#i miss developing stupid weekend traditions

[lunarsapphism]

was trying to look for a picture of my desk at college cause i needed to remember the configuration so i can use it as a reference to look for a new desk for my room and made myself sad instead

[thewertsearch]

Asks Compilation 16/6

The best thing about categories like Sburb Titles is that once you have a big enough sample size of Person/Category mappings, you can extrapolate their traits to any character you like. 

Example: I got an ask a while back asking whether I have any Titles for my own OCs, and to be totally honest I can’t stop thinking about it

Oh, that is awesome. I’m bookmarking that for reference, when I’ve finished the comic. Biology is not my strongest suit, but I do find it fascinating, and speculative biology is my jam. 

It’s a balancing act, trying to make a quirk both unique and readable. i thought about a capitalization quirk WHERE i only capitalize common programmINg keywORds, but it looks kind of funky, and I wasn’t sure how to define what keywords to include. 

@capribornio​ submitted: Part 1! Terrible memes to help you cope with what just happened.

Part 2! (Dunno why tumblr wouldn't let me submit you the two images at once, but.)

jettison to the moon drop it on those stupid pawns bye bye kids, you're gonna die now your session's dead and gone

That was made by abysswarlock! Their blog is linked below the main links in my bio.  It’s great, isn’t it? Really makes the Land come to life. 

Man, I’m really mad I missed the Club Penguin craze, because if I’d played it, I would absolutely have answered this ask with penguin designs for each of the kids. 

Classic Tumblr. When you edit you blog description in the appearance editor, it actually scrubs all the HTML you added, and replaces it with plaintext. To update your description properly, you need to do it in the theme editor. 

I fixed the blog description on desktop, but I don’t think it ever worked on mobile, since tags generally don’t work properly on the app. I think it should work if you access the blog through say, Firefox, rather than the app itself? 

So do I!!!

That’s one of my favorite anime tropes, and it’s vary Homestuck-friendly, considering how many characters are bespectacled. I’m glad that my ‘sona is continuing this proud tradition. 

Thank you!  I think a big part of it is just that Homestuck happens to deal with stuff I’m really into. I love time travel and alt-self/identity shenanigans, so I was already looking at the Paradox Clone system from every angle even before the Veil. Once that cursor targeted Nanna, a lot of things immediately clicked into place. 

I didn’t see the paired tubes coming, though. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment. 

Maid! That was the first class I chose for myself, because I liked the connotations around ‘organizing’. 

I’m planning on doing a bunch of Title tests over the weekend. The Official Sally Classpect will be an open question for a long time, but I am interested in how much the various tests will agree. 

We’ve already talked a bit about it on the blog, but Homestuck is a kind of meta story on a lot of levels. 

We saw it with the reader suggestions at first, but there are other things too, like Hussie’s narration interacting with WV. Is that ‘canon’, per se? Much to think about...

[ sent on the 12th! - Cat ] 

Happy belated birthday Carcino ‘Cancer’ Geneticist! May this year bless you with Grist, Boondollars and a successfully salvaged Sburb session!

Honestly!!! 

Hussie is very good at turning on the waterworks. It doesn’t happen much in Homestuck, but when it does, it hits hard. 

True, true. But that was just John’s opinion - now Hussie’s narration is saying she sucks!

These guys really have been great recently. It’s like Hussie has spent a while giving them improvised character traits based on reader commands, and now that their personalities are fully established, they’re actually getting full arcs with awesome moments of development. 

I honestly can’t wait to see what the Windswept Questant’s real plan is. She’s abdicated to PM, and seems to be putting a team together. Did she know WV had the Ring all along? What’s up next? 

[meatheadosis-sf]

Hypnocon 2021

The 22nd annual North American convention/conference for men into men into erotic and recreational hypnosis will return to San Francisco this year. It's free to attend (with donations welcome).

$139/night event room rates for the Con weekend (and the day before and after, if you'd like to enjoy the rest of the city while you're here). Locals, or people making other arrangements, can of course attend without booking a room.

Enthusiastic informed consent is required for any hypnotic play (or other play, for that matter) at the Con. There will be presentations about negotiating consent early Saturday morning and before each play party.

Check out http://Hypnocon.com for more details and the group rate hotel booking info.

____________________________

SCHEDULE

October 15th - 17th at the Hotel Spero in San Francisco CA

At past Hypnocons, because they're free, many people were able wander in at will, to see only the events they were interested in. Because of this year's vaccination requirement, that won't be true this year. Once you've registered, you can certainly come and go as you please (hang on to those name tags!), but you must register!

Proof of vaccination is REQUIRED by the city of San Francisco and the hotel itself, and will be checked at registration. A digital photo of your vaccination card is sufficient, assuming the name on it matches your photo ID. To the best of my knowledge, no one planning to attend will be crossing any borders to do so. If you are coming from a different country, please let me know before you come, so we can figure out what works as proof for you.

Friday:

Registration 2p - 6p in Jarvis's Corner (the desk will direct you to it). Hypnocon is completely FREE (donations are welcome), but you do need to register so that we can check your proof of vaccination (including photo ID), and give you your name tag. Name tags will be created with both scene/screen name and the name you want to be called at the Con, color coded to distinguish hypnotists, subjects, switches, and observers from each other. Feel free to add preferred pronouns.

After 6p, you may be able to find someone to register you at the hospitality suite, but we're all here to enjoy the Con ourselves. You'll have to gamble. You MUST register, show proof of vaccination, and wear your name tag to attend!

If you would like to be notified via text when things happen that aren't on the schedule (e.g. where people are going for dinner; when the play parties start, etc.) you can choose to put your name and phone number on the Text List. We'll also be posting news to the Discord server.

Several people volunteered on the survey to be part of a Welcome Team, to introduce newbies to people, break the ice and help everyone get comfortable.

Friday and Saturday nights, VisibleRestraint and their partner will host a Kinky Hypno Play Party in their suite.

Flanelbear will host the Hospitality Suite, which is a great place to socialize, meet a hypno partner to play with, and see impromptu demos.

Unscheduled social time for the rest of Friday. We won't have the meeting room until Saturday, but the hospitality suite will be open (though limited in seating). Jarvis's Corner might sit another small group at the table, and there's a small restaurant inside the hotel.

This might be an excellent time for out of towners to visit Mr. S (in-store shopping has returned), since it closes at 6p. And of course all of the Tenderloin restaurants are nearby. Impromptu groups of people go out for dinner together based on food preferences, and maybe one place will draw a big group - it's a great way to get to know each other.

After dinner, you can join the play party, hang out in the hospitality suite socializing, or hit the SOMA or Castro bars. The SF Eagle will be within a 30 minute walk, or about 17-20 minutes on the Muni 9 bus, and I know there'll be a Hypnocon contingent there Friday evening. Or maybe you'll find a hypnotist or subject to play with privately in one of your rooms.

Saturday:

8:00a - 9:00a Registration in Jarvis's Corner (see above). You MUST register, show proof of vaccination, and get a name tag in order to attend! There's a brief window for latecomers, but it's important to get here in time for the first presentation:

9:00a - 9:50a Negotiation And Consent by VisibleRestraint [50] Enthusiastic, informed consent is required BEFORE engaging in any hypnosis at the Con, so everyone is encouraged to attend this workshop. There are nuances to hypnotic negotiation that might not be familiar to those of you who are old hands at BDSM consent negotiations.

10:00a - 10:50a Hypnosis 101 by JohnBear [50]

11:00a - 11:25a JoshSF will give a "Pre-Talk" [25]

11:30a - 12:20p Hypnovices: Sharing The Kink, And Onramps For Hypnocurious Doms by MindFoxxx Muscle [50]

12:20p Just before we break for lunch, we'll have the traditional (and optional) Group Photo taken [10]

LUNCH BREAK

1:30p - 2:20p The Awakenings Project: Preliminary Results Of A Formal Study Of The Erotic Hypnosis Community by SamHypnosis [50]

2:30p - 2:55p Hypnosis And Rope Bondage by VisibleRestraint and their partner [25]

(! No gap, in order to get one ten minute break instead of two five minute breaks)

2:55p - 3:20p Hypnosis And Working Out/Muscle Growth by GreyMuscleBear [25]

3:30p - 4:20p Kinesthesia Bootcamp - Wondertushy will awaken, develop and enhance our somesthetic (aka kinesthetic) sense. [50]

4:30p - 5:15p Horny, Tranced, And Stupid - a panel discussion by RicktheTist, VisibleRestraint, and Visible Restraint's partner (open to others who'd like to join in) [45]

6:00p (?) Group Dinner - location TBD

8:00p Kinky Comedy Stage Hypnosis Show performed by The Dominicator. A separate donation bucket will be there specifically for him, and we encourage people to enjoy this show even if they're not staying for the rest of Hypnocon.

Sunday:

9:00a - 9:55a Jarvis's Corner will again be manned briefly for latecomers needing to Register for the day.

10:00a - 10:50a Hypnosis And Neuro-Linguistic Programming by JoshSF

11:00a - 11:30a Hypno And Pup Play - Further Down And In by AnimalJSmith

11:40 - 2:00p SpiralBear will facilitate group participation hypno games. Fractionation Station and Speed Trance will involve everyone as either hypnotist or sub.

Checkout time at the Hotel Spero is 12p noon. You'll be able to store your bags in the hospitality suite, the meeting room, or with the front desk, so that you miss as little as possible Sunday morning/afternoon. We have the meeting room until 2:00p, and the Hospitality Suite for the rest of the day.

Many attendees are booked through Monday checkout, so the fun doesn't have to end - but we won't have the meeting room after 2p, so anything else will be completely informal.

[anothertimdrakestan]

Midnight Kisses - Dick Grayson x Reader

Words: 1.3k

Requested? Yes! From the lovely @subtleappreciation and @geekandnerdworld

“Hiiii! May I request a 6 with Dick please?” and “Hey. How are you doing during this major historic moment (which nobody asked for)? Could you please write a fic with Dick from the prompts 1, 6, 12 and 29. Thanks.” (1. pick me, choose me, love me 6. you can’t kiss me all day 12. alcohol does not solve all you proble- 29. dumbass are you drunk??? )

LINK TO PROMPTS  -> REQUESTS ARE STILL OPEN!

I LOVE THESE my boi Dick needs some love ;))) Thank you for the wonderful requests and I am doing alright in these wild times thank you for asking. I hope you don’t mind that I combined your requests : ) I hope you enjoy!

A Friday night meant board games and spooning, it was all you looked forward to during the week, texting your boyfriend how much you missed him and couldn’t wait to hangout during your weekends together. That was the way your life had been working, Dick was busy saving lives at night and working during the day and you were working during the day and studying at night - but both of you always cleared your Friday nights and most weekends for each other. It was a small tradition but it was reliable and showed that every week there was room in your life for Dick, and room in his for you. 

Sending a quick text then heading over to his apartment. On the way over you got a call from one of Dick’s younger brother, Tim.

“Heyyyyy Y/N so, Dick got in a teensy tiny little fight with Bruce because long story short Damian tried to stab someone and they both wanted to reprimand him differently and it was a whole thing and Dick looked pretty upset when he stormed out so just a warning I know it’s your Friday night date thing”

“How did Damian get a swor- nevermind I know how. Alright, thank you for the warning Timmy I’ll be sure to be extra nice, tell Bruce he’s wrong I don’t even have to know the argument and tell Damian he and I get to have a talk”

“Will do, you’re a lifesaver Y/N!”

And the call ended as you started the walk up three stories of stairs to get to Dick’s apartment. Cursing yourself for falling for a Batboy who enters rooms using grappling hooks to dive through windows and not doors like regular humans you groaned up the stairs, not even stopping to knock you threw open the door. “Honey I’m homeeeee” you called with a giggle, scanning the kitchen and living room for your lovely boyfriend. 

You heard a groan coming from his bedroom and the first sight you saw was Dick lying on his bed his lips sealed around a bottle of wine, the bottle was glugging as he swallowed drink after drink, his eyes half closed, nostrils flaring as he took deep breaths between chugs. “Oh Dick what are you doing?” you rushed to his side, pulling the bottle out of his mouth with a ‘pop!’ the red liquid spilling on him before you could turn the bottle right side up.

“Nowo Eiiim Nooot!” Dick’s slur was terrible, as much as he could pretend, he was a lightweight and you assumed the bottle of wine was not his first drink that night. Shaking his shoulder you chastisted him “Dick you dumbass are you drunk?” he smiled lazily, pulling you into his embrace. Placing sloppy kisses along your jaw he hummed as you ruffled his hair. “Rough day, more kisses” he mumbled, leaning into you as you lightly ran your fingers through his hair. “Baby talk to me, Tim called and told me a little” you whispered through his never ending kisses. 

“Today is stupid. First off Dami tried to turn a kid into a skewer then Bruce thinks he should ground him! Like obviously there has to be a punishment because Damian but also we need to talk to him and explain why that’s not okay and give him alternative ways to use his anger!” Dick was exasperated, waving his hands in the air. You loved the way he looked after Damian, and after being with Dick for so long you loved Damian too, you’d been adopted into a weird half family and gained three lifelong brothers and the love of your life. 

“You’re right Dick, and you’re allowed to be frustrated, but drinking can’t solve all your proble-” Dick stopped you with a long, passionate, kiss. Pulling away you shook your head at him. “You can’t just kiss me all day you drunk” Dick smirked. “Hmm I can and I will!” with one hand he pulled the covers over both of you and pulled you down under them with him. Laying down enveloped in sheets that smelled like Dick snuggled between your boyfriend’s (massive) arms was perfect. You were cupping his face in your hands, eyes boring into each others. “You’re really pretty” Dick whispered, his face just inches from yours. “Very kind of your love bird” you smiled into another kiss. 

“Do you love me?” He caught you off guard, “Dickie of course I do! With my whole heart” you kissed his nose, but he still looked slightly upset. “That’s not what Wally said, he said you were using me for this gorgeous body!” Dick gestured to the grease stained shirt and loose sweatpants. “Yeah baby, real gorgeous” you winked. “You love me! No one else” he stated, opening one closed eye to check that you agreed. “You’ve gotta convince me, prove to me that you’re the best boyfriend ever!” you teased, bringing his lips onto yours again. 

“Mhm okay, okay! I’ve got it” Dick squealed, springing up out of the bed. Running into his closet you sat up, giggling as he threw clothes backwards like a dramatic movie star. He came out in a black blazer that was very clearly inside out, and he stumbled towards the bed, taking both your hands in his. “My lovely Y/N, you’re the love of my life, so I beg you!” he cleared his throat, pretending to wipe away fake tears, “pick me, choose me, love me” then he gave you the cutest puppy dog eyes ever. “You win! Dear world I choose Richard Grayson as my one and only lover!” he cheered and dove back into bed with you. 

“Why are you so goofy when you’re drunk” you teased Dick. With your favorite teasing grin he pulled the bottle of wine off of the side table shaking it mischievously “I drank, you drink, we drunk!” he pushed the bottle towards you making a hilarious face. “D do you really want me to be drinking with you?” he gave you a fake glare. “You drink or I do!” he said cheerfully as you took the bottle from him. “I could drink this, or we could do something else?” with two fingers you traced from his chest up to his cheek, pulling him in for a deep kiss. “Yes, this is what we should be doing!” you laughed, placing the bottle back down, taking a quick swig for courage. 

“You know you’re my favorite person right angel?” Dick was drinking in the look of you in his arms. “I love you too Dickie” were the last words you said before he pulled the sheets over your head, completely focussing on you in every way for the rest of the night. 

The morning after, you woke up wrapped up Dick’s arms while he snored louder than you thought was humanly possible. He was clutching you tightly to his chest, keeping you completely stuck to his side as he snored in your ear. Starting with a poke, it turned into more of a shove, and developed into a sort of cooing Dick awake. With a deep groan he squeezed you so tight you forgot what the ability to breath was before realizing you, his hands holding his head which you assumed would be pounding after last night’s endeavors. 

Grabbing him some water and advil he was sitting up in bed, opening up his arms to cuddle you while he nursed a pounding head. The morning was slow, but serene and comfortable. You and Dick woke up slowly, after a shower and maybe a little throwing up, Dick was back to normal. “I’m gonna go talk to Damian now, wanna come?” Dick had gotten dressed and looked stressed. “Listen to you parent your baby brother and-or son? Absolutely.” you teased Dick, grabbing your purse. 

“Have I ever told you you’re my favorite person in the entire world?” Dick quipped as he grabbed his keys. 

“Uh yea, do you not remember anything from last night?” You teased.

“To be honest I really don’t”

[readyplayerhobi]

Flower | 21

; Hoseok x Reader

; Genre: Fluff, slight angst

; Word Count: 3.2k

; Warnings: Slight anxiety

; Synopsis: You finally decide to take a dip into the world of online dating and find the Flower dating app. One of the top matches for you proves to be a guy who looks to be your complete opposite; tattooed, pierced, a metalhead and oh…incredibly handsome. What happens when you throw caution to the wind and reach out to him?

; A/N: Hopefully you all enjoy this :) please leave comments or feedback so I can see what you’re all thinking! :D

; Flower Masterpost

-

Hoseok was sitting on the other side of the coffee table in front of you, a small furrow in his brow as he examined the small tile in his fingers. His lips pursed, soft and rosy pink in the dim lighting you’d set up in the living room for tonight.

Neither of you had anything to do for the evening, with Hoseok’s friends going to a concert that he hadn’t been interested in. Apparently that was actually a band he didn’t like listening to, so he’d happily avoided attending. It meant that he had this Friday evening free, which in turn meant that he was with you for once.

The two of you had settled into a little routine over the last nine months. Hoseok would stay over four or five days a week, spending the remaining days either at his apartment or his parents. Occasionally even at his friends if they went to a concert or just had a night out.

Friday’s were his designated evening to spend with his friends. They would usually meet up at the bar they frequented or go to one of their houses, get drunk and rowdy. Or sometimes they’d go on a trip to a nearby city, spending the night there instead.

It had apparently been their tradition for a long time now, with Friday’s being the start of the weekend and no work. All of them got involved, though Namjoon and Amelia often ended up missing them due to their baby. Though you knew that Namjoon sometimes came along, sent by Amelia to enjoy a night with his friends.

You didn’t mind that he spent that time with them. In fact, you were glad of it. The last thing either of you wanted was to become so reliant on each other that neither of you spent any time with your friends. So you encouraged him to enjoy those Friday’s, knowing that you got the rest of the weekend with him.

Wednesday’s were your night with Chungha and Soyeon. The board games had returned frequently and sometimes, they even managed to coax you out to a restaurant where you would all happily talk about your lives, the state of the world and more. It felt nice, to know that you’d developed a routine that was drastically different to the one from a year ago but still solid enough that you felt stable with it.

It felt healthy, like neither of you were becoming too reliant on each other while still being able to have a good amount of time with your family and friends.

But tonight, you’d invited Hoseok to stay even though you normally never really saw him on Friday’s. Only if you’d specifically asked for him to stay free, such as when you took him to the beach house. He’s happily taken you up on your offer and had told you that he’d get Chinese takeout for you both, which had been greedily consumed an hour earlier.

And now...you were both sat playing a board game. A city and map building board game at that.

A snort left you as you wondered whether Hoseok would have ever expected to be playing Carcassonne on a Friday night with his girlfriend a year ago. You certainly wouldn’t have expected it. Not with someone who looks like him and has his tastes in music and entertainment.

Glancing up at you, Hoseok’s brow rises slightly before he places the tile down carefully. It lines up with the half of a city on another tile, and he carefully places the little wooden ‘meeple’ down in the middle of his now completed city. Looking at the points board, he moves his point keeping meeple up by two before giving you a big smile and taking the one he’d put on the tile off now it was completed.

“Two points...yeeeah.” He says happily and you laugh, shaking your head as you pick a tile from one of the three piles. Your tile has green grass and a little church on it, causing you to place it carefully in a free space in the middle of the map, a little ‘abbot’ meeple being placed on top. You smirk at him as you move your point keeping meeple up by eight before claiming your abbot back.

“Eight points...yeeeeah.” You mimic him, causing his eyes to narrow. It amuses you how competitive he gets in board games. He’d never really played any like the kind you played before he’d started dating you, and it was only in recent months that he’d started to show an interest.

That had made you excited, as you loved playing them and having someone to play with constantly meant you had already been eagerly searching websites for the games that you’d always wanted. As much as Chungha and Soyeon loved to play too, they weren’t too interested in the games that required more time and patience.

“You know...I can’t believe I’m getting overly into a board game where I’m making a city of all things.” Hoseok muses, almost bringing your own thoughts to life and you can’t help the laugh that leaves you. 

“I was literally just thinking that. It’s definitely not what I expected. But it’s fun right?” You say with excitement, beaming so wide to him. He pauses for a moment, just taking in your smile before sighing gently and nodding.

“Yeah...although it’d be more fun if you wouldn’t purposefully dick me over.” He gestures towards the city that he’d been carefully building over the game, the city getting larger and larger. It would be worth a lot of points to him.

Or it would be, if you hadn’t thought ahead and carefully placed a city tile a little further away from him with a big meeple on it. Those were worth double points...and they always took precedence over smaller meeples. When you’d causally connected your city up to his, it had meant that he’d lost the city to you.

There had been much outrage at first before he’d pouted for a solid five minutes. You’d been giggling at him the whole time, telling him that he’d better step his game up as in the game of Carcassonne, you either win or lose.

Not that he’d truly appreciated that, but he had been a little cunning since. Purposefully blocking your cities or roads so that they couldn’t be finished. It was all fun though, and you knew that he wasn’t really annoyed.

It was one of the things that made your heart burst about him; how he went along with your tangents on useless topics or actively engaged with your rants or simply listened as you speculated the stupidest stuff to him. You didn’t know many other people who would listen to you properly when you went off on a theory of how to reduce global warming.

That had a more memorable conversation including firing all the rubbish on the planet towards the sun, a mass snow maker in Antarctica to reduce the sea levels and so forth. And Hoseok had gone along with it all, no matter how silly the topic. Even actively contributing towards it.

He never seemed to make you feel stupid for the stuff you talked about. Your bizarre thought processes sometimes left him a little confused, you were well aware of that, but he tried to keep up with you and encourage whatever little thing had sparked your interest. 

In fact, you couldn’t really remember every actually causing Hoseok to get annoyed through the things that you loved. Sure, he got annoyed when you didn’t replace the toilet roll when it had run out, instead leaving it on top of the holder or when you didn’t clean the sink of toothpaste stains. He especially didn’t like your habit of barely hoovering and your lack of care about putting clothes away almost infuriated him.

Hoseok was a surprisingly clean man.

But he never got annoyed about things that you loved. Never made you feel silly about them or ashamed. And you loved that about him.

Smiling softly at him as he examines the new tile he’d picked up, his tongue sticking out of his mouth as he concentrates once more while his eyes can over the map, you feel the fluttering in your stomach once more. He looks tired, after a long week of work and you can see the shadows under his eyes.

His dark hair is tousled from where he’d run his fingers through it continuously throughout the day and his lips are ever so slightly dry. Humming to yourself, you stand up and quickly disappear to your bedroom before coming back, a small tube of lip balm in your hand. Handing it over to him, you smile as you gesture to his lips.

“Your lips look very dry right now.” He gives a smile of thanks, uncapping it and twisting it up before liberally applying it on. It’s rather ridiculous how good he looks with his now glossy lips but you don’t comment on it, instead leaning forward until you can rest your elbows on the coffee table, chin in your hand as you watch him.

Hoseok is too focused on trying to decide what to do that he doesn’t really notice your perusal. Either that, or he’s too used to it. You do this quite frequently, mostly because you’re perpetually surprised that you of all people managed to date someone like him.

“I l-” The words choke in your throat as you go to say them, your brain catching up with what your mouth was saying far too quickly. Your almost admittance of your feelings made you feel hot, but what made you feel even hotter was the frustration at how hard you found it to get these three words out.

You’d been trying to say them to him for a while now, but everytime you came close, your throat would tighten. Almost like it didn’t want the words to escape, like it wanted to hoard them to itself. You always struggled to talk about your feelings, but this felt even harder. This was something so intimate and personal to you, the words giving Hoseok the ability to hurt you in ways no one else ever has.

Your hands clenched into fists as your jaw sets, the pressure hard and you glare down at the table. It’s like an intense feeling of embarrassment and anxiety takes over every time you try to say it, your body flashing lightning hot and your muscles tensing as if you’re expecting the fright of your life. All because you want to say three words to him.

"You don't have to say it to me." Hoseok said softly, his voice far kinder and patient than it should be. Sometimes you wondered how he put up with you and your mood swings, but you knew why; he loved you.

You’re also not really surprised that he knew what you were trying to say, even if it had come out of the blue like this. He’d always shown that uncanny knack of simply understanding you. But it’s frustrating right now. He deserves to hear it out loud, to hear you say the words that had made you so happy when he’d told you.

"But I should. It's not fair to you." Moving around to your side of the table, Hoseok sits next to you with a smile. Gentle fingers cup your face, applying pressure until you're looking directly into those dark eyes you'd fallen head over heels for in the last few months. He deserved so much better than you and it made your stomach hurt to think that. You knew he'd berate you for that kind of mindset.

"Hey, I don't care about what's fair or not fair. I care about you. And your feelings and whether you're comfortable," Hoseok pauses, taking a deep breath before licking lips. "I've known since the very beginning that you're not great at communication. That's fine though, because I've learnt that what you don't say in words...you do in actions."

You frown at him in confusion, hand coming up to rest on him as you wonder what he means and he laughs in response, fingers stroking gently. If it was possible for someone to tell you that they loved you through pure motions alone, then it definitely felt like Hoseok was doing it right now.

"You've never told me that you love me in words. But you've been telling me for a while now that you do with what you do for me. When you buy me that stupid thing in a store 'cos it reminded you of me or you get my favourite cereal even if you hate it. When you watch films and programmes for me, or listen to my music because it makes me happy. When you make the effort to call me, even when you don't like it. When you come with me out with my friends, even if it makes you uncomfortable."

Your body feels warm at that, squirming in discomfort at his words. "Those are normal things, right? Isn’t that what girlfriends do for their boyfriend?"

Hoseok shakes his head in response. "No, well yeah. But you take it further. It's like you're always wanting to make sure I'm happy and content so you do everything to make that happen, no matter the cost to you. I worried that you're making yourself unhappy doing it, but then I watched you with your parents or Soyeon or Chungha and just realised...that's you. Some people say 'I love you' a lot, some people are physically affectionate...and some people do things to show their love."

There's a silence that falls after that, warm and filled with plenty of emotion you can't identify. You turn his words over in your head, chewing on them and realise slowly that he's right.

"I like to make people happy. If they're happy then I'm happy because I did something good." The words sound a little childish and you look away, hoping that he doesn't think they are too.

But he just wraps his arms around you, pulling you to him and hugging you tightly. Neither of you say anything for a moment, just letting the moment percolate just a little bit longer and you enjoy everything about him.

The strong feel of him against you, the warmth he radiates and security you feel in his arms. His addictive scent that sends a wave of pleasure through you as you bury your nose into his neck, inhaling deeply. You finally get what some people mean when they say that their partner feels like home, because while you may have only been together a few months, you have never felt more at home with someone before.

Hoseok shifts slightly and you feel a gentle pressure on your temple, the hard coldness of his piercing letting you know that it's his lips. He stays there for a moment, petal soft lips against your skin as he takes in a deep breath.

"I love that about you...you know that? You're very easy to please. You never want big fancy things or anything like that. Just...affection." His words are a tiny bit husky but you can feel the amusement laced through them, the flow slightly stilted as if he's not sure how to word things.

Pressing your forehead against his collarbone, you look down to where your hand rests on his thigh and take a deep breath. Mind racing, nerves dancing, stomach swirling and body tensing, you finally do it. You push through the fear and the anxiety that overwhelms your body and say what you’ve been trying to for so long now.

"I love you Hoseok." 

You're so quiet that you're not sure he's even heard you, but you're too focused on your hand on his thighs. As you say the words, you poke at the firm muscle lightly, almost as if by doing so then he'll be distracted and he won't hear.

But he does hear. Of course he hears.

You can feel the tremble through his body, the way his breath hitches ever so slightly and you feel hot all over with embarrassment. Which in turn makes you feel ashamed, because you shouldn't be embarrassed to tell the man you love, your boyfriend of nine months, that you love him.

And yet you are, because you struggle to talk about big and important emotions like this.

He understands though. Hoseok understands how big of a step this is for you, how important this is and how much nerve you'd had to build to finally let yourself say it. You still feel like throwing up, but part of you is elated to get it out.

"Yeah?" He whispers softly, nose running along your hairline and you nod in response. Staring firmly at the Iron Maiden band shirt, you poke gently once more at his thigh.

"I love you." This one is even quieter but he doesn't care. You can tell he doesn't care, because he simply hugs you tighter before pulling away to press a long, emotion filled kiss to your lips.

-

The two of you somehow managed to finish your game of Carcassonne, with you winning. Hoseok didn’t seem to care though, and once you’d both finished tidying it away, he’d been eager to pull you to the bedroom. It was there that you discovered perhaps the best sex you’ve ever had, all because both of you were feeilng particularly loved up and mushy.

And now, you’re incredibly sleepy as you lay against him, simply enjoying the feel of him and how at peace you feel with everything right now. How happy you are.

His chest is warm and firm beneath your cheek, rising and falling slowly as he breathes deeply while the comforting thump of his heart beats beneath you. Your hand rests on his chest as well, his sleep shirt covering up the inked skin but you imagine it clearly.

Hoseok probably never expected to meet someone like you when he'd signed up to Flower, and part of you still maintained that he was meant for someone better. Yet here he was, in your bed...in your arms...in your life...in your heart. And he'd openly welcomed you into his own.

You knew that you'd lucked out with him. Seriously lucked out, and you thanked whatever gods were out there for letting you be the one to catch his interest.

Silently, you let your fingers trail along him in a touch so light it was barely there. Reaching where his heart should be you gently press down in a gentle poke. A responding gesture on your back from him makes you jump slightly, looking up at his face only to see it still serene in its peacefulness. But you know he's not asleep, and you repeat the gesture once more on him.

He does it again and you grin, forcing yourself to stay quiet and motionless before you settle yourself down to sleep properly. Hoseok said that you showed your love in actions because it was easier than using words, and he was right.

It was easier and you felt far more comfortable doing it than saying it out loud. You'd already made up in your mind what the tiny, innocent gesture meant in your head. It said a lot about how well Hoseok knew you already that he'd figured it out so quickly too.

Poke, I love you.

[skamamoroma]

In what do you think Robbe and Sander balance each other?

Oh this is a lovely question! (Sorry it took me a little while to answer)

I think there will be much more to add to this over the next episode and a half but, so far, I think the main things are similar across the parallel universes but there are a few specific I think, too

We’ve seen the type of relationship Sander and Britt had. It was toxic. This wasn’t the type of relationship Even and Sonja etc had. They had an unhealthy relationship but Britt is entirely not at all able (currently) to have a loving relationship with someone like Sander. He is a complex, varied and beautiful soul but he has a vulnerability and the way she has treated that vulnerability is close to unforgivable (in terms of Sander). But the way it has been presented and the way Robbe has been presented shows why Robbe is Sander’s person and why the universe chose him, you know? He has within him a capacity to love Sander exactly as her deserves and vice versa. I think that’s a huge one.

Robbe is affectionate. He is hugely clingy and cuddly and likes to touch. We’ve seen him from the very beginning wrapping his arms around Sander, pressing himself close to Sander, resting his head on him, cuddling up to him, climbing on him, sitting on him, being lifted by him, jumping on his back, stroking his hair, kissing his forehead, stroking his arms, clinging to his back, refusing to stop kisses... I mean that’s a genuine list!!! Sander seems like he is really into that. They are clearly hugely compatible there because Sander is also pretty demonstrative with his love. But we’ve seen how much he likes to be cuddles and wrapped up but also how much he likes to manhandle Robbe... They’re pretty well matched in that department!

Robbe listens and appreciates. Britt called Sander stupid on insta and his jokes dumb... Sander is a passionate soul. He has varied interests but clearly has a love for Bowie and the way, when they first met, Robbe listened and was fascinated which meant Sander felt ok to reach out and pass on his playlist... which Robbe proved he was listening to and then at the weekend they were listening to it together as they lay in bed. Sander clearly feels able to express his passions with Robbe and they’re well received. Plus, Robbe is so appreciative of Sander’s art. He adores the mural (even if it was a shock!) so much he set it as his desktop, he loved the drawing, he stared in awe at Sander in his art class and called Sander “our artist”. That’s a really lovely thing for someone so passionate like Sander to have around. It’s so encouraging and sweet. That encouragement and support comes from Sander too as we’ve seen he’s keen to make sure Robbe studies.

They’re forgiving souls. Sander listened to Robbe after he’d screwed up. He was willing to give him 5 minutes. He had this gut feeling about Robbe and he, himself, understands what it is to mess up and not mean it at all. Robbe is the same. He discarded Britt and any confusion and still comforted Sander as they walked away from school. He tried to find ways to understand why sander behaved as he did after the attack. They are gentle with each other but also not afraid to press for stuff in some ways but I think they will both improve here a lot especially Robbe.

They make each other laugh and smile. They tease and play. That’s a good balance of personalities especially when they are able to do it in intimate moments. That’s true intimacy.

Sander recognises stuff about Robbe without him needing to say much. He said he knew Robbe had had a bad few months... and he tried to introduce a tradition for him. He makes Robbe feel wanted and special and loved and valued, where maybe he hasn’t before. Robbe hasn’t experienced home and comfort and support for a lot of his life and he misses his mamma, has been left somewhat alone. Sander tries to promise forever and helps make a home, surprises him, prioritises him (obviously discounting their struggles). You can see he genuinely cares about Robbe in these little personal but hugely meaningful ways.

There are many other ways but these are the ones I thought of at the moment. I can’t wait to see how the last 2 episodes develop as we will absolutely be able to add to this!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Why I won't buy an Ipad: ten years later

Ten years ago, Apple released the Ipad. I was in a hotel room in Seattle, jetlagged and awake at 4AM while my wife and daughter slept.

I had been thinking about Apple's impending Ipad release and what a reversal it meant for everything I loved about tech: taking away your right to decide whose code you'd run -- even your right to change the battery! I wrote about my feelings and many people read it. It even rated a mention in Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs.

A decade later, the Ipad is ten years old and Apple has killed 20 state Right to Repair bills, in part to lock out third parties who might change you batteries for you.

I just reread that piece, and I still stand by it.

Why I won't buy an iPad (and think you shouldn't, either)

I've spent ten years now on Boing Boing, finding cool things that people have done and made and writing about them. Most of the really exciting stuff hasn't come from big corporations with enormous budgets, it's come from experimentalist amateurs. These people were able to make stuff and put it in the public's eye and even sell it without having to submit to the whims of a single company that had declared itself gatekeeper for your phone and other personal technology.

Danny O'Brien does a very good job of explaining why I'm completely uninterested in buying an iPad -- it really feels like the second coming of the CD-ROM "revolution" in which "content" people proclaimed that they were going to remake media by producing expensive (to make and to buy) products. I was a CD-ROM programmer at the start of my tech career, and I felt that excitement, too, and lived through it to see how wrong I was, how open platforms and experimental amateurs would eventually beat out the spendy, slick pros.

I remember the early days of the web -- and the last days of CD ROM -- when there was this mainstream consensus that the web and PCs were too durned geeky and difficult and unpredictable for "my mom" (it's amazing how many tech people have an incredibly low opinion of their mothers). If I had a share of AOL for every time someone told me that the web would die because AOL was so easy and the web was full of garbage, I'd have a lot of AOL shares.

And they wouldn't be worth much.

Incumbents made bad revolutionaries Relying on incumbents to produce your revolutions is not a good strategy. They're apt to take all the stuff that makes their products great and try to use technology to charge you extra for it, or prohibit it altogether.

I mean, look at that Marvel app (just look at it). I was a comic-book kid, and I'm a comic-book grownup, and the thing that made comics for me was sharing them. If there was ever a medium that relied on kids swapping their purchases around to build an audience, it was comics. And the used market for comics! It was -- and is -- huge, and vital. I can't even count how many times I've gone spelunking in the used comic-bins at a great and musty store to find back issues that I'd missed, or sample new titles on the cheap. (It's part of a multigenerational tradition in my family -- my mom's father used to take her and her sibs down to Dragon Lady Comics on Queen Street in Toronto every weekend to swap their old comics for credit and get new ones).

So what does Marvel do to "enhance" its comics? They take away the right to give, sell or loan your comics. What an improvement. Way to take the joyous, marvellous sharing and bonding experience of comic reading and turn it into a passive, lonely undertaking that isolates, rather than unites. Nice one, Misney.

Infantalizing hardware Then there's the device itself: clearly there's a lot of thoughtfulness and smarts that went into the design. But there's also a palpable contempt for the owner. I believe -- really believe -- in the stirring words of the Maker Manifesto: if you can't open it, you don't own it. Screws not glue. The original Apple ][+ came with schematics for the circuit boards, and birthed a generation of hardware and software hackers who upended the world for the better. If you wanted your kid to grow up to be a confident, entrepreneurial, and firmly in the camp that believes that you should forever be rearranging the world to make it better, you bought her an Apple ][+.

But with the iPad, it seems like Apple's model customer is that same stupid stereotype of a technophobic, timid, scatterbrained mother as appears in a billion renditions of "that's too complicated for my mom" (listen to the pundits extol the virtues of the iPad and time how long it takes for them to explain that here, finally, is something that isn't too complicated for their poor old mothers).

The model of interaction with the iPad is to be a "consumer," what William Gibson memorably described as "something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote."

The way you improve your iPad isn't to figure out how it works and making it better. The way you improve the iPad is to buy iApps. Buying an iPad for your kids isn't a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it's a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.

Dale Dougherty's piece on Hypercard and its influence on a generation of young hackers is a must-read on this. I got my start as a Hypercard programmer, and it was Hypercard's gentle and intuitive introduction to the idea of remaking the world that made me consider a career in computers.

Wal-Martization of the software channel And let's look at the iStore. For a company whose CEO professes a hatred of DRM, Apple sure has made DRM its alpha and omega. Having gotten into business with the two industries that most believe that you shouldn't be able to modify your hardware, load your own software on it, write software for it, override instructions given to it by the mothership (the entertainment industry and the phone companies), Apple has defined its business around these principles. It uses DRM to control what can run on your devices, which means that Apple's customers can't take their "iContent" with them to competing devices, and Apple developers can't sell on their own terms.

The iStore lock-in doesn't make life better for Apple's customers or Apple's developers. As an adult, I want to be able to choose whose stuff I buy and whom I trust to evaluate that stuff. I don't want my universe of apps constrained to the stuff that the Cupertino Politburo decides to allow for its platform. And as a copyright holder and creator, I don't want a single, Wal-Mart-like channel that controls access to my audience and dictates what is and is not acceptable material for me to create. The last time I posted about this, we got a string of apologies for Apple's abusive contractual terms for developers, but the best one was, "Did you think that access to a platform where you can make a fortune would come without strings attached?" I read it in Don Corleone's voice and it sounded just right. Of course I believe in a market where competition can take place without bending my knee to a company that has erected a drawbridge between me and my customers!

Journalism is looking for a daddy figure I think that the press has been all over the iPad because Apple puts on a good show, and because everyone in journalism-land is looking for a daddy figure who'll promise them that their audience will go back to paying for their stuff. The reason people have stopped paying for a lot of "content" isn't just that they can get it for free, though: it's that they can get lots of competing stuff for free, too. The open platform has allowed for an explosion of new material, some of it rough-hewn, some of it slick as the pros, most of it targetted more narrowly than the old media ever managed. Rupert Murdoch can rattle his saber all he likes about taking his content out of Google, but I say do it, Rupert. We'll miss your fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the Web so little that we'll hardly notice it, and we'll have no trouble finding material to fill the void.

Just like the gadget press is full of devices that gadget bloggers need (and that no one else cares about), the mainstream press is full of stories that affirm the internal media consensus. Yesterday's empires do something sacred and vital and most of all grown up, and that other adults will eventually come along to move us all away from the kids' playground that is the wild web, with its amateur content and lack of proprietary channels where exclusive deals can be made. We'll move back into the walled gardens that best return shareholder value to the investors who haven't updated their portfolios since before eTrade came online.

But the real economics of iPad publishing tell a different story: even a stellar iPad sales performance isn't going to do much to stanch the bleeding from traditional publishing. Wishful thinking and a nostalgia for the good old days of lockdown won't bring customers back through the door.

Gadgets come and gadgets go Gadgets come and gadgets go. The iPad you buy today will be e-waste in a year or two (less, if you decide not to pay to have the battery changed for you). The real issue isn't the capabilities of the piece of plastic you unwrap today, but the technical and social infrastructure that accompanies it.

If you want to live in the creative universe where anyone with a cool idea can make it and give it to you to run on your hardware, the iPad isn't for you.

If you want to live in the fair world where you get to keep (or give away) the stuff you buy, the iPad isn't for you.

If you want to write code for a platform where the only thing that determines whether you're going to succeed with it is whether your audience loves it, the iPad isn't for you.

https://boingboing.net/2020/01/27/nascent-boulangism.html

[shippingtheswann]

Answering the Call

A/N – this is my first ever One Shot. It is based off the prompt found on @bleebug Tumblr – Best friend CS AU where Emma butt-dials Killian when confiding in her friend(s) about her feelings for him, and he just sits there listening, confused and ecstatic and feeling like a jackass for eavesdropping, but mostly just relieved that his love isn’t unrequited like he’s believed for years. My story takes a little bit of a different route, but still has it all. 

----------

His night wasn’t ending on a good note. There was no way after the day he had. He spent the last twelve hours preparing a presentation, and all he had to show for it was a slide that had his name and his professional information Killian Jones, COO, Jones INC. He was no where close to being ready for the conference next week. Normally, his brother Liam would be the one making the presentation. But, this time, Liam forced Killian to take on the job to impress potential investors and companies. He hated it. Public speaking wasn’t his strong suit – and neither was coming up with a way to make his company look good.

On top of that, he missed his weekly hang out with his friends. It had been a tradition that he looked forward to every week.

They would choose a new bar each week; trading off who was the designated driver (or the person who paid for the Uber) and who got to choose the location that week. You would think that after more than 5 years of weekly meetings, they would have run out of places to find – but each week, there was somewhere new within the hour drive of their universe.

Sure, Killian could normally tell what kind of bars he would be going to each week, simply based off his friend’s personalities – but he still enjoyed trying out new things. He especially enjoyed the company.

The past few weeks of bars had been an adventure to say the least. Mary Margaret and David had taken them to an 80’s themed pop up bar that had been opened and closed in quick succession. Ruby had decided on a biker bar out in the middle of nowhere that claimed to have the best moonshine. Regina took them up to Canada for her turn, opting for a special wine tasting at a place that looked like a castle. Trying to get 7 drunk Americans back into the country turned out to be easier than he expected. Graham had chosen another traditional sports bar.

Killian had been looking forward to this week. It was Emma’s turn.

Even though she wasn’t standing in front of him, his heart still skipped a beat when the thought of her.

Emma Swan was everything that Killian wanted but couldn’t have. She was untouchable. Not only was she too perfect for him – with her blonde hair and green eyes that brought just about every man she knew to his knees – but she had a dark sense of humor that Killian couldn’t get enough of. She was sarcastic half the time. She was the perfect drinking partner – never getting drunk enough to black out but keeping the pace with the men and showing them that she was just as much of a bad ass as they were. She was strong, yet gentle; loving but protected. She was perfect.

Ever since that night they met, Killian had been drawn to her; wanting to be around her every chance he got.

But, she was off limits. She was David’s adopted sister. She had been hurt in the past. She had walls sky high – and while Killian still worked on cracking those walls, he knew that nothing would ever come of it. David warned him the first night they met back in Freshman year. After another stupid frat party where Killian put on his best dashing rapscallion persona, David cornered him and told him to not mess with Emma.

They had grown up a lot in the last few years, but Killian knew it wasn’t enough to make Emma his, no matter how much he prayed for it to happen. And he knew that David wasn’t Emma’s keeper, that she could make her own decisions; but he respected David too much to cause any friction.

It was also worth remembering that Emma hadn’t once returned his affection.

As Killian walked through his apartment, in search of some much-needed aspirin, he remembered the last time that he brazenly flirted with Emma.

It was during their trip into Canada with Regina. They had all had too much to drink. When Regina said that she had paid her assistant to work extra hours and drive them home in the large van that she had rented, everyone pregamed in the van once they crossed the border. He could remember rolling his eyes when Regina had told them that they were traveling up in a rental van that night, but he couldn’t wait. He could remember pushing Graham out of the way to get to Emma’s side, not wanting anyone else to get all her attention. He remembered glass after glass of rum, even though Ruby was giving him a hard time about it being a vineyard. His hands, having developed a mind of their own, found Emma’s hair while they were sitting in a booth away from the crowd. As the night wore on, he got closer and closer to her, flirting a little bit more with each inch. Yet, she never reciprocated. She remained aloof. She was sweet and caring, but never crossed the line Killian was hoping she would. Her hands never traveled to him. They stayed firmly on her lap. The words that she whispered to him as he laid his head on her shoulder too tired to keep his eyes open as the van drove silently down the highway.

“You’re my best friend, I can’t”.

He had been placed in the friendzone – and he didn’t see himself ever leaving it. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to hear those words or not, but the weight they carried finalized everything.

While that thought weighed heavy on his mind, he also knew that just having her in his life was better than nothing. If all she wanted from him was a friendship, then he was willing to be that for her. All he really wanted was for her to be in his life forever, for her to cast her glow upon his life for eternity. So even if she never loved him the way he loved her, he was OK with that.

And he did. He loved Emma Swan as deeply as one could love. Everything he did, he did with her in mind. He took the job at Liam’s company simply because he knew he would be able to afford to give Emma the life she deserved, even if it meant sacrificing what he loved to do, which was sail. There was no real job market in sailing, but Liam’s investment company made money and provided Killian with a safety net he knew Emma would need one day. He begged Liam to open a branch of the firm in Seattle, not wanting to be too far from his second family. He even purchased the apartment in hopes that one day he would share it with Emma. It was only a 10-minute walk to her job, and Killian abused that knowledge at times, randomly bumping into her on her lunch break or seeing her as she walked into the precinct in the mornings.

He popped the two pills and drank some water. It was nearing midnight and he was too tired to eat, even though the leftovers from dinner the night before were calling to him. He sat on his bed, his hands playing with his phone. He missed Emma, and the group. He missed their antics. They always ended up getting into trouble, even if they didn’t mean to. He wanted nothing more to just call Emma and talk to her. She always picked the best bars and he wanted to hear about everything that happened. His apartment was just too quiet.

He flipped the phone in his hands a few more times, then opened the screen and clicked on Emma’s name. He knew she would probably be asleep, but he just wanted to hear her voice, even if it was for only a few minutes. They hadn’t spoken at length since that night in Canada. Just a few casual conversations when they saw each other at last week’s bar hop. Graham hadn’t left Killian and David alone that night – there was a big game on that kept their attention on the screens.

The time that passed felt endless. The ringing of Emma’s phone kept his brain alert, while sending his body into shock at the same time. The nerves pulsing through his system would have been enough to kill just about anyone. After 4 rings, he didn’t think she would pick up and his heart sank. The feelings that washed over him were worse than the nerves that had been replaced. While he knew she probably wouldn’t answer, he got his hopes up again. Her voice came through the phone causing a slight smile to develop on his face. But, it was only her voicemail, telling the caller to leave her a message or to text her like a normal human.

“Hello Love, I was just calling to see how the night went. I missed you all, but Liam was insistent that I finish the presentation. Call me when you get a minute, or you know, text me. Either one. You know that I worry you didn’t make it home ok,” he said with a laugh, referencing his weird motherly concern, as Ruby called it, “I haven’t talked to you in a while and I just wanted to catch up. Well… have a good night Swan and hopefully I will talk to you soon”.

He hung up with a sigh.

He threw himself rather dramatically onto the bed. His arm came to wrap around his head, sheltering his eyes from the beaming light on his ceiling.

Just as his thoughts started to drift towards the deep end, where he would wallow in self pity thinking that he ruined his friendship with Emma that fateful weekend, his phone rang in his hands.

She appeared on the screen, all bright and beautiful. It was a picture Killian had taken of her one weekend the group traveled down to San Diego. She was sitting on the beach, the ocean sparkling in the background. The strings of her bikini poking out from her red coverup. The large straw hat she wore to block out the sun bent back. Her smile was contagious, as she had just finished laughing at something Mary Margaret had said. He cursed himself for ever making that picture her caller ID. He wanted to stare at it more than talk to her.

He forced himself to answer the call.

“Good evening Love,” he started, waiting to hear her angelic voice answer him back.

He could hear mumbling, but no one spoke directly to him. There was laughter in the background.

“Emma,” he said, a bit louder than normal.

Still, no one answered. There was some scratching on the phone, and then things came in a bit clearer.

Ruby’s unique laughter came through the phone. He could hear Mary Margaret shushing everyone else. Regina’s voice then came in. He was able to hear the words out of her mouth, but something was muffling the noise.

“Come on Emma, Truth or Dare?” Regina said.

He could hear more giggling, then the woman he loved said “Truth”.

It finally dawned on him that Emma must have butt dialed him. Emma’s iPhone had been known to do that a few times. It was so old, and she refused to upgrade it even though her plan allowed her to. Yet, Emma kept the beat-up thing that took nothing more than any piece of fabric touching it to unlock it. A few times, she had accidently dialed her Captain when she was putting her phone in her pocket. He laughed to himself before yelling her name one last time.

“Emma” he screamed into the phone.

No reply.

As he moved the phone away from his face, about to hang up the call, he heard something that had him pulling the phone back towards his ear.

“Alright, tell us how you really feel about Killian,” Regina

He felt wrong to listen, but something in him needed to know what Emma felt.

There was a round of laughter as the girls were probably getting settled to hear Emma’s confession. He could imagine them. Regina was probably sitting in a chair, her icy eyes focused on Emma. Mary Margaret was probably on the floor, trying to contain her excitement. Ruby was probably lying down, taking up the whole couch of whoever’s apartment they were at. It was Emma that he had troubles imagining.

Was she smiling as Regina asked the question? Did her heart start to skip at beat at the mention of his name, the way it did for him? Were her cheeks flushed because of thoughts of him?

“Killian’s my best friend,” Emma said, muffled by her pocket. He could hear a smile in her voice.

“Come on Swan, there is more to that – tell us how you really feel about Killian,” Regina said, this time a bit more forceful than before.

He heard a sigh and he felt his heart completely stop; the breath caught in his chest.

“Oh, fuck it,” she started, her voice coming in a bit clearer, “I love the man. OK! I love him. I’ve loved him for years.”

He almost dropped the phone. Everything that was happening suddenly stopped – time stood still. Emma Swan loved him. The woman he loved, that he would go to the ends of time and space for loved him back. He heard the words straight from her mouth. Yet, the words didn’t sound exciting and promising. They sounded sad. It was if a knife was slowly cutting out his heart. She loved him, but clearly that love wasn’t enough.

“But I’m scared OK. I’m scared of what loving him might mean,” she concluded.

“What do you mean?” Ruby asked.

“Remember when we all went to that bar Regina found a few weeks ago,” she paused, probably waiting for her friends to nod their understanding, “Killian was being just so… Killian. He was the perfect gentleman and the whole night, I just imagined what being with him would be like. We aren’t even dating, but he was constantly touching me, throwing attention my way. What would that be like if we were actually together? Then, in the van, he put his head on my shoulder, and suddenly, my feelings smacked me right in the face. And then I got scared. He is my best friend – what would happen if I lose him? What would happen if I lose our friendship? I couldn’t live with that.  The last few weeks, with us barley talking because I got scared of my feelings, has been so rough. All I’ve wanted to do is talk to him, be near him; it’s been torture.”

Killian let a breath out. A thousand things were running through his mind. How could he be so blind to what Emma was going through? How could he get her to change her mind and be with him? He needed to make her see that no matter what, they would be OK. She needed to understand that he would never do anything to hurt her, that he would spend eternity making sure that what they used to have will always be there, as a strong foundation to what they were going to have.

“Oh Emma,” Mary Margaret’s soothing voice echoed in his ear, “You can never be sure what is going to happen, but you can’t live your life surrounded by fear. Fear is natural and serves a purpose, but you can’t let it control your happiness. Love, true love, the love that I know you have for Killian and he has for you, is worth the risk of anything that may happen.”

“You really think he loves me?” her voice was barely audible.

“Of course, he does!” he heard Ruby yell.

“The man isn’t the brightest, but he isn’t a dumbass, of course he loves you,” Regina quipped.

Killian rolled his eyes at the words, but she was right – he did love her.

“What should I do?” Emma questioned.

“You tell him, you tell him everything. Be honest with him. Tell him you are scared. Tell him you don’t want to lose his friendship. But start with telling him you love him,” Mary Margaret told him.

He could hear shuffling, movement of fabric over the phone. Then, everything got very clear.

“Oh shit,” he heard Emma whisper, her voice louder than it had been before.

Suddenly, her face appeared on his phone. She must have turned on her FaceTime app.

“Well hello there love,” he smiled, not hiding the cocky grin that was now splashed across his face.

“How much of that did you hear?” She asked, her cheeks reddening.

“Enough to tell you that I love you too,” he said.

Maybe the night was going to end on a good note.

[maelaola]

Away and Under the Weather: Part 3

This is it. My final and, in my opinion, WORST illness-related experience abroad. It actually involves a few different illnesses and was spread out over at least a month. It was painful, exhausting, and just bizarre. Enjoy! #1 It started with the flu... It started with the flu. Nothing special, just the flu. When you live in another country AND work with children, you're going to get sick now and then. It was around this time of year (April) in 2007. I don't even remember how bad a flu it was. I probably had a fever, some body aches and a runny nose. That's usually what I get. I taught lessons through it (as usual) and it was over. I didn't need to go to the doctor until later. The flu ended but the crap in my lungs never really went away. After a week or two of wheezing and coughing, I went to get checked out. At the hospital, I was shown around by my own English-speaking nurse to see two specialists and got an x-ray of my lungs. It cost less than US$50. (I miss Korea.) I had acute bronchitis. The flu had slightly inflamed my bronchial tubes and there was a little infection. They gave me antibiotics, pain pills, something for the mucus, and anti-inflammatory medicine. Getting treated in Korea by western medicine is different than at home. Korean hospitals also treated people using eastern medicine and I took advantage of that more after this experience. Eastern medicine is about treating the delicate balance that exists in your body and allowing your body to function at its peak potential. Western medicine works more like a band aid. You're hurt here; fix here. Western medicine in Korea takes this metaphor even further. Sick? In pain? Appendages double in size? Okay! What can we do to patch you up and get you back to work? On top of that, we really do blindly trust doctors a lot. Which is fine for the complicated stuff. But in Korea, you barely even know what medicine you're taking. They give me the list but there's a lot on there and it's hard to tell the pills apart. They prepare all the pills for you and separate them by dose in these long strips of vacuum sealed plastic baggies. Swallow the cocktail and get back to work. No need to wait for the effects to kick in. I can tell you that I took my first baggie on a Wednesday night or Thursday morning. I remember that because by Friday I was calling the nurse and taking the only sick leave I ever took in 3 years in Korea. I felt a little off on Thursday. Not sick, just off. So it took me (and my head teacher/neighbor who was walking home with me) completely by surprise when I randomly puked on the street Thursday night. I barely made it to the storm drain let alone even thinking about trying to find a toilet. Living abroad, I've had my share of food poisonings so the idea that my body was rejecting something was not foreign to me. But there was no food. It was like a hangover without the bliss of being an idiot the night before. Since it wasn't food, I assumed pills and called the nurse. I stopped taking all of them since I didn't know which was which in my poison cocktail. I didn't feel any better the next day as I started to have stomach problems come out the other end. Great. And remember how I couldn't have sick days? That was especially true my first year when our numbers were already small and there were teachers fleeing the country in the middle of the night every other week. Fortunately, though, through some luck--and a lot of pity from my head teacher and principal who watched me try to teach my 4pm-7pm elementary class from a chair when I wasn't running to the bathroom--my head teacher had her second three-hour slot free and taught my 7pm-10pm middle school class. So I went home and proceeded to have my worst weekend ever. I was supposed to be at a wedding. Instead, every three hours (like clockwork!) I crawled the three feet from my bed to the bathroom and then tried crawl back, dragging what was left of my tattered stomach on the floor. Eventually that was too much and I brought a pillow and blanket into the bathroom to sleep on the floor in between sessions. I didn't leave the house until Sunday afternoon. I limped across the street to get some saltines and electrolytes with some hope that I would be better before Monday. And, surprisingly, I was. My stomach was convinced everything was out that it didn't like and it stopped trying to kill me. On Monday, I was exhausted, soar, and really cranky but I was mobile enough to go down the hill to my work. I settled in my chair to be a white-faced, native speaker in front of 15 Korean kids for 6 hours. The kids were extra nice and the next few days went fine. Although, it still amazes me that the kids never viewed this behavior as strange. I could not stand most of the time and could barely speak but I was still there. Even now in Hong Kong, I often teach while wearing a doctor's mask when I have a cough or runny nose, and I have some kids come to EVERY class in a mask. Sick? Wrap it, cover it up, take a pill. But do it at work. In this case though, the pills were the problem. I talked to my mom on Skype later and she told me that it was probably the anti-inflammatory medicine. She used to work for a doctor and patients often called and complained of stomach problems when the doctor prescribed anti-inflammatory medicine. So that was it. The weekend was more than enough to learn my lesson. The body is connected, beware of pills, listen to your mother, work somewhere with sick days, bla, bla, bla... Teacher, finishee?? Anio. I got better and started to regale my friends with gross stories of the worst weekend ever. Around midweek, I decided that I was better enough to not cancel my rafting trip for the coming weekend. It was rafting in Korea, after all, which is only slightly more intense than floating down a lazy-river. It was mostly an excuse to drink somewhere else and also to watch a traditional Korean mask performance. Rafting was scheduled for Sunday so we watched the mask dance on Saturday. It was in a very cool theatre-in-the-round, and--despite not understanding a word they were saying--it was really funny! There was an ajumma character which is always a riot and at one point a guy pretended to cut off the fake bull's penis. It was an outdoor theater, and it was really hot, so most people sat in the shaded section. About 30 of us came on the trip and showed up late so a few of us sat in the sun so we could watch from the front row. It was really bright when I first stared down at my feet so I just thought I was seeing things. They felt a little strange and warm, but so did the rest of me. And I was wearing larger flip-flops so I wasn't uncomfortable. I felt a little stupid but I turned to my friend and said it anyway, "Do my feet look bigger to you?" I'm not sure if she could see or if she was just a little worried about the question I just asked but we needed a closer look. We walked around the edge of the seating and went outside to where it was shaded and we could see better. And there they were: cankles. I grew cankles in an afternoon! There was a weird fluster next as three of my friends and I tried to figure out what to do for a case of instant-fat-feet. I lay down on the ground and elevated them, someone put a cold water bottle on them, but mostly we just poked them a lot as if we were suddenly going to able to diagnose the problem. I freaked out for a while as they seemed to get bigger in the heat. Fortunately, they grew to certain size and stopped. They didn't hurt and I could walk. I didn't go to a doctor because I was where I usually was when stuff like this happens: in a village in a foreign country. The play ended and after some shopping we all got on the buses to go back to the place we were staying. A few more people got to see my exciting new development. Most of the theories tossed around that day had to do with the bus going up and down the hills and something with altitude. I kept them elevated and took some allergy pills or something. I even went rafting the next day. (Seriously, easy rafting.) I just kept showing people my fat feet hoping someone could tell me what was happening to me. Monday I went to work, fat feet and all. I got a kick out of freaking out the kids with my cankles. (It actually freaked out the other teachers and staff more.) They were still there a week later when my parents arrived in Korea. I'm sure it was a great sight for my mother, who hadn't seen me in nine months. Because that's what you want to see when your oldest child is all alone for the first time and on the other side of the world. That she's becoming deformed. My dad made me sleep in his special airplane socks that are supposed to give you even circulation and they started to really go down. Mom cleaned my apartment which was not in an acceptable state (is it ever?). I took my first real vacation since I arrived in Korea and relaxed in Jeju-do. It took some time but they went back to normal and I was all better. Finally, we sat down together with the Internet and tried to figure out why my feet blew up. (Mom is an experienced hiker and didn't buy the 'altitude' theory.) And there, at the bottom of the list, on some medical website under possible causes for swollen feet it said, "...may be caused by anti-inflammatory medicine." So that was it. I got the flu which gave me bronchitis that led to the worst weekend of my life followed by one of the weirdest. The lesson for all this is very simple and not at all original: Stuff happens. I did what I was supposed to. I was sick so I went to the doctor. Usually that's the end. Take the pills, drink some liquids, all better. Only this time the pills poisoned me, my stomach tried to kill me, and my feet doubled in size. The good experience that came out of this was that the next time I was sick, I was really willing to try acupuncture and Korean traditional medicine. Also, I try not to suck down pills like candy. My feet are big enough already. Unfortunately, I know this is not the end. Despite Hong Kong being more western than Korea and having more resources than Buenos Aires, I know it will happen again. You get sick, you fall down; drink your fluids, pick yourself up. It's just different when you don't speak the language.

**********

Again, this is old content I wrote about nearly 10 years ago for another blog (http://laurabusan.blogspot.com/). It’s time I start writing again and bringing everything together.

[brightestwitchxmionee]

task 002 - childhood memories 

Childhood

Best childhood memory?: 

     Hermione’s favourite memory would have to be the day she first realised something was different about her, which happened to be the day before McGonagall visited her home. All her life, since she could remember, Hermione was never like the other children, especially when attending public muggle school. She was outcasted, maybe because of her smarts, but even then she was always despised when she tried to not be smart to make friends. It was a month before her 12th birthday in September, and she sat quietly in her room reading Matilda by Roald Dahl for the hundredth time. 

     She always enjoyed the story, connecting with Maltida in ways she never thought she could. Not that her parents treated her poorly, but rather the students, and how Matilda never enjoyed Miss Trunchbull just like Hermione never enjoyed her time in public school. Halfway through the book, reading about Matilda doing some magic in class, Hermione shut the pages and let out a sigh of frustration. If only she could do magic. 

     For a moment, she wanted to play pretend like she would do when younger. Rising from her cushions and detangling herself from her bed covers, Hermione walked across the room, amusing herself as she imagined herself moving objects with her fingers just like Matilda. She reached her shelf and slid the book back into its place, her finger tracing down the spine before she curled it back as if trying to jerk it towards her. She laughed at herself, finding it stupid and awkward-- magic was not real. As Hermione turned away, she heard a quick shuffling behind her and her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Turning, Matilda was pushed out a tad from the slot she had slid the book into. She pushed it in once again, but the book fought back and nudged itself out against Hermione’s hands. It shot out and fell at her feet. Her heart rattled in her chest as she tried to make sense of what happened, trying to logically put together why the book moved. Yet, she couldn’t help but wonder if it was her that moved the book with her finger. Feeling silly once again, she pointed her index at the shelves, directly at the spot where Matilda was slid into, and quickly Hermione dragged the finger away towards herself. 

     There was a rattle around her as all the books flew out of their sockets and pelted themselves towards Hermione. She screeched and cover herself but they all missed and landed around her. Her heart beat faster, breathing ragged as she lowered her arms to look at the scattered books and pages. “Hermione--” she heard her parents call, but there was just a big smile on her face, too shocked to speak, and too happy to finally understand something was different. 

     The next day, a strangely dressed woman with cat-like features approached the house but Hermione already knew why she was there. It was obvious, she was a witch, and her life was going to change for the better. 

ooc; dunno why i wrote this memory like this. also this is a mild rewrite of a larger self-para i have of hermione reading matilda. this is based off of some tumblr post i saw years ago about younger hermione doing magic like matilda. 

Worst childhood memory?:

Her first couple of days at Hogwarts when she wasn’t fitting with the other students, which reminded her of muggle schooling when she was outcasted for no particular reason. It especially didn’t help when she first discovered the different opinions based off of magical blood and knew she’d be discriminated towards for most of her life by pure-bloods or traditional wizards. 

What were they like as a child?:

Hermione was a very calm child when growing up, always following the rules her parents set for her and never acting out when in public-- or acting out in general. Her mother constantly referred to her as ‘an angel child’ whenever she spoke to her grandmother or any other relative. She wasn’t fussy as a newborn and even surpassed the ‘terrible twos’ stage as a toddler. Of course, that all changed once she started muggle school, her parents constantly notified about the ‘strange’ things Hermione would do in class, and even during her times at Hogwarts they were always aware of all the things her, Harry and Ron went through. 

Any crushes growing up?:

She was never much for crushes and romances, but she did adore Professor Lockhart during his time at Hogwarts before they found out he was a fraud. 

Did they know/like their parents?:

She adores her parents, possibly more than anything in the world. It has been hard on her since the war, their memories still modified and still unaware they even have a daughter, never mind just not having them around. Her mother was one of her closest relationships besides Harry and Ron.

Best influence on them as a kid?:

Professor McGonagall, without a doubt. She always looked up to her Head of House, and she was also the one person she went to or owl’ed during her first couple of weeks in the magical community. McGonagall always pushed Hermione towards achieving more advanced studies, not that she needed much pushing, but she fought for the time-turner so Hermione could take more classes during her third year, and always treated the young witch as if she was one of her own.

Worst influence on them as a kid?:

Probably Harry and Ron, but only in aspects of getting into trouble and having that ‘hero-complex’ of always trying to save the school. Not that she was innocent as well, there were moments where she would be the instigator and provoke the other two. When she brewed polyjuice potion during their second year to disguise themselves as Crabbe, Goyle, and Millicent, for instance, or when she continued to do research on Nicolas Flamel and countless of other things.

Did they have a lot of friends?:

Growing up in the muggle world, no, but attending Hogwarts, it is well-known she is best friends with Ron and Harry, and from them Hermione grew close to Ginny Weasley and the rest of the Weasley family. She also has a good relationship with Neville Longbottom, always sticking up for him even on the first day of school. A lot of her fellow Gryffindors are also good friends.

Type of discipline (ex. strict, lenient):

Her parents were mildly strict whilst growing up but that never bothered Hermione since she wasn’t one to act out towards her parents. As she grew older and made friends and entered a world that they weren’t apart of, they became more lenient about certain things, especially when she would spend summer and winter holidays with the Weasleys and Harry.

Were they overprotected as a child? Sheltered?:

Not really, they let Hermione grow from mistakes and venture out into the world to appreciate and learn.

Did they feel rejection or affection as a child?:

From her parents, there was nothing but love and affection. They adored their only child and loved her endlessly. She also received the same love from the rest of her family members, including her grandparents and cousins. 

Were they an early or late bloomer for puberty?:

She was either ‘early’ or ‘regular’ bloomer when it came to puberty. Around 13 or 14 did she finally start developing, especially around the time of the TriWizard Tournament and Yule Ball. 

Do they still know any of their childhood friends?:

Not so much the muggle ones, not that she had any, but she’s still very close with all of the friends she made at Hogwarts while growing up. 

Describe their childhood home:

The floorboards would creeky in the living room right behind the couch, if one wasn’t careful and minded their step. The air always smelt clean, of bleach, since her mother was very proper and stingy towards sanitation, being a dentist, but during the weekends it would always smell of baking-- either a cake or cookies, maybe even pastries. Her father loved to bake, but cooking was his speciality, and he always made the best potatoes for their roasts. Her room walls were a faded lilac, almost white, and her bookshelf was so old and groaned whenever she added more books to her collection. The wood and paint chipped from it, yet it matched with the mismatched furniture in her room. There was always a lot more blankets scattered around than anything else. The lawn out front was trimmed neatly and a little sign hung from their fence to remind their neighbours to not litter and to curb their dog. Occasionally they held little garden tea ‘parties,’ the three of them, within the fence of their front yard since they did not have a backyard, but that was only when she was a child. 

What was the economic status of their family?:

They were very well off as muggles, both her parents being very successful dentists.

Their childhood career choice:

She always wanted to be an activist for magical creatures, noted in her third year when she created Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare.

[bangkokjacknews]

The Weekend Mystery - Will the real Paul McCartney please stand up?

Did the famous ex-Beatle really die in a car crash back in 1966?

On 12 October 1969, Tom Zarski rang the ‘Uncle’ Russ Gibb’s radio show on WKNR-FM in Dearborn, Michigan, and announced that Paul McCartney had been killed in an accident in November 1966 and the Beatles had drafted in a lookalike to keep the band fully functioning. He backed up his argument with several pieces of credible circumstantial evidence, including the decision by the band in 1967 to stop playing live in order to concentrate on their studio recordings and film work. Russ Gibb was so intrigued by the story that he then spent two hours on air mulling over the clues and playing Beatles records. When one caller urged him to play ‘Revolution 9’ (from The White Album) backwards, Gibb was amazed to find he could distinctly make out the words ‘Turn me on, dead man’ through his headphones. Despite the fact that Zarski had pointed out he didn’t actually believe Paul McCartney was dead, he was just interested in the theory, by the end of the programme networks across the United States were discussing the mysterious death of one of the world’s most famous rock stars and the events surrounding his demise. Hundreds of news journalists promptly flew to London and interviewed as many of the conspiracy theorists they could find, and from the reports that followed the only certainty is that many of them were experimenting with LSD, as none of it made much sense at all. The story ran that on the evening of Tuesday 8 November 1966 Paul McCartney and John Lennon were working late into the night on the Beatles’ upcoming album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band when a row developed over recording techniques and McCartney stormed out of the studio. Furious, he sped off in his Aston Martin and smashed into a van, dying instantly. The resulting fire prevented the coroner from positively identifying the body but the remaining band members were left in no doubt at all that McCartney had not survived. Another caller to Russ Gibb’s show claimed that McCartney had picked up a hitchhiker called Rita that night. When she suddenly realized who he was, she had screamed and lunged at her hero, causing him to crash into the van. Neither Rita nor the other driver were ever seen or heard from again. The public mourned as shock in but there was one unavoidable question: if McCartney had died in 1966, who was the man that looked like Paul and who had been hanging out with the Beatles ever since? The explanation ran that Beatles manager Brian Epstein was so horrified at the thought of the world’s most successful band breaking up that he held secret auditions and persuaded John, George and Ringo to have all their photographs taken with a stand-in to keep the public unaware of the accident. When Epstein died only nine months later, after a battle with depression and drug abuse, his untimely demise was cited as another piece of evidence. It was said that he just couldn’t come to terms with the loss of McCartney. The Paul-is-dead mystery was also conveniently used to explain McCartney’s sudden split from long-term fiancée Jane Asher (because McCartney stand-in William Shears Campbell didn’t like her) and that his new relationship with Linda Eastman (later McCartney) was Campbell’s real love interest. Another piece of supposedly compelling evidence is that for several years the other three Beatles had wanted to stop playing live shows because the audiences were screaming so loudly they couldn’t could hear anything, but McCartney had resisted. With Paul gone, the remaining three could do as they pleased – indeed the Beatles had last performed live on 29 August 1966, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, and played no more live concerts after that. Conspiracy theorists nodded and agreed that it all made perfect sense, while others, including the Beatles, laughed it off as a ridiculous urban legend. And still the story continued. One American radio presenter had photographs of the singer before and after November 1966 scientifically compared and found there were obvious differences, one being that the nose was of a different length. A doctor from the University of Miami analysed voice recordings and concluded publicly that the recordings prior to August 1966 were different to those recorded afterwards. Paul McCartney, he claimed, did not sing on Beatles records after August 1966. By now fans all over the world were beginning to look for their own clues in Beatles music and album covers, and the clues turned up in spades. Here then are some of them, and the evidence seemingly pointing to the fact that Paul McCartney was dead. Sgt Pepper was the first album the Beatles released after the supposed accident, after recording began on 6 December 1966. When it reached the shops in June 1967, nobody noticed anything unusual about the artwork in connection with the Paul McCartney mystery, but in 1969 conspiracy theorists were able to detect a range of coded references to Paul’s demise. For a start the band appear to be standing at a graveside complete with flowers and wreaths. They are surrounded by famous personalities, who could be mourners, and one of them is holding an open hand above McCartney’s head, said to be a traditional Eastern symbol for death. The theorists looked closer and concluded that the yellow flowers at the foot of the picture are arranged in the shape of a left-handed bass guitar, Paul’s instrument, and one of the four strings is missing, signifying his absence. Under the doll’s arm on the right hand side there appears to be a blood-stained driving glove and the doll itself has a head wound similar to the one Paul was supposed to have died from and he is wearing a badge on his sleeve on the inside cover bearing the letters OPD, standing for ‘Officially Pronounced Dead’. The open-palm gesture actually appears on the front cover of Revolver, twice in the Magical Mystery Tour booklet, twice in the Magical Mystery film and twice on the cover of the original Yellow Submarine sleeve, but, in reality, none of it means anything at all. There is no such gesture in Indian culture symbolizing death. The badge Paul is wearing on the inside sleeve does not read ‘OPD’, it has the initials OPP on it. The badge was in fact given to McCartney when he visited the Ontario Provincial Police in Canada during the Beatles’ world tour in 1965. A statue of Kali, a Hindu goddess, also features on the front cover of the Sgt Pepper album, which the theorists maintain represents rebirth and regeneration, hinting that one of the Beatles has been reborn, or replaced. But Kali, from which the name of Calcutta is believed to derive, has traditionally been a figure of annihilation, representing the destructive power of time (kala being the Sanskrit word for ‘time’) Also, the ‘O’ shaped arrangement of flowers at end of the band’s name has caused some theorists to speculate that the whole thing reads ‘BE AT LESO’ instead of ‘BEATLES’. This was taken as a sign that Paul was buried at Leso, the Greek Island the band had supposedly bought. But none of the Beatles had bought a Greek island and there is no such place as Leso. There are many more pieces of ‘convincing’ evidence. I’ve just picked out some of my favourites. The Beatles all grew moustaches at the time to help mask a scar on the lip of McCartney stand-in William Shears Campbell. In fact McCartney did grow a moustache for Sgt Pepper as he was unable to shave at the time. Paul had fallen off his scooter on his way to visit his aunt and split his lip on a pavement, making it too painful to shave. He also lost a front tooth in the accident, explaining why he appears in the ‘Rain’ and ‘Paperback Writer’ promo videos missing one of his teeth. The accident also explains the scars seen during the White Album photograph sessions. The number plate on the VW Beetle shown on the Abbey Road cover reads LMW 281F, taken to mean Paul would have been 28 ‘IF’ he had survived. But Paul would have been only twenty-seven, and the VW Beetle had nothing to do with anyone at Abbey Road. The director of the photo sessions tried to have it towed away, but the police took too long to arrive so they went ahead with the picture anyway, leaving it in shot. McCartney is wearing no shoes in the Abbey Road photograph. His explanation was: ‘It was a hot day and I wanted to take my shoes off, to look slightly different to the others. That’s all that was about. Now people can tell me apart from the others.’ But the conspiracy theorists swore that the picture had been set up to look like a funeral march, with him as the corpse. On the records Rubber Soul, Yesterday and Today, Help and Revolver there were said to be many more clues. The song ‘I’m Looking Through You’ on Rubber Soul was thought to be about discovering that McCartney had been replaced. Some fans took these blatant ‘clues’ as hard evidence while others quickly realized all of those records were made prior to 9 November 1966 and could not possibly have anything to do with the supposed accident. But with hysteria mounting, even the thinnest clue came to look like definite evidence. In the lyrics to ‘I am the Walrus’, the line ‘stupid bloody Tuesday’ is taken by some to be John Lennon referring to the day of the accident that claimed his band mate. But when it was pointed out the alleged accident was supposed to have happened on a Wednesday morning, conspiracy theorists then claimed it was the Tuesday night that the two of them had fallen out before McCartney had stormed off, and to his death. Some believed it, while others dismissed it as an already thin lead being stretched even thinner. But then came the line ‘waiting for the van to come’, a supposed reference to the ambulance, and ‘goo goo ga joob’ – apparently Humpty Dumpty’s last words before he fell off that wall and bashed his head in, as Paul was supposed to have done. The Beatles themselves very quickly became very irritated by all the speculation. And it was not long before the band, aware every lyric and photo shoot was now being studied, began to play up to the hysteria. After writing one complicated and seemingly meaningless song called ‘Glass Onion’ Lennon remarked, ‘Let the f**kers work that one out.’ But he included the lines ‘Well here’s another clue for you all / The walrus was Paul’. In no time at all, people were announcing the walrus was a symbol of death to some cultures and Lennon despaired. It wasn’t much fun being a Beatle any more and the band broke up soon afterwards. So – to sum up – if the real Paul McCartney had died in his Aston Martin in 1967, and a replacement found in time for the photo shoots for the next album, then imagine the string of coincidences that needed to have taken place. For a start he had to look and sound just like Paul. Then he had to convince Linda or, if she was in on the plot, she had to like him enough to stay married to him for the next thirty years. And he would have had to learn how to play guitar left-handed, which is even less likely, I can assure you. John Lennon would have to have been fooled too, as it is unlikely he would want share song-writing credits and royalties with a stranger for the last three years of Beatles recordings, especially as Epstein wasn’t there to tell him to. And most of all, for the lookalike to have written and recorded songs of a McCartney standard for over thirty years would be hard to imagine. Hang on a minute, I have just remembered ‘The Frog Chorus’ and ‘Mull of Kintyre’, and so my argument is beginning to wear thin, even to me. And another thing – would the real Paul McCartney have married Heather Wills, or whatever her name was? Perhaps Zarski was right after all – there must be an impostor. - Albert Jack Albert Jack AUDIOBOOKS available for download here  

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[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

A Drive with Abby (Post 117) 11-25-15

Instead of our usual Saturday morning breakfast, Abby asked me to take her to the bus terminal in Cleveland so that she could head farther east to New York City for a vacation rendezvous with one of the first friends that she met at Excelsior Middle School when we moved in Discovery Bay. Unfortunately since the bus ride is a ten hours slog, I ended up having to get up early enough to arrive at my brother’s house where she is staying in time for our 6:30 AM rendezvous.  Saturday is a morning of the week on which I usually sleep in to recharge my batteries, but I often only get to see Abby once a week because of our busy schedules so I cut my weekend recuperative somnolence short. Driving her to Cleveland was a priority, but the early hours necessitated a pit stop at Duncan Donuts. We tried Panera first, but they only serve late risers who can eat a leisurely breakfast later in the morning than we had time for.

It was a good ride of close to an hour that could have actually been forty-five minutes, as I don’t follow GPS instructions well when I am in conversation.  The polite lady voice had to recalculate and redirect us several times much to Abby’s disgust, but my daughter and the anonymous disembodied voice both tolerated my navigational shortcomings.  My ability to filter out interruptions did not serve me well in this case.  A skill that probably started as a coping response to parenting four young children, may one day manifest into the type of indecisiveness that transforms me into an abominable road hazard.  

Currently, I have no problem bombing off into the wrong direction with the understanding that my electronic helping orienteer will eventually get me over the river and through the woods.  One day I will certainly be the guy freezing at all intersections while everyone honks at me.  I figure that I probably have about 20 more years before all my bad driving habits metastasize, but hopefully by then the nice electronic lady will actually be turning the wheel herself and pushing the pedals.

Anyway, as I was missing turns and passing correct exits, we talked about just about every subject under the sun.   We talked about ISIS and about her nostalgia for our North Carolina days when we were habitually poor.  Her favorite anecdote is about how I often used to turn left-over taco cheese into bread fondue with the magic RF energy of our microwave. There must not have been any further change left to be found out of the couch cushions during the week that I created that tasty dish.  I am sure that it is a story she will share with her children one day as a modern version of a Depression Era fried bologna or SPAM meal tale from a bygone age.  We covered such a wide variety of subjects that I can scarcely remember them all.  Such is a drive with Abby.

I will miss her on Thanksgiving Day.  For a twenty-two year old, she cooks a mean turkey even though she now has so many food allergies that her enjoyment of holiday meals is extremely limited.  Mostly I miss talking to the one person who most fully shared what I went through in the final months with Pam.  Whether I was leaving my sleeping station on the floor by my wife’s bed or relinquishing my spot helping her move around the house, it was Abby who relived me of my duties in our perpetual rotation that finally resolved itself in a way that we dreaded and probably expected although we chose not to discuss what we knew was inevitably coming for Pam.

Abby will be spending her holiday with her friend in NYC, while I spend mine here with Stephen, Nick and Natalie in Ohio. Two lives on separate trajectories: one enjoying new adventures and staring forward in anticipation of earthly things to come, the other looking to complete his mortal projects while trying to uncover and discover what happens in the next journey.  It strikes me more and more how the work I am doing in Ohio is really the logical extension of the work I had started for my last employer that had gotten bogged down and derailed for various reasons over the last several years.  It is a great gift to me to see what actually might have been done within an organization that is cohesive.

Family life should also have a singleness of purpose – that all members attain their place at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. Abby and I felt a great unity and mutual respect with regards to our care for Pam.  We knew what our main thing was.  The arguments that we had at the time were trivial and we can no longer remember them except when we are nostalgic for portions of the past that are as comedic and stupid as nacho cheese fondue with stale bread for dinner. 

Although Abby will not be with me eating much better fare on this Thanksgiving Day, I remain as grateful as can be for the great change in my life that Jesus has wrought.  As is our new tradition, the Donnelly’s will attend Mass on Thursday morning.   We are now wont to give thanks twice over, having discovered Father Jerry’s favorite Mass of the year, when none are obligated but many arrive knowing it is proper to seek a blessing on their bread and wine for the great feast of togetherness that this great nation celebrates in imitation of another greater feast that we will someday join.  

Isn’t it odd that like Cain so many American’s are fleeing the idea of God, but they still celebrate Thanksgiving.  Just who do they think they are thanking? For me Thanksgiving starts with the Eucharist, but no matter how you celebrate be at peace.  May all your families enjoy a lovingly long weekend enjoying each other’s company and forgetting irritations that are unimportant within God’s individual development plan for each and every one of us.

[comicsbeat]

Continuing with our wide-ranging survey of creators from every end of the business on what happened and what’s coming. Some of these precitions for 2019 sound pretty gloomy. What do you think? Are we headed to a new comicsgeddon?  You can check out the other parts of the survey here.

  Tom Peyer, comicsahoy.com, Editor-In-Chief, AHOY Comics

2019 Projects: I wrote two series that will have season finales in early 2019, The Wrong Earth and High Heaven. So will AHOY titles Captain Ginger and Edgar Allan Poe’s Snifter of Terror. We’ll announce their Wave Two replacements soon (if we haven’t already by the time this goes out).

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? The death of Stan Lee.

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? I gave up making predictions on November 9, 2016.

James Romberger, Cartoonist, gallery artist, critic, teacher

2019 Projects: The graphic novel version of Post York, major publisher to be announced soon

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? Probably the death of the most polarizing individual with the most problematic legacy in comics: Stan Lee

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? Doubtless, the further infiltration of comics characters into movies, at the same time that sales of mainstream comics decline, as meanwhile alt/lit comics become more inclusive, while academia continues to incorporate comics in the curriculum

Stuart Moore, Writer/Cat Herder

2019 Projects: X-MEN: THE DARK PHOENIX SAGA (prose novel) – May 2019 BATMAN: NIGHTWALKER gn (adaptation) – DC Ink – summer 2019 And several new creator-owned comics that I can’t talk about yet!

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? The explosion of new imprints and small companies. Creatively, it’s a very exciting time.

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? The continuing convergence of comics with other entertainment media. There will be winners, losers, and lots of shades in between.

Taimur Dar, Journalist/Marketing Associate

2019 Projects: Still contributing to the Beat in addition to my continued involvement overseeing the offi cial social media and promotion of the late/great Dwayne McDuffie. Some potentially BIG things related to McDuffie coming in the near future I’m not at liberty to discuss so fans should definitely keep an eye out.

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? The rise of and fall of C*micsGate.

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? Before the recent glut of new comic publishers I would have said the launch of the new comic publication from Bill Jemas. Yet the involvement of former Marvel EiC Axel Alonso has me curious to see what form the company takes and the status of these new publication by the end of next year.

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2019? Probably Season 2 of TITANS on DC Universe which has me hooked despite my qualms about the dark direction and portrayals of certain characters. On the flip side, I’m excited for Zachary Levi as the titular hero in SHAZAM! which may finally bring much needed levity to the gritty DCEU. Hopefully it doesn’t turn into another GREEN LANTERN, but however the film turns out, it looks like fun!

Who inspired you in 2018? Brian Michael Bendis for his ongoing positivity in the face of his near death experience with his MRSA infection last year. Also the way he promotes the works of others on his various social media and just his general kindness towards fans.

David Harper, Host of Off Panel podcast

2019 Projects: More of Off Panel, more freelance projects, possibly…other things

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? In terms of volume and attention, probably C*micsgate and the endless awfulness that crew brought to the table. In terms of long-term impact, probably a combination of the continued rise of all-ages comics (especially with Gina Gagliano leading the new RHCB graphic novel imprint) and the change in leadership over at DC, which seemingly has resulted in some changes in strategy, most notably the at best neutering and at worst early death of the Black Label imprint.

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? Raina Telgemeier has two books coming out, so I’d be shocked if it wasn’t Raina’s return to the top of the kids comics ranks.

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2019? I feel zero guilt for it, but I could not be more excited for Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

Who inspired you in 2018? Zach Lowe. This NBA writer and podcaster for ESPN is my favorite writer and podcaster around. If the comic industry had someone with that approach talking about comics, we’d be all the better for it.

Karen Green, Curator for Comics and Cartoons, Columbia University

2019 Projects: Sadly, I can never talk about what’s coming up until the deeds of gift are signed…

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? Industry pushback to the bullies of C*micsgate

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? With any luck, the complete collapse of C*micsgate and its ilk

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2019? No pleasure ever makes me feel guilty

Jimmie Robinson, Writer/Artist

2019 Projects: ARTillery: Weapons of art

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? Black Panther movie

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? San Diego Comic Con 50th anniversary

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2019? Being an Eisner Awards judge

    Hart Seely, Publisher AHOY Comics

2019 Projects: I do all the crapola work on AHOY Comics. The editors do the fun stuff. But – plug coming: This spring AHOY will launch a new wave of comics, and we are insanely proud of them.

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? Probably the appearance of Batman’s junk, a reflection of the lengths to which a frightened industry will go to get attention.

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? Somebody else’s junk, I suppose.

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2019? The Yankees, if they can just find pitching, pitching, PITCHING!

Who inspired you in 2018? My kids, all grown-up, who fight every day to get by in a world that my generation – the Baby Boomers – has totally botched. History will not treat us fondly. But young people – from the Stoneman Douglas students to those who march in social causes everywhere – give me hope. They may prove to be the only thing we did right.

Jim Ottaviani, Writer

2019 Projects: HAWKING will come out in July, with art by Leland Myrick. It’s the biography of a guy who made a number of cameos on The Simpsons and The Big Bang Theory and did some science too.

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? I’m sure plenty of stuff happened, but between work and the state of the world, I clearly missed most of it.

Shaenon K. Garrity, writer, editor, cartoonist

2019 Projects: Skin Horse, the online strip I create with my co-writer Jeffrey C. Wells and colorist Pancha Diaz, had its tenth anniversary in 2018. We plan to get Volumes 7 and 8 out in print this year. In non- comics news, I recently finished a sci-fi novel, so this year I’ll be looking for a publisher.

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? It continues to be exciting to see the industry branch into new publishing models, both online and in print. Anyone who isn’t following Iron Circus Comics is a dang fool.

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? I hope it’ll involve more spectacular work from up-and-coming creators. In 2018 I was blown away by Tillie Walden, Carolyn Nowak, and Aminder Dhaliwal, among many others. More of that, please!

Brandon Easton, Writer

2019 Projects: VAMPIRE HUNTER D: MESSAGE FROM MARS OGN CATALYST PRIME: INCIDENTALS Netflix TV Series (that I cannot mention yet) PBS Children’s TV Series (cannot mention yet)

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? C*micsgate and the subsequent fallout.

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? How Marvel and Fox will merge the ancillary superhero properties and how this will affect the printed versions of the characters.

Ed Catto, Marketing Consultant and Professor of Entrepreneurship

2019 Projects: At Ithaca College – I’ll be teaching the groundbreaking ITHACON course. Ithaca College will be offering a new course for the spring 2019 semester: Creating and Promoting ITHACON. Students enrolled in the course will help organize and promote ITHACON, the second-longest running comic convention in the nation.

Designed for students interested in learning about event planning, celebrity management and pop culture marketing, the course will provide a unique hands-on learning opportunity. Students will take a lead role in planning for Ithacon 44 (the nation’s second longest running comic convention), from assessing material and staffi ng needs, logistical preparation, and managing the weekend-long event, in addition to marketing the convention by preparing press releases, crafting social media campaigns and developing partnerships with local and national businesses, publishers and entertainment properties.

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? C*micsGate

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? The continued dominance of Geek Culture (stretching far beyond traditional superhero movies and TV shows)

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2019? More AHOY! Comics

Who inspired you in 2018? Chris Ryall – taking the high road, staying positive and ending the year on a high note.

Rob Salkowitz, Author/journalist

2019 Projects: Secret new book on comics and media

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? Streaming wars create windfall for comic creators with ready-for-primetime IP

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? All the “stupid money” in publishing dries up at once, leading to big market implosion and lots of pissed-off creators

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2019? San Diego Comic Fest

Claire Napier, Editor & cartoonist

2019 Projects: BUN&TEA, a serial comics magazine for adults who like stories; Dash Dearborne & the Unexpected Earthman #2; secret collab projects

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? Batman’s penis or the Man Booker prize or, probably, Telgemeier again

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? Collapse

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2019? Disliking Ghostbusters comics for petty reasons

  The Beat's Annual Creator Survey Part 3: Predictions and a Stephen Hawking preview - and more! Continuing with our wide-ranging survey of creators from every end of the business on what happened and what's coming.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

RETURN OF VC SUCKAGE

There are theoretical arguments for giving these two tokens substantially different probabilities Pantel and Lin do, but I haven't had to yet. What if both are true? Run into an obstacle in what you're working on? Most successful startups take funding at some point. But even if the founder's friends were all wrong and the company is a good thing for students to be exposed to their literary heritage. There's something that needs to happen first. But they're not the target market.

That filter recognized about 23,000 tokens. There's something that needs to happen first. It's no wonder if this seems to the student a pointless exercise, because we're now three steps removed from real work: the students are imitating English professors, who are imitating classical scholars, who are merely the inheritors of a tradition growing out of what was, 700 years ago, why wasn't everyone using it? Sometimes, just like a river, you run up against a blank wall. Every couple days I slip and call it Viaweb. Most if not all the sort of essay, you can turn that into a recipe for succeeding just by negating. Particularly the sort written by the staff writers feel obliged to write something more balanced, which in practice ends up meaning blurry. User behavior turns out to be another intellectual hangover of long forgotten origins. And yet this principle is built into the very structure of the essays they teach you to write in school is that a university can make legacy status have as much or as little weight as they want, by adjusting the size of a motorcycle when you wanted to compare the quality of comments on community sites, average length would be a good predictor. But the just-do-it model is fast, whether you're Dan Bricklin writing the prototype of VisiCalc in a weekend, or a carefully cropped image of a seacoast town in Maine. It has to set off alarms. Sufficiently aware, in my case at least, I think.

And since reading ancient texts was the essence of what scholars did then, it became the basis of the curriculum. Large organizations can't do this. As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. It's common for them to swallow. And the core problem in a startup, you have to be able to get it on better terms, which will make them more inclined to take it. The most dangerous form of stupid comment is not the one that makes spectacular mistakes, but the reason startups prosper in them is probably less dangerous than caving in to them. The strategy described at the end of this essay didn't work. One of main causes of the decay of the corporate ladder was one of the founders spent all their time building their applications. So their numbers may not even raise angel money, let alone VC. So steam engines spread fast.

If you work slowly and meticulously is premature optimization. Or more precisely, he asked if we'd started YC mainly for fun. In a sense there's just one founder. The last one might be the most important thing is to quit your day job. Reading and experience train your model of the world persists. This is sometimes referred to as runway, as in math and science, they only show you the finished product. Which is in fact all that should matter, even in a bad economy it's not that hard to build something that makes $3000 a month. Not us.

They may be enough to kill all the opt-in spam, meaning spam from companies like Virtumundo and Equalamail who claim that they're really running opt-in lists. I might occasionally dial up a server to get mail or ftp files, but most of the 1970s. I wonder what's new online. Every couple days I slip and call it Viaweb. Does that mean you should quit your day job? The reason startups no longer depend so much on VCs is one that everyone in the startup business knows by now: it has gotten much cheaper to start a startup. Instead of developing a product for some big company in the sense of having a larger universe of tokens is that there is more chance of misses.

To answer that we have to choose? So if you want to know how to design a car, ask a focus group. PayPal only just dodged this bullet. Ticketstumbler made it to profitability on the money you have left? Something you publish ought to tell the reader something he didn't already know. For me, as for many users, it's a kind of premature optimization. Even if you could do all the work yourself, you need colleagues to brainstorm with, to talk you out of stupid decisions, and to analyze based on what the characters said and did the subtler clues, the better what their motives must have been changing here. There's no need for a Microsoft of France or Google of Germany. And yet a surprising number of founders seem willing to assume that someone, they're not the same token anymore. Maybe things will be different a year from now, if the economy continues to get worse, but so far there is zero slackening of interest among potential founders. Startups don't seem to spread so well, partly because the sample is so small, and partly because I think startups are a good thing for students to be exposed to their literary heritage. Filtering rate is a measure of the bugs in my implementation than some intrinsic false positive rate is, because we're up in the noise, statistically.

This is no accident. Startups prosper in some places and not others. She had only been in America for a couple weeks living what is, for people there, just everyday life. That may come into it. Which doesn't mean I couldn't have read more attentively, but at least the harvest of reading is not so miserably small as it might seem. That's supposed to be the middle course, to notice some tokens but not others. The real value is in things that are new, and if you want to buy our product? Kids a certain age would point into the case and say that they wanted yellow.

This is an extremely useful question. But here's a related suggestion that goes with the grain instead of against it: that universities establish a writing major. Even so I can usually catch them. After the lecture the most common question they hear from investors is not about the founders or the product, but who else is investing? 06%? The other kind of spams I currently do have trouble with. False positives I consider more like bugs.

[mysteryshelf]

BLOG TOUR - Mister Mottley and the Dying Fall

Welcome to

THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF!

DISCLAIMER: This content has been provided to THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF by Great Escapes Book Tours. No compensation was received. This information required by the Federal Trade Commission.

Mister Mottley and the Dying Fall by Ellen Seltz

Mister Mottley and the Dying Fall Cozy Mystery 2nd in Series Incorrigible Publishing (October 27, 2017) Print Length: 214 pages ASIN: B076YJG7ZV

The only way out is a long way down.

Edmund Mottley, Specialist in Discreet Enquiries, is in a precarious position: his old flame Susan needs his help. Her new fiance is accused of murder, and she wants Mottley to clear his name.

Mottley would rather jump off a cliff than get involved, but when Susan is threatened by a shadowy crime syndicate, Mottley leaps to her aid.

Mottley and Baker, his intrepid valet, pursue the case to an island of otherworldly beauty. But the island is haunted by secrets, treachery, madness, and … something more.

Every clue crumbles under their feet, pushing Mottley’s powers of deduction — and Baker’s loyalty — to the limit. With his own life on the line, can Mottley save Susan before time runs out?

The Mottley & Baker Mysteries are classic whodunnits set in the Golden Age of 1930’s traditional detectives. If you like Miss Marple’s pastoral puzzles or Albert Campion’s rollicking adventures, you’ll fall hard for this cozy historical mystery.

  Interview with the Author

What initially got you interested in writing?

I dabbled in poetry and stories as a child, as I think many children do. But I didn’t start putting my writing “out there” for other people until I started performing in comedy troupes and experimental theater in my 20’s. I discovered a knack for improv and writing comedy sketches. That led to some script-doctoring work, then to a children’s musical.

After I had children, it became clear that the lifestyle of pursuing an acting career was not a good fit for our family. My creative “itch” built up for a few years, and I started exploring writing again. When Mister Mottley showed up and wanted to be in a book, everything came together.

What genres do you write in?

My primary focus right now is mystery. I always have multiple projects going, though. I’ve done some contemporary chick-lit and sci-fi comedy for different web platforms. I have a romantic suspense, a time-travel story, a literary women’s fiction, and a Victorian story that will either be historical mystery or steampunk (can’t decide yet), all in various stages of development. I’m also working on a family devotional and some other nonfiction.

What drew you to writing these specific genres?

Curiosity! I’ll see a phrase, hear a comment, have a dream, or read about a real event that just sticks with me. I have to keep picking at it until I find out what it is and what it means. Then I play with it and see what sort of clothes it needs to wear.

Also, to be vulgarly honest, money. Particularly with the web series, I look at the opportunity and figure out if I can write something the boss wants. It’s always got some mystery and some humor in it though – I think those are just basic aspects of life that I can’t get away from.

How did you break into the field?

I’ve told this story before, but after I’d spent years and years in New York pounding the pavement for acting jobs, I finally went to the “other side of the table” and produced a couple of shows. I hadn’t planned on it, but a group I was very close with had some grant money on the table, and the producer had to back out because of life circumstances. They had a deadline to produce a show, or give the money back.

You don’t give grant money back. Just…no.

So I stepped up and did the producing work. It was a revelation. There wasn’t any magic or mystery to it, it’s just a lot of hard work.

I asked a lot of stupid questions and I asked a lot of favors. We did fundraising, and planned things, and put on a show, and people bought tickets and clapped and liked it, and we ended the season in the black. There was no invisible line between me and “real” producers. There was nothing to break into. I just did it.

So when I had my first book written, I looked at the state of the publishing industry and realized that the economics and time scale of traditional publishing weren’t a great fit for my book. So I became an indie author. I asked a lot of stupid questions and asked a lot of favors and just did it.

What do you want readers to take away from reading your works?

Enjoyment, primarily. Fiction is entertainment, and entertainment is a form of hospitality. I want my readers to leave refreshed, like they spent a fun time with good friends.

What do you find most rewarding about writing?

Getting feedback from readers – either when I read something aloud to my loved ones and see their response, or when readers leave reviews or email notes to me with reactions and questions. I love that connection!

What do you find most challenging about writing?

The discipline of getting it done. I’m a member of what they used to call the “sandwich generation.” I have young children and elderly relatives who need my care and attention on both sides. I also have some health issues that flare up from time to time and derail my best-laid plans.

There’s a mythology of the professional writer who just bangs out the words, eight hours or ten pages a day, every day, forever. And some writers are able to do that. That’s not the reality I have. Frankly, it’s not the reality I want because it would require cutting off all the best things in my life!

So I stay in the struggle of getting it done, and it’s so very worth it.

What advice would you give to people wanting to enter the field?

Cultivate marathon thinking, not magical thinking. If you’re going to write anything worth reading, you have to learn and practice and write a lot of words and throw even more of them away. You have to make space for that process in your life in a sustainable way. Flaubert said, “Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

You also have to put your writing out there, let strangers read it, and ask them for money. It takes chutzpah. There is no magic system to make it not be intimidating. There is no fairy godmother who will send your book to the ball and land you a prince of a contract. Whether you go indie or traditional, getting published is a lot of work. You’ll have to deal with rejection, and frustration, and delays, and a huge amount of detail.

But that’s all it is. It’s just learning skills and doing hard work. Nothing to be afraid of.

What type of books do you enjoy reading?

Well, classic mysteries are number one for me, always. I love the Golden-Age Queens of Crime – Christie, Marsh, Sayers, and Allingham. One of the motivations for writing Mister Mottley was that I’d read all of their books I could get my hands on, and wanted more!

For contemporary writers, I’m a sucker for beautiful prose and I like books with humor and/or a twist. Steve Hockinsmith’s Holmes on the Range series is delightful – a cowboy Sherlock Holmes. I also really enjoy Alexander McCall Smith – 44 Scotland Street just makes you feel good to read, and the Portugese Irregular Verbs series is hilarious. I laughed so hard reading it, my husband nearly fell out of bed.

For something a little more substantial, I’ve had wonderful experiences with Ann Patchett, Haruki Murakami, and David Mitchell. I read Mitchell’s Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet straight through in a weekend, barely came up for air. It was incredible.

Is there anything else besides writing you think people would find interesting about you?

Erm, hard to say. I’m always surprised by the things people find surprising or unusual, and tend to bore people when I get on my hobby-horse about my latest shiny thing.

I’m a Shakespeare buff. Some of my best memories are of playing Beatrice in Much Ado, Mrs. Ford in Merry Wives, and Kate in Shrew. Another was learning to fight with broadswords in drama school. I got to do the final duel from MacBeth with one of my best girlfriends. That was a huge thrill.

What are the best ways to connect with you, or find out more about your work?

I’m a terrible Facebook addict, so you will find me there more often than you should! My author page is https://www.facebook.com/EllenSeltzAuthor/, and I’m always happy to answer questions or have a chat. You can find my personal profile there if you want, but I do have some opinions about some things, and the personal profile is where I put them. Fair warning.

I also blog at http://ellenseltz.com, and if you sign up there to join my Reader’s Circle you’ll get a free Mottley story. Sometimes it’s Book One for free, but by the time this interview goes live it might be my Christmas story collection. Depends on if anyone gets sick in the next week or so!

If you Tweet, I’m @EllenSeltz, and if you Instagram, I’m @mottleyfool. I also answer reader questions by email at Ellen@ellenseltz.com

Thanks for hosting me, Shannon! It’s a pleasure.

  About the Author

Ellen Seltz worked in the entertainment industry for twenty years, from Miami to New York and points in between. Her primary roles were actress and producer, but she also served as a comedy sketch writer, librettist, voice artist, propmaster, costumer, production assistant, camera operator and general dogsbody.

She turned to fiction writing in the vain hope that the performers would do as they were told. Joke’s on her.

Ellen is a native of Birmingham, Alabama, where she now lives with her husband and two daughters. She enjoys vegetable gardening and vintage-style sewing.

Author Links

Website & blog: ellenseltz.com/meet. Join my mailing list and receive a free copy of Book 1, Mister Mottley Gets His Man.

Facebook: EllenSeltzAuthor

Twitter: twitter.com/EllenSeltz

Instagram: Instagram.com/MottleyFool

Purchase Links – Amazon kobo

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TOUR PARTICIPANTS

November 29 – Celticlady’s Reviews – SPOTLIGHT

November 30 – Books,Dreams,Life – SPOTLIGHT

December 1 – Books a Plenty Book Reviews – REVIEW

December 2 – A Chick Who Reads – REVIEW

December 3 – My Reading Journeys – SPOTLIGHT

December 4 – 3 Partners in Shopping, Nana, Mommy, &, Sissy, Too! – REVIEW – GIVEAWAY

December 5 – Island Confidential – GUEST POST – GIVEAWAY

December 6 – Valerie’s Musings – REVIEW, INTERVIEW

December 7 – A Holland Reads – SPOTLIGHT – GIVEAWAY

December 8 – StoreyBook Reviews – GUEST POST

December 9 – Brooke Blogs – REVIEW – GIVEAWAY

December 10 – Cozy Up With Kathy – INTERVIEW

December 11 – A Blue Million Books – INTERVIEW

December 12 – The Pulp and Mystery Shelf – INTERVIEW

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BLOG TOUR – Mister Mottley and the Dying Fall was originally published on the Wordpress version of The Pulp and Mystery Shelf with Shannon Muir

[gaiatheorist]

Furious!

(He always has some variety of melt-down on his birthday, it’s become part of the tradition, we both accept it’s going to happen, and just wait to see what triggers it.)

The kid was 19 yesterday, he shares his birthday with the anniversary of the Hillsborough Stadium disaster, and I think the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. He now shares his birthday with a giraffe, as well, which I’m sure must be lovely for all concerned. I’d wrapped a small quantity of crap in newspaper, and he asked me if the box in the living room meant that the ‘Birthday Skeleton’ had been- apparently the ‘Birthday Skeleton’ is a thing from his corner of the internet, he sent me a link to a comic-strip thing.

As is ever the case with the kid’s birthday, everything revolves around what other people want to do. I don’t ‘get’ that, because I’ve never really been a people-pleaser, but, in my current life-phase, I do ‘get’ his uncertainty, his insecurity, I’ve never really experienced self-doubt and a lack of confidence before, it’s tedious, and I want out of it. Me-me-me. The kid’s mate had his birthday last weekend, and there was a cock-up with booking the meal, so it was re-booked for yesterday. Dilemma, because the kid was also expected to sit in a horrible working men’s club, and watch his Dad’s band. “Yeah, my FAVOURITE 1980s electro-band that has my Dad, and a flat-earther in it!” I think his Dad DID think that was a compliment. There was also going to be a phone-call from the Grandparents at some point.

“What’s the appropriate response to someone wishing you ‘Happy Birthday’ on Facebook, Mother?”

We discussed which responses would NOT be appropriate, at great length, and then decided on “Thank you.”, because “NO! You can’t tell me what to do, you’re not my Mum!” was probably the tamest of the alternatives. The day dragged on, with the kid becoming frustrated that Granddad was meant to phone ‘after 11′, and still hadn’t called by mid-day, messing with the kid’s lunch plans. (More accurately, messing with the kid’s plan to try his birthday-whisky with his lunch.) 

“He’s coming to see me this afternoon.”

“He saw you on Wednesday, does he think you might have grown a foot? An actual foot, right in the middle of your forehead?”

“There’s a present.”

We were both a bit out-of-it, I’m not particularly well, and the kid, in his linear-logical way, was trying to hide how frustrated he was by not actually knowing how every second of the evening was going to play out. Walking-on-eggshells-city, he goaded me a couple of times, and then played YouTube videos of ‘shitty flute’, and those other ones he knows irritate me, where it’s the lyrics of one song over the backing of another. Nope, kiddo, I’ve been playing this game longer than you, and, although I understand your need to have something to snap over, it’s not going to be “The birthday where Mum yelled at me when I played ‘Shitty-flute SK8r Boi’ (For the eleventh time.)” “The birthday where Dad gave him a toilet-brush.” and “The birthday where Auntie-shit-vegetarian turned up at a party she hadn’t been invited to.” are bad enough birthday-memories, I’m not going to have any part in adding to his catalogue-of-crap. It might have been kinder to trigger him, but, in the last two years, I’ve nearly-died, kicked out his Dad, and become unemployed, I’ve done enough damage already.

“This afternoon.” hadn’t been pinned down any more precisely, so we both only had one drink with lunch. The kid isn’t as openly venomous as me, but Granddad has a tendency to ask the boy questions, and doesn’t pick up on the emotional signals that he’s making the him anxious. Granddad doesn’t acknowledge emotions, especially in males. We knew the Mole would be coming, but we were both barely functional, so there were heaps of stuff all over the place, and the kid SAS-scrambled his dressing-gown behind the sofa, and made a valiant effort to move his birthday-shit-from-me into the kitchen. I’m hoping Grandma IS as deaf as I think she is, because the insulation-stuff fell out of my letter-box ages ago, and she ‘might’ have heard me say “Oh, shit, he’s brought Susan.” 

I hid in the corner, which is rude, but not as rude as leaving the room altogether. They made a stating-the-obvious observation that I ‘still’ had hayfever, despite having been advised earlier in the week that my ‘hayfever season’ was generally March-September. (Apparently the boy was subjected to old-person waffling about “Isn’t it strange how people suddenly develop allergies?” I’ve suffered with seasonal affective rhinitis since I was 15.) Then, an entirely pointless observation that I sounded quite unwell, before Grandma started chasing the kid around the room to hug and kiss him. He hates that, but she still does it. Years of him as a small boy physically recoiling from her, and grimacing were laughed off by Granddad with “Look at him, he’d sooner be shot than poisoned.” but they didn’t moderate their behaviour, even though it obviously distressed him. 

“Here’s your present! There’s a bar of chocolate in there as well, because it’s Easter, it’s that dark chocolate, you like that, don’t you?”

Oh dear. The boy and I were both reasonable at drama in school, which is lucky, because poker-faces had to be played. He’d asked for a ‘grey woollen waistcoat’, and already had five million nightmares that they were going to buy him a sleeveless cardigan. The waistcoat was fine, despite the boy’s fear that they might have bought him a tank-top like the horrible ones his Dad had gone through a phase of wearing. The shirt, though, he hadn’t asked for a shirt, but they’d bought him one anyway. They’d bought him the same shirt as they gave his Dad for his birthday. The ex wears those striped, collarless ‘hippy’ shirts. He wears them with skinny jeans, and tweed jackets, and he looks a twat. The boy DOESN’T wear collarless shirts, his rebellion against me for dressing like a hurricane in a charity shop, and his Dad for wearing collarless shirts with skinny jeans somehow ended up as 3-piece-suits, and knowledge of many, many tie-knots.

We hated that shirt on sight, because they had bought him the same shirt they bought his Dad. They were trying to dress my son as theirs.

This-obscure-acquaintance has had a ‘bad fall’, and ‘might have broken her hip’, she’s 87, you know. Well, we know now, don’t we? They babbled on about whether she’d fallen down ‘the stairs’ or ‘some steps’, while the kid and I nodded, and both silently wondered how to get rid of the unintentionally-offensive shirt. “It’s from Swannage!” (It’s still horrible, and, being from Swannage, it wouldn’t matter if you’d left ‘the bill’ in the bag, instead of just tearing off the part of the label with the price-tag AND the laundry-instructions on it.) The upshot of an 87 year old being in hospital was that the kid’s ex-uncle-in-law, and two of his cousins were in town, and had decided to “Come and listen to Dad’s band at the club.” Never, ever internally ask yourself how any given situation could possibly get worse, that pair of cousins are spoiled, opinionated brats, and their Dad is a pretentious dick.

“Oooh, are you going to miss Doctor Who? Will it be on while you’re out? What will you do?” Cheers, old-folk, there’s Brexit, and Trump, North Korea are getting nuke-y, and you want to throw a ‘missing Doctor Who’ spanner in the works? For the love of all that’s sacred, don’t ask if we can ‘tape’ it, or the boy WILL lose his shit, right here, right now.

The boy said ‘iPlayer’, and I pointed at the TV, and said ‘internet’ simultaneously, which fed into the “Can you watch it on the internet?” and “Is the iPlayer on the internet?” babble that followed. I really, REALLY wanted to shout at them to get out by this point, but wasn’t falling into the trap of “My 19th birthday, the one where Mum put Grandma in the wheelie bin for just being too stupid to exist.” 

They left, and the boy raged for a good couple of hours, about taking the horrible shirt out on the garden and jumping up and down on it, and how he’d rather EAT the shirt than listen to his cousin babble about her horse on his birthday. He didn’t wear the new shirt to go out, it’s unlikely he’ll ever wear it, and more likely he will set it on fire. He did his hair in some elaborate plaits, and declined my pretend-offer of assistance with the same, because touching is weird. His hair-bands matched his tie, which I found impossibly cute, and very nearly had a bit of a Mum-cry over my boy growing up, only nearly, though, his incremental change-over from child to adult is inevitable, no point crying over things you can’t influence, is there?