#has someone written this? i don't think so... maybe i will...

[yourlocalmud]

The first time you erased someone, it was an accident.

You were ten. Your babysitter—Lori—was yelling at your brother for spilling grape juice on the rug. You didn’t mean it, not really, but your voice had cracked like glass when you whispered, I wish you never existed.

And just like that, Lori vanished mid-sentence. Your brother blinked, confused. He was still holding the juice box, but the rug was clean. The scream on your tongue died unheard.

No one remembered her. Not your parents. Not the neighbors. Her room in your memory was full of clothes and noise. In reality, it was a dusty storage closet.

That night, you learned to keep your wishes silent.

They call your kind anomalies. You’ve heard the government’s coded terms. “Event Nullifiers.” “Causal Threat Entities.” They’ve been looking for you since you were seventeen and wiped your abusive teacher from time. Your classmates came to school crying, confused why they’d all had nightmares of a voice they couldn’t place.

There’s a woman now—Agent Moss—who’s made you her obsession. You watch her chase your phantom across redacted case files, blurred CCTV images, and “incident reports” that make bureaucrats nervous. You admire her focus, in a way.

But she’s already failed. Hundreds of times over.

She doesn't remember that you erased her husband last year.

It’s not murder, you tell yourself. Not really. Not if the world adjusts. If timelines snap shut like they were never open. No one mourns the ones who never were.

They just live better without them.

Right?

Still… you keep a notebook. For the ones you regret. A kind of reverse memorial. It’s dog-eared and messy, tucked into your coat with names written in fading ink:

Eliza Moran, age 9. The bully who made you cry.

Randy Feld, college roommate. Loud, cruel, thought he was hilarious.

Devin M., a mistake. You were angry. He didn’t deserve to vanish.

Lori. The first.

You’re hiding in a train station now—Grand Central, late night, mostly empty. You stand near the coffee stand, watching the same man buy a decaf latte three nights in a row. He hums when he pours in the sugar. You find that oddly beautiful.

Agent Moss is closer than ever. You can feel her nearby, her presence like a migraine pressing against your brainstem. She’s been upgraded to Division 9 Clearance. You’ve read her file. She has a pacemaker now—stress-related heart failure.

You feel guilty.

You could end her chase. With a whisper. With a breath.

But… something stays your hand.

Maybe it’s loneliness.

Your power doesn’t protect you from grief. You erased your mother’s cancer but couldn’t save her. Her body lived longer, but her spirit—fragile, unraveling—left anyway. You tried erasing her death. But she just… died differently. So you let it be.

Some things aren’t meant to be rewritten.

Still, they don’t understand that. The government thinks you're a bomb waiting to go off. Moss believes she can stop you before the fuse runs dry.

You almost wish she could.

The announcement blares: Final train to Poughkeepsie. You turn away from the board.

And there she is.

Agent Moss. Lean, gray-haired, her coat tight at the seams. Gun tucked away. Her eyes scan the crowd, and land—right—on—you.

You brace for it. The chase. The order. The scream.

But she says:

"Tell me what my husband's name was."

Your heart skips.

She remembers.

You sit across from her in the station’s quietest corner. There’s no one nearby. Just you, and her, and the sound of things unraveling.

“You brought him back once,” she says softly. “Didn’t you?”

“Yes,” you whisper.

"And then you took him again?"

You nod.

She doesn't cry. “Why?”

You don't lie. “Because he hit you.”

She flinches.

“I wanted to spare you the choice,” you add.

Agent Moss stares at you like you're the puzzle she’ll never solve. “You think you’re God.”

“No,” you say. “God left someone like me behind.”

She looks down. Her fingers twitch like they want to reach for her weapon, or maybe for your throat. But instead, she asks:

"Do I still miss him?"

You answer gently: "You miss the version of him that never existed."

She doesn't turn you in that night.

She lets you go.

And you disappear again—another ghost, another whisper.

But before you leave, you tuck your notebook behind the station’s old vending machine. Open to the first page. Lori’s name circled in ink. A confession. A warning. A record.

Maybe someone will find it.

Maybe someone already has.

You have the power to erase anyone from existence and restore time as if they had never been born. The government is trying to hunt you down before you can cause any serious damage. You can’t help but find this foolish — you’ve used your power hundreds of times already.

[ao3commentoftheday]

I just saw your response to gifmaker anon (sending hugs to anon!). First, let me just say thank you for being such a safe space here on tumblr and providing emotionally intelligent advice! It always warms my heart to see your replies to asks.

I am not a gifmaker or videomaker or writer or anything really (although i am tempted to try, maybe soon) and i have also struggled with loneliness in fandom, especially here on tumblr on which i am new. I was wondering if you had any concrete advice on how to reach out in fandom spaces, especially on tumblr? When is it ok to DM someone, and about what? I guess i’m afraid of taking up ppl’s time and energy, and that they think I’m weird or not fun. I have sent asks, but it honestly makes me very anxious, mostly because i never know if the tone carries.

And also how to make others reach out to you — Is it only through creating things, like fics and art? I think i’m a bit scared that what i want to make is not something a lot of people will like, and so i will just have written something i care about and then bare my soul by posting it and then just stand there in silence because no one connects with how i think, or no one understands it.

Lots of love to you!

link to the ask anon mentions

Thank you for the love - and the lovely compliment! 💗

I'm not sure I'm the best person to ask about how to make friends on tumblr. I say that because my perspective on social media is quite different from a lot of folks. I grew up pre-internet in a rural area and so I didn't get online until I moved to a city for university. My first online interactions were using things like ICQ (think WhatsApp without the phone calls) and IRC (think Discord but text only) and mostly with people I knew personally, or friends of my in-person friends.

Because I was introduced to the habit of meeting online strangers through them being friends-of-friends, I kind of have that habit still in place? I don't see messaging someone as intimidating. Sending an ask or a DM isn't scary. It's just waving hi to someone at a party and seeing if they like the spinach dip.

(ironically, talking to someone I don't know at a party IS intimidating to me)

The biggest source of my success when it comes to making friends online has been going into interactions with the friendly force of the extrovert I'm pretending to be. You know how there are some people who just seem to create friendships out of thin air? I pretend I'm one of them. I'll wave hi in a new discord server and as soon as someone replies to me, I'm basically just

Generally speaking, I keep DMs to either conversations with someone I've spoken to before or questions that seem too private for an ask (that can be published publicly). That's just me, though. Other people might have different preferences.

If you want people to reach out to you, reblog ask memes. These are lists of questions that you're wililng to answer if folks drop one of the numbers/questions in your inbox. At least, that's the way they're supposed to work. Sometimes I see people reblog them by just answering all of the questions up front, but that removes the possibility of someone asking you.

One other thing - if you want to prove that you're willing to answer asks? You can always send one or two of those questions to yourself as an anon ask. Just like a busker might drop a few coins into the guitar case to encourage people to tip!

Don't worry too much about taking up space, anon. The internet is a vast expanse with plenty of room for all of us. And if someone doesn't reply? There's a 99.9% chance it's not about you at all. We're all dealing with a lot of stuff on any given day and sometimes answering an ask or a DM falls off the radar.

One last thing in this already long post - Do Not, Under Any Circumstances, Use Creativity As a Means of Getting Followers. I know that's a lot of capital letters, but I feel very strongly about that after years of running this blog. If your primary goal for writing fic or making art is to get followers or attention or make friends, then you'll feel really bad if that doesn't happen as a result.

Make the art because you want to make the art. Share the art because you want to share the art. When you make the creation about the response to it instead of the creation itself? That leads to crushing disappointment.

Best of luck anon! Much love back to you 💗

[altraviolet]

Heya 👋

Hope you doing well!

I already have done rereading TEG for the second time and this is like my hobby now😄

English is not my native language, so I'm finding new details every time I read the story. Also I have to say, that this fanfic is the first ever english written story, that I've fully read! And that's making me quite proud of myself. I wanna to thank you for that!♥️☺️

So, I want to ask you something. In chapter 51 there was this line:

"Though he was curious about how the food actually tasted. The minibots' Movie Night candy looked and smelled pretty good.

Maybe someday he would deign to find out."

I wonder how would Soundwave feel if he try some candy on a Movie Night or on a Game Night with Rodimus? Would be happy? And how the others would react on that?

Also forgive me if that question was already been answered 🙏

Thank you very much!♥️

Hi!

Oh, thank you so much for the rereads and for the ask! Thank you for reading TEG, even though it's not in your native language- that's not always easy, I'm glad it's worth it to you! ❤️

This is a cute question! I don't think it's been asked before.

Soundwave would definitely only eat with Rodimus first. It took him a very long time to show Rodimus his face: it would take an even longer amount of time to show it to anyone else.

There's 2 ways I can think of SW eating a piece of candy for the first time:

when he's alone, just to try some. this is more in character but less fun, because...

2. failing that, SW would probably first eat a piece of candy at Game Night without telling Rodimus he planned to do so. Rodimus knows the sound of SW's visor being removed, so he'd be like ?? as they're playing and he randomly hears it. He'd look over to Soundwave doing the equivalent of OuO but with one eye (Ou-), and then popping the candy into his mouth.

Some things to keep in mind:

-candy hasn't been made with SW's dimensional additives before, it might not taste all that good

-SW hasn't tasted food with his mouth in foreverrrrrrr so it'd probably be a bit overwhelming

All this to say, he'd probably pull a face that would make Rodimus laugh very hard.

After SW got some of the damage on his face fixed, he might eat at Movie Night. He'd calculate the most trolly way possible to do it - perhaps aligning a big nom with a monster in a movie taking a bite out of the main character. He knows once he puts his face out there, it's out there, and he can never take it back again, so he has to make a (good? amazing? traumatizing?) first impression.

That said, the Movie Night mechs would be very excited about it and falling all over themselves at finally seeing his face. Wait, actually, I'm getting some deja vu here, I think I may have answered a similar question before xD Because I think I said before that Swerve would be like "that's not as weird as I thought it would be" and Jackpot would owe someone some money, lol

But yeah, everyone would be pretty excited about it. Some people would be very intrigued by his facial biolights, Riptide would be like "hell yeah" because he'd finally have another noseless mech aboard.

Whirl would be like "well it's not as good as mine but it's okay I guess" haha

In a very far future, where SW eats without his visor in the cafeteria, just like everyone else, the crew would get used to it pretty quickly. I do think that SW would prefer to have the visor on most of the time, though, as projecting images on it is a big part of how he thinks and presents himself (even when he doesn't mean to).

Thanks for the ask! :)

[somegrumpynerd]

A bunch of doodles inspired by @wickjump saying Cross has an eternal kicked puppy look (and steadily devolving into dadmare because y'know. My Brand)

[hopelesslyprosaic]

I have to say, people who read the Sherlock Holmes canon and ship the two of them should be forced at gunpoint to read the Raffles stories

Like, genuinely. There is nothing remotely subtle about this- completely and proudly blatant, I don't even know.

I largely enjoy the stories themselves, though I don't think Hornung was at his best when writing the action sequences that the scenarios generally required- but their relationship just freaking sparkles in such a fun way and it's not even as though it's subtext, or if it is it's very near-the-surface subtext, it's just that every single goshdarned opportunity Hornung has to show how obsessed Bunny is with Raffles or how devoted Raffles is to Bunny or how annoyed either one is when the other shows any interest at all in a third party, he takes. And it's not just obsession or devotion or jealousy, they just clearly love each other and are proud of each other and want to be with each other. I'd say it's romance novelesque but so many romance novels don't even really bother with that bit.

I mean (spoiler warning) the whole saga literally ends with Bunny's ex-girlfriend writing him a letter saying "I get that you burgled my house because you followed Raffles because you were in love with him, he came by and told me so and I totally get it, he's super great, but now that he's dead and you're not with him anymore maybe we can get back together someday." Who DOES this.

I know I'm not saying anything here that freaking WIKIPEDIA doesn't already say, but I'd only read some of the stories in no particular order before and didn't realize what the full cumulative impact of it would be til I binge-read all three short story collections together. Unreal. Still not over it. I'm a canon fan/shipper as a general rule for stuff and this is just canon.

[icewindandboringhorror]

Recent images I suppose ~

[jayreyen]

I wasn't planning on posting art here because this is a "writing" blog but here's my oc x Alex

[thatonecrookedsmile]

More progress being made. I finished re-reading The Illusion of Living this past Friday. It's a nice book. 👍 This was the last of the Bendy books in this "marathon" that I'm doing which I had already read previously and now I'm rereading, meaning that I'm kind of up to date when it comes to rereading all the books that were released until December 2021. But the race is not over yet. Soon I'll start Fade To Black, and (technically) I'll finally be up to date.

Just to continue my chain of posting about the books I finished (at least, the main ones that I really wanted to read) here it is…something I did at the beginning of March, on the night when shit went down. (I hope you know what I'm talking about). I saw the tweets first hand, I was there! Right at the damn moment. And it was..something reading those tweets alright. If the image above doesn't show it, my mood that night and the next 1-2 days wasn't so… great. You might read this and think I'm exaggerating, but that night especially I, uuhhh, I didn't feel good! And this image (and maybe 2 more posts I made that night) are the results of that. (And to think that a week before this happened, I had finished rereading DCTL after a long time. Talk about better/worse timing than this)

At least, if you want the bright side of this, it's that even after that day, I decided to continue with my book marathon, and I don't regret it. I was down that day, but I wasn't out yet damn it!! and I'm still not. (I don't know if this sentence makes a lot of sense, but you get my point)

As a bonus, here's something I did the night I got to the part where Henry is first mentioned in the book (you can consider this as a representation of my reaction when he's first mentioned, both for when I read TIOL for the first time in 2021, as now in this rereading)

Feat. canon Henry design and my fanon design for him (I wanted to include him here + I still read this book with my fan-designs in mind)

[match-your-steps]

just read a review of the lego movie from 2014 and it is genuinely a horrible piece of literature and through perusing the comments underneath the review, I have gained an intense dislike of the reviewer. it's not even that I liked the lego movie and he didn't it's just that a lot of the stuff he says is factually incorrect, really stupid-sounding, or he doesn't provide any real reason, and in the comments, he reacts to even the friendliest and politest constructive criticism as if it's a personal attack on him.

[lith-myathar]

.

[winter-spark]

I notice that even though Citron's my fave, I spend more time here talking about Orange and Navel.

I think it's fear of being wrong.

[petiolata]

Boring and bad advice from someone whose only qualification is "I've written!". Volume =/= quality or qualification. There are millions-word long garbage fics.

"400k in fanfiction" yeah me too. Along with pretty much every fanfic writer I know.

"Professional beta reader" lol. Seriously, lol. A beta-reader's job (including ones who are paid) is to give insight from a reader POV. While there are definitely better or worse ones, there is no required skills or skill level to be paid to beta-read. It's not like being an editor. (While in the fanfic world, the more editor-y the beta is, the better, when it comes to *pro writing* and paid roles, the editor and beta reader are intentionally distinct and beta readers serve the function of a focus group; they're a preview into how your actual audience will perceive the book. If your target demographic is LGBT young adults who reads queer YA novels, then a beta reader's qualification is being an LGBT young adult who reads queer YA novels. They don't have to know anything about the craft of writing.)

My #1 piece of holy grail advice is don't take advice from OP or the thousands of nobodies like them. Find authors with real qualifications and proven chops and read their books on things like showing vs telling, plotting suspensefully, etc.

The endless amounts of crap writing advice posts that gets reblogged and sharing is nothing short of amazing.

As for OP: your books don't sell. There's a reason for that. Stop giving advice and start reading it. Hopefully from some authors who actually know what they're talking about.

my 10 holy grail pieces of writing advice for beginners

from an indie author who's published 4 books and written 20+, as well as 400k in fanfiction (who is also a professional beta reader who encounters the same issues in my clients' books over and over)

show don't tell is every bit as important as they say it is, no matter how sick you are of hearing about it. "the floor shifted beneath her feet" hits harder than "she felt sick with shock."

no head hopping. if you want to change pov mid scene, put a scene break. you can change it multiple times in the same scene! just put a break so your readers know you've changed pov.

if you have to infodump, do it through dialogue instead of exposition. your reader will feel like they're learning alongside the character, and it will flow naturally into your story.

never open your book with an exposition dump. instead, your opening scene should drop into the heart of the action with little to no context. raise questions to the reader and sprinkle in the answers bit by bit. let your reader discover the context slowly instead of holding their hand from the start. trust your reader; donn't overexplain the details. this is how you create a perfect hook.

every chapter should end on a cliffhanger. doesn't have to be major, can be as simple as ending a chapter mid conversation and picking it up immediately on the next one. tease your reader and make them need to turn the page.

every scene should subvert the character's expectations, as big as a plot twist or as small as a conversation having a surprising outcome. scenes that meet the character's expectations, such as a boring supply run, should be summarized.

arrive late and leave early to every scene. if you're character's at a party, open with them mid conversation instead of describing how they got dressed, left their house, arrived at the party, (because those things don't subvert their expectations). and when you're done with the reason for the scene is there, i.e. an important conversation, end it. once you've shown what you needed to show, get out, instead of describing your character commuting home (because it doesn't subvert expectations!)

epithets are the devil. "the blond man smiled--" you've lost me. use their name. use it often. don't be afraid of it. the reader won't get tired of it. it will serve you far better than epithets, especially if you have two people of the same pronouns interacting.

your character should always be working towards a goal, internal or external (i.e learning to love themself/killing the villain.) try to establish that goal as soon as possible in the reader's mind. the goal can change, the goal can evolve. as long as the reader knows the character isn't floating aimlessly through the world around them with no agency and no desire. that gets boring fast.

plan scenes that you know you'll have fun writing, instead of scenes that might seem cool in your head but you know you'll loathe every second of. besides the fact that your top priority in writing should be writing for only yourself and having fun, if you're just dragging through a scene you really hate, the scene will suffer for it, and readers can tell. the scenes i get the most praise on are always the scenes i had the most fun writing. an ideal outline shouldn't have parts that make you groan to look at. you'll thank yourself later.

happy writing :)

[leatherbookmark]

I love tiktok edits of videos from fansigns and such because they subtitle everything. Not just what the idols are saying -- though it's more of a "*praises him*" than "wow that was so cool!" kind of subtitles -- but also every single thing they do. So you have a video of a guy talking quietly to another guy, and in case you didn't know what you're looking at, the subtitles helpfully inform you that the guy who's smiling is smiling, or that the guy who's taking his jacket off is taking his jacket off, etc, etc. Fascinating.

[docholligay]

Do you think authors sometimes don't realize how their, uh, interests creep into their writing? I'm talking about stuff like Robert Jordan's obvious femdom kink, or Anne Rice's preoccupation with inc*st and p*dophilia. Did their editors ever gently ask them if they've ever actually read what they've written?

Firstly, a reminder: This is not tiktok and we just say the words incest and pedophilia here.

Secondly, I don't know if I would call them 'interests' so much as fixations or even concerns. There are monstrous things that people think about, and I think writing is a place to engage with those monstrous things. It doesn't bother me that people engage with those things. I exist somewhere within the whump scale, and I would hope no one would think less of me just because sooner or later I like to rough a good character up a bit, you know? It's fun to torture characters, as a treat!

But, anyway, assuming this question isn't, "Do writers know they're gross when I think they are gross" which I'm going to take the kind road and assume it isn't, but is instead, "Do you think authors are aware of the things they constantly come back to?"

Sometimes. It can be jarring to read your own writing and realize that there are things you CLEARLY are preoccupied with. (mm, I like that word more than concerns). There are things you think about over and over, your run your mind over them and they keep working their way back in. I think this is true of most authors, when you read enough of them. Where you almost want to ask, "So...what's up with that?" or sometimes I read enough of someone's work that I have a PRETTY good idea what's up with that.

I've never read Robert Jordan and I don't intend to start (I think it would bore me this is not a moral stance) and I've really never read Rice's erotica. In erotica especially I think you have all the right in the world to get fucking weird about it! But so, when I was young I read the whole Vampire Chronicles series. I don't remember it perfectly, but there's plenty in it to reveal VERY plainly that Anne Rice has issues with God but deeply believes in God, and Anne Rice has a preoccupation with the idea of what should stay dead, and what it means to become. So, when i found out her daughter died at the age of six, before Rice wrote all of this, and she grew up very very Catholic' I said, 'yeah, that fucking checks out'.

Was Rice herself aware of how those things formed her writing? I think at a certain point probably yes. The character of Claudia is in every way too on the nose for her not to have SOME idea unless she was REAL REAL dense about her own inner workings. But, sometimes I know where something I write about comes from, that doesn't mean I'm interested in sharing it with the class. I would never ever fucking say, 'The reasons I seem to write so much of x as y is that z happened to me years ago' ahaha FUCK THAT NOISE. NYET. RIDE ON, COWBOY.

But I've known some people in fandom works who clearly have something going on and don't seem to realize it. Or they're very good at hiding it. Based on the people I'm talking about I would say it's more a lack of self-knowledge, and I don't even mean that unkindly. I have, in many ways, taken myself down to the studs and rebuilt it all, so I unfortunately am very aware of why I do and write the things I do most of the time. It's extremely annoying not to be able to blame something. I imagine it must be very freeing. But it ain't me, babe.

Anyway, a lot of words to say: Maybe! But that might not stop them from writing it, it might be a useful thing for them to engage with, and you can always just not read it.

Also, we don't censor words here.

[olgasaysso]

The apothecary diaries made me realize something very interesting about how women perceive power...

I can't be the only one who noticed that in stories written by women power is often compared to a prison or a cage meanwhile in the ones written by men it's mostly fun and freedom.

It is that women tend to see power as more of an responsibility and men think of it as the ability to do whatever they want?

The apothecary diaries made me think of it first. I discovered with surprise that I actually like the emperor, which I almost never do. Any guy that has relationship with more than one woman at once tends to disgust me, especially if he's in a position of power but for some reason not him.

Because the emperor is as much a prisoner as the 2000 women in the rear palace. Maybe even more because as long as he doesn't touch them, they're allowed to leave.

Like on one hand, he's the most powerful man in the empire. He calls the shots, right?

But on the other hand, he can't even properly protect Lishu from being sold to some pedofile by her father. The only way he could protect her was to make her his concubine and how f*cked up is that? She's like a daughter to him and the only way he could protect her was by marrying her? And then he couldn't even spend time with her anymore because that would be read wrong.

It's the fact that 3 of his children died because there was no proper medic to save them due to the fact that they don't allow non eunuchs to treat them and forbid women practicing medicine... when he doesn't even care about that. He hasn't blinked once at Maomao running around the inner palace and being a doctor.

At first when I was watching the story I thought of how horrible it was that he didn't even visit Lady Lihua after their son died. But then it made me think of how he's literally not allowed to get attached because of his position and how hard it is for him? The fact that he couldn't even provide enough support for Lady Ah-Duo so she doesn't lose her uterus? The fact that she switched their baby with his brother and he had to watch his son grow up "away" from him?

There's so much more to this, especially with Jinshis approach to power and I could go on an on but I think I made my point.

And when I started comparing the stories written by women to those by men... Women tend to write power as more of a burden than a gift.

After watching TAD I watched solo leveling.

And for those of you who don't know, it's basically a story about a guy who suddenly "discovers" that he's like a character in a game (not exactly but it's be too long to explain) and basically finds out that he has endless potential and over the course of the story he becomes the most powerful being in the entire universe.

And there's a moment where he's talking to his little sisters friend that gets very misread as something inappropriate by another character.

This other character points out, kindly, to Sung Jinwoo that the girl is a minor.

Sun Jinwoo doesn't understand so he just looks at him and asks "so?".

And so the guy immediately gets scared and never mentions it again despite the two of them being friends.

This moment is kind of played for laughs. Nothing actually happened, Sung Jinwoo is a good guy so he wouldn't.

But he could. Nobody could do anything to stop him.

And when I watched that I laughed too. But then I thought of how terrifying that is. To have someone be so above the law, this untouchable. Who can do anything he pleases because no one will ever stop him.

But that's never actually adressed in the show other than to show us how cool this is.

It this was written by Natsu Hyūga there'd probably be a million different situations to show us how fucked up this is and how it weighs on the main character.

In the apothecary diaries Jinshi doesn't even want to ask anything directly of Maomao because he doesn't want her to interpret it as an order.

[inkskinned]

i love finding out how big this world is. my girlfriend has only visited boston a handful of times, but i grew up here. i told her we'd be going to do the tourist traps in salem, and she said - which salem?

to be fair to her, there are a lot of other states that have a town named "salem." and i think there's some evidence that the witch trials actually happened in what is now called Danvers. but the thing is - she thought "salem" was like, a made-up thing. there wasn't actually a salem, massachusetts - like there isn't a gotham city.

they don't talk about it that much where she grew up, is the thing! and this made me laugh. a week ago she was talking about her hometown and said something akin to "well the museum's kinda like the one in richmond," and i had to explain i still had no frame of reference for what the hell this museum was like.

i love finding out what knowledge i take for granted. i used to live with 5 other women. 3 of them were from south korea. they had to take, like, a solid fifteen minutes to explain their birthday system to my gay math-blind ass, laughing as they did.

that same month, our roommate from denmark taught me the danish word for wreath by accident - she'd been talking about decorations, used krans, and i'd been able to figure it out through context. i just picked it up and kept talking. our entire house used krans as the word. she came home and slammed the door one evening, mock-angry, shouting: you motherfuckers! it's a - a wreath!

and how often do you use certain words, anyway! i am cuban, so i was raised with certain spanish words sort of sprinkled in there; but never how you'd think. in middle school i asked someone to pass me the recogedor - in a completely american accent, like i was speaking english. i hadn't registered it as a spanish word. i mean, how often in school do you actually use the word "dustpan" - i'd only ever heard it in the context of cleaning my house.

there are places that you grew up that you, just, like, know. that you assume everyone knows. there are things and people and "common knowledge" that you have that, just, like. doesn't exist for me. i don't know what you call your public transportation system, but in boston we call it "the T". our train cards are called charlie cards because of a song where a father accidentally abandons his family, which was written because our system of transportation. in boston, most people would snort and say everyone knows that, kid.

i think you and i should go on a long walk - it's getting dark early these days and we need any sun we can manage. tell me about the first time you saw snow. tell me about the stuff everyone knows about your home. tell me about the cities "everyone's been to," about the food "everyone's already tried." who knows. maybe it will feel nice to you - watching someone learn about it for the very first time.