a silent companionship in your darkest hours.

you feel tears welling up in your eyes, but they're not tears of sadness this time. they're tears of gratitude and hope. "you've already helped so much just by being here," you say, your voice trembling. "i don't know what i would do without you." your words quiver with the raw emotion of the moment, each tear a testament to the profound impact of his presence, a lifeline in the stormy sea of your struggles.

matt smiles softly, brushing a tear away from your cheek. "you don't have to worry about that," he says. "i'm not going anywhere. we're in this together." his words, tender and resolute, weave a promise of unwavering support, a beacon of steadfast companionship amidst the turbulent waves of uncertainty.

the two of you sit there for a while longer, wrapped in each other's presence. the tv continues to play in the background, but neither of you pays it any mind.

the world outside your shared bubble fades into insignificance, as the silent communication of your hearts speaks volumes, creating a sanctuary of mutual understanding and unspoken solace.

in this moment, the world feels a little less daunting, and the future a little brighter, knowing that you have someone who truly cares by your side.

the shadows of uncertainty recede, replaced by the warm glow of companionship, illuminating a path forward where hope and support intertwine, making each step a little lighter and each breath a little easier.

as the night grows darker, you both eventually drift into a comfortable silence, the kind that only comes when two hearts understand each other without the need for words.

the quietude envelops you like a soft blanket, a testament to the profound connection that transcends spoken language, where every breath and shared glance speaks volumes of unspoken understanding and mutual solace.

tags — @imwetforyourmom @meatballzerz69 @bandanamatt @pinkishpearls @thedangerousalleyway @sturniolo0bsessed @muchloveforhacker @stinkytinkywinky @jetameivous @everleiqh @conspiracy-ash @ifwdominicfike

[emilykaldwen]

FFWAD 24 - Sins of the Father by @selfproclaimedunicorn

For my first foray into this yearly celebration with @renegadeguild, I picked the brilliant and fantastic story, Sins of the Father by @selfproclaimedunicorn. Misa has taken the fantastic AU premise 'What if Daemon Targaryen and Rhea Royce had kids?' and has run with it in the most delicious and satisfying way. The story isn't complete, but the first 'arc' has a good stopping point at a whopping 160k words, which made for the chonkiest book you could imagine.

This was the twelth book I've bound (both fic and rebinds of old favorites) and I tried several new techniques for it including rounding and backing the spine. I also stretched my legs in the formatting department and went all in with the interior. That meant ordering some special springhill paper to do these fantastic maps for the endpages. Full details behind the cut!

Typesetting: Normally I've kept my settings pretty minimal as I got used to the ins and outs of InDesign (during this, I did purchase Affinity Publisher and might end up moving to that, but I'm finally getting the hang of ID and you can pry it from my cold hands). I really wanted to mimic some of the interior of Fire & Blood for this, so I hunted down the fonts used and took an image of the decorative banner you see on the sides to use for the chapter openers. I also wanted to include timelines and family trees in true historically inspired fantasy tradition.

The family tree was created based off of the author's spreadsheet in Google Drawing, which I found to be the easiest thing to use when it comes to creating chaotic family trees like this (In the past I'd used lucid chart for a printable version, but google worked better here).

the timeline is honestly my favorite thing and I learned how to use tables in ID for the first time. I'm incredibly pleased with it. The formatting is based upon the line of kings in the source. The timeline covers the events of the first arc as printed in this particular story.

The chapter openers are some of my favorite! As the children are proud to be House Royce, I wanted to reflect that. The runes you see behind the Chapter number and title are the Floki font and name the character whose the POV for each chapter.

Since there's plenty of High Valyrian spoken and the author doesn't include the translations within narrative, it was the perfect moment to set up footnotes. I'll absolutely be doing this for my own story when I bind it!

Rounding and Backing: So this was a total adventure, but I really wanted the old book feel. I made the mistake of pressing the book for too long and lost a lot of the swell in the spine to round but it worked out AND I managed to back it a little bit. Since I wasn't doing cord tapes for the spine (this was a version of the three piece bradel), I had to troubleshoot. I ended up cutting strips of the leather cord I bought from michaels and laminating those pieces together and placing them on the oxford hollow on the spine (given how thick the book is, I wanted to give it as much structural strength as possible). The 'leather' covering you see is actually the craft leather (polyester) from Dollar Tree and it's pretty awesome but definitely has difficulties staying put with glue. I followed the normal procedure and slathered both sides up and used twine to compress the bookcloth along those leather pieces. there's a little gaping in some places which I think would help if I'm able to properly apply backing paper to the polyester.

HTV do's and don'ts: Hi! don't be me and forget to apply your teflon sheets before applying the HTV because then you fuck with the polyester but it's not too bad. The other pro-tip is to gently apply the iron to the cover so it's warm before applying the HTV so it can start to stick. I had to apply the front cover in three pieces and do the title twice. Also, it's really difficult to apply HTV to a rounded spine so I'll have to figure out how to set up the spine and cover before applying (since there's a certain amount of stretching the bookcloth over the spine). The spine might end up having to be regular adhesive vinyl for that. Also, it's stupidly hard to find metallic HTV in bronze.

Front matter and final thoughts: The bronze dragon was a lucky find through an extensive google search, and the runes surrounding it are 'we remember with fire and blood', a combination of House Royce and House Targaryen's words. Seems fitting four Yorick, Ella, and Aemon! The copyright page is mimicked off the source's style, including the AO3 information, the creative commons and fair use information, the guild stamp, a QR code to the AO3 page, and my own press stamp! The summary is pulled from AO3 as well.

All in all, I made this book twice and I loved it and learned so much every time.

I'm so happy with this project and I'm so excited to do the next arc! Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful story, Misa!

[readyforthegarden]

Here’s some softness…

I’m a musician myself, I mainly sing/songwrite. So for me, it always been ideal to find a partner who lives in the same realm where everything is a lot of thoughts are music driven or related. So sometimes I imagine what it would be like to just be able to share the love language that is music w/ the boys. Or even just lounge around where you could bounce off each other creatively.

With Jake, I could picture him just playing freely and you just sit and listen, basking in the sounds of him eventually crafting together a melody. And then he looks at you, noticing that you too are enveloped in whatever is fueling him on and he asks you to sing over it. Because he loves when he thinks he’s found what he was looking for just for you to come in w/ a different narrative he didn’t hear, revealing pieces of a puzzle he never thought were missing. And just as you always take him and his playing in with awe, his mind stills and he becomes breathless and mystified every time he hears you sing. He holds your gaze w/ pride in his eyes. And the two of you just become this force, individually beautiful arrangements, but threading them together, not overpowering, each of you still listening to the other, balancing each other out w/ harmonies and countermelodies. Until you two are completely captivated in the trance y’all fabricated and y’all explore this small realm y’all exist in. I also have this image of Jake facetiming you late just anxious or sad during one of his off days while on tour, bc those tend to be the hardest when he might be stuck in a hotel room or bus. And he just wants to hear you bc he’s having a bad mental health day and can’t sleep. You see his contact light up your screen and your stomach flips when you see it, but quickly drops when you hear his tone and you can only see his ceiling. You simply ask him whats wrong and he immediately opens up like he has been dying to you to ask him all day, “I don’t know. It’s just one of those days, you know? Something has been in the room w/ me all day, pushing and shoving me around, scattering all my thoughts to make itself known. And I can’t even tell you what IT IS, just that it won’t let me sleep now either and we have a show tomorrow.” You gently reassure him that he is okay and is safe and that you love him and ask if there is anything you can do. His voice timid, ever so slightly breaking, he requests, “Can you- Can you just sing until I fall asleep?” You walk w/ your phone to your piano and begin playing some chords. You venture into Age of Worry by John Mayer in the style of YEBBA, and then move into Behind That Locked Door by George Harrison. Once you let off the keys, you listen closely to hear soft snores finally sounding from your phone and end the call w/ a whispered “I love you.”

With Josh, I feel as if you would be able hear him singing from across the house. It’s a slow soulful tune you recognize, so you move toward the melody until you find him. His face lights up the moment he spots you and hears you start harmonizing w/ him. He motions you a “C’mere” and you walk over to him. He takes your hands in his and places them on his neck and he smooths his hands over your hips and places on the small of your back, He leans into you swaying you to the beat of the song y’all are singing. The both of you just slow dance around the room while y’all finish serenading each other. Once it’s silent, still swaying you feel him smile against your cheek and he whispers “I love how beautifully my voice blends to yours.”

I could also see Josh coming to you when he sees that you’re in a creative plane sitting next to you at your instrument while you play w melodies. When you pause, he hands you a notebook saying, “Here, I wrote this for you. Will you sing it?” And he just sits and listens to you wide eyed and enraptured by you applying his words he gifted to you to the melody, and eventually he starts sing under you w/ harmony. Once you both break, he tells you how much he is in love w/ your voice and just loves listening to you, words that always stun you when they come from him.

Sam, I feel like sees the world through a more logical lens and moves w/ ingenuity in everystep. This makes me think it would be fun to dissect music w/ him, especially bc Ik he likes jazz. Some of my favorites range from Paul Desmond, Bill Evans, Jim Hall, to John Coltrane, and Oscar Peterson and i just know it would be so fun to listen to these w/ Sam. It’s a lazy afternoon and it starts pouring outside, so you innocently put on a jazz record w/ intentions of just listening not challenging yourself. You lay down and he curls up on top of you and you both enjoy the crackle of the needle against the rain. But it’s not too long until you both really start to ingest the music, and being the analytical musicians you are, you both get into it. Pretty soon it’s back and forth w/ “Well what story do you think he’s telling here?” and “What do you think he was feeling here?” or “Do you think that phrase was a reference to this piece written here?” and “Can you hear the rhythm and the melody commutating in this part?” Until eventually y’all mentally wear each other out. Still laid together y’all are lulled to sleep by the jazz and soothing rain. But not before Sam tells you how much he appreciates and loves your musical intellect and how it’s one of his favorite things about you.

As far as Danny, I feel as if that’s his favorite way to spend time w you. Like w/ the other boys it kind of happens organically, but Danny would plan a day out of it. He might come wake you up and while you eat breakfast he’s quizzing w/ ideas for lyrics and melodies. And as y’all sit in his studio piecing it together, he makes sure to get your input on every note. And he eventually talks you into the booth, telling you he only wants to here this from you, and records you playing and singing the song the both of you just birthed. He adds it to his collection of songs that had been through the same process, and he listens to them when he’s far way and homesick for you.

I hope that was soft enough and helped🫶🏼🫶🏼

You….you have left me absolutely and utterly speechless, friend. What a gorgeous way to describe each of there men and their passions and talents along with your own. I’m awestruck, thinking of these scenarios.

[deltaruminations]

ok one more especially ridiculous skelebros deltarune headcanon for today. they play TTRPGs together lol

wingdings usually GMs because he gets really into the worldbuilding and lore and narrative. he listens to podcasts and shit about GM-craft and philosophy and writes his own campaigns and homebrews stuff from scratch and it’s all genuinely Good. he knows the mechanics and rules like the back of his hand but is occasionally willing to bend or break them when it’s more narratively interesting or fun. he is on the other hand So Unbelievably Shitty At Roleplaying that often sans just steps in and acts as NPCs for him. on the very rare occasion that he actually plays a PC he always picks a boisterous frontline build like barbarian or fighter and ends up sucking at it because he’s too risk-averse and cracks under pressure. he then gets so frustrated/confused/moody about sucking at it and the other two are so mediocre as GMs that they just reinstate the normal arrangement

papyrus is deep into the roleplay and gets pretty emotional about it. when his pet falcon "BURGERMEISTER BEAKINGTON LXIX" died in their first campaign (he was like. 12. to be clear) he cried so hard about it they had to end the session early and he wouldn’t speak to wingdings again until sans finally convinced him that it wasn’t personal, that’s just what the game is like, and their brother still loved him. it’s still a sore spot for them and he continues to guilt-trip wingdings about it occasionally (often successfully). as a roleplayer he gets very hammy and melodramatic which can be A Bit Much but is also sort of the heart and soul of the game and honestly the main reason they keep playing. he has weird ideas for what to do next and basically never wants to do the thing they’re being guided to do, which makes wingdings extremely nervous because he has to improvise but also kind of delights him because it means he gets to put on his Lore Hat and spin up new nodes and edges on the worldbuilding corkboard. papyrus also has sort of an externally bizarre but internally consistent understanding of how he believes the game should work and will assertively rules-lawyer at times based on this understanding. wingdings often has to step into Teacher Mode and gently negotiate a compromise with him with sans as emotional backup for both of them. when he very rarely GMs, papyrus homebrews his own extremely convoluted and ambitious systems full of dragons on skateboards and wizards in muscle cars that are incredibly crunchy and hard to follow both narratively and mechanically. sans thinks this is funny as hell and loves it when papyrus GMs while wingdings mostly finds it vexing and draining lol

sans is mostly just there because they need at least two PCs and his brothers love this shit and he loves them. he always plays some kind of healing/support so papyrus can be whatever fearsome warrior he wants to be and not immediately die in every encounter. he is of course the laid back jokester type who wants to flirt with every NPC (the fact that he also roleplays a lot of the NPCs as well makes this extra obnoxious) and does goofy shit during encounters just to see what’ll happen. he’s never once looked at any of the handbooks and never will and just lets his brothers correct him and tell him what to do. both brothers (but especially papyrus) get frustrated with him sometimes for not taking the game more seriously but what they don’t fully realize is that he’s the release valve for turbonerd tension. he lets them be mad at him so they don’t bicker too much with each other.

when sans GMs he plays the usual system and just reuses WD’s world and characters. he always starts his brothers off in the same tavern, where they meet some kind of NPC who seems to have an epic quest for them. but that quest ends up just being a series of mundane errands with no combat just shit like picking up laundry from the dry cleaner or grocery shopping with a vague list and figuring out what kind of milk they’re supposed to buy. he never asks for ability checks and if someone asks to roll dice he’ll say ok and then completely disregard whatever they roll. "nat 20, huh? what’s your charisma again? no, you’d need at least 400 for that 20 to matter… tough break… listen, i don’t make the rules…" wingdings finds the complete disregard for the structure of the game and RP-heavy play disorienting and hard to navigate but thinks it’s pretty funny and appreciates the novel, realistic detail sans brings to the story and often works those ideas into the canon of his worldbuilding. papyrus thinks it’s boring and unsportsmanlike and loses his shit at sans about it every time. "YOU PROMISED YOU’D MAKE IT EXCITING THIS TIME!!! YOU. PROMISED!!!" "i did. i even gave you a puzzle. i gave you a whole milk mystery." "MILK. IS NOT. A PUZZLE!!!" "well, i didn’t think your ‘moo’-d on it would be so sour." "I. FOR ONE. FOUND THE MILK MYSTERY. DAIRY. DAIRY. INTERESTING." "THAT’S!!! NOT EVEN!!! A PUN!!!" papyrus throws his dice down on the table and storms out of the room

[coconutsplit]

Transforming mundane conversations into engaging and meaningful dialogues involves employing techniques that foster deeper connections, encourage critical thinking, and stimulate creativity. Here’s a framework to elevate ordinary conversations:

Framework for Transforming Mundane Conversations

1. Cultivate Curiosity and Open-Mindedness

Ask Thought-Provoking Questions: Move beyond small talk by asking open-ended questions that encourage reflection and exploration. For example, “What’s something you’re passionate about that most people don’t know?”

Show Genuine Interest: Listen actively and express curiosity about the other person’s experiences, ideas, and feelings.

2. Employ Active Listening Techniques

Reflect and Paraphrase: Restate what the other person has said to show understanding and encourage them to elaborate further. For example, “It sounds like you’re saying that…”

Ask Follow-Up Questions: Dive deeper into their responses with questions that explore their perspective or reasoning.

3. Share Personal Insights and Stories

Relate to Experiences: Share your own stories or insights that connect to the topic at hand, making the conversation more relatable and engaging.

Use Analogies and Metaphors: Explain complex ideas or experiences with analogies or metaphors to make them more accessible and interesting.

4. Encourage Critical Thinking and Reflection

Pose Hypothetical Scenarios: Introduce “what if” scenarios to stimulate imaginative thinking and explore different perspectives. For example, “What if we could redesign our daily routines from scratch? What would you change?”

Challenge Assumptions: Gently question commonly held beliefs or assumptions to provoke deeper thinking and discussion.

5. Incorporate Diverse Perspectives

Introduce Different Viewpoints: Bring in perspectives from various fields, cultures, or disciplines to enrich the conversation. For example, “How might someone from a different culture view this issue?”

Discuss Recent Trends or Innovations: Talk about current events, technological advancements, or cultural shifts that relate to the conversation topic.

6. Create a Collaborative Atmosphere

Brainstorm Together: Work together to generate ideas or solutions on a topic, fostering a sense of collaboration and creativity.

Build on Each Other’s Ideas: Encourage a flow of ideas where each person builds on what the other has said, creating a dynamic and engaging dialogue.

7. Utilize Storytelling Techniques

Craft Compelling Narratives: Use storytelling techniques to make your points more vivid and memorable. For instance, frame your conversation around a narrative arc or key experiences.

Incorporate Humor: Use appropriate humor to lighten the mood and make the conversation more enjoyable.

8. Practice Empathy and Emotional Intelligence

Acknowledge Emotions: Recognize and validate the emotions expressed in the conversation, which can lead to a more empathetic and meaningful exchange.

Respond Thoughtfully: Be mindful of how your responses affect the other person and tailor your approach to maintain a positive and respectful dialogue.

Example: Transforming a Conversation About Daily Routines

Cultivate Curiosity:

Ask: “What’s one aspect of your daily routine that you find most rewarding or challenging?”

Listen: Pay attention to their response and express curiosity about their experience.

Active Listening:

Reflect: “So, it sounds like you find your morning routine really sets the tone for your day?”

Follow-Up: “What specifically do you think makes your morning routine effective?”

Share Insights:

Story: Share a personal story about a change you made to your routine and how it impacted you.

Analogy: “I think of routines like a well-oiled machine. If one part isn’t functioning well, it affects everything.”

Encourage Critical Thinking:

Hypothetical: “If you could design your ideal daily routine from scratch, what would it look like?”

Challenge: “Why do you think most people struggle with maintaining their routines? Are there assumptions we make about productivity?”

Incorporate Perspectives:

Different Viewpoints: “How do you think routines differ across cultures? What can we learn from different approaches to daily life?”

Trends: “With the rise of remote work, how do you think daily routines are evolving?”

Collaborate:

Brainstorm: “Let’s brainstorm some creative ways to improve our routines. What new habits or tools could help us?”

Build Ideas: ���I love your idea about setting specific goals each day. What if we combined that with a morning ritual?”

Storytelling:

Narrative: Frame a conversation around a successful routine you’ve developed or a transformative change you experienced.

Humor: Lightly joke about a humorous routine mishap to make the conversation more engaging.

Empathy:

Acknowledge: “I can understand why that part of your routine would be challenging. It sounds like it’s really important to you.”

Respond Thoughtfully: Tailor your responses to show you value their perspective and feelings.

By applying these techniques, you can turn mundane conversations into stimulating and impactful dialogues that foster deeper connections and insights.

[abigailzimmer]

Favorite Reads of 2023

As a reader, I think of myself as slow to turn toward fiction, but this year started off with stunning story after stunning story, thanks to writers like Emily St. John Mandel, Rivka Galchen, Amal El-Mohtar, and Max Gladstone. Miriam Toews' Fight Night made me weep on a train from Edinburgh to Glasgow; Josephine Tey's mysteries made me chuckle from Glasgow to Edinburgh. I wandered slowly but steadily with Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell throughout the year and I read Timothy Moore's short stories in one sitting and then started them over the next week. Grateful for these writers who move me in so many ways, and of course I have some poetry and nonfiction favorites!

1. Timothy Moore's exciting debut short story collection, I Will Teach You Retribution, is perfection. Its humor and absurdism and poignancy remind me a bit of George Saunders (CivilWarLand in Bad Decline), a bit of Aoka Matsuda (Where the Wild Ladies Are), and excitingly and obviously of Tim. If you aren't moved by the plight of a people-eating giant's quest for justice against himself, or a side character/ex-lover's desire to have her own transformative character arc, or a girl's use of social media to be popular, even though dead—or at least by the empathetic way Tim writes these characters and the wonderful crafting of his sentences—your heart may have stopped. An unexpected love-at-first-paragraph. Ten out of ten best use of exclamation points.

2. In Scared Violent Like Horses, John McCarthy writes about childhood in rural Illinois, absent parents, fistfights with friends, and flyover states, but mostly he writes of people in a way that sees their empathy and value. I read this while feeling a little lost and heartsick, and these poems wrapped around me and reminded me of what I love best. This is not to say that I saw my journey reflected back at me, but that lyric can offer the comfort of a song, that poetry lets you sit in a space of experience not answers, and that you can endure so much hardship and still emerge with tenderness. John’s writing is thoughtful and vivid, graceful and grace-giving. “But I’m not sure why we would expect dreams to make sense, when our waking lives so often fail to observe narrative convention,” he writes. And later: “No place is sad if you stay long enough.”

3. How to Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is an abundantly written book, composed of letters between Red and Blue, two agents on opposite sides of a time war, one side more organic and one more tech-driven. It’s surprising and inventive in its world building and sweet on the act of letter writing. A love story that gushes to the beloved, overflowing without feeling cheesy. I read this on a beach in Mexico, against the bluest backdrop with the reddest sunrises.

“I want to tell you something about myself. Something true, or nothing at all.”

4. Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility was satisfying and unexpected, even up to the last line. As in her other books, she weaves together stories of multiple characters, gently nudging them more and more into each other’s orbits as the book draws to a close. This book feels higher stakes or maybe has more imaginary elements than The Glass Hotel, which I thought was nice but forgettable—I prefer the bigger “what ifs” in my fiction. But her writing always feels like a gliding, with these lovely details that linger. Here, there's an untouched forest in Canada and a shabby moon colony with a river reflecting the darkness of space. A writer of post-apocalyptic fiction, now a mother and turned off her own ideas. (It’s interesting to hear from an author who wrote a wildly successful novel about a global pandemic, then lived through one, and wrote a second pandemic-related novel in which much happens very differently.) The question of simulation a backdrop, the difference between knowing something in the abstract and the experience of it, how we come to the knowledge we have and the gestures we know we must make. All of it so well done and a pleasure to read.

5. The overarching frame of On Dreams by Maureen Thorson is the author's diagnosis of a rare eye disease that causes blind spots and some of Aristotle's absurd theories, such as how a mirror turns red when a menstruating woman looks into it. From there, in essays composed of short, aphoristic lines, Thorson explores what is reality and truth, how we know what we know, the illusion we have of control, and why we turn to writing and narrative. It's funny and smart, weaving in notes from her broad reading, and poignant in the leaps and turns it takes from line to line.

6. Border Vista by Anni Liu is composed of these lovely memory poems—atmospheric. She writes about emigrating to the US while young and being separated from her dad and grandparents with uncertain status, about relationships and home and dreaming in her nonnative language. The poems read almost memoir-like, back to back. The settings simple: a walk in the woods or market, hearing a piece of news or sitting in a movie theater, with some startling insight dropped upon the reader, the reader unaware even that she was building toward something. The lines below have echoed in my head the whole year, naming a longing so ingrained I didn't even know it was there:

“Crossing a deer-shaped patch of earth, I come back to the edge of an ancient sadness of being just one thing”

7. I really enjoyed diving into the oeuvre of Josephine Tey this year, and in particular I don’t think I’ve read anything quite like her Daughter of Time, a unique take on both the histories and mysteries genres. Her Inspector Grant, laid up in a hospital and bored, takes on an academic investigation of the slander against Richard III, infamous for killing his two nephews—the Princes in the Tower—to remove any rivals to the throne. Despite the fact that Grant is initially driven into this mystery because Richard’s face just "looks" more like a judge’s than a criminal’s (classic Tey ridiculousness), Tey makes a compelling case for his innocence. Grant and his “looker-upper” (researcher) friend take a policeman’s approach to the unresolved mystery, looking at the whereabouts and motivations of the people involved instead of what they say, and keeping an eye out for any breaks in the patterns that suggest foul play. For a book whose main action is two men talking about historical accounts, it’s surprisingly gripping and convincing (although my own knowledge of British history is spottier than a spotted dick pudding!).

"Give me research. After all, the truth of anything at all doesn't lie in someone's account of it. It lies in all the small facts of the time. An advertisement in a paper. The sale of a house. The price of a ring."

8. When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen is a book that “wants to believe it’s always possible / to love bigger & madder” and a poet whose “job is to trick adults / into knowing they have / hearts.” There's so much unbounded joy in these poems, even when writing of the sadness of having sadness or of the painful rejection by his mom for being gay or by fellow Americans for being Chinese. He writes rooted in a strong sense of self, which means his poems overflow with brightness, humor, and triumph.

Some possibilities:

“I want to be the Anti-Sisyphus, in love / with repetition, in love, in love. Foolish repetition, / wise repetition. I want more hours. I want insomnia, I want / to replace the clock tick with tambourines.”

“I am … an elegy that has felt light, the early morning light falling / on your lovely someone’s / lovable bare feet as he walks across the wood floor to sit by the window”

“Let’s put our briefcases on our heads, in the sudden rain, // & continue meeting as if we’ve just been given our names.”

9. Serendipitously, I read Rivka Galchen’s Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch just after reading Maria Popova’s marvelous storytelling about Johannes Kepler’s defense of his mother’s witch trial in Figuring. It’s a fascinating story in that Kepler felt responsible for fueling the accusations against her due to an allegorical sci-fi story he wrote about moon people holding onto outdated beliefs despite evidence otherwise, and—small detail—the narrator got to the moon thanks to his magical mother. Kepler eventually cleared his mother’s name of charges and spent years annotating his own manuscript so that no one could misunderstand his intentions again.

Rivka’s book is a fictional telling more focused on the accused, Katherine Kepler, and reminded me of the narrative style of Miriam Toews' Woman Talking with a literate third party roped in to make a record and with the reader being told about the events conversationally vs. reading them. Around the same time, I watched the movie The Wonder (which has some tough tw content but was excellently done) which also resonates in theme, about the stories we believe and shape our lives around, and how the efficacy of religion and science is all wrapped up in story.

This was an excellent story based on fascinating history, and Rivka’s writing is both dryly funny (“A hummingbird once rested near my shoulder. It was a very ill omen. For one who isn't a flower.”) and thoughtful (“I had to say what was in my heart, which is knowledge.”).

10. I really enjoyed This Party's Dead, in which British journalist Erica Buist, to cope with her grief at the loss of her father-in-law-to-be, travels to seven death festivals around the world to learn how people in other cultures grieve.

“Whenever anyone suggests the dead are in attendance, gifts and sugar always seems to follow.”

The journey's question broadens from "how do we grapple with the reality of mortality" to the more meaningful exploration of "in what ways do we continue to have a relationship with 'our dead'"? Because we do have one, even if our culture doesn't know what to do with that relationship or provide us with outlets for remembering in community. (There's a lovely line in which someone refers to their ancestors as "my" dead.)

Some of the festivals she visits involve meals in graveyards, others take place when it's time to bury a body--sometimes months or even years after a death, and others involve exhuming bodies so that living family members can rewrap them or visit quite literally with their bones before reburying. As part of a western tradition that sees very little of and so fears dead bodies, Erica asks celebrants how they feel about the corpse of their loved one. She often assumes incorrectly a reason why something is done (perfume over the body not to hide the smell of decay for us but to show the loved one they are still cared for) and observes: “Time and again, I see fear [as a cause for a ritual] where there is only love.”

It's a moving book, written with humor and openness, and I'm very drawn to the rituals of communally remembering our dead. I wish we had something like this beyond a funeral to help us transition from having a living loved one to a dead loved one: a reason to come together often with food and sharing and to invite our dead back home, even if for a little while.

As one festival celebrant tells her, “We think about dead people all the time. We pray for all the ancestors, even the ones we don’t remember; we have a huge celebration for them every six months. They’re not lost.”

(Book buddies: Mexico's beaches and Scotland's train views.)

[rk099]

Winter Whimsy: Tales from the Snowy Wonderland

Winter, with its crisp air and blankets of snow, transforms the world into a magical realm where nature's wonders unfold. As the snowflakes gently descend, they weave a tapestry of enchantment, turning landscapes into snowy wonderlands. In this blog, we embark on a journey through the whimsical tales that winter whispers.

The Dance of Snowflakes

Each snowflake is a unique masterpiece, delicately crafted by nature's artistic hand. As they pirouette from the heavens, a dance unfolds, painting the world in a glistening white cloak. The symphony of their descent serenades the quietude of winter, leaving behind a mesmerizing spectacle that captivates hearts and imaginations alike.

Frosty Friends: The Snowman Chronicles

In the heart of snowy landscapes, snowmen come to life. From simple and endearing to elaborate and imaginative, these frosty friends embody the spirit of winter whimsy. Tales of snowman-building adventures and the camaraderie they share with winter enthusiasts evoke warmth in the coldest of days.

Aurora Borealis: Celestial Winter Lights

While winter days may be shorter, the nights are adorned with celestial wonders. The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, dances across the night sky in a display of vibrant hues. These cosmic paintings tell stories of otherworldly realms and add an ethereal touch to winter's charm.

Ice Castles: Frozen Fortresses of Fantasy

In regions where winter embraces its icy grip, artists and architects sculpt enchanting ice castles. These ephemeral structures stand as testament to human creativity and nature's transformative power. Exploring these frozen fortresses is like stepping into a fairy tale, where crystalline spires reach towards the heavens.

Cozy Tales by the Fireside

Winter nights invite us to huddle by the fireside, sipping hot cocoa and sharing tales that warm the soul. Whether it's recounting childhood memories of snowball fights or weaving fables of mythical creatures hidden in the snowy depths, these stories create a sense of togetherness in the face of winter's chill.

Animal Tracks in the Snow

The snowy canvas is a storyteller, capturing the tales of creatures that leave their footprints in the pristine landscape. Following the tracks of foxes, rabbits, and other winter animals unveils a narrative of survival and adaptation in the face of the season's challenges.

The Solitude of Snowy Silence

Amidst the flurry of activities and festive cheer, winter also whispers tales of solitude. The serene blanket of snow absorbs sounds, creating a tranquil haven where one can find solace and reflection. Winter's hushed tones encourage us to appreciate the beauty of stillness and the quiet power of nature's pause.

Winter, with its whimsical tales, invites us to embrace the magic woven into the frosty fabric of the season. From dancing snowflakes to the silent serenity of snowy landscapes, each story contributes to the enchanting narrative of winter wonder. As we navigate the snowy wonderland, let us revel in the joy, warmth, and captivating tales that this season graciously unfolds.

[existentialmagazine]

Review: Shades of Oleander offer a dreamy alternative-rock haze of sound within ‘Room to Improve’, comprised of both warmth and pain

Like many other acts, Shades of Oleander found themselves birthed from the aftermath of turbulent times, rising from the pandemic and its isolation with a desire to reconnect and create. Crafting a narrative of resilience and artistic brilliance, this three-piece converged to create something extraordinary, meeting audiences of thousands with just their first singles alone. Now returning for the first time since 2021, the trio share their newest offering ‘Room to Improve’, an expansion on their already distinct sound with more of an overarching dreamlike concoction of lulling instrumentals.

Leaning into a hazy sound that’s akin to the wistful but beautiful longing a summer sunset can evoke, Shades of Oleander take you through an auditory journey within ‘Room to Improve’ that’s undeniably created to make you feel, to make you yearn for something you cannot even describe. With an intro of deeply reverberated guitar strums and a slow riff, the open-aired sound feels vast and intangible, lingering in isolation that leaves you feeling torn between serenity and solitude. The verse introduces steady drum beats, an easy-going sway accompanied by continued guitar twangs and newly added rich piano keys, together continuing to draw-out their light emphasis for effect. It’s hard not to resonate with this tender sound, wrapping a warm nostalgic air throughout every instrumental choice and the scarce amount of evolution throughout, a continuation that’s made even more poignant by the fact we cannot live through our memories in the same state of continuity. The gently sung vocal lines are filled with a breathy sort of raspiness, never harsh but always emotionally infused as each line clearly displays an interlinking personal connection, channeling the song’s melancholic downbeat styling with an equally sombre delivery.

Adhering to their staple passion for storytelling, ‘Room to Improve’ is just as meaningful as everything that Shades of Oleander have released, if not more. As they explore a connection between two lovers, the words of this enchanting single delve through the nuances of being in partnership when often things are clouded by the expectations of perfection. Opening with the haunting line ‘come on, my love, your hand in mine’, the sweet sincerity of their connection is established instantly, a sense of safety and familiarity in their touch with one another. Continuing ‘sweetly you sing; softly you sway’, Shades of Oleander explore how the mundane becomes so beautiful when you find yourself adoring someone’s every being, completely mesmerised by every little thing they do. The chorus hook pulls back from this bubble of rose-tinted perception though, leaning back into the past through the line ‘step on over remember the compass you made‘, an acknowledgement of how things once were and the good and bad that’s come since. Asking they reminisce, it’s clear they deem these memories cherished, still just as in love as ever before. Following with the line ‘give me room to improve on the path that we take’, the trio look into what others often neglect - the need to grow within your relationship. As many expect things to continue as easy and dreamily as ever, when in reality relationships are stability through turmoil and co-operation even in disagreement, together working through every bump in the road. It’s also clear that their path is now one conjoined, a separation from the visions they both had of their future, instead uniting on a journey together both beautiful and unknown. The next verse adds much more hesitation, lingering on lyrics like ‘rest if you must but it’s never the same’, illusive but carrying a tension that the rest of the song does not. With plenty to interpret and the realities of a union spoke about without sugarcoating, ‘Room to Improve’ is a gorgeous insight into a real and heartfelt love.

Check out ‘Room to Improve’ for yourself here to appreciate the trio’s aching lyricism and serene, tenderness of sound.

Written by: Tatiana Whybrow

Photo Credits: Unknown

// This coverage was supported and created via Musosoup, #SustainableCurator.

[musicarenagh]

A Truthful Testament: Nigel Brown’s “Here Comes The Truth” In his eleventh studio album, “Here Comes The Truth,” Nigel Brown delivers a well-crafted narrative drawn from life's rich tapestry of experiences and feelings. An established veteran in the folk and soft rock scene, Brown embraces an organic writing process that, once again, affirms his remarkable prowess as a consummate musical storyteller. https://open.spotify.com/album/1Ht8Cpmc9qR9qBvbnP7wjH A sense of intimacy permeates the entirety of the 13-track album—each song standing as a testament to his personal journeys, societal observations, struggles with inequality, and tale-telling for fictional characters grappling with their life situations. Synergistically working together within this record are tightly knit elements of songwriting and production—all self-managed by Brown—with whispered drumming provided gently by none other than his son. From the onset, listeners may distinguish a fabled familiarity that harks back to the golden eras of 60s and 70s music. This nostalgic sensation is carefully curated sans pastiche; it is indeed the result of an artist respecting history while making his own mark simultaneously. This isn't merely the echo of artists who've come before him but rather resemblance born out of reverence. It is clear from listening to this finely crafted record how much love Brown holds for music legends like Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac or Mark Knopfler and particularly THE BEATLES. His interpretations never mimicry but rather authentic homages weaved seamlessly into every chord, melody, and verse. However nostalgic its soundscape might be though – one should not mistake it as 'purely retrospective.' This work effectively straddles both spheres – old and new - solidifying its relevance today. The title "Here Comes The Truth" is not simply prophetic; it mirrors real-time critique on governmental actions amidst a pandemic crisis – adding further depth to Brown's enthusiastic exploration into truth-telling. [caption id="attachment_52182" align="alignnone" width="1671"] A Truthful Testament: Nigel Brown’s “Here Comes The Truth”[/caption] Vocally, Brown continues to impress with his tempered yet distinctive male crooning. There's a gentle boldness in his voice that confidently delivers his stories and shared insights without yielding to melodramatic overselling. Simultaneously, the singing accentuates the easy-listening experience of the album – calming yet stimulating enough as you tap along with its rhythmic undulations. On "Here Comes The Truth," Nigel Brown proves that he is still actively seeking novel ways to unhinge corners of artistic expression within the conventional 'folk-rock' box. The natural progression seen here comes not only from a seasoned pro doing what he does best but also someone who is not afraid to evolve musically while maintaining his authentic narrative backbone. The album culminates as an engaging journey that lures you into repeated listening, each time unveiling intricate narratives or melodies previously unconsumed in prior sittings. Here lies an example of how music matures over time, like well-aged wine—fortifying its depth and resonance with every subsequent encounter. As for any music enthusiast seeking tunes layered richly with genuine emotions, historical nods and contemporary relevance - anchored by experienced musicianship - look no further than Nigel Brown’s "Here Comes The Truth." It's more than an album; it's witnessing an artisan at work. And trust me when I say this; it makes for incredibly compelling viewing! Follow Nigel Brown on Website, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.

[sweetsmellosuccess]

TIFF 2022: Day 7

Films: 4 Best Film Of The Day: Sanctuary

Sanctuary: In a festival that has featured more than one failed play-to-film adaptation, including The Whale, and Roost, Zachary Wigon and his extraordinary cast and crew have crafted a two-person, one-location romantic zinger that feels perfectly designed for the screen. One key in such a production is to make each of the remaining elements as impeccable as possible. The cinematography, from Ludovica Isidori, is gorgeous and inventive (the opening shot hangs upside down, crawling up the arm of its character until we reach their face) with a smoothly engaging style of storytelling; the script, from Micah Bloomberg, is sharp and salty as a pretzel rod; and the soundtrack, from composer Ariel Marx, ranging from atonal blurts, to driving low-end strings, carries us along. The plot, such as it is, revolves around the relationship dynamics between Hal (Christopher Abbott), the young, newly made scion of his late father’s hotel empire, and Rebecca (Margaret Qualley), his extremely high-end dominatrix, as they play what Hal believes to be their “final game,” in which the pair perform a interdynamic sexual role-playing scenario, strictly following the script he devised before the proceedings. On this particular night, however, as Hal is about to be accepted by the board to be the new CEO, he feels the need to discontinue their fruitful partnership, a notion to which Rebecca, quick as a whip, and smarter than a cat-o-nine tails, doesn’t take kindly. What follows is a variation of one of their games, in which the power dynamic is completely upended back and forth, leaving the pair with a sense of each other that goes far beyond their usual sexual shenanigans. It might sound dull, yet another Covid-era drama where you can feel every bit of the restraints put on it, but, instead it feels so organic, you completely forget the constraints of the production. 

Falcon Lake: Montreal director’s Charlotte Le Bon’s debut feature, which she co-wrote, begins with the image of a body lying face down in the water of a wooded lake. It hovers there a few long beats, enough time to question the genre of what we’re watching, just before the hitherto motionless figure suddenly raises up and swims gently back to shore. It’s the kind of feint the film returns to over and over in the course of its narrative arc, suggesting we shouldn’t feel altogether comfortable, even if it plays like a sweetly contentious coming-of-age story. Bastien (Joseph Engel), a French kid (“13-turning-14”), arrives at a rustic vacation house in Quebec with his family in order to spend several weeks at the house along with his mother’s good friend, and her daughter, Chloe (Sara Montpetit), a pretty 16-year-old, filled with odd facts (‘when you drown, you get to experience nirvana’) and various other ghosty reveries. It’s not long before the two become friends, she encourages him to pal around with her as she hangs out with older kids, drinking and smoking, a situation Bastien seems perfectly happy with, if at some remove. As much as it sounds like a horny teen anthem, Le Bon is searching for deeper stuff for her characters: With all the potentially sensual situations they get into, including taking a bath together (with swimsuits), and lying across one another at night in her bed, neither one of them seems particularly interested in pushing the boundaries of what they feel. There is no rush, in other words. As the summer progresses, and they spend more of their time together, it is indeed the rarest of teen romances that’s actually rooted deeper in friendship than lust. It’s a carefully crafted film, as well, laying the groundwork for its closing beat such that we can’t say we weren’t warned. I’m not entirely sure it works  —  for all the foreshadowing and portent, it still somehow feels more of a reach than it should, and might have been better off more enigmatic  —  but so much of the film is successfully built around its young leads (both very good), and their evolving relationship, the ending doesn’t doom the entire project. 

Moonage Daydream: Reportedly, director Brett Morgan wanted to avoid a “wikipedia” style doc about David Bowie. Consider this mission accomplished: In lieu of chronological career highlights and historic background, Morgan has taken his unprecedented access to the Bowie archives and crafted a rollicking, impressionistic film that avoids hagiographic cliches, and instead gives us a wide sampling of the many thousands of hours of footage of Bowie in his artistic element. A renaissance man at heart, Bowie’s restless nature led him to challenge himself across the artistic spectrum: As one interviewer puts it, by the time he was 33, he had already made 17 albums, numerous gallery shows for his paintings, two feature films, and a stint on Broadway (as John Merrick in “The Elephant Man”). He is best known for his music, of course, and Morgan samples many a live recording to bring the audience some of what they might come to expect (a range of songs from “Ziggy Stardust,” of course, but also some deeper cuts off of his Berlin period, and a tune or two from his more recent catalog), but this isn’t some concert film with bits and pieces of other ephemera jammed between the hits. In a roundabout way, it covers a fair amount of his musical output over the years, including the regrettable “Let’s Dance” phase (an obvious selling out to which Bowie responds by saying he would never begrudge an artist growing their audience  —  but, later, seems to suggest making such a bland pop album, and its resulting popularity, cast him in a sort of artistic prison of his own making), but also includes snippets of his work on stage, screen, in performance art, and his own video creations (the film makes pretty clear there weren’t many mediums Bowie didn’t try his hand at). It keeps his personal life, with the exception of his marriage to Iman, completely out of it  —  you wouldn’t know he had been married before and had children  — a decision, one guesses, readily agreed to by the Bowie estate, which allowed Morgan such unfettered access. It doesn’t question his choices, or provide much in the way of context of his work (the heavy drug use in Berlin never seems to come up), but it does provide Bowie-lovers with plenty to relish. 

The Fabelmans: The film that begs the question, what’s the point of making an autobiographical film about your troubled childhood if you aren’t the least bit interested in investigating the honest emotional truth behind it? Steven Spielberg’s film, which premiered on Saturday night to a mostly adoring critical throng, covers the basics of his growing up, with most of the already accepted canon about him: At an early age, he became besotted with movies after his parents took him to The Greatest Story Ever Told; his father (in the film played by Paul Dano), a brilliant engineer and a pioneer of computer design, moved the family around a bit, spending time in New Jersey and Phoenix, before settling in California; his mother (Michelle Williams), a flamboyant musician, was in love with her husband’s best friend (Seth Rogen), and eventually, his parents split up to accommodate her. But all the while, young Spielberg (played as an older teen by Gabriel LaBelle) is making movies, dreaming of the day he can get behind a camera in Hollywood. As penned by Spielberg and frequent collaborator Tony Kushner, the story is reduced to so much shtick, a slick, surfacey retelling of the myth, as if crafting a superhero origin story of his own. There are good moments sprinkled throughout, and Dano, for his part, carries the role with solemn dignity and understatement (in direct contrast to the mawkish Williams, whose big presentation and overemoting feel from a different movie altogether). You can feel Spielberg struggle to make sure everyone is treated fairly  —  the film takes great pains not to pin the blame of the break-up on anyone, and tries to show how everyone was actually okay after it happened  —  but, then, if the divorce was so even-handed and well-received, why bother making a film about it in the first place? Releasing in November, and doubtless a frontrunner for a Best Picture nomination, Spielberg has actually gone and created a film that seems like a huge part of the problem with these premanufactured sorts of awards-coaxing fare: By playing it nothing but safe, and shutting down any expression of actual grief, longing, or disappointment, he proves the film is little better than a pantomime, a magic show to fool the rubes into thinking they have any better inkling of his inner workings than they did before they saw it. 

Wherein the author contemplates this year’s offerings and the past decade of covering this fabulous film festival, as he’s poised to embark on a new career path that will more than likely involve him standing up in front of a group of sullen teens, espousing the glories of the Russian masters, rather than taking in a beatific week of international cinema in the early days of September. 

[pippenpaddlopsicopolisthethird]

That person might not have said top ten but I would like to see the other five underrated animes 👀

(First post) I’LL KEEP ‘EM COMING, I LIVE FOR RECOMMENDING ANIME. I keep changing my mind on which ones to include because there’s so much good shit out there.

By the way, all of the recommendations in this list AND the last one are 26 episodes or less and tell a complete story. No cliffhangers, no “finish the manga to see the finale”, no “where’s the rest of it???” endings. That’s why, for now, Stars Align and Princess Jellyfish still get stuck with the honorable mentions even though what’s been made for both of them is incredible.

1. The Tatami Galaxy (Drama, Introspective)

The director behind Ping Pong the Animation and the original author behind Eccentric Family join forces to make Tatami Galaxy, which capitalizes on the best strengths of both shows. The protagonist is a lonely college student facing the prospect of graduating after having thoroughly wasted his college years. He bemoans how circumstances outside of his control, from conniving fake-friends to selfish and shallow extras, have conspired to ruin what should have been a “rose-colored campus life”, and wishes he could do it over again so he can get it right.

So he does, with the show using avant-garde animation and abstract storytelling to explore all of his threads of what-ifs. The plotlines seem separate but weave together and subtly build on each other, culminating to a finale that explores the meaning of relationships and who you are in the absence of outside forces that can define you. It’s heartfelt, funny, raunchy, and deep, and perfectly encapsulates the existential dread of being in college. I watched it for the first time when I was about to finish undergrad and it hit like an emotional freight train, then I rewatched it during quarantine and it hit like a truck. This is one of my top favorite anime of all time.

2. Re:Creators (Fantasy, action)

Most of the anime I’ve put on these lists get their spots for being deep, nuanced, and delicately crafted. This is not one of them. But, by god, is it one of the most over-the-top fun shows I’ve ever seen. Re:Creators is a rare reverse-isekai. Fictional characters from popular anime, games, and manga suddenly start turning up in the real world, instructed to “find your Creator and reshape the world you came from”. The soundtrack by Hiroyuki Sawano is bar-none one of the hypest things out there; seriously, just listen to Layers, the song for a character from a grimdark everyone-dies series begging her author to tell her why.

The characters in this show are so fun to watch bounce off each other, even if they’re not as “three dimensional” as others. Magical girls fight Stand users, mechs face down scifi-noir detectives, Lawful Good Paladins go toe-to-toe with Chaotic Evil light novel villains.  But by including the artists who imagined these characters as characters themselves, it also has a lot to say about the creative process, the reasons people create, and the relationship between an artist and their work. Between the high-octane fight scenes, there’s a surprisingly human and genuine throughline.

3. Sora no Woto (Slice of life, music, post-apocalyptic)

This show is another of my favorite examples of worldbuilding done right. A young girl joins the army as a bugler because it’s one of the only ways she can learn to play music. The episode plots focus on how she and her tiny regiment of young women stationed at a small town in the middle of nowhere deal with day-to-day troubles, while the details of the world around them slowly fill and round out the picture of a broken society where people still just... live. They still create myths, they still have festivals, they still blow glass and tell ghost stories and make art. The plots seem inconsequential, until the world built into the background becomes too prominent to ignore. The background art and music is some of the most gorgeous I’ve seen. It’s part of a genre I’ve been calling “soft apocalypse” and it’s been one of my favorites for years.

BONUS MENTION: Girl’s Last Tour (Slice of life, post-apocalyptic)

Yes, I’m cheating, but listen. Girl’s Last Tour fits perfectly into the canon narrative provided by Sora no Woto, just set in the far future, a few apocalypses later. It’s got less of a main plot, because there’s almost nothing of society left, just two girls wandering together through an abandoned world. It’s soft, introspective, and bittersweet, showing how humanity is still humanity no matter how few people are left. Despite having nothing about their productions in common, it’s the perfect spiritual successor to Sora no Woto and they deserve to be recommended in the same spot.

4. Tamako Market (+ the movie) (Romance, slice-of-life)

This show is the platonic ideal of a soft, heartwarming, sweet-as-sugar, slice-of-life romance. It follows the daily life of Tamako, a high school girl who lives above a family-owned mochi shop in a shopping center, who is followed around by a talking bird trying to find a bride for his prince in a far-off land. But really the show isn’t about the bird. The show is about love in all its forms. The love that the other families in the shopping center have for Tamako, the love that she and her friends have for each other, the love they have for the activities they’re passionate about, the love you feel when someone makes you a cup of coffee, fated love, childhood crushes, family love.

Something about this show that also stands out is how gently and naturally it incorporates some of the best queer representation I’ve ever seen in anime. One of the shop owners is a kind and soft-spoken trans woman, who is never the butt of a joke, never questioned, never treated as different, loved all the same. One of Tamako’s friends is gay, and her crush on Tamako is treated with as much respect and care as every other moment in the show. This series never makes you flinch for fear of “representation” that turns sour. It’s the epitome of a feel-good show.

5. ACCA 13-Territory Inspection Department (Political, mystery, drama)

Yes, I keep saving my favorites for last on these lists. I can’t describe this show as anything but the perfectly written plot. As a rule, I don’t like political dramas, and this is one of my favorite anime of all time. It’s set in a fictional country, where 13 regions all exist relatively independently under one collective monarchical ruler, and follows Jean, an agent of the independent Inspection Department, which acts as a check and balance to each power. The series begins with Jean being assigned a full review of each territory while the powers-that-be field whispers of a coup. This show masters foreshadowing, intrigue, escalation, and mystery. The stakes build and overlap on scales from intensely personal to national. The pacing is amazing, keeping tension balanced with plot twists that answer more questions than they ask.

Plus, it’s got one of the most visually appealing and stylized openings out there. I realize that political drama isn’t exactly escapism right now, but believe me, this series is worth it.

[p0cketw0tch]

The Affection of Vampires

They came for us one day, fifteen humans, all strangers, all taken to play in their annual “family game night”

We would play their games-some competitive, some cooperative-and then, at dawn, we would be free to go home, never to be bothered by any of their kind again. 

Those that survived at least.

It wasn’t even malicious, the deaths and maiming. Some were simply uncaring casualties of the games, some accidents. They were strong and fast and they simply did not care enough to play carefully with their new toys.

The whole thing was almost farcical, a parody of gore and those games played at company picnics. Activities put together with supernatural powers and crafts bought from the dollar store. There was nothing elegant or mysterious about these vampires, they were more like sociopathic children, squabbling and goofing around. Viewed from the outside, as a TV show or a movie, the whole thing might have been a comedy.

It wasn’t funny from the inside

I’m not sure what prompted me to talk to Marie. Maybe it was rash curiosity, maybe  it was desperate attempt at integrating myself to one of our captors. They were happier when we forced smiles and pretended to have fun.

She seemed a bit sadder than the other three. Lonely, even. Nikolai swanned about, delighting in showing off in front of his temporary human pets and Pierre and Ana were wrapped up in each other. Marie was quiet and that made her almost approachable.

I've always been good at bonding with new people. Between games and bodies I talked to her like she was someone I wanted to get to know, and slowly she opened up. We spoke of our favorite books, of art, of dreams and fears. We both liked comics and sci-fi. She liked to paint and I liked to sketch. She worried she'd never find a bond like Pierre and Ana had, and I admitted that sometimes I wondered if I felt love the same way as other people. Under different circumstances, I would have actually liked her, would have wanted to be friends.

Beneath the horror and fear, I think I did like her. The human mind is bendy that way.

There were eight of us left alive by the time the sky began to lighten. Marie came up to me and took my hand, smiling brighter than I'd ever seen. Nikolai had an announcement, she said, and she tugged me gently over to the group.

Nikolai was smiling broadly, puffing his chest as he floated above a makeshift cardboard pulpit. This had been the best family game night they had had in decades, he said. Traditionally, a new group of humans was chosen each time, fresh blood, as it were. But it would be a shame to lose such a delightful group as us. We would be 'invited' again next year, along with the new faces chosen to fill out our numbers. And perhaps, he added, casting an indulgent look at Marie and I. Some of us could even spend time together before then.

What could we do but choke back sobs and feign enthusiasm? They said we could go back home, but any one of them could slaughter us all in a tantrum if they thought we didn't return their regard. I turned to Marie, still holding my hand, and saw both joy and anxious hope in her oddly bright eyes. There was no backing out. I smiled back with as much sincerity as I could muster.

The affection of vampires is a dangerous thing.

This was a dream I had two nights ago. As a piece of original fiction, its rather cliche. As a dream, it’s surprisingly narratively coherent (although I’ve always had rather vivid and cohesive dreams). I woke up afterwards with the line “the affection of vampires is a dangerous thing” on my lips and ABBA’s Lay All Your Love On Me playing in my head. It seemed rather Halloween appropriate, so I thought I’d type it up

[septembersghost]

this is saved in my drafts from December 15, it was a section of a message to @alaynestone that I intended to polish up and write in a more cohesive way, but I never actually did that, and finding it again just made me decide to post it in its (mostly) raw form.

by now, I've written stray thoughts on this subject and the way I knit it to the Winchesters often, so it's not exactly a new topic here, but I'd been thinking a lot about folklore, the nature of what that is and how those stories continue on, ever since the album came out (a year ago now!), but also as its own concept, also because of reflecting so much on Supernatural before it came to an end. how culture and time crafts and shapes that, what we wrap ourselves up in narratively.

there is a particular power to ghost stories. it isn't only about the fright, the haunting or the presence, the danger of it, it's about our desires, our hope that there is something which remains. even if that something is a terror, is there a consolation in perceiving it, holding onto it, recognizing and understanding that it's there? ghost stories aren't about the dead, but rather what keeps death from its claim. we tell them, in many ways, to remember. if there is a spiritual realm beyond the earthly one, we seek it out, and part of the way we do that has always been storytelling. a ghost is a wish.

folklore was once considered "lowbrow" - something that extended from the "common" people, informal, rural, the fringes of proper society. but its study and preservation reveals so much about those people, their culture, their customs and beliefs, their interconnectedness, the losses and victories that look small on the outside but leave lasting ripples. folklore is a breathing thing, not an artifact, because it is constantly being given life anew. it moves across generations, perhaps gently reshaped with time, but the need for it remains the same. folklore is about humanity.

Supernatural is folklore in a way I don't think genre fiction (certainly on television) has ever attempted, not in the same sense, not in the prism of archetypes that the Winchesters and the stories they followed represented. maybe this is bias because Supernatural was really what got me to watch every other genre show I’ve watched - there are so many, but none of them entirely compare to me? I appreciate and enjoy them, but it’s not the same - the other shows are fun and absolutely had impacts on me, but they never mattered as much. that's likely the indelible power of SPN coming first in my life, in 2005 - things like Buffy and The X-Files existed before and were undeniably influential on the crafting of SPN, but they came into my consciousness later (BTVS in 2008/2009, The X-Files in 2015, when SPN had been a part of my life for an entire decade) - but it was also because the boys felt like they WERE the lore to me, more so than the monsters they hunted, they were the legend that was being woven, being passed by word of mouth from one tale to the next. the places changed, but they carried through. the path wound forward and we followed them along it. neon motel signs and rolling fields, flashlight beams falling across a tombstone, rings of salt, sparks from a match - that was evanescent. they left it behind them each time, but they were the constant.

my heart was planted with those boys in their car on the open road, and the specific yearning and eeriness and complexity, from the pilot. maybe it was timing and what I was going through, that I needed something that much and it hit a particular place with grief and longing themes to me that I needed to have, I don’t know. there are so many complex reasons why I latched onto it, so many reasons why it was Dean (which I've definitely addressed many times, in countless ways), so many reasons why it was Sam and Dean together as integral pieces.

I don’t go back to episodes of others shows, even ones I like rewatching, to feel...what I feel with Dean specifically, and with Sam and Dean and all they encompass. people knew this about me (family, some friends that I don’t have contact with anymore) way back in 2005/06/07, and thought it was strange because of the way my “femininity” and emotionality/sensitivity have always been viewed (and devalued lol), because they saw the surface image of two hot guys fighting monsters and didn’t get it. I was already long obsessed with spookiness and Romanticism and gothic horror and deconstructions of heroic characters, but how to explain I saw all those things in the show? the folklore is such a huge part of it. there’s a unique sense of passing stories (and their baggage, the generational trauma and the inextricable bonds of light) on. a unique sense of bereftness, which doesn’t sound like it should be comforting, but that had such an effect on me. the isolation, the shadowy spaces, the visible breath, the headlights in the night, and these two boys filling up all its edges. the aesthetics, the symbolism. the questions about faith and reason and meaning. maybe it’s because I lived in constant fear and isolation when it started too, before I adjusted to that. maybe it’s because I’ve thought of myself as a ghost for so long. whatever the reason, that was all so formative. (hence why seeing it desecrated was more than a “I’m mad this fictional thing I like got ruined and was sad at the end,” and was more a “they violated something personally dear to me and murdered someone I love most in front of my eyes” kind of reaction).

nothing will ever be quite like it again, because nothing else is going to explore loss and connection, trauma and adriftness, love and desperate need, vengeance laced with empathy, violence succumbing to tenderness, the way they did. imperfect, silly and camp at times, problematic at others, sure, but that's not the point. it was not prestige™ television because it wasn't supposed to be, and there's a real pretentiousness surrounding that which bothers me, that insinuates that the practice of episodic television slowly building its pieces is lesser, when it's simply different, much like comparisons of "scholarly" literature to folklore in the past. the medium of television may be the same, but the method isn't and shouldn't have to be, if we think of the vast array and mosaic of how any form of storytelling is presented.

what made them fascinating and worthwhile was the soul of it. genre shows, especially monster-of-the-week shows where we get that rich development and the luxury of time with the characters, are fading away completely. keeping things as tight as possible actually reduces the imaginative aspects, compresses that folklore. they had so much space to exist, to feel lived in and real to us, to walk in our minds in interesting ways. the passion and attachment that came with them is an almost primal thing, because it comes from such a human place. the spinning of stories.

they felt like those whispers in the night, to tell by firelight, glinting in the dark. something with fear and love in it, both a dire warning and a protective amulet to hold onto. they are ghosts now, really. they’ll never disappear. they haunt every frame of 327 episodes. they’re ghosts with us too, held to us with that invisible string.

I knew you’d haunt all of my what-ifs..and I knew you’d come back to me - there are lyrics for them everywhere on that album, and I keep giving them double meaning within and without the narrative. (aside, since I wrote this seven months ago, I guess it was inevitable that I would make this post?) passed down like folk songs, the love lasts so long.

I’d rather think of them as ghosts than as gone, and that’s probably not kind of me due to what that means in their world, but they beckon us back in spite of ourselves. when someone tells you a place is haunted, don't go in - but of course we do. we surrender to it. ghost story, love story. same thing, really. both undying. their spirits are too strong to be put to rest or made silent. even as an echo, the heart keeps beating.

[spicykoreantatertots]

Camp Blue Side - Part Two

Pairing: Jung Hoseok x Reader

Genre: Summer Camp AU, Non Idol AU

Rating: 18+ (eventual smut)

Word Count: 3.2k

Warnings: Swearing, angst, (more in future parts)

Summary: Last summer, sparks flew between you and Hoseok. He had an unforgettable smile, and you were putty in his hands. By the end of the summer, promises were made and you shared your phone number. But he never called. This summer, you're back at camp with a vengeance. Ghosted or not, you're ready for some friendly competition. He may be a Camp Blue Side veteran, but you won't back down.

Notes: This fic has been updated and is now part of the Summer of Love Collab! Please join us as we finish summer strong with seven summer themed fics!

Summer of Love Masterlist

Beta Readers: @thesoftsoobin

Banner: @sunshinejunghoseokie​

Camp Blue Side - Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four

~~~~~~~

The staff parking lot is filled with cars and this year’s counselors are celebrating each other’s arrival. Each time a new car pulls up, usually honking loudly, the group cheers. Just about everyone has arrived already, Namjoon is fiddling with his clipboard and pen. Everyone should have been here by now.

Hoseok arrived about ten minutes ago. His beat up old mazda pulled up and you did your best not to look in his direction, only stealing a glance as he exited the car. The only way to describe that man is bright. Neon green shoes, rainbow tye-dye shirt, and his dazzling heart-shaped smile. 

Somehow, he was even more beautiful than you remembered. You had spent the past school year hating him, but now he’s here, in the flesh, and you just want to feel his arms around you. You tore your eyes away from Hoseok, and you felt Seokjin’s hand on your shoulder. It grounded you back in reality.

As the final car, holding Jimin and Jungkook, pulls up, half-hearted cheers ring through the crowd. Not that you aren’t all excited to see Jimin and Jungkook, but no one likes to see an angry Namjoon. 

“Hey! It’s Jimin’s fault, okay? I even got to his place early!” Jungkook jumps out of the car, hands held defensively in front of his body. Jimin, screaming his rebuttal from inside the car, is cut off by Namjoon’s announcement. 

“Now that everyone is finally here, we will give cabin assignments and you can all get settled in before dinner.” Seokjin, standing a good two feet away from Namjoon, produces a clipboard from his backpack and begins listing off the cabin assignments. Two counselors of the same gender identity per cabin. 

Of course, you already know who your cabin mate will be this year. You’ve learned a lot of privileged information by arriving early with Seokjin. 

“Margo! Hey! We’re paired up this year in Cabin 2.” You whisper, not wanting to speak over your friend. 

“Oh hey, that’s awesome! Let’s go!” Margo picks up one of her bags and you reach to grab the other. The two of you walk off to Cabin 2, making casual small talk about the past year away from Camp. 

You were stoked to see a familiar name next to yours on the cabin list. Although you and Margo barely kept up with each other over the summer, you had gotten to know her quite well the year before. She was a first year counselor, and you were only a second year. You knew what it was like to feel alone, so you tried to take her under your wing and show her the ropes. 

She ended up being a great person to talk to about your crush on Hoseok, and well now you have a lot of tea to spill. 

“And he just... never called? Or texted?” Margo asks, eyes wide in disbelief. 

“Nope.” 

“But he’s here now.”

“Yep.”

“And you’re going to be competing against him in team competitions.” 

“Exactly.” You share a devious smile.

“This is going to be an interesting summer, isn’t it?” Your cabin mate asks with a sigh.

“You bet your ass it is.”

~~~~~~~

After Margo got her belongings unpacked and stowed away, the two of you head to the Mess Hall for dinner and to catch up with your fellow counselors. You’d be lying if you said you weren’t nervous to see Hoseok and to have to explain to everyone why the two of you weren’t... together. 

But it appears that Hoseok may already be handling that himself. A group of male counselors are sitting at a table where he is recounting some tale, and they are all listening intently. 

You can’t quite make out what he is saying, but you spot Seokjin sitting at a different table with Yoongi and a young guy you don’t recognize. Must be Yeonjun, the new JC who will be co-leading Team One with Hoseok. You’ll be keeping an eye on him. Seokjin waves you over and Margo follows you. 

“What has he been telling everyone?” You hiss at the guys when you sit. 

“Well...” Seokjin starts and your heart begins to sink. You know that tone.

“He’s got a new girlfriend.” Yoongi says, ripping the bandaid off in one swift motion. It stings. “He’s been bragging about her to all the guys. She’s hot and they met at work, or something like that.” He adds. 

“Ah.” You try to breathe through the feeling of your stomach dropping out, and Margo pats your bag gently. You spent the past year hoping he would call, processing the fact that he wasn’t going to, and burning with righteous fury. And now... you just want to cry. 

But you can’t let anyone see you cry. Especially not here and not now. Hoseok may have hurt you, but you can’t let him know you’re in pain. 

“Alright everyone, while we’re waiting on our dinner, let’s pair up in our activity groups and get to know each other a little better!” Namjoon announces and the room begins to buzz as everyone finds the people they would be working with this summer. 

You look around for Margo’s twin brother, Mack. He is going to be your co-leader for Team Two this year. 

“Hey Y/N!” Mack says, extending his hand for a fist bump. 

“What’s up! You excited to crush Team Two and Team Three this year?” You may be over-enthusing to make sure you don’t seem... sad. 

“Yeah! I’m sure you are too. Especially to beat Hoseok’s team.” Gulp.

“I do love some friendly competition, haha.” You reply dryly. 

“Well aren’t you guys together?”

“Uh...” you pause, color draining from your face.

“Oh god. I’m so sorry. He was talking about some awesome girl he’s been dating. I only caught part of the conversation, I thought he was talking about you.” Mack, looking mortified, tries to explain himself.

“No, it’s okay. He ghosted me. I haven't heard from him since last summer.” You clarify. Mack looks so sorry he mentioned it.

“Well I guess we really do have to beat his team now, don’t we?” He says with a smirk.

While Mack makes some more small talk about the plan for the coming weeks, your eyes scan the room. Everyone is paired off in their little teams. Yoongi is with Xavier, his Music co-leader, Taehyung with his Arts & Crafts co-leader, but his eyes are across the room on the Lead Counselor in Training who is chatting with Namjoon and taking notes on her clipboard. You spot Hoseok all the way on the furthest side of the Mess Hall from you. He’s talking to Yeonjun, facing away from you and that feels intentional. 

When the cook, Heather, steps out of the kitchen with a large sheet pan full of pizza, the counselors cheer. Then they immediately run to get in line, but before they can be served, Heather goes back into the kitchen. 

“How are you doing?” Seokjin asks, lining up behind you.

“Fine, Jin. Just fine.” 

“So, not fine, then?” He quips, laying a hand on your shoulder. 

“He’s gotten ahead of the narrative.” You reply, but he gives you a puzzled look. “He’s already told everyone about a girl and now I just look... pathetic.” 

“You’re not pathetic, Y/N.” Seokjin replies, giving your shoulder a pat. 

Heather returns from the kitchen with a tray of side salads and a tray of desserts, a choice between a sugar cookie and chocolate pudding. 

Unsurprisingly, you can see that Hoseok has secured a spot at the front of the line. Against your will, you watch him closely. He grabs his pizza, two slices, grabs a side salad, and reaches for a pudding cup. Something in your stomach twists, and you just want to get out of there. 

“Hey, where are you going?” Seokjin asks, but you’re already out the door. 

You try to hold back tears as you walk toward your cabin. 

He used to give you his chocolate puddings. Who is he going to give it to now? Why would he pick it up if he doesn’t even like them. 

When you make it back to the cabin, you throw yourself onto your bunk and let the tears flow into the pillow. Seeing Hoseok has been harder than you anticipated. 

~~~~~~~

“Hey, Y/N, you okay?” Margo asks, tiptoeing into the cabin.

“Yeah, you should head back, isn’t everyone still hanging out?” You ask, bring your head up from the pillow. It’s dark outside already.

“Well, no. It’s kind of late. Did you eat anything?” She asks.

“Yeah, I had a protein bar.” You reply, but your stomach growls, as if to say, that wasn’t enough. Margo reaches into her bag and pulls out a package of oreos, holding it in your direction. 

You cave, holding your palm open for a handful of the cookies. Your nearly empty stomach accepts the sweet treat and settles. 

“Did everyone notice I left, they must think I’m so pathetic.” You pout. 

“You wanna know what everyone noticed?” You nod in response to Margo’s question. “Everyone noticed that Hoseok left as soon as he realized you were gone.”

~~~~~~~

CPR training is a vital part of the yearly annual counselor training. Everyone needs to know how to resuscitate and potentially save the lives of the campers. Though it is a very serious topic, it’s hard to take the CPR dummies seriously. The faceless, limbless, lifeless dolls look very much like... blow up dolls. 

“If I hear one more moan out of you guys I will dock your pay!” Namjoon shouts over the chorus of immaturity. Very suddenly, the room goes quiet, “I thought that might get your attention, now Seokjin, please continue with the demonstration.” 

“Yes sir.” Seokjin replies, holding back a smirk.

He begins pumping the inanimate heart to the beat of a song and your eyes wander to Hoseok across the room. He’s giggling and whispering something to Yeonjun. Those boys will be fierce competition. 

It’s something you thought about this morning on your run. As you were jogging on the wooded trail, you realized Mack was right, you have to do everything in your power to take Team One down. The fire of competition will get you through the sadness of Hoseok’s betrayal. And tonight, you’ll get your first shot at beating them in the game of glow in the dark capture the flag.

Standing from his kneeling position, Seokjin asks, “Alright, who is up next?”

~~~~~~~

The sun has set and the teams have been divided for a game of capture the flag. Hoseok ended up on Seokjin’s team, and although you wish you were on your friend’s team, you’re relieved you didn’t end up on Hoseok’s. 

“Okay, Y/N, you’re a runner, I want you and Ryujin to be in charge of trying to get their flag. The rest of us will try to distract their team and protect our flag.” Namjoon orders in the huddle. The huddle breaks and everyone waits for the final ray of sunlight to fall behind the horizon. 

“I’m nervous.” Ryujin whispers to you while you stretch your calves.

“Ah yeah, you probably should be.” You joke. “Listen, all you need to worry about is getting tagged. Just don’t let anyone touch you and do your best to stay hidden. If you get your hands on the flag, just sprint back to our base.”

“You make it sound easy.” She laughs.

Seokjin’s whistle sounds and you take off. Ryujin, poor girl, runs straight for the field between the two bases. A rookie mistake. You, however, have played this game before. You run to the trees on the side of the field to take cover and watch the game unfold. 

It’s hard to see, but you can just make out Ryujin’s form running around the field dodging other bodies. It looks like so far your team is doing a good job of keeping the flag safe. Namjoon tackles a member of the other team and you decide to make a run for the other team’s base while everyone is distracted. 

You can hear your heart beating in your ear as the blood rushes to your legs. You’ve almost run the whole distance of the field behind the trees when you hear something. Suddenly a pair of neon green shoes catches your eyes. Hoseok. 

Holding your breath, you take cover, crouching behind a tree and hope to god that he doesn’t come over here. If he knew it was you, maybe he would spare you both the confrontation. You count to 60, slowly, and when he doesn’t come, you decide to stand up, intending to run for their base in a hail mary attempt to win. 

But you’re cut short. Just a few feet away, Hoseok is standing, waiting. He doesn’t move at first, but after a few breaths, he takes a step, and another. You can finally make out his eyes in the darkness. It’s the first eye contact you’ve made so far.

There are no words shared between you. At this moment your mind is blank. Having your old summer fling within arms reach is overwhelming. You feel the pull to reach out to him. He’s eyes are looking directly into yours and for a moment it looks like he’s going to speak. But he stops himself, his brows furrow for a moment, and then, he runs.

~~~~~~~

After a long week of training, morning runs, avoiding Hoseok, and trying to figure out what happened between you and him during the capture the flag game, you are really looking forward to lake day. A day off from training before final camp preparations take place. The campers will be arriving in just two days. 

You are one of the first ones to show up at the beach after lunch. You wasted no time changing into your bathing suit and slapping on some sunscreen. Jungkook and Jimin, the aquatic leaders, had already arrived as well. 

Other counselors trickle in and you get to watch their interactions. It’s only been a few days, but everyone is already back into the Camp Blue Side swing of things. 

The JCs all tend to head straight for the lake, while the older counselor’s chill on the beach. You’ve opted to sunbathe for a while before cooling off in the lake. You expect Seokjin will take a spot next to you when he arrives. 

The LCT has found a spot on the sand with Yoongi and Taehyung, no surprises there. She’s delicately rubbing sunscreen on Taehyung’s back. When she finishes, Taehyung’s Arts & Crafts co leader calls him over and he puts sunscreen on her back. You’re pretty sure you can see steaming coming out of the LCT’s ears. 

Someone lets out a joyful shout as they run from the edge of the beach all the way down the dock and jump into the lake. Hoseok.

“He really is still a camper at heart, isn’t he?” Seokjin asks as he sets his towel out next to yours. 

“If you mean to say he’s a child, then I can agree with that.” You roll your eyes. He is horsing around in the water with the JCs, no wonder they all look up to him. Yeonjun, his co-leader, is trying to pull his head underwater, but Hoseok isn’t budging. 

He hasn’t changed much and it takes you back to last summer. The campers would climb all over him during lake days, and he would let them. Once the two of you had become... a thing, you would always notice that he didn’t rub in the sunscreen on his nose. It became your responsibility to make sure the lotion was rubbed in all the way. 

“Y/N, Jin! We need one more for volleyball!” Jimin’s invitation brings you back to reality. Seokjin consults you before claiming the spot. You follow him over to the net to watch the game. Hoseok is playing. 

At first, you try not to watch him, but when the game gets going, Hoseok steps up his game. He serves, he sets, he dives, it’s hard not to watch him. You notice, toward the end of the game, that Hoseok has his signature white streak across his nose. He catches you looking, but instead of looking away, you point to your nose. 

Hoseok, still looking at you, misses a ball that lands right next to him, losing the game for his team. 

“Hoseok! What the hell man?” Jimin shouts, frustrated by Hoseok’s lack of attention. 

“Sorry, sorry. I got... distracted.” Hoseok replies, picking up the volleyball. “Round two anyone?”

~~~~~~~

“All right campers, let’s give a big round of applause to Heather for cooking our dinner tonight!” Seokjin announces over the microphone. The children, hyped up on carbs from dinner, cheer loudly for the Camp chef. They all arrived just a few hours ago, descending on camp like a swarm of buzzing bees. 

You’re a bit of a nervous wreck. For some god forsaken reason, you decided that you could volunteer to give a presentation at the camper orientation, and now you’re about to have to do that. Your notecards are organized and you rehearsed your talking points with Margo twice, but it doesn’t feel like enough when there are close to one hundred people in the audience. 

“Okay, now that we’ve gone over the basic camp rules, let’s give it up for Y/N, the Team Two leader who will be discussing the team games!” Seokjin says cheerfully, stepping off the stage and handing the microphone over to you. This is it. 

“Hey everyone! Who’s excited for the team games this year?” You ask, a big smile across your face. Of course everyone, counselor’s included, cheer loudly. 

“Yeah, that's great to hear. I am also very excited. As you can tell I took a lot of notes to make sure I give you all the important info.” You joke, but there’s only a few scattered laughs. You have to tuck the microphone into your arm awkwardly so you can flip your note card over to find the right page.

“Oh well they’re out of order, so I guess...” You look out into the crowd of expectant faces. Some of the campers are already not paying attention, you’ve lost them. As always, Hoseok catches your eye. He can see you’re floundering already, and he smirks. He fucking smirks. “I’ll have to wing it.” You finish your thought and toss the notecards to the side.

You manage to get through it, even working a few jokes in here and there. And it seems like the kids are really pumped for the team activities and the competition. 

“Okay, I think next up is Jungkook with some information about water activities and lake day!” The kids cheer, the girls squeal, all too excited for Jungkook to be on stage. 

“Hey, that was pretty good Y/N!” Seokjin whispers as you step back down from the stage.

“You missed a few talking points though-” Namjoon’s critique is cut short.

“You were GREAT!” Seokjin reaffirms. 

~~~~~~~

Hushed whispers can be heard in the cabin, but it’s the first night and you’re not going to try to enforce lights out. You would probably be struggling to fall asleep either way. 

Your interactions with Hoseok thus far have been quite puzzling. He has been confusing, rude, and annoying, but what does it mean? You keep thinking about the look in his eye that night during capture the flag. You could feel a spark between you, but he almost looked pained. But he’s the one who caused your pain. 

Maybe he’s just trying to get under your skin to make sure his team wins. Well tomorrow is day one of camp, and you’ll be damned if you let him win.

~~~~~~~​

[yegarts]

“I Am YEG Arts” Series: Kristi Hansen

Photo credit: Ryan Parker Photography

Kristi Hansen. If the name sounds familiar, it’s for good reason. She’s an actor, creator, and advocate for inclusivity who’s disrupting traditional leadership models to create opportunities for equity-seeking communities. Impressed? So was the Edmonton Artists’ Trust Fund committee, who recently recognized her as one of their 2020 award recipients. But that’s not the only place you might know her from. If you’re lucky, you saw her in The Silver Arrow or Woody—her one-woman show that compares and contrasts her life as an amputee to other amputees (real and imagined) around the world. But as impressive as what she does may be, her greatest accolade is who she is. A person unafraid to look deeper, feel deeper, question deeper, and present truths that aren’t always put forward.

Actor, teacher, co-conspirator, and self-proclaimed brat in the making—this week’s “I Am YEG Arts” story belongs to Kristi Hansen.

Of all the titles used to describe you and what you do, which do you use to describe yourself? Is there one you hope to add?

I have started to refer to myself as a “co-conspirator” when entering an art practice. I am always hungry for a collective process and am constantly looking for how each artistic process can create an ensemble of co-conspirators who develop a language and community agreement for how we want to work. I am drawn to other co-conspirators who are “brats” (artists who are constantly finding ways to gently subvert and find new pathways in the process). It is my greatest aspiration to be a brat. ; )

What was it about the arts that made you feel it could be your community?

I had a sneaky feeling when venturing into my life as an artist that as someone who never really had a community growing up, the arts could be my place where people weren’t afraid to look deeper, feel deeper, question deeper, and present the truths that weren’t always being put forward.

What keeps you choosing Edmonton as your place to live and work?

I came to Edmonton in 1999 to study at the Grant MacEwan Theatre Arts program without any real sense of how special a place Edmonton is. I didn’t imagine myself still being here 22 years later, and yet the more places I work outside of Edmonton, the more I can’t imagine myself calling anywhere else home. After Grant MacEwan, I went to the University of Alberta’s BFA Acting program and continued to meet folks within the Edmonton theatre and arts community who inspired me with their DIY punk attitudes. I’ve always been attracted to folks who make their own paths, and Edmonton artists seemed ripe with that resilience and subversion. I always felt like transformation, curiosity, and FUN were at the center of so much of the work in YEG. I got hitched to a really cool Edmonton artist (Sheldon Elter), I bought a very affordable house in the Alberta Avenue neighbourhood (which I love), I can bike downtown in seven  minutes, I have a great dog, and I get to work with so many different companies in so many different artistic mediums. I am truly #LivingTheDream.

Photo credit: Ryan Parker Photography

More people are wanting to build inclusive communities and spaces that don’t exist—like what you did with The Maggie Tree. Tell us about that experience and the first steps you took to make it happen.

Inspired by the Edmonton “If you are looking for an opportunity, create it yourself!” creation method I’d seen in so many other Edmonton artists and art companies, my friend Vanessa Sabourin and I saw a need for more women theatre artists to work and create together and to be IN CHARGE of their own productions and careers. We started an ad-hoc women’s theatre company, The Maggie Tree, in 2007. We had no money, but we had a community of supporters: Azimuth Theatre had a small space at the time that they rented to us for a cut of our box office. Vanessa’s dad built the set for us. Edmonton art superstars Amber Borotsik and Lori Gawryluik joined us in the process. Lori let us use the Artery (which she was running at the time) for a fundraiser. Then we did a run of a show. People came. And then we were a theatre company. It grew from there.

We learned how to write grants. We learned and continue to learn how feminism is intersectional and how to be inclusive and welcoming to gender diverse humans and other equity-seeking communities in our practice of what we want our inclusive, feminist theatre company to be. I often get to sit down with young artists who want to know “how to do it.” Honestly:

1. Find a thing you want to do.

2. Find a place where you can do it.

3. Commit to dates.

That’s the foundation. Once you have those three things, you’re off to the races. Not to simplify the other producing aspects of getting something together (all that grant writing, contract building, budgeting, policy creation, and marketing stuff is hard), but I honestly find once I have the three basics decided, I am flying.

Is there a particular piece of feedback you lean on when days are tough?

I’ve had the good fortune of working with many amazing artists who have given me GREAT advice/feedback over the years, but I want to offer a mantra that I came up with years ago (Ha! How hilariously self-congratulatory of me, but it’s honestly my go-to) that serves me well any time I enter a new artistic process: We are going to try some things: Some of them will work, some of them will not, and we are going to keep trying. This mantra keeps me going on the tough days, and keeps me brave when I want to retreat into the safety of what is already known and maybe not as interesting.

Tell us about the role funding and awards have played in your career. What doors do they open?

I first started writing grants for The Maggie Tree as an individual artist to fund our productions. I learned the art of grant writing from Vanessa Sabourin, Steve Pirot, Murray Utas, and Vern Thiessen: All brilliant artist and producers who know how to weave an undeniable narrative and craft a beautifully specific budget. The Maggie Tree started being successful in our asks for Edmonton Arts Council, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and Canada Council for the Arts grants. This enabled us to engage more and more artists in our projects and to start moving into being able to offer equity contracts for artists and to create viable work opportunities for Edmonton artists. These grants allowed me to advance myself as an artist and producer and to be able to PAY myself for the art I was creating and/or producing. I’ve been lucky enough to receive a few awards in my career that have helped to launch my profile as an artist locally, provincially, and nationally, and I am grateful to now be known inside and outside of Edmonton artist circles.

Grants and awards offer artists the opportunity to create their own opportunities and to expand their profile so OTHER folks can offer them opportunities, as well. Before you know it there’s a career in the arts in front of you.

What excites you most about the YEG arts scene right now?

I am constantly inspired by the younger generations of YEG artists coming up. I am here for the push for a kinder, more inclusive, more transparent workplaces (cuz let’s face it: Art is WORK, and as much as we love our art, we are still workers). I am excited for new art spaces: CO*LAB, the new Roxy… I’m also pretty hyped for new performance technologies being created right here in YEG with Moment Discovery.

Photo credit: Ryan Parker Photography

Tell us about your workshops and commitment to being an educator/mentor. What do you hope people will take away?

I am pretty into the idea of educating/mentoring folks by being led by them and the artist they are. I’m not interested in people changing themselves into what they think is marketable or palatable for whoever their “audience” is. I want them to be the best and most authentic THEM they can be in their work. When I work with a group of humans, I am most interested in ensemble training and dismantling hierarchy in groups. I return to the idea of the co-conspirator and the brats: How can we work together? What agreements need to be made in order for us to do our best work together? What are the rules? And when do we know it’s time to break the rules (cue the brat)?

I had the good fortune of many wonderful mentors who taught me so many important lessons and also taught me things that no longer serve me. I hope that for any of the folks I have helped mentor that they take anything that I pass on that is useful and let go of anything that is not or that no longer serves them in their practice. We are all on our own artistic journeys, but it is as a community—or ensemble—that we grow and move forward. Ultimately, we need each other.

You’ve talked about the importance of artists generating opportunities for other artists. Can you speak to that a little more?

I truly believe this is the way it works. When you care for your community, the community cares for you and those you keep bringing into the circle. I also think it’s important to nudge people when you see opportunities that could be good for them. Let them know you’re thinking of them. They may not have the confidence to apply on their own, but that little push can go a long way. There is nothing more encouraging as an artist than to know that someone else believes in you and your work.

Who’s someone inspiring you right now?

I’m pretty inspired by Carly Neis, Cynthia Jimenez-Hicks, and Cameron Kneteman (along with producer Mac Brock) as they continue to workshop and produce their new TYA play focusing on disability, Tune to A. They are being giant brats and being kind all over the place on this one, and I couldn’t be more proud of the accessible practice model they are building in their process.

Describe your perfect day in Edmonton. How do you spend it?

Breakfast on my patio in Alberta Avenue, putzing in my garden, taking the dog on a bike ride through Dawson Park, a piece of cheesecake from Otto, seeing a show (art show, theatre show, music show), then finishing the night off with a beer and burger from the Next Act. I’m a simple creature, really. ; )

Want more YEG Arts Stories? We’ll be sharing them here all year and on social media using the hashtag #IamYegArts. Follow along!

Click here to learn more about Kristi Hansen, her workshops, and upcoming projects.

About Kristi Hansen

Kristi Hansen is a disabled theatre artist who has called Edmonton home for the past 22 years. Kristi trained as an actor at Grant MacEwan’s Theatre Arts Program from 1999-2001, and then at the University of Alberta’s Bachelor of Fine Arts Acting Program from 2001-2004.  Kristi is the co-founder and co-Artistic Director of The Maggie Tree and the former co-Artistic Producer of Azimuth Theatre in Edmonton, AB.

Acting credits include Candide (Edmonton Opera); The Silver Arrow, A Christmas Carol, and Alice Through the Looking Glass (Citadel Theatre); The Invisible: Agents of Ungentlemanly Warfare (Catalyst Theatre); Mr. Burns: a post-electric Play (You are Here Theatre/Blarney Productions); The Bad Seed, The Jazz Mother, Pith!, The Scent of Compulsion, and The Ambassador’s Wives (Teatro la Quindicina); The Hollow (Vertigo Theatre); Small Mouth Sounds, 10 out of 12, and Passion Play (Wild Side Productions); Irma Voth (Theatre Network); Christina/Philippe (Northern Light Theatre); The Sound of Music (National Arts Centre); Comedy of Errors, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet and Love’s Labour’s Lost (Freewill Players); The Snow Queen and Apocalypse Prairie (Azimuth Theatre); The Supine Cobbler, Monstrosities, Age of Arousal, Hroses: An Affront to Reason, Folie à Deux, and Hunger Striking (The Maggie Tree). Her one-woman show, Woody, explores the themes of privilege and disability in a reflection of her life as a disabled human living in North America in contrast with other amputees (real and imagined) around the world.