#i don’t understand why the class isn’t structured that we have assignments based on the movies we watch

[livvyofthelake]

in my watching movies class not remotely paying attention to this movie. sorry bro i’ve got stuff on my phone and this is like. a bummer of a movie tbh

[sarita-daniele]

Hi, angel! Hope you're doing alright 💓 (hola ángel! También hablo español :) ) I was wondering if you could give some advices in starting out in an arts career?

Hola amigx, ¡perdón que nunca vi tu mensajito! I’m not on my Tumblr very often and definitely forget to check my messages. Luckily my favorite causita @luthienne told me you’d messaged me! 

I don’t know what arts discipline you’re in, so feel free to let me know if the advice I have doesn’t apply to you (and ignore it!). There are so many ways to build an arts career, but I’m happy to share some things I’ve learned through trial and error along the way. 

(Outrageously long post below break!)

Educate yourself in arts technique, but also study widely. 

Techniques are important in art, but only as important as the concepts behind them. When I was younger, I wowed people by drawing near-photographic portraits, but that technical talent and skill alone couldn’t make me a professional artist. Memorable artwork has not just a how, but a why. It isn’t just the object but the story behind the object, and the meaning of the object in the world. Art is about what interests you, what makes you think, what you most value and want to change in this world. So as you build an arts career, learn the techniques behind drawing, woodworking, casting, writing, music-making, whatever your discipline is, but take time, if you can, to also study history, sociology, anthropology, ecology, linguistics, politics, or whatever else you’re drawn to conceptually. Study as widely as you can. 

The studio art program I went through (a public university in the US) was very technique-forward; we signed up for classes according to technique, like printmaking or small metals, learned those techniques, completed technique-based assignments. Then I did a one-term exchange at arts university in the UK that was very concept-forward. We had no technical courses, just exhibition deadlines, and what mattered in critique was the concept. Both of these schools had their strengths and flaws, but what I learned was that, to be a practicing artist, I needed both technique and concepts that I genuinely cared about and could stand behind. If I could go back and change anything, I would probably take fewer studio courses (after graduating, I couldn’t afford access to a wood shop, metal shop, or expensive casting materials, and lost many of those skills) and more courses in sociology, Latin American studies, linguistics, ecology, anthropology, etc., because my artwork today centers on social justice, racial justice, Latinx stories and histories, educational access and justice, the politics of language, and community ethics. 

And please know that whenever I talk about seeking an education, I’m not talking solely about institutional spaces. College career tracks in the arts (BFA, MFA, etc., much less high-cost conservatory programs) are not accessible to everyone and aren’t the only way to establish an arts career. You can study technique and learn about the world using any educational space accessible to you: nonprofits that offer programming in your community, online resources, Continuing Education programs. And of course, self-education: read as much as you possibly can!

Know the value of your story. 

I come from a Cuban/Peruvian family and grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. My father’s family fled political violence surrounding the Cuban Revolution and came to the U.S. when he was a teenager. My mother was born in Brooklyn to Peruvian parents on work visas and moved back to Lima in her childhood. I grew up with these two cultures present and deeply embedded in our household, in our language, our food, our sense of humor, our sense of history. And yet, some residual assimilation trauma still affected me. I drifted towards the most American things, the whitest things, English authors and Irish music, in part because I enjoyed them but also because those were the things I saw valued in society. I wanted to fit in, wanted to be unique but not different, wanted to prove that I could navigate all spaces. The reality of marginalized identities in America is that our country tells us our identities are only valuable when they can be seen as exotic, while still kept inferior to the dominant, white American narrative (note that this “us” is a general statement, not meant to make assumptions about how you identify or what country you live in). 

But as an artist, all I have is my story, and who I am. I wasn’t willing to look at it directly. For years, I avoided doing so. It turns out, though, that I couldn’t actually begin my career until I reckoned with myself and learned to value everything about myself. To fully acknowledge my story, my history, my cultural reality, my sense of language, and my privileges. So I encourage young artists to look always inward, to ask questions about themselves, their families, and what made them who they are. 

The reason for doing this is to understand the source from which you make art.  Sometimes, however, for marginalized artists, the world warps this introspection into a trap, pigeonholing us into making art only “about” our identities, because that work is capital-I-Important to white audiences who want to tokenize our traumas. This is the white lens, and if anything, I try to understand myself as deeply as I can so that I can make art consciously for my community, not for that assumed white audience. 

Know that your career doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s, or like anything you’ve envisioned up to this point. 

As a high schooler I imagined that a life in the arts meant me in a studio, drawing and making, selling my work, getting exhibitions near and far, and gaining recognition. It was a solitary vision, one with a long history in the arts, rooted in the idea of individual genius. My career ended up completely different. Today, my arts projects involve teaching, collaborating, collecting interviews and oral histories, and creating public installations, rarely in traditional galleries or museums. 

As you work towards an arts career, figure out what does and doesn’t work for you: the kind of art you like and don’t like, the kinds of spaces that feel comfortable and those that don’t. I always thought I wanted to be part of traditional galleries, so I got a job working in a high-end art gallery in Boston during my grad program. Once in that space, however— even though I found the space calming and the work beautiful— I realized that there was something that I deeply disliked about the commodified art world. I didn’t like that we were selling art for over $10,000, that our exhibitions were geared exclusively towards collectors and wealthy art-buyers. The work was often technically masterful, but didn’t move or connect with me on a deeper level, and I realized that was because it wasn’t creating any change in the world. I liked work that shifted the needle, that made the world more inclusive and equitable, that centered marginalized stories (that gallery represented 90% white artists). I liked artwork that people made together, which drew me to collaborative art. I liked artwork that was accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy, which drew me to public art. I liked art exhibited in non-institutional spaces, which led me to community spaces. Since I was in an MFA for Creative Writing, I liked interdisciplinary art that engaged performance, technology, text, that was participatory and not just a 2D or 3D object. Figuring out all of these things led me to apply to my first major arts job: as a teaching artist in a community nonprofit that made art for social change in collaboration with local youth, in a predominantly Latinx neighborhood. 

My career path didn’t look like anything I expected, but I love it. The bulk of my income comes from teaching creative writing and art classes for nonprofits, working as a core member of a public arts nonprofit, and freelance consulting for book manuscripts. I love being an educator and consider it part of my creative practice. I love that I’m constantly collaborating with and talking to other artists. I love working with books and public art every day. I publish poetry, fiction, and literary translations, and exhibit artwork I’ve created in the studio and through funded opportunities. 

Fellow artists tell me often that I’m lucky, that my “day jobs” are all within the arts. But there are downsides to the way I’ve chosen to structure my career. I’m constantly balancing many projects, and my income is unstable. It’s difficult to save and plan towards the future,. I get by, but financial instability isn’t an option for many artists with families and dependents, with debts, medical expenses, and just isn’t the preferred lifestyle for a lot of people. I know artists who worked office jobs for years to support their practice and gain financial stability. I know artists who had entire careers as lawyers or accountants before becoming artists full time. I know artists who teach in public schools or work as substitute teachers. I know artists who are business owners and artists who work in policy and politics. I know artists who work in framing stores and shipping warehouses while being represented by galleries. These are all arts careers, and I admire every one of them. So as you build your career, don’t feel like it has to look like anyone’s else’s, like there’s anything you “should” be doing. Focus on the kind of artwork you want to make and what kind of work-life balance is best for you, then structure your career around that as best you can. 

Any job you use to support yourself can connect to an arts career!  

I get asked often by young people looking for jobs what kinds of jobs will best propel them towards an arts career. I believe that any kind of job can connect to and support an arts career, and I know that some suggestions out there in the arts world (like “get an unpaid internship at an art gallery!” or “become a studio apprentice to a well-known artist!”) assume a certain amount of privilege. So I want to break down how different kinds of jobs can connect to your art career: 

1) Jobs that allow for the flexibility and mental capacity to create. My friends who work restaurant jobs while going to auditions fall into this category. Who work as bartenders in evening so that they can be in the studio by day. Who dog-walk or babysit or nanny because the timing and flexibility allows for arts opportunities. My friends who are Lyft drivers or work in deliveries. These are often jobs outside of a creative field, but they can be beneficial because they don’t drain your creative batteries, so to speak. You still have your creative brain fully charged, and some jobs (like dog-walking) even allow for good mental processing (you can think through creative problems). As long as the job doesn’t drain you to the point where you have no energy at all, these kinds of jobs can be great because they allow time and space for your creative work. 

2) Jobs that place you in arts spaces, arts adjacent spaces, or spaces where you can learn about material/technique. My sculptor friends who work in hardware stores, quarries, foundries, or in construction. My printmaker friend who interned with graphic designers. My writer friends who work in bookstores and libraries, artists who work in art supply stores. My friend who worked with her dad’s painting company and got to improve her precision as a painter, which she then took back to the canvas. My teen students who get paid to work on murals or get stipend payments for making art at the nonprofit I work for. My filmmaker friends who worked on film crews. Friends who worked as theater ushers, in ticket sales, or as janitorial staff at museums. All of these jobs kept these artists adjacent to their artwork, whether through access to tools, materials, supplies, or books, through networking and conversations with other artists, or through skillsets that could enhance their art. 

3) Jobs that deeply engage another interest of yours, that bring you joy or can influence your work in other ways. If there’s a job that has nothing to do with your art but that you would love, do it! First, because I believe that the things we’re passionate about get integrated into our art, and second, because any job that gives you peace of mind and joy creates a positive base from which you can create. My friend who worked at a stable because she got to be around horses. My friends who worked at gyms or coaching sports because it kept them active. My friend who worked in a bike repair shop because he was obsessed with biking. An artist I knew who worked at the children’s science museum because she loved being around kids and planetariums. An artist who worked at a mineral store because rocks made her happy. If you have the opportunity, work doing things you like without worrying about whether it directly feeds your arts career.

Because believe it or not, all jobs you work can intersect in some way with your art. You’re creative— you find those connections! A Nobel-Prize winning poet helped his dad on the potato farm and wrote his best-known poem about it. Successful novelists have written about their time working in hair salons and convenience stores. A great printmaker I know who worked in a flower shop began weaving botanical forms and plant knowledge into her designs. The key in an arts career is to see all your experiences as valuable, to find ways that they can influence your art, and to be constantly thinking about and observing the world around you. 

As for me, I worked as a tennis instructor, a tennis court site supervisor, an academic advisor, an art gallery intern, and a coffee shop barista before and during my work in the arts!

Let go of objective measures of what it means to be good. 

I was always an academic overachiever. Top of my class, merit scholarships, science fair awards, AP credit overload, the whole thing. On the one hand, I grew up in a house where education was valued and celebrated, and my parents emphasized the importance of doing my best in school— not getting good grades, but working hard, doing my personal best, and reading and learning all I could. I loved school. I loved academics. And I’m not saying this to brag, but to lay the groundwork for something I struggled with in the arts.

It is jarring to be an academic overachiever and enter an arts career. I thrived off of objective value systems: study, work hard, get an A. If I worked hard and learned what I was supposed to learn, I earned recognition, validation, and opportunity. 

And then I entered the arts. The arts are entirely subjective. We hear it over and over— great artists get rejected hundreds of times, certain art forms require cutthroat competition, etc. —but it’s hard to understand the subjectivity of the art world (and the entrenched discrimination and commercial interests that affect who gets opportunities and who doesn’t) until you’re trying to live as an artist. That you can work hard on something, give all of your time and physical effort and mental and emotional energy to it, only to have it rejected. That what you think is good isn’t what another person thinks is good. That there is a magical alchemy in the act of creation that can’t be taught, or learned, but must be felt, and that you can be working to find that light while actively others try to extinguish it. That you can be good and work hard, yet still not get chosen for the awards, the exhibitions, the publications. If you chased being “the best” your whole life, you’re now in a world where there is no “best”, where greatness is subjective, where the idea of competitive greatness is actually detrimental to artists supporting each other, and where work that sells or connects to white, cishetero traditions is still the most valued. 

After struggling with this for a long time, I came to the conclusion that the most important thing to me now is making the art I want to make, the art only I can make, whether or not it fits what arts industries are looking for or what’s going to win awards. If I make art I believe in from a healthy mental and emotional place, doors will open, even if they aren’t the doors I expected. So try to let go of any sense that worth comes from external validation. Learn to accept critical feedback when it is given kindly, thoughtfully, and constructively. Surround yourself with friends and artists who who can talk to about your work, who build up your work and help you think through it rather than cutting you down. Don’t believe anyone in the arts world who thinks they get to be the arbiters of what’s “good” and who has “what it takes”. People have probably said things like that to the artists you most admire, and if they’d listened, you wouldn’t have experienced art that changed your life. 

Work to gain skills in basic business, marketing, and finances for artists. 

Many artists (at least where I am in the U.S.) go through an entire arts education without receiving resources or training in the financial side of the arts world. Your arts career will likely involve some degree of self-promotion and marketing, creating project budgets and grant proposals, artist statements and bios, sorting out taxes, and other economic elements. I can’t speak to other countries, but for artists in the U.S., taxes can be extremely complex. If you’re awarded a stipend, grant, fellowship, or employed for gigs or one-time projects, you’ll likely be taxed as an independent contractor and have to deduct your own taxes. Through residencies and exhibitions, you may pull income in multiple states and countries, which can also affect taxation. If you’re an artist who doesn’t have access to resources about finance and taxation in your arts program or who doesn’t independently have expertise in those fields, I recommend finding ways to educate yourself early: online resources, low cost courses, or even just taking your financially-savvy friends out for a coffee!

ANYWAY SORRY FOR THE LONG POST I HOPE SOMETHING IN THIS DIATRIBE WAS HELPFUL I HOPE THERE WEREN’T TOO MANY TYPOS AND I hope you have the most wonderful, fulfilling arts career! <3 

[mbti-and-academia]

INTJ vs INTP cognitive mechanics - an analysis based on an observation

With study of the cognitive functions I'm finally starting to recognize what INTJness actually feels like.

The other day, I was going through a programming tutorial as part of a larger book on the functional programming style. I was modifying the example slightly to produce a different output, and suffice it to say it wasn't working. I called on my INTP, who is doing the same tutorial, to see if they could figure it out.

Basically, my approach was trying to "tap into" my Ni, looking over the script from a zoomed-out perspective and getting a feel for where the problem might be. I get the general feeling that the second half of a certain function isn't working. I test this assumption, I was right - so now I try to narrow down in my mind where it "seems off", and come to a vague conclusion that it's probably the order of execution. I test this assumption. It works. The example is now working as expected. I don't have a clear, 100% understanding of why exactly the order of the statements was causing the particular bug, but I move on, because I realize that this kind of error is more of a general silly-mistake in how I wrote the algorithm, and isn't something instrumental to the greater goal - which is understanding the mechanics of the functional style.

My INTP friend, in contrast, looks at the script not from a zoomed-out perspective, but goes through the logic, one step at a time, analyzing exactly what each statement does and the effects it has - and how the result should look at each point in time, and why, until they figure out exactly what was wrong and why. They didn't just get a vague intuitive understanding of how to fix it and move on, they understood in detail how every single component interplays with every other, why the statement execution must be in this order for the algorithm to work, and all the other ways changing the order of the statements would affect the output. They have understood all the mechanics of the algorithm through pure logic, and it took them much longer to move on than it did for me - but unlike me, who was doing the problem for its general purpose within the goal of understanding functional programming, they felt that understanding the algorithm (which on its own is not related to functional programming at all, and is just a modified sort algorithm), was something they wanted to understand all the components of, regardless of whether it is meaningful to the purpose of the assignment.

This felt like a very illustrative moment in understanding the differences between how INTP and INTJ approach problem-solving. Of course, as INTJ I am also compelled to learn the mechanics of all sorts of things, even those irrelevant to the overarching goal of whatever the book or the tutorial or class or the thing I am studying is right now - but I would tend to note them and set them aside for later to learn, as something separate from the process. I went back over the sort algorithm with a more Ti approach myself later, after I had grasped the concepts in the chapter I was working on, and was ready to take a break. The first "goal" was gaining an understanding of the concepts in that chapter of the tutorial, and I did not allow myself to be distracted from this purpose - but when it was done I went back to the algorithm I got wrong and Ti-ed my way through the logic, step by step. But this happened in a separate process from doing the tutorial, and a separate timeline - I didn't allow the "working on this chapter" timeline to fork into the subprocess of working out this unrelated algorithm error for any longer than it absolutely needed to.

For my INTP friend, however, following this unrelated tangent - right then and there, in the middle of the process of understanding the chapter and in the same timeline - was something perfectly natural. It was natural for them to make many "deep forks" in the path to understanding the chapter, almost so much so that they may not even make it through to the end of the chapter, and instead get lost in the study of the forks and tangents along the way. As an INTJ I just could not do this - I would feel very mentally unsettled about this.

I feel the INTP approach with Ti/Ne is very thorough but incremental and undirected in its understanding; the Ni/Te approach of the INTJ is a lot less thorough, and more "overarching" - focused more on setting up the "skeleton" or the inner structure of the framework first, and then filling it out with details - and being always painfully conscious of the shape of the path one is following. Almost as if there is always this voice nagging you that this item may be irrelevant right now, come back to it later. It is like an architect trying to capture the overallness, or a writer trying to synthesize the outline of the entire story out of thin air first, and then refining all the generalities and fleshing them out. The coherent whole comes first, and is always there and always something one is deeply conscious of, and driven by. It is like the INTJ is going through every process with a general (usually not very detailed) map or compass that they follow, always internally tugging them back to North, whereas INTP is wandering through all the nooks and crannies of the landscape without a map or a compass, and seeing what kind of fascinating mental discoveries they have on the way. They may have a purpose in mind, but it can be diverted away from indefinitely and come back to later, if there are more interesting paths to explore on the way - whereas for the INTJ the interesting paths will be noted and come back to later, as it would feel "wrong" in a fundamental way to divert away from the purpose.

I still have a difficult time figuring out how Ni worked the way it did - I suppose part of it is that I already have a decent amount of programming experience, and was able to subconsciously extract a deep pattern from what I had experienced before, without knowing where exactly I had seen this before or what it was based on. My intuition was like a synthesis of patterns I had extracted before - like a deep-learning algorithm "figuring things out" from intermediate representations. This may be why it required a lot of Se input and Ti-type analysis in the very start of my programming study before I could begin to "grasp" it, as it served to "feed" my Ni with raw materials and structures to synthesize patterns and meta-patterns from, and later synthesize hunches like this. So now I can often "feel" the way to solve something, without explicitly working through the logic.

Naturally everyone who gains proficiency or experience in some field finds themselves doing this - as humans we are equipped with all the cognitive functions, after all - but as an INTJ it is my first instinct to do this to everything, and is my most visceral response to a problem - and the impulse to analyze with Ti usually comes later, as a conscious decision. As far as I understand it, for my INTP friend it was the opposite - the first response to a new concept or a problem is to analyze it and all its components and understand every small piece of the mechanics - even if they get an Ni "hunch" about what is wrong, they tend to not trust it as much, and the impulse to analyze is first and foremost.

Just some rambling observations on Ti and Ni mechanics.

[ardenttheories]

Your takes on gender can be applied these ways also: 1. Their species could be transphobic solely because they might view gender as unnecessary (which isn’t true, due to so many trolls being trans with no problem, so that’s out the window,) or 2. The Condesce herself or her generation created gender roles on Alternia; it would also make sense with The Signless preaching beliefs of freedom and possibly even expression, if we were to go that route. While it doesn’t fix all, it’s better than nothin

Continuing on with Signless and the Condesce, it would have actually made more sense for Sign to be a Fuchsia if society is based on blood caste, for more than one reason (I mean the political implications of a thief of BLOOD being a tyrannical emperor and what you could do with that are pretty fucking apparent but hey who gives a shit amiright) and while life can be just as politically aligned as blood, the inherent structure of blood and the way it’s broken and set up makes Sign a better fit

The bulge-nook standard is all just a bunch of useless bullshit, but it wasn’t in the past apparently; I think it’s mentioned somewhere in the comic that they’re actually close to extinction because the mother grub method is unsustainable and was created BY the Condesce? And that they actually could procreate together but they’re slowly losing the ability? Therefore you could also say that those who are still able to reproduce via encounters could be labeled differently, but that’s still shit

Continuing once again off of the whole mother grub thing (Sorry I’m spamming your inbox I just really like your think thoughts,) the only reason I could see a troll harboring certain ‘gender’ traits (boobs for example) would be for advantages in different climates, besides possible ovaries which, if trolls are more bug than human-like, don’t even make sense anyway. It’s all just a bunch of crud BUT the argument for being trans lies solely in what could remain, OR societal reconstruction I guess

I suppose HIC could have been the generation to assign gender roles to her society, but my only issue would be this: why? I pointed this out in another anon, but there’s no actual divide into “trolls who are superior for being x gender” and “trolls who are inferior for being x gender”. She’s the empress, so you’d think she’d have a preference for women - but her closest and most valued are both men. And even then, she kills indisciminately between genders. Her only preference I’ve ever seen gender-wise is that she always views women as heiresses (or, people who are possible to take her throne), and even that doesn’t entirely make sense; it can easily be explained away as Hussie trying to build a matriarchy where one just didn’t need to exist, to parallel Alternia and Earth. 

To HIC, hemospectrum trumps gender. A male and female rustblood could be standing side by side, both accused of a crime, and neither would be considered more or less guilty on a gendered basis: they’d both be culled for being rust. Likewise, two violetbloods could kill a purpleblood, and the male wouldn’t be more likely to get caught than the female, or viseversa. They’d both get away scot free because they’re highbloods, and higher than the purple they killed - or, they’d both be revenge-slaughtered by other purplebloods.

This isn’t even getting into the fact that, although our canonical legislacerator is female (Redglare), the actual judge (His Honorable Tyranny) is male. So, again, we have a male in power. Yet there’s no explicit bias towards or against men. 

It’s this foundational issue for trying to put a gendered system - as we understand it - on a system that just doesn’t work for it. I do very firmly believe that the trolls would have a gender system, yes; but I think it would revolve around something entirely different. More like how bee genders work; if they’re all “female”, then how do you differentiate the “gender” of bees? By focusing on what actually differentiates them societally: their roles in the hive. Queen, worker, drone - these are the bee genders. How you could implement that to Alternians, I’m not totally sure; I’d have to think on that a little more.

The Signless works well as a mutantblood for the martyr status Hussie was going for; he’s a very clear allegory for Jesus as-is, and having him be a fuchsia wouldn’t have really worked in that sense (because he would have been born into an inherent place of power, without the requirement to go through the martyr journey - and he could have much more easily set about a better, more equal structure had he been an heir than he could have being a mutant). 

It’s a good way to impose on readers just how violent troll society is against those who don’t fit into the spectrum, since the hemospectrum is a class structure that was instilled by both HIC and Doc Scratch (which doesn’t exist as strictly on Beforus, except that the upper classes look after the lower). It also just allows for the equal “one troll of each caste” motif Hussie wanted to go with. So, again, this is an unfortunate instance of Hussie choosing design over lore.

That said, being a fuchsiablood - or even a mutated fuchsia, if we still want to go down the mutant route - would have been endlessly interesting. It could have completely different to see a not-so-shoddily hidden allegory. How The Signless would have attempted to go against HIC, his abilities as a Blood Player, the potentialities of him still raising a rebellion and attempting to change the entire structure of Alternia to something more Beforean - it’s definitely juicy food for thought, if nothing else.

I couldn’t find anything on the Mother Grub method being instilled by HIC, or the fact that it was unsustainable - at least, not on Alternia. Everything I’ve seen relating to Alternia and Mother Grubs very much seems to state that these are the natural ways of the world, something that wasn’t meddled with (which goes along with a theory I had with a few anons some time ago, under the “#homestuck biology” tag, wherein the Mother Grub, trolls, and Drones are actually all founded from the same ancient species, but the trolls just so happened to be the ones to evolve into intelligent life). 

(Edited note: I did find something mentioning that the threat of global extinction allowed for the implementation of the caste system to begin with - as in, the hemospectrum didn’t exist until that specific point in time. It doesn’t mention anything about the Mother Grubs before or after this event, or what caused the near-extinction of the troll race. I would assume Doc Scratch, in order to force the Hemospectrum to exist in the first place, since he takes full credit for its conception. In either case, it isn’t an inability to breed that almost killed off the entire Alternian race - otherwise, even post-Hemospectrum, they would have still died out.)

Anything regarding unsustainability might be instead referring to HIC’s attempts to reintroduce the troll population to the Alpha kids’ Earth; she tries to bring lusii into the world and tries to repopulate Earth using genetic material via the Mother Grub (including for humans), but ultimately fails to do so (partly because her attempts to do so were thwarted by a clone of her lusus, partly because, I assume, human DNA isn’t compatible with the Mother Grubs). 

So, unfortunately, it doesn’t look like trolls ever had the ability to mate with each other and reproduce in a more mammalian way. Which I still despise as a concept, if I’m completely honest; the trolls are clearly meant to be based on insects, are surrounded by insect-like evolutionary divergences, and breed in a very insect-like way. The idea that they ever, at any point, had a more mammalian lineage just makes no sense. That’s like saying that we descended from ancient bees instead of ancient apes. 

It’s, again, one of those instances were you can tell Hussie tried to make something unique and interesting, but then didn’t fully think it through and returned to what he knew most - which is a very much more human experience. 

I think the best explanation for the “gender” differences - beyond “Hussie needed a way to show male and female characters because he didn’t think to include different genders in a society that clearly needed it - probably is the climate concept. It’d be more interesting, for one, and still allow for the potential that trolls don’t have - or show - inherent sexual dimorphism. Especially because, like you said, those are very mammalian traits? Insect-based species don’t have an evolutionary need for those things. 

[letterboxd]

Bong Hit!

Today Parasite overtook The Godfather as the highest-rated narrative feature film on Letterboxd. We examine what this means, and bring you the story of the birth of the #BongHive.

It’s Bong Joon-ho’s world and we’re just basement-dwelling in it. While there is still (at time of publication) just one one-thousandth of a point separating them, Bong’s Palme d’Or-winning Parasite has overtaken Francis Ford Coppola’s Oscar-winning The Godfather to become our highest-rated narrative feature.

In May, we pegged Parasite at number one in our round-up of the top ten Cannes premieres. By September, when we met up with Director Bong on the TIFF red carpet, Parasite was not only the highest-rated film of 2019, but of the decade. (“I’m very happy with that!” he told us.)

Look, art isn’t a competition—and this may be short-lived—but it’s as good a time as any to take stock of why Bong’s wild tale of the Kim and Park families is hitting so hard with film lovers worldwide. To do so, we’ve waded through your Parasite reviews (warning: mild spoilers below; further spoilers if you click the review links). And further below, member Ella Kemp recalls the very beginnings of the #BongHive.

Bong Joon-ho on set with actors Choi Woo-shik and Cho Yeo-jeong.

The Letterboxd community on Parasite

On the filmmaking technique: “Parasite is structured like a hill: the first act is an incredible trek upward toward the light, toward riches, toward reclaiming a sense of humanity as defined by financial stability and self-reliance. There is joy, there is quirk, there is enough air to breathe to allow for laughter and mischief.

“But every hill must go down, and Parasite is an incredibly balanced, plotted, and paced descent downward into darkness. The horror doesn’t rely on shock value, but rather is built upon a slow-burning dread that is rooted in the tainted soil of class, society, and duty… Bong Joon-ho dresses this disease up in beautiful sets and empathetic framing (the camera doesn’t gawk, but perceives invisible connections and overt inequalities)—only to unravel it with deft hands.” —Tay

“Bong’s use of landscape, architecture, and space is simply arresting.” —Taylor Baker

“There is a clear and forceful guiding purpose behind the camera, and it shows. The dialogue is incredibly smart and the entire ensemble is brilliant, but the most beautiful work is perhaps done through visual language. Every single frame tells you exactly what you need to know while pulling you in to look for more—the stunning production design behind the sleek, clinical nature of one home and the cramped, gritty nature of the other sets up a playpen of contrasts for the actors and the script.” —Kevin Yang

On how to classify Parasite: “Masterfully constructed and thoroughly compelling genre piece (effortlessly transitioning between familial drama, heist movie, satirical farce, subterranean horror) about the perverse and mutating symbiotic relationship of increasingly unequal, transactional class relationships, and who can and can’t afford to be oblivious about the severe, violent material/psychic toll of capitalist accumulation.” —Josh Lewis

“This is an excellent argument for the inherent weakness of genre categories. Seriously, what genre is this movie? It’s all of them and none of them. It’s just Parasite.” —Nick Wibert

“The director refers to his furious and fiendishly well-crafted new film as a ‘family tragicomedy’, but the best thing about Parasite is that it gives us permission to stop trying to sort his movies into any sort of pre-existing taxonomy—with Parasite, Bong finally becomes a genre unto himself.” —David Ehrlich

On the duality of the plot: “There are houses on hills, and houses underground. There is plenty of sun, but it isn't for everybody. There are people grateful to be slaves, and people unhappy to be served. There are systems that we are born into, and they create these lines that cannot be crossed. And we all dream of something better, but we’ve been living with these lines for so long that we've convinced ourselves that there really isn’t anything to be done.” —Philbert Dy

“The Parks are bafflingly naive and blissfully ignorant of the fact that their success and wealth is built off the backs of the invisible working class. This obliviousness and bewilderment to social and class inequities somehow make the Parks even more despicable than if they were to be pompous and arrogant about their privilege.

“This is not to say the Kims are made to be saints by virtue of the Parks’ ignorance. The Kims are relentless and conniving as they assimilate into the Park family, leeching off their wealth and privilege. But even as the Kims become increasingly convincing in their respective roles, the film questions whether they can truly fit within this higher class.” —Ethan

On how the film leaps geographical barriers: “As a satire on social climbing and the aloofness of the upper class, it’s dead-on and has parallels to the American Dream that American viewers are unlikely to miss; as a dark comedy, it’s often laugh-aloud hilarious in its audacity; as a thriller, it has brilliantly executed moments of tension and surprises that genuinely caught me off guard; and as a drama about family dynamics, it has tender moments that stand out all the more because of how they’re juxtaposed with so much cynicism elsewhere in the film. Handling so many different tones is an immensely difficult balancing act, yet Bong handles all of it so skilfully that he makes it feel effortless.” —C. Roll

“One of the best things about it, I think, is the fact that I could honestly recommend it to anyone, even though I can't even try to describe it to someone. One may think, due to the picture’s academic praise and the general public’s misconceptions about foreign cinema, that this is some slow, artsy film for snobby cinephiles, but it’s quite the contrary: it’s entertaining, engaging and accessible from start to finish.” —Pedro Machado

On the performative nature of image: “A família pobre que se infiltra no espaço da família rica trata a encenação—a dissimulação, os novos papéis que cada um desempenha—como uma espécie de luta de classes travada no palco das aparências. Uma luta de classes que usa a potência da imagem e do drama (os personagens escrevem os seus textos e mudam a sua aparência para passar por outras pessoas) como uma forma de reapropriação da propriedade e dos valores alheios.

“A grande proposta de Parasite é reconhecer que a ideia do conhecimento, consequentemente a natureza financeira e moral desse conhecimento, não passa de uma questão de performance. No capitalismo imediatista de hoje fingir saber é mais importante do que de fato saber.” —Arthur Tuoto

(Translation: “The poor family that infiltrates the rich family space treats the performance—the concealment, the new roles each plays—as a kind of class struggle waged on the stage of appearances. A class struggle that uses the power of image and drama (characters write their stories and change their appearance to pass for other people) as a form of reappropriation of the property and values ​​of others.

“Parasite’s great proposal is to recognize that the idea of ​​knowledge, therefore the financial and moral nature of that knowledge, is a matter of performance. In today’s immediate capitalism, pretending to know is more important than actually knowing.”)

Things you’re noticing on re-watches: “Min and Mr. Park are both seen as powerful figures deserving of respect, and the way they dismissively respond to an earnest question about whether they truly care for the people they’re supposed to tells us a lot about how powerful people think about not just the people below them, but everyone in their lives.” —Demi Adejuyigbe

“When I first saw the trailer and saw Song Kang-ho in a Native American headdress I was a little taken aback. But the execution of the ideas, that these rich people will siphon off of everything, whether it’s poor people or disenfranchised cultures all the way across the world just to make their son happy, without properly taking the time to understand that culture, is pretty brilliant. I noticed a lot more subtlety with that specific example this time around.” —London

“I only noticed it on the second viewing, but the film opens and closes on the same shot. Socks are drying on a rack hanging in the semi-basement by the window. The camera pans down to a hopeful Ki-Woo sitting on his bed… if the film shows anything, it might be that the ways we usually approach ‘solving’ poverty and ‘fixing’ the class struggle often just reinforce how things have been since the beginning.” —Houston

The birth of the #BongHive

London-based writer and Letterboxd member Ella Kemp attended Cannes for Culture Whisper, and was waiting in the Parasite queue with fellow writers Karen Han and Iana Murray when the hashtag #BongHive was born. Letterboxd editor Gemma Gracewood asked her to recall that day.

Take us back to the day that #BongHive sprang into life. Ella Kemp: I’m so glad you asked. Picture the scene: we were in the queue to watch the world premiere of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite at Cannes. It was toward the end of the festival; Once Upon a Time in Hollywood had already screened…

Can you describe for our members what those film festival queues are like? The queues in Cannes are very precise, and very strict and categorized. When you’re attending the festival as press, there are a number of different tiers that you can be assigned—white tier, pink tier, blue tier or yellow tier—and that’s the queue you have to stay in. And depending on which tier you’re in, a certain number of tiers will get into the film before you, no matter how late they arrive. Now, yellow is the lowest tier and it is the tier I was in this year. But, you know, I didn’t get shut out of any films I tried to go into, so I don’t want to speak ill of being yellow!

So, spirits are still high in the yellow queue before going to see Parasite. I was with friends and colleagues Iana Murray [writer for GQ, i-D, Much Ado About Cinema, Little White Lies], Karen Han [New York Times, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The Atlantic] and Jake Cunningham [of the Curzon and Ghibliotheque podcasts] who were also very excited for the film. We queued quite early, because obviously if you’re at the start of a queue and only two yellow tier people get in, you want that to be you.

So we had some time to spare, and we’re all very ‘online’ people and the 45 minutes in that queue was no different. So we just started tweeting, as you do. We thought, ‘Oh we’re just gonna tweet some stuff and see if it catches on.’ It might not, but at least we could kill some time.

So we just started tweeting #BongHive. And not explaining it too much.

#BongHive

— karen han (@karenyhan)

May 21, 2019

Within the realms of stan culture, I would argue that hashtags are more applicable to actors and musicians. Ariana Grande has her army of fans and they have their own hashtag. Justin Bieber has his, One Direction, all of them. But we thought, ‘You know who needs one and doesn’t have one right now? Bong Joon-ho.’

And so, you know, we tweeted it a couple of times, but I think what mattered the most was that there was no context, there was no logic, but there was consistency and insistence. So we tweeted it two or three times, and then the film started and we thought right, let’s see if this pays off. Because it could have been disappointing and we could have not wanted to be part of, you know, any kind of hype.

SMILE PRESIDENT @karenyhan #BongHive pic.twitter.com/Dk7T8bFYtv

— Ella Kemp (@ella_kemp)

May 21, 2019

But, Parasite was Parasite. So we walked out of it and thought, ‘Oh yes, the #BongHive is alive and kicking.’

I think what was interesting was that it came at that point in the festival when enthusiasm dipped. Everyone was very tired, and we were really tired, which is why we were tweeting illogical things. It was late at night by the time we came out of that film. It was close to midnight and we should have gone to bed, probably.

Because, first world problems, it is exhausting watching five, six, seven films a day at a film festival, trying to find sustenance that’s not popcorn, and form logical thoughts around these works of art. Yes! It was nice to have fun with something. But what happened next was [Parasite distributor] Neon clocked it and went, ‘Oh wait, there’s something we can do there’. And then they took it, and it flew into the world, and now the #BongHive is worldwide.

I love the formality of Korean language and the way that South Koreans speak of their elders with such respect. I enjoyed being on the red carpet at TIFF hearing the Korean media refer to Bong Joon-ho as ‘Director Bong’. It’s what he deserves!

I like to imagine a world where it’s ‘Director Gerwig’, ‘Director Campion’, ‘Director Sciamma’… Exactly.

Related content:

Ella Kemp’s review of Parasite for Culture Whisper.

Letterboxd list: The directors Bong Joon-ho would like you to watch next.

Our interview with Director Bong, in which he reveals just how many times he’s watched Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

“I’m very awkward.” Bong Joon-ho’s first words following the standing ovation at Cannes for Parasite’s world premiere.

Karen Han interviews Director Bong for Polygon, with a particular interest in how he translated the film for non-Korean audiences. (Here’s Han’s original Parasite review out of Cannes; and here’s what happened when a translator asked her “Are you bong hive?” in front of the director.)

Haven’t seen Parasite yet? Here are the films recommended by Bong Joon-ho for you to watch in preparation.

With thanks to Matt Singer for the headline.

[thesealfriend]

*puts on Serious Game Dev Hat"

This one might get really rambly so it's going under a read more. Main topics are Games, Crunch and University.

(For folk seeing this who are curious but completely divorced from the games world, because even though it's in the news a lot lately it's hardly the universal topic people think it is, Crunch is the term for when creative studios, in this particular case games studios, overwork their employees by "incentivising" them to work longer hours or produce more content for little to no compensation, usually towards the end of a development cycle when deadlines are looming. I put "incentivising" in quotes because a lot of companies say they don't force workers to crunch, it's voluntary and workers are just so passionate! But actually, taking a stand and enforcing boundaries can often come with consequences within the workplace - workers who stand up to crunch might be first for layoffs or receive bad references from employers when trying to move jobs. It's hardly as "voluntary" as they make it seem.)

Anyway, rambling already! Let's begin...

So I studied game design at uni. This is no surprise to those who know me or note my "game dev hat" tag. I don't work in the industry right now for Reasons™ but I plan to one day.

My across my degree, grades were based on about 70% coursework, 30% exams/class tests. Funnily enough, the best way to learn games is to make games. So out of that coursework, I'd say the fair majority was, if not "make a game", then at least "produce a design document"/"prototype a game"/"create a level". There was a decent amount of essay-based coursework, writing about the psychology of games or theory of play etc, as well as reports on projects, but I'd say at least half of my grade came down to some aspect of actually creating games.

And that was a lot. It's understandable for the kind of course it is, but we often found ourselves working on 2-3 games or levels in 12 weeks. Which, when you vaguely run the numbers and compare the expected output to the time, was about doable. We weren't making AAA masterpieces of course, we were working in groups of 2-4 usually to make a vertical slice prototype (all functionality of a game across a small segment of the content) or a level or two to fit a brief. But!

We were expected to put in 40 hours a week for uni, as though it were a full time job. That explicit expectation means I can try and step around trying to calculate hours in the day and subtract for travel, leisure, eating etc. I'm using the numbers we were given. So that's 40hrs total, over 12 weeks, but that's including all the time we spend

Depending on the semester we had about 12-16hrs of teaching time, sometimes plus up to 4 hours unsupervised lab time to work on class exercises, so let's call that 16 hours overall in uni. That leaves 24 hours per week, to work on usually 3 classes at a time. That's 8 hours, per class, per week. Multiply that by 12 and you get 96 hours. 96 hours in which to complete each class, assuming we spend the exact amount of time we're meant to on uni work.

Now that sounds fine, right? That's two whole Global Game Jams* for each class, and that's not including time one would spend at a jam eating, sleeping or resting. People make pretty impressive stuff at jams, so why not be able to do that over the course of 2 jams comfortably?

(*for the uninitiated, GGJ is an annual event where game developers (including designers, programmers, artists and musicians etc) cram into a room for 48hrs straight, get given a surprise theme and make a game out of it. It's entirely for fun and I love them. Also some jam sites give you free pizza.)

Well, the thing is, I've led you all down a bit of a rabbit hole going purely by the numbers. I've not gotten into the nature of some of the work, and the overall system, which makes a difference. See, unis want to teach us good time management, and they want to actually steer us away from crunch. I've been verbally told many times that Crunch Is Bad And We Shouldn't Let It Happen. So they build in systems like interim reports, and enforced team meetings with minutes taken and then rating your team members' performance, appointments with tutors throughout the year for bigger stuff. These are all meant to ensure that you're working on projects at the "right rate" and keeping up with deadlines. And honestly? For some of the less game-specific coursework (psychology projects, essays on theory of design etc) this works fairly well. Universities have been structuring courses the same way for decades, why change it now?

But the thing is, game development is game development whether you're in the "controlled environment" of a university or the Real World™ of the games industry. Quite frankly put, shit happens. And this goes for all university courses, not just games. You get the usual tech issues ("my computer broke and I'm having to do this work at the library/elsewhere on campus", "my internet is down and I can't collaborate with my group" etc etc) as well as the personal life interruptions, both of which are highly tied to class and that's a whole other essay ramble. You also just get that one person who assigns themself task XYZ then never does it, which you could have managed to do yourself if you'd known they weren't going to do anything, but they assured you they would! These are the things we're warned about, told to give extra time to account for, and if it's really bad most unis have some kind of "oh shit something outside my control happened" form you can fill in for extra consideration, as well as individual tutors offering extensions.

But on top of that you also get the games-specific issues.

You get that one animation that, no matter how much skill and effort you put in, you're not happy with. You get that weird code that won't compile, and nobody on StackOverflow can recreate. You get the creative block. My god, the creative block. And then, you get the last minute changes to the brief or structure, or if you're unlucky enough to be working for a real world client, you get *weekly* changes to the brief or structure. You get the fact that the software you've been given doesn't fit what you've been told to do. You get the natural period of downtime because you've worked on your character model, and you're waiting for another group member to finish an animation and there's bugger all you can do in the lull. Most of these are just, things that happen, and we're expected to work around them because they happen in the real world too.

But in the Real World™, whenever "shit happens", that's when a studio, if it's a good one, can work around the issues. They hire the right people, and the right number of people for each role, knowing the kind of work that's expected, rather than just going "ok we have more programmers than artists this year so the teams will reflect that, good luck". They vet the software to ensure it meets the needs of the employees and their tasks. They have producers to keep on top of the brief, and liase with clients to make sure everyone knows what they're going to be doing ahead of time and throughout. And on top of all that, they remove the time pressure. They set goals, that "we'd like to have XYZ done in 6 weeks, and a beta released in the coming months" but they don't expect the workers to perform miracles.

But universities can't, or won't, do that. At the end of it all, the end of the semester is approaching and you've been putting your best work in all term, but there's 2 weeks to go and so much left to do if you want to submit something you're happy to be graded on. You could ask for an extension, but if everyone who was in that situation did so there just wouldn't be deadlines. You could just push ahead at normal pace, and submit what you have and hope for the best, but then you're risking failing the class and having it all be for nothing. And some people will do either of these things + they'll sacrifice a grade and do a resit in order to give themselves more time to finish another concurrent project, or they'll glean a few days' extension for a very specific issue, but for a lot of folk, you do what feels natural when deadlines loom and you're behind. You crunch.

And much like industry, uni society encourages crunch implicitly, even though it explicitly shames it. The tutor tells you, "last year's students managed this project in the same length of time!" but they don't mention how all of them probably crunched too. They blame your time management, not realising that if 75% of the class are having to work around this then the issue probably isn't with individuals' time management. The students talk among themselves about who got the least sleep over the last two weeks of term, and it's a badge of honour (again, not necessarily game dev-specific, but there's definitely an enhanced culture of it there) and who put in 8hr shifts after uni to crush the bugs.

And we're taught about passion. One of my tutors, who is the most Explicitly Anti-Crunch man I know, was also the first one who told me that "If you aren't working on other stuff in your personal time you can't expect to get a job easily". He didn't say it in a positive way, but he knew it was the case and didn't encourage us to fight it. And sure, if game dev is something you enjoy as a hobby that will stand you in good stead. But if every student or young dev is told they have to go "above and beyond" to succeed, then that shifts the bar for what "above and beyond" means. Exactly the same as companies "incentivising" 60 hour weeks, so that everyone works 60 hours to prove they're passionate, and then 80 hours is above and beyond.

And you know the worst part about all this? From a purely productive standpoint, it works. For every class I got a good grade in, I'd crunched. And sure, I'd have probably just about passed most of them if I hadn't, but crunch in my case (and other folk I've spoken to) isn't the difference between an A and a B in games courses, it's the difference between an A and a D. Because sure, I'd submit 80% of the work, but without that final 20% tying it together that 80% of the work might make up 40-50% of the grade requirements. It's a very all-or-nothing discipline, except you can't physically do "all" because if you satisfy all the grade requirements, you get 80-90% because "there's always something more you could add to make it better". Which is also a whole other rant.

Anyway, my point with all of this is that, despite how it seems, studying game design at uni sets prospective employees up for crunch. The magnitude is lower, but the attitude is there. They know that they've done it before, that if they can just pull through a couple of weeks doing double time, they'll get it out the way. And so far, that has worked for them, because deadlines rarely do move. But in industry, they work their two weeks double time only for the worst of the studios to say "actually we see you working hard but also we're not gonna make it, you've got another month". And then they have to pull that time for another month. And maybe again after that. As a student, that kind of extension happened to me once - my 3D coursework was meant to be due before the Christmas break, and with 2 weeks to go, the lecturer announced we had til the start of the exam period (mid-January). But because we had that extra time, he expected the quality to reflect it. We weren't getting extra time so we could do the same amount of work without crunching - we were getting it so we could do more work. Again, the exact same pattern we see in industry right now.

So what's the solution? Honestly, I don't have one. Reviewing workload for students in creative subjects is a sticking plaster, and removing time pressure from coursework would require an overhaul of the system that I can't see coming any time soon. Acknowledgement of the problem is the best we can do for now. If you or someone you know is in or studying for an industry prone to this kind of behaviour, talk about it. Push the idea that the institution is flawed, and that whatever kind of unhealthy habits people pick up while studying don't have to become their life.

Look after each other. Peace out!

[rivkahstudies]

do you have any advice for a high school senior who wants to make the most of their last year of high school? asking for a friend :)

hi darling! I think the things I remember most from my senior year (though it was only two years ago that it started) can be summarized in, “crazy busy, crazy stressful, but at times, crazy fun.” Here’s to making the most of it, and maintaining health while you do so!

This is going to be combination masterpost and advice post, because I’ve accumulated a lot on this subject and I have a loooot to say. 

Also this is heavily based off of the assumption you’re pursuing higher education, but some of these things still apply/can be tweaked.

table of contents:

i. academics

ii. social life

iii. personal health

i. 𝓪𝓬𝓪𝓭𝓮𝓶𝓲𝓬𝓼

a. grades

They’re important for your future if your plan is to go to college or academy, but they’re not the whole world. (see social life and personal health)

I’m not a big fan of the “3-to-1 rule” or other such things that tell you “study for this amount of time no matter what” because it’s important for you to understand what comes naturally to you and what you need further clarification on. Some classes are going to take up less of your time than others.

The best you can do on a given day isn’t necessarily 100%. Sometimes your best that day is 90%, 80%, 60%. “try your best” isn’t “your best ever” so don’t push yourself for 100s every time for the expense of categories ii and iii.

A lot of people (at least in places like where I went to high school) who are hung up on the stress of competition and the need to be The Best™ are going to ask you for grades. It’s going to be everywhere. Assignment grades, test grades, SATs, ACTs, (if you’re not in the US, the equivalents of your state, regional, or national standardized tests), entrance exams, et cetera, et cetera. I know it’s tempting to fall into the anxiety of whether you measure up, but here’s a quick tip: even if you think you did well/above average, you can keep it private. It infuriated my classmates when I wouldn’t share, because I was comfortable with how I competed with myself and didn’t care what my peers thought of my scores. 

When you’re someone as dedicated to studying as I am, you might get a lot of “oh, you got that grade because you’re you” (the underlying implication being that it’s natural or the work is easy for you, which was not the case for me) or “ha! I got higher than (name)! I measure up!” This is a lot of their own biases and insecurity talking and the best way not to be affected is not to buy into it. Again, this is based on my own experience.

 I really cannot emphasize extra credit enough because some of my teachers threw it around like candy and some of them barely drizzled a little in at intervals, but either way it really saved me when it came to rounding my grades up.

It never hurts to have a grade tracker if you’re concerned, you don’t get graded by total points accumulation/have a weighted system, and/or don’t have an easy way to access your grades online throughout the year.

find your study strategy/ies for each class and stick to it/them. It won’t necessarily be the same. I’m a primarily visual learner, and it really, really helps for most things, but I still need rote memorization for subjects with a lot of vocabulary, like medicine or languages.

further resources

studying without notes by @fuckstudy . 

prioritizing that crazy to do list (the abcde method) by @eintsein

a comphrensive guide to anki (flashcards online) by @studyingstudent

a stash of tiny study tips by @acalmstudiousfirecracker

and much much more on my #studyref tag.

b. extracurriculars

These I think matter (though I’m biased) more than grades, because they’re what shape you and your experience. Most of the students at my university had grades like mine, but it’s the places I frequented and the people to whom I devoted my time that formed my sense of self. I have so many skills, anecdotes, and ideas that I’ve gained from my extracurricular work.

If you have any you’ve stuck with since early in high school and you still like, keep ‘em. Quality over quantity. Show jobs or universities you can be dedicated and disciplined, and have stamina to see projects to the end. (I was in 7 and held leadership positions in 4 and it was probably part of the reason why I spent all of senior year on three hours sleep… besides my IB classes of course.)

If you’re not pursuing college immediately or at all (or even if you are), participate in ones that pull you out of your comfort zone and teach you something new.

ii. 𝓼𝓸𝓬𝓲𝓪𝓵 𝓵𝓲𝓯𝓮

Treat this category as you would anything else in your schedule–requiring time and being a significant priority. Not always at the very top, but still demanding its own attention.

See friends outside of school, for however long or short a period, at least once every week to two weeks. This can include extracurricular time if you’re pressed.

Schedule time with your family (especially if their lives are also cluttered and hectic) do something dynamic, and also something separate that’s relaxing. One week your family time might be reading in the same room and having gentle conversation or a family dinner; the next might be going out to the movies or taking a hike together. It can be easy to feel taken for granted or to take family for granted.

By the way, this includes “chosen” family if you’re not on great terms with some/all of them. I have experience with this too.

Get. Out. Of. The. House. This plays into “personal health” too! You need a change in rhythm/routine and exposure to the outside. Especially in your winter season. 

I’m one of those people who has to have things scheduled way in advance, so family/curfew/etc permitting, do something a little bit spontaneous, say with only a few hours or a couple days notice. It will make you feel more alive if you’re in a stressful slump.

Communication is really important, especially if you’re stressed. Don’t be afraid to tell people “I am sensitive/hyperreactive to X because Y is putting me on edge right now” or “this triggers X insecurity because I’m anxious about Y.” This goes doubly if you’re struggling with mental illness. Talk to someone you trust. (See “personal health.”)

Don’t give in to peer pressure if you’re spent the time you need with friends and have to excuse yourself for other responsibilities. Balance!

No is equally as important to respected as Yes, no matter what the case.

Respect boundaries but invite people to challenge their comfort zone at their space.

Don’t be broken up if a romantic relationship doesn’t last. It’s senior year. Everything’s changing. Let it.

Also, please don’t be like me and let your summer/your school year be eaten up with relationship drama. I thankfully ended a difficult relationship early (late September) so it wasn’t a huge issue, but I watched people close to me struggle with while also battling the stress of the year.

iii. 𝓹𝓮𝓻𝓼𝓸𝓷𝓪𝓵 𝓱𝓮𝓪𝓵𝓽𝓱

mentally

If you’re struggling with mental illness, be aware of your own limits and pace yourself.

Sometimes we feel dull because we need to break routine/stimulate ourselves in a new way. You should have a structure/routine, but it should be flexible enough for you to adapt to changes and listen to what your mind and body are telling you.

The path to self-love must first begin with self-acceptance. If you struggle with self-image or self-esteem issues, you can’t build positivity off a foundation of negativity. You must first level it to neutrality.

Perform check-ups with yourself. This may be in the form of meditation, a diary, therapy, etc. None of these things are a “last resort” but rather a healthy part of building good mental habits.

physically

Exercise! You don’t have to be a star athlete to bring about the benefits. Even a 15 minute jog, 30 minute walk/hike, or 10 minutes of stretching can give you benefits.

On that note! Take! Frequent! Breaks! And please, please google stretches for certain body parts like hands if you do repetitive motion like drawing or writing for a long period of time! You don’t want to push yourself!

Listen to your body and don’t ignore pain, hunger, nausea, fatigue, etc. Respond patiently and with what’s appropriate.

Don’t forget about diet. It’s easy when you’re busy to reach for the quick and nutritionally poor snacks/meals, but it’s really important to set aside time to cook/meal plan or even just throw together a quick snack tray of fruits/crackers/cheeses/etc. It doesn’t have to be instragrammable but you should have a balanced diet that factors in your specific needs, if you have any restrictions, etc.

Change yo pillow case frequently kids, it does wonders for acne.

I cannot stress enough! To! Stay! Hydrated! My goal is eventually eight glasses a day but my minimum is 4-5. I try to have one every meal, especially in college.

Bedtime is important! But more than that, wake up time is important. If you’re trying to adjust your schedule and can only keep one consistent, choose the time you wake up. Eventually your body will naturally become fatigued for the bedtime to match it. It’s how I turned my sleep schedule from 12:00 AM to 8:00 into 9:30 PM to 5:30 AM over the course of one winter break! 

If you’re a morning person, you’re a morning person. If you’re a night owl, you’re a night owl. There’s research now to prove that forcing yourself into a rhythm too extreme for your tendencies can make you feel awful either way.

At the end of the day, you’ve got one goal and one goal only: to look back on this year and be proud of what you’ve achieved and how you’ve grown. You shape your future and choose what matters most in your life!

If there’s anything else you think I’ve missed or you’d like me to cover more in depth/link more posts to, please ask me! I’d be happy to clarify/continue this series! I want to make sure you’re completely satisfied.

[howdoyouwriteathesis816]

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[whoslaurapalmer]

alright guess who’s rolling in a smooth fifteen and a half years late with some 2004 movie takes because I just rewatched it

i mean we’ve all seen the 2004 movie none of the following words are going to be new or anything but it gave me something to do 

-for the record, the last time I watched this was…..2016 or earlier???? I would put it on in the background sometimes because it was the only snicket media content available -but as referenced in my backstory post, I did indeed see it in 2004. -i BEGGED my parents to take me to see it. they did not. -we were out to a late lunch/early dinner right after it came out, and I kept grabbing my mom’s watch and telling her how far away we were from the next showing and since the restaurant was so close to the movie theater that we could definitely make it in time. -we still did not go. -but, as per the post, one of my best friends had a birthday party where we all went to the movies to see it. -probably because our librarian had read us the bad beginning, but my class was SUPER into the series. there was one kid who wrote all his creative writing assignments in lemony’s style. -i wonder if he’s still into the series……..

-you know all this time later I still don’t know how I feel about the littlest elf. how do people feel about the littlest elf?? like props for pulling an unauto reference but……...littlest elf -but I did just notice one of the elves is holding a SHOTGUN

-okay the feel to this though. like…..god the aesthetic is so good in this movie -the gears and the clocktower and the fog and that beach and just…….fuck -oh no my mind is spinning. like I know this isn’t the reason but those trees poking out of the water is just giving me massive ‘clusterous forest after it presumably flooded’ vibes -i think the movie, for all it fails re: most of the emotions, really gives a sense of emptiness and loneliness though, the city and the landscape feel small and contained -i like jude law’s voice and I like what they did with lemony in this movie but I love and will always love patrick warburton. -the spyglass doesn’t work here either because it never got the chance to pan out because there was only one movie and it’s still too early and forcing it right away because there’s no timeeeeeee

-i like jim carrey a lot better when he’s not being, jim carrey -you know what I mean???? -like he’s so good in eternal sunshine, I love eternal sunshine -like I like nph a lot as olaf but I also feel…..it’s very nph. like I don’t look at carrey’s olaf and think ‘that’s 100% olaf’ but I don’t look at nph’s olaf and think ‘that’s 100% olaf’ EITHER there’s something still very much of the actor about both their interpretations as if they both leaned too much into the absurdity that was in olaf (carrey acting for the troupe and like 80% of his mannerisms in the movie, nph in slippery slope and the musical numbers) but not hard enough into what made olaf olaf -idk -i think they both had really good menacing!olaf moments though – nph in hostile hospital, carrey threatening violet at the end, those are ones that still really stand out to me, and that’s really important to olaf’s character, he was a villain and he wasn’t always that smart but he was capable of such cruelty just as much as absurdity -but not enough for me to look at either and say ‘that hit everything I wanted someone to hit in olaf’ -and it’s not even a matter of them downplaying the cruelty to hit you with it later for mood whiplash or anything, there wasn’t enough of all the parts of olaf to give that whiplash 

-i have nothing to say about the troupe I just don’t even want to go there

-i’m getting ahead of myself here in the movie but like, we all know that klaus takes a lot of violet’s moments in this movie, especially her biggest one in the marvelous marriage climax, and thinking about that makes me mad about all the netflix moments in s3 where klaus did more than violet too, and now I’m like, really incredulous that that happened in netflix too

-the lil fort scene has always stuck in my mind ever since I was a kid

-weird props to the movie for having their names on the custody document as ‘sunny, klaus, and violet’

-‘last chance superette’ okay well that’s something

-the car and the train has also been something that stuck with me a lot -like…….i actually really like this scene a lot and I’m trying to, explain why -it’s a really scary scene!! there’s a lot of tension and I appreciate that a lot!! it’s not canon but it’s remarkably well done and I think it honestly fits really well, it’s something olaf would do, and the fact that poe is upset because sunny was driving and not that olaf wanted to kill them, that’s, at least there’s that -(i really like the books pulling out when klaus remembers something too) -like I really don’t know why but I like it framed like this. I LIKE the movie framed like this. that they get taken away from olaf so quickly by something so absurd that isn’t why they should be taken away but wind up in his hands again at the end and then they get away again and typing it out makes it sound so….repetitive and stupid and like it doesn’t make sense but idk. idk!!!! there is something about it I like -like repetitive for the movie, because it’s, contained as itself as one movie, but, maybe a little close to the books -hmmmmm -still can’t word this right -i guess just, in terms of the movie!canon, it was styled well, for how the movie was structured -(of course it falls apart when klaus has to do violet’s stuff at the end of the movie that just fucks it all up. but right here. I did like it.)

-the movie’s “there’s always something” vs netflix’s “i’m gonna fix this”……….both are good

-monty brought the strongest vfd vibes in this movie didn’t he re: spyglass, lost his wife in a fire, violet remembering the song monty sings -i’ve said this before and this is completely unrelated but I don’t think going to peru was intended as a vfd recruiting thing -oh no wait this is very related, here??? in the movie???? “we’ll be among people who understand us” who value clever children or whatever, oh yeah movie!monty was gonna do it -(i need to think more about monty re: vfd and his experiences because, there’s a lot of possibilities here, honestly, and I think because we don’t see monty in atwq and he’s so early in the series proper that I don’t consider him in vfd and what that meant for him as much as I should)

-both versions of like the physical reptile room inspire such adventure and excitement……….i love that….those big windows and all the reptiles…….

-the sanctuary theme would be better in a different movie because like, the series isn’t about ‘sanctuary’ per se -it’s about something close to that but not ‘sanctuary’ for sure, like that’s such a weak, barely skimming the surface reading of the themes

-you know???? netflix!gustav was good. -like I don’t want to just compare the movie to the netflix show the whole time you know because they ARE separate entities although based on the same source and just have completely different takes and for both some of those takes were good and some of them were bad, but I never did like that image of gustav -i did like the dart in netflix though. a one good moment…. -(it’s also hard to compare them because 1-3 is all we got with the movie and 1-4 were some of the only books solidly done by netflix)

-klaus saying “everything happens for a reason” that’s never been a favorite saying of mine

-“it is a curious thing, the death of a loved one” is a line that’s pained me so much the older I’ve gotten and I care about it a lot because it’s so true, and I think it works better as narration than josephine saying it (I thought it was out of character for her to say it in netflix actually) BUT I ALSO get so pissed that the movie leaves out “as your mind tries to adjust to the way things are now” or however the rest of the quote goes

-reptile room in netflix after monty dies though is real top-notch and I love it a lot, this one is just, it’s decent but it’s rushed -i could say that about the whole movie, it’s decent but it’s rushed -the thing about the movie though is that like. it hits the major overall notes of the plot of each book just in a very quick and short and therefore low-key manner and because it’s a movie and an hour 48 minutes and they have to rush so netflix, spacing it out in two episodes, had more time and could do it better -and yet. at the same time. -we all know that one of my top complaints about the netflix show is that they too rushed a lot of scenes that I think should have been slower, that were slower in the books -and it’s not like I think the movie did a better job. because the movie fails in a lot of ways, and doesn’t go anywhere into the trauma or any of the real sadness -and even though it fails like that and cuts so much short. there are moments where I think it works better -and I’m trying to tell myself this isn’t just because I’m still living the ‘incredibly outraged at netflix even now, especially lately’ life and I’m not just picking one over the other because I don’t want to -and I’m trying to think of a moment more than just the letter at the end that the movie gave time to the kids to feel something and I can’t (and I can’t count the letter because it’s, the letter) but -i do think the movie let things stretch for even a second longer -it could be the aesthetic because I love the aesthetic of the movie a lot -i don’t know I think….both of them have strengths, netflix had more time but the movie hit a closer aesthetic, at least to me -and netflix didn’t USE that time, is what I’m getting at, and somehow the movie had just a tinier bit more time even though it was shorter, but that probably is just because, the aesthetic, I am a sucker for it -i think this part has something to do with my feelings about netflix’s vfd subplot, that’s probably, where this is coming from, and sometimes I think the clothing and the scenery in the netflix show especially in s1 was very colorful which is fine really that’s such a petty thing to dislike

-“doesn’t it strike you as odd that none of our relatives are related to us?” is still top notch

-although josephine has the pictures I still think monty does have the stronger vfd vibes. -i love the way that window curtain opens!! fucking terrifying!!!!! -i think of jane lynch turning around and saying “is this a bad time?” even now that’s still hilarious

-okay this is it. -this is really truly the one thing the movie did better than the netflix show, and a lot of people feel the same way about this -hurricane herman. -(it was so…….kidsy and kind of charming in the show. and even in the books it wasn’t charming. it was a lot shorter, but not charming.) -like this is legitimately terrifying and how all josephine’s fears come true is one of the most PERFECT things -don’t TEMPT me by saying “[ike] was investigating fires” because I don’t have the time to have ike thoughts right now because that almost lines up with a wip I have, so fuck you -(when I fell asleep to this movie the other day I thought to myself ‘gee hope I don’t wake up during the hurricane scene’ I did in fact wake up then and had to turn the volume down.)

-i think when it was 2004 and I was watching this in the theater I did not watch the leeches, ten year old!me wasn’t having it -there’s a lot of fear in this movie, I’ll say that though, it doesn’t hit the sadness but it hits some of the fear

-here we go, back to bad beginning content -“and what about what I want?” he got the creepiness really good though ugggggg

-okay as many things as I think are not okay but decent in this movie, f u c k  y o u for giving klaus the grappling hook and rescuing sunny!! fuck you for having him burn the paper and not letting violet do the left-handed thing!!! why even change that????? why e v e n there’s no reason to change it -how dare olaf say “rapscallion” in this that’s one of my favorite words -god the soundtrack was so good though………... -“right hand please” yeah I will slap you -klaus is the only one who gets these sad flashbacks god movie I was giving you, some, benefit, of the doubt, watching this as an adult, until this part, when I just, nah man -“these children tried to tell you but you didn’t listen” this is NOT the speech for OLAF to give -movie you were doing okay but you just REALLY fell apart here. none of this is okay -even the ‘these happy things happened! no they did not because the world doesn’t work that way’ falls flat against how lemony would say that in the books, seeing it ruins it -it actually reminds me of the ‘look at all these side characters having happy endings’ in s3 though

-i did always like this scene too though. where they go back to the mansion at the end -i liked the staircase, too. -i will say, there is something….very emotional, about finding something from a loved one, after they’re gone, that you didn’t know they did for you, or that they did at all, and to find it so suddenly. I think the spirit behind the letter in general, not the content and not the weird optimistic ending it leads to, but just the spirit of the letter, is close to violet and klaus and sunny reminiscing on their parents in the books

-the movie was before the beatrice letters but, lemony hanging out in a clocktower with these pigeons and bea’s letter having been delivered by pigeons…….

-ultimately, yes. it was decent, but rushed. -it wasn’t as ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE as I remember saying it was a few years ago, if I think about it as a self-contained sort of thing, there were some things I liked or appreciated, the costumes and the scenery and the soundtrack fit my mental image of the books -although you know what???? you know something i did not consider until the movie was over??? that could just be, I DID see the movie when I was first reading the books as a kid and it may have just stuck with me as The Image I Had And Sometimes Still Do For Parts Of The Books, huh   -but in terms of how it translated the books, like if I think about 1-3 and what they contain, on more than just a surface level of going through plot beats, yeah, it failed hard, and missed the mark a lot -the last like half hour made me a lot more pissed than ever, though, ugggg -i’d put it on in the background again, though.

[anthracenes]

Passion-Based Learning | Chapter 6

Tags/Trigger Warnings: Non-Con/Rape, Hypnosis, Hypnotism, Abuse of Authority, Conditioning, Dehumanization, Master/Pet, Master/Slave, Dom/sub, Brainwashing, Praise Kink, Anal Sex, Manipulation, Objectification, Creampie, Implied/Reference Incest, Step-Parent/Step-Child Incest, Cock Rings, Orgasm Delay/Denial

[read on AO3 here]

“Welcome back, Isaac. Please, come on in!”

To no one’s surprise, Isaac is already back for another session at Wilfred’s—two days before when he was initially scheduled to come in. He had called them earlier that day to schedule one last minute, making good on their previous offer of extra sessions if he needed it. 

And the boy needed it, badly.  

Isaac looked horrible this time around: disheveled, with his hair tousled up and dark circles under his eyes. “Tired” doesn’t begin to cover it; it was more or less as if the boy had just rolled out of bed from several fitful nights of sleep. Wilfred could feel the palpable fatigue just by looking at him, yawning and spacing out as they both slowly made their way into the living room. He knew his student was constantly stretched thin by all the assignments and responsibilities that came with his academic track, so he could only imagine how Isaac was dealing with them now—with the added bonus of his suggestions weighing on his mind. 

It’s no wonder at all why the boy didn’t notice the small breathy moans Alex made that morning, when he had his kitten dutifully ride his cock as he took his call. 

“So I heard from Alex that you had to schedule an extra session with us all of a sudden, but I don’t think you mentioned why yet over the phone. Did the exam last Friday go well for you?” 

“Oh… uhm, yeah, they were great… I think I did a little better this time, thanks to our refresher on orbital basics last week,” Isaac frowns, visibly stumbling over his thoughts. It was clear even to Wilfred that the exam results were the last thing on his mind. 

“Oh? What’s brought you here to us so soon then?” the tutor asks.

“I’ve been having a hard time relaxing lately… Things have gotten hectic around the lab, and midterm season is approaching soon too. I know I’ve done a lot to prepare already, but maybe organic chemistry has been keeping me up at night more than I thought it would....” A pink flush colors the boy’s cheeks as he trails off.

“What’s wrong? You don’t need to be shy with me, Isaac.”

“Um… I was thinking... I guess I’d sleep a little better if we do some more review...? I just feel like... I’ll be able to relax once I feel more confident with the material,” Isaac says hesitantly. It wasn’t as if he had said anything out of the ordinary, but it was clear on the boy’s face that there was something not quite right with that statement. The boy looked puzzled, unsure—like he was trying to convince himself that this was the reason he came here today more than anything.  

“I see. No, that’s perfectly understandable,” Wilfred replied, nodding. “Pre-exam jitters can be quite a problem for many people. You’re certainly not the only student of mine to have had something like this happen.” 

Isaac smiles, seemingly relieved that Wilfred had understood him. Of course the tutor knew the real reason why his student felt compelled to come back to him so soon. Even if Isaac himself did not. Still, it was fun watching the boy struggle for a bit, trying to put together a reason for coming here that didn’t come out sounding absolutely ridiculous. 

“In those cases, it helps for some people to review the material until they know it like the back of their hand. Alex and I can help you with that all day today, since no one else is booked for the rest of the afternoon. We can go at your own pace, for as long as you want. And since we have an extra session this week, we may even cover a lot more material than I was planning to.” 

Wilfred sits himself on one end of the couch before gesturing to Isaac to do the same. 

“For now though, why don’t you have a seat right here so we can get started?”

     ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

  “So, Isaac,” Wilfred starts off, “Last time, we were able to briefly cover arrow-pushing after our review of orbitals, right before taking our study break. We were only able to briefly touch upon it, and I want us to go over it again before we move onto resonance structures.” The tutor uncaps a dry erase marker he pulled from underneath the table and draws the structure for nitrate on the whiteboard. “Do you remember what we covered last week?” 

Isaac nods slowly. “A little bit… I don’t remember much, but I think I remember from my lectures. It’s the flow of electrons, right? Electrons don’t stay fixed in one area and are constantly moving throughout the molecule.” 

“Good! You must also remember what arrow pushing is then?”

“It’s… the tool we use to help visualize the movement of these electrons.”

“That’s correct,” the tutor smiles, all saccharine and sweet. “Because our eyes can’t see the electrons moving throughout the molecule in real time, we use tools to picture in our head how these electrons may be moving. This is how we get a better sense of which parts of the molecule have a partial negative charge and which parts have a partial positive, which will help our understanding of how molecules bond with one another. Arrow pushing is an important early tool to grasp in order to master the subject of organic chemistry.”

Wilfred takes care to enunciate each and every one of his words softly, carefully—gradually slowing down his pace until his speech syncs perfectly to the hypnotic ticking of the living room clock. He uses this slower, gentler tone in his voice as he draws curved arrows pointing from lone pair to bond and bond to lone pair. 

Lone pair to bond and bond to lone pair. 

Meanwhile Isaac is splayed helpless on the couch, taken by the sights and sounds of Wilfred’s “lecture”. His brown eyes glaze over as they watch his tutor’s marker glide across the board, following the fluid movement swinging over from one point to another.

Lone pair to bond and bond to lone pair. 

Back and forth. It was just like the to and fro of the heavy brass behind the glass case—as if the marker was mimicking the natural swing of the pendulum perfectly. His arms and legs lay limp by his sides, while a thin sliver of drool hung from his parted lips. 

“Yes, that’s right… Arrow pushing is an important tool for us here, see? That’s why it’s important that you focus your all on these arrows, Isaac…”

Wilfred inches closer and closer while continuing to draw the curved arrows on the board. To and fro. To and fro. He stops leaning in only when his lips are a hair’s breadth from the boy’s ear. 

“Yes… just like that. Just these arrows and the sound of my voice. There's no need to think of anything else right now—nothing else matters but these arrows and the sound of my voice…”

A blank lifelessness crept over his student’s expression—as if everything else was in the process of being purged from his head one by one until only the arrows and his tutor’s voice remained. The boy lays on the couch, held captive by the marker’s movements until his mind was completely emptied.

A clean slate once again, now ready for the tutor to work with.    

“You look so tired, Isaac… so very sleepy,” Wilfred whispers. “I bet you’ve been wanting to sleep more than anything in the world, haven’t you?”

The boy gives a light nod of his head. 

“And you must be hungry too, I’m sure… You barely have time to sleep and eat, what with all of your classes and labs these days. You weren’t able to catch lunch on time today either, isn’t that right?”

Isaac frowns. “Yeah…”

“Sounds like what you need is a little study break then. A little break from studying, where you can rest and relax . I’ll have you fall into a nice, deep sleep and you’ll come out of it feeling refreshed and full by the end of it.” Wilfred smiles, not at all bothering to hide the dark, predatory glint in his expression at this point. 

“That’s right… And while you sleep, I’ll make sure to give you something big and thick to fill you up while you rest, too. Stuff your hungry body full, just like before. Doesn’t that sound nice? Wouldn’t you like to have that happen again in our sessions?”

“Please,” he whines, nodding once more. “Please, please…”

“Then let’s have another one together, Isaac,” the tutor whispers. “Right now.” 

Wilfred draws up a different structure on the board, right below the one of the nitrate. “Just like last time, I’m going to count aloud all the arrows here. And with each one, each number I read aloud, you’ll be made to feel all warm and relaxed. So relaxed you can’t help but close those heavy eyelids… So warm you can’t resist falling deeply asleep.” 

Without further ado, the tutor starts to count aloud to the ticking of the clock. With each one, he slowly traces over the curved marks with the capped end of his marker––going from bond to bond, to and fro.     

Wilfred doesn’t even need to reach halfway this time, however, before he finds Isaac collapsed onto his side.  

[emperorren]

I wondering if they teach literature in american schools, I mean why they don't understand the basic tropes and concepts of storytelling?

Judging from how they generally suck at basic analysis, they probably slept through their entire literature class, lol.

But seriously, I don’t know how literature is taught in the US tbh, but I remember studying Propp’s morphology of the folk tale in middle school (and my teacher made us practice creative writing in which we would use his theories to create our own original short stories. That was a good exercise. I got an A in one of those assignments, lmao). Studying Greek and Latin literature in high school was also formative in that sense because they rely heavily on archetypes and formulaic structures that you need to analyze closely in order to truly comprehend the narrative you’re studying. (You can’t escape the Tropes when you have two separate tragedists from separate eras writing about the same story from different angles. Or when an author’s entire body of work is giving his own spin to very popular myths. Really, the majority of Greek/Latin literature is about reinterpreting ultra-popular stories for a genre-savvy audience.) I did not study Joseph Campbell, though.

That said, a major issue imo is that people aren’t adequately trained to apply the notions they’ve learned at school re: “classic” literature to contemporary media, especially mainstream cinema and tv shows. They don’t seem to be able to recognize those narrative as texts, whose internal logic and structure is based on well-known formulas, and isn’t just a product of the individual creator’s whims. The fact that they’re popular doesn’t mean they don’t answer to the most basic rules of literary storytelling---in fact it’s the opposite, because popular fiction needs to appeal to as many people as possible, so they want to rely on well-established structures.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHAT NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ABOUT COMPETITION

Perl may look like a group photo. Dropbox raised a series A. They had to buy a lot of stuff you don't like. You may not at first make more than you wanted to create a technology hub: rich people and nerds. Merely incorporating yourselves isn't hard. Most good startup ideas is to become the sort of stuff that might be assigned reading in a college class. Over time the teams have gotten smaller, faster, and more informal.1 Add up all the evidence of VCs' behavior, and the reactions that spread from person to person in an audience are disproportionately the more brutish sort, just as it had to be delivered. Another great thing about Web-based application. It could be that, because it's easier to sell at first, and since this isn't a word most people use in conversation much, I should explain what it means.

But it's harder, because now their honor was on the receiving end of a pendulum's swing, the other end of the experts, look for the client. I had till then managed to avoid facing it.2 After spending years chasing them, it's a great advantage to be able to try out software online. That's the secret. RTML was Common Lisp augmented by some macros and libraries, and concealed under a structure editor that made it look like it had syntax.3 But if you're thinking about investors during it, then you're competing with publishing's form of distribution, and that's why so many startups grow out of ideas that count as research, the less you need a lot of online stores, there would need to be software for making them, so that you could reach through computer stores or even by mail-order. The best I can say is: if you're in a market where products are as undifferentiated as cigarettes or vodka or laundry detergent, spending a lot on brand advertising is a sign of breakage. The more versatile the tool, the less likely they are to belong to a group. What you're afraid of competition. And what drives them both is the number of startup people around you. VC firm is a bigger deal than getting money from angels.

But I feared it would have led to disaster, because our software was easy to use. But I think the main reason I wrote this. Viaweb, I doubt we ever had ten known bugs at any one time. Especially since you won't even really learn about it is just to read. Medieval alchemists were working on a problem you have? When Rajat Suri of E la Carte decided to write software for Windows we'd have to use it. It brought a critical mass of experts in an important new technology together in a place they liked enough to stay. It's hard to tell whether you're a good con artist, you'll never convince investors if you're not one of the two angels in the initial phases of a startup, people treat you as if you're unemployed. Err on the side of doing things where you'll face competitors. You either have a self-consciously cool person wanted to differentiate himself from preceding fashions e. A fine idea, but you don't need a lot of people fast. I write down in notebooks.

The number of users, software that drove an impressive collection of dials displaying real-time server statistics a hit with visitors, but indispensable for us too, modifications including bug fixes to open-source x? The importance of personal introductions varies, but is less than the inconvenience of signing an NDA. It's important to realize you're not. In every period, people believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you would want to use. Can't you just think of new ideas yourself? When we got into such a scrape, our investors took advantage of it in a bank? The power of chance meetings is more variable than people around you are professors. The fund managers, who are both hard to bluff and who already believe most other investors are conventional-minded drones doomed always to miss the big outliers. There are answers to that question that don't even involve desktop computers. In our test drive, users actually used the software. Fortunately the process of writing it, they had some new ideas.

You may even be able to use their office staff, lawyers, accountants, and so on.4 I know the founders of a lot of bandwidth to crawl the whole Web. This worked for bigger features as well. If you stop eating jam, fruit starts to taste better.5 If you can make changes almost as you would in a program you were writing for yourself. But if you do something to the software, listening closely to the users as you do. We encourage that.

Why is your inbox overflowing? When you make something dramatically cheaper you often get qualitative changes, because people start to use it themselves. Restaurants with great food seem to prosper no matter what. It seems that, for the simple reason that if there were a number of users you can support per server is the divisor of your capital cost, so if you can choose when you raise money, you can win big by seeing things that others daren't. And if you want to understand startups is to look at what used to be for getting users. If we could look into the future it would be even cheaper today. I haven't decided. Let me see and decide for myself. When you have a thesis about what everyone else in it is overlooking. I've already said at least one person willing and able to demo a real, working store. And as you go.

Notes

They may play some behind the scenes role in IPOs, which are a hundred years ago it would be very hard to say that Watt reinvented the steam engine.

We consciously optimize for this at YC. 5 to 2 seconds.

They found it easier for us, because you can control. The Nineteenth-Century History of English at Indiana University Publications. And while we have to track ratios by time of day, because the processing power you can imagine what it would be critical to do some research online. 'Math for engineers' classes sucked mightily.

So, can I make the fund by succeeding spectacularly.

People were more at home at the exact same thing. Only a fraction of VCs who understood the vacation rental business, it's because of that. There are aspects of the rest of the more effort you expend as much difference to a car dealer.

Thanks to Bill Clerico, Trevor Blackwell, Garry Tan, Jessica Livingston, Eric Raymond, and Brian Burton for their feedback on these thoughts.

[a-mountain-girl]

alright it’s venting time because I think better when I write and I can’t find anyone irl who I could talk to about all of this.

But before I begin if someone could bring me a gigantic bar of chocolate (milk pls I’m so sick of dark chocolate that’s all “santa” gave me for Christmas like... did mom forget I don’t like dark chocolate?) or a pint of peanut butter, pistachio, or moose tracks ice cream that would help.

Like, I understand that this hasn’t been a bad day necessarily just a bad hour that has since spiraled into a several bad hours and I’m more upset about underlying issues than I am about what happened. So what happened? 

Well it all seems innocuous enough. I went to my senior capstone class and met my classmates (all of whom I know from other classes) and the professor (who I’ve taken a class from before, this is important). We talked about the syllabus and class structure and I exercised an admirable amount of self-control in not excusing myself to go scream in the snow. I really, really wanted to go do that. 

The problems are 1) This is the only professor I have ever given a bad rating and for good reason. I don’t want to spend too much time on this but at first I was thinking “this guy seems pretty chill if a bit annoying” and then when he was talking about his education and specialty I realized... this is That Professor. This is That Guy. This is the one I actually called a dick in the course evaluation. Because I took the required survey of american literature from colonialism to the civil war course from this guy; this was online which made things worse. Now this was supposed to be a LITERATURE course, a SURVEY of LITERATURE. His course design was literally 50% ART, another 30% was dense paragraphs about history (I’m ADHD I absolutely cannot get through gigantic blocks of dry, useless text within a reasonable time frame), another 20% was bits of literature and media that was not relevant to the time period because his big thing was “How are these things influenced or developed from early American literature and/or history?!” Like.... I DON’T KNOW BECAUSE WE HAVEN’T STUDIED IT DIPSHIT! Then to add to it his expectations were that C is Average bullshit like, you’re setting your students up for failure when you set it up like C is the grade you expect to give them and to get an A a student has to go above and beyond like no, if a student meets expectations they should get an A. You’re just an asshole. Then his expectations for regular coursework were buried on a completely different website and never repeated, they also didn’t make sense. They were not clear. And then his idea of “feedback” is to ramble for paragraphs on a tangent and NEVER TELL ME WHY TF HE GAVE ME THE GRADE HE DID! Feedback needs to include an explanation of what the student did right and wrong so they can improve in the future. His rambling along with the lack of clarity in instructions made it impossible to get good, much less consistent grades. I’d try to follow all the instructions, even put in extra effort and get excited and I’d get a poor grade on an assignment in spite of doing everything right according to his incomprehensible instructions and then I’d half-ass a discussion post, turn it in late, and get an A and three paragraphs of this guy rambling excitedly in the comments. Like, it was impossible to figure out what he actually wanted us to do and then I was already mad enough about the lack of focus on what the class was actually supposed to be about and all this led to me throwing in the towel and either half-assing everything or just skipping assignments because I couldn’t care anymore. I have no desire to study under this buffoon’s “guidance” again.

2) One of the classmates is Obnoxious Man, who I will point out isn’t even graduating this spring and therefore really doesn’t need to be in this class and I think he shouldn’t be. I’m uncomfortable enough with the professor but I would be willing to give him a second chance in light of his whole thing about it being “student-led” and it being easier to communicate in person. But Obnoxious Man makes this impossible. The professor wants us sharing and working together all semester. I am not comfortable sharing anything remotely personal such as a reading I find fascinating or working with this man. I will not be giving him any access to me outside of the classroom. He will not be getting my phone number or my email. His vibes are disgusting and I’ve been dealing with boys and men just like him since kindergarten. I don’t care if he hasn’t actually done anything to threaten me, based on previous experience I won’t even take a chance. The second to last guy like this spent weeks harassing me because he wanted me to date him, the last guy would steal my stuff and stalk me. I had to get the school equivalent to a restraining order which he still found every excuse to violate. I can’t do this but I also can’t just drop the class because I, unlike Obnoxious Man, have to graduate this spring. I thought I could tolerate him after last semester but there’s a big difference between having to put up with him in discussion-based classes during half of the week and him having access to me.

3) I was thrown by the actual expectations laid out in the syllabus. I thought I would be doing a whole new, intensive project. I had a great idea and was actually getting excited. Instead we’re supposed to do group projects (see above for issues with that) and a personal project which will be revising an old paper like... when I finish a class I am done. D O N E. I never want to see that crap again. I don’t think I even still have half of that material! There isn’t one of those papers that I want to look at, much less expand! And how is this really challenging? The professor, Mr. Dickhead, went on and on about how important revising is to critical writing yada yada yada but maybe I don’t care?! Maybe I’m only in this degree as preparation for grad school in a different area? I hate writing critical analysis 99% of the time. It’s like pulling teeth. That’s not a great metaphor because I’m now expected to drag all these papers I want to forget about back into the horrible light of day. And I don’t know if these expectations were invented by the department or by the professor so I don’t know who to be mad at or if I could possibly request some sort of independent project.

4) Because of this and some things said by other students in their introductions (all positive things btw) I started into a reactionary spiral of feeling inadequate, childish, stupid, helpless, etc. etc. Like, one of these classmates is a finalist for a Fullbright scholarship which apparently had to be applied to in October and I didn’t know any of this?! Like that stuff is important but nobody tells me things and I don’t know how people know about all these scholarships and awards and programs and stuff that is helpful. It’s hard enough just making it through the day and doing a mediocre job on my assignments. It took me months to get up the courage to ask professors for recommendations. Filling out graduate applications has been hell and I had to tell my advisor yesterday that she’s not finished with the recs because there’s on in her inbox she missed and I still have to submit one more application that I was feeling good about yesterday and now am about ready to give up on. And the writing center isn’t open and I don’t want to be a burden on my advisor and talk to her about any of these issues...

[thelazyeye]

hi em !! could you write something with potter eddie? like clay and stuff

YES I SURE AS FUCK CAN. I took a pottery class in high school and I fell absolutely in love with the art. Anon you reached into my chest and stole my whole ass heart. This wasn’t meant to be long but I saw an idea and I ran with it and I really, really hope you like it! Enjoy, anon!

There’s Clay Underneath My Fingernails, Earth Underneath My Skin

When Eddie first enrolled in ceramics in high school he thought he would hate every second of it. His curriculum demanded that he take an art class every year and, naturally, on the day of registration Sonia had kept him home because he looked ‘feverish’ despite having literally no fucking temperature. And, as luck would have it, no other art classes had openings that fit with what he needed to graduate. So, ceramics one it was.

He dreaded it. It was messy, useless, and a waste of his time. All art classes would be a waste, honestly. He wasn’t Bill. He didn’t understand how to draw and paint lines that somehow came together to look semi-decent. Or, dare he say, beautiful. He wasn’t artistic. He understood math and money and mechanics. He knew how to put stuff together, not create stuff.

He had no idea how good the clay would feel in his hands. He didn’t know how satisfying it would be to build something up from nothing. And surprisingly, he had no idea how good he was going to be at it.

So, Eddie spent the last semester of his senior year wrist deep in clay, building and molding and sculpting until he had filled an entire bookcase with stuff he made by hand. He learned how to make mugs, whistles, bowls, chalices, containers, jars, everything imaginable. He even made a box that he designed to look like a book. The top cover came off on a hinge that swiveled back and forth. He got an A on every assignment. Who knew something Sonia did could have paid off so well.

These days, Eddie finds himself at the local studio at least a few times a month. It’s enough time to sculpt something, bisque fire it, glaze it, and throw it in the kiln for its final fire. He churns out one piece a month, two if he’s dedicated or has extra spare time. His apartment is full of handmade mugs and vases. He gives a lot of his pieces away, never really bothering to sell them. Maintaining a store is too much effort and he isn’t in it for the money. Pottery is something he loves, not something he’s trying to build his life around.

The clay is cold to the touch, firm and slick as he moves his fingers around the first mounts of a new pen holder he’s been thinking of making for his desk. He has a design in mind so he works. He divides the clay up and rolls it between his hands and the wooden tabletop. When he’s done he wraps them around each other, coiling the clay until he has a base and the wrapping up the sides. He adds swirls and notches and bumps for texture. He doesn’t notice as other people file in and out of the studio. He just rolls, wraps, and molds his design, watching as what he’s pictured in his mind comes to life before him.

“It’s unique,” comes from behind, a gentle voice that startles him out of his concentration. He knows who it is without looking.

“Thank you,” he answers, soft and distant. Too wrapped up in the way he smooths out the inside of his sculpture for support. Too focused on the bend of his coils, the wrap of his spirals.

“Are you planning on finishing it tonight? I can throw it in for the first fire before I leave and you can come back and finish it tomorrow,” the voice says back, all easy charm. The same way it’s always been. “The shop opens at 10. Maybe we can grab breakfast and then head on over?”

Eddie stops at that and turns. His heart practically leaps into his throat as the studio owner leans over him. He’s got thick glasses resting on his nose and thick, black hair curling out of the bun on top of his head. It was infuriating. No hair that unkempt should look that fucking good. “Tempting, Richie. But I’m gonna have to pass.”

“Oh, come on Eds!” Richie cries, throwing his head back and draping his arm over his eyes. It’s for dramatic flair and it makes Eddie crack a soft smile. He turns back, though, quick not to let Richie see it.

“Not my name,” comes out quick. The venom that used to be there has long since died, though. It melted with the snow and left something blooming inside of him. It settled in his chest, taking root in his organs and binding itself to his nerves.

Eddie has been coming to this studio for the better part of 2 years now. He found it shortly after he moved to Monroeville. It was the perfect place to step away, to unwind after a stressful week. He met Richie the first time he came in. Richie was trying to set up him in the studio and get him everything he would need to become a regular member. The interaction was so bad that Eddie had almost abandoned the idea altogether. Richie was crude, he didn’t seem to take anything Eddie said seriously, and he pried too much for Eddie’s comfort. Serious boundary issues. He was everything Eddie had spent most of his life distanced from and Eddie was more than prepared to walk out of the studio forever just so he’d never have to see Richie again. He did walk out that day, a scoff on the end of his lips and his jacket hastily thrown over his shoulders.

For some reason, though, he found himself back the next week. The second Richie had seen him he bounded over, hands out in defense when Eddie moved to leave a second time. He apologized for his behavior and offered Eddie a discounted rate. Richie’d spent several months walking on eggshells. He was still infuriating but it was more tolerable. His one liners and crude comments were on the downlow and Eddie could swear he caught Richie smiling at him in ways he didn’t smile at the other members.

Shit didn’t really start to shift, though, until The Vase Incident. Eddie had this bright idea to make a Vase for his coworkers’ birthday. She’d caught eye of one of his pieces in their shared office and gushed over it. So, he decided hey, why not make her something nice?

Well, something nice turned into absolute hell. He couldn’t get it right no matter how hard he tried. He spent hours at the potter’s wheel, throwing his clay and spinning. He didn’t spin frequently but he wanted it to be nice for Bev. He wanted it to be perfect but he couldn’t get it right. Either the clay was off center or he spun his slope too thin or it collapsed at the base. He swears he nearly had a stroke over the damn thing.

He had been so wrapped up over it one January weekend that he hadn’t noticed the other potters left and that he was the only one in the studio, aside from Richie. Richie was on the opposite side of the studio, carving patterns into a tile that Eddie thought might turn out to be mosaic.

“Let me help you,” he offered after watching Eddie destroy the collapsed base of yet another vase. “If you keep this up we’ll be here all night.”

The clock on the wall read 11:23pm and Eddie all but kicked the chair out from under himself as he stood. His frustration was clear in the tension of his shoulders. If Richie could help him, fine. He would have taken anything he could get at that point.

Richie took his place, throwing a hunk of wet clay on the wheel and pressing the pedal down gently. He used his fingers to center it, pushing the edges until the met as an even ridge and then cupping his hands around the lump. He brought it high, pressed it low, and then dipped two fingers into the middle to create the opening. Eddie watched as Richie pinched the top and brought it outwide, eventually pressing his entire hand down to hollow the base and then guiding the clay up and redistributing the mass.

After ten minutes, Richie had constructed a simple, yet elegant, vase. It wasn’t very big, maybe big enough for one or two flowers, but it was standing and structurally sound. More than Eddie could say for his own work.

“How did you do that?” He asked, voice scratchy and hands covered in drying clay.

“Practice, Eds. I own all these wheels. It’d be a damn shame if I didn’t know how to use them,” Richie winked. He failed at covering a yawn before stepping away to grab a line of string. He gently cut the vase from the wheel and lifted it off. Eddie watched as Richie carved a crooked E.K. into the bottom before placing it in the kiln room. “I’m gonna fire a round tomorrow. I’ll throw this in then. Why don’t you go home and get some rest?”

“Sure. You, too, you know. It’s well past closing time,” Eddie said back, a small smile on his face.

“Yeah, I know. I just couldn’t bring myself to interrupt you. You’re cute when you’re concentrating.” Richie didn’t hide his flirting, this time. He let himself smile at Eddie from across the studio. It was like the defenses they’d both been wearing for so long had dropped from the exhaustion. “You know, if you took my last name you could carve E.T. into the bottom of your pieces,” he chuckled, “You know, like E.T. phone home?”

Richie eyed him, gauging his reaction with a toothy grin and a very clear wink. If he was waiting for Eddie to take the bait, he didn’t. Eddie simply smiled back and wished Richie a goodnight, effectively destroying most of the boundaries they had established after that first day.

Today, he’s not making a vase and as per their new usual Richie isn’t tiptoeing around him anymore. Eddie flips his piece over, minding the coils on the top and wetting his fingers to smooth out the bottom for structural support. When he’s done, he carves E.K. into the bottom and stands.

“Come on!” Richie chirps as he follows Eddie across the studio, “We both know you’re going to be back here tomorrow to glaze this beauty up!”

“I will,” Eddie answers, placing his piece on the cart and moving to wash his hands, “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to get breakfast with you.”

“Lunch then? We can go after you finish,” Richie says. His voice borders on something other than teasing. Its new, almost insistent. It catches Eddie off guard. “It’s supposed to be nice tomorrow.”

Eddie watches him out of the corner of his eye, slipping his jacket over his shoulders and grabbing his stuff. “We’ll see.”

He doesn’t miss the way Richie pumps his arms in the air as he leaves the studio. It wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t a no either, and he thinks they both know the meaning behind his indecision.

He can feel something twist in his chest as he drives home. It lingers through dinner and into the night. A date with Richie Tozier isn’t unattainable, it never has been, but Eddie has always stayed far, far away from the idea. He found every excuse to keep him far, far, away. He was too crude, too loud, too messy. He was too kind, he was too beautiful, his hands were too perfect. Richie Tozier was too much for him.

It wasn’t sustainable. Eddie knew it. Richie was just some person filling the void in his chest. He didn’t even know him. How could he have any real feelings? It was just a childish infatuation that would destroy everything if he pursued it. He’d lose the pottery studio and he’d lose Richie, too.

Not that there was anything real to lose there. But whatever.

“Spaghetti! Right on time,” Richie shouts as Eddie walks in the next day. The clock blinks 10:20 am on wall but Eddie pretends he doesn’t notice Richie greeting or the fact that he’s right on time. Instead, he places his jacket on the hook and moves to his regular workstation. Richie disappears into the back room and returns with his piece. “It really is unique. What color are you going to choose?”

They talk glazes for a few moments and Eddie watches as Richie ties his hair back at his own work station. He’s got a small pot in front of him. Its stubby and wide and very Richie. Richie flicks on the radio and they settle into silence. It’s too early for others to be in the shop on a Sunday, so they work in peace. Eddie paints with a green, speckled sort of glaze. The brush works over the indents and ridges of the coils. In the time it takes him to work three coats over the piece Richie isn’t even halfway finished with his own greenware.

He watches Richie work, deep concentration written on his face. He’s got his glasses pushed up and a detail brush painting small designs into the underside of the lip. The sunlight comes in through the window and hits him in a way that makes him glow. That feeling from the night before returns and, fuck it, whatever. Who fucking cares. This is ridiculous. This is insane. This is absolutely fucking silly. One hundred percent bonkers. Hands down the worst fucking decision he’s ever made was finding this god damn studio.

He places his piece back on the firing cart for its final run through the kiln and slips out of the front door. Richie is so deep in his work that he doesn’t even see Eddie go.

Eddie doesn’t go back to the studio for a few weeks. He tells himself he’s busy with work, life, whatever excuse he can shove into the situation. It’s not like he has anyone to defend himself to but he can’t bring himself to admit why he’s avoiding the shop. It drives him insane but it’s an insanity of his own creation.

It isn’t until he loses his favorite pen twice in the same day that he breaks. That dumb little coiled container was supposed to be for his desk. It was supposed to help keep his life organized. It was supposed to be a gift to himself. A gift to his fucking desk and pens and home.

God dammit.

Richie doesn’t work on Tuesdays, so Eddie finds himself in the studio before work. He’s dressed head to toe in scrubs and a light jacket to combat the Spring chill. He fully intends to be in and out without incident but naturally the universe has other plans for him.

“Eddie, fuck man it’s good to see you!” the assistant manager calls out from the front. He bounds over and Eddie doesn’t even have time to reply before Bill is in front of him, smiling and talking. “Richie’s been worried about you! Says he hasn’t seen your cute face in a few weeks. Everything okay?”

Eddie coughs quietly before answering. Richie was worried about him. God dammit. “Yeah, Bill. Everything’s good. Just been super busy with work and stuff.” He gestures to his clothes before placing his piece in a bag and angling toward the door. Bill just nods empathetically and waves him goodbye.

He shouts a quick see you soon, hopefully! before the door shuts.

For no reason at all his interaction with Bill burrows into his skin. Eddie is fifty percent emotionally driven impulse and he was more than ready to withdraw his membership from the studio on principle alone. He can’t date the owner. He can’t have a silly schoolyard crush on that man. There’s no reason for something so disruptive. And then Bill just had to tell him he that Richie was worried and that he hopes to see Eddie soon. Why that mattered so fucking much, Eddie had no idea. But it lives inside of him now. Eating at him until he breaks in the other direction.

He finds himself back in the studio again next Tuesday. Bill greets him gently before he takes his seat, grabbing some clay and rolling out two slabs to create about a quarter inch thickness. He cuts the first one, rolls it, and binds the seams. It’s a technique he’s used hundreds of times before and it comes easy to him. He cuts a circle for the base from the second slab and carves in a single word before binding it to the tube he’s created. He rolls a coil, twists it along the side, and boom. Its bisque fired that night and Eddie returns on Thursday to glaze it before work. He paints a simple design around the outside of it and then places it on the cart.

He meets up with Bill over the weekend outside of the shop to pick it up. Inside, he can see Richie teaching a young girl how to make a whistle. He can see the slope of the chamber and what looks like six appendages extending out. Even from here, Eddie knows it’s going to be a Richie Tozier original. Something ridiculous, unique, yet still beautiful in its own way.

He doesn’t return for another two weeks. The anxiety of his plan weighs down on him. It was an impulse that could go horribly, horribly wrong but he also knows that no one knows what he’s planning. He could abandon it entirely and no one would know. He could call the studio, end his membership, and be on with his life. He’d never have to see Richie again. Sure, he might have to give up sculpting for a few years, maybe the rest of his life, but damn if it isn’t a possibility.

Still, though, Eddie finds himself outside of the studio on a Saturday afternoon. As always, he can see Richie inside working on something. He steels himself and pushes through the doors, immediately heading over to the Keurig to make a cup of coffee. He grabs a handful of creamers and sugars and heads right for Richie’s workbench.

“You look like you could use a cup,” he says, trying and miserably failing to come across as natural. If Richie notices he doesn’t say anything about it. Thank god for small graces.

“Kaspbrak! You’re back!” Richie shouts loud enough for several people to turn their heads. Eddie can feel his face heating up as he places the mug on the table. Richie doesn’t fall for his casual motion, hand falling on Eddie’s wrist immediately. “Whoa! What’s this?”

Eddie does some sort of half shrug as he sits down across from Richie. Richie picks up the mug and admires it. It’s got an orange glaze on it with red and yellow accents. It’s really nothing special but Richie seems enamored with it. “You make this, Eds?”

“Not my name, Richie,” he quips, then adds “but yeah.”

Richie traces the designs on the outside and admires the binding and structure of it before sending Eddie a smile that makes him melt from the inside out. Man, he really is fucked, isn’t he?

They talk for a little while as Richie works. Eddie watches those slim fingers as they construct masterpieces from the Earth. Its captivating. Richie asks him questions and Eddie dances around complete truths. He doesn’t want Richie to know where he’s been or why he’s been avoiding the studio.

As Richie drinks his coffee Eddie can feel anxiety bubbling up into his throat. He gets closer and closer to the bottom and eventually he picks the mug up for a final time, gulping down the rest after making a comment about cold coffee being a sin against mankind.

Eddie’s worried Richie doesn’t see it at first. He watches as Richie lowers the mug, eyes trained on Eddie over the rim. Time slows for a moment as the mug starts moving down toward the table and Eddie watches Richie’s eyes shift from his own to the inside of the piece.

There’s literally no going back now.

A small smile creeps over Richie’s face as he sits across from Eddie. Silence passes between the two and Eddie can feel his heart hammering out of his chest. This isn’t the reaction he’d expected. He’d thought Richie would make some snide comment, say something funny, jump up and down in the air. Fuck. Maybe he’d been reading the signals wrong. Maybe Richie flirts with everyone. Maybe he’s destroyed his entire hobby by being a huge fucking idiot. He’s going to have to end his membership and give up pottery forever. No local studio will take him once they hear how intrusive and disruptive he is. He’s going to have to move across the country, change his name, reimagine his entire life. There’s no way he’s going to live down the embarrassment.

“Yes,” Richie whispers. It’s so quiet that Eddie almost can’t hear him over his internal beratement.

“What?” Eddie says back automatically. He’d heard Richie, but just barely. Maybe he’d missed something. Maybe Richie had said something he didn’t hear. Maybe Richie was fucking with him.

“I said yes, Eddie. How about tonight? I can close up a few hours early or maybe Bill can come in to close. Does seven work for you?”

Oh. Fuck. It actually worked.

“Yeah!” Eddie replies, too loud and too excited but somehow it Richie doesn’t startle. He looks at Eddie with an equal amount of excitement, just barely contained behind his own eyes.

“Okay, yeah, cool. Perfect. Meet me back here at 6:45, yeah?” Richie says fast. His hands fly around the table before he grabs a hunk of clay and starts pressing his fingers into it. It’s a nervous tick, Eddie thinks, but somehow it’s cute as hell.

“Yes. Perfect. Okay. Yeah. I’ll see you then,” Eddie says and then pushes up. He shrugs his jacket on and makes for the door. When he glances over his shoulder he sees Richie holding the mug he made, smile so wide it looks like it could tear his face into two. He’s staring into the mug where Eddie had carved out one simple word.

Dinner?

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[dndplus]

In-Depth: Altering Combat

This is post is titled “In-Depth”, and it is done so because it talks about the aspects of combat and building encounters in D&D that are beyond your basic ‘understanding locales’ and KFC nonsense.

If you want the beginner’s post on Combat, go here:

    Getting Started: Combat

That said, in my Getting Started post, I didn’t go into detail on certain aspects of running an encounter.  This was intentional, as someone who’s just started should’t be concerning themselves with quite so much.  But what about the rest of us?  The people building encounters for players at level 3, or 5, or 9, or 14, or... you get the picture.

As per usual, I’m going to break this post down into certain key segments:

Experience, and Why You Shouldn’t Always Listen to the CR

Special Enemy Abilities

Moving The Goalposts: How to Make Parties of Particularly Deadly Player Characters Feel Their Weaknesses

One Big Foe

Depending on your level of experience, one (or all) of these bullets will jump out to you as things that have needed adjustment on your end.  Here’s some tips and insight on how to manage all of these factors, starting with some advice to keep experience values from affecting how you structure encounters...

Experience, and Why You Shouldn’t Always Listen to the CR

I’m going to go ahead and start this post by saying that, in my opinion, no custom campaign should ever really bother with experience.  This is a guideline (admittedly a useful one), but it can grossly limit a DM’s creativity and flexibility when building an encounter.

So, you can either assign experience values yourself based on the difficulty (because, yes, an encounter can be worth MORE experience than the CR suggests as well), or you can simply inform your players of when they’ve earned a level-up as your campaign’s story dictates.  I’ll give some advice on this, but first, let’s talk about the why.

A vampire has a challenge rating of 13, and awards 10,000xp (split evenly among the group).  It’s a difficult foe, with regenerative capabilities, Legendary Actions and Resistance, the added complication of Misty Escape, incredible story-centric skills (shapechange, charm, etc), and even the ability to summon minions.

It also only has 144 hit points (on average).  In a straight up, no non-sense fight, you’d be downright shocked to see how low a level some parties of 4 can be when challenging a “dreaded” vampire and coming out on top.

So, what gives?  Why 10,000xp for something that has such a strong chance of being outright blown up?  Well first of all, a vampire has legendary resistance and legendary actions baked in because it’s meant to fight with others.  The chaos of a packed battlefield is what makes a vampire the CR 13 menace it claims to be.

But that’s my point: A vampire is not a CR 13 creature when alone, not the way many dragons fit their CR when they are.  For instance, an Adult White Dragon (also CR 13) has the same Legendary Resistance, Legendary Actions, much more HP, a higher Armor Class, a deadly breath weapon (12D8, save DC 19, YIKES!), and a far more powerful array of standard attacks.  What’s more, dragons of this size have Frightful Presence, which severely ups the creature’s action economy (more about action economy in One Big Enemy later...)

At this point, the Adult White Dragon already seems stronger than a Vampire, but it pulls way, wayyyy ahead when you factor in its nightmarish 80ft Flying Speed.  If this isn’t proof that you can’t always trust the CR rating of a creature, I don’t know what is.

So, how do we go about assigning level-ups in a way that keep us from worrying about the sudden deluge of experience an overrated monster offers?  Simple!  You forgo experience altogether!  Some players like the illusion of experience, though.  To accommodate this, plan out all of the adventures you wish to have spanning a “level” and then split up the experience rewards based on the difficulty of individual missions.

If your players understand and trust you enough to handle the level-ups without the bells and whistles, it’s up to you to plan their distribution.  The best way to do this is to look at the greater adventure at play in your campaign and take stock of your villain.  Your players should be strong enough to handle them when the times comes, but not so strong that they walk right over the poor sod.  Use those benchmarks to create the ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ points of the level ups you need your players to get.

After that, use important encounters to space those level ups out.  Here’s a few examples of events that are well suited to triggering a level up:

Defeating one of the villains most powerful minions.  This one is obvious, and a classic.  As an added bonus, it cements the feeling in your players that they’re getting closer to final confrontation.

The conclusion of an important meeting, or the coming of a particularly plot-important revelation.  This one is a bit more complicated, but again fits well with the feeling of progression.  Typically, this is best used when your players have gone through a lot of combat since their last level, but are lacking in some plot-significant baddie to mark the occasion.

Difficult Side Quests.  Yeah, sometimes the players get dragged into something completely unrelated, but it’s nice for these to have weight and not feel like a waste of time.  If you’re worried about your players going off and doing other stuff to the point that they’ll become too powerful, remember that you can fill the final boss encounter with additional minions to bring the difficulty up to par.  Alternatively, you can use the story you’ve created to put a sense of urgency into the players, and also create consequences for their wandering.  A necromancer threatening to ascend into a lich is a terribly frightening prospect, and makes the players feel like they’ve lost ground for running off to level up more before the final confrontation.

That’s really all there is to say about experience.  It’s not a terribly detailed subject, but it’s one I want Game Masters to understand.  CR, like everything else, is just a tool.  Treating it as gospel will make balancing encounters that much more difficulty in the long run.

Special Enemy Abilities

I sincerely hope that this is a short subject, because it’s not a particularly complicated one.  What’s it really about, though?

Well, sometimes that Specter enemy you’re throwing at your players was created as a result of something unique.  The Monster Manual already gives us a ‘special’ version of the Specter in the Poltergeist, but that doesn’t always fit the flavor of your specter’s circumstances.

Let’s start with a few examples of why a creature might have special abilities:

A pact, blessing, or curse from some greater being.

The unique way in which it came to be.

Life in a locale not typical to its species.

Some detail specific to your setting.

There’s a lot more, but these should give you an idea of when to get creative.

In the instance of the specter, we’re going to combine 1 + 2, in which someone died at the hands of a particularly horrid and dark god.  At this point, you have to ask yourself: how much stronger, or weaker (because yes, they can be weaker), is my ‘special’ creature?

So, our ultra horrible nightmarish entity has doomed a few pour souls to a particularly vile magically induced death.  What comes of it?  If the entity is supposed to be particularly powerful, then make the specters more powerful too.

We’ll start by upping the HD from a flat 5D8 to 5D8 + 20, which is a significant increase for any party that has trouble dealing with a Specter’s natural resistances.

It can’t just be more powerful though, can it?  No, the rule of cool is important, and we want this new version to do something cool that will tip your players off to how unique it is, as well as match the dark entity that created them.

In this example, I’m using an evil god of my own design known as Goddenfeir.  Without going into too much detail and boring you all to death, Goddenfeir is a god obsessed with the concept of complete nonexistence, and finds it unattainable.  Wraiths, specters, and the like created by Goddenfeir carry this sense of oblivion deep within their being, and manifest abilities to go along with it.  Here’s what I gave the specter:

Breath of Oblivion - Recharge 5-6, 15ft Cone.  Targets caught in the breath must make a DC 12 Dexterity Saving Throw, suffering 5D6 Cold Damage on a failed save, or half as much on a successful one.

This is a frightening ability, especially when the prospect of multiple specters comes into play.  In my own campaign, this was done to pump up Goddenfeir himself in a simple event that wasn’t meant to threaten the players that much, merely show them that he’s there, and that even something as harmless as a Specter (CR 1 normally) can potentially become very dangerous with his dark influence.

Moving The Goalposts: How to Make Parties of Particularly Deadly Player Characters Feel Their Weaknesses

Adding this category was very much so an afterthought, but it’s an important one: some player parties are just too damn good at killing things.

So how does a Dungeon Master kill-, er... challenge such a party?  Simple: you move the goalposts.  Not every encounter needs to come down to ‘killing the other guy’.  Not every encounter needs to be combat, either.  You could throw a puzzle at your players, or a particularly deadly trap (or a combination of the two!).

When you are looking for a way to give your oh-so-powerful band of murder-hobos a fight that will leave them quaking, you want to change the goal of the overall fight.  Here’s some basic examples of how to do that, for you to use straight up or to inspire you to create one of your own:

Evacuation!  A town is under attack, and its enemies are legion.  Have your players brave the town and help the people trapped within escape, fighting through the endless hordes all the while.  This can be easily done by enticing them with a great deal of gold for every person they save (and then making them increasingly difficult to get to, of course).

Trapped!  Sometimes, the only play is to run away.  Again, we have an endless horde situation, but this time your players are working against the clock (and their own limited resources) to secure a means of escape.  Speaking of clocks...

Stall/Rush!  Some parties are strong because they blow enemies up super fast.  Some parties are strong because they’re just so damned resilient.  Whichever the variety plaguing you, making a fast party take their time (such as with an enemy who’s invulnerable for a series of turns at the start of a fight) can be devastating.  Likewise, forcing a slow party to get the job done fast (say, defeating a powered up Ogre Champion with the key to the lift of the collapsing mine they’re in).  

This is a pretty bare-bones set of examples, but I think they demonstrate pretty well that a lot of parties are only really strong when the game is being played how they expect.  Dungeons and Dragons isn’t just about killing the bad guy, though.  Sometimes the evil player campaign requires taking someone alive, or the good player campaign needs the players to make an ally of an enemy.  Whatever the demand, there’s always a way to move the goalposts and show your players they’re not as unstoppable as they think.

One Big Foe

I saved this for last specifically because it’s what reminded me to return to an combat in an In-Depth post.  In the Getting Started: Combat post, I talked about KFC and how it shows us that quantity > quality when it comes to making an encounter more difficult.

But what about when when you want to hit your players with a proper, ginormous monster?  Some monsters are already built for this, like Dragons and Beholders, as shown by the presence of Legendary Resistance and Legendary Actions.  Legendary Actions, in particular, are there to help even out the action economy difference.

Action Economy

You have 5 players.  They are each level 3, and you’ve called in a Hill Giant (CR 5) to pick a fight with them.  With the ability to deal 36 damage in a couple of attacks, it’s pretty clear that a Hill Giant is a deadly foe.  Surely it will-, wait, no, the players killed it in 2 rounds.

How?  Your 5 players only had to average 10 damage each to deal 100 damage in two rounds, and the Hill Giant has a low Armor Class and an average HP of 105.  The Hill Giant, if lucky, did 72 damage total.  In all reality, it did much less, with several points of damage going over as a player fell unconscious, or 18 points vanishing into the abyss as your giant rolled a natural one or just outright missed.  What’s more, no one in the party probably even bothered using a potion or other consumable, and next to no healing spells (if any) were used either.

This is where we even things out...

Legendary Actions

Hill Giants do not have legendary actions, and shouldn’t, but when one big enemy is alone, giving them legendary actions can help improve the threat they pose to the party without diluting the experience and adding more small enemies to back it up.

For a Hill Giant, we give it a pool of 2 Legendary Actions, which it takes at the end of a player’s turn, and is refreshed every time the Hill Giant’s turn ends.  It’s Legendary Actions would then look something like this:

Move, 1 Action - The Hill Giant moves up to half it speed.

Club, 1 Actions - The Hill Giant swings its greatclub at a target..

Hurl, 2 Actions - The Hill Giant scoops up a rock from its pouch and hurls it at a distant target.

At this point, the Hill Giant is suddenly terrifying.  2-3 turns feels like an eternity when it gets two attacks on its turn, and up to 2 additional attacks through the use of Legendary Actions.  We made it more mobile as well, a fact that will truly terrify the squishier members of the group who rely on keeping their distance.

In the end, though, a Hill Giant still only has so many hit points.  The fight would have to go terribly, TERRIBLY wrong for 5 player characters to all die to this one Hill Giant.

It’s important to think about what you want your legendary actions to accomplish for a creature.  I set the boundary of two attacks, an attack and half of its movement, or a single ranged attack, and then made the total legendary action uses match the pool of actions themselves.

Hopefully, this will improve your encounters when you try to throw a single, menacing beast up against your players, instead of it just turning into an ego boost for your players!

[nightblogofficialbook]

Chapter One

Also available on the Tapas.io Website, search for Night in the Novels tab!

“Helen, time to wake up!”

I turned over with a groan. “My alarm hasn’t even gone off yet, mom,” I complained, burying my head further under the pillow.

“You set that thing way too late, you’re always rushing yourself in the morning!”

Mom clicked the light on and I groaned louder. “Come on, I’ll make you pancakes but you have to get up now little missy.”

I gave in and sat up. My hair was a nest, my muscles still asleep. I yawned and stretched, and got up to walk out of my room to the bathroom to fix my mess.

My name is Helen Morris. I’m sixteen, tired of life, and ready for retirement already. It’s currently 5:30 a.m. thanks to school being an hour’s bus route away from home. In three months I turn seventeen and qualify for driving unsupervised. Not that I have a car to drive, but at least I’ll be able to work without the school stepping in, too. I live with my mom in an old, rickety two-bedroom, one bathroom house with walls that creaked and water that didn’t always run hot for very long. It wasn’t much, but it was paid off and in her name. My dad’s in prison, but I don’t want to think about him.

I got dressed in plain jeans and a blue t-shirt and walked through the hallway to the kitchen. Mom had some homemade blueberry pancakes made up ready the way I usually eat them. I groggily sat down and took a bite, enjoying the flavor for the moment. Mom glanced back at me from the sink where she was cleaning the pans and bowls.

“See, isn’t this nicer than rushing off with no breakfast?” she said matter-of-factly.

“It is, thanks Mom.” I really was grateful to being woken up like this. Mom usually works overnight as a nurse, so mornings like these are the result of her still being awake after her shift. It was hard to fully appreciate it in the moment, though, with the not being fully awake yet and all.

I finished my pancakes and milk, and dropped the dishes in the dishwasher. After finishing up the rest of my boring morning routine of brushing my teeth and getting dressed, I grabbed my bag, hugged my mom, and went out the door for the ten minute walk towards the bus stop.

The air was still cool and crisp, but I knew it was a lie. In two to fours hours it would be hot as hell. I still wore a jacket nonetheless because the school, in addition to being terrible already, did not know what the meaning of climate control is, and tended to have its classrooms ranging from stuffy to freezing. But for these ten quiet minutes, it was a nice morning.

The aged houses and trees of my neighborhood gave way to a more modern urban sprawl, the neighborhood of the better-off kids. I like to think I was only envious of the fact that they had less things to worry about, given their financial stability. Granted, I had no idea what kind of lives lived behind those doors, but I couldn’t help the bitter feeling that it surely couldn’t be anything nearly as bad as the rest of us. I haven’t really been out in the world necessarily yet, but I did see how much mom struggles to keep us afloat and happy.

Past this neighborhood was the community center and library, which is where my bus stop was. Behind this was a large, forested area which I sometimes use as shortcut to get  here from home as it cuts the time in half. Which I frequently have to do. It can be pretty creepy this early in the morning, even more so after dark. But the five minutes of sunset was where it’s at; the way the golden-red rays fell through the trees...it was pretty magical.

Fun fact about this forest; there’s this huge creepy castle that no one ever goes near, somewhere right smack in the middle. It’s not like people aren’t allowed to go near, but, inexplicably, people avoid that place anyway. Some say it’s haunted, some claim it’s not even there. Apparently some have even actually gone in but never came back out. None of it is backed up by anything, but I’ve always avoided the area nonetheless. It’s a bit out of the way from my route home anyway, and I’m not dumb enough to go trespassing on someone else’s property in the middle of the woods.

The bus arrived, and thank goodness, because the other kids at my stop started to arrive at the same time. I didn’t want to interact with anyone if I could help it. One dude quickly put out a cigarette soon as he saw the bus, and a couple girls my age looked disappointed to not have any time to gawk and gossip about the shabbiness of everything in general. Since the bus barn is close to this area, ours was the first stop to be picked up in the mornings, but also the last one to drop in the evenings. Which meant we got first pick on seats but also had to deal with everyone else for the maximum amount of time possible. And this bus picked up both junior high and high schoolers.

I remember being in junior high, I grimaced as a bunch of fourteen/fifteen-year-olds loaded up at the next few stops. It really wasn’t all that long ago honestly, but it was such a weird age. Girls figuring out puberty, boys learning how to be asses but not understanding why girls won’t be attracted to them, but at the same time both genders thinking the other is stupid. I really hated that age. Not that high school is much different, but at least everyone has enough going on to keep out of each other’s business.

The hour passes and I nearly fell asleep as the bus dropped the high schoolers off first. I got my stiff legs moving and made my way into the building.

Classes pass in a daze like usual. Nothing is very interesting, but at least it’s consistent. I know what to expect from my day, and what’s expected of me. I know what periods I’m going to hate, and which ones I can relax in. It really isn’t as bad as I complain about, sometimes. That’s just how life goes. You settle into monotony and enjoy the calm ride however you can.

Unfortunately for today, I had forgotten about my math test. I’m not bad at math, but I’m not great at it either, and the teacher is REALLY confusing most of the time. She needs to seriously consider retirement; hardly anyone could make heads or tails of what she’d say. I bombed the test of course, I forgot to do the practice homework to prepare for it. When I got my test back, there was a note in red pen telling me I need to apply myself or I’m going to have to take remedial lessons. The last thing I needed was even MORE time at school. That would mean I’d have to miss my bus and catch a public bus. Which means getting home after dark and making mom worry.

Last class was just a seminar hour for study, and thankfully I had this with my best friend, Emily. We both took a dead language class as an elective and were translating a runes assignment.

“Tell me if you think this is close,” she said quietly. “Here be a person of shared...tree?”

“That’s the symbol for parent, not tree,” I corrected, “so it should be ‘Here be a person of shared parent.’ They’re saying it’s their sibling.”

“Ooooooohhhh I get it now,” Emily mused. “I swear though, I had to have gotten somebody’s eulogy or something.”

“It might be, it’s gotta be more interesting than mine. I’m pretty sure I just have someones written layout of their town.”

“Seriously though, how are you so good at this? These are dead languages, and the teacher freakin’ loves you.”

I shrugged. “I dunno. I have a hard time with the roman based letters sometimes, which is dumb, but give me runes and I’ve got it. I think it’s because there’s a simpler pattern to decipher for me. Like, the structure just makes sense with the language syntax or something.”

“I dunno,” Emily stared dubiously at her text. “We’re already in the second course and this is still all just gibberish to me.”

“You got that far, though, didn’t you?” I said, gesturing to her project. “You got halfway through the assignment before getting a symbol confused with another.”

“Yeah, but I still have to use a cheat sheet.”

I shrugged again. “Nothing wrong with that. Plus, no one else has it as easy either. Maybe I’m just a weirdo.”

She laughed, and I grinned. Our seminar teacher shushed us angrily, even though we weren’t being that loud. I narrowed my eyes his direction but just let it go. He had always been an ass that could only ever amount to a gym teacher, but it wasn’t worth picking a fight with him. Besides, there was nothing I could really do about it.

School let out and Emily walked with me to my bus. She was one of the lucky ones whose parents were able to have time to pick her up after school. “You think you’ll be able to come over today?” she asked hopefully.

“Sorry, not this time either. Mom wants me to pick up some stuff from the community center for her work and by that point it’ll be almost dark.”

“Dang. You should ask her if it’s cool if my mom just picks you up from school and then takes you home.”

“Ha! Good luck with that, she barely feels comfortable with me riding the bus, let alone someone else’s car.”

We said our goodbyes and I got on the bus to settle in for the hour-long drive back. The town flew by in a blur of hills and houses and trees, every now and then passing through the small business district again as the bus weaved back and forth, unloading it’s contents like a slowly hatching spider’s nest. The tiredness of the day began to weigh on me, and I felt a little guilty for lying to Emily. Mom didn’t actually have anything I needed to get; I just didn’t want to ask her again, only to be told no and reminded of the dangers of why. And with her busy schedule, she really didn’t even have time to meet parents and give proper assessment. It was so frustrating, but even more so because I understood why.

At least, in a few months, I’ll legally be allowed to work, and I’ll be able to use that as a reason for her to allow me to start making my own decisions.

My stop finally arrived, I got off the bus like all the other little spiderlings, and began my walk home. I still have enough time before sunset actually happens and it gets too dark, so I decided to take my nature path through the woods. It was quiet, immediately a different atmosphere from the civilization around the community center. The trees were tall and loomed far overhead, not impossibly tall or really even impressively tall, but gentle. The oaks and sycamores and birches all commingled their leaves, creating this wonderful blanket of patterned light through the summer green foliage. A breeze would sometimes drift through, causing the treetops to shimmer and rustle and bring relief from the fading summer heat. Below my feet was a lightly worn path from all the times I’ve walked through these woods, every now and then branching off into other less worn paths from the times others had walked through here as well. I breathed in and enjoyed the peace. Sometimes I wish I could just live out here, in the trees, away from all the people. Away from all the noise and frustrations of everyone’s expectations.

The peace was short lived of course, as it always was. The path was only a five minute walk after all. And before long I was back near my house with its tall privacy fenced in yard and it’s peeling paint and creaky hinges.

Mom was already awake and getting ready for work, wearing her baby blue scrubs as I walked in.

“Dinner is on the stove,” she instructed, “ and I have the oven on warm so don’t forget it. Remember to keep the doors locked.” She kissed me on the forehead. “Love you baby, be safe.”

“You too mom,” I hugged back, and locked the door as she left. I checked all of the windows and back doors absentmindedly, thinking about how different things would be if things were...well, different. Mom could stay at home and wouldn’t need to work so much, I could possibly have a life outside school and home, though to be honest I don’t know how much I’d actually want that. Maybe we’d have a bigger, newer house.

I shook my head, assembling the chili tortillas mom had prepped for me and sitting down. No, this is nice, this is okay. We’ve got a warm home, enough good food, and new clothes when we need them. We’re not hurting for money, and getting by modestly. This was nice enough.

After cleaning my dishes and putting the food away, I went back to my room to my desk to deal with the remedial homework my math teacher had given me. I clicked the radio setting on my alarm and listened to music while I worked through the numbers. The song playing on the station made me smile; it was a pop classic Emily and I liked to make fun of, due to it sounding exactly like every other song out there but with the lyrics being horrifically bad. I sung to it softly, wondering what she was up to.

Just as the thought crossed my mind, the phone rang. My heart gave a start from the sudden noise. “Hello?” I answered.

“Hey! It’sa me!”

I laughed. “Hey Emily. I was just thinking about what you’d be up to.”

“Making pizza rolls. Well, waiting for pizza rolls. So I just heard our song on the radio and I thought hey, Helen better be hearing this too ‘cause I can’t just enjoy the hilarity of it again all by myself.”

I laughed again. “I was, actually. Trying to plow through this stupid extra math work Mrs. Marrow gave me.

“Ugh, Bloody Marrow, she needs to retire.”

“For sure.”

“Anyway, so I actually wanted to tell you something that happened to me today!” she began, excited. “Erin asked me out in the most sweetest adorable way ever, she had given me her phone number last week ‘cause we had a science project together and had to coordinate outside of class and whatever, and today she sent me a text wanting to know if I like ice cream and would want to go get some at this new shop opening up at the mall this week!!”

I sat forward in amazement. “Emily! That’s awesome! You’ve had a crush on her for like, forever, I’m so happy for you!”

“I knoooooooow,” I heard her squee on the other end, and the sound of rustling as she was probably rolling back and forth on her bed happily. “She’s so prettyyyyy and I’m so gaaaaaaaaaaay.” I laughed.

“Well, I really hope it works out for you. It’d be really cool to see you two together.”

“Yeah, I’m a little scared though. I mean, this clearly sounds like a date, but I have no idea if she’s like, INTO me, or just ya know, looking for a friend or whatever.”

“Dude. She’s totally into you. How could she not be?”

“Buuuuuut-”

“For reals though. I’ve seen the way she acts when you come around. Plus you’re not exactly hiding your rainbows. She’s totes into you.”

“Uuuuuggghhhhh I just don’t knowwwwww.” I heard her shift. “Have you ever had a massive crush on anyone? Or have a crush on anyone currently?” she added with a hint of probing in her voice.

“I did once,” I grimaced. “That was a few years ago. You remember James?”

She made a noise of surprise. “Ugh that jock-head?”

“Yeah. He went to my middle school before we had moved here.”

“Dang, small world.”

“Yeah. Well, I used to think he was cute back then, and he kind of was. But I never really knew him. When I first moved here and started high school, I found out he went to this school too, so I tried to go talk to him since he was the only person I knew, and he essentially said ‘Ew, no, go away.’ Or something like that.”

“Ugh, boys are so rotten. You should switch sides, girls are way nicer.”

I gave a small laugh. “I wish. I get why you like girls, but I just kinda...don’t like anyone.”

“Dude, confession time to lighten the mood? I once had a crush on you.”

“I know,” I laughed. “You gave me chocolates and your lunch like, everyday. I felt bad for not realizing sooner after I ate all of your food.”

She laughed too. “S’algood, s’algood, I think I may have been mixing feelings a bit, you just seemed like someone I HAD to get to know.”

“I’m really glad you did. I didn’t have any friends at that time.”

“And you’re like, the most open-minded person ever. A lot of girls would get really defensive. Which sucks, but is also pretty hilarious too.”

“Well, I’m flattered you thought I was gay,” I teased. “And sorry that I wasn’t.”

“Yeah, you could be bi though, and I just wasn’t your type. Or maybe even ace.”

“I dunno, I kinda just...don’t care? I don’t really care what category I’d fit in, I just want to be treated like me.”

“Saaaaaame, girl, same.”

We chatted for a few more hours before it started getting really late. The phone call distraction extended my homework by the same amount of time, but it made it easier to get through, and at least it was done. As the last tangent conversation ended we said our see-you-tomorrows and hung up.

I flopped back against the musty pillows. I should really wash those. Our earlier conversation went through my mind, and I turned over on my side, hugging a large stuffed husky my mom got me when I was ten. It’s not like I didn’t want to like people, or that I didn’t want to date anyone. No one ever felt like they were actually interested in ME, not even Emily. At least Emily was aware of it; that’s the reason we became friends. But...I didn’t want to risk the possibility of actually really liking someone, and they just turn out to be like James had been; a stuck up jerk who didn’t even want to be nice. Or like some of the guys that were too thick to understand that Emily likes girls and certainly not them.

Being alone though...that’s what sucks the most. And for me, being around people who make me feel alone is the worst feeling of all.

I sat at the computer lab in the community center, looking at job listings, looking for any that hire seventeen year olds. It was still a few months away but It wouldn’t hurt to try to get a head start. I could use the shortened time to convince them to at least consider me; there was a public bus route that made a stop just down the road from where the school bus drops, at roughly the same time. I could take my seminar hour at the end of the day and check myself out of school, work for a couple of hours, and then commute back here. And mom wouldn’t need to know about it, AND I’d be able to help out with expenses. It’s a win-win scenario, it wouldn’t even cut into homework time.

I leaned back and stretched, and noticed that it was unusually quiet, and dark, in the building. I looked around; everyone had left save for the front desk lady, who was quietly reading her book. The auto lights had already gone out.

I checked the time on the computer. It said 8:05.

Oh crap.

Logging out as quickly as I could I bolted out the doors; the sun was already in setting position. “Oh crap oh crap.” Mom is going to be furious, this was her night off, I should have been home an hour ago…!

I ran towards the woods, debating whether to take the chance of it being dark before I made it through or getting into even more trouble with mom. To be honest, mom is probably scarier. The implications of it being after dark by the time I made it home was enough of a risk. I dove right into the treeline.

There was a different eeriness to the atmosphere here today, maybe it was because I was in a hurry, and maybe because it was minutes from full darkness. Something sent prickles across my skin, like I was being watched, like something was following me. I moved quicker, faster, my breath starting to become labored. A chilling mist was filling the forest; the sun had set. A strange lurch in the pit of my stomach pulled me in a direction that I was sure was the path home. Surely I was close now…?

I stopped, unable to believe my eyes as the treeline gave way to a clearing, my heart sinking as I realized it wasn’t because I was leaving the forest...and rising again from the sheer awe that was before me.

Towering far above me and covering the entire expanse of the open treeline I stepped out from, was an impressively large, black stone castle.

“It’s real…” I whispered. “No way…” How on earth did I end up here? I know that path by heart, I shouldn’t have veered off for a moment…!

Curiosity governed my senses. I walked through the white rose bushes that lined the outer wall and towards the brick; it wasn’t just a flat dark stone, it was carved with intricate details and patterns and symbols. With a start I recognized a lot of them; sanskrit, rune, greek, hebrew, korean. None were written in a manner I could read or understand, but something told me it was all the same language, whatever it was. Running my fingers across them felt almost electric, as if they held magic or something dumb like that.

I walked along the wall, carefully avoiding the rose buses that lined the way, coming up to a wrought iron gate. It twisted into intricate vine-like patterns with an almost glossy new sheen, as if it had just been made. A similar theme was applied to the rest of the castle beyond the wall, like a gothic style mansion with darkened rooftops. It was gorgeous and glossy and new and…

Wait, new?

I looked closer at the walls, and tried my best to look closer at the inner castle itself. Everything looked pristine and kept, fresh painted with muted and yet vibrant colors, even the stone and iron showed no discernable age. As if it had been freshly built. If this was the legendary castle in the woods, it would have to be SUPER ancient, because that myth has been around since our parents’ parents were little. It would be worn, the stones cracking and nature attempting to take over, or at the very least look uninhabited.

This looked very inhabited.

A chill fell over my body and dread followed suit. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t know what kind of people would live here, but I got the feeling they’d be the kind that wouldn’t care about shooting some random teenager looking like they’re about to trespass. I backed away quickly, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck rise as it felt like I was being closely watched again.

“Ouch!” Pain stung across my forearm as I stumbled into a rose bush, dragging a very thin bead of blood in a line down the scratch. “Ah, crap…” Now mom won’t just be mad. She’ll be paranoid.

A light snap! sounded from my left and I spun towards it, fear filling my pulsing chest. A million thoughts ran through my head, my breath started to catch. Very slowly, carefully this time, I started backing away. I let out a sigh of relief as a squirrel ran out from a bush, but the tension remained. It was time to leave.

But then I heard another crack, and this wasn’t a squirrel.

A pair of eyes shone in the dark, and a large, lithe figure began to step out from the shadows; that was all I needed to turn around and nope the heck out of there.

I had barely taken ten steps before I felt a rush of wind, and then suddenly I was jerked backwards into something solid by my arms. “NO-!” A scream had just barely begun from my mouth when pain erupted my from shoulder. Numbness overtook me and then everything was black.

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