#i feel like some caveman part of my brain activated

[shadow0-1]

I'm ready for love, and I'm ready for war

[glassmarcus]

My 2 cents on 13 sentinels

Look I don't want to talk about 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim too much. Not only is it a game that's entirely made of spoilers, the sequence of those spoilers are organized in a way which makes it impossible for me to begin outlining anything about this plot. My narrative analysis skills are not up to snuff. I remember being impressed with the multiple story lines intersecting in early 3D Sonic games. Oh boy, 13 Sentinels would have annihilated baby Marcus' brain if it was even remotely possible for a game like this to exist back then. It has 13 main characters, each with their own story that reveals earth shattering details about the world which in turn re-contextualizes everything you've learned. Plot lines can spoil each other. It's like each story mode is racing to see which can blow your mind first. It's delightfully intricate and can basically only be done in this light novel format. I came into this game with general knowledge of the plot due to a stream I casually watched years ago. Even with that knowledge, this game just kept impressing me, with the plot detail I never knew, the plot details I forgot, and subtle character relations and intricacies that are only clear after knowing what the fuck is going on. I refuse to dive into it as I don’t have the time, but the plot of this game is a 10.

While the plot is the main selling point, even if it was mediocre it would still be worth playing. This may have been Game of My Year 2020 if I played it when I bought it. It would be down to Kingdom Hearts 3: Remind and this. I was initially put off by the Real Time Strategy combat part of the game. It looked a bit bland to me. I don’t know what was wrong with me back then. This gameplay rules. You pilot a bunch of robots and play tower defense for 2 minutes in missions. It's not thrilling a lot of the time but it's always satisfying. Seeing your Sentinel slice through hordes of enemies with a single attack gives me those good chemicals; Upgrading my mech abilities after the battle to make numbers go higher activates the fun spot in my caveman brain; Completing the whole game in one streak and fulfilling all the side goals just makes me feel like a good boy. There's complexity to it for sure, but you never need to think that hard, it just helps if you do. And that makes the whole experience relaxing, which is a nice change of pace due the RTS segments acting as a bit if a break from the bat shit insane story.

This presentation is bonkers by the way. It's the most stunning light novel I've ever laid eyes on. The depth and detail of each asset in this game is unreal. The UI, the character models, the unique graphic images, the backgrounds. It's all peak. And the fucking Soundtrack. Christ this is such a 10 it's unreal. I’m going to buy Unicorn Overlord on release because that's how much goodwill Vanillaware has built with me. I usually say negative things when I do write ups on games, and I do have some gripes, but I just don't care because the game balls too hard.

[orangesalamander-but-studying]

Tips on motivation

(from a mostly dysfunctional student with mental illness)

Disclaimer: This may not be applicable for everyone and the only qualification i have is “rando that miraculously did well at school” so here ya go:

(If you’re reading this on a bad day, and you feel like you don’t even want to get out of bed today, let alone study, scroll to the end)

Get a notebook. Write down every detail of the life you want to live- i mean everything. Look at this list as often as necessary. Adjust your life in order to get what you want. Let your dreams motivate you. (Admittedly, this doesn’t work very well for me for too long, but if it works for you that’s fantabulous!)

Romanticize the shit out of the idea of studying. Pretend you’re a scholar at a prestigious university, light candles, dress like an academic, get yourself some iced coffee and put on a dark academia playlist. Make studying poetic! (Personally, i make EVERYTHING poetic coz life can be dull and depressing enough as it is)

Get out of your sweats and into a killer outfit. I love to put on a pair of jeans or a cute dress with high heels and then walk around my room telling myself i’m an intelligent, powerful, badass bitch (or empress, depending on the mood) and that a couple of pages with words on them ain’t got nothing on me! Definitely puts my intrusive thoughts in their place because excuse me, i’m the one in a killer outfit and the voice is just a hater.

Make a game out of it. I use the app Forest to grow trees and its friggin great when you work to collect enough coins to unlock a new species- let the little things motivate you, don’t look at the big picture if it overwhelms you. My anxiety and depression sometimes make it difficult for me to take myself seriously so making it a game helps me forget the stakes and focus on getting through the hour. 

Choose a reward for the end of the week and hype it tf up, imagine the scrumptious feeling of delayed gratification that you’ll experience if you study now and watch that movie/ read that book/ eat that cake/ go on that friend date later, stress free coz you have your life together. I understand this may be difficult when you’re going through a depressive episode, but try to focus on the feel good feelings you’ll have later.

Start a studyblr and let the aesthetic motivate you. You don’t need fancy stationery or perfect handwriting or super neat notes- be imperfectly yourself and use the studyblr to motivate yourself and track your progress.

Sometimes i sit at my desk for hours and get nothing done. That’s okay! Activate caveman brain and take your studying to someplace else, even just to you bedroom floor. This helps my ADHD brain by keeping things exciting and different.

Start a bullet journal and plan everything- structure your life, break down huge intimidating tasks into ridiculously baby steps (eg. take out book, write date etc). Sometimes my anxiety refuses to let me study because it makes monsters out of tasks.

If the very thought of getting out of bed is draining that day, don’t think about studying, don’t let yourself make you feel bad. On the bad days, everything is an act of indescribable strength on your part. Acknowledge that. Acknowledge that its difficult, acknowledge your strength, And then think about the next minute- forget the rest of the day, the rest of the day does not exist. All you need to do today is get out of bed. And then all you have to do is brush your teeth. Then just drinking water is your goal for the day, then just doing something that makes you happy, then just eating something, and if you feel up to it, just do ten minutes of an assignment, then because you’re a warrior, do just another ten. And at the end of the day pat yourself on the back, be unashamedly proud of yourself for whatever task you were able to complete, no matter how seemingly insignificant. Then tell yourself that when you’ll do it again tomorrow, it will get easier. 

Mental illness is really, really hard. And it may not happen immediately, or even in a few weeks, or a few months, and you may not notice it happening but i promise you, one day you’ll smile and you’ll surprise yourself and you’ll realize you’re coping. You’ve made it this far and you’ll continue to do so.

I’m so proud of you all.

[forasecondtherewedwon]

3 Simple Rules for Dating a Centenarian

Fandom: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Pairing: Sam Wilson/Bucky Barnes Rating: T Word Count: 2374

Summary: After seeing Steve's shield handed over to some stranger, Sam calls up Bucky, certain he's the one person who can properly commiserate. He doesn't really expect Bucky to answer though (the guy's become a bit of a recluse), or to hear the hints that he might be missing Sam as much as Sam's been missing him. Not that he'd ever say it straight out.

Sam is almost completely still as the feelings rattle through him like a roller coaster’s last run on a derelict track. He only lets it out—the blend of frustration, betrayal, and regret—in the way his fingers squeeze his knee through his jeans, skin damp against the denim. Keeping his hands clasped, and watching those clasped hands, was more grounding, but he needs one of his hands to hold the phone to his ear, and that activity is getting pretty damn tired.

Bucky’s voicemail clicks on for the third time in a row.

“Bucky,” Sam says, “I know you prefer calls to texting, so what are you doing ignoring me, man? Haven’t used your cell in so long that you’ve forgotten how to hit the answer button? At least it rang. That’s something, I guess.”

He sighs away from the speaker where it won’t be recorded for Bucky to hear later. Maybe he did divert his message from the snarky sarcasm he was planning to leave the guy, but Bucky doesn’t need to hear him sigh on top of that.

For a few moments, Sam taps his foot along with the muffled music of his nephews’ video game coming through the closed door. He knows the boys’ routine (and if he ever forgets, he sees the copy Sarah has on the fridge door) and that this isn’t their usual scheduled time for whatever they’re playing out there. Best guess: Sarah wants them hogging the TV so she won’t be tempted to peek at that government-sanctioned shitshow. Sam can’t blame her. Actually, he wonders if she blames him. The disappointment was so clear in her eyes before he stopped making himself meet them. He thought he was doing the right thing when he handed the shield over. Are there people out there who think he’s let them down, or just his sister? Just himself?

He can’t talk to Sarah right now and he’s thankful that she’s giving him some time to himself, but as soon as he got it, he realized he didn’t know what to do with it. Just like that shield. Dialing Bucky over and over—tapping in every number every time because that appears to be part of this pity ritual he’s performing—seemed like the thing he should do. Probably won’t answer. That asshole is terrible at staying in touch. Still, Sam’s heart feels a little heavier with every word closer he gets to the end of this message. Feels like he’s trying to keep the thing afloat in his chest, like his parents’ boat down at the dock. This is what he knows he should do when everything in him wants to sink—reach out, talk to people. Kinda self-sabotage when he picks the one person almost guaranteed not to answer.

Oh, he’ll hear back from Bucky eventually, probably a handful of choppy texts sent in the middle of the night two weeks from now. Sam knows his pattern; Bucky’s chattiest between 3am and 4am, so chatty that what are likely intended as longer blocks of text arrive in broken fragments because he wants to make everything into neat paragraphs, like he’s writing a damn letter, instead of just getting to the point, but he hits send too soon. Sam would teach him—with plenty of mocking and name-calling, but he would teach him—only while he’s been running ops all over the planet, Bucky’s shrunk his own world way down. He’s gone local to the extreme and it aggravates Sam, even though Bucky isn’t his responsibility, isn’t his other inheritance from Steve. It’s sorta just easier to feel like Bucky is a misplaced bequest than to acknowledge that maybe he misses the guy and his sharp-shooter’s eye and his caveman hair. He can’t keep calling him.

“Thought I’d give you a heads-up,” Sam says, voice weary with this half-true excuse. “Maybe you already saw.” He clears his throat and says quickly, “Anyway, guess I’ll hear from you when I hear from you.”

He’s pulling the phone away from his head and has barely ended the call when it’s ringing in his hand. He answers and catches Bucky’s voice saying his name before it’s even back up to his ear.

“Bucky?” Sam says. “You have a senior’s moment and forget where you left your phone?”

“Nah,” Bucky says. “I saw it was you and decided to ignore it.”

“But you called back.”

“You wouldn’t quit calling. Seemed like you needed me to tell you directly to knock it off.”

“Jackass.” Sam’s gaze darts to the door, but it’s still shut. No chance Sarah saw him grinning over this easy banter. Always the banter with this idiot. Always easy. He sniffs and turns his chair away from the black TV screen. “Did you see that joker on the news?”

Bucky’s either less self-conscious or more inept because he sighs right into the mouthpiece, an exhausted breath in Sam’s ear that has his fingers fleetingly digging into his knee.

“Couldn’t believe that shit,” Bucky tells him in a rough voice. He’s clearly holding back his own feelings about today’s events and, from the sounds of it, they’re more along the lines of anger, hurt, and a simmering desire to wrench the shield from the arm of the new Captain America. “You know that thing’s supposed to be yours.”

“You saying I should’ve done something to stop it?” Sam demands.

“Coulda.”

Sam forces his shoulders to drop, draws a slow breath in and pushes it back out.

“It wasn’t mine anymore, if it ever was. I gave it to the Smithsonian. They sealed it in this glass case and added it to the exhibit.”

“Not a very tight seal.”

“Guess not,” Sam agrees.

“You shouldn’t have turned it over,” Bucky says. Sam’s silent, frowning, and Bucky goes on. “Forget about the shield being given to somebody else—it shouldn’t have even been in a glass case. Doesn’t belong there.”

“I do just fine without it,” Sam assures him. The practicalities of carrying that shield around are more straightforward to discuss than his yawning uncertainty in the face of Steve’s legacy and his place relative to it. “The shield would only get in the way of the wings.”

“You and those wings.”

“Hey, they carried me over Tunisia recently. Show some respect.”

“Didn’t hear about that,” Bucky says in a tone that’s difficult to interpret, though Sam squints thoughtfully as he listens.

“Yeah, well, I shouldn’t even be telling the likes of you, but it was discrete. As far as the major players are concerned, I was never there.”

“So it was illegal?”

Sam’s head tips back as he laughs hard.

“Why, you wanna turn me in?” he jokes. “Working on the government’s trust? What’s the next level up from a pardon? Knighthood?”

“You are such a pain in the ass,” Bucky groans, which really does make Sam smile.

“I’m sure it would’ve been illegal if you were there,” he says automatically. Too fast, his imagination fills it in, a fictional alternative materializing in his mind. Him and Bucky, cocky in reckless freefall. Him and Bucky, fighting back-to-back in a plummeting aircraft. Sam screening Bucky from enemy fire with his wings. Bucky deflecting a stray bullet with his arm before it could hit Sam.

“Nah, I can’t do that no more.”

“Uh huh. I’m sure you’re an angel.”

“Anybody get hurt?” Bucky asks.

Sam glances through the window at the blue sky, the truck rolling unhurriedly past with the driver’s arm hanging out to catch the sun. Beautiful day. He remembers a kick that sent a guy through the door of the plane, sucked out into the sky, another guy tossed aside who tried to fight him in midair, and a helicopter aflame as it went down. He shrugs and figures Bucky’ll hear the gesture in his voice.

“Nobody who didn’t know the risks.”

“Of going up against Captain America?” Bucky probes. Sam rolls his eyes.

“You know, that would almost be a compliment if you got my name right.”

“Don’t tell me you’re not using the name just to avoid compliments from me.”

“I honestly can’t say which one would feel more wrong,” Sam says, passing a hand over his head as he leans back in his chair, “calling myself Captain America or hearing a little overdue praise from you.”

“I’m not really a words guy. Ask my therapist.”

Sam sits with that for a second. He’s happy that Bucky’s talking to someone. He needs it, badly, after decades of violence and being belted into the passenger seat of his own brain. It’s more than Bucky’s ever admitted to him before, but Sam would bet—and bet big—that seeing some stranger named as Steve’s successor today has gotten to Bucky as much as it’s gotten to him. Something like that is bound to open Bucky up a little. He’s the only other person Sam can imagine the news having such a monumental impact on.

“You could try words,” he goads, not wanting to leave Bucky hanging more than a few seconds after his admission. “What else do you have if you don’t feel like being a human action figure?”

“I have my system. My rules.”

“Oh yeah? What rules?”

“Three of ’em,” Bucky informs him. “Nothing illegal. Nobody gets hurt. Making amends for the actions of the Winter Solider.”

“You don’t have to make amends for something you—”

“Don’t. It… helps.”

And who is Sam to question what’s helping Bucky? After the multiple-lifetimes’ worth of hell the guy’s been through?

“Good for you, man,” Sam offers softly.

“Save it, Sam.” The words are clipped but light. Sam grins.

“No words for me either? You more comfortable with me sticking to actions? How are we supposed to talk to each other when you don’t come to Tunisia with me?”

“Wasn’t invited,” Bucky quips back.

“You mighta been if you answered your phone more often. I’m not gonna send you the details to a covert operation in a text.”

“You wanted me in Tunisia?”

“You get shit done,” Sam acknowledges simply. You wanted me in Tunisia? echoes in his head. His heart’s bobbing like a buoy now. You wanted me in Tunisia? You wanted me?

“Not like that.”

“‘Not illegal,’” Sam repeats. “‘Nobody gets hurt. Making amends.’”

“Right. Can’t do any of that.”

“Well, I’m glad this regime’s working for you, but you have to admit it’s weird that I saw more of you when we were fighting alien hordes.”

“What can I say?” Bucky asks in a tone that seems to consciously flatten the charm out of it. “I’m old-fashioned now.”

Sam snorts.

“You were old-fashioned then.”

“I assume you had a team on the ground.”

“I had to,” Sam says over the sound of a squabble in the other room. Immediately, he can hear Sarah’s voice rising slightly above, breaking it up. Just like that, there’s the looping music of the video game again. She’s raised those boys well. “Couldn’t wait around for you.”

“I might show up if you asked me on better dates.”

“It wasn’t a date, it was a goddamn op.”

It’s startling to hear the sound of laughter. Not hearty, deep, rich, or loud, but definitely laughter. Bucky laughs? Sam backtracks a minute. Bucky makes jokes? About dating? About the two of them dating? Evidently, that is something he’s capable of, along with returning calls during daylight hours.

Sam shifts in his seat.

“You could come around sometime,” he suggests, nervously rubbing a hand up and down his thigh. “If you like fish and you’re ever in Louisiana.”

“I do like fish,” Bucky says. “I’ve been going to this sushi place a lot lately.”

It’s not his taste that surprises Sam—it’s the readiness with which he responds to the invitation. He would’ve sooner guessed that Bucky would tell him to shove it up his ass. In a joking way, but still.

“On dates?” Sam asks, telling himself he’s providing some good-natured hassling and that it has nothing to do with the odd feeling he got when Bucky’s joke about them dating caught up with him.

“One. Mostly, I go with Mr. Nakajima.”

“And that’s not a date?”

Sam laughs and wishes he could shut his own mouth as firmly as he’s (many times) told Bucky to shut his.

“I’m pretty sure he’s in his eighties, so he’s more age-appropriate for me than most people, but I murdered his son,” Bucky says grimly.

“Amends?” Sam guesses, adjusting his tone to cope with Bucky’s emotional switchback.

“I haven’t told him yet, but, yeah, I’m working on that.”

They’re both working on something, Sam thinks. Both confronting something that feels too big to tackle—the decision not to announce himself as the new Captain America, guilt for assassinations Bucky had no control over but which span the better part of a century. Sometimes it seems to Sam that they go up against the easiest situations as a team and face the hardest stuff alone. But he called Bucky, and Bucky called back.

“You could bring some of those amends down here and trade them for a snapper dinner,” Sam proposes, aiming for irritatingly cheerful to pull Bucky back out of the dark.

“What do I have to make amends to you for?”

“Being a dick. I’ll text you my sister’s address.”

Sam swiftly ends the call. There are two possible sources to which he can attribute the small surge of adrenaline he feels: hanging up on Bucky and the fact that he might’ve just asked him on a date. When Sam dialed, he knew it was because he didn’t want to do this alone, but he thought that meant watching the appointment of an upstart Captain America. Although he believed he could count on Bucky’s understanding today and for the near future, asking him down to have dinner with Sarah and the boys (or tricking him into it, since he didn’t exactly say it’d be a thing with the whole family) lengthens the timeline. Near future? Inviting Bucky to meet his family and see where he grew up means recognizing that he’ll be in his life a little longer. Alone? Sam might forget the meaning of the word.

[msjr0119]

Hey everyone! Sorry for another long hiatus, I’m still alive- even if I look like a zombie every morning 🙈😂. I have really bad baby brain at the moment so if there’s some grammatical errors, please ignore them. They will be rectified before posting.

⚠️Please do not read if you are under 18⚠️

A/N1: Whilst I’ve been on hiatus I have been editing a few things of mine, so have decided to do a Sneak Peek/ WIP. There will be warnings for each specific series.

A/N2: @callmeellabella / @plumeriavibes sent me a few requests to do over a year ago- they are completed and I hope to post this week. Technically here in the UK we are still in lockdown - so they will still be apt, Ella 😂

Tags- As always I tag my combined tag list for these things⬇️

@drakexwillow @annekebbphotography @kingliam2019 @burnsoslow @kimmiedoo5 @lodberg @walker7519 @drakewalkerisreal @axwalker @bascmve01 @ladyangel70 @texaskitten30 @yukinagato2012 @indiacater @queenjilian @drakewalker04 @cmestrella @hopefulmoonobject @rainbowsinthestorm @desiree-pow @jared2612 @twinkle-320 @princessleac1 @custaroonie @princess-geek @bebepac @nikkis1983 @rafasgirl23415 @seriouslybadchoices @furiousherringoperatortoad @shanzay44 @choices97 @gardeningourmet @lovablegranny @mom2000aggie @gkittylove99 @sweatyrysconnoisseur @rubiwalker

Cordonian Wags

⚠️ Warnings - Possible adultery? 🤷‍♀️

“Miss Brooks, please.” Standing up slowly, her legs felt like jelly. Following the sonographer into the room, she laid on the bed before slowly raising her top which revealed a small neat bump. The image that all the paparazzi had been so desperate to capture.

“Before we begin, are there any questions that you’d like to ask?” The woman calmly asked as she prepared to begin the scan.

“Every baby is a miracle, right?”

“Yes, of course they are. There’s no need to be worried. Everything will be fine.” Obviously the health of the baby was a priority- but in her situation there were other queries that were lingering throughout her mind.

“Your baby is going to be either a footballer or a gymnast. Look at its legs, it’s such a wriggle bum.” For the first time since entering the room, she slowly turned her head and viewed her baby for the first time. “The baby’s heartbeat is fine... you have a very active and healthy baby. I have no concerns. How many copies of the photo would you like?” Answering one, she ran her finger over the black and white shot. Just you and I, little one.

“Can I ask one question?”

“Of course!”

“With these scans... I may sound stupid, which I have been recently in the last few months. My question... it’s ridiculous. I already deep down know the answer but can you tell certain things such as the baby’s race? Grandparents DNA?” The medical professional sat down close to her, holding her hand that was shaking as she spoke those words.

“Unfortunately not.... is there....”

“Let me rephrase my question... is there anyway that you can tell who the father is?”

****

A Proposal

There are two WIP for this series. A one shot based on Bertrand as well as a sneak peek for the upcoming chapter. If you don’t read the series, the one shot can be read as a stand alone.

⚠️Warnings: Swearing, nudity, possible ‘affair’.

One shot

Regretting his idiotic split second decision, Bertrand was now locked out of his room. Wearing a skimpy towel that barely just covered up his manhood. Due to the alcohol consumption- his brain was barely functioning as he began to ‘walk’ along the corridor. Rounding the corner, he spotted two familiar faces- then stumbled knocking down a painting off of the wall.

“Your highness! Ri Ri... good evening.” Both sets of eyes widened, mainly for two reasons. The first one being, witnessing Bertrand in this state. The second reason- would the Duke remember seeing them together. Alone. Did he see Liam lock his lips onto Riley’s? They would sure find out in the morning, once the group reformed.

“I wonder where everybody else is? Where’s the staff in this place?” Bertrand muttered to himself as he entered the elevator. Reaching the ground floor, the drunk duke strolled out not having a care in the world.

“Sir? You cannot walk around like that. Please return to your room immediately!”

“I’m locked out!” Wafting his arms in the air- the towel soon disappeared. Creating jaws in the reception to drop to the floor in sync. “What? Have you never seen a naked man before?”

“Sir... please....” The young receptionist pleaded.

“If I hear you say ‘Sir’ one more time, I will get the prince to lock you up in his dungeon.... I AM A FUCKING DUKE YOU IMBECILE!” To avoid more of a commotion, the receptionist handed Bertrand a sign to hold against his private parts. Out of order. To cover his buttocks up- she handed him another sign; No exit.

Chapter 2

Riley headed down to the hotel lobby, mainly needing to grab some breakfast to sober up. Still feeling slightly drunk, she had debated whether or not to eat or do the hair of the dog.

“Blossom! There you are!” Jumping out of her skin to begin with- she was relieved when Maxwell was on his own.

“Here I am...” Where should I have been? Did I miss a memo?

“I was so worried about you.”

“You were?”

“Yes. We’ve lost Liam. Then I came to find you and couldn’t see you anywhere. Bertrand- well I found him naked on the bathroom floor. With two... forget about Bertrand. Where have you been? You smell manly. Have you ran out of that black opium already?”

“Well I was in my room all night. The jet lag must have knocked me unconscious...” Lying, she didn’t want to admit that she had a blissful night with the prince. “What do you mean I smell manly?” Having a discreet sniff of herself, she couldn’t smell anything.

“You smell of aftershave. It’s similar to what Drake and Liam wear. Are you sure that you was alone?” Shit.

“Erm, I fell over on the way down here. A man who works here helped me. He must have been wearing the same aftershave. There’s not only people in Cordonia who wear it Max! Although I did bump into Daniel at some point. It could have been him? I was on my own, all night. Believe me.” Please believe me.

****

The American Adventure

Warnings: Swearing

“Riley?” The line cut off.

It wasn’t her, that’s why she hung up. How useless is Glen? We are looking for Leo. Unless Leo has a secret that he’s keeping from us all.

“Hey, Li. Wrong number. Fuck it, forget about Leo. If we can’t track him down we will just go to New York without him. As Bastien said, you need to have a bachelor party before the shit show of a social season begins.” Liam didn’t require Drake to remind him of what his future held for him. The lack of freedom and choices he could have made him wish at times that he wasn’t now the next in line.

“Glen was sure that was the correct number.” Liam glared at his head guard, who just shrugged his shoulders.

“Unless Leo’s turned into some obnoxious Yankee bitch- then no it’s the wrong number. I’ll just go and pack a bag and come back with you. Give me five minutes.” Waiting for Drake to be out of view, Glen gulped before defending himself to his monarch.

“That was the number that you provided me with your highness- and I confirmed it. Somebody else must have that number now. Not, Riley.”

“Glen, once we get back to the palace- do another thorougher search on Lindsey and Riley Brooks.” Liam whispered.

“But, your highness... you’ve been trying to do this for over a decade now. Myself and Bastien - we tried....”

“Glen, don’t question my actions. Please. I am pleading with you to do this one more time. Bastien always avoided doing this for myself. For Drake. I don’t know why? But it seemed like he knew something but kept it from the both of us. If we can’t find them, then I’ll accept defeat.”

“Yes Sir, what about Prince Leo?”

“Leave Leo to me, I already know where he is. He’s closer to us than you all think.”

***

The Unexpected Roommate

Just a short sneak peek for this one. Don’t want to give too much away.

Pairings: Drake x Riley, Leo x Olivia, Liam x ?

⚠️Warnings: Swearing, pranks, alcohol mention, end of a relationship.

Once she had packed all of her belongings, she looked around the apartment- feeling slightly sentimental. Leaving the keys on the table, she didn’t want to keep them. Instead, she wanted to close this chapter of her life- being Drake Walker’s roommate.

“Shit! The cupcakes!” Racing over to the oven- she had completely forgotten about her goodbye gesture that was now impersonating a charcoaled sausage. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Emptying the cupboards, food items were now scattered everywhere until she stumbled across a basic Victoria sponge cake. That’ll do.

~ ~ ~

Drake and Leo returned to the apartment- slightly later than the two of them had anticipated. Whilst they sat in the bar, Drake thought back to Riley’s words. Regretting denying that she could be correct, he had hoped that she would have reconsidered about staying with Olivia. He needed to apologise, talk openly to her- before he lost her for good.

“It’s ‘oh so quiet’... awww she’s made us a cake with a message on it, Drake.”

Au reviour, Dickheads...Ri xo

“She’s a fucking scruff! Have you seen all of the burnt cupcakes? The washing up pile? Food everywhere! She’s fucked off and not cleaned up after herself!”

“Drake, calm down. You’re going to give yourself a heart attack. How the two of you lived together and not killed each other is beyond me. Let’s tuck in.” Drake shook his head as he watched Leo dive in like a starved caveman. Staring vacantly at the scene surrounding them, he had no idea where to begin to clean up after Riley.

“This is disgusting! It tastes weird... just try a bit, buddy. I think my taste buds are playing tricks with me.” Taking one glance at the cake, Drake rolled his eyes back after inhaling the aroma of the sponge cake.

“It tastes weird because it’s not what you’d usually top a cake or dessert with. How stupid could you be eating something before smelling it?”

“It looked soooo scrumptious. When you’ve been drinking, you’re starving. What is it then Mr Clever clogs?” Leo sarcastically said.

“You use it with a razor!”

****

Unnamed one shot

I decided to do a one shot based on my labour of my little girl. It was short in comparison to most labours- but so much happened. Looking back now, I find it slightly hilarious.

⚠️Warnings: Alcohol mention, labour.

Ten minutes later- Savannah knocked on the door. Wearing her pajamas, Ugg boots and a parka coat- Riley knew it was cold outside, it was December after all. But she believed that Savannah would have come fully dressed as she had taken a long time to arrive when she lives on the next road. As she entered the house- she witnessed her brother pouring whiskey into his cup of tea. Shaking. Panicking. Wondering how the labour was going to go. Would he be a good birth partner again? Would it all go to plan?

“Great minds, bro.” As she said this, a can of Strongbow magically appeared from her coat pocket. Bitches I’m the one in labour, why are you both drinking alcohol?

“Can you one of you just get me some pain relief please? It’s in the top drawer...” Savannah looked at Drake with a perplexed expression, wondering what Riley meant with her words. Lucky Drake knew what his girlfriend was referring to. He didn’t agree with her choice. But also wouldn’t want her to turn into ‘she hulk’ if he refused to give her it.

[d-nghy-ck]

hi hi! omg I just had to stop myself from going anon, old habits die hard I guess 🙈

Anyway, Bronwyn! I wanted to ask if you had any master-writer tips for anyone out there who struggles with actually sitting down and writing instead of sayyyy avoiding their wips and spending all their free time on their phone (totally not asking for myself of course ahaha 👀👀)

Hi Mili <3 Ahaha, welcome to my inbox off anon ;)

I struggle with this as well, so we can figure it out together <3 Maybe some thoughts on my personal experience will help! 

P.S. From one previous Baekhyun ult to another, oh my god a couple of the songs on this new album are killing me. I feel like my heart is dropping out of my chest, o h my g o d d d especially “All I Got” like .... hhhnnggg [gargling noises]

I think the first thing to keep in mind is you don’t always have to be productive. Writing is a hobby, meant to be fun, and if you’re not feeling it, no use in forcing it! Maybe your mind really does need to vacate for the moment; recharging mentally is so important, and might aid in boosting productivity later! 

But, let’s say you’re bored by everything on your phone, and you’re itching to write, you have ideas, they sound fun to develop, but you can’t seem to put the phone down, thanks to your caveman brain enjoying the instant gratification of the stimuli on your phone screen? The “count to five” rule is really effective for me. This works for anything - not just writing. If I think, I really should be doing [activity], I tell myself “I’ll stop what I’m doing by the count of five” and start counting to myself, and something about it -always- makes me instantly productive. Every time. It always gets me to at least start, and starting is always the hardest part. 

Also, set realistic goals and expectations for yourself. If you want to edit today, maybe tell yourself that you’ll edit at least one page today. Not as daunting when you’re looking at a 20 page draft! And chances are, you’ll edit more than one page anyway once you get rolling. 

Another tool I’ve used is associating music with productivity. There are certain lofi youtube compilations I’ve listened to only when I’m at max productivity, and as a result, I’ve associated that mindset with it. Every time I listen to it now, it triggers a focus in me. A negative drawback is I started to use it for my job, so now when I listen to it I feel like I should be writing exsums and crafting business process flows but LMAO guess I’ll find another lofi, then. 

I think a lot of motivation comes from finding joy in the process - if it’s fun, exciting, and interesting enough to you, then you’ll want to work on it, and you will. If it isn’t? Maybe you can set it aside (to potentially work on at a later date, even!) to open your mind and time to new ideas that thrill you more at the moment, or transform your story into something that’s thrilling enough to get you creating in it. 

Also, limit distractions - put your phone out of your sight (I like putting mine in a drawer or behind my laptop screen), write down a note within your view as a reminder to limit tumblr, youtube, twitter, etc. Cutting it out completely is unrealistic - but maybe allow yourself a glance at social media for ten minutes every hour, and often taking that mental break helps reset your mind to work on the next section in your draft. 

We’re not meant to be productivity machines. Recognize your mental and emotional strain levels - if you had a long day at work? You’ll be mentally exhausted. If you had a good cry? You’re probably not going to write. Just enjoy rest. You always have tomorrow. 

Whatever the case, you’ve got this!! Ayyyy!! Rooting for you! 

[brichan87]

Trying out a new story

Been working on a new story: a new take on the superhero genre. Figure I will post it here and see what people think. Still a work in progress but feel free to leave feedback.

Chapter 1

The morning cold seeped into her bones as she shuffled into the kitchen not quite ready to face the world. Her eyes opened to narrow slits, filtering out all of the world except her intended target. The sky outside was still dark and caused her mind to plead for her to go back to bed. Yet, as she does every morning, Tally resisted the urge to turn around and return the the bedroom.

The winter holidays were fast approaching; however, the days seemed to be lengthening while her energy diminishes more and more each day. Every morning she should wake up feeling refreshed and revitalized; instead Tally feels more exhausted than when she went to sleep, defeating its entire purpose. Meditation, tea...nothing seemed to help which caused her frustration to increase with each failure. Why waste that time sleeping if it did nothing for her?

Part of her understood that the stress of the season was adding to her exhaustion. Between the decorations, preparations for guests, and trying to that holiday scene perfect for social media, it was natural for someone to feel burned out. And her second job only added to the exhaustion. However, Tally could not shake the feeling that something was not right.

Something about this exhausting felt strange: like it was unnatural. Maybe it was just her trying to explain away her stress and fears as reactions to things that are out of her control but something inside of her was screaming “danger!” The damage dealt to her arm the night before did not help her with the feeling of impending doom. For such minor injuries, the pain level kept creeping up over night.

“Maybe I need to call the doctor to get checked out,” Tally mumbled softly as she wrapped her hands around the warm ceramic mug waiting for her on the counter. The smell of orange and cinnamon wafted through the air causing her brain and body slowly began to become more alive.

“Hey, that could have been mine,” a voice teased from behind her. 

Turning her head to glance over her shoulder, she saw her boyfriend set down his tablet and stand up from the table. Making his way into the kitchen, he popped open the refrigerator door and dug out some ingredients. After mixing some of them together, the man walked up to Tally and placed a small kiss on her cheek before handing her a bowl of fruit and yogurt.

“Me, tea. You, coffee,” she grunted. Last night was a rough one; getting in at one in the morning definitely made her less than cheery at 5 A.M. But the soft smile she got in return made her heart flutter as she reached out and grasped the bowl that he held out to her. 

“Wow. Didn’t know I was dating a caveman.” Bradie chuckled as she flashed him a less than loving hand gesture. “Alright, alright, I get it. Mornings are still not your thing. I appreciate you sacrificing your chance to sleep in to spend some time with sad, little me who has to be at work by seven in the morning everyday.”

“Sad, little you is exceptionally cheery today. Why?”

“Because it is the last day of school before Thanksgiving Break. So not only will I have 5 days of no work related activities because I was ‘a good child’ who got all his lessons planned before the break, but tomorrow I finally get to meet your family.”

THUNK!

Every dish on the table rattled as Talaleigh let gravity drag her head down until her forehead struck the surface; whether or not the groan she let out was out of pain or frustration was a mystery to both of the people in the room. 

“Are you sure we have to go visit my family? It’s really not too late to say something came up,” she pleaded. The table muffled the sound of the words but the dread managed to ring out loud and clear. “We can even hop a last minute flight and go see your parents. Or a nice, quiet couple’s Thanksgiving. Anything but going to see my family.”

The room was silent for a few minutes then Bradie let out a soft sigh as he slid into the chair opposite of hers. “What’s going on, Tal? Because you never want me to meet your family. And I try to not be offended by it but more and more it is starting to feel like you are ashamed of me.”

“No, not you,” she reassured. Lifting her head up, Tally reached across the table and rested her hand on his forearm. “Never you. You are amazing. Smart, intelligent, kind, good-looking, amazing, and I know I am repeating myself here but it is true. It is not you that I am trying to hide.”

Standing up from the table, Tally grabbed both of their cups and took them into the kitchen. “It’s just that…,” she began as she poured Bradie more coffee and began to brew herself a new cup of tea. This conversation seemed easier to have if she was slightly distracted by a separate task. “My parents are a little nontraditional. Loving, supportive people but definitely different. Nothing like your parents. And then my brother,” she continued as she brought finished the preparations and brought their drinks back to the table. “He and I really don’t get along at all. As in we get into fights pretty frequently. And they are not small fights.” As much as she tried to fight them back, a few tears began to fill her the corners of her eyes. “And it sucks because he were actually really close as kids, but then something happened and it has never been the same since." Grabbing a tissue off the corner of the desk, Tally wiped away the tears before they escaped. "So it is not that I don’t want to show you off to my family, it is more that I don’t want you to bear witness to the kind of crazy you’ll be tied to if you stick with me.”

“Oh honey, I’ve already witnessed that crazy. However…” he paused to duck the wadded up napkin being thrown at him. “I love you too much to care what your family is like. They are a part of you, so I  am sure that I will love them just like I do you. And if not, I promise we never have to see them again. Deal?”

A twitch of her lips revealed her thoughts before she gave him a small nod. "Deal, but that means you.." A yawn fought its way to the surface, breaking off her comment. As she brought up her arm to hide her mouth, her sleeve slipped down, exposing several bruises and cuts littering the expanse of her forearm. Most were shallow but a few of them were deep enough to require bandages until they scabbed over.

“Jesus Tal!” Bradie exclaimed. He clamored out of the chair and knelt by her side. “Those look bad. Why didn’t you say anything?” He gently grasped her wrist to examine the wounds. Rolling up her sleeve further, he noticed some areas that looked like they were burned by some sort of chemical: the skin was red and pebbled with tiny bumps.

Tally half-heartedly tried to pull her arm out of his grip but her boyfriend was not done investigating the wounds. "It’s nothing, really. Just ran into some trouble with a nasty plant last night, and it left me with some scratches and little poison ivy I think. Not a big, oh sh------” she hissed as Bradie accidentally grazed one of the wounds with his fingernail. Waves of pain pulsed through her arm, and Tally squeezed her eyes shut while trying to ride out the pain. When she was able to open her eyes again once the pain faded away, Talaleigh felt a twinge of guilt when she laid eyes on her boyfriend. Disapproval was sketched all over his face.

“It’s not a big deal, my ass,” he grumbled, letting her arm go as he stood up. “You should have woken me up.”  Reaching into the cabinet above the sink, he shoved boxes and bottles to the side, digging for an item buried in the back. “You know I wouldn’t mind helping you clean up your wounds. If anything,” he continued as he pulled out a first aid kit and made his way back to her side. “It would help me because then I wouldn’t have mini-heart attacks every time I find one on accident.” He knelt down beside her and held out a hand, waiting for her to place her care literally and figuratively in his hands. Tally did not hesitate to comply.

“I know,” she replied softly. She winced a little as the man at her knees started to apply antiseptic to the cuts on her arm. Flames licked at the wounds as the medicine killed the bacteria surrounding the edges of the cuts. For the second time in the past five minutes, Tally felt tears welling up in her eyes. But these tears were different; they were for the man who loved and worried about her enough to risk being late for work in order to take care of her. “I know it scares you, and I’m sorry. I...I just figured that I had it handled so there is no point in waking you just so you could worry more.”

A hand reached up and brushed off a few of the tears that had escaped to her cheek, surprising Tally because she did not even notice them leaving. Then a pair of strong arms wrapped around her shoulders and brought her to his chest.  The continuous beat of his heart soothed her frayed, emotional nerves and surrounded her with warmth and safety.

“I will always worry,” he whispers in her ear, causing more tears to join the ones that he erased a moment earlier. “It is just the price of loving someone who cares so much about others and will do whatever she can to help them. And I know your job is important but so are you. Don’t make sacrificing yourself the first option you pick. Can you promise me that?”

A flurry of emotions raced through Talaleigh. Her instincts to make light of serious issues warred with her desire to comfort the man before her. All of the thoughts and feelings swelled up in her throat, making it impossible for her to speak. So instead she slowly nodded her head against Bradie’s shoulder, smearing tears over the shoulder of his shirt.

“Okay,” she croaked. “For you.” The two sat quietly for a moment, enjoying the comfort of being near each other. However much they desired to spend the rest of the day cuddling like this, both new that the real world would soon be calling. Sitting up, Tally wiped her face off with her sleeve and glanced at the clock. “And now I have made you late. So sorry.”

“Nah, I’ll still be there on time. I’ve got no copies to make and probably very few children there today, so no need to get there early. What are you up to today?”

"Nothing special, I hope. Probably spend a little time straightening up and then most of the day working on my book. Hopefully I can get a chapter done before we leave tomorrow. Since I worked last night, I should be a 'last resort' call but we know how that goes sometimes."

"Well, I hope you have a quiet day of writing because no matter what happens, tomorrow will be a day to remember." Leaning down, he placed a kiss on her cheek then headed to the door. "Remember to use your powers for good, not evil," Bradie called out as he walked through the doorway.

“Very funny,” she yelled as the door closed behind him. “It’s not me you have to worry about."

Collecting the breakfast dishes from off the table, Talaleigh carried them to the sink and began to clean them, losing herself in the routine of dipping her hands in and out of the  hot, soapy water. Her mind drifted to her family and what might be awaiting her tomorrow. The prospect of introducing the one she loved to her family should be thrilling since it is proof of how committed Bradie and her are to one another. However, the fact that she cannot even begin to imagine how her family will behave in front of her boyfriend was making her incredibly anxious.

How long has it been since I went home, she thought as she placed one of the dishes in the drainer. It has been at least a year, if not longer. I mean mom and dad did come visit me here in the spring. So I have seen them just haven’t visited them. And they haven't met Bradie yet even though I promised them we would stop by a month or two ago. But things have been crazy between work and Bradie hardly gets any long breaks until the November/December time frame. And I did see Axel last month but God knows that was anything but enjoyable...

Anger rushed through her veins at the thought of her younger brother. The brother that she always put first. The brother who she sacrificed her free time to take to friends' houses and after school activities. The brother she practically raised. The brother who turned his back on her.

She slammed the pot in her hand down into the sink, sending a spray of bubbles and water over the wall and her shirt. “Damn him,” she ground out as she flexed her hands over and over, trying to release the fury boiling under her skin. “I swear if he does anything to ruin this holiday he will regret it.”

A shrill chime echoed through the room, dragging Tally out of her pensive state and back into the real world.. “Oh you have got to be kidding me,” she groaned as she dried her hands on a dish cloth before heading back to the table to grab her phone. 

“Hello? Yes, it is her. No,.. see I worked last night and have the marks to prove it. Got tangled up with… no, the pun was not intended! Yes, I’m fine but..look! I don’t mean to be short or sound disagreeable but I have a life too and there are other people who can handle this. I mean what's the point of having a union if you are going to keep calling up the same people all the time. So unless you can explain to me why it is so important for me specifically to be there, I am hanging up and turning the phone on silent.” 

The speaker on the phone had to say only three words before she interrupted him with a brusque “I’ll be there in fifteen” and ended the call. “Eff my life,” she grumbled as she threw the phone onto the sofa while heading into the bedroom to change into her costume.

When Bradie joked with her about “using her powers for good”, it wasn’t actually a joke. For the past year Talaleigh has been working as the superhero Safeguard, and she has just been called onto another assignment.

[that-house]

Hey so I hit 100 followers today!

Buckle up, this is gonna be a LOOOONG post.

I quite honestly expected it (while my ego is a little smaller than my jokes make it out to be it is definitely present), I didn’t expect it to happen so fast.

It’s not an insane milestone, plenty of people have 100 followers. A hefty portion of my followers are bigger than me. But it’s still important to me. Knowing that there’s 100 people out there who enjoy my shit makes me happy.

First and foremost the credit quite honestly has to go to ahegao George Washington. No, I’m not joking. Until I posted on r/tumblr about my desire to draw that, I had 0 followers. I jumped to like 10 overnight, which was awesome. And then those new followers helped me spread my posts and get more attention.

Secondly I’d like to shoutout @imaverysadgirl and @themeaninglessjumble. You two were my first real tumblr frens. You were the first of my followers to really interact with me. Ember, I’m super happy you’re alive to see me hit 100 followers. Jumble (I don’t know your name unless I forgot it), your art and creations are great and you deserve way more attention.

To all the rest of you, you guys are great, too. Every new follower makes me happy. I’d say I don’t deserve you all, but my colossal ego says I do. Regardless, being nemesi and getting called out for being horny on main and sending and receiving asks has made this last month or so great.

Finally, for all the shit it gets, and for all the shit it pulls, [tumblr] really is pretty dope. I got to meet you all, and it’s actively making me a better person by exposing me to groups of people I’d rarely interact with in real life.

Why does it feel like I’m saying goodbye? I’m not, don’t worry. I plan to stay, and neither death nor pain shall drive me from this hellsite. I’m just saying thanks.

Now with the thanks out of the way, I want to talk about myself a little. Just the stuff that I’ve always wanted to say and never quite gathered my thoughts and found the time to talk about.

You’re gonna get to know me so well! This is like a mini autobiography!

First off, my mental health. This is something I don’t talk about much on this blog, mostly because it doesn’t need much talking about. I’m doing pretty well, to be honest. I have a smattering of anxiety and I’m maybe a little too introverted for my own good, but I’m not suffering from depression and the only time I ever even remotely considered suicide was when I just really really didn’t want to go to French class. COVID has been great for me, since I don’t have to see people. I suppose I’m not a great person to talk to if you’re struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts, seeing as I can’t personally relate, but I’m still always here for you guys if you need me. Just because I haven’t lived through your experiences doesn’t mean I can’t try to help.

Next up I want to talk about my sexuality. This one’s a bit of a mystery. For the past 16 years of my life I’ve considered myself 100% straight. But lately (let’s be honest, following the release of Spirit Blossom Thresh) I’ve been wondering if I might be bi. How many times can I joke about wanting to smash sexy boys before it’s not really a joke anymore? And if I am, a lot of things would suddenly make a lot of sense. But every time I think I have it figured out it suddenly feels like I have no clue what’s going on. Regardless, my sexuality has honestly never been a massive part of my identity (though I’m definitely not asexual, my friends can attest I’m far too horny for that). I have no clue if I’m bi and for now it’s kind of a fun little adventure!

I guess I’ll talk about school and stuff now. Believe it or not, I’m kinda smart. I’m taking a shitton of AP courses this year. But I simultaneously feel like it’s too much and not enough. I’m smart, but I’m not a great student. Compared to my dad, who graduated college with a 3.98 GPA (and his only B being in History of Canada as an American) and now has a super well-paying government STEM job that he loves, I feel like even if I work my ass off I’ll never quite measure up. And my parents have had super high expectations of me, and it’s only recently that they’ve started to accept that I might get some B’s here and there. I’m worried about all the homework this year. I’m a year ahead in Math but I don’t feel good enough at math to be taking AP calculus junior year. I’m worried I’m going to get like a C. But for the most part school is alright, too. That’s sort of the trend in my life. Everything’s alright.

Time to talk about my love life! I have no love life! I’ve been single for 17 years and probably stand no chance of changing that until at least college! Haha I’m so alone! But I can live with it. Growing up an only child with a few friends means that I’m pretty good at functioning without a ton of social interaction, and, while I’d like a partner someday, I’m not desperate. I can wait until I find someone. Pretty much my goal is not to die alone.

Onto sports maybe? I played soccer for most of my life, and was always the worst player on the select team. I was too good for the normal team and not good enough for the select team (kinda like math). Soccer was really toxic, especially when you’re the worst player on a team of high school jock drug addict boys. So I quit, and started playing frisbee! It’s a lot better. The people are nicer! But my first season never happened because of COVID and now I’m in my Junior year and haven’t played much frisbee! So I kinda suck! But I’m physically fit and that’s good enough for me! On my own time I bike and run to stay in shape.

Are you still with me? Now I’m gonna talk about my hobbies and things!

I’ve been playing video games for a long time. I kinda suck at them to be totally honest. I probably have below-average reaction time, and my parents only let me play 15 minutes a day for most of my childhood, so I have a lot less practice than most of my friends. I’m pretty slick with Swain in LoL tho.

This next part is borderline shameless self-promotion, but since the Kickstarter isn’t live yet I guess it doesn’t count. I’m making a tabletop role playing game! I’ve been working on it for the past few years. My goal is to launch the Kickstarter prior to my college applications, because that’ll look sexy as fuck to potential colleges. It’s a post-apocalyptic sci-fi game where you play as supersoldiers trying to reconquer the wastelands of Earth for humanity. I’ll do a big post on it when I launch the Kickstarter, and I guess that’ll also be a full name reveal (kinda spooky since my full name is ENTIRELY unique and one-of-a-kind. More ego boost lmao).

And finally I want to talk about my art and writing. I’ll start with my drawing, and finish off with my writing, since that’s what I’d most like to be known for on here (but that’ll never happen because my caveman brain shitposts are too funny).

So I’ve been doodling for a long time. I briefly got formal art training but sacrificing my Saturday mornings to draw what someone else wanted me to make so that I could make better stuff in the future didn’t appeal to my 8-year-old brain. I draw in the margins of worksheets. I draw on random sheets of paper. Recently my parents bought me a drawing tablet, and I’ve been trying to improve at digital art. I’d say I’m getting better, but I don’t practice nearly enough. All in all my art serves its purpose. It makes people laugh and can sometimes creep people out. It’ll never go in a museum, and I’ll never make money off of it but whatever.

And finally, my writing.

How can I talk about writing without talking about reading? I’ve likely read more books than both my parents combined, and if not, it’s close (and my mom is a prolific reader too). I have three bookshelves in my room and books on every surface. You can’t follow me for long without seeing a post ranting about my latest read. I love to read and I read incredibly fast. Reading spurred my love of English class, which in turn helped me write.

And finally, we get to writing in and of itself. I’ve been writing stories since I was a little kid. I’d like to think I’ve improved a fair bit. I’m still no novelist, but I consider myself a fairly adept short story writer.

But I suppose where my writing really stems from is my bed. Every night while I’m lying in bed, I tell myself stories until I fall asleep. I work on a story until it’s done or until I get bored of it. Along the way, in the shower, on my bike, I build the world of the story, crafting the plot. Sometimes the stories are elaborate fanfictions of my latest reads. That’s probably how they started. Often, they’re unique worlds all of their own. My current writing posts are about the City of Mammon, but my current story in my head is about some vampires who hunt other vampires in Victorian England.

And now we get into the process of writing. It’s fun! I sit myself down with an idea in my head, and use all the fancy words I picked up from my books to convey the vibes I want. I honestly wouldn’t be a great writing teacher. It’s just a skill that comes naturally to me as a result of what I’ve been doing with my free time my whole life. And it’s beautiful. And every time someone compliments my writing or reblogs it, I love writing just a little bit more.

Well I guess this is it. The 100 follower special. I wonder how many of you guys will take the time out of your day to read this. Hopefully a lot!

James (or That House) signing off for the night!

<3 thanks guys

[that-shamrock-vibe]

Movie Review: Scoob! (Spoilers)

Spoiler Warning: Alright so this isn’t the type of movie that really warrants two separate reviews, but because it was only released recently I feel a spoiler warning is warranted as I will be talking about specific points in the movie. So if you haven’t yet seen Scoob! and don’t want anything ruined before you do, go and watch then come back.

General Reaction:

So, I’m having a hard time really getting to grips with my enjoyment level of this movie. Because while I don’t think this was a bad movie by any means, I always wouldn’t rank it as one of my favourites particularly with this new wave of nostalgia-based movies that seems to be a thing in recent years.

Maybe the problem is I am not an avid Scooby-Doo fan, a lot of people may think that is sacrilege and I did grow up watching the original Scooby-Doo shows and movies, but I wasn’t as into it as I was other Cartoon Network shows or even other Hanna-Barbera properties.

On that note, something that fascinated me about Scoob! in its promo campaign outside of it being a stunning CG-Animation movie was the inclusion of other Hanna-Barbera properties. In the trailer it is simply Dynomutt, Blue Falcon and Dick Dastardly, the former two who I believe were spin-off characters of Scooby-Doo originally and Dick Dastardly who of course is Dick Dastardly. Wacky Races and its spin-off Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines were shows I was an avid fan of, but once you see the movie and you realise that Warner Bros. Animation is really pushing for a Hanna-Barbera cinematic universe to stem from this with the amount of references and cameos of other characters and properties it is fascinating to me.

For instance, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 attempted something similar by effectively shouting about the fact that this movie was supposed to not only set up a third Spider-Man movie but also a Sinister Six movie and a Black Cat movie, then it was revealed Venom and Carnage were supposed to come into play, but then the whole thing got canned because the movie tried doing too much too soon.

Here though, they are subtle references that, unless you know the characters, don’t really register. I mean one or two are really obvious like having this universe’s version of Captain Caveman be somewhat of an antagonist here...I will be talking about him further down...but there are also just simply posters and name references that catch your eye if you know the characters. I don’t know every Hanna-Barbera character but the one that did catch my eye was a cardboard cutout of Hong-Kong Phooey.

As for the actual movie from a storytelling perspective, again I never really thought there was anything that grand about Scooby-Doo in terms of how they told a story. It was one of the first “monster of the week” shows in how formulaic it was and there was almost always a predictable formula in how each character would play their part.

In hindsight to that, I do appreciate both this movie and the first live-action Scooby-Doo movie for actually making that a satirical plot point, but in not having that much of a plot to base the movie on...I mean you can tell this is really an origin story of sorts in that if they are planning a cinematic universe this is that first rock, but unlike Iron Man they never had that hook that made you want to see the story continue.

I guess you could compare it in-house to what the DCEU did with Man of Steel. I didn’t really need more from after seeing that movie but I did want to see what this universe’s versions of some of my favourite DC Characters would be like, in a way this is similar.

It does sound stupid but the plot very much feels like a Scooby-Doo movie plot, in that the movie opens with that classic “monster of the week” unmasking, but the main threat of the movie is a real monster with some type of supernatural mystical twist.

But also, in adding the entire universe of Hanna-Barbera characters to that, you also have the most blatant in-movie Warner Bros. promo campaign with so many of the studio’s other properties being name-dropped it was borderline laughable.

In terms of the actual movie experience, this isn’t the first time I’ve watched a movie for the first time not in the cinema but knowing that the movie should have been released in cinemas rather than me simply not seeing it for any reason was rather surreal and, I do feel that this is the type of movie that warrants an audience viewing rather than just me watching it in my bedroom.

I also feel I would have enjoyed it a lot more with an audience, particularly an audience that doesn’t mind slightly dated, cheesy or somewhat really obvious plot points at times. I kind of predicted every major plot twist in this movie, although a couple of them I feel the audience is supposed to know from the get go otherwise why make it so obviously unless your pandering to a really young audience that don’t have two brain cells to rub together and tell that Fred with a really sinister grin full-naming Scooby is really the main villain in disguise particularly when you just saw him do the same thing ten minutes before.

But anyway, rather then going character by character in this spoilery section I’m going to break it down into what I liked and what I didn’t like. There was nothing I loved but also nothing I hated.

What I Liked:

But in terms of the overall message of the movie, Scoob! really hammers home that old-school notion of Man’s Best Friend, and not just with Shaggy and Scooby which is all I will say on that.

Alright so this movie is obviously called Scoob! and focuses on Scooby as effectively the main character as well as his friendship with Shaggy. The two really are one character in that you can’t really imagine one without the other, and the movie really explores that in both good and bad ways...we’ll get to the bad.

As a dog lover and dog owner myself, this movie really spoke to me on that level and the bond that Shaggy and Scooby share I finally understood. In all other media for me it’s more a case of Scooby and Shaggy just being friends but here that bond goes deeper because you see them meet and you see them essentially become family.

I really didn’t like the plot device of making them fall out only to have them make up later, it just is a very lazy trope at this point particularly as I’ve already seen it in a Scooby-Doo property before.

But they do kind of explain why it is necessary and why it happens because while they do have their friends at Mystery Inc. Shaggy and Scooby had no one before having each other, so when one feels like they’re drifting apart something flips and they get very possessive.

Also that ending, I mentioned this movie has a lot of things thrown in but while Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros. references are kind of in sync with this movie, how about Greek mythology to the point where they effectively summon the Underworld to Earth!

I’m a massive Greek mythology fan, and seeing the main monster of this movie actually being from Greek mythology and animated so beautifully is why this is in the good section, even if the Underworld actually looked like the Cave of Wonders from Aladdin.

The voice cast for this movie is also unexpectedly brilliant. A lot of people may complain that the original cast who are still all alive, I think, weren’t asked back but outside of Frank Welker as Scooby I don’t think you really need them.

Zac Efron is one of those actors at the moment that can do no wrong for me, he can do comedy, he can do musical, he can do drama, he can do serious gritty drama. I really loved him as Fred here.

Will Forte didn’t fool me into thinking it was Matthew Lillard returning to the role because I feel his voice here wasn’t as squeeky or high as Lillard’s, but he still did a great job, Ian Armitage voicing the kid version was great too.

Gina Rodriguez is a choice for Velma not just because like a lot of these characters the classic Velma’s voice is very distinct and almost iconic but to actively race-bend the character and make her Latina I thought added some much needed diversity to this movie and the Hanna-Barbera universe in general.

Jason Isaacs as Dick Dastardly was really a fantastic choice both for the actor and for the character. There were times particularly towards the start when he made Dick sound like Captain Hook and even his design here is very Captain Hook/Gru esk rather than the lanky Dick Dastardly design, and I was missing his classic hat. But for me Jason Isaacs is at his best when he’s playing a villain.

On that note, Dee Dee Sykes and Dynomutt I thought were absolutely wonderful here, I’d actually say these two and Dick Dastardly were my favourite characters. All the D’s apparently.

Not only was it a teachable moment for me because I had to look up someone I was pretty sure was someone I thought they were in terms of me knowing Dee Dee originated in Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, but here was on Blue Falcon’s crew with Dynomutt and no reference to Captain Caveman whatsoever I was okay with.

Also, I cannot believe I am saying this but, this movie actually made me like a Ken Jeong performance. I cannot stand this man, I do not find him funny, I do not find him entertaining, yet something about him voicing Dynomutt who originally I swear what meant to have the brain capacity I associate with Ken Jeong, but to make me like the character was impressive.

The final thing on my good list to mention is that opening sequence, after the very heartwarming opening scene of Scooby and Shaggy meeting and a Halloween setting of the team first coming together to battle a monster of the week in a It inspired haunted house, they show a shot-for-shot remake of the opening credits for the OG cartoon which is rather clever.

The only other voice actor to mention in the good section for me is Simon Cowell, not only do they have Simon playing himself in such a brilliant way but also his son Eric also voices a character, very brief and not central to the plot, but really a cute moment. Also I don’t know why but Simon in voice over sounds almost like a parody to Simon in live-action.

What I Didn’t Like:

Alright so these are really knitpicks but I think they’re worth noting in terms of moving this universe forward.

Scooby Doo is a dog, a talking dog yes but a dog none the less...so why the heck does he talk so much. I mean granted this is a universe with a robotic dog and a biped martial arts vigilante dog...but they never genuinely explain how Scooby can talk and while it’s understandable in the original cartoons as it’s mostly groans and the odd mispronounced word...here he was having monologues...also as a puppy he should have had a puppy voice, just saying.

As mentioned, I never really got into this franchise when I was younger so outside of Scooby and Shaggy I don’t really know these characters...but was Fred always so weirdly obsessed with the Mystery Machine? I get being happy with your vehicle but I thought Fred and Daphne were supposed to be the ship of this property...not Fred and the van.

I really really really really really really really really did not like the cop out ending they had, I didn’t let them get away with it in Stitch Has a Glitch and I am not letting them get away with it here. This big dramatic heartstring pulling thing happens, yet it’s almost immediately rectified with no solid explanation other then “we need to wrap things up”.

So to see one of these properties not authentically translate I thought was annoying, by which I mean Captain Caveman. Looks wise he is on point and I am fully aware that Mel Blanc is not going to rise up from the grave to voice him again, but the very essence of him being a caveman in his speech was not there for me here.

It would have been better if they allowed some time to go past and let the heroes stew in their sorrow before somehow discovering a way to fix things, but no it is literally as soon as the bad thing happens we are supposed to believe this was thought out?

My final thing is this. The Hanna-Barbera properties I grew up with are Scooby-Doo which I liked, Top Cat which I loved, Wacky Races which I loved, The Jetsons which I wasn’t as acquainted with as I would have liked to be, The Flinstones which I loved, Hong Kong Phooey which I liked and Captain Cavemani which I liked.

I’m sure Tracy Morgan is a likeable comedian, but then play on the comedy of the character and have him be like he originally was.

Hanna-Barbera Cinematic Universe:

I would love to see The Flinstones, Top Cat and the other Wacky Racers get this movie treatment. In fact if they market it correctly, Warner Bros. Animation could have a different genre movie for each property, be that comedy for Flinstones, action for Hong Kong Phooey, maybe a heist movie for Top Cat, sci-fi for the Jetsons, the list goes on.

As mentioned before, I do not see that groundwork for a cinematic universe here. Rather than it showing signs of being like the MCU I think it does stick more in-house as the DCEU by simply giving me the want to see other Hanna-Barbera characters inhabit this universe.

Do I feel this is the start of something big? No, do I feel there is potential here absolutely.

Overall I rate the movie a solid 7/10, it’s enjoyable, it’s cute, it’s family-friendly and I believe that’s its USP. It’s not a groundbreaking movie but it does have that cinematic universe potential and, as mentioned, I do look forward to see if more Hanna-Barbera properties get the same treatment.

So that’s my review of Scoob! What did you guys think? Post your comments and check out more Movie Reviews and other posts.

[missmentelle]

In one of the posts you wrote ages ago you mentioned that when you're aroused your brain significantly increases your tolerance of pain and disgust. Can you expand on this and explain a little more, or add some links so I can understand it better? I have noticed my attitude toward sex ex oral sex differs a bit depending on my mood, so I'd like to read more about this. Thank you in advance!

This is actually a very fun area of research, because the study designs tend to be sort of hilarious. 

Each of us has something called a disgust response, which activates when we are around things that we consider to be disgusting. There’s a lot of individual variation in what people find disgusting - some people retch at seeing mold on bread, while other people can comfortably wade through raw sewage - but each of us has a line where we start to get grossed out. The point of the disgust response is to protect us from disease; you’ll notice that a lot of the things people commonly find disgusting are things that potentially carry or cause disease, like rotting food, blood, waste products, insects, vermin, poor hygiene, and so on. Our disgust response is there to prevent us from picking up or touching things that might make us sick, and it might even make us throw up to purge our bodies of any contamination we might have accidentally ingested. Remember that we still fundamentally have “caveman brains” - for our early ancestors, even a routine case of food poisoning was potentially life-threatening, and had to be avoided at all costs. Early humans that didn’t have an aversion to eating spoiled food would not have survived to pass their genes along. In the brain, disgust is governed by a tiny part of the cerebral cortex called the insula, which is located deep inside the lateral sulcus of the temporal lobes - basically the big wrinkle on the sides of your brain. We are also very good at recognizing and responding to expressions of disgust on the faces of other people; after all, we are social animals, and when we see other people around us experience disgust, we take it as a warning signal that there may be something disease-causing nearby. That’s probably why seeing other people vomit makes you want to vomit - not only is vomit gross, but for most of human history, if someone in your community got sick from food poisoning, there’s a very good chance that you ate from the same contaminated food supply and your body is better off trying to purge the contamination from your body before you get sick. 

The one time when your disgust response is not useful for the continued survival of the species, however, is when it comes to sex. Sex involves a lot of things that we typically find disgusting - bodily fluids, sweat, genitals, weird smells - but if the species is going to survive, most of us need to find a way to bring ourselves to do it. Ideally, it needs to be a fun activity that people want to do often, and not something that grosses most people out. So the theory is that when the body begins to experience sexual arousal, the disgust response is actively suppressed to make sex enjoyable. I think most of us have experienced this in everyday life. When you’re not aroused, seeing or smelling sweat is kind of gross - when you’re in the middle of sex, you probably don’t really notice or give a shit if your partner is sweaty. Seeing and touching your partner’s genitals during sex is pleasant, while having a random stranger flash their genitals on the bus is revolting. You might be willing and eager to explore all kinds of potentially disgusting fetishes and sexual acts when you are turned on, but feel disgust with yourself for doing those thing once you are no longer aroused. And for the most part, scientific studies have been able to back this up. 

In what is arguably the most famous study on the topic (Borg & de Jong, 2012) participants were randomly divided into three groups - one watched a sexually arousing stimulus, one watched a stimulus that caused non-sexual positive arousal, and the third saw a neutral stimulus. The three groups were then asked to do a variety of disgusting tasks (like drinking from a cup of juice that had a large bug floating in it) and rate their disgust. The sexually aroused group were willing to do more of the tasks than any other group, and they reported the least disgust. This study was partially backed up by a 2019 study on disgust and arousal in male participants - this study had aroused and non-aroused heterosexual males rate various samples of women, by indicating how willing they were to have sex with the women. They were given a high or low risk of disease for each woman (indicated by whether or not the women were sex workers, which is a discussion for another day). Aroused men indicated that they were much more willing to have sex with all of the female subjects they saw, including those that were indicated as high disease risk. Not every study, however, has produced the same results. A 2015 study of sexual arousal and disgust in females did not produce the same results - they found that women who were high for “trait disgust” (basically, women who are very easily grossed out) actually experienced increased disgust when aroused, not less, while women who were low on trait disgust (women who are grossed out by very few things) showed the expected pattern of decreased disgust while aroused. It’s possible that these results are due to a weak study design - this is the only study that relied on participant’s self-reports of how disgusted they were feeling, rather than their willingness to do disgusting tasks while aroused - but it’s also possible that this is just a more complicated psychological mechanism in women. Research on arousal and sexuality is still in its very early days, because it was all but impossible to get research grants to study sex until the last few decades, so we will probably see a more nuanced understanding of the link between sexuality and disgust emerge as more research is done. Hope this answers your question!Miss Mentelle

[hollybourneauthor]

“How Teen Fiction Can Change The World”

The Patrick Hardy Lecture has been running annually since 1989. Guest speakers from the world of children’s books, including the likes of Jacqueline Wilson, Meg Rosoff, Juno Dawson, and Michael Morpurgo, have taken to the lectern, and this year I had the overwhelming privilege of speaking to those who work in the industry.

“How Teen Fiction Can Change The World” Holly Bourne, Patrick Hardy speech, 2020

 Before I get going, at the risk of sounding like a yoga teacher, I want to ground us all in this room. Right here. In this moment. It’s a Wednesday night in winter, you’re sitting in a library, and you’re about to listen to me give a lecture about stories. So, high chances are...you really like books. At some point in your life, you stumbled across a story that won you over. You became consumed by the magic of fiction, and could never go back. There are probably a few key books that you’ve read that you honestly believe changed you. Improved you. And reading those books may have led to you making a number of small decisions throughout your life that paved the way for bigger decisions, that, all collected together, led to this very point in your life. Right now. This room. The people sitting around you. Your passion. Maybe even your career. Reading is likely the part of your identity that you feel the proudest of, and the most nourished by. I know that’s true for me.

 So, I just want you to take a few moments to think about the books that led you here today. Directly, or indirectly. The books that you’ve no-doubt read and reread countless times. The books that you feel are etched onto your soul. That made you who you are. That helped you through life and steered you towards becoming someone you’re proud of… And I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, I’m guessing that those books – those life-changing books – are books that you read as a teenager.

 This is the topic of my speech today. How I believe teen fiction doesn’t only have the power to change a young person’s life. But how that magical transformation can start ripples that can actually change the world for the better. I truly believe that YA books – writing them, publishing them and distributing them – is an act of activism that can start huge, positive, social change.

 But how?

 Before I talk about teenagers, I want to explore the powerful nature of stories themselves. Our brains are wired for stories – they are how we learn to survive in the world. Human survival needs two things – the basics of how to keep yourself out of danger, and how to keep in favour with the social group around you. We are pack animals. We need the surrounding community to survive. And we constantly tell each other stories about how to live. Information is more palatable if it’s in the form of a story. Rather than saying to someone “Don’t eat those red berries”, we’re much more likely to engage with that life-saving information if someone says, “Did you hear about Ig, the caveman from next door? Oh my God, it was AWFUL. He ate those red berries on the bush outside, and his stomach exploded ALL OVER THE CAVE. It was so gnarly. They’re still cleaning it up…”

 The same is true with instructions on how to be socially accepted by others. Linguistic experts have found humans spend most of their conversation time gossiping about people who aren’t there. Telling stories on each other. Gossip is actually narrative that instructs humans on what is and isn’t acceptable in their social group. Again, we’d get bored of an information manual. But if someone comes over to you, wide-eyed, saying, “Have you heard that John left his wife for his twenty-two year old secretary? And now everyone has turned on him and he isn’t welcome at the Safari Supper any more,” you’d be lapping it up. But you’d also be learning important lessons about how to behave. Instructions are boring, but stories are riveting. Our brain rejects one, and embraces the other. And, through narrative, we learn how to survive – both emotionally and physically – in this world.

 I find the work of Sigmund Freud hugely influences how I write stories, and how to ensure they connect with my readers. Some of you in this room will, no doubt, have done English degrees and will be familiar with how Freud’s theories relate to narrative. So apologies if this is a recap, but it’s something I try to remind myself of whenever I’m writing.

 Freud believed all humans lived in a state of constant conflict between three parts of our psyche – our Id, our Superego and our Ego.

 Our Id is the totally subconscious, primitive and instinctual part of us. It’s our selfish desires. Our animal selves. And it’s always there.

I’m hungry.

I want that.

I want to have sex with that person. NOW.

A newborn baby is completely Id-driven – at the mercy of its desires. And that part of us never goes away. The Id is always with us, steering us to survive. Utterly reactive and animalistic.

 Whereas the Superego is there to tame the Id. The Superego is the cocktail of messages we marinate in throughout our lives, telling us what a person should or shouldn't do. The Superego is about consequences. It’s your values. Your moral compass. Don’t steal. Don’t snatch. Don’t dry-hump that person on the Tube even if you really fancy them. Essentially the Superego socializes us. The most powerful influence on your Superego comes from your parents and your early childhood experiences. But society has a part of play. Laws are part of the Superego – telling us what is and isn’t legally acceptable. And culture plays a huge part in shaping it too. What should a man be? What should a woman be? What is right, or wrong? And the Superego isn’t always a good thing. It provokes a lot of guilt in us, and, if taken too far, feelings of shame can make us unhappy.

 And, finally, the Ego is the navigator of these two conflicts. It’s the “weigher-upper” – listening to the Id and the Superego and making the best judgement it can. I like to believe that the Ego is essentially who we are as a person, based on the decisions we make as a result of this eternal internal conflict. Rather than beating ourselves up for having “bad thoughts”, we should judge one another, and ourselves, on our actions. It’s our actions that make us who we are. We are what we do, not what we think.

 We learn about Freud in creative writing because, to some degree, every successful story represents the struggle between the Id, the Superego and the Ego. We are drawn to these stories because they reflect the battle we fight in our heads every day. If you consider the huge, ongoing success of comic book films, you can see how Freud’s theory explains their popularity. Baddies in these stories are often very Id-driven – selfish, compulsive and uncaring of how their actions impact those around them. Whereas superheroes are disguised “Superegos” – representing goodness and morality.

 But what excites me most about Freud isn’t how I can use his work to shape my books, but the belief I have that reading powerful stories can actually contribute to a person’s Superego. How the act of reading a work of fiction can actually cause a psychological change in us that makes us better people in our non-fiction lives. And the nature of the adolescent brain makes the opportunities for this even richer.

 So why books? What makes fiction the most potent vessel for activism compared to, say, films, TV, video games or even an Instagram caption? It’s because the very nature of reading itself is an irreplicable act of immersive empathy. When I go into schools, I always tell teenagers that novels are like really safe, legal, hallucinogenic drugs. I once read a funny tweet that said that reading a book is crazy when you consider what’s actually taking place. Effectively, you are staring at symbols printed onto a dead tree and vividly hallucinating. That’s pretty magical when you truly consider it. Even with all our technological advances, even with virtual-reality goggles, nothing quite recreates reading. How a reader is effectively transplanted into the mind of someone who doesn’t exist – feeling their feelings as they’re feeling them, experiencing their experiences as they experience them. When written well, and used for good, stories can educate readers about all sorts of social issues by provoking an empathetic and emotional response. You can open a reader’s eyes to the truth of what life is like for people who aren’t like them – from being on the receiving end of racism, to experiencing mental illness, trauma or physical disabilities. In To Kill A Mockingbird, Atticus tells his children that, in order to understand a person, you have to try and crawl into their skin and walk around in it. That’s exactly what books do.

 It can also be truly revolutionary and reassuring for a reader to find a book where they see themselves in a main character. Especially if this main character’s hardship or thought processes are something you believed was unique only to you. Being seen, heard, understood – sometimes the first time someone feels like that is through the pages of a novel. Alan Bennett once spoke of the magic of this moment and how it’s like a hand has come out of the pages and is holding yours. And if you’re reading about a main character suffering how you suffer, and yet this character is able to stand up and be brave... Whether that's speaking up, fighting back, or simply just asking for help...well, this connection between writer and reader could well inspire the reader to be brave themselves.

 Now, let’s go back to those books you had in your head. Your favourite books that you read when you were younger. The ones that really lodged in. What’s going on there?

 There’s actually some neuroscience that can explain this. Scientists have found that during puberty, when a child’s brain is rewiring to become an adult brain, a side effect is that we make memories more strongly compared to any other time in our lives. You can recall and connect with your teen years more easily and potently compared to your twenties, thirties and onwards. I certainly know this to be true for myself. Ask me to close my eyes and remember being fifteen and, yeah, I’m there. Hell, I don’t even need to close my eyes. I can already smell the Lynx Africa, remember who kissed who at the school disco. I can remember the full names of all the popular people in my year group. And yet, if you ask me what I was doing at twenty-five, twenty-eight, thirty-one, I’d have to think about it. Trying to recall what job I was doing, struggling to remember certain people’s names... It’s vaguer, and certainly less visceral.

 On top of this they’ve found that teenage brains are hyper-attuned to social stimuli. From an evolutionary perspective, adolescence is when you have to figure out how important you are to your social group and that impacts your chances of survival. This means teenagers are constantly asking themselves: Am I important? Do I matter? Does anyone care about me? Because of this, they’ve found that teenage memories particularly linked to identity and sense of self are even stronger. So if a teenager stumbles across a book that is holding their hand through its pages, just consider the POWER of that memory.

 And let’s not forget just how wonderfully malleable young people are. Teenagers are so much more open to change – both in society, and in themselves. They haven’t calcified yet. They haven’t had as many years of repeating unhealthy patterns and gathering biased evidence to prop up unhelpful theories – about the world and their sense of self. I saw a talk once by a psychologist who said we need to stop dismissing our younger years as being unimportant years of freedom that do not matter. Actually, your youth and what you do with it paves the way to the future, and tiny adjustments, over time, can see you end up in a totally different place. She used the analogy of aeroplanes, and I love to think of teenagers as aeroplanes taking off from Heathrow airport. The planes all soar up in the same direction, but with minor changes in angle, they land in New York or Brazil or the Arctic.

 I’ve started to see evidence of my books causing angle changes in the journeys of my readers’ lives. I’ve now written ten YA novels, and have built my career by being honest with teenagers about the hardship of their reality, as well as encouraging them to fight for a better future and a better world. I educated them about feminism through my Spinster Club series, asked the question Is mental illness preventable? in Are We All Lemmings And Snowflakes? and, most recently, wrote about an emotional and sexually abusive relationship in The Places I’ve Cried In Public. I’ve been touring the book with Women’s Aid and have become an ambassador for their Love Respect campaign that educates young people about healthy relationships. I’ve always believed that my stories were activism, and hoped they’d create positive changes in the Superegos of my readers. And I’ve now been in the game long enough to see my faith wasn’t misguided.

 I met my very first Spinster Club alumni only last week, at a Women’s Aid event I did at Bristol University. After my talk, a young woman came up to me, squealing, and revealed she’d read my Spinster Club books as a teenager and they’d made her a feminist. She then went on to say she’s now studying law, and has got a barrister traineeship and wants to use law to protect vulnerable women. I’m not going to lie – it was probably one of the happiest moments of my life.

 And the ability to tweak a person’s journey has never been more evident than in my latest book, The Places I’ve Cried In Public. Since it’s been published, it’s had more crossover appeal than I thought, and I now get several messages a week from women in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties and even sixties, telling me their own harrowing abuse stories. They tell me about their PTSD, the university degrees they never got because their partner never let them go, their fights through family court, their lost years, lost self-worth, their therapies and their ongoing recoveries. Each tale is just as heart-wrenching as the last. And all of them write to me, I wish I’d read your book when I was younger, or I wish I could go back in time and give this to my 14-year-old self. They wish they’d known the red flags to look out for that could’ve prevented them from going down a path they’re still on.

 And when I talk to teenage readers about the same book…

 “Well, those sorts of relationships sound terrible. I’m never going to let myself get into something like that.”

 “I HATE Reese. I want to kick him in the eyeballs.”

 “The book made me cry so much. I never want that to happen to me.”

 I’m not saying preventing awful things is that simple, but, also, maybe it can be? When you combine everything I’ve spoken about, what’s to say we can’t use fiction to nudge teenagers into making healthier decisions that will benefit them? As well as hopefully entertaining them along the way.

 When we start reflecting on the power of teenage fiction, as people who work in the industry, we need to ask ourselves: how do we utilize this? Maximize this? And, to me, the most important thing is to remove as many barriers as possible between teenagers and the stories that can change their lives. I see the need to address this in three ways.

 Firstly, we need to ensure books are available to all teenagers, regardless of their means. Novels, and their life-changing magic, should never be allowed to become an elitist item. So we need to fight to keep libraries and school libraries open, and to keep trained librarians in position. Librarians are experts at matchmaking teenagers with the best books for them.

 Secondly, we need to fight for all teenagers to be able to see themselves in books by making the publishing industry more diverse, and therefore the stories it produces more diverse. The magic of fiction can only work if there’s an authentic connection between writer and reader, and diverse voices are an essential component for this to occur. If we think back to that reminiscence bump, and how memories about identity leave a particularly strong mark, just imagine how it must feel to be a marginalized teenager who finds a book that finally gets them.

 And thirdly, we can’t let our own maturity and “calcification” accidentally erect barriers by letting literary snobbery shame a teenager for what they are reading. There is no such thing as good or bad reading – there is only reading. We need to celebrate and reward the books that teenagers are connecting with. It’s the connection that changes a life, not the beauty of a sentence. Yes, perhaps ideally, we want them to read the classics, but they’re much more likely to get there if the world of reading seems like an open, non-judgemental, non-elitist place. Let’s also recognize how hard it is to write a book that’s “easy to read” – the craftsmanship that goes into creating a story that pulls a teenager away from the huge list of distractions fighting for their attention. Literary snobbery is an unhelpful stance that will only inform a teen’s Superego in a negative way, leading to shame and exclusion. In trying to crowbar a teenager into reading a certain type of book, you’re potentially putting them off all books for ever.

 I started by grounding us in this room. And now, after geeking out on you for half an hour about brain science and psychology, I want to bring it back to this room. I want us to take a moment to reflect on just how much power sits within these four walls. Collectively we have access to thousands upon thousands of young people, and a passion for the stories we want to give them. Just think of the ripples we can create by the simple, wonderful act of activism which is giving a book to a teenager. I honestly believe that giving the right book to the right teenager at the right time can change and possibly even save their lives. And I also believe that all those teenager aeroplanes, taking off from Heathrow airport, feeling empowered and understood, will go on to achieve remarkable things. Teen fiction really can change the world, and make it a better place.

 A long time ago, someone gave you a book that led to you sitting in this room today. Let’s go out and start that journey for others. Who knows who will be sitting listening to the Patrick Hardy lecture in twenty years’ time, and what they will have achieved. But every time I think of this, I feel nothing but hope.

 Thank you so much for listening.

[lhazaar]

i hated rock climbing as a kid, which i know is a very specific thing to hate. it was hard and made me feel bad about myself and i didn’t like everyone staring at me suspended in the air. it also hit 70 degrees today and i’ve been going to the beach a lot more, which is great because it’s close and quiet, but not great because i live in the pacific northwest and in order to reach the water along most of the nearby shore i have to climb down, up, then back down a very steep drop-off of very sharp rocks

turns out that the things i hated about rock climbing were 1) dislocating my wrists and knees 2) being stared at and 3) having boobs. it is so much easier to climb shit when i’m not catching Ye Olde Fleshbag Of Holding on the wall every time i try to hoist myself up—and i think i’ve talked about this before, but it also turns out that the kinds of collagen i have mutations in are affected by progesterone levels in your body. going on hrt has made me dislocate way less often (but made chronic pain way worse lol ANYWAYS)

i went up and down the side of a cliff for like an hour the other day just looking at tide pools. there are so many weird things in the ocean. yesterday i climbed out of the water and onto a big rock shelf so i could take a nap and read comics. it’s really fun and i’m really glad that it’s something near enough to me that i can do but i’m also pretty sure it’s activating some primal part of my ape brain that finds climbing around on shit inherently rewarding. a ghost of a little caveman in there just going absolutely wild over using its hands to change elevation. like damn buddy i’m glad we’ve found something to tame the adhd “if i don’t move around right now i will literally explode and die” feeling but it’s sharp rocks over the ocean and i’m pretty sure we shouldn’t actually be doing this because if we slip we're gonna drop like forty feet into the ocean and break all of our asses

[theouijagirl]

(Note I don’t have any mental illnesses to cause hallucinations etc) so I was laying in bed, and I was getting anxious about something, a few mins later I felt something hugging me, and I heard faint humming, and it got louder, it sounded like a lullaby (no I don’t live with anyone) is that anything spiritual at all? Bc it did calm me down but also scared me a little lol

First of all, you don’t need to have a mental illness to have hallucinations. Everyone experiences hallucinations almost every day. Not all hallucinations come from schizophrenia. Those moments when you think you see something out of the corner of your eye for a second, but nothing is there, is a hallucination, for example. 

Why do we have these weird little hallucinations? It goes back to our caveman ancestors, who lived every moment in a flight or fight response. At any moment they could be murdered, or killed by a saber tooth tiger or whatever. They were never truly safe, and those who thought they were were killed and didn’t pass on their DNA. So all of us have this ingrained fight or flight response that is ready to go at a moments notice, tucked away in the back of our minds. The only thing is that we don’t really need to use it in this day and age, since there is not a daily threat of murder or saber tooth tigers. So that response happens sometimes when we are at our most vulnerable. When you’re naked in the shower, your senses are heightened, and noises seem louder (which is why dropping the shampoo sounds like an atomic explosion). I usually arrive at my work before the building opens and I’m the only one there, and all the time I’ll think I see weird movement just out of my range of vision, and that’s because my brain is panicked because I’m alone in a warehouse and it’s ready for danger. I also get really jumpy, like any time one of my employees shows up and I didn’t hear them come in, they’ll greet me and I’ll jump out of my seat at my desk. And what is the most vulnerable place, where you would be in the most danger of murderous cavemen and saber tooth tigers? In your bed, asleep.

It’s very common to experience auditory hallucinations as you’re falling asleep. It’s part of our cycle as our brain enters sleep mode. It’s why you get that feeling of falling down just as you’re starting to pass out, or why you may suddenly feel there’s someone watching you in your room. It’s why little kids need night lights and can lie awake in the dark, terrified. It’s just built in to us experience these kinds of things. So if anything happens to you as you’re falling asleep that you feel may be paranormal, the chances are that it’s just your brain. I think everyone has experienced, at some time or another, that weird comforting bedtime hallucination where you just feel safe and looked after. It’s not paranormal, and it’s nothing to be worried about.

Remember that spirit activity is often repeated, because that activity occurs to get your attention. If you had just one event that never happens again, it’s a good 99% chance it wasn’t paranormal at all. 

[ashekirk]

So I’m a witch again...

Well, here I go again.

I used to be a pagan, back in my teens up until I was about 22. I was a true believer. I fully believed in gods and goddesses, and that I could summon magic to create change in the universe. Well, I say "fully," but there was always a seed of a doubt in my head that the supernatural was just fake. It had always been there, even when I was being indoctrinated as a Christian in childhood. Perhaps it helped that my sister never believed in any of it, and wasn't afraid to say so.

That seed sprouted and bloomed during my twenties. As I matured, and started working, thoughts of witchcraft and deities became just abstract concepts in my mind, and then I came upon the YouTube skeptic community. At the time, it wasn't the absolute cesspool it became in the last 5 years, and I found it very enlightening. I realised that there was no reason to believe in anything that I couldn't find convincing evidence of. I learned to think critically, and to see religion and new age woo as lies to control the masses and make money.

I was quite a big fan of Matt Dillahunty, who, on The Atheist Experience, would push back on any spiritual belief and ritual as harmful to both individuals and to society.

But the allure of the Atheist movement on YouTube fell away as they turned away from criticising Christianity to outright bashing on feminism, social justice, transgender, and of course Islam. To even tolerate the existence of Islam was unacceptable, and if you were a feminist, well, basically you were Hitler.

Of course, Matt Dillahunty didn't participate in this shitlordery, but the mystique around him did eventually break for me, when he said some pretty rubbish things about the issue of another atheist celebrity being accused of sexual harassment. Now, I view him as an okay atheist community leader, all things considered, but I'm not fawning over the guy.

And then the Trump presidency happened, and Nazis started multiplying all over the internet. Some of them were religious, some of them were not. Their white supremacy and fashy thought was the new enemy.

So, I was a moderate atheist, who was happy to coexist with leftists, regardless of their religion - right wingers being way more toxic to society than any sufficiently liberal religious person. I realised that while religion certainly plays a factor in oppression, it's conservatism and fascism that are the true problems in society, and religion is just the excuse a lot of people use to take away rights of people they don't like and keep society at a point where they're on top, looking down on everyone else.

Fighting for justice and activism kept me busy, but I was desperately empty inside.

Battling depression for years and seeing countries all over the world being pulled in by hard right nationalism left me in a terrible state.

At the same time, the new reboots of Charmed and Sabrina appeared on the small screen. I watched The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and after digesting the series, started feeling a great longing.

While the series leaves a bit to be desired in their representation of witchcraft, the aesthetics and the rituals depicted reminded me of how amazing I used to feel when working magic. Whether magic was real or not didn't matter to the effect it had on me. Feelings of connection to nature, having energy surging through me, the feeling of being able to do something about things I had no real way of changing.

Compare that with the hopelessness I felt, wishing every day that an asteroid would just smash into the earth and wipe out humanity like it did the dinosaurs. No karma to punish bad people, no ability to change the horrible things that were happening except desperate tweets and barely watched YouTube videos.

Finally, I started googling things like "atheist witchcraft" and "doing witchcraft even though you don't believe in it."

I came across Humanistic Paganism, a movement that seems to be exactly what I was looking for. And furthermore, it links up so well with the way my psychologist described my anxiety disorder, i.e. the primitive, irrational brain taking over in times of panic, and having many detrimental effects on the body.

Magic changes my mindset; my mindset changes my probabilities of successfully manifesting my will in my life. It works by reconciling the rational and the irrational parts of myself. Take a protection charm for instance. A braid of garlic, a bag of herbs or a piece of metal, in and of itself, doesn’t protect me from anything. But if I use it as a protection charm, it reminds my rational brain to be vigilant, which helps me avoid avoidable danger. But it also appeases my irrational side by acting as if the piece of metal or bag of herbs will protect me from unavoidable danger. My irrational side is an heirloom from some hairy caveman who screeched and ran when he heard the “angry” thunderstorm. That irrational side is where uncontrollable emotional breakdowns come from. With magic, I gave that irrational side a more productive job to do so that I don’t have to simply repress it. That way all of me can work towards the same goal. From <https://humanisticpaganism.com/2014/05/14/an-atheists-magical-practice-in-detail-by-atheistwitch/> 

As soon as I read it, I knew it was time to break out the pentacle again.

So, now I'm an atheist witch that doesn't believe in magic, but I do believe in the therapeutic power of witchcraft. And so, I'm going to practice witchcraft as if I believe it, all the while knowing that its primary purpose is satiating that part of my mind that hungers for meaning and miracles.

Already, I am feeling a renewed sense of purpose and control of my destiny. It doesn't matter if it comes from a fake place, as long as it keeps the depressive nihilism away.

Obviously, this is deeply personal, and certainly not everyone's cup of tea. But for me, it's just what I needed.

[daydreaming-away-reality]

Cyborg [Chapter 1]

Steve Rogers x Reader | ☁️ + 🌠 + ✨ | 1.8k | Cyborg!Reader

[ Cyborg Masterlist ]

You stared at the dark sky, stretching in preparation. It was barely daybreak, yet, here you were standing outside in the chilly air in a t-shirt and tights for running. Breathing out, you could see a small cloud appear and fade before you in the dim streetlights. 

Five o’clock use to be a dormant time for you, lying in bed and recharging the electricity in your body. Ever since you moved into the suburbs of New York though, your roommate had a habit of going on a ‘morning run’, and since you were eager to experience the world with him, you picked up his habit too.

“Alright, (Y/N),” a deep male voice called out to you. “Sorry for the wait. Ready to go?”

You turned, (E/C) eyes meeting beautiful blue ones. Seeing Steve’s smile in the morning was almost enough motivation to get you up and moving for the day.

“I’m ready when you are,” you chimed out.

Steve gave you a once over and frowned. “Wait.”

He moved towards you, leaning down. You curiously watched him, uncertain of his next move. Reaching forward, he began to tie your shoelace.

“Don’t want you tripping and hurting yourself,” Steve explained as he fixed it.

You blushed lightly. “Thanks, Steve.”

Your roommate was Captain America, the one and only Super Soldier who saved America. After waking up as a cyborg, you had been assigned as the Captain’s assistant when he woke from the ice - much like how JARVIS was for Tony Stark. After the Battle of New York though, you had been forced out from hiding and moved in with Steve for the past two years.

Living with him finally let you experience the world for the first time and try out your new abilities.

Overall, you enjoyed the mundane way of life that you and Steve shared as you both tried to adjust to your surroundings. 

“Sure you’ll be warm enough?” Steve asked, noticing how you didn’t wear a jacket.

“Don’t worry about me,” you reassured him. “I’ve altered my internal body temperature and adjusted the cooling system to match weather right now. Are you ready?”

Steve couldn’t help but smile at your technical terms. Being a cyborg, you often spoke in this manner out of habit. Steve found it cute how you always tried to find ways to make things easier for him. As much as you found it to be your responsibility to look out for Steve, Steve felt it was his responsibility to protect you. Perhaps it was old fashioned, you personally admitted to Steve that you found his gestures to be endearing.

All in all, you both had a strong, reliable relationship as partners - even though it was clear there was something more between the two of you.

“Let’s go,” Steve agreed.

The two of you took off, starting off slow before picking up the pace. It was the usual long running route around New York, one that Steve would aim to do at least four or five times.

Initially, you had struggled with the run, unaccustomed to the extensive activity. Steve didn’t mind - in fact, he took it easy with you, building your endurance and pacing. Now, you were fully able to keep up with him and Steve commended your efforts.

The repetitive sound of feet pounding against the ground paired with steady breathing became the only sound that filled the air. Surprisingly, someone else, a man, running the same route as the two of you.

You fell back a bit, trailing behind Steve as the two of you ran by.

“On your left.”

It wasn’t long before the two of you saw him again as you ran along side the lake.

“On your left,” Steve called out again.

“Uh huh, on my left,” the man responded. “Got it.”

By the time you were about to make the third round past him, you decided to slow your pace down.

“Don’t say it, don’t say it,” the man chanted. 

Completely out of habit and courtesy, but at this point out of amusement, the words slipped out of Steve’s mouth.

“On your left.”

“Come on!”

You chuckled, changing your pace to match the man’s.

“Sorry about him,” you said, smiling. “He’s dedicated to his routine.”

The man panted but nodded. “He’s fast, how do you keep up?”

“Practice, its not easy though,” you cheerfully replied. “Nice to meet you, by the way, I’m (Y/N)!”

“Sam Wilson,” he replied. His brown eyes flickered up to the disappearing figure of Steve’s. “Sure it’s okay for you to leave your partner?”

“I’m sure we’ll catch up, if not, he’ll find us,” you brushed off. With how hard you had been pushing yourself to keep up with Steve, this pace felt more leisurely. “Is this run part of your morning routine?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Hard to break habit.”

By the time the sun was out and shining brightly, you and Sam took a break, resting under the shade of a tree. Using the connection link in your brain, you sent a message to Natasha, letting her know the morning run was over as promised.

Standing in front of Sam, you slowly stretched as you complied the statistic elements of your run, keeping track of your development. A notification in your brain alerted you to the Steve’s approach as well as Nat’s reply, ‘Thanks sweetheart. I’ll be there soon. :)’

“Need a medic?”

Sam laughed, looking up at the newcomer. “I need a new set of lungs. Dude, you just ran thirteen miles in like thirty minutes.”

“Guess I got a late start,” Steve replied.

“Really? You should be ashamed of yourself. You should take another lap. …did you just take it? I assume you just took it.”

You smiled, fondly watching Steve interact with Sam. It was nice seeing him converse with others.

“What unit are you in?” Steve asked.

“Fifty-eight para rescue, now I’m working down at the VA.”

With this new information, you almost instinctively searched Sam up in the military database. After working with the Avengers, it had fallen into a bit of a habit - perhaps, you could look up this former soldier, but at a later date. 

“Sam Wilson.”

“Steve Rogers,” your roommate answered. “I’m assuming you met (Y/N)?”

Sam and you exchanged nods.

“Must have freaked you out coming home after the whole defrosting thing.”

Steve sighed. “Takes some getting use to. I have (Y/N) here though, so it’s not that bad.”

Blue eyes met yours and you immediately caught onto his gesture. Walking over to his side, you waited for Steve’s next move.

“It was nice meeting you, Sam,” Steve acknowledged, turning away.

Your eyes flickered over to Sam, noticing his approach.

“Your bed,” Sam started.

“What?” Steve asked.

“Your bed is too soft,” Sam said. “Over there, I used rocks for a bed and pillow like a caveman, now I’m home, lying in my bed and it’s like...”

“Lying on a marshmallow,” Steve finished, nodding in agreement. “Feel like I’m going to sink right to the floor.”

The men continued their talk, and you flickered over the plan for the day in your head. Steve had so much to do after joining SHIELD, he always had the best intentions. You appreciated the efforts he put into every little thing - caring for you included.

“Marvin Gaye, 1978, Troubleman soundtrack. Everything you missed, jammed into one album.”

“I’ll put it on the list.”

Steve pulled out his notebook, the one kept around to note things down by hand. Despite having you, he hung onto simple things like this, showing his attachment to the past.

“I’ll add it too,” you mumbled, mentally adding to the growing list of things Steve wanted to look into.

Steve’s phone buzzed and the message flashed in your brain too.

‘Mission alert. Extraction imminent. Meet at the curb. :)’

“Alright, Sam, duty calls. Thanks for the run, if that’s what you want to call running.”

“Oh, that’s how it is?”

“Oh, that’s how it is.”

“Any time you want to stop by the VA, make me look awesome in front of the girl at the front desk, just let me know.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

The roaring approach of Nat’s car by the curb shifted your attention. 

“Hey fellas, either of you know where the Smithsonian is? I’m here to pick up a fossil,” Nat greeted. 

“Hilarious,” Steve retorted.

“Let’s run again together sometime!” you called out to Sam with a wave. Ducking into the backseat, you greeted the redhead. “Morning, Nat!” 

“Morning, darling,” Nat replied, flashing a smile your way.

Being the youngest among the group appeared to make you the soft spot for everyone. Most of them indirectly met you during the Battle of New York, when you had wirelessly communicated and aided Steve. Over the past two years, you’ve actually met some of them in person, proving them cared about you all the same.

“Can’t run everywhere,” Steve said to Sam.

“No, you can’t,” Sam agreed.

The car quickly took off and you made sure to click in your seat belt.

“Did Director Fury give me permission to come with you guys?” you asked, eager to hear Nat’s response. “I’ve been getting stronger, I think I can handle a mission.”

Nat offered you a sad smile when she made eye contact with you through the rear view mirror.

“Sorry sweetie. Fury say its not safe for you and because of the location, you won’t be able to contact us either.”

“I’ll try to convince Fury to let you join us next time,” Steve added. “I know you’ve been improving. Your hand to hand combat is great.”

You sighed, sparks of electricity fizzling from your fingers. Your inner bioelectricity was buzzing, waiting to be used. Concentrating, you let the electricity flow and made sure to control its power. A small electromagnetic force field appeared, pulsing with energy.

“When did you learn that?” Nat remarked, as you tore your eyes away from your hands.

“A few weeks ago,” you replied. “I’ve nearly perfected it.”

“Don’t underestimate her, Nat, (Y/N) is incredible.”

You blushed at Steve’s compliment and it appeared that Steve realized his words too, flushing slightly. Nat’s perceptive eyes didn’t miss a thing as she glanced at the two of you.

A incoming message alert flashed in the corner of your vision - urgent. You let the message open up, the content surprising you.

‘Meet me in SHIELD headquarters once Captain Rogers and Agent Romanoff head off for their mission. - Director Fury’