#i feel like if it was -20 early in the morning in jan but then warmed up to like -5 midday

[medieval-canadian]

so i'm crocheting a temperature blanket this year. my initial instinct was to say it's for my 32nd year but that's not actually how birthdays work so instead i'm awkwardly going with "the year i'm 32" and shortening it to just 32 mostly. anyway, that's besides the point.

i have the colour palette/yarn, i have the pattern (toni lipsey's linen stitch pixel temp blanket), i made a gauge swatch, i've started tracking temps (i've recorded hi/lo starting on dec. 8).... but fuck, i'm having so much trouble figuring out the temperature gauge!!!

i can't decide what the intervals should be, i can't decide if i want purples to be warm temps or cold temps or where to put the neutrals, i can't decide if i want to fiddle/tweak(/cheat?) and use the lows for the cold temps instead of the high which was the initial plan.... i just don't know!!! ugh.

[ana-chronista]

Hi, ship asks for the classics?

Jance: 10, 19, 22, 27, 28

Bojere: 12, 16, 18, 20, 29

Sorry for the delay, this turned into a bit of an essay (no surprise there, it's me after all...)

Jance Who drives and who picks out the music? I feel like Nace would be better with sticking with directions, so he’d probably take over the bulk of driving, at least over long distances. That leaves Jan in charge of the driving playlist. How do they silently/subtly express their love for each other? It can be distracting how they wind each other up pretty much constantly, but they show their love in the little things they do for each other. Jan sneaks tracks onto the driving playlist that he’s not keen on but that he knows Nace really loves and makes sure that there are always gluten free options for snacks at practice or at restaurants when they go out (the other guys would, but Jan jumped in pretty quickly to take charge of that – one of the early signs he was completely gone for him). Nace is very good at being observant and either grounding Jan when he gets sidetracked or getting him away from everything when it becomes clear he needs some time out from everything. How do they apologize after arguments? Tough one! I feel like Nace is better at talking through any issues while Jan would find that uncomfortable. It would probably lead to a few extra arguments at the beginning, but as time goes on, I think Jan would start to open up more and be more on board with it even if it doesn’t come naturally. Maybe he even initiates a few such discussions himself. For something ridiculous though, it would probably just be a case of a simple hug and a sorry. I don’t think they would be much inclined to hold grudges against each other. Who would propose? What would their wedding be like? So Nace decides to propose, spends ages finding the perfect ring and agonising how to do it. Big romantic date? Intimate evening at home? On some far-flung beach at sunset? He’s got the ring ready and waiting and is just trying to pick the right moment when Jan turns to him after a gig, still high on adrenaline, throws his arms around him and just blurts out “marry me”. Sometimes things can be that simple. And it’d make for a funny story afterwards! The wedding is where the care and planning is clearer. Seeing that one interview though where they have different ideas about how big a wedding should be suggests they’d have to compromise though. Maybe a small ceremony with just their nearest and dearest, followed by a huge party to celebrate at a different date? The party would be wild enough that people are still finding out new things that happened there in the following months. What’s something that reminds them of their partner(s)? Do they have anything on them daily as a reminder (a photo, phone background, tattoo, clothing/accessory, etc)? Phone backgrounds seem pretty standard, though probably not the lock screen – more chance of a fan accidentally spotting it. They’d also be normal, everyday photos, maybe Jan playing the guitar on the sofa or Nace cuddled up with Igor. Clothing theft is a serious issue within Joker Out, so it would be less obvious but they seem to have a pretty mix-and-match wardrobe. Nace would have a harder time of it than Jan as he’s much more broad-shouldered, but just because it’s rarer doesn’t mean Jan would have less of a reaction to seeing Nace wear one of his t-shirts or hoodies. Maybe it would make even more of an impression.

Bojere Who gets up the earliest? Who has the worst sleep schedule? Who is the sleepiest? As a member of Joker Out, Bojan is contractually obliged to be allergic to early mornings, so of the two of them Jere would be more of a morning person. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s got the best sleep schedule though, as he’s always on the go. As for who is the sleepiest, I feel like they’d crash at the same time, leading to them often being found napping together in the studio, on the sofa, in the back of the car, etc. Both the JO boys and the Kӓӓrijӓ crew probably have a lot of photos of this happening; they have an ongoing competition to see how can take the closest photo without waking them. What’s their favorite “domestic bliss” moment? Do they cook/clean together? Do they like to go out shopping together? They would enjoy spending an evening cuddled up on the sofa (rare, given their busy schedules) with some beers and watching trash TV. Jere in particular likes to point out ridiculous people in shows and be like “see this person? That is you, Bojan.”. He’s very quick with it. Cleaning together would result in too much messing around (think ‘everything in the kitchen is covered in water except the dishes we actually meant to wash’) so if they really want to get anything done they have to divide and conquer. Cooking is marginally more successful, because if they’re making something unique to their home country, the other one has to act as assistant (while probably providing an on running comedy commentary about the dish). They are 100% the sort of couple who would go out shopping with a list (hastily thrown together on the back of an envelope at the last minute, but still, adulting) and come back with nothing from it but an entirely different set of shopping altogether. And they’d have a great laugh while doing it. What does a date night out look like for them? Depends who is organising! Bojan would go fancy with reservations at a nice restaurant with excellent reviews (anything to see Jere in a suit, you know?), whereas Jere would take them on a night of drinking and dancing at some fun bars, usually with some karaoke thrown in for good measure. Both types of dates are fun! What clothes/accessories do they steal from each other? Stolen rather than freely given (the hockey jersey) or left behind (half of Bojan’s Nordic Tour suitcase)? I think Bojan would have kept that Bulbasaur hat of Jere’s and maybe a pair of those spiked sunglasses. And we all know Jere has a fair amount of Carpe Diem-era merch, but seeing him in Bojan’s own Demoni hoody would probably do funny things to his heart. What is something they can never agree on? How do they meet in the middle? International tournaments would bring out their competitive sides. Think something like the Olympics – one of them just wandering in at breakfast and being like “oh, sorry, did you not get any medals in that latest event? Can’t relate.” – or the World Cup – one getting a mock crying photo from the other because their team’s just been knocked out at group stage while the other is going through to the next round. (Eurovision too, obviously, but that goes without saying.) There’s no real meeting in the middle for this! However, the nearest thing would be something like being able to become an honorary Slovene/Finn if your own team doesn’t qualify and getting to share in the glory that way!

[sea-of-machines]

The future past tour - Tampere 3.6

Now that I've slept, I can finally write my thoughts down. Possible grammar mistakes coming...

Yesterday (3.6) I, my brother @wish-i-could-fly-like-superman and our big brother left at ten o'clock in the morning towards Tampere, where we were going to see Iron Maiden (well, not big bro, he was just helping me with the driving because it was a long trip and there was no way I could drive that alone).

About six hours of driving with breaks later, we finally arrived at Tampere. At this point I began to be very nervous, which I somehow hadn't been before. We took a little walk around, found the entrance to the arena so that we didn't have to search for it in panic when it was time for the gig, and then just tried to relax and rest a bit.

The gig itself. Oh boy where do I begin. We arrived at the door about half an hour early, and got a good spot in the line. Then when we got in, we went to our seats, which were super high in the back of the arena. I was feeling kind of dizzy as I have a fear of heights, but thankfully I adjusted to it. Oh, and we had to buy an expensive water bottle (4€ for 0,5l????) because I was dying (not seriously but the water did help).

Lord of the lost began warming us up at 19:30, and I think they were great. They were well in tune, and the singer was kind and adorable.

Then after the warm-up, we began to wait for iron maiden. They were in time, as around 20:50 UFO's doctor doctor began to play.

I thought that I would cry when I see maiden, but I wasn't able to produce tears. I sang along and probably stared at Steve for the most of the gig because he is the most beautiful man ever (though we saw the boys only just as very small because we were so far away).

The music was good, holy shit. They played so well! And they played Alexander the Great!!!

My favourite songs of the night were probably death of the celts and fear of the dark because

1. Death of the celts was super beautiful. I found it rude when people got up from their seats to take a piss break during senjutsu songs. Bro, you paid almost 80€ to see a band and you are going to go to the toilet??? (I'd piss my pants if the other option was missing bits of an iron maiden gig, seriously).

2. Fear of the dark. The best singalong tune for real. I really would've loved to hear how the audience sounded as we sang together, but I tried to remove my earbuds and decided that I'm never going to take them off again, the music just sounded so muc better with ear protection as they muffled the sound. Without them it sounded very, well, loud.

Steve's position on the stage had changed, he had swapped it with Adrian and it was weird to see Steve and Janick together on the right side (from my point of view) and Davey and Adrian on the right. But I loved to see it to be honest, since Janick was really interacting a lot with Steve. That's what my little heart needed to see.

Adrian got so many solos??? Dave and Jan both had literally like 1-2 solos when Adrian soloed everything else. Kinda odd but okay.

I really wanted to dance and party so hard but the seated area wasn't good for it. All the people sitting up there were sooo boring as they never clapped or vibed with the music. WTF???

I'd definitely love to see maiden again but from the floor where I could actually see them and have a possibility to dance. Why come to a gig if you're just going to sit there like it was the movies?

After the mind blowing concert around 23:00, we headed back home. It was a bit scary to drive at night when it was dark and rainy, and there was a possible risk of a moose to run on the road. We had to keep our eyes open, but in the last 100km of the drive I was feeling so tired. We made it back alive and in one piece with no damage to us or anyone else. I think the clock was already half past five in the morning when we arrived at home. Then we emptied a bit of the stuff from my car, and went to sleep. I woke up at twelve and it's now half past, and I need to finish emptying my car today.

Even though it was a long and tiring trip, it was fun. I just wish that Tampere would lower their hotel costs so that we could avoid pulling these dangerous stunts aka driving at night. Seriously, you can find a hotel room for two cheaper in our capital city Helsinki! That is crazy. Our total amount of kilometres was around 800 from the whole trip.

[old-daemon-farts]

Rhea gets her spotlight

I know at some point Cayde and Rhea were trying to answer questions but it's been a bit and I don't even remember what those questions were! May have been the 30 days of daemonism challenge. But now Rhea wanted to try her hands at the 100 question list. She can only answer in small burst so there will be another couple post added later on.

1. What is your name? What is your human’s name? My full name is Rheasilvia but I go almost exclusively by Rhea. My daemian still goes by Kit. 2. How did you get your name? Kit wanted my name's origin to be Greek like her irl name. So we browsed through different mythology stuff until we saw Rhea and knew it was perfect. Many years later we discovered the name Rheasilvia in a game and then found out it's a real astrological name as well! So it became my formal name. 3. Do you have any nicknames? What do you like to call your human? I call Kit, Kit. Rhea is technically my nickname I guess but Kit likes to call me "her heart". 4. What is your gender, if any? Female with she/her pronouns 5. How old are you? Do you know your CIE date? I'm seven as of writing this and my CIEday is Jan 18th 6. How are you feeling right now? Excited! I'm always excited when I talk. I use to be so much calmer, but I came to love and appreciate so much about life that talking and being here brings me so much joy that I don't know what to do with myself. 7. What is your favorite time of day? Oh this is so tough. I like mornings I think. When it's too early in the morning you want to stay in bed and cuddle, but it's also the beginning of the day and holds so much potential. Time to get up and do things! 8. What is your favorite time of year? Spring. Absolutely Spring. 9. What is your favorite activity? Baking! 10. What is your favorite food? Does it differ from your human’s? Even Kit doesn't know her favorite foods! But I love smoothies, and fruit, and cakes! 11. List five of your favorite songs, and five of your human’s favorite songs. I'm only going to list a few of mine if that's okay. They may not be my favorites but I do like them!

Lost Boy by Ruth B.

Tulip by Jessica Hoop

Try by Colbie Caillat

Drum Go Dum by K/DA

Who's laughing now by Ava Max

12. Who was the last person you talked to, other than your human? Em of Thom and Ani 13. If you could change one thing about your human, what would it be? Not a single thing. Flaws and perfections all, I love who she is. 14. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I want to be purple. Oh wait I can do that whenever I want! 15. Are you affectionate? Very! 16. Are you introverted, extroverted, or in-between? Hm. I think I'm a social introvert. I love people and talking to others but the majority of the time I need quiet alone time. 17. Do you like to meet other daemons? I love seeing other daemons! I don't socialize all that much but I love seeing everyone around. 18. Do you have any friends, excluding your human? I do! At least 5 other humans and only three of them are daemians. 19. What do you do during a conflict? Nothing. I don't like conflict. I kinda hide until it's done then pick up the pieces after. 20. Are you happy with the amount of time you are projected currently? Considering I was gone for a whole year I am very happy with how much I'm being projected right now! I don't need to be around ALL the time. Little bit is good. 21. Do you have a favorite quote? If so, what is it? Nope, nothing in particular. But I like repeating different positive phrases a lot. 22. What is your favorite word? Purple. Oh wait you said word not color. Well it's my favorite word now too. 23. What is your favorite memory? My memory is so fuzzy but anytime I sit on Kit's head as a bluebird, thats my favorite memory. 24. What is your favorite thing about your human? EVERYTHING. But probably her heart. 25. What is your favorite thing about yourself? That I get to show the world how kind and wonderful Kit's heart is.

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

well I've had an interesting first week of the year back at work. I managed to get through to my usual doctor this week, which is a bit of a miracle, considering she's always back late jan/early feb each year. she's recommended 3 places for me to ring to follow up on a probable ADHD diagnosis. the best one is one in Sydney, in Bondi.

but to do all of their tests would mean I'd try to jam them into a week, if I could (probs not let's be real), or each time I do one I spend on a hotel room to stay up there, since I just wouldn't feel bothered to the 2 hour drive home after 8 hours of tests. but the Sydney one gives you a brain scan which would be super cool. but also if you managed to get bulk billed, it's $1,200. also they don't focus on meds, they focus on "brain based" and behaviour change stuff.

the other 2 places are local to my area, but you have to ring to find out their prices. but on the other hand, my doc said to leave all this stiff until after I have my colonoscopy that's booked for a couple weeks from now, on the 16th.

work is better since I'm not at a tired low point like I was at the end of last year. my boss is a bit happier that I'm turning up at the office at around 8:50 roughly and set up by 9. but yeah I hate having to cut my pre work bed relax after my bath each morning to 7:15 to get out the door by 8;20. but rn 8:20 is only working bc it's the school holidays so I'm not locked into the mronjng school run traffic and school zones right next to my house (basically). so it means I will have to bother to leave at 8:15 or whatever when school starts back up again on jan 31st.

but yeah. I still haven't handed in any of my unfinished (or unstarted) cadestship assessments; bc I forgot right before we left of chrissy/NY break to ask our outsourced IT guys to set up our VPN access app (it just gives you a code to type in) on my phone to access the work hard drive at home lmao. so I've meant to start this week, but I just haven't.

aside from work, the other interesting thing is that someone from the catholic school I went to for years 7-10 from 2008 til 2011, decided to invite me to a 10 year reunion that someone else from our year group from that school set up on Tuesday on fb for October this year. and I was just so surprised that someone bothered to remember me and invite me.... and I feel kinda touched tbh lol. bc i didn't even graduate with them properly, in a way, in 2013, bc I obvs graduated at the public school that I transferred to. it's so random that someone thought to invite me all these years later.

and I'm also stressing over the event a little. mostly on the level of what to wear to it, obvs lmao. but also, most of these people are successful working in good jobs. or they run their own successful local businesses/take over their parentd businesses.

while, on the other hand. I finish my cadetship in march, and I have no idea whether i'll be kept on where I am or whether I'll be somewhere else or jobless lmao. but anyway. it's going to be so weird seeing anyone from that school again, when half of them have kids and are married now or some have even divorced or split from their partners that they married in our early 20s (or at least that's what I've deduced from their name changes on fb back to their original last name I knew them by in school).

also im bitterly jealous of a few of them because they've bought their first house or have a second house and are using their first as an investment property. like bruh. am I the only one who still hasn't moved out of home yet??? and obvs there are obvs other people renting but still. am i the only one still at home??? I don't want questions about that tbh.

like is it even worth catching up with these people, when I still remember the derision I got from one of the girls from my group from that school, when I ran into her at uni back in 2016??? how she told me that everyone was actually SO GLAD that I'd left bc apparently they were all secretly harbouring embarrassment for my behaviour and my "attention seeking" or whatever the fuck she said to me???? but also part of me hopes that rich boy goes and is happy to see me and I'll get to congratulate him in person on his engagement or perhaps being married by the time this event happens (if it even does lmao). and that's my other thing. could just be an elaborate joke where they do this, and I turn up, but NO ONE is there???? like hello trust issues, aren't you looking very sexy this week.

[ibelieveinghost]

4/7/24

up-dates!!!

1st off!: got my visa!!! finally!!!!!! actually, i got it on Wednesday but never found the energy to write here haha. oh! i graduated on Friday too and somehow talked the school into refunding the rest of the tuition. so everything went great in the end.

but seriously. i haven't write in so long, and i'll try my best this morning(rainy Sunday vibes yay!) to cover as much as possible. ok moving on---

i've been drawing/sketching on and off, and it sorta feels like a habit. lighthearted efforts and ease, something i rarely experience w/ making art since...since high school.

i've been updating more consistently on my blogs/twitter now. i got some response. some. not as much as one'd wish haha. but honestly, i felt so grateful that people are liking my stuff.

on the other hand, the job hunting has been going... well it has been going! not a ton of jobs being posted out there since early March, and i'm starting to realize that i'm only pretending to be really wanting certain positions. i got so accustomed to idea of working as a researcher/scientist, but. man. wasn't that why i left school in the first place, that i fucking hate it despite pouring ~10 years of my life into it and seemed to be going somewhere. having bright prospects and all. now that i knew. well. i need a little more time to think and un-think, to not rush ahead, and be complete honest w/ myself. getting the visa means i got all the time i want. so again, all worked out in the best way possible.

oh yea! birthday coming up in couple weeks! woo hoo! been planning a little overnight trip somewhere! probably 軽井沢 or 伊豆高原. idk! haven't gone anywhere not Tokyo/Yokohama since early Jan, and traveling alone is totally my thing! actually, growing older is so much cooler than i'd thought when i was in my early 20s. but like. past me: imagining feeling more grounded, taking things less seriously, and being more in tune with urself.

ok! dumping some photos seem like a good way to continue:

(reverse chronological order)

(コメダ I literally come here everyday now lol)

(graduation cert came with a bear! + my lamys... i'm not collecting them! they're super easy to write to write with and i adore the bright neon colors that's it!)

( i went to the 4D special viewing of prisoner of Azkaban and man---it worked so well w/ the 4D format. i mean it is the rainy/icy snowy one of the 8, so a lot of spraying water on your face situations! i was wearing a wide grin the whole time i guess. it was so much fun. that being said, i def shed a few tears near the end when harry realized no one's coming to save the two of em, so he stepped out and did what he didn't even know he's capable of. a scene my younger self never managed to relate to. but it def resonates now.

i love this movie so much, probably my fav out of all of them. watched it at the theater w/ dad when i was probably in...middle school or younger?)

(awww)

(the day i got my visa)

(date w/ S!)

(dinner later that night, w/ the gang)

(us, acting a little stupidly ha + interesting cards i took from the bar)

(last Sunday)

(the komeda near ogikubo station, it went all orange that day + cute lil book i might come back and buy later)

(the night i last hang out w/ A)

damn we're reaching the 30 photo/post limit

so guess that's that! i'm coming back to wrap up this epic photo dump soon(later today)

it felt so nice to just recounting my life, sharing all the bits and pieces on one had ever asked for. to me, it's a cute and ultimately therapeutic thing to do. my future self must be thanking me for taking the time to record everything haha.

anyway! see ya soon!

[mithliya]

ty for the heads up! my friend I'm going with has done most of the planning, but I'd definitely be keen for recommendations of stuff to do/see/eat - our flights got changed so we're finding more stuff to fill a couple extra days

firstly i strongly recommend that u rent a car bc our public transport is garbage and scarce + ubers & taxis are expensive. please bear in mind people drive horribly and be careful and very alert on the road!

totally try jan burger, burgerland, teren teren (get the bahraini tikka laham/beef tikka). have the ghoozy laham at al naeem restaurant & grills (@ madinat hamad souq waqif).

go to manama souq! there’s a very nice place to have breakfast called haji’s traditional cafe. their breakfast is awesome & make sure u have some chai karak!!! it’s not easy to find outside the gulf (& i think also south asia). i’m not sure how good their lunch dishes are so i cant recommend that necessarily but feel free to try it.

u can visit the tree of life if u want but it’s somewhat underwhelming bc it’s just a tree in a dessert 🤣 but the tree itself is impressive bc it’s so old & survives somehow

also it’s not the cheapest but you should perhaps go early in the morning & get a day pass at the ritz carlton bc their beach is very nice & so are the pools (last time i went it was 20 bd & u can be there for a long long time so i find it worth it. also u can use the indoor pool as well, go to the beach, & there’s even kayaking i think which i think costed a little extra but was affordable). i recommend to bring snacks and drinks with you so that you don’t have to spend a lot of money on their expensive things. i like to go to the beach and swim to the island across and then chill there, then swim back & then go to the pool. there’s also the sofitel if u want cheaper but i think it’s like 15 bd and personally i think ritz is way nicer and the 20 bd can be worth it the longer u spend there.

if ur into water sports u can easily go diving lessons also in bahrain but i’m not sure which places offer the best as i’ve never done it. if u like ice skating there’s funland, i believe they have a ladies night or at least they used to, try to go on the ladies night bc sometimes that’s when all the lesbians will come out of hiding in bahrain 🤭.

what else.. the bahrain fort is good and the museum is also nice, arad fort is also nice. the dilmun burial mounds are also nice. please be careful what time u go tho bc it is REALLY HOT! my gf & i went at like 1 pm & we almost passed out from heat exhaustion 😭 either go very early or go at like 5 pm, do NOT go at noon.

those are the places i’d recommend off the top of my head but i’m sure there’s more so if u need more lmk and i’ll think of what else u could do. bahrain is quite small so there isn’t that much to do but there is some variety. imo (private) beaches & food & perhaps water sports are the highlights in bahrain

[delvalentine]

hahahahaha, are you suspecting you're HORNY (for the fanfic writing meme). i do agree that you sound like a sweetheart!

speaking of self-ships... do you have any self-ships?

i also respect nurses a lot! plenty of my friends are working as a nurse or in healthcare and their schedules are insane. knowing that there are cases that can also last for your entire shift... 😱 sounds like a really serious case. what inspired you to be a RN First Assist?

all the best for balancing work and other interests!! it's also something i have trouble doing as well. i'm hoping to fix my screen time and habit to mindless scroll so i can fix my sleep schedule.

i'm somewhat of a graphic designer! my role has changed though. i used to be designing websites but i've shifted to making game assets instead, so i'm actually doing a bit of animation right now. i--i have no idea how to animate so most of my working hours is spent watching youtube tutorials online HAHAH. it's an experience, and i'm very grateful for it regardless.

thank you for ur well wishes uwu you are right that adulthood is truly so, so, so different from being a teenager. writing fanfic is one of the constants in my life, LOL. it's also really funny how you have to request a day off for your graduation 😝 i hope you enjoy your graduation regardless! and congrats to graduating!!!

-- pasta la vista, milk

(trying out gen z email culture because i see it around the internet and it's so funny)

With full disclosure I never noticed this sitting in my inbox even tho it has been since.. April 💀 then I was thinking of making a self-ship post but cringed at myself... looked through my inbox... and then saw that Milk had asked me about self-ships months ago ?! Crazy.

But, for work stuff, I figure actually participating in the operation would be neat as an RNFA. Though I don't know if my suturing would be quite up to par (shaky hands) LOL. It rained on my graduation as it did on my high school graduation so I suppose that was consistent 🥲 I'd actually prefer to take evening/night/weekend shifts because there's overtime and I hate mornings... but of course this is one of few nursing fields that operates mostly on a day schedule 🥲🥲🥲 I'm soooo mf sick of my 6AM alarm !!! But I did go on a week long trip to Japan this early June (again bcs I had gone Jan 2023 lol) and brought back lots of merch, so though my wallet may be sore, my heart is full... of weeb shit. 😌

That's so cool to be able to say !! I really enjoyed graphic design so hopefully it's still fun as a career. Def feel you on doom scrolling... I even have the Instagram time limits but just don't listen to them which defeats the purpose 💀💀💀 oopies

As for my self ships *cracks knuckles* I branded myself as a Wakatoshi Ushijima stan all throughout 2016 and beyond and I stand by it. He's beefy, stupid, and I have a thing for any character with such an abundance of talent that they instantly become an antagonist. I don't think we'd be compatible, but is he ever a joy to look at... I'm also still hopelessly in love with Haiji Kiyose from RWTW because he has the perfect complementary personality for me; he'd be such a good househusband (men that cook >), motivate my grumpy ass with undying optimism, and put up with my moody tsundere archetype 🤩 . Ignis Scientia also comes to mind as a personality match—he cooks, is sarcastic, and wears glasses? Bonus English accent. That checked off my boxes at once & I literally had stomach pain when certain events happened to him in FFXV because I was THAT emotionally attached. My Japan trip re-ignited a lost love in Sakyo Furuichi; even though I don't follow A3 anymore, I just KNOW I deserve to be isekai-d as a hot yakuza wife .. that trope is MADE for me 😤! I'm still deeply in love with Yuuta Okkotsu but have stalled on the JJK manga bcs of deeply unfortunate and traumatizing canon events 🥴 and currently I am on my knees for Rin Itoshi (even after I saw how straight up uggo he looks in the U-20 arc so I must really be delulu) and Yoichi Isagi; I tried (and failed) to pick between them just like a 2010s dystopian female MC. I just know I’d fight with Rin every single day because we’re too similar (and so the hate sex 🤌🏼) In Genshin I fell for Diluc right away; that personality type is just so scrumptious... tldr anybody that's a candidate for hurt/comfort means I am INTERESTED!

Basically 90% of the time I put a reader insert fic out, I'm living my own Y/N fantasy. If I'm not attracted to them and I'm not writing it as a gift for somebody, I feel 0 inclination to write for that character 😂

Anyways, I really am so sorry for the late reply; I was always wondering why I hadn't heard from you anymore but it turns out I was the reason 💀 what's new in life!? What fics are you working on?

Wishing you well and lots of love!!  @themlky

[kanmom51]

Tagging game again.  

Took me some time to get to this but here I am. 😊

Tagged by: @whysojiminimnida

Name: my name is Mom....Kan Mom... 😋

Sign: Sagittarius

Height: Short ass gentleman is what I am, sob sob.

Time: When everyone is asleep (so either extremely late at night or super early in the morning).

Birthday: 20 Dec.

Fav band/artist: BTS, obviously.  But a whole lot of 80s and 90s shit too.

Last movie: Jurassic world Dominion if we are talking cinema, but lots of Netflix and Disney/Marvel films too.  I’m a bit of a TV addict. 

Last show: Shining girls on Apple+ really enjoyed it.  Before that season 3 of The boys.  If you are squeamish (sex and gore galore) my advice is that you keep clear of that one.

When I created this blog: Old person here...don’t judge...I think it was around Jan or Feb 2021.  But at first just did a lot of searching, reading and a little asking before I dared to actually open my blabbermouth and voice my opinions.

What I post: What I feel like posting, lol.  But I’ll give you a hint here...

Other blogs: Mine? Nope.  First timer here.

Do I get asks: I do.  Even more so when I decide to open my anons option (call me either brave or stupid to do that...). 

average hr. of sleep: That’s one in the gut, lol. Used to get plenty, now much less - 4-6 hr. usually now days.  Blame Riley, BTS and my bloody lady hormones (or is it a lack of them?  Idk).

instruments: Recorder, Alto recorder, Clarinet, Piano, but now days playing on someone’s nerves is my specialty.

What I’m wearing: My snug PJs sitting under a blanket, cause it’s bloody cold here.

dream job: I kind of had my dream job, which turned out to be more of a nightmare if I’m being honest (note to followers:  don’t trust legal tv shows, they are unrealistic, lol).  But seriously, I’m kind of over self fulfilment.  Been there done that.  At this point it’s about having fun, enjoying family and life as a whole.

dream trip: Japan and a shore to shore Canadian road trip.

favorite songs: The truth untold, House of cards, Black swan, Euphoria, Airplane pt. 2 + the other songs that consist of my more or less 15 hr. Spotify playlist.  

Oh, and honourable mention to Calem Scott’s If our love is wrong, I guess I’m in love by Clinton Cane and Only then by Roy Kim (JK’s cover).  What can I say?  I’m a sucker for a good tear jerker.

Tagging:  Not gonna put that pressure on anyone.  Just join in the party if you care to.

💜 💜 💜

[hotchkiss-and-tell]

Dates or Time of Year for Each Nancy Drew Game

whatamagicalplace made one of these charts last year. Those efforts gave me a starting point but I wanted to tweak it after doing my own research. I decided to share my final result since my version differs from hers in several ways. My reasoning for each game is discussed below; but if you have any evidence to add, feel free.

SCK: Nancy says in the opening letter she took a semester off school to visit Eloise in Florida. The banners for Senior Prom are still prominent throughout the school and the event is scheduled for May 23. Game takes place in a single day but that day could be any time in late spring semester prior to May 23.

SCK2: Homecoming banners are prominent and the event is scheduled for Sept 23. A flyer with Jake’s secret messages has a date of Sept 05, so let’s assume Jake was still alive then. The game says Nancy is there to investigate after Jake was murdered “last week.” That could mean three to seven days after the murder since it happened on a Thurs. Thus Remastered takes place in a single day but that day could be anywhere from Sept 08 to 22.

STFD: Nov 13 (confirmed with calendar). Game takes place for as many days and nights as player needs.

MHM: “Winter Festival” and Charlie studying for finals indicates late Nov to early Dec. Newspaper about the lost gold at the end is dated Mar 03; it could’ve been published after money settlement and the renovations completed though. Game takes place for as many days and nights as player needs.

TRT: December. The Spanish letter from Lisa’s friend is dated Nov 30 and acknowledges that Lisa is already in Wisconsin. By now, time should be well into Dec. 

FIN: Possibly Nov (game’s release) but there are no confirmed dates on anything. It’s likely during the school year since Maya is doing the interview for the student newspaper. Game takes place over three days.

SSH: Calendar on Henrik’s desk is for the month of April. The book version takes place during the DC Cherry Blossom parade which usually occurs last week of March or early April. Game takes place for as many days as player needs. (Early April timeline would match with end of game trailer and dates for DOG.)

DOG: Jeff’s calendar is open to April. Culprit’s log book says Sally is due to move in to the cabin on April 19. Sally says she spent four weeks at Moon Lake, implying the game starts May 18. But I really don’t see Jeff’s character forgetting to change the calendar, so either Sally moved in early or she means four weeks total including seeing the property, bidding, and the final sale plus moving in. And let’s remember there’s no safe water source, so it’s unlikely Sally could live there for four weeks straight. Sally says the dogs howled a full week before they attacked the house and then they appeared every night since; maybe Sally lasted 9-14 days with the ghost dogs. The game could likely begin anywhere between Apr 28 and May 18. Then continue for as many days and nights as the player needs.

CAR: Culprit’s emails with black market dealer date from May 23 through June 04. Harlan’s appt book opens to June 09-13 with the significant clue on June 10. Game is a single day, likely on June 10, but could be as early as June 05.

DDI: June 17 (confirmed with calendar). Single day of gameplay.

SHA: Sept 15 to 17. Nancy’s airline ticket confirms arrival date in AZ. Timeline of the game takes place in three days. (Tex’s b-day is Sept 16!)

CUR: This is anybody’s guess. Hugh and Linda were married Aug 22. The lawyer’s letter to Mrs. Drake states Linda must live at the manor for another three months to fulfill the “six-month-habitation-clause” and those six months must be consecutive in the first year of marriage. Game could be late Nov at the earliest. However, frogs are chirping when Nancy arrives at the manor which is a spring thing and Bess and George say they are attending sailing camp. The fact that no one is suggesting that Linda can leave due to health reasons and start the six months over when she’s well again makes me think the year is half gone already. So the game could also be taking place in April or May at the latest.

CLK: May 07 (confirmed with calendar). Single day of gameplay.

TRN: We see snow in Copper Gorge, but it’s in Colorado and snow can be any time of year there. Frank and Lori are wearing the puffy vests and everyone else has jackets and sweaters. Fatima says it’s the off-season now and summer is the busy season. Makes me think winter is my best guess.

DAN: Game takes place for as many days as player needs. The newspaper on Day 1 is dated Aug 28. Newspapers continue to appear through Sept 06, which publishes that the journalists are negotiating for raises and the sounds of the impending strike are occurring outside JJ’s apartment. Day 11 (Sept 07) and onward have no more newspapers appear on the kitchen table. Let’s say Aug 28 to Sept 07 for simplicity.

CRE: Mike’s calendar is set to March. Quigley’s tape recorder log updates as of Mar 28. Craven’s shipping records say his latest sample was sent to Aikens Biotech on Apr 09. Game takes place in a single day, probably Apr 09 or 10. (Mike just hasn’t turned over the calendar yet)

ICE: Newspaper in the lodge is dated Jan 13. Elsa’s resignation letter is dated Jan 15. Lodge computer says Lupe checked in on Jan 15 and she noticed the lack of maid services for days. Game likely takes place that same week, starting maybe Jan 18 at the earliest, and lasts over several days and nights.

CRY: May 31 (confirmed with calendar). Single day of gameplay.

VEN: Newspaper in the Ca’ terrace says chalice was stolen “this morning” and the police records say the theft happened Jan 25. When Nancy nabs Nico on the stakeout, the next day’s newspaper is dated Feb 03. Since game takes place over several days, it likely plays from Jan 25 to Feb 03.

HAU: Night of May 28. The wedding is set for June 01. The end dialogue says Kyler and Matt couldn’t stop saying “I love you” from when the rocket launched to four days later, which was their wedding day.

RAN: The float plane pilot says resorts like Dread Isle shut down in the summer for “hurricane season” in the Bahamas. And the game was released in July. Since we see the map that charts all of Nancy’s past cases (including HAU) so the game is after the wedding on Jun 01. But there is no reference to the current date aside from “summer.” Single day of gameplay.

WAC: The essay Mel receives from her teacher with the plagiarist comments is dated Nov 21. Since two more nights of sleep are required to trigger events in the game, we can figure that the game takes place from Nov 21 to 23.

TOT: Scott’s calendar is open to May and filled in with code until the 19th. The log book of precipitation is filled out until May 24. Game likely takes place from May 20 to 25.

SAW: The TE-Japan brochure in Nancy’s teacher tote says her exchange program runs from Jun 01 to Sept 15 with different durations of 2 weeks, 3-4 weeks, and 5-8 weeks. With no specific date in the game and the player taking as many days and nights as needed to solve the mystery, we have to settle for saying it takes place in “summer.”

CAP: Karl’s daily calendar is on page March 12. When Nancy finds the final forged email from “Markus” she remarks that it has tomorrow’s date, which is Mar 13. Game is a single night of play on Mar 12.

ASH: Newspaper and police report of Nancy’s arrest say the game is done in a single day of August 18. The fire took place on Aug 17.

TMB: It’s the desert and there are no dates on any clue in the game. Since Lily is a student and Abdullah and Jon are professors, perhaps the game takes place in summer between any busy semester/class schedules.

DED: Ellie’s notepad in the control booth says she gave the coil demo to Nancy on Oct 29. Nancy arrived in daylight hours but since Ellie is on the night shift, the demo could have taken place on either side of midnight which means the game could start on either Oct 28 or 29. (Nancy arrived 10/28, night fell and midnight passed, then Ellie gives demo 10/29 OR Nancy arrives 10/29, night fell and it’s not midnight yet, then Ellie gives the demo still on 10/29.) Game continues for as many days and nights as the player needs.

GTH: Jessalyn’s phone recorded her bachelorette party antics from the night of Oct 27 to early morning of Oct 28. Addison says Jess had vanished for the second time after sun-up. It is unclear how many days Jessalyn has been missing before Nancy arrives on the island. Nancy was deep asleep when Savannah calls her for help, which means Jess has been gone at least a full day. Then Nancy arrives on the island at night which either means it’s evening on the same day of Savannah’s call or another day has passed by the time Nancy gets there. Oct 29 is the earliest possibility. Game takes place over three nights. Likely set between Oct 29 and Nov 01.

SPY: The newspaper reports that July 14 is near and it will be the eighth anniversary of Revenant’s first attack. Alec’s letter documents that his sister was kidnapped on the first of the month and has not been seen since. Game takes place between Jul 02 and 14. While Nancy cannot sleep or change the time of day, it is hard to believe that traveling back and forth throughout Scotland’s towns and the different phases of the spy operation all take place in a single day.

MED: Summer in the southern hemisphere, so datewise it’s set between Dec and Feb. Again there’s no sleep or time of day transitions but the elimination rounds likely take place over several days.

LIE: Employee timecards are recorded through July 05, the artifact exchange log is filled out through July 06, and the packing slip on the open crate says received July 06. Game is a single day of play, likely on July 06 or 07.

SEA: Soren’s winter guest log says Nancy is visiting in January. Game takes place for as many days and nights as player needs.

MID: Minion’s plane ticket TO Austria where the game begins is dated Oct 26 and the game goes into Halloween.

[statelies]

(   *  💀  /  jessie mei li, questioning, she/they )  —  is that emmeline vance i just saw rushing down the corridor? i hear they’re a twenty year old hufflepuff, returning for their sixth school year, but their friends would tell you that they are industrious & compassionate as well as blunt & graceless. if you want to know more about them, i guess i could tell you that they’re muggleborn, and from what i hear, they’re currently allying with the order. when our divination professor looks into their crystal ball, they see: falling asleep studying over open books, split open pomegranates, working under flickering candlelight, casual intimacy between friends, a kitchen full of laughter.

CHARACTER INSPIRATION: Izzie Stevens (Grey’s Anatomy), Callie Torres (Grey’s Anatomy) (+ Sara Ramirez, the they/she icon we all deserve), Kara Danvers (Supergirl), Charles Boyle (Brooklyn 99), Alina Starkov (Shadow and Bone), Janet (Not a Girl) (The Good Place), Penelope Garcia (Criminal Minds).

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Implied Racism.

LINKS: Pinterest. Playlist (Coming Soon).

𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐒

I N T R O

full name ➵ Emmeline Huan Vance

nicknames ➵ Emmy; Emma; Line; Em; Melly; Melsy; Vance; Hurricane

pronouns ➵ she/they/her/them

birthdate / age ➵ October 24th, 1959, 09:47 am / 20 years old

birthplace ➵ Brighton, East Sussex

childhood home ➵ Unknown home in Brighton, East Sussex — 162 Orchard Croft, Harlow, Essex

current residence ➵ Hogwarts, Scotland

religion ➵ agnostic; paternal grandparents were Methodist ( Protestant ) while maternal grandparents were also Christian

occupation ➵ full - time student at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry

P H Y S I C A L

height ➵ 5 feet, 2 inches / 157.5 cm

weight ➵ 48 kg / 106lb

body type ➵ hourglass shaped figure

hair ➵ dark brown, bordering on black; soft and wavy

eye color ➵ dark brown

dominant hand ➵ right

FC ➵ Jessie Mei Li

voice ➵ Jessie Mei Li

special characteristics ➵

small waist

has a birthmark on her right ankle that looks like an apple

pierced septum

smells of ➵

lavender hand lotion

pomegranate

cardamom, jasmine and orange blossom perfume

E M O T I O N A L

zodiac ➵ scorpio sun (x); sagittarius rising; cancer moon

MBTI ➵ ISFJ (“The Defender”)

positive traits ➵ industrious; compassionate; generous; warmhearted; benevolent; selfless; observant; honest; personable; kind.

negative traits ➵ blunt; graceless; meticulous; well-meaning; impatient; internalizes feelings; oversensitive; tactless; overbearing; clumsy.

likes ➵ Pumpkin pasties; duelling club; laughter; the rush of incoming patients; cooking for friends; Ballycastle Bats; Diagon Alley; being barefoot at the beach; roadtrips; apple juice; hugs from friends; nicknames; vanilla candles; the heat of a boiling cauldron; Sugar Quills; warm sweaters; pizza; pomegranate seeds; cheek kisses; taking photographs; finishing essays early; coffee with milk and two sugars; Queen; Aston Villa; cats

dislikes ➵ spam (the food); apparition; the Daily Prophet; starless nights; Kenmare Kestrels; karaoke; losing bets; skinned knees; snakes; pigeons; the colour fuschia (it’s too bright); ticking clocks; banana flavouring; funerals; Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans; Celestina Warbeck; mayonnaise; blue M&Ms; her lao ye; the word mudblood; leprechauns; fans of Kenmare Kestrels; losing football matches; witch Halloween costumes; rugby

amortentia ➵

birthday cake

fresh mint

old books

orange blossom

M A G I C

blood status ➵ muggleborn

wand ➵ Aspen, dragon heartstring core, 8 inches, hard

wand-quality aspen wood is white and fine-grained, and highly prized by all wand-makers for its stylish resemblance to ivory and its usually outstanding charmwork. The proper owner of the aspen wand is often an accomplished duellist, or destined to be so, for the aspen wand is one of those particularly suited to martial magic. An infamous and secretive eighteenth-century duelling club, which called itself The Silver Spears, was reputed to admit only those who owned aspen wands. In my experience, aspen wand owners are generally strong-minded and determined, more likely than most to be attracted by quests and new orders; this is a wand for revolutionaries.

patronus ➵ Hippo

E D U C A T I O N

Hogwarts class ➵ Hufflepuff, 1981

extracurriculars ➵

Hufflepuff Prefect / September 1979 - June 1981

Herbology Club & Greenhouse Keepers / September 1977 - June 1981

Toothill Duelling Club / September 1979 - June 1981

Wenlock Study Club / September 1979 - June 1981

courses & exams ➵

Ancient Runes - O

Astronomy - E

Charms - O

Defense Against the Dark Arts - O

Herbology - O

History of Magic - O

Muggle Studies - O

Potions - O

Transfiguration - O

Care of Magical Creatures - E

M I S C E L L A N E O U S

health ➵

walnut allergy

hayfever

pets ➵

Jíngyi; the long-eared owl

Shu; the white cat

handwriting ➵ Abuget

F A M I L Y

Deirdre (née Wilkinson) Vance ➵ paternal grandmother; retired nurse; deceased May. 1980

Edward Vance ➵ grandfather; retired soldier and miner; deceased Jan. 1980

Xiulan Wong ( Wong Xiulan ) ➵ maternal grandmother (lao lao); homeschooled; housewife; alive

Da Wong ( Wong Da ) ➵ maternal grandfather (lao ye); homeschooled; shop-owner; alive

Dr. Cillian Vance ➵ father; worked for/with the Red Cross UK (and the Hong Kong Red Cross); alive

Mei (née Wong) Vance ➵ mother; teaching assistant; alive

𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐄𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐌

emmeline had always known they were different. at first, it was because of her skin, the way she looked and spoke and could never find anyone to play with on the playground, her chinese middle name and her lao lao being the one to pick her up from school every morning. she would cry to her mother at night, cling to her arms like they were the port keeping her safe from the storm, and listen to her father sing, voice warm and tender as she drifted to sleep, but she never got the answers for why she was treated differently — never got answers for why she was the only non-white child in her school, never got answers for why they hated her so much, hated her existence. but she weathered through primary school, finding her footing in secondary school with her only friend, aisha, who never cared that she was different, that sometimes she could do things that nobody else seemed able to do, that she’d been encouraged to always tell the truth, nothing but the truth, that sometimes she’d say things that hurt, things that stung even though she never meant for them to.

for a while, the feeling of being wholly different faded, or at least, emmeline didn’t notice it quite so prominently anymore, and then suddenly it appeared again — but this time it had been because she didn’t know if she always felt like a girl. not a girl in the traditional sense, anyway, not some days. she liked dresses and fancy heeled shoes and tiaras, but found herself equally at home in plaid shirts and her father’s way-too-big suit jacket and kicking around a football, and for a half-asian barely a teenage… person (she’s still working on it), suspended constantly between two identities, it confused them (even though they’re perfectly aware now that those things are superficial, but the feeling still remains). the only person they ever talked to about it back then was aisha — their lifeline, their best friend, the one their parents reluctantly approved of because they had been so lonely for so long. while aisha was crushing on boys, sweaty and loud and just this side of too teasing, and starting to wear makeup and changing herself, emmeline was trying to find where she fit in, trying to understand who she was, who she is, why they feel so different.

in the midst of all that, emmeline’s letter to hogwarts came. just another difference for emmeline to feel, the knowledge that they have magic was unexpected and tore her family in two. the family she loved - her mother, her father, her lao lao and lao ye, and granny and pops - all had differing opinions on whether or not to accept it, whether or not to send them to school and deal with the fact, up front, that emmeline was, and always would be, special. in the end, emmeline’s pops snuck her out, following instructions from a professor mcgonagall, to find diagon alley, the place where emmeline suddenly felt she fit in. she could feel the magic in the air, could feel it almost crackling in the space around her, almost inviting her in. of course, it took some time — a little too much time, really — to buy everything she needed, and when she cried into her ice cream on the way home, overwhelmed and tired and feeling so many things, he was the one who held her all the way home. 

he and their granny were the only ones there to send them off the hogwarts that first year, their parents reluctant to accept anything so unnatural about their child, but emmeline hardly cared at the time (even though it hit them later that night and they sobbed into their pillow), too excited to remember to even wave, too excited to remember to cry because she was leaving behind the only friend she’d ever truly known, and when they saw hogwarts, that castle appearing, they just knew. they were home. she knows, after years and years of being torn between two identities on so many different fronts, that people aren’y happy she’s here, happy she has magic, happy she calls this place her home away from home, that she laughs loud at the hufflepuff table and wears yellow and black face paint for quidditch matches and tried out for the muggle football team, but there’s nothing they can say to change who she is, her pride in the blood flowing through her veins, in the magic at her fingertips. emmeline’s always known they’re different, but having magic, being home at hogwarts, is the first time she’s ever felt proud to be so.

[astormyjet]

Winter of 2018 - Summer of 2021 TIME FILES WHEN YOU’RE IN YOUR 20s!!!!

OH BOY. It’s been three years (or more) since I updated this. “Time is a weird soup!” to quote a fave. I guess I quit tumblr around the time there was a purge of content and creators and a smack down on a lot of the fandom communities. Tumblr has always been something of a crapshow though so I’ve been more productive with my time than I was in some ways, but I’ve also found other ways to waste my time. *cough twitter/netflix/youtube/MTGArena cough*.

General Life Achievements since 2018 -JLPT N3 GET in 2019! -Blackbelt GET in 2018! -TESOL 120 Hour and BE 50 Hour Cert from online provider GET in 2021 -STUDENT LOAN BANISHED (Thank you grandparents) -Survived Apartment flooding in early 2020. -Mystery anxiety related illness and chronic pain in my left leg from early 2020 - Present. -A mythical 6th and 7th year on the JET Programme. -Started posting on Instagram a lot more about my wanderings around Matsuyama/Uwajima. Mainly old buildings and stray cats. @astormyknight -Surviving so far in Japan with old rona-chan.

2018 was rough. I was given an additional school in the first semester (March to July) as we had someone find a better job. I enjoyed it, but it was a bit of a rough go especially when I was transferred that August after three fantastic years at Tsubaki JHS and ES and only a semester there. I legit went through the five stages of grief - which I think is another reason I stopped blogging. I was given my current base school along with four other schools. Going from 2(3) to 5 schools was a bit of an adjustment. I still feel a bit spread out.

That said, I keep running into teachers and students who were at the Tsubaki’s. The teachers shuffle around every April, so it's always a lottery with which new faces are going to be old friends (or enemies…). A couple of kids moved and transferred into my current schools from Tsubaki too. So I have one kid I can say I've been teaching for 6 out of the 7 years I've been here!

One of the kids who was in JHS 3rd grade when I first got here (in 2015!) hangs out around one of my favorite cafes, so I got chatting with him recently. He's in his second year of nursing school - his class nearly broke me in the first year, it was really a trial by fire with those kids. I was 22 then, and he’s 20 now, so it was interesting chatting to him about that first year of teaching. His younger sister was one of my favorite students too, she was in the group of kids that graduated in the March of 2018, the year group that went through Tsubaki JHS with me - they’re newly minted University students now!

This Thursday morning when I was cycling in to work, a kid who was 2nd year JHS when I left  (so 2nd or 3rd year JHS now) pulled up with their Mum in a van and got their mamachari out of the back to bike to school. The franticness of it all was hilarious. Their Mum legit sat on the horn until I pulled over. I was so happy to run into this kid, even at social distance and both of us late to work/school - because we both remembered each other and as they were going around the corners they were yelling each time they turned and humming the old elementary school directions chant and pelting me with questions about what I’ve been up to.

I've had so many students and schools now, that everything is kind of running into a blur. I remember flashes of kids faces and voices, random memories of in class or out of class shenanigans out of the blue. Also, I now, more than ever, have issues remembering kids' names, but I still know their faces (even with their masks), whose homeroom class they were in, who their friends were and which club they were in. I get random flashbacks to past conversations with them when I see them on the street or we run into each other. I feel bad because the first thing former students ask is ‘Do you remember my name?’ and I always have to be like, ‘Honestly, no, but I remember you did this on x day, x month in x classroom’.

Socially in 2018 -2019 - a few of our friends went home and things shook up a little. Our DnD group changed a bit - one of our players stepped into the role forever DM (THANK YOU RALPH). From memory the newbies were great - some of them just went home at the start of last month and it’s weird not seeing them around (JESS DO YOUR BEST!). I think we only have one or two people left from that rotation. There’s no 6th year ALTs, and only two 5th years.

Aug 2018 - Aug 2019 was the year of Hiura - my mountain school. Dang man, they were so cool. The students of the JHS and the ES combined barely hit 30, so each class was between 3-10 students depending on the grade. It was easier to get to know the kids, their abilities and their goals than it has been for me at other schools. I miss it so bad, being in nature once a week did my country-kid heart so good! The bugs! The frogs! The river! The mountain! The monkeys! The lizards! The dilapidated houses and hidden shrines!!!! The random crabs in the English room...I forgot that there was such a thing as freshwater crabs, and being right next to a river, the invasion wasn’t as out of place as I first thought...  

The area is so picturesque and calming. Every week up there was a small adventure (after getting over my motion sickness from the bus ride up). The kids were constantly pranking either myself or the main English teacher. There was always some new weird bug or lizard in a tank to be educated about. There were chickens on the way to the JHS that used to escape from their cardboard box prisons to run riot on the gardens. There were old people to freak out with my youth and foreignness! The kids also got to do a lot of extra classes, sumiyakai (making charcoal the traditional way), planting and maintaining rice paddies, setting up vegetable gardens, raising fireflies, conserving a special breed of fire lily (only found in this particular mountain valley) and another rare flower, wilderness training ect.

I wish I could have stayed there a lot longer but SOMEONE (read...the BoE) decided that schools had to be shuffled again(thank goodness the dude who has it now was able to keep it from the 2021 shuffle, he's the best fit for the school). I had so many good memories from there, I wish I had been more consistent in writing it down. I do have a bunch of photos and videos from there though, so that's nice. The only thing I don’t miss is the bus trip up and down - not only was it motion sickness, there was a healthy dose of fear each ride as the driver brought us perilously close to the edge of the mountain drop…

2019 - 2020 was interesting. With the school I got given instead of the Hirua’s I was roped into more demonstration lessons which was a lot of pressure because I was also involved quite heavily with the JHS observation and training lessons too. They were somewhat rewarding, the third graders are now super smart 5th graders, but the teachers  who need to embrace the new curriculum and ways of teaching really haven’t taken on anything from the lessons....

Outside of work as well, I was given the chance, thanks to an ALT buddy of mine, to join in with the local festival. It's been one of the biggest highlights of my time here, and I am gutted it’s been cancelled for the last two years, but I understand the reason…. I was able to travel to Okinawa too during that summer for an international Karate seminar with the Dojo I train with. I met the head of the style I currently practice and a bunch of people from around the world. I also got to see Shuri castle before it burned down. So that was a stroke of luck. One of the places I want to go when/if we get out of this pandemic is Okinawa. I want to see more of those Islands so bad. Just before the whole pandemic thing too - I managed to see the Rugby World Cup, a Canada vs NZ match, I even ran into Tana Umanga in Oita city!!!

2019 - 2020 was supposed to be my last year on JET, so I was frantically Job hunting. I went to the Career Fair in Osaka in early Feb/Late January 2020. I applied and got interviewed for a position in Sendai in early Jan 2020. In the end though - the Rona hit. We started hearing whispers of it around the end of 2019, then the cruise boats happened, and then Japan refused to cancel the Olympics...every holiday season there is a new wave of infections, my nurse friends in Tokyo are struggling....my teacher friends in more populous areas of Japan are struggling…

JET couldn't get new ALTs for 2020-2021, I took the extra year when it was eventually offered, as the one job I had managed to get a serious offer for was hesitating because with the rona setting in, things were uncertain. There was a lot of time spent adjusting to the new rules surrounding what we could do in class with the kids as well as textbook change. Schools shut on and off during the spring months. 

I also got a reminder of my mortality mid May with an unrelated illness which is still smacking me around a bit - stress/age, it does things to the human body it has no right to. It's only been in the last three months I’ve been able to exercise like I used to, I’ve put on a bunch of weight I can't shrug off (one part medication, another part diet) My relationship with food needs to change, and I really need a kitchen that allows me for more than one pan meals. I also need to figure out what to do with a left leg that is in constant pain from the knee down and a heart that misses beats when stressed out (mentally and physically…). 

My apartment also got flooded by the guy upstairs at one point, I spent most of late February/early March living in a hotel while my walls and floor got redone - I think this was one of the things that really stressed me out and kicked my anxiety right up a notch, it was right when things were getting REALLY bad with rona-chan in Hokkaido and schools were shutting down here as it was filtering into the prefecture and so Japan closed schools for the first time…

Classes in covid times have been weird. We’ve been wearing facemasks full time since the early stages of the pandemic (March 2020) - so I admit that I get a bit pissed off seeing both Americans and New Zealanders back home bitching about just having to start wearing them full time in public. I have asthma and have been suffering with the things on during the 30*C plus with high 90s humidity summers. Teachers were offered vaccines late July 2021, just days before the Olympics were open - and I finished my two shots in the middle of August. But the overall distribution and take up of the jab has been slow.  As mentioned above, we can't play a lot of the games we used to play with kids in classes anymore, and a lot of the activities outlined in the textbook curriculum need to be adjusted too, so we’ve had to be creative. We use hand sanitizer a lot more too. One of the things I miss the most though, is eating lunch with the kids.

Socially from summer 2020 - now 2021 we played a lot of DnD and board games, both online and in person when we could. There were no new ALTs again for the 2021-2022 JET year, and those of us who were in 6th year were offered a 7th. Four out of six of us took it. As a whole we’re down from a peak of 38 ALTs for Junior High and Elementary school to 22 for now. We hopefully will get a new person at the end of September, and 4 more in November. Which will bring us to 27. This has led to ANOTHER round of school shuffles.

Summer vacation has been weird the last two years. With rona-chan, we haven’t really been able to travel. All the summer festivals (all the Autumn and Winter ones too!) have been cancelled, so the changing of seasons just feels, wrong. I dunno. There is so much we all miss from pre-rona-chan, and so much that doesn’t happen that makes this just feel like one long long unending year of sadness, coldness, raininess, unbearable heat and repeat. I’m tired. Time is going so fast, but so.dang.slow.

I lost my favorite school (AGAIN GDI!!!) and gained the school I taught a semester at in 2019....I had my first day there on Wednesday. Schools actually started back on September 1st so there was some drama as the BoE didn’t communicate fast enough about our school changes. We legit got told on the 27th of August (on a Friday) our schools were changing effective September 1st, but somehow some of our schools found out on the Monday 30th August. In July we were told we would be changing schools at the end of September, so.a lot of ALTs and schools were left short changed, not having opportunities to say goodbye to co-workers or students/having their planning for the semester more or less thrown out the window too. I love my job. I really dislike the way the BoE treats us, the Japanese assistant language teachers and our schools.

The new school I have is used to having an ALT there twice a week, who plans all the lessons and executes them. I’m at three elementary schools. I'm only at each once a week, I want to plan, but being that I miss an entire lesson in between visits, it's going to be difficult to do so. Not impossible, but being that I'm already doing it for two other schools, who are at two different places in the textbook ah…….. From what I have talked to my new supervisor about though, it sounds like the teachers have taken on more of the lesson planning and I'll be able to contribute ideas when I'm there. I just want to and wish I could do more without being confused all the time. (This is all usually done in my second language too, not in English so extra levels of confusion and miscommunication abound).

 I feel like this at my JHS too a lot of the time. I want to contribute more, but even with constant communication with my main in school supervisor (who is a badass and pretty much on the same page about everything with me) I still feel about as useful as tits on a bull. Especially now that classes have been cancelled and or shortened, there's less time to do stuff. Any game or activity I plan is usually cut in favor of making up time in the textbook. When I'm in class, I'm back to being a tape recorder, the fun police and general nuisance.　

Also in the last week...my two of my schools were  shut due to students testing positive for the rona. This is the second time my schools have had a scare in the last 8 months. And by shut, I mean the students were all at home, but the teachers  all had to come into the office. Because why not I guess….. I mean,  the cases increasing is really not unexpected with the amount of people who were travelling over obon and the increase of cases due to the Olympics/Japan being slow on vaccinating/delta being the dominant strain/Japan's leaders doing relatively little except asking shops and restaurants to limit people coming in at one time and closing before 8pm. I know my schools weren't the only one shut either - but still High Schools were having their sports days this week. I kept on seeing groups of kids hanging in the park after, so that was a little bit nerve wracking.

It's just frustrating - we’ve been on half days to “minimize the risk of infection” for kids and teachers, as if only being at school from 8am through to 1pm is going to reduce the risk.  My schools have only just started testing out Microsoft teams and Zoom lesson equipment. Thankfully our school’s run in this time was contained real quick, the family was super good about informing us when they got their results back, and the fact they needed to be tested. The homeroom teacher and the students from the same class were the only ones tested, and they all came back clear, which was nice. But the information came back so SLOW. 

I’m a little irritated because I found out on Wednesday night what was going on, and even if I am vaccinated, I am super worried that I will end up being the covid monkey due to being at different schools three days out of five. I think other than being worried that I will catch it myself and get real sick, my biggest fear is that I will be protected from bad symptoms from the vaccine, but still be able to pass it onto some of my more vulnerable friends and students. The whole thing is a mess.  

Other than Covid and BoE drama, life is good. I’ve had a couple of other big changes - both fantastic and not so great, but yeah.  I have my health (and health insurance!) for now. I have a job, for now. I have a sense of existential dread for the next 12 months, but we’ll see where we end up. Life post JET is going to be way less cushy and I am TERRIFIED. I mean, I have a BA in Eng/Ling and no idea what to do with it…..because I am NOT suited for academia.

TLDR: Love my job. Don’t like the system. What is life? Future scary. 

[dawningofdrag]

Hiya; I would like to humbly request, Angst; 20. Might be any s13 ship, but preferably Rosnali.

I love your drabbles so much💖

well this took a while huh !! lmao thank u puddle for requesting !! u are an absolute dear so i really tried my best to make sure this rosenali angst was decent, i hope u love it <3 this is also uploaded on ao3 in case u wanna give it some love there

send me a number and a category and i’ll write something for you!

20. “Don’t look at me like that.” “Like what?” “Like you still love me.”

-

Nothing is more deafening than the beep of a car as it’s engines turn off. The heavy silence that sits uncomfortably on your shoulders, paired with the eeriness of the early hours of the morning, streets barren and dark, nothing but the occasional gust of wind grazing against the rolled up tinted car windows. It creeps up on you the longer you sit in it, soaking the carpets and drowning you in it’s heavy tension before you give in and open the door to finally breathe again. Rosé absolutely hates the feeling, despises it even, but she keeps finding herself in it again and again.

Rosé is cold, really cold, bare legs and arms wrapped by a blanket she knew from experience Denali kept in her backseat. The cold midwestern air causes her teeth to chatter and a shiver to run up her spine despite the old car’s desperate attempt at heating up the interior, forcing her to shake off the bitter temperature that plagues her skin. She winces at the migraine already creeping into the innervations of her mind, the four vodka sodas she had downed an hour ago losing its effect on her usually fleeting mind and allowing the thoughts she initially drank away to resurface and come back at full force. She keeps finding herself in a situation where she needs saving, sitting on the sticky pavement outside the bar she frequents unable to take three steps more, like a damsel in distress waiting to be saved from the strangers trying to give her a ride home and her phone running on three percent.

This is the third time Rosé finds herself like this. Drunk and incoherent and panicking as she runs through a mental list of people who wouldn’t hate her if she called them up at four in the morning to pick her up at a bar in the middle of town on a weekend. There’s Olivia who’d probably even offer to walk her to her apartment door, Lagoona who’d tell her off the whole ride home, and Jan who though is always up to help, is so bad at driving she’d throw up before she even got to her apartment. Rosé scrolls through all the eligible options that litter her contacts, but somehow from the moment she opens her near-dead phone to the second she ends the call she finds herself blacking out, finding herself waiting for Denali’s Prius with that tiny dent in the rear end and her stupid pride bumper sticker they had bought on a trip to New Orleans three years ago.

She doesn’t know why her drunk self somehow still manages to crawl back to her, but she does. It’s the third time it happens in the span of two weeks, and she is extremely humiliated by the questionable choice when the late morning comes, and Denali isn’t even supposed to pick up. But she does. She always does and maybe that’s why Rosé keeps calling her.

Every single time she calls her name through the heavy bass blasting through the club or with the echo of the dirty bathroom stalls, she answers her call like she’s been waiting for it and is by the front door of whatever club she finds herself in in fifteen minutes. It’s how Rosé keeps ending up in Denali’s passenger seat with goosebumps wrapping around her pale arms, worn and thin fleece blanket haphazardly covering her legs.

“You don’t have to keep picking me up, you know.”

Rosé attempts to cut the tense silence that suffocates the dark interior of the younger girl’s car, the lacking sound of a running engine causing the ringing in her ears to grow in volume. Her green eyes don’t even dare look to her left to meet the blonde’s heavy gaze, knowing just how well it’ll break her if she does. The tension rises to her feet, soles of her stiletto heels sticking on the rubber carpet and planting themselves there. Rosé feels as if she had been glued to her seat, arm not even daring to reach for the door handle. So many questions accompany her growing headache, mind begging for answers as if her life depended on it, but she decides against it.

“I know,” Denali mutters under her breath along with a dragged exhale, cutting her train of thought short. The blonde glances at her lap before her eyes shoot back up to look at the empty road in front of them, bare lips pursed like she had to hold back. “I just wanted to.”

The second half of her statement does nothing to ease the overbearing thoughts that are slowly eating Rosé alive. The restraint she has to practice on herself starts to prick her legs, the flooding tension that wants to swallow her whole reaches up to her calves and causing an unsettling feeling to make itself comfortable in her stomach. She wants to scream, meet the younger girl’s dark eyes and cup her cheeks, let the tears she cries in the comfort of her bedroom finally run free down her face as she begs for the answers to her questions she can never seem to figure out. Why do you keep picking me up when I call? Why do you still help me after everything I’ve done? Why do you still look at me when I can’t even look at you?

The uncomfortable feeling that plagues her soul rises up to her chest, filling her lungs and taking her hands and threatening to pull her under. She picks on the chipped nail polish that paints her fingers, projecting that ever growing anxiety onto the bright colors that glow under the warm yellow car light. Rosé feels the younger woman’s kind eyes bear holes into the side of her face, and it almost drives her man. The silence rings in her ears like a siren until the deafening sound is stopped with the simple whisper of her name, finally mustering up the courage to push her past the boundary she had been teetering off of.

“Rosie-”

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you still love me.”

“I don’t.”

Denali purses her lips the second the words slip out of her mouth, knuckles turning white as her tan fingers wrap tight around the steering wheel. Rosé watches intently with tired eyes, the sinking feeling crawling up to her shoulders, grazing her neck, finally swallowing her whole. The lump on her throat grows in size, words that so desperately want to roll off of her red stained lips suffocate and trip over each other in an attempt to escape, and yet not one does.

Rosé knows what Denali looks like when she’s thinking. When the gears in her head are turning at a rapid speed she could never keep up with. She catches the subtle twitching of her bare pale lips and her dead set gaze on the uninteresting scene playing out past the windshields, the heavy anticipation aching each muscle in her body crawling closer and closer to her pain threshold. Her body begs for more than those two stupid words she refuses to accept are true, arms tempted to reach out and take her hand and tell her about how she’s realized how much she still needs her-

The blonde leans over to her side of the car, hand reaching out to unlock the door on her side. She doesn’t even give her a glance as she sits back in her chair, back relaxing against the grey nylon-covered cushions of the driver’s seat.

“I can’t, okay?” Denali chokes out, and Rosé could barely make out the glossy sheen that accompanies her defeated gaze. “Just- get out of my car.”

[alwaysalreadyangry]

most of the UK reviews i’ve read of martin eden have been a disappointment, tbh. i don’t know if this is because critics have been busy with cannes or because outlets here just don’t have the space, or because it’s kind of seen as old news. i have seen no real engagement with the politics or form beyond a couple of cursory lines, and it’s a shame because... i think it’s really rich wrt those elements?

so i am looking again at the (wonderful) review from film comment last year and it’s such a shame that it’s not available freely online. so i thought i’d post it here behind a cut. it’s long but worth it imo (and also engages really interestingly with marcello’s other films). it’s by phoebe chen.

COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS              Jan  3, 2020                    BY PHOEBE CHEN

EARLY IN JACK LONDON’S 1909 NOVEL MARTIN EDEN, there is a scattering of references to technical ephemera that the 20th century will promptly leave behind: “chromos and lithographs,” those early attempts at large-scale reproduction; “a vast camera obscura,” by then a centuries-old relic; a bullfight so fervid it’s like “gazing into a kinetoscope,” that proto-cinematic spectacle of cloistered motion. These objects now seem like archaic curios, not much more than the flotsam of culture from the moment it shifted gears to mass production. It’s a change in scale that also ensnares the novel’s title character, a hardy young sailor and autodidact-turned-writer-célèbre, famously an avatar of London’s own hollowing transmutation into a figure for mass consumption. But, lucky him—he remains eminent now on the other side of a century; chance still leaves a world of names and faces to gather dust. Easily the most arresting aspect of Pietro Marcello’s new adaptation is its spotlight on the peripheral: from start to end, London’s linear Künstlerroman is intercut with a dizzying range of archival footage, from a decaying nitrate strip of anarchist Errico Malatesta at a workers’ rally to home video–style super 16mm of kids jiving by an arcade game. In these ghostly interludes, Marcello reanimates the visual detritus of industrial production as a kind of archival unconscious.

This temporal remixing is central to Marcello’s work, mostly experimental documentaries that skew auto-ethnographic and use elusive, essayistic editing to constellate place and memory, but always with a clear eye to the present. Marcello’s first feature, Crossing the Line (2007), gathers footage of domestic migrant workers and the nocturnal trains that barrel them to jobs across the country, laying down a recurring fascination with infrastructure. By his second feature, The Mouth of the Wolf (2009), there is already the sense of an artist in riveting negotiation with the scope of his story and setting. Commissioned by a Jesuit foundation during Marcello’s yearlong residency in the port city of Genoa, the film ebbs between a city-symphonic array and a singular focus on the story of a trans sex worker and her formerly incarcerated lover, still together after 20-odd years and spells of separation. Their lives are bound up with a poetic figuration of the city’s making, from the mythic horizon of ancient travails, recalled in bluer-than-blue shots of the Ligurian Sea at dawn, to new-millennium enterprise in the docklands, filled with shipping crates and bulldozers busy with destruction.

Marcello brings a similar approach to Martin Eden, though its emphasis is inverted: it’s the individual narrative that telescopes a broader history of 20th-century Italy. In this pivotal move, Marcello and co-writer Maurizio Braucci shift London’s Oakland-set story to Naples, switching the cold expanse of the North Pacific for the Mediterranean and its well-traversed waters. The young century, too, is switched out for an indeterminate period with jumbled signifiers: initial clues point to a time just shy of World War II, though a television set in a working-class household soon suggests the late ’50s, and then a plastic helicopter figurine loosely yokes us to the ’70s. Even the score delights in anachronism, marked by a heavy synth bass that perforates the sacral reverb of a cappella and organ song, like a discotheque in a cathedral. And—why not?—’70s and ’80s Europop throwbacks lend archival sequences a further sense of epochal collapse. While Marcello worked with researcher Alessia Petitto for the film’s analog trove, much of its vintage stock is feigned by hand-tinting and distressing original 16mm footage. Sometimes a medium-change jolts with sudden incongruity, as in a cut to dockworkers filmed in black and white, their faces and hands painted in uncanny approximations of living complexions. Other transitions are so precisely matched to color and texture that they seem extensions of a dream.

Martin’s writer’s optimism is built on a faith in language as the site of communication and mutual recognition. So follows his tragedy.

Patchworked from the scraps of a long century, this composite view seems to bristle against a story of individual formation. It feels like a strange time for an artist’s coming-of-age tale adapted with such sincerity, especially when that central emphasis on becoming—and becoming a writer, no less—is upended by geopolitical and ecological hostility. At first, our young Martin strides on screen with all the endearing curiosity of an archetypal naïf, played by Luca Marinelli with a cannonballing force that still makes room for the gentler affects of embarrassment and first love. Like the novel, the film begins with a dockside rescue: early one morning, Martin saves a young aristocrat from a beating, for which he is rewarded with lunch at the family estate. On its storied grounds, Martin meets the stranger’s luminous sister, Elena Orsini (Jessica Cressy), a blonde-haloed and silk-bloused conduit for his twinned desires of knowledge and class transgression. In rooms of ornate stucco and gilded everything, the Orsinis parade their enthusiasm for education in a contrived show of open-mindedness, a familiar posture of well-meaning liberals who love to trumpet a certain model of education as global panacea. University-educated Elena can recite Baudelaire in French; Martin trips over simple conjugations in his mother tongue. “You need money to study,” he protests, after Elena prescribes him a back-to-school stint. “I’m sure that your family would not ignore such an important objective,” she insists (to an orphan, who first set sail at age 11).

Anyone who has ever been thrilled into critical pursuit by a single moment of understanding knows the first beat of this story. Bolting through book after book, Martin is fired by the ever-shifting measure of his knowledge. In these limitless stretches of facts to come, there’s the promised glow of sheer comprehension, the way it clarifies the world as it intoxicates: “All hidden things were laying their secrets bare. He was drunk with comprehension,” writes London. Marcello is just as attentive to how Martin understands, a process anchored to the past experiences of his working body. From his years of manual labor, he comes to knowledge in a distinctly embodied way, charming by being so literal. At lunch with the Orsinis, he offers a bread roll as a metaphor for education and gestures at the sauce on his plate as “poverty,” tearing off a piece of education and mopping up the remnants with relish. Later, in a letter to Elena, he recounts his adventures in literacy: “I note down new words, I turn them into my friends.” In these early moments, his expressions are as playful as they are trenchant, enlivened by newfound ways of articulating experience. His writer’s optimism is built on a faith in language as the site of communication and mutual recognition. So follows his tragedy.

One of Marcello’s major structural decisions admittedly makes for some final-act whiplash, when a cut elides the loaded years of Martin’s incremental success, stratospheric fame, and present fall into jaded torpor. By now, he is a bottle-blonde chain-smoker with his own palazzo and entourage, set to leave on a U.S. press tour even though he hasn’t written a thing in years. His ideas have been amplified to unprecedented reach by mass media, and his words circulate as abstract commodities for a vulturine audience. For all its emphasis on formation, Martin Eden is less a story of ebullient self-discovery than one of inhibiting self-consciousness. There is no real sense that Martin’s baseline character has changed, because it hasn’t. Even his now best-selling writing is the stuff of countless prior rejected manuscripts. From that first day at the Orsini estate, when his roughness sticks out to him as a fact, he learns about the gulf between a hardier self-image and the surface self that’s eyed by others.

WITH SUCH A DEEPLY INHABITED PERFORMANCE by Marinelli, it’s intuitive to read the film as a character study, but the lyrical interiority of London’s novel never feels like the point of Marcello’s adaptation. Archival clips—aged by time, or a colorist’s hand—often seem to illustrate episodes from Martin’s past, punctuating the visual specificity of individual memory: a tense encounter with his sister cuts to two children dancing with joyous frenzy; his failed grammar-school entrance exam finds its way to sepia-stained shots of a crippled, shoeless boy. These insertions are more affective echoes than literal ones, the store of a single life drawn from a pool of collective happening.

But, that catch: writing in the hopes of being read, as Martin does (as most do), means feeding some construct of a distinctive self. While the spotlight of celebrity singles out the destructive irony of Martin’s aggressive individualism, Marcello draws from Italy’s roiling history of anarchist and workerist movements to complicate the film’s political critique, taking an itinerant path through factions and waves from anarcho-communism in the early 1900s to the pro-strike years of autonomist Marxism in the late ’70s. In place of crystalline messaging is a structure that parallels Martin’s own desultory politics, traced in both film and novel through his commitment to liberal theorist Herbert Spencer. Early on, Martin has an epiphanic encounter with Spencer’s First Principles (a detail informed by London’s own discovery of the text as a teen), which lays out a systematic philosophy of natural laws, and offers evolution as a structuring principle for the universe—a “master-key,” London offers. Soon, Martin bellows diatribes shaped by Spencer’s more divisive, social Darwinist ideas of evolutionary justice, as though progress is only possible through cruel ambivalence. Late in the film, an image of a drunk and passed-out Martin cuts to yellowed footage of a young boy penciling his name—“Martin Eden”—over and over in an exercise book, a dream of becoming turned memory.

In Marcello’s previous feature, Lost and Beautiful (2015), memory is more explicitly staged as an attachment to landscape. Like Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazzaro, Lost and Beautiful plays as a pastoral elegy but lays out the bureaucratic inefficiency that hastens heritage loss through neglect. Rolling fields make occasional appearances in Martin Eden, but its Neapolitan surroundings evoke a different history. Far from the two oceans that inspired a North American tradition of maritime literature, the Mediterranean guards its own idiosyncrasies of promise and catastrophe. Of the Sea’s fraught function as a regional crossroads, Marcello has noted, in The Mouth of the Wolf, a braiding of fate and agency: “They are men who transmigrate,” the opening voiceover intones. “We don’t know their stories. We know they chose, found this place, not others.” Mare Nostrum—“Our Sea”—is the Roman epithet for the Mediterranean, a possessive projection that abides in current vernacular. Like so many cities that cup the sea, Naples is a site of immigrant crossing, a fact slyly addressed in Martin Eden with a fleeting long shot of black workers barreling hay in a field of slanted sun, and, at the end, a group of immigrants sitting on a beach at dusk. Brief, but enough to mark the changing conditions of a new century.

Not much is really new, however: not the perils of migration, nor the proselytizing individualists, nor the media circus, nor the classist distortions of taste, nor, blessedly, the kind of learning for learning’s sake that stokes and sustains an interest in the world. Toward the end of the film, there is a shot of our tired once-hero, slumped in the back seat of a car, that cuts to sepia stock of children laughing and running to reach the camera-as-car-window, as if peering through glass and time. It recalls a scene from Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire, which leaps backward through a similar gaze, when the weary angel Cassiel looks out of a car window at the vista of ’80s Berlin and sees, instead, grainy footage of postwar streets strewn with rubble in fresh ruin. Where human perception is shackled to linearity, these wool-coated and scarfed seraphs—a materialization of Walter Benjamin’s “angel of history”—see all of time in a simultaneous sweep, as they wander Berlin with their palliative touch. Marcello’s Martin Eden mosaics a view less pointedly omniscient, but just as filled with a humanist commitment to the turning world, even as Martin slides into disillusion. All its faces plucked from history remind me of a line from a Pasolini poem: “Everything on that street / was human, and the people all clung / to it tightly.”

Phoebe Chen is a writer and graduate student living in New York.

[snowe-zolynn-rogers]

Pairings: Romantic Romile (Roman x Emile), Romantic Prandy (Andy x Pryce), Romantic Anxtober (October x Virgil), Romantic Intrulosleepceit (Remus x Logan x Remy x Deceit)

Word Count: 1135 Words

Summary: Deceit's hair, Putting Others First, and poly cuddle piles.

Warnings: Sex Mentions, Cursing, Cancer Mention, Sick Character, Immunocompromised Character, let me know if I should tag anything else.

Note: Bolded and blockquoted are actions in their chatroom, not a message.

Usernames, a quick translation guide: Andy: Raccoon Man (the trashiest hero), Belladonna: hazelnut, Castor: schrodingersdumbass, Dayd: carniverousroomba, Dice: Dr. Bitch, Emile: Thera-pissed, Eve: wall-e, Halley: aspermylastemail, Janus: SnekBoi, Logan: Momgan, Noah: nope, October: eatpavementido, Orion: birdgeoisie, Patton: Papa Bear, Pollux: satantakemehome, Pryce: SwEeTvErUcA, Remus: Octopussy, Remy: Coffee Bandit, Roman: waaahluigi, Sirius: literalsunshine, Teal: uwu, Thomas: shrexy, Virgil: spipples, Vita: þiccness

A Very Sanders Group Chat: Chapter 11

8:34 AM

SnekBoi: Remus, come to me room. Right now.

Octopussy is now online

Octopussy is now offline

Momgan: What happened, darling?

SnekBoi: My hair again.

Coffee Bandit: It's just hair, babe.

SnekBoi: I know but this means it'll be an even longer time before I can feel normal again.

Coffee Bandit: Normal's overrated, babe. Let's be weird together.

SnekBoi: Remus get the clippers.

spipples: Wait you're not going to

SnekBoi: I can control this. This is the one thing I can control this time.

Octopussy: I'm keeping it, emo, don't worry.

spipples: This doesn't worry me any less.

9:04 AM

Octopussy: twinsies.jpg

Momgan: So you shaved your head with him?

Octopussy: yup! I did this last time too and so DeeDee didn't have to be bald alone.

Momgan: Even the white?

Octopussy: well, it'll all grow back white anyway so why not.

Momgan: As long as you both are happy with it.

Octopussy: Dee's not happy about it, he loves his hair, but this is better for him than slowly losing hair every night.

Octopussy: plus now he gets to rock his old wigs without maybe pulling out hair.

Coffee Bandit: Yup, both of 'em still look cute.

12:12 PM

Octopussy: @SnekBoi sugarbutt, I'm going on a quest with Virgie-poo. if you need anything, Logan is off today and Remy's off too.

spipples: I'm unwilling please help me.

SnekBoi: Have fun you two. I'll be fine. I'm even starting to feel better.

Octopussy: that's good, honey. I love you! I'll see you tonight, promise!

Octopussy and spipples are now offline

5:20 PM

Momgan: Be careful. Please.

SnekBoi: I am. I'm fine.

Thera-pissed: I have a feeling I'm going to have several mental health appointments scheduled this week.

Coffee Bandit: You probably will, yeah.

Thera-pissed: Not surprising. Usually I get to schedule more appointments after these big discussion talks.

6:14 PM

SnekBoi: I guess I'm now known by name.

shexy: And I couldn't be prouder to have you onboard, Janus.

Momgan: Were you non-strenuous on your body?

SnekBoi: I'm considerably drained but I'm lying down so I shouldn't have any fall risk right now. Boogeyman is guarding me very well and retrieving anything I need but I'm probably just going to go to sleep.

Coffee Bandit: Please be careful with yourself, babykins.

SnekBoi: I'm careful, just tired and achey. I'll sleep and then I'll feel better, promise.

Momgan: Get some sleep, dear.

Coffee Bandit: I'll come over and stay with you if you can't sleep alone.

Momgan: If I may, I'd like to extend the offer to myself as well.

SnekBoi: Get over here then, you nerdy puffballs.

Momgan and Coffee Bandit are now offline

SnekBoi: Ah yes, to have two of three boyfriends smother me into oblivion. I can't wait.

6:30 PM

SwEeTvErUcA: Will someone explain why my little brother refuses to leave his room?

Thera-pissed: He and I have made an agreement that he not interact with others until his scheduled therapy session tomorrow morning. After then, he's all yours unless something has gone wrong with his stress levels and he happens to endanger his health.

SwEeTvErUcA: Cryptic, why's my brother's boyfriend being so cryptic? What are you two hiding from everyone?

Thera-pissed: Because I, despite being your brother's boyfriend, will be completely professional when it comes to his mental health and me and my patient have a strict contract of what others outside of the sessions can and cannot know, his current status, the one I believe you're questioning my knowledge of, being one of them.

SwEeTvErUcA: This answers none of my questions but fair enough.

SwEeTvErUcA: Hey, at the appointment, make sure you tell the little bastard I love him.

Thera-pissed: Of course.

9:45 PM

spipples: Wow, I leave for like 9 hours. The fuck, guys?

literalsunshine: Alright, so Auntie Jan and Auntie Roman are mad at each other, Grandpa Patton is happy but not about either of them, he's happy about Thomas. Auntie Jan finally got Thomas to trust him and Roman seemed really sad so I think Thomas is mad at him or something.

spipples: I have the urge to hit my head into a wall again.

literalsunshine: Mom, please don't.

spipples: I know.

literalsunshine: Take a shower, we can watch a movie together in your room.

spipples: Done deal.

spipples is now offline

11:55 PM

nope: so I guess we're not telling him tonight.

literalsunshine: not after this morning.

nope: I'm sure it's not his, though, Siri.

literalsunshine: And I'm sure it is, Noah.

þiccness: Can you two not be cryptic? Everyone is so cryptic today.

literalsunshine: No.

nope: absolutely not.

þiccness: I hate you both.

literalsunshine: Anyway, we can wait a bit longer to tell him, anyway. Or I guess, I'd like to wait just a bit longer.

nope: I guess it couldn't hurt to wait a little longer. Just know that mine are getting suspicious so we might want to figure it out soon.

literalsunshine: I know, it's just yours has less drama than mine, Noah.

nope: I know, babe. Want me to come cuddle?

literalsunshine: Please.

hazelnut: I can't wait until everyone in here is honest with each other.

shrexy: Says the one I only know by username.

hazelnut: Oh easy, Belladonna Hazel Sanders, my mother and father are functions of yours. You don't know me because the only adults that know of my existence besides my school in this big ol' brain box of yours is my two Aunties and my new step-dads.

shrexy: Well, hello, Belladonna.

hazelnut: I like Bela, by the way.

shrexy: Bela.

shrexy: Bela, by chance are your mother and father Remus and Janus?

hazelnut: Oh hey, first time, right guess. Never had that happen before. Everyone always switches me and Vita's parents because we both act a lot like each other's parent.

shrexy: Soooo yeah?

hazelnut: Yep. Remus is my dad and Janus is my mom.

shrexy: I thought Janus said he and Remus were never romantic before?

hazelnut: I do not control whose womb I arose from, Thommy, all I know is that's the one that housed me for like seven months. Also, he never said anything about being together in the past.

shrexy: Bela, it's nine months.

hazelnut: Nah, mom got sick while pregnant so he had me early so he could start chemo.

shrexy: Ah, makes sense.

hazelnut: Oh yeah, look how cute they are.

hazelnut: polyamorouscuddlepile.jpg

shrexy: Awwww. Like a box of kittens.

hazelnut: I'm just glad they're happy. Mom and Dad are emotionally constipated idiots who couldn't figure out for 14 years how to confess that they like each other as more than just friends-with-benefits.

shrexy: You know what? I believe it.

spipples: Ah yes, the specific brand of chaotic dumbass that is Remus and Janus is unrivalled by any other besides possibly Vita.

Taglist: @glaxyjellyfish @chronophobica @fear-ze-queer @imma-potatoo

[positivlyfocused]

The Way My Life Is Supposed To Be

This is the series called "journal entries" for when I experience something I write about in my journal I think others might benefit from reading. This is a continuation of that series.

From my journal - Monday, Jan 4, 2021

I feel my expansion. It feels lovely. I like finding this place early in the morning, then holding it for 15-20 minutes and watching that become my dominant perspective throughout the rest of the day.

It feels wonderful having that perspective early in the morning. And I know, even though that perspective may diminish as the day goes on, I am creating a crease, setting or condition which eventually will extend from one morning to the next. That’s right, a full day’s experience of positive focus. Then a full week. Then a full month.

I’m already well along the way. I feel that condition dominating life experience. As it does, I see the world around me shaping to that. It’s wonderful creating reality, knowing how it’s done, doing it that way instead of by default, and witnessing my own god-being express itself all around me.

It’s the way life is supposed to be. It’s the way I knew it would be.