#i literally gave them a bibliography and required reading

[transmascmikey]

im so fucking exhausted. i spent 3+ hours yesterday debating how trans people deserve to be referred to by their desired pronouns even if they aren't in the room. press f to pay respects

[sisterofiris]

Everyday life in the Hittite empire

Have you ever wondered what your life would have been like if you had been born in central Anatolia 3500 years ago? No? Now that I’ve brought it up, are you curious to find out?

Well you’re in luck, because that’s just what this post is about. So sit back, close your eyes, and imagine yourself in Anatolia - that is, modern Turkey. Are you ready? Can you see the mountains, the red river and the towering buildings of your capital, Ḫattuša? Can you hear the chariots driving up the road? Can you feel the electric brewing of a storm in the distance?

Then let’s go.

(With a brief disclaimer: while I study Hittitology, this is not intended as an academic-level post. It was written to give general, approachable insights into Hittite culture and can be used as writing inspiration or to titillate curious history nerds around you, but if you’re writing an academic paper on the subject, I would recommend you check out the bibliography instead.)

About you

First things first, are you older than five? If so, congratulations on being alive. Child mortality in this place and time is very high, so you’re one of the luckier ones among your siblings. You probably have at least a couple of those; you may even have as many as six or seven, especially if you come from a well-to-do family with access to good healthcare. When you were little, your parents might have told you the tale of Zalpa, in which the queen of Neša gives birth to thirty sons then thirty daughters who marry each other, but you know this only happens in the stories - not to normal people.

When you were born, your parents rejoiced regardless of your sex, as sons and daughters are equally valued in your society (albeit for different reasons). Your father took you on his knee and gave you a good Hittite name: maybe Armawiya, Ḫarapšili, Kilušḫepa or Šiwanaḫšušar for a girl, or Anuwanza, Kantuzili, Muwaziti or Tarḫuzalma for a boy. Gender-neutral names, such as Anna, Muwa and Šummiri, would also have been an option. Many people around you have Hurrian or Luwian names, even if they are not ethnically Hurrian or Luwian themselves. (This is comparable to the modern popularity of Hispanic names like Diego, or French names like Isabelle.)

It’s hard to say what you would have done during childhood. While your earliest years would have been spent playing and babbling in grammatically incorrect Hittite, by the age of six or seven you may well have already started training in the family profession. If a girl, you would have been taught to weave by your mother; if a boy, you might have helped your father out on the farm, tried your hand at making pottery, or spent long hours learning cuneiform. (There may have been careers requiring gender non-conformity, as there was in Mesopotamia, but as far as I am aware this has not been proven.) You know that even the noblest children are given responsibilities - king Ḫattušili himself was once a stable boy.

Now, as an adult, you are a working professional contributing directly to Hittite society. You look the very portrait of a Hittite: as a woman, you have long, dark hair that you probably keep veiled, and as a man, your hair is around shoulder-length and your face clean-shaven. Ethnically, though, you are likely a mixture of Hittite, Luwian, Hurrian, Hattian, and depending on when and where exactly you live, maybe Assyrian, Canaanite or even Greek. There’s a fair chance Hittite might not actually be your native language. Still, you consider yourself a Hittite, and a subject of the Hittite king.

Well, now you know who you are, let’s get along with your day!

Your home and environment

Your day begins the way most people’s days do: you wake up at home, in your bed. As an average Hittite, you probably sleep on the floor rather than on elevated furniture. Your floor is either paved or of beaten earth, and your house itself has stone foundations and mud brick walls, with a flat roof supported by timber beams. Windows are scarce and small, to keep the indoor temperature stable.

Outside, the rest of the settlement is waking up too. Statistically, you live in a village or small town, surrounded by forest and mountains. Summers here are hot and dry, and winters cold and snowy, with spring and autumn being marked by thunderstorms. Most inhabitants work as farmers, relying on the weather for their survival. Contagious illnesses are a constant threat - under king Muršili II, the land suffered a deadly plague for twenty years - as are enemy invasions. If you live within the bend of the red river, in the Hittite heartland, consider yourself lucky; if not, your settlement could well be shifting from one kingdom’s property to another and falling prey to both sides’ raids on a yearly basis.

Admitting no enemy forces are in the area today, you take your time to get up. You might tiredly stumble to the outhouse to go pee. Eventually, you’ll want to get dressed.

Clothing

As a man, your clothes comprise of a kilt or sleeved tunic, with a belt of cloth or leather. As a woman, you wear a long dress and, if you are married, a veil. All clothing is made from wool or linen, and a variety of dyes exist: red, yellow, blue, green, black and white are all colours mentioned in texts. If you are rich enough, you may be able to import purple-dyed fabric from Lazpa (Greek Lesbos) or the Levant. You will also want to flaunt your wealth with jewellery, regardless of gender.

Of course, your shoes have upturned ends in the Hittite style. Historians will tease you for this. Don’t listen to them. You look awesome.

Mealtime!

It’s now time for one of your two daily meals (the other will take place in the evening, after your work for the day is done). This will be prepared at the hearth, a vital element of every home, and which is likely connected to an oven. The staple of your diet is bread; in fact, it is so common that “bread”, in cuneiform texts, is used as a general term for food. It is usually made from wheat or barley, but can also be made from beans or lentils.

Worried you’ll get bored of it? You needn’t be: your society has enough types of bread that you could eat a different one each day for a whole season. Fig bread, sour bread, flat bread and honey bread are just some of your options, along with spear bread and moon bread... yes, in other words, baguettes and croissants. (Something tells me the Hittites and the French would have a lot to talk about.)

You also have various fruits and vegetables available: cucumber, leek, carrots, peas, chickpeas, lentils, beans, olives, figs, dates, grapes, pomegranates, onions, garlic, and more. Your diet is completed by animal products, including cheese, milk, butter, and meat, mainly from sheep and goats but also cows and wild game. Honey, too, is common.

These ingredients can be combined into all sorts of dishes. Porridge is popular, as are stews, both vegetarian and meat-based. Meat can also be broiled and quite possibly skewered onto kebabs. And of course, food would be boring without spices, so you have a variety of those to choose from too: coriander are cumin are just two of them.

As for drinks, you can have beer, wine, beer-wine (good luck figuring out what that is), milk or water. If you’re well-to-do enough, you may own a rhyton, a drinking vessel shaped like an animal such as a stag or bull. Don’t forget to libate to the Gods before drinking your share.

Daily work

The next thing on your plate, after food, is work. What you do depends on your social status and gender, and most likely, you do the same work as your parents did before you. You could be something well-known like a king, priest, scribe, merchant, farmer or slave, but don’t assume those are all the possibilities; you could also be, for example, a gardener, doctor, ritual practitioner, potter, weaver, tavern keeper, or perfume maker.

It’s impossible to go into detail on every career option you would have in Hittite society, so for the sake of brevity, let’s just discuss four - two male-dominated, and two female-specific.

Farmer

As a farmer, you are the backbone of your society. You and your peers are responsible for putting food on the plates of Hittites everywhere, thus ensuring the survival of the empire.

Like many farmers, you live on a small estate, most likely with both crops (or an orchard) and livestock to take care of. You may own cows, sheep, goats, pigs, horses, donkeys, and/or ducks. Your daily routine and tools aren’t that different from other pre-industrial cultures, though you have it a little rougher than most due to the Anatolian mountain terrain. If you have the means, you hire seasonal workers - both male and female - to help out as farmhands, and you may own a few slaves.

You get up early to milk the cows, and at the onset of summer, you or a hired herdsman may lead your livestock up to mountain pastures to graze. Depending on the season and the work that needs to be done, you may spend your day ploughing the fields, harvesting grain or fruit, tending livestock, shearing sheep, birthing a calf, repairing the barn, or various other tasks. Make sure to take proper care of everything: new animals are expensive, and losing one could get you into a precarious situation. In particular, you’ll want to keep an eye out for bears, wolves, foxes, and even lions and leopards.

Scribe

Few people are literate in Hittite society, and you are one of the lucky ones. You have been learning to read and write in three languages (Sumerian, Akkadian and Hittite) since childhood, and after long years of copying lexical lists and ancient myths, your education is now complete.

As a scribe, you are the dreaded bureaucrat. In a small town, you likely work alongside the town administrator, recording tax collections and enemy sightings as well as corresponding with other towns, and with the capital. You and your peers are the go-to people for officialising marriage agreements and divorces, drawing up work contracts, and creating sales receipts. If not in the town administration, you could also work in a temple, recording the results of oracles, cross-checking the correct procedures for a ritual, and making sure everything necessary for a festival is available. If you are particularly lucky, you may be employed by the nobility or even the palace, and be entrusted with such confidential tasks as writing the king’s annals or drafting an international treaty.

Regardless of where you are, two things are essential to your job: a stylus and a tablet. You may be a “scribe of the clay tablets”, in which case you will need to carry around a bit of clay wherever you go (and some water to moisten it). Otherwise, you are a “scribe of the wooden tablets”, in which case you use a wax tablet in a wooden frame, which requires less maintenance. It’s unclear whether these types of tablet are used for different purposes.

Fun fact: you likely have a few pen pals around the Hittite empire. After corresponding with other scribes for so long, you’ve started writing each other messages at the bottom of your tablets, asking each other how you’re doing and to say hi to each other’s families. Your employers needn’t know.

Weaver

Weaving, to a Hittite like you, is the quintessential female activity, along with textile-making in general. Like farming, this is a backbone of your society: without weaving, there would be no clothes, and without clothes, well, you can’t do much.

As a weaver, you produce textiles for your family and in many cases also for sale. You work in an atelier within your home, along with the other women of the household, keeping an eye on your smallest children as they play nearby. While your husband, brothers or sons may transport and sell your handiwork, you are the head of your own business.

You are skilled in multiple weaving techniques, and can do embroidery and sew fabric into various shapes (including sleeves - take that, Classical Greeks). You create clothing for all sorts of occasions, including rituals and festivals, outdoor work, and winter weather, and if you are lucky enough to be commissioned by the nobility, you put your best efforts into clothing that will show off their status. Don’t try to cheat anyone out of their money, though; prices are fixed by law.

Old Woman

Contrary to what you might expect, you don’t need to be old to be an Old Woman - this is a career just like any other, though it probably does require a certain amount of life experience and earned respect. As an Old Woman, you are a trained ritual practitioner and active in all sorts of cultic, divinatory and magical ceremonies.

Most commonly, you are hired for rituals protecting against or removing evil. Your services may solve domestic quarrels, cure a sick child, or shield someone from sorcery (a constant threat in your society). This is done through symbolic acts like cutting pieces of string, breaking objects, and sacrificing and burning animals, which are of course accompanied by incantations - sometimes in Hittite, sometimes in other languages, like Hurrian.

Far from a village witch, you are high-placed in Hittite society and trusted by the royal family itself. You have taken part in major rituals and festivals, including funerals, and you perform divinatory oracles too. This last responsibility gives you a large amount of influence over the king and queen; if you establish that something should be done, then it almost certainly will be. Use this power well... or not.

Your loved ones

After a long day ploughing fields, writing tablets, weaving clothes or reciting incantations, it’s finally time to reunite with your loved ones. For adults, these likely - but not necessarily! - include a spouse and children. You may just live with your nuclear family, but living with extended family is also common, and there may be as many as twenty people in your household. Siblings, aunts and uncles, parents, grandparents, children and babies all share the evening meal with you, and some nights, you might gather afterwards to sing and dance, tell stories, and play games.

You also have relationships outside of home. Friendship is valued by Hittite society, with close friends calling each other “brother” and sister”. You might meet up with them regularly at the local tavern for a beer and a bit of fun. Someone there might even catch your eye... Interestingly, there are no laws against that person being of the same gender as you. So, same or different gender, why not try your luck tonight?

Greater powers

It’s impossible to spend a day in the Hittite empire without encountering religion. The Land of a Thousand Gods is aptly named: Gods are in everything, from the sun to the mountains to the stream at the back of your house to fire to a chair. You should always be conscious of their power, and treat them with respect. Though there are few traces of it, you may have a household shrine where you make libations or offer a portion of your meal. Your Gods may be represented by anthropomorphic statues, by animals such as a bull, by symbols such as gold disks, or even by a stone. Either way, treat these objects well; the divine is literally present in them.

You should also be wary of sorcery. Never make clay figures of someone, or kill a snake while speaking someone’s name, or you will face the death penalty. Likewise, always dispose of impurities carefully, especially those left over from a purification ritual (such as mud, ashes, or body hair). Never toss them onto someone else’s property. Has misfortune suddenly struck your household? Is your family or livestock getting sick and dying? These are signs that someone has bewitched you.

Some days are more sacred than others. You participate in over a hundred festivals every year, some lasting less than a day, some lasting a month, some local, some celebrated by the entire Hittite empire. The most important of these are the crocus festival and the purulli festival in spring, the festival of haste in autumn, and the gate-house festival, possibly also in autumn. The statues of the Gods are brought out of the temples, great feasts are held, and entertainment is provided through music, dance and sports contests. Depending on how important your town is, the king, queen or a prince might even be in attendance. All this excitement is a nice break from your regular work!

Sleep and dreams

Phew, what a busy day it’s been. The sun, snared in the trees’ branches, has set on the Hittite land, and you are ready for bed. Time to wrap yourself snugly in blankets and go to sleep.

You may dream, in which case, try to remember as much as you can. Dreams can be a vehicle for omens. Maybe, if the Gods are kind, you might catch a glimpse of what the next days, months and years hold in store for you.

Good night!

Bibliography

Beckman, Gary, “Birth and Motherhood among the Hittites”, in Budin, Stephanie Lynn, Macintosh Turfa, Jean, Women in Antiquity: Real Women across the Ancient World, Abingdon 2016 (pp. 319-328).

Bryce, Trevor, Life and Society in the Hittite World, Oxford 2002.

Bryce, Trevor, “The Role and Status of Women in Hittite Society”, in Budin, Stephanie Lynn, Macintosh Turfa, Jean, Women in Antiquity: Real Women across the Ancient World, Abingdon 2016 (pp. 303-318).

Golec-Islam, Joanna, The Food of Gods and Humans in the Hittite World, BA thesis, Warszawa 2016.

Hoffner, Harry A., “Birth and name-giving in Hittite texts”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 27/3 (1968), pp. 198-203.

Hoffner, Harry A., “Daily life among the Hittites”, in Averbeck, Richard E., Chavalas, Marc W., Weisberg, David B., Life and Culture in the Ancient Near East, Bethesda 2003 (pp. 95-118).

Marcuson, Hannah, “Word of the Old Woman”: Studies in Female Ritual Practice in Hittite Anatolia, PhD thesis, Chicago 2016.

Wilhelm, Gernot, “Demographic Data from Hittite Land Donation Tablets”, in Pecchioli Daddi, Franca, Torri, Giulia, Corti, Carlo, Central-North Anatolia in the Hittite Period: New Perspectives in Light of Recent Research, Roma 2009 (pp. 223-233).

[jeannereames]

Writing Historical Fiction (Well)

From an anonymous ask:

"What advice would you give to someone who wants to write about Alexander?" Sorry I didn't clarify, I was thinking of writing a fictional novel (but do not plan to publish it, lol)

If you’re just writing for yourself with no plans to publish, you don’t have to worry about constraints like wordcount and publishability. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to sell mainstream historicals. Selling a genre historical is easier (historical fantasy, historical mystery, historical romance). But there’s a reason it took me 30 years to get Dancing with the Lion into print. Yes, some of that time I was actually writing it, but much more was devoted to finding a market for it, and notice that I did, finally, have to sell it as genre even though it isn’t really. (It was that or shelve it forever.)

Yet if you’re asking for my recommendations, I assume you want to write something that’s marginally readable. Ergo, what follows is general advice I’d give anybody writing historical fiction.

For historicals, one must keep track of two things simultaneously: telling a good story, and portraying history accurately enough. It’s possible to do one well, but the other quite badly.

First, let’s look at how to write a good story.

There are two very basic sorts of stories: the romance, and the novel. Notice it’s romance small /r/. A romance is an adventure story; in romances, the plot dominates and characters serve the plot. A novel is character-driven, so plot events serve character development. Dancing with the Lion is a novel.

Once you’ve decided which of those you’re writing, you have a better handle on how to write it. You also need to know where you’re going: what’s the end of the story? What are the major plot points? Writers who dive in with no road map tend to produce bloated books that require massive edits. That said, romances will almost always be faster paced, in part because “what’s happening” drives it. Whereas in novels, the impact of events on characters drives it. Exclusive readers of romances are rarely pleased by the pacing of novels. They’re too slow: “Nothing is happening!” Things are happening, but internally, not externally.

Yet pacing does matter. Never let a scene do one thing when it can do three.

You will want to pay attention to something called “scene and sequel.” A “scene” is an event and a “sequel” are the consequences. So let’s say (as in my current MIP [monster in progress]) you open with a fugitive from the city jail racing through the streets with guards following: he leaps the wall of a rich man’s house and ends up in the bedroom of a visiting prince. That’s the scene. The sequel is the fall-out. (House searched, prince hides fugitive, prince gets fugitive to tell him why he’s running.) Usually near the end of the sequel(s) to the first scene, you embed the hook to the next (a slave of the rich man has been found murdered outside the city walls). The next scene concerns recovering the body and what they discover (then fall-out from that). Etc., etc., etc.

That’s how stories progress. Or don’t progress, if the author can’t master scene-sequel patterns.

It also means—again—you need to know where you’re going. Outlines Are Your Friends. But yes, your plot can still take a sharp left-hand turn that surprises you…they almost always do.

When I sat down to write Dancing with the Lion, I knew three things:

1)     I wanted to write about Alexander before he became king.

2)     I wanted to explore his relationship with Hephaistion.

3)     I especially wanted to consider how both became the men they’d did.

With those goals in mind, I could frame the story. Because I always intended Hephaistion to be as important as Alexander, the novel opens in his point-of-view to establish that. And because I didn’t want to deal with Alexander as king, the novel had to end before he became one. History itself gives a HUGE and obvious gift in the abrupt murder of Philip. Where to open was harder to decide, but as I wanted to explore the boys’ friendship and its impact on their maturation into men, I should logically begin with their meeting, and decided not to have them meet too young. From there, I spun out Hephaistion’s background, and his decision to run away from home to join the circus, er, I mean Pages. 😉

IMO, Alexander’s story is Too Big to do in a single novel, or you get an 800+ page monstrosity like Chris Cameron’s God of War. The author must decide on what piece of the story she wants to tell. (Or, like me, view it as a series.)

So that’s (in a nutshell) how you construct a story.

As for the historical side, there are three levels here:

1)     What the world looks like (details).

2)     The events that take place.

3)     How people living in that world understand life, the universe, and everything.

Number two is probably the easiest. Numbers one and three require deeper research on all sorts of things. Sometimes historical novels spend all their time on number one and completely forget number three exists.

The past is a foreign country. Just as you wouldn’t (or at least shouldn’t) write a novel set in Japan (if you’re American) without learning something not only about the physical country but also the customs…same with stories set in the past.

This is why the Oliver Stone movie failed. He put modern people in a costume drama. He didn’t understand how ancient Macedonians (or Greeks or Persians) thought. So he committed crazy anachronisms like the oedipal complex between Alexander and Olympias. Freud may have named his theory after a Greek hero, but it’s largely a foreign idea to the Greek mind. (Whether it’s valid at all is a topic for another day).

The author has to let ancient people be properly ancient.

Problem: what do you do when they’re SO foreign they’re impossible to understand for modern readers—or their attitudes are outright offensive?

Well, if you don’t plan to get your story published, you don’t have to worry about that. Or not as much. But if you want to share it with others, you might still want to consider it.

There are two basic approaches:

1)     Introduce your world through a “stranger” who enters it.

2)     Spread out more “modern” views among various characters in the story, to give modern readers something familiar to hang onto.

The first of those is by far the most common. So in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, Claire Randall—quite literally a modern woman—introduces the modern reader to Jacobite Scotland. As she learns about her new world, so does the reader, and in Claire, the reader has a voice to express both their fascination and their horror of that world. In Judith Tarr’s Lord of the Two Lands, she uses Meriamon, an Egyptian priestess, to enter the Macedonian world of Alexander. Judy can then contrast Egyptian and Macedonian cultural values in order to explain them. Meriamon asks questions the reader wants answers to—or Niko (or Alexander) ask questions of her about Egypt.

The second choice (which is what I did in Dancing) is to identify cultural mores likely to offend modern readers: indifference to slavery, glorification of war and conquest, Greco-Macedonian attitudes towards women, and Greco-Macedonian attitudes towards sexuality. Then to assign one of the characters to voice a more modern view. Alexander gets to be a proto-feminist, and I gave points of view to two women. One of those women, I made a slave. Hephaistion gets to express a more modern view regarding the horrors of war. Sexuality was a bit tougher, but I used the boys’ atypical relationship—that the younger is the one of higher status—to illustrate Greco-Macedonian assumptions about what a male-male relationship should look like.

That approach presents more hurdles, but for my purposes, I preferred it.

I harp on this because it’s the biggest problem for historical fiction: not having historical characters! It wrecks what might otherwise be decent research into the details. No matter how much you look up what they ate, how they dressed, the way their houses were laid out…if you have them behaving anachronistically, it’s a bad historical. Or if you have circumstances that just wouldn’t occur.

Let me give an example. I’ve said before that, when I started writing the novel in December of 1988, Dancing always began with a run-away boy (Hephaistion). But in my initial version, he showed up in Pella incognito. The more I read about Macedonia, however, the more I realized that was virtually impossible. There just weren’t that many Hetairoi. He’d have been recognized, and probably sooner rather than later. So I went back to the drawing board and, instead of having him try to hide, he comes right out and says who he is, and that he wants to join the Pages. It might take away the “mystery,” but set up more interesting dynamics: would Philip let him stay? What would his father do? Etc.

That requires the author know enough about the culture to know what’s possible, probable, and impossible. It also requires the author to be willing to change original plans in order to reflect reality, not insist on doing ___ anyway.

A good example of jettisoning history in favor of “what I want to do!” can be found in David Gemmell’s Lion of Macedon. So many, many things wrong with that book, starting with his choice to make Parmenion a Spartan for no historical reason whatsoever—but (I assume?) because Spartans Are Sexy. Parmenion likely belonged to the royal house of Upper Macedonian Pelagonia. Although even if he didn’t, absolutely nothing suggests he wasn’t Macedonian, and quite a lot says he was. The whole duology (with included The Dark Prince) was essentially Blue Boltz ™ Epic Fantasy Does Greece. The fact he actually included a bibliography in back, and got weird, isolated details right only added insult to injury.

Yet Gemmell was a best-selling British fantasy novelist who knew pacing and how to spin a good yarn. For a reader with zero knowledge of Alexander, it would stack up as a predictable but tolerable fantasy set.

Remember that as an historical fiction author, your job is to practice the art of getting it right. If that isn’t important to you, please God, write something completely made up.

At the spectrum’s other end is Showing Notecards on Every Page. You’ve done ALL that hard research, and you’ll be damn sure the reader knows it!

Um, the reader doesn’t care. The reader wants to be transported to another world. How locals in that world shoed horses (or if they shoed horses at all) is irrelevant. It matters only if your main character’s a farrier. And even then, it matters only if said-farrier is having a conversation with someone else while shoeing a horse.

If people want all the little details of history, they’ll read a history book.

Now, how much detail is “too much” can vary from reader to reader, and often has something to do with the genre.

Regular readers of historical fiction are fans because they enjoy history. So they’ll expect proper world-building. But they don’t want the Dreaded Information Dump. Weave in details. The Dreaded Information Dump is a common beginning-author error across the board, but especially bad in certain genres, such as historicals, fantasy, and SF.

What’s an “information dump”? It’s where the author provides details the reader doesn’t need at that point in the story. What the character looks like, is wearing, their family background, what they had for breakfast….

As mentioned, details should be woven into the story organically. What your character had for breakfast matters only if, later, it’s giving him/her gas: “Damn those beans in my breakfast burrito!” Some details may be useful to set a scene and prevent characters from walking around, having conversations in a void, but again, a light touch.

Similarly, One scene, One head. We do NOT need to see everything from each character’s point of view. No, really. We don’t. And dear God, please don’t “head-hop” inside of scenes (unless you’re writing omniscient, but be sure you know what omniscient IS). Drives me BUGGY.

Anyway, back to the Notecard Showing Problem. As noted above, genre expectations and reader preferences often dictate what IS “too much detail.” Generally, historical Romance (the genre) and historical mysteries go lighter on detail than historical fantasy or plain historicals. That’s because the former two have genre conventions that work against it. Romances preference the love story front-and-center at all times, and mysteries have a mystery to unravel. E.g, they’re plot driven. By contrast, historical fantasies tolerate more world building because world building itself is a feature of fantasy (and science fiction too). And the appeal of mainstream or literary historicals IS the world building, so you get massive novels like Ken Follet’s Pillars of the Earth.

I’m blathering now, but hopefully this gives pointers not just about writing Alexander, but writing fiction period, and historical fiction in particular.

[dadvans]

Please share your thing on Nate macK horndogging on lil croz. For science

for anyone who wants to understand WHY i horndog over sidnate, @emilyisobsessed made a great two-part primer that i urge everyone and anyone to check out here: part one, part two

continued, obvious required reading would also be to watch all of the tim horton’s commercials and respective bloopers they film together each summer. DEEPLY moved by nate’s ability to reduce sid to a giggling mess just by emphatically saying “sidney”:

2015: Operating Tim Horton’s Drive-Thru Together, Upper Deck Trading Cards, +BLOOPERS

2016 Tim’s Runs

2017: Gary from Belleville, Jeff from Kelowna

2018: New Ride, +BLOOPERS, +FRENCH

The 2018 Away Game mini-documentary about the Kenya Ice Lions

that said, YES i have a ten-page annotated bibliography for this awful fic i’m writing. let me condense, highlight and expand on some Important Points derived from that beyond the primer (READ THE PRIMER!):

Nate built his own house LITERALLY driveway-to-driveway of Sid’s in 2017. That fall Nate mentioned in an interview that Sid might be moving away/selling his house (12:56). We got this direct follow up last November:

“For much of the past two years, Sidney Crosby convinced Nathan MacKinnon that he was moving. Normally this wouldn’t cause any alarm, except for the small detail that MacKinnon was just finishing construction on a summer house along Grand Lake in Nova Scotia … less than a one-minute walk from Crosby’s estate. The plan had been for them to train together, using their respective private gyms and mutual conditioning gurus. No doubt MacKinnon was generally pleased about becoming neighbors with a close friend and fellow Cole Harbour native too.Finally, as MacKinnon’s place was just nearing completion last offseason, Crosby gave up the gag. “He was pretty upset over that,” Crosby says. “I had him going for a while. Then I told him one time, ‘I’m not going anywhere. It’s all good.’” 

I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE!!!! W O O F

CAN YOU BELIEVE THESE IDIOTS

Nate also mentions that Sid is a “good cook” and he went over there “every night for dinner.” 

From the same linked SI Article: “And so their natural summer schedule resumed, MacKinnon popping over most mornings for workouts and Crosby cooking everyone lunch afterwards.” Y’all this + making dinner for Nate + that Spittin Chiclets anecdote from Andy O’Brien about Sid stress cleaning his house = MAJOR horny feelings about Domestic Househusband Sidney Crosby

from this 2015 piece: Nathan MacKinnon walked by Sidney Crosby’s display case every time he carried his hockey bag into the rink as a minor hockey player. “Yeah, that’s been there a long time. It’s been there ever since he made the NHL. About 10 years now (…) I used to stop and stare in there almost every day and look at all Sid’s stuff and dream.”

Please peep these moments that were giffed from the primer: 

Tender Sidney Crosby Birthday Skate Spanking & Hug

Nate chasing Sid down on the ice at practice to sweep him into a post-goal hug

Also, please don’t sleep on Nathan MacKinnon. He is a treasure, just the most delightful meatloaf man. Here is one of my favorite anecdotes from the 2018 Sportsnet piece on him by the first writer who interviewed him in 2009:

“He wasn’t a particularly precocious kid, and seemed singularly unimpressed that a writer and photographer had shown up at his front door. He made us promise not to tell his parents when he went through the ice up to his shin after posing, against their advice, on the semi-frozen lake in back of the family home.”

TL;DR nate brings sid’s giggly dorky dad side out full force, has admired him since he was a kid and now they’re best friends who live next door to each other, they travel the world together, they tease flirt in literally every piece of media they’re in together, they constantly talk about each other in every interview. i’m waiting patiently for sid to come home from austria so i can get my regular summer boyfriends content of them grocery shopping together asap. 

[empressxmachina]

--Also on Wattpad--

Mouse Trap, pt. 3

“I can see you just fine.”

“Oh… Oh, my god,” Lauren breathed in her own panic and filth, slid down her wall with her back to it, toppled in a puddle of regurgitated food, sweat, fear, and tears.

If she was indeed in one of his spaces as it had appeared, then it was sensible that he could see her whenever he desired. Knowing how or, worse, why, however, was another story that she wasn’t sure that she wanted to read. As exciting as the technology seemed, was she as safe as this overbearing onlooker tried to claim?

With every new action and word, Lauren’s confidence waned.

The enhanced zoom on the screen was then stretched further out, revealing the entire plaza that held Lauren and later, eventually, the whole block in which it was contained. Everything not within a certain radius from the center was smudged into a blur, almost as if he rubbed it all out for himself, giving all that was untouched a tilt-shift feel. Her form, now more antlike than ever, was illuminated in a bolder, verdant glow to differentiate her from everything else, which proved immediately useful.

Mesa Metro was, in her eyes, the miniature megapolis she had only envisioned it was to him up and over yonder.

The snapshot then became a living map of sorts, changing to a silent video with a snail trail in Lauren’s same green hue following her as she exited the area, taking some insectile public transit as far as she could go before walking the rest of the way. The rest of the days between then and now was spent with her glow spiraling in the same place as where she currently was: home, never leaving, never having expected a response.

With as much surveillance as she had for her things and how dystopian Mesa Metro could be at times, she never felt more out in the open than she did now. Luckily for her, there seemed to be no footage of her inside the house. Still, how much had he already learned of her domicile with her glasses and watch just sitting there?

Did his omnipresence include space within walls, too, or various altitudes of places, or other angles than the locked bird’s-eye – more like a midday sun’s eye – view? What were the chances he already figured out her house’s floor plan and her place in it?

“I haven’t gotten to probe your existence from end to end to know for sure, yet,” a new message started, somehow still legible from her further distance away, “but much is already clear.”

“Y-Yet?” Lauren echoed, audibly coughing from her own confusion. Whether he meant that he hadn’t finished or hadn’t started, she could only wonder... and hope he’d reconsider both options.

But she didn’t have to, for long.

“One could say I’m already halfway deep in prodding, managing this conversation and all,” the transcriptions continued. “So, why stop now?”

Lauren’s heart sank, her wishes vanishing like his words every few seconds. ‘Halfway?’ In only some minutes!? She was officially stuck in quicksand with not enough calmness to get herself out. The remaining semblances of peace she could imagine were all in the after, nothing in the now. With that crater from a pen’s cap still fresh in memory, multiple visions of ends of days once again flashed in her head, ranging from elongated and cataclysmic to subtle and swift, all of his doing, surely, and it was all her fault.

“Well… with you not having manipulated your new ‘update’ for some time, now, perhaps you’ve seen enough of it.” Truer words had never been spoken. Lauren had seen enough of a lot. “Though with that research I appear to have interrupted, I would’ve guessed otherwise, believing you’d want as much as you could get.” That statement did nothing to relieve Lauren, either, proving he could go and had gone further into her data – her existence, even – on top of reading her psyche unfortunately well.

How deep would he go? How far could he go?

The dictating carried on. “You’ve fawned over me with your tiny files up to moments ago, and you’ll continue to do so. But in this now, despite all that…”

The ellipsis lingered, and Lauren waited for a judgment to be dealt unto her. Whatever she was to get, she deserved. She couldn’t say the same for Mesa Metro and all past it if it came to it, despite their flaws; she prayed she’d be forgiven when it was all over. That end wouldn’t be today, it seemed, as the foul stench of a new purpose – extreme subjugation or maybe just her upchuck – began to waft over her.

“…I grow tired of this single-handing for what should be a two-way affair, so I shall leave you to satiate.”

Before she could say or think anything else about this whole encounter, the disembodied domineered, shutting down his presentation, sucking every visual and word into a simulation centered on the screen. For uncomfortably long, it left a frozen void in which Lauren could only stare at her drained, draining self as she pushed off the wall and crept toward it.

Just as it started, it was nothing again.

Time went as slowly as her computer was dark, and she hated having to think for herself again. There were too many new variables now, and none of them made any sense.

“What… the fuck… was that?” Lauren interrogated herself, running a hand through her stringy hair, slumping in her chair. “Was… Was that shit real? Any of it?” With the pains in her body and the wetness on her clothes, there surely was no denying something bizarre went down just now. But saying that this was the first time she had ever gone delirious and malnourished in her own home would be a lie.

It was late. Lauren hadn’t gotten proper meals, exercise, sleep, or sunlight for days. The lack of lights on her computer showed that it wasn’t merely on standby or sleep mode but was entirely shut down, probably from inactivity. Her glasses and watch mirrored that, fading to a dim lime on the now dormant network connection. Her phone had died. Her room was a mess. She was a mess.  

Her present was a repeated past and a probable future. Nightmares as daydreams were a constant for her. While there was no way of denying the astral projection and municipal annihilation from days ago with her data and the outside news, she couldn’t think of any sane reason why a higher being like that – he – should waste effort on someone – something? – like her. Directly her.

She didn’t deserve the attention. She never did before, so why now?

Lauren could feel the essence of sleep attempt to overtake her, pulling her toward another haggard hibernation at her desk, despite her bed being within reach. On instinct, she began to pull her hoodie’s hood over her head and retract her arms out her sleeves to make a makeshift cushion that’d hopefully bolster her and any nearby gear and tools on her eventual fall out of consciousness.

A crick in her neck was eminent in a couple of hours as her figure faltered down… but the Fates decided to bring it in early with some sun.

Just as her eyes were to close, the computer suddenly awakened, shining its near-blinding light across Lauren’s scleras. She jerked back into action, seeing her lock screen come into focus.

“S-See?” she argued through a yawn. “It was just an update, after all. No need to worry.”

With no intention of continuing research further into the morning, Lauren decided to just play it safe, checking that the update didn’t set any progress back. If it had, she’d have to make a journey into one of her several external drives or servers and make a new surface-level copy. Going from program to program – note-takers, stimulators, other data aggregators – all appeared to be well, softening Lauren’s heart for a quick retiring to bed.

Her last stop was her blueprinting software, where she had a deconstructed view of the materials and layers used to construct her space-warping lenses and its logging watch supplement. So much technology stuffed within such a narrow space. Companies tried to do less with less success, yet here Lauren was, literally going out of the box, out of this world.

It was a marvel to see in action, and it was even more marvelous that it worked. Lauren knew she had prowess – she wouldn’t be freelancing, otherwise – but she was also her harshest critic. The collections of her own comments on her own works badgering how and why she did things in a particular way (and how they somehow managed to work) probably weren’t right for her mental state, but they pushed her to work harder with each new design.

The text and links in her margins and other documents linked externally were worthy of their own analyses and bibliographies. They all followed a just-as-intricate organizational system, too, categorizing thoughts by time, purpose, solution, and the like, along with graphic dividers like color, font, and size. With how frequently Lauren looked at her green sheen and its related script during testing and active use, she vehemently didn’t use them to jab at her own processes.

So, despite her tiredness, it was clear to see the lone flag of that scheme, amidst the waterfall of colorful banners and bubbles, slightly bolder and more massive than the rest.

“What?” Lauren questioned, scratching her scalp with uncertainty. Doing so showed her that she required a shampoo session, finding filth collecting under her nails, but that was an issue for another time. “Did… Did I make this?”

Hovering the mouse cursor over that flag, she found its author listed as not her name or alias but instead “<null>,” leading to several possibilities, all discomforting. A) it was her own comment, and self-referencing was apparently terrible, now, B) an invalid character was put in the wrong place, which could have its own map of reasons, or C) an unauthorized entity had gotten access to the system. Nothing in the background showed any signs of a virus, and nothing in the foreground gave any clue as to which cause was the true one. So, with bated breath, Lauren clicked twice and dove in.

The window hung for a period, a loading circle replacing the pointer and her anxieties with doubts of security again. She knew that doing anything when not at 100 percent or at least sixty percent had such a high probability of something going wrong or something important going missed. But she couldn’t back out now, not with her computer likely to lock up. Luckily, all stayed free and open, and that flag dimmed from being accessed. Though, from the looks of it, there was no reason why its reference should’ve frozen her system as it did.

It was a PDF with just a handful of pages, and two of them were blank.

The bookends were empty, and the inner layers didn’t have much to them, either. In fact, one of the pages was an exact copy of a print that Lauren had already made. Her materials list as diagrams was reposted as the second page. The page after that was similar, except that about half of the items were deleted. But the last page was a puzzle: an almost literal puzzle.

The second page was copied again; however, the missing items that Lauren knew were replaced with a new set in a similar style. They were all recognizable in some way, reasonably findable from a store or online, but a combination that she had never considered. Both as a group by itself and in totality with everything else, the question was how they all fit together.

Its creator, quickly made visible to not be herself, clearly knew what they were doing with the additional subtitle in the footer of the page: ‘to satiate.’ At the realization, a chill ran down Lauren’s spine.

It hadn’t been a dream.

There were no instructions, just visuals, and as the genius she was, Lauren knew what they all were meant to be, stating their purpose with a wheeze,

“An earpiece.” An optimized headset with a mic and speaker from which she felt a disgusting aura of déjà vu.

This was his earpiece: the one that put her in this debacle in the first place.

If her intuitions were right, then the construction wouldn’t be complicated. Maybe time-consuming, sure, based on the glasses and watch being the bases for it, but not hard. They would make things harder if she went through with making them, though. But did she really have a choice?

She was just a circuit in his machine, instructed to make new circuits for new machines for her circuitry in his machine to interact with the said machine and its circuits. It was laid out in front of her, like her monitor’s light across her face, including what would probably be an everlasting truth:

Her death would be heard.

[anythingstephenking]

Time Traveling Swing Dancers/Teachers/Assassins

Welp, I did it y’all. I made it full circle to the book that started it all, 11/22/63. I read this brick of a book back in 2016, which lead me to The Stand, which led me to a journey towards 73 novels. Bless your heart, 11/22/63.

I just love this book. My first read through back in the day took me only a couple days; my second trip back in time took me almost a week, still a feat for the 800+ pages of book. Let’s go.

Another tale, like Under The Dome, that ruminated in King’s mind since the 70’s but came to fruition in the 21st century. Although the idea kicked around in King’s head for decades, he was daunted by the research that would be required to tell the story properly, so I think he waited until he was swimming in that sweet sweet money to hire a research team. Per usual, I am speculating.

But King did have a research assistant on this book, that much is true. He also consulted with the likes of Doris Kearns Goodwin, a treasure of American history, who gave King some real fun ideas about what might have happened if JFK had lived. The research was obviously thorough, and like it or not, you sure learn a lot about real-life Lee Harvey Oswald in this work of fiction. You’ll also squiggle in your seat through reminders of racism and hate that lived out loud in the 60s, different but also the same as we see today. History doesn’t change everything.

King has said that the extensive research and reading he did to prepare to write this story confirmed in his mind that Oswald acted alone. While it’s fun to imagine conspiracy theories of magic bullets and a second shooter, if King believes, I’m inclined to believe. If QAnon has taught us anything, it’s that Americans love a conspiracy theory. If Jack Ruby hadn’t shot Oswald in that parking garage, we may have learned what actually happened on November 22, 1963. If Oswald had gone to trial and had been placed under oath. If his last words weren’t about how he was a patsy. If, if if. Maybe Jake should have stopped worrying about stopping Oswald and stopped Ruby instead.

So, yeah, Jake Epping. Our hero of this tale. He’s a writer that teaches and lives in Maine. I mean, if I had a dollar for every time I started a book summary with that sentence, I’d have like $10 bucks and I probably go buy myself a fancy coffee of something.

Jake’s a teacher and loves hamburgers! Who doesn’t. He get’s them cheap at his favorite diner, from the proprietor named Al Templeton, who harbors a pretty rad secret that he’s gunna toss onto Jake. Now, why Jake? I mean, I don’t really know. Al doesn’t have any family and Jake is young and unattached? I suppose at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter, because Jake, like Frodo Baggins before him, is off on an adventure.

Because Al’s diner is actually a portal back in time. We all suspend some disbelief - it’s some version of a thinny (maybe?) that plops you from present day back to 1958. The rules are this: however long you spend in the past, you can return to the future just 2 minutes after you left. Al says there’s no impact on quick trips - Al’s been going back and forth for years buy ground beef for his cheap burgers - but when you do something that might change the future, the past will push back. We learn that Al is very, very wrong, but more on that later.

Al’s set out to save John Fitzgerald Kennedy from his head exploding, but the past gave him lung cancer and he didn’t make it to ’63. He’s back in the present and ready to tag Jake into the ring to get back to the fight for him. Jake hesitates but not NEARLY enough. Seriously, if some stranger told you had to go back in time, follow around a total assmunch for 5 years and live WITHOUT CELL PHONES OR NETFLIX?? I don’t care how delicious the root beer in 1958 is. Fuck that.

Jake goes. A couple times actually. He’s first interested in saving Harry, the high school janitor’s family from being murdered, which is a real noble cause. The past gives him diarrhea, and he wears a diaper to take out the bad man. He fails the first time (diarrhea), heads back home to “reset”, and back to 1958, succeeding the second time around. Sayonara douche.

We cross paths with Beverly and Beep Beep Ritchie in Derry, where Jake spends a fair amount of time in 1960. The town is dark, creepy and troubled, and Jake hates being there. Little interconnected web of the King-o-Verse is always there, and I love every second of it. 

Jake heads to Dallas to wait on Oswald, realizes he hates it (lol, fuck Dallas-Fort Worth), and moves out to the country instead. He gets a nice little job and meets a librarian, and our heroine, Sadie. Sadie’s got some real baggage in the form of a psychotic ex-husband (men are mostly the worst in this book) but her and Jakie fall in love anyways. She’s a well written, strong female lead and I haven’t loved a female King character this much since Lisey.

General consensus is that the mid-section of this book is that it drags a little bit, but I couldn’t disagree more. Sure, does Jake putting on a big theater production have literally anything to do with Lee Harvey Oswald? Nope. But I loved all Jake’s time in Jodie, Texas. He falls in love with Sadie, they are lovely and happy, and albeit doomed because of time travel, it’s a wonderful distraction from all the heaviness.

That said, PLEASE Stephen King, DON’T WRITE SEX SCENES LIKE THIS. ::Monkey with hands over eyes emoji:: The sex stuff is awful. There’s a lot of broad references to Jake and Sadie’s love life, like “She looked. Then she touched.” Gross.

Exhibit B:

She said, "Don't make me wait, I've had enough of that," and so I kissed the sweaty hollow of her temple and moved my hips forward ... She gasped, retreated a little, then raised her hips to meet me. "Sadie? All right?"

"Ohmygodyes," she said and I laughed. She opened her eyes and looked up at me with curiosity and hopefulness. "Is it over, or is there more?"

"A little more," I said. "I don't know how much. I haven't been with a woman in a long time."

It turned out there was quite a bit more … At the end she began to gasp. "Oh dear, oh my dear, oh my dear dear God, oh sugar!"

Guys, this passage was from Sadie’s FIRST TIME. She comes? And Jake notices there is blood on the sheets afterwards. But she orgasmed. Yeah ok, sure.

Other than poorly written Harlequin romance passages, the rest of the story clips along with lots of fun (and not so fun) bits, leading the the culmination of Jake (spoilers) killing Oswald. Sadie dies in the process and it is heart wrenching. But at least the world got saved?

WRONG. Another gripe is this; Jake goes back to 2007 and it’s a fucking post apocalyptic wasteland. Nuclear war has ruined the globe - Jake somehow crosses paths with Harry the janitor, who gives him a 5 minute synopsis of how everything went to hell. It is TOO SHORT. Why do we spend so little time here? I want more dystopian future.

We also get a brief bit about how each trip back isn’t a real “reset” - each one triggers a new “string” or parallel universe. Al’s diner isn’t the only passage, and anyone that has read the Dark Tower books gets it. Al was dumb and Jake was dumb, and at the end of the day Jake resets the past and saves this new string from nuclear fallout but you know those poor souls that were on that timeline are still fucked?

Anywho, the end is lovely and King changed what he originally planned (which was lame) at his son’s suggestion. Good job Joe Hill. Maybe I’ll read some of his books someday.

So that’s 11/22/63. This is the latest in King’s bibliography that I have already read, so I’m headed into the last 20 or so novels without any spoilers at all. I still haven’t even let myself watch The Outsider on HBO yet.

Speaking of adaptations, Lisey’s Story on Apple+ starts airing on Friday. Will be watching and hope that it is better than The Stand.

9/10

First Line: I had never been what you would call a crying man.

Last Line: Then the music takes us, the music rolls away the years, and we dance.

Adaptations:

A Hulu miniseries! They did 2 seasons of Castle Rock, so they’re a-ok in my book. Anything not produced by ABC is a-ok with me. I watched it when it aired and it was pretty decent IIRC. I’ve started rewatching, but only made it through the first episode so far. It’s a hard rewatch knowing what a creep James Franco is. And his fake goatee in the first 30 minutes is the actual worst.

The show takes its own liberties with the plot which is fine; Jake gets a partner in crime named Bill; without Bill we’d have a lot of internal Franco monologue I’d guess. The show is well cast and well acted, and has an 8.2 on IMDB, so it’s doing a lot better than most King projects.

James Franco channeling his inner Annie Wilkes.

[schoolenthusiast]

Some tips I wish I had known before starting grad school

A couple of weeks ago I answered someone’s question on Tumblr about what to expect/what to do when starting a PhD. It gave me the idea to extrapolate about the subject just in case it could help some fellow tumblr grad school enthusiasts.

1. Choose your program and advisor wisely

Before submitting your proposal, do some shopping for your graduate school program. It’s an important step because at this point, your future opportunities will often depend on where you are working and who you are working with. Who are the experts in your field of study? Where do they teach? What is their reputation → this is fairly important: try to get to know them as researchers (how often do they publish? where? what are their current research interests) but also as people (do they enjoy working with their grad students? are they involved in their faculty? are they easy to reach? how do they work? are they perfectionists or slackers?) 

The main idea here is to find someone who will be willing to mentor you and bring your research to the next level without shoving their ideas down your throat. I’m not saying you will become friends with them (although you could), but since you will be working with them and even for them for quite a while, it is really important that you choose them carefully. Academia is highly competitive, and you have to be able to trust your advisor.

2. Do some research before starting

Most of PhD students start their adventure during the fall semester, which means they have submitted their candidature during the winter semester, presumably while finishing either an undergrad program or any form of master’s degree. This means there is usually some time between the time you submit your thesis research proposal and the time you actually start as a PhD student. Take it as your advantage. In most cases, you will already have done some topic-related research at this point to submit your proposal. Getting a head start doesn’t mean you should reread everything during the summer, because it is more than ok to take some time to rest. What could be a good idea is to look at your main research material and focus on it so you get a better understanding of what you know and what you need to know.

Example : 

Let’s say you’re a lit student (like me). You know you want to work on Author X and have a critical approach inspired by the research of Y and W. Now, this has already been stated in your research proposal and you’ve read the necessary works before then (normally). 

A good place to start during the summer would be to reread the books of Author X to a) single out the ones you will be focusing on and maybe even annotate them and b) get a better understanding of their work as a whole. 

Then, you could reread the books by Y and W to make sure you understand them well. 

Once this is done, try to find the alternate theories about their research: is there anyone who contradicts them? what flaws are there in their ideas? how could the same mistakes be avoided? is the research usable in your given context? what are the precautions to take while using their methods? etc. → This will save you a ton of time later when you have to defend your methodological choices to research committees and similar academic boards.

If you have time and energy, you can even start to take notes about your different choices about the things you encounter during this phase (especially concerning step 4, since you will more than likely have to discuss it in your thesis later)

3. Get involved

Motivation is often hard to find in this incredibly long process (4-5 years for most of PhD programs... when things go well! imagine having a child or an illness during this time!). One thing I found that helped me was to get OUT of my research bubble and participate in things organized either by other students or professors. It can be attending a book launch, or just the end of semester party, or just attending the lecture your advisor gives to undergrads. Although these are sometimes time consuming, getting out of your place for a couple hours, breathing fresh air while you commute, talking to people and looking at something else than your computer screen helps a lot. You’ll come back from these events rested, and it will help you focus more.

Is your field so narrow there is literally nothing available for you to participate in? Organize one ! Most universities have special funds for organizing conventions and colloquials. You will get experience in diverse skills (budget, marketing, communication, etc.), meet people (who will most likely be impressed of the work you did to make this event possible) and make sure your implication stays in your uni’s history. If you feel like you don’t know your professors/advisor that much, this is a great way to get to know them: invite them to be keynote speakers at your event. This might help you attract even more “renowned” people to the event, as their circle of acquaintances might be broader than your own. Organizing a set of conference sure is energy and time-consuming, but the rewards are huge when it comes to your career. Who knows, maybe someone you will meet there will become a future colleague or a friend?

4. Do other things

What usually happens when people get into grad school is that they start wearing blinkers. Although I’m not sure if the idiom translates well to English (^^), it means that they get so focused on their research subject that they don’t notice anything else. They read only research-related stuff, attend research-related events, and meet research-related people. Although it might not seem dangerous (after all, you get to learn a lot and you get closer to your goal!), it can lead to completely overlooking something that could be crucial to your research! Reaching outside your traditional field of research will let you encounter new theories and methodology, new thinkers and new ideas. When you feel like you’re stuck on a problem, taking a step back can often let you reconsider and see it differently. Talk to your problems to the people around you, but not necessarily people in your field. Their ideas and insight might help you get out of your research slump.

5. Plan wisely

Planning takes time and we all know we don’t have enough of it. BUT it will help you feel like you have a hold onto things (because you will, duh!). It will also be a source of motivation (grad school often feels like everything in our life is on hold, but making a daily to-do list will prove it is not). Planning early (and sticking as much as possible to your schedule) will let you have more breathing room when it comes to surprises in your life (a surprise teaching job? a travel opportunity? illness? an invitation to your annual field symposium? a child?). If these happen, you will have to do more work, that’s for sure, and you don’t wanna be so behind that you have to decline or quit.

Plan:

Daily things (chores, reading time, lab time, errands, FREE TIME)

Upcoming deadlines (keep track of them ! make sure you know all the requirements!)

Upcoming interesting events (either a research-related conference coming to your university or just a concert with friends)

If you have a job while you are also in grad school, try to take note on what you can do and when. If you have a teaching job related to your field, see how explaining things to undergrads can help you better understand your own research.

Required reading for your thesis (got dozens of pages in your bibliography? better get cracking! But let yourself some time to digest the information you read. There’s no point in reading so fast you end up skimming the whole thing and then having to reread it months from now when you’re supposed to be writing your thesis). Take good notes and create a system that works for you.

6. Take some time off

DO. SOMETHING. FOR. FUN. EVERYDAY. (Even for just 5 minutes! TREAT YOURSELF)

7. Get feedback

Show what you write to your friends. Talk to them about what you want to do next and ask if they know things that could interest you. 

If you participated to an event related to your research, think about what you could have done better and think of ways to improve for the next one. Consider the questions people had for you and try to figure if they were overlooked in your presentation because of time issues (as it is often the case) or just because you never thought about them before.

#1 is really important here. Talk to your advisor. Have a chat in their office from time to time, just so they can keep up with you and see you’re involved (or still alive!) Send them drafts early in your process so you can assess how much time it takes before getting A) an answer to your email (this can take a while) and B) annotations and suggestions on your draft. You DON’T want to work for months on end only to scrap everything and go back to where you started.

8. Ask questions

“There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven’t even started wondering about yet.” — Roald Dahl

It was true when you were a child trying to understand the world, and it is still true now. Don’t allow yourself to become mediocre. Don’t ever be satisfied with half-assed answers. Sometimes the key to motivation is to stay curious.

9. Always bring a (leisure) book with you

This is directly related to #6. This point is especially important if you work in the humanities or any field that basically only requires a lot of reading-related research (i.e. not labs, because grad students working in labs do spend a lot of time in there, but they sure don’t bring it back home with them). If you’re really stressed about not doing enough research, it’s fine, but you have to admit that when you’re just waiting for the bus or in a line to get your lunch, doing research-related readings is simply not worth it. Hence the leisure book. Allow yourself some breaks and renew your love for reading!

10. Look for scholarships and other funding resources

I can’t insist on this enough. Being a grad student takes a lot of time and dedication. The few academia-related work opportunities you will get most likely won’t pay for your daily needs, much less your total tuition. Getting a part-time job can also be risky, as it will reduce the time you have for research, drain your energy, and also make you less available for occasional activities (conference, research trips, etc.). It doesn't take a lot of research to see that student loans are a huge source of stress and although it might be necessary for you in order to survive, taking less money from loans because you’re getting it as grants is the best opportunity. You can ask your advisor for suggestions, or look online either on your university’s website (they usually have a list available either for all of their students or to a specific group you might be part of) or other organizations. Some governments also have research grants available.

This is something you should do before starting your grad school program or even in your first year, as some of the grants are renewable over a specific span of years (you get an amount of money for 3-4 years), so you should definitely try to get it as soon as possible. Doing research early about grants can give you a better idea of what you can expect and how to budget. Keeping a budget is the key, since for most of the grants you will have to submit one to prove that you could benefit more from that money. Also, knowing your needs and the possible savings you could make is a lifetime-useful skill.

Your advisor can help with the process and give you advice on what to write in your proposal (they’ve most likely written a ton of those, or even been on selection committees before, they know what will be expected). 

You’re already a grad student and have never asked for grants before? It’s never too late to start. Sometimes grant organizations will prefer giving the money to someone how has never benefited from it before, and this person might be you!

11. Stay or become friends with people outside your field and out of grad school

Grad school can be is hard on mental health. Students often have depression symptoms or other mental health problems during their grad student years. Grad school will most likely make you feel isolated, especially if you’re working a lot from home and/or in a very competitive field (who am I kidding, they all are). There is no magical solution to this, but keeping in touch with people might help you. Share how you feel with people you trust, either from your field or, preferably, your ‘outside’ life. Take time to visit your family if you’re living away from them. Take breaks to send stupid faces on snapchat. Play video games with your friends. Take your nieces, nephews and/or kids to field trips. Go grab a drink with someone you’ve met in college but haven’t seen in a while. Take up a class to learn something new.

Surrounding yourself with people who are not experts in your field or have no graduate school experience will prevent you from spending all your precious free time talking about your thesis or your grant proposal. It might not seem useful at first, but trust me, it is.

If you’re still struggling with mental health issues related to grad school, please look and ask for help. You will not regret it.

[tigertyl3r78]

Curatorial Statement

Activism in the Digital Age

           Activism once meant throwing rocks through windows, marching in the streets, boycotting, or holding a stand in. While all of these methods are still widely used, they all require ones physical presence in order to achieve the desired goal. With the advent of the internet and social media, activism has blossomed into something greater built on the shoulder of those who came before us. Similar methodologies are utilized, but from the comfort of ones own home or from the last booth in a coffee shop you can make just as great of an impact on the world by a few clicks and taps of your keyboard. Our culture has become one of accountability through social media. If you skip out on posting during a march or showing your sticker for proof that you voted, your later opinions may not be considered as valid. Staying quiet and watching things unfold from the sidelines is no longer an option when it comes to politics in the current state of our country so silence is taken for siding with the enemy.

Can you imagine being one of the people who didn’t participate in the bus boycott during the civil rights movement? Or someone who watched as the suffragettes were carted away to prison for fighting for not only their rights but your rights as well? We look back at it now with such clarity. “Of course I would’ve marched” or “Of course I would’ve said something”, but is that really true? What will future generations look at us for and say, “why didn’t they do anything?”. For this reason I have chosen to focus on activists using their voices through the internet or social media to enact change. This ranges from organizations to celebrities to people I had never even heard of previous to starting this project. This wide variety of people utilizing the internet to make changes for good shows that there is both a need and a desire amongst our society for this kind of involvement. Those who may not have felt comfortable enough to go to a rally or to march because they were afraid or didn’t feel they belonged now can find a space that feels just right for them and what they believe in.

Taylor Swift was long criticized for not speaking out about her political views after Donald Trump won the election and she didn’t make a statement or reveal whom she had voted for. For someone with millions of followers seeing her every day life, this was red flag. Ones political standings were often not talked about in years passed but again, with the advent of social media and the firestorm Trump has created, being silent meant that you must not want people knowing what you did or did not do for the greater good. Before the midterm elections this November, Swift posted to her now 113 million Instagram followers a simple black and white polaroid that may have not even garnered a second glance had people not stopped to read her well-thought out and articulated caption.

Her message was urging her followers (and anyone else who happened upon the photo because of Instagram’s algorithm) to register to vote and then to head to the polls to have their voices heard. Soon after posting, voter registration ages 18-34 skyrocketed and over 2 million people “liked” the photo she posted along with her lengthy caption. The mixing of linguistics and imagery has been a practice of contemporary artist for quite some time now, but social media allows everyone to be an artist in that way. Curating the perfect photo and then creating the right words to further depict you message takes creativity and thought whether your message is political or not. By choosing a neutral image, classic black and white, she appealed to the masses rather than a singular group. Although she stated whom she was voting for and why, she did so in a calm and non-vindictive way so as to not single out anyone or decrease her reach.

In An Xiao’s project titled “Nothing to Tweet Home About”, she combines the prominence of social media with the nostalgia of a postcard. Twitter gave people the platform to literally send out hundreds of 140 character messages per minute telling friends and followers everything and anything they want to. It also allowed people to feel as if they wee receiving these messages form people they follow regardless of if they were the intended recipient of the underlying message or not. Postcards were the way to do this in the past but could take weeks to reach the recipient and were mostly reserved for people on vacation or those in need of sending a short message to someone. Thinking about the women in the early days of feminism or the men and women of the civil rights movement makes you appreciate how big of an impact they made without the ability to spread the word through Twitter or Instagram. There is a certain excitement when receiving something in the mail now because it is so uncommon.

Receiving a handwritten letter from someone usually only comes from ones grandmother on their birthday with a five-dollar bill in it and even that becomes repetitive. People now dread looking in their mailboxes because all that gets delivered there are bills and taxes. Twitter holds the same sentiment as a quick note on a postcard but with the adaptation of instant retrieval and reaction. Xiao, who created this project right here in Connecticut, combined the nostalgia for the tangible with the recent requirement for instant gratification by sending out around 100 postcards with tweets written on them. By melding the two, Xiao taps into the excitement of receiving something handwritten in the mail with the mundane nature of a simple tweet, which has also now become unexciting to us because of it’s presence in our everyday lives.

The Benevolent Society, Reactive, & Designworks also utilized the power of Twitter in an exhibit in Australia called Hundreds and Thousands. They asked the people of Australia to utilize the 140 character count to tell their followers what they hoped for the future of Australia. They then took all the tweets that used the required hashtag to create a light installation tunnel. Tunnels are often thought of as roads to freedom, (i.e. underground railroad), and this one could be both enjoyed for its visual beauty but for its sentiment of hope for the future. Again, this melding of the linguistic with the visual helps reach a broader audience and makes the exhibit feel more collaborative.

Emma Watson is a UN Women Goodwill ambassador and has often given profound and moving speeches for and with them. She is not a huge presence on social media as she seems to be quite a private person but usually when she does speak out on any of the various social media platforms, it’s about fighting for social injustice. The picture and tweet I have chosen to feature shows her in the classic “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” shirt, again in black and white like Ms. Swift. Her tweet alongside it was simple, the hashtag and the magazine that took the photo for her. This is important not only because over 37,000 people had liked it before it was screen grabbed, but because this image was taken by a major magazine publications viewed by women every day. Whether inadvertently in line at the grocery store or if you were a subscriber/follower, you saw this image and read those words. By having the magazine take her photo in this sweatshirt and then tweeting it out with their watermark, she used her platform and the platform of the magazine to curate an image of herself that would catch people’s eye. Those who recognize the sweatshirt would be pleased to see the magazine advertising it, Watson reaffirms her strong political voice, and those uneducated may have been prompted to research the slogan further.

Lastly, after Trump’s election to the presidency, there was a march held in Washington and around the world to protest his inauguration and election. The Women’s March logo is now an image that is seen an instantly recognized along with the pussy hat and the various slogans chanted and held in the air on that day. Their Instagram account currently has 1.1 Million followers and they continue to schedule events and offer aid and words of encouragement to their fellow feminists when they see an act of injustice. Their entire website and Instagram page is a carefully curated set of images and words that was sparked by the fury felt by many after Trump’s election. We saw this same kind of outreach used after the Parkland shooting this year. There were hashtags, celebrity involvement, and even a concert and march held in D.C. We are seeing an uptick in the oppressed or marginalized fighting for themselves, using the tools of social media, rather than waiting around for someone “higher up” to do it for them. Women in countries who were being harassed on buses have created their own all-female bus system; kids are demanding gun control, as the adults haven’t been able to reach a resolution. Things are changing for the better because of this sense of community and communication through social media and the internet.

Many felt helpless, alone, or trapped and had no way to release these emotions and the founders of the march gave those people an outlet and a voice. For days before the march in January, you could not go on any social platform without seeing someone posting about the march and sharing their logo. Creating community and conversation has been seen through all of these artistic endeavors and is the basis for any strong activist movement. Without the support of a team, people who have a common goal and the drive to execute it, change cannot be accomplished. Whether these people are friends you share these posts with or followers you’ve never met and may never see in your life, these words and images spark a fire in people.

 Bibliography

·http://www.anxiaostudio.com/art/nothingtotweethomeabout.html

·https://www.womensmarch.com/

·https://www.bustle.com/articles/73803-9-celebrity-activists-whose-twitter-accounts-are-changing-the-world-one-tweet-at-a-time

·https://econsultancy.com/four-examples-of-digital-activism-using-art-and-digital-to-fight-a-cause/

·https://daily.jstor.org/what-parkland-tells-us-about-teens-and-social-media/

·https://www.jstor.org/stable/43496487?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

·https://www.jstor.org/stable/2781286?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

·https://www.instagram.com/p/BopoXpYnCes/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

[japanesestudies172]

Earthquakes and Disasters: How Ready is Japan?

(Photo credit: Daily Express)

Japan is one of the countries that is most struck by earthquakes. In fact, there is a quake every 5 minutes and consequently, tsunamis. Fortunately for them, they are also one of the best prepared nations in the world in terms of disaster preventions. I want to investigate how they implement these measures and analyze them for effectiveness. How effective are these measures? Are most of the masses aware of the necessary steps to follow in case of an emergency? As I travelled around Japan, I looked for answers.

(Photo credit: ICCROM)

(Photo credit: World Monuments Fund)

Japan has many heritage buildings. After the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, the number of damaged heritage buildings were a shocking 554, including 116 Important Cultural Property buildings and 438 Registered Cultural Property buildings (Nishikawa 36). Some of these buildings were completely teared down by the earthquakes and tsunamis. As these buildings are considered important in generating tourism revenues for the country, Japan has decided to enforce earthquake countermeasures on them. The government hired some experts to evaluate the earthquake resistance of these buildings, and to reinforce them accordingly. The more people that are expected to enter a certain building, the higher the resistance must be. However, it is not only these cultural buildings that are supposed to be earthquake resistant. Japan has worked hard to ensure that most buildings and structures are built with earthquake resistant materials, especially new ones. As a result, over 75% of buildings in Japan are earthquake resistant.

(Photo credit: Surviving in Japan)

From my observations during my time in Japan, the Japanese people are very aware and prepared on the possibility of an earthquake striking. When I visited the Bousai Center, which every prefecture has at least one of, I was surprised that it was free for everyone, even for foreigners such as myself. I signed up for the earthquake-only experience, but had I done the others (including fire drills, smoke drills, etc.) it would have still been completely free. I think that this is a great step by the Japanese government because giving the public free education on matters relating to safety is of utmost importance.

(Photo credit: Web Japan)

At the time I went there, there were also a lot of little kids who were about to leave, they were presumably grade school kids who went there on a field trip or maybe even a required educational trip. This is important because I think these earthquake safety drills should be drilled into us, starting from pre-school all the way to high school, and even while we are already working. I felt like the drills really help in being able to survive an earthquake, especially with the panic. A lot of people panicked when they hear that there is an earthquake ongoing, especially when they did not have any sort of disaster training. 

(Photo credit: Twitter)

This was especially true when a random earthquake struck us while we were in the dorms, and a lot of the foreign exchange students were extremely panicked and called their parents immediately. The quake was only 4-5 magnitude in strength, so it could be felt but it is not so extreme that it would tear apart our dormitory. However, if a strong quake did hit us, a panicked mindset would be a deterrent to surviving. That is why having experienced these drills can help us keep our focus during crucial moments and ultimately lead us to survival.

(Photo credit: Disaster Preparedness Tokyo)

While in Japan, I also read some of the Bousai comics and books that I was able to procure. Most of them just emphasized what one had to during an earthquake in many different situations. Also, one of the things I found interesting was fastening the furniture, TV, and cabinets to the wall securely. I did not ever think that one had to do that, because in my own house back in the Philippines, none of our furniture are fastened.

The handbook that the government gives to every household is also a very informative 300-page book. Since it is meant for Japanese people, the Japanese they use is not as easy as it is in the manga. There was no furigana, so it was a little difficult for me to read. I should note that this handbook is only given to residents in the Tokyo area, I am not sure if they give similar ones to everyone across the country.

(Photo credit: Spoon & Tamago)

The book was very thorough in illustrating literally every possible scenario that one could be doing during an earthquake. This includes being in the airport, on the streets, in the classroom, in a movie theater, in the office, on a road intersection, on a bridge, in a tunnel, in the bathroom (showering and using the toilet are different scenarios), climbing down stairs, and more.

The book also tells us of the NG (Not Good) things to do during an earthquake. Most of them are obvious like don’t light match so that you don’t cause a fire, don’t touch electricity, and don’t walk barefooted. Some of the less obvious ones were to not carry out a rescue operation by yourself and to hold back from calling on the phone because the lines are cut. I think that some of the obvious ones should not be mentioned by the book, such as walking barefooted to avoid injuries, but other than that this information is useful, to both kids and adults alike.

(Photo credit:  絵本ナビ)

On the other hand, the manga that I’ve read was more targeted towards younger people, so they used relatively easy words which also made it easier for me (and presumably Japanese kids) to understand. The manga had most of the information that was written in the Bousai handbook.

Since it was targeted towards kids, the author made it sort of interactive with the reader. One of the adults in the book would constantly ask the crew of kids questions about disaster prevention, and it does feel as though that the reader is one of those kids. There would also be personalities for each kid, for example, there would be the smart one, the not-so-smart one, the one who would ask a lot of question, and more. It makes it even more relatable to the reader, and I would recommend it to children who want to learn more about disasters in general. This is because the manga does not only contain information on earthquakes, it also covers a variety of disasters that may inevitably strike Japan one day.

As for ICU’s earthquake procedures, they did not exactly brief us about the safety precautions to take during an earthquake. However, they gave people from the University of California (UC) a pamphlet that briefly outlines that to do during an earthquake. This was held as a separate orientation for them, so the rest of the people who were not from UC were not given this orientation. I think this is one part that ICU should work on. They should give everyone the same information especially when it concerns the safety of their students.

(Photo credit: Time Out)

While browsing through stores such as Tokyo Hands, I found that they don’t really have a big area for bousai goods. It is always just one section set aside for disaster prevention goods. Some of the goods they sell in there are quite questionable. I was not exactly sure on what a cap should be used for during times of disaster. The cap was not really anything special and even had no brand name. It was just wrapped in a regular plastic wrap and under the item name “work cap”.

I also was not very sure on the use of a toilet bowl cover in the context of disaster prevention. Apparently, that toilet bowl cover is the number one best seller last year. However, after reading the labels for the product, I realized that if water supply was cut, then there would be no flush for toilets. I guess Japanese people really find this item to be a necessity. I did not expect that this would be the number one selling item of all the disaster prevention goods. I expected the bousai bag to sell more than the toilet bowl cover since that is presumably more useful.

The bousai bag that was sold in the stores included 18 different things that might be useful for survival during a disaster, all for the price of 5000 yen. I guess if one were lazy, then 5000 yen might be worth paying to save one’s life during a disaster.

What I found was the most interesting item sold in the store was the Izameshi Carry Box. It is basically food supply that would last a long time, ideal for times of disaster where electricity might be cut. For 11 packs of food, one would have to pay 8000 yen. This would come out to around 700 yen per meal, which isn’t that bad. However, according to my Japanese friend, these kinds of food don’t really taste that great. They are essentially just for last resort because they generally taste very bad because of all the preservatives added to make sure they last during a disaster.

(Photo credit: CNN)

Japan has put a lot of work into the preparations for earthquake prevention. They have a lot of countermeasures in place in order to secure the safety of their people. The government knows exactly what the threat is and is trying their hardest to educate the people about the proper safety procedures. From the bousai centers to books about disaster prevention to their educational curriculum, Japan is a nation well-prepared for the disasters nature has in store for them. The worst has yet to come, but I think Japan will endure just fine. In a nation that takes disaster prevention very seriously, I have no doubt that they will be able to withstand just about any kind of earthquake. They are after all one of the most innovative leaders in disaster prevention in the world.

Bibliography:

Eisuke, Nishikawa. "Development in Earthquake Countermeasures for Heritage Buildings in Japan." Archeomatica, Vol 8, Iss 1 (2017), no. 1, 2017. EBSCOhost, rizal.lib.admu.edu.ph:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsdoj&AN=edsdoj.5589eac1b8bb497db904da98945cdcb9&scope=site.

Haraoka, T, et al. "Prevention of Injuries and Diseases in Non-Professional Disaster Volunteer Activities in the Great East Japan Earthquake Areas: A Preliminary Study." Public Health, vol. 127, no. 1, Jan. 2013, pp. 72-75. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.puhe.2012.09.005.

Moriyama, Karin and Makiko Kaga. "Mental Healthcare Efforts for the Public After the Great East Japan Earthquake: "Guide to Good Mental Health for Those Affected by Natural Disasters" Published by the Cabinet Office." Brain & Development, vol. 35, no. 3, Mar. 2013, pp. 201-208. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.braindev.2012.11.003.

Nakaya, Naoki, et al. "Effect of Tsunami Drill Experience on Evacuation Behavior After the Onset of the Great East Japan Earthquake." International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, vol. 28, June 2018, p. 206. EBSCOhost, rizal.lib.admu.edu.ph:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edo&AN=129095664&scope=site.

Raby, Alison, et al. "Implications of the 2011 Great East Japan Tsunami on Sea Defence Design." International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, vol. 14, no. Part 4, 01 Dec. 2015, pp. 332-346. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.ijdrr.2015.08.009.