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hide-in-imagination · 1 year ago

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12, 14, & 23 for the WIP ask game :D

Thank you!

I'll answer these based on Roads That Cross since that's the WIP you all know-- if anyone wants to ask about another I haven't posted yet, go ahead!

12. Will/do you have multiple drafts or versions of your WIP, and if so, what draft or version are you on right now?

Oof, oh my god. Um, well, as you all know I've been working on Roads for 5 years now, and I don't write in chronological order, so I've basically had 40 different Word documents on my folder for a long time, each for every future chapter. Some scenes have changed throughout the years, mainly because my writing has evolved and because I've gotten better ideas for them since the first time I ever came up with them. I usually just delete what I don't like and rewrite it, but, there are some scenes, especially from chapter 30 and afterward, that are very important and so I don't want to lose anything, no matter how it might no longer fit with the vision I currently have. For those scenes in particular I do keep the old drafts, usually at the bottom of the same document, so that I can go back to the original versions of it and maybe rescue some sentences or feelings that I consider important. Sometimes, it's not about the scene not working out but that I have a lot of different ways that it could go, and they all work in their own way, but I know I'll eventually have to choose just one or mix it all into one because I can't have 10 different versions of the same conversation kjsdn (yes, they're usually dialogue scenes that get the most drafts.) Um, I'd say those scenes are in version #3 by this point ? The oldest dating from 2018 or 2020, then some changes in 2021, and... I can't remember if the last time I touched them was this year or last year. But yeah, that about sums it up🙌🏻

14. What has been the hardest thing about working on this WIP so far?

Not losing motivation, I'd say. It's been a long journey. I'm constantly reading other fics since that's my favorite way of passing time, and while that's partly good for my creativity, it is also kind of discouraging because I'm constantly just seeing people writing way better than I do, and way faster than I do at that, so when you see someone cooking 7k words chapters every week, you kind of look at yourself and go Damn, what the hell am I doing?

It's a little sad to realize you don't really have a talent so you have to work 10 times harder just to reach the level of someone that whips out 12k words like it's nothing. Of course, I could defend myself saying they're writing in their native language while I'm not, but honestly, I know it wouldn't make a difference. My writing would still be the same if I wrote in Spanish, and, in fact, I think it would take me even longer to write because I would be cringing all the time ksjfskjd.

Anyway, in summary, keeping it going has been the hardest part, but I just try to remind myself that I don't need to be Shakespeare, and that, by this point, I just want to finish it so I can put it to rest, so it shouldn't be a big deal and I try not to let it affect me😂

23. What is the weirdest thing you’ve had to google for this WIP so far?

Oh my god, remember "With a new perspective" ? I spent months, MONTHS, googling about bathrooms 🤣🤣🤣 I JUST- again, English is not my first language, so I wasn't sure how to describe the things in Ámbar's bathroom, and hell- not even in Spanish I knew how to call some stuff 😂 Plus, first I had to come up with a mental image of it, so I went on a deep dive on Google Images, Pinterest, etc. And when I found something that I liked, then I had to discover how that specific shape of furniture was called. I became an expert on all the kinds of bathtubs there is 😂😂 I was so insane that my best friend even joked about it, sending me tiktoks "just so you can look at the bathroom" 🤣🤣 The worst part is, the bathroom descriptions weren't even important in that chapter compared to everything that was going on😂😂 But for me it was really important that everyone knew Ámbar had a ceiling-to-sink, wall-wide mirror and that she calls it "the usual bathroom mirror everyone has" because it was funny to me that she believes that's the normal when my bathroom mirror is literally like 40x20cms 😂😂

Anyway, I better stop ranting now. Thank you for the ask! <3

If anyone else wants to do it, the questions are right here.

#silver-inked #answered #ask games #fic related #c speaks

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wolfjackle-creates · 1 year ago

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Ooh, wait, I have thought about this a lot.

I've been off and on writing since I was in highschool. Back then it was with paper and pencil during class. And I never finished anything. Nor was what I wrote that good. But I enjoyed it and it kept me from getting bored in class.

Then I went to college where I had an intense major (18 credits a semester for 2 semesters a year for 5 years then a year of school-sponsored, unpaid internships). I started working part time in my 2nd year, too, so yeah. I managed nano twice during that, but it was literally just word vomit and not that great.

In fact, it took until 2018 for me to really start trying to write again. And I got nowhere until 2020 when I joined a new fandom and made a writer friend and got an idea and forced myself to put it down.

But I wasn't very good. I didn't have the discipline to sit down and write. I needed to really force myself to learn how to craft a story. I had the plot and the characters all figured out, but getting it written? That was hard.

So I wrote something and it wasn't that good. But then I rewrote it and focused on *how* I was telling the story and it got better. It took me so many rounds of editing to get that 24k fic to something I could be proud of. And I am proud of it. After all of that, it turned out pretty damn good if I do say so myself.

And I did that a few more times over the next 2 years.

And then, not quite a year ago, in Nov 2022, I did something new. I'd gotten invested in a new fandom about a year ago (Aug 2022) and this fandom shares prompts like you wouldn't believe. So in November, I saw one that burrowed into my head (hi @gremlin-bot!!!). And I went with it. I went into a haze and wrote 3k in a single night. Only spent 2 days on editing before I posted.

Since then? I've done that a dozen times. If you go to my blog, you can see a masterpost of quite a few stories, the majority of them have been written in the last 10 months.

And what have I realized? My first drafts are getting better. I don't need to do full rewrites and 2 rounds of heavy edits and 4 rounds of line edits to get something that I'm okay with sharing anymore.

If I hadn't started by learning how to edit, I don't think I would've gotten to the point I'm at now. I needed to learn how to fix bad prose before I could learn to write good prose on the first go around. But at the same time, it wasn't until I started writing prolifically that I was really able to improve in leaps and bounds. My improvement before was slow and tedious. Now it's beyond obvious to me. And that's happened in the last 10 months because of how much of it I've done.

But I did need to be an editor first. That is what helped me figure out word choice and sentence structure and how to make a story flow.

I'm not a perfect writer, of course. And there are definitely things I still need to improve (descriptions. I'm not a visual person and I hate trying to describe things). But I'm so much better than I was 3 years ago when I really sat down and wrote my first story to completion.

I’m curious when it comes to getting better at writing, do you genuinely try to fix your mistakes, is it editing or just plain keep writing and writing even if it’s published after the first draft to get better? Like write story after story to get better at writing?

Improving your writing

This is a very interesting question. And I think my answer would be kinda... both? I think the best way to improve your writing is through editing, because it forces you to really think about the writing, the style, the words with intention. BUT creativity is also kinda like a muscle, you need to exercise it. Thus, writing a lot can also be important, it's practice. The more you write and the more you edit, the easier it is to apply the intention you learned by editing while writing. So it kinda goes hand in hand!

What do you guys think?

#writing #my rambles

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taminoarticles · 2 years ago

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— Tamino for CRUSH Fanzine, Issue 14 / 2018 (x)

Tamino (Habibi)

Photographed by Nicolas Wagner Interview by Ariel Kenig Styled by Marie Revelut Tamino is wearing Ann Demeulemeester

I'm crazy about him. His music is like a shock to the system. His name is Tamino, and I met him via CRUSHfanzine’s co-editor, Nicolas Wagner, who decided to shoot my new crush while he was in Paris. But Tamino is not only a crush. We could call it love, admiration — the ultimate crush. I am reminded of those rare times when discovering an artist forces you to compare his immensity to others. To err is human, I guess. And yet, when faced with two figures, two faces, two pyramids, the brain needs to differentiate shapes and shades in order to better recognize them. I met Tamino, asked him a few questions. I had a serious look on my face. It didn't last long. Not long enough. Here is my transcript…

“My paternal grandfather died when I was 5 years old. He lived in Cairo. I was always familiar with his songs, primarily via cassettes that my mother would play me when I was little. She thought it was very important that I know where I come from. It's a little strange to see him on YouTube. My dad takes care of those types of things, but it's not easy. My grandfather never really thought about his legacy. There are other singers, like Abdel Halim Hafez, who are still alive and are better known today than my grandfather. His music is everywhere. It would probably be a good thing if my family took steps to showcase this heritage. My grandfather was the first Egyptian singer to play electric guitar on stage. He listened to Elvis Presley… he wrote part of his music himself. As for myself, I write alone. And I do almost everything all by myself. I've been working with a producer whom I met two years ago, on an EP at first. We had such good chemistry that we re-recorded my song “Cigar” together. I told him about my video concept, of that skeleton that stars in the clip, and he produced the song with that idea in mind. That's what I like about him and the guy he's in a two-man band with: they think not only in terms of sound, but of entity. They want to capture the essence of an artist and take it to such-or-such particular idea they have of him, portray him in this or that way, and in my case, take the project to quite majestic heights. You may find it funny, but I don’t write “sad” songs. I mean, I'm not telling the story of a guy sitting alone on his bed with his guitar... I like more epic, more “regal” things. I love Belgian surrealism, that I connect in my work to more Eastern or romantic references. For me, it's a logical juxtaposition... I've not been to Egypt for five or six years, but I'm going back next week. I can’t wait. I like to go closer to the Red Sea, in the less touristy places. I don't have a TV, I don't read the press, and I deleted my Facebook account. I stay abreast of what's happening in Egypt via YouTube. It's strange for me to see that these wars that are rocking the Arab world have existed for thousands of years…

Facebook has too many distractions. I need to stay focused in some sort of flow, to work every day for a long time, whether I end up writing only two sentences or an entire melody. All in all, if you include all the projects and bands in which I participated, I must have written over a hundred songs. For my album, we recorded 18, of which we'll keep 11 of 12. Right now, we're working on mixing it. I studied at the Conservatory, in the popular music department, which gave me a lot of freedom. I worked on my Voice and I continue to maintain it. I am careful not to scream in bars when the music is too loud. It’s easy to end up screaming without even realizing... Although these days, I don't go out much... I don’t have the time. And I have no personal life! [Laughs.] It’s true, it's crazy. I am 21 years old. My life is a little different. You're never around, and when you come out, your friends are surprised: “What? I thought you were in a relationship, I thought you moved.” I don’t feel the age difference with the people I work with. When I was younger, I was very shy, and at the same time, I needed to express myself. It was a weird combination. Nowadays, I'm lining up the tour dates. Our last concert in Paris, at La Maroquinerie, was very moving. My two musicians cried in the middle of the concert. I was getting dewy-eyed myself. It was so intense, to be so well-received in another country. I was reminded of one of our first concerts in Belgium... I think the album will be both an extension of the EP and a synthesis between two themes: romance that can both lift you up and make you vulnerable because you can fall at any time, and indifference to life, in the meaning we give to it, our investment in it. Everyone has a dark side but… I don't know... I do not only write somber music, but I know myself a little bit, so… It's sometimes cumbersome... When you spend too much time looking in the mirror, you end up doing nothing... Sometimes, it's better to just “do,” and the song may tell you something about yourself. A song written in twenty minutes, without too much thinking. This earring? I found it in an old cupboard. It's my mother’s. I'm not sure that she ever wore it.

#tamino #tamino amir #crush fanzine #article #interview #english #2018 #with photoshoot #original text #HUGE thanks to mahdisehel on instagram for sending this to me!! and for not finding my out of the blue dm weird i am forever grateful #tumblr has a character limit for each block so i have to split the text up #i like this interview!!#i can finally rest easy

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theageoftheunderstatement · 2 years ago

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Newsweek Magazine: Arctic Monkeys Change Direction Yet Again on 'The Car'

Written by David Chiu, 24/10/2022

When Arctic Monkeys released their sixth studio album, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, in 2018, it was viewed as a dramatic left turn for the British band primarily known for their guitar-charged indie rock and the distinct lyrics of frontman Alex Turner. For that record, the British quartet incorporated ornate psychedelic and lounge-pop influences that leaned toward Burt Bacharach and the Beach Boys, with the piano becoming more prominent than the guitar. Yet, those noticeable shifts didn't appear to alienate the band's diehard fans when Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino became the band's sixth consecutive number one album in the U.K.

After that stylistic detour, fans might have expected Arctic Monkeys—Turner, drummer Matt Helders, bassist Nick O'Malley and guitarist Jamie Cook—to return to the earlier brash rock for their next album. But the band from Sheffield remains determined to evolve and defy expectations, as indicated by The Car, released October 21 via Domino Records. It's a continuation of the trippy and elegant after-hours vibe mined on Tranquility Base, although the music—featuring strings and horns this time—sounds more loose, atmospheric and expansive.

"I think there's this idea of when starting a new record [is the] 'we're-not-gonna-make-it-anything-like-the-last-one,'" the pensive Turner tells Newsweek. "But what I realize more often than not is they all seem to bleed into each other. It's only now when I've got this one under the microscope, I realized how much of that is true. I was probably trying to get away from things we've done on that last record. But I think there's still some of that kind of hanging over here into [The Car], but hopefully not to the extent where it isn't also reaching some new places that we haven't been before as well."

A listen to The Car (produced by longtime collaborator James Ford) immediately draws comparisons to the music of such artists as David Bowie (somewhere between his Young Americans and Station to Station albums), Serge Gainsbourg, Nick Cave and Scott Walker as well as '70s R&B and glam—and yet it still sounds like Arctic Monkeys. "I find it a bit more difficult than I have in the past to draw a line between records of other artists and this thing," Turner says. "I could probably pencil in a few. Perhaps the things I've sort of absorbed for a relatively long period of time now just influenced the process but in a more subtle way than having a discussion saying, 'Let's try and do a song like this' or something. It feels a little more unspoken now. Perhaps I'm just still too close to it in the moment."

Unlike Tranquility Base, whose theme centered on a futuristic hotel on the moon, The Car doesn't primarily focus on a particular subject running through the songs' enigmatic lyrics. "I think there is a theme or feel that runs through this whole record, but I don't think it's exclusive to the words," Turner explains. "It's almost easier to latch on to a theme if I take the words out of it for a minute and focus on what the feel of everything else is doing. I think that the lyrics are sometimes subscribing to that feel. And if there is a theme that runs through it, it's more along those lines than it is about XYZ, if that makes any sense at all."

"The first thing I wrote through it was this instrumental section at the beginning of the album," he continues. "Everything that came after that was written after that. It felt like it has a relationship with what was being evoked in that instrumental section. I wouldn't be leaning into the idea of it's just another 10 songs that aren't connected in any way. But at the same time, I don't think I can pin down a theme, not in a succinct sentence anyway."

The first single released off The Car, "There'd Better Be a Mirrorball," carries an air of melancholy amid the gorgeous strings and prominent piano lines, as Turner sings wistfully: "So if you want to walk me to the car you ought to know I have a heavy heart, so can we please be absolutely sure that there's a mirror ball."

"Obviously, you're describing the lead-up to some sort of goodbye line," Turner says, "and suddenly a mirrorball drops into the middle of that situation, which somehow doesn't seem totally incongruous in my mind. Perhaps on some level, the mirrorball is kind of synonymous with the closing of the show or something like that. But I think what I was imagining is carrying someone's suitcase to the car and then the lighting suddenly changes and the mirrorball drops in the middle of that situation. It's like, 'What's going on there?'I think it does feel like there are a few goodbyes here and there."

Introduced by beautiful acoustic guitar picking, the lyrical setting of "Mr. Schwartz" seems to take place at a movie shoot, which seems appropriate given the cinematic feeling of the song and the album. "There is a feeling of that behind-the-scenes of the production," Turner says. "That idea is not exclusive to or contained within just that song....It feels like there is something going on in the background of all these songs, like sort of a production: There's someone with a clipboard somewhere and somebody's up a ladder not too far from where these things are going on. The character of Mr. Schwartz was something that kind of did present itself to me in very real life, but sort of has been allowed to become a character in a song, I suppose."

The sweeping "Body Paint," the latest single, may be the most brash song of the collection. There are moments of electric guitar bursting through the lush orchestrations, while Turner's vocalizing echoes Bowie's '70s soul boy phase. It opens with a line Steely Dan or Prefab Sprout could have written: "For a master of deception and subterfuge you've made yourself quite the bed to lie in." Explains Turner: "It definitely does get pretty sparkly in the guitar toward the end of that. It's loud...more than I had expected it from the sketches of that song that we had before. I had it down for something that was gentle at the beginning. But during the session, there was something that was more lively that wanted to come out there at the end. I think that songs always continue to reveal themselves even sometimes after they've been recorded. We played the version of that on stage for the first time the other day, and it definitely seemed like it's still got somewhere to go. It's becoming a more exaggerated version of itself."

The Car marks another maturation and evolution in Arctic Monkeys' sound. Its release falls on the 20th anniversary of the band's formation. The hype surrounding Arctic Monkeys' arrival in the post-Britpop era has since become the stuff of legend: their early recordings were burned on CDs and given away at their shows, which prompted fans to upload them online. After signing with indie label Domino, Arctic Monkeys released 2006's Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, which hit number one in the U.K. and became that country's biggest-selling debut. Since then, it has been hit albums, touring and festival appearances for the band. On his end, Turner has been engaged with a side project, the Last Shadow Puppets, whose elaborate sounds may have been a prelude to the music of Tranquility Base and The Car.

"It was the summer of 2002 when we first got all the way through the same song at the same time together," he recalls. "We still are friends like we were before it started, and still trusting each other and our instincts in the same way. " The fact that Arctic Monkeys never made the same album twice most likely contributed to their longevity and friendship. It's been a progression that was more natural than calculated.

"When I cast my mind back to 20 years ago," says Turner, "there's always been something inherently uncooperative. I don't know if that somehow has translated to each time we've been faced with the task of making something new. There's something about not wanting to kind of cooperate with our perception of what we think that should be. I suppose you can arrive at the idea that if one record was successful, the next one should try and emulate or bark up the same tree as that one was. We're not having the board meeting where we're kind of discussing that out loud to that extent. The whole thing in the first place was done on a hunch, on an instinct, and I think that's something we're just still paying attention to, that same instinct all the way along. That's the through line."

Arctic Monkeys will be touring the U.K., Ireland, North America and South America the rest of this year and into 2023. Having branched out on their last two records, it wouldn't be surprising if their next record tackled another genre, perhaps hip-hop or ambient music. Turner says. "Yeah, why not? I'd have to give it some more thought. When I think about my perception of the way people make dance music, I am interested in that approach to it. I'm not saying that it's something I want to do, but I'm interested in watching somebody do it or something for an afternoon."

#interview #arctic monkeys #alex turner #the car era #newsweek magazine 2022 #it's an interview in october but i think it wasn't posted here?#i love how he described there'd better be a mirrorball and mr. schwartz here

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epersonae · 2 years ago

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A day being like

Get woken up by cat way too early

Feed the cat

Go back to sleep

Wake up the usual amount of early, write the beginning of a new fic

Wear one of their t-shirts

Walk in the beautiful sunny morning and take pictures of flowers and think about those few days at home over the holiday weekend before they died

Have a totally normal conversation with the barista, show off the fat bees tattoo without explaining that it's in memory of them

Draw a tarot card, remember the card I drew while I was home last year (4 of wands: that deck, which they gave me, is still in time out)

Edit a chapter to post a day late, chat about editing suggestions with my beta

Realize that the next chapter has some Big Sad content so maybe I will try to post it on time

Wonder if they would have encouraged this terrible new idea I started last night, remember the day in 2018 when I wrote something I didn't even ship and they said it was the best kiss I'd ever written

Water the veggies, remember how I had to let last year's garden die, get mad at my old landlord again

Eat open-faced cheese and tomato sandwiches, wish for someone to share the tomato with, remember that Ryn hated tomatoes but they tried once for me

Nap

Wonder if they would have been friends with people I've met through ofmd

Get excited that Emi is liking the mafia AU that I like

Update Straight Guy Friend about who's going to be here next weekend, read his DM grumping about his new copy of Sunset Tree on vinyl has a scratch, remind each other why everyone was excited for cassette and CD back in the day (look at Ryn's record player, the disc on it that I just bought, think again how it was being made while they were still alive, I think, but they never got to hear it)

Remember that yesterday was their best friend's birthday, hope her copy arrives soon

Rubber ducking in video chat

Write a half a sentence of a fic

Write two sentences of a different fic

Feed the cat

My weekly zoom call with my knitting group, hear all about someone's job hunt, give each other project advice, joke about being able to spot common projects "in the wild"

Spent 15 minutes trying to decide whether to go to [redacted] to return something, because [redacted] works there, or at least did several months ago. Do it anyway, he's not there, it's fine.

Get a new idea for how to resolve a plot point while reading discord in the sonic drive thru

Sing out loud in the car on the way home wishing I could sing to them

Don't cry, somehow, all day (so far)

#This is sad week #Don't know why I'm sharing this #Except that: the grief is just all around me at all times

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vibraniumwing · 4 years ago

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my stars know about you.

a sam wilson x fem!reader blurb wherein sam finds the old videos the reader has when he was snapped away.

WARNING: a bit of angst and tfatws spoilers for those who haven't watched but aside from that, nothing else.

A/N: ha yes hello i impulsively wrote this bcs my muse was so high all of a sudden and i have this monologue ready for it. listened to this playlist right here and wendy ft. john legend’s written in the stars <3 also, is this still a blurb ??

---

Sam had promised you he would clean around the house while you go on a fun little weekend with Sarah and the boys, wanting to give you more time to relax and be around his family; his lips churning up into a small yet giddy smile at the thought of the small velvet box hiding somewhere in your shared room that contained the necklace you’ve been eyeing whenever the two of you could go out.

He was half-way done with the things hidden in your work drawer when he came across a flash drive that had a label written on it called visual diary. His brows furrowed lightly as walked to his side of the office, opening his laptop and plugged it in, opening the files to see multiple videos titled with dates, the first one from all the way back in 2018.

Sam shifted in his seat, clicking on that certain video only to be greeted by your tear-stained face and bloodshot eyes, under eyes dark from the possible lack of sleep. His heart dropped at the distraught look on your face as you took a deep breath in before looking into the camera.

“hey sam, it’s me. it’s一 it’s been exactly five days since Nat called me about how you were one of the people who, unfortunately, got snapped into non-existence.”

The way you spoke caused goosebumps to form along his skin, realizing that these were probably videos you'd made five years ago, when the snap happened. Sam’s heart was shattered at how lost you looked from the other side of the screen, wanting nothing more than to cradle you in his arms.

“I’m with Sarah right now, she’s sleeping in her room with Aj and Cass. She’s been strong, but you can see the worry in her eyes一 she’s holding up much better than I am though. I’ve been such a mess, I can’t look into the mirror without seeing… feeling you beside me. I miss you.”

Sam stopped the video, his own tears starting to choke him upon seeing the state that you and his younger sister have been. He knew that it was hard, after seeing Sarah struggle with the family business and keeping things together; seeing you wake up at night with cold sweat glistening on your skin as you jolted up from yet another nightmare of him not coming back.

He wanted to stop from diving deep into the videos but his curiosity was stronger. He scrolled through some more videos, randomly clicking on one.

This time, Sam was greeted with a somewhat cheery you, out on the hill you first confessed your attraction to him一 the same night he admitted that he loves you more than a friend, where everything started between the both of you.

“hey there, handsome. i surely hope you can recognize where i’m at right now, if not, then i guess i’m kicking your ass.”

He chuckled, finding your humor amusing despite how lackluster your tone was as you spoke into the camera. Sam reached up to trace your features that were present on his screen, remembering every single feature of yours, engraving it into the forefront of his mind.

“today’s the day we’re supposed to celebrate our first anniversary, sammy. we should’ve been in hawaii by now, swimming with the fishes or explore the beauty of that island. instead, i’m here, in my car alone on the hill where we first admitted our feelings for each other.”

Sam didn’t fail to notice how you were trying your best to hold back your tears, taking note of how your tongue poked the inside of your cheek一 a habit he noticed you would do whenever fighting strong emotions一 and he whispered a small, “Don’t hold your tears back, sweetheart.” and as if you heard him, you let out a small chuckle.

“if you were here right now, i know you would say something like, “don’t bottle those tears up, beautiful” or something along those lines. i want you to know that i’m trying, sam. but it’s hard, it’s been five long months since you’ve been gone and i don’t know how long i can last without hearing you say you love me or your obnoxious laughter that would resonate through the house.”

“I love you, baby.” was all that left Sam’s lips, tongue jutting out to dampen his lips as he listened to you speak, mind blank as too many thoughts about what he wants to say to you as of the moment are too much.

“i’ve told the stars about your laughter. it’s niche and cliche, i know, but mom told me to tell them all about the people i treasure the most whenever i can’t tell others about them.”

“i told them about how beautiful you are一 about how scintillating your eyes are that they could battle even the brightest star in the sky tonight. i let my stars know about how amazing of a chef you are even though you almost burnt my old apartment’s kitchen down because you forgot about the cake you tried so hard to bake.”

Sam cringed at the memory, nose scrunching up in disbelief that he could forget such a simple task; he spent the night apologizing and all you ever did was smile and lean in to give him a kiss in hopes to shut him up.

“i told my stars about how brilliant you are一 how your words are so deep even with the shortest sentences, about how you can easily captivate me and a bunch of others with the stories that you speak… about how much love you have for me and for everyone you care for. it never ceases to amaze me how you can stand up and fight for the people that you love.”

At this point, Sam was already in tears as you shared about how you spoke about him. He adored how your eyes were filled with that well-known fondness you have whenever you speak about something you love.

As the video ended, Sam was left to look at the reflection of himself on the screen, staring at his reflection as your words echoed in his mind. He always listened to you ramble on about how everyone’s destiny was written somewhere in the skies, their lives aligned like the constellations that shined bright in the nighttime.

Normally, he would brush it off, skeptic to that belief but as he tuned into your stories, he can’t help but believe that in what you were saying. Sam was about to play another video when he heard the familiar jangle of your keys in the front door.

Sam pulled out of his chair and raced over there to meet you, immediately engulfing you in a tight hug before you could even close the door. “Hello, beautiful.” he softly greeted, pulling away to place a light kiss on your temple. “How was your weekend away with Sarah and the boys?”

You chuckled softly at the sudden affection he was giving, dropping your duffel bag on the floor to wrap your arms around his torso, feeling how relaxed he was against you. “It was great! Could’ve been better if you were there to be with us.” you answered, reaching up to peck his lips a few times, making the latter smile. “What’s with the affection? Did you break something, Samuel? Wait一 were you crying?”

He shook his head, adamant in admitting that he was, he lifted you up easily as he took you over to your shared office, sitting back down on his office chair with you in his lap as he showed you the compilation of the videos, “I… I found the flash drive while cleaning and I got a little too curious and decided to see what was on it and well, turns out I got a bit more than what I expected.”

“I was going to show them to you one day, Sam.” you admitted, making yourself comfortable as you snuggled up to him, his arms laced around you securely. “But I wanted to make it a bit more… special since this was a very vulnerable time for me.” the softness in your voice made him curl a single digit under your chin to make you look at him.

“I’m sorry that I left you alone for that long, baby girl.” Sam apologized, feeling incredibly guilty for leaving. Despite knowing it wasn’t his fault, he couldn’t bring himself to accept that you and his sister had to spend so many years without him. “I know you’ve told me multiple times that I shouldn’t say sorry, but I can’t help it. You’ve waited for so long.”

“And I’ll wait a million more if it meant I could be with you.” you cut him off, shifting slightly to make you face him completely. “You can go anywhere, anytime, for how long and I would wait for you to come back every single time. So please don’t feel guilty about it, love.” your hands holding the sides of his face as you start to pepper it with gentle kisses.

You smile at his peaceful expression, “My heart is in peace knowing that we’re written somewhere in the stars.” you say to him softly, squishing his cheeks in a playful manner, light laughter filling up the room.

Sam smiled, sealing the feather-like kisses with his lips on yours, capturing it for an intimate one that conveyed how much love he has for you, resting his forehead on yours right after. “You know that I love you, right Y/N?”

“I do and I love you so much more, Sam.”

---

TAGLIST: @https-bvcky @harrysweasleys @selenasprompts @weasleytwins-41 @anchoeritic @marvel-diaries @demirunner @barneswidow @lovecroftreads @punkrific @6r4cie @yougottalovefandoms @swiftssss

to those whose urls are in bold, i can't tag you for some reason. join my taglist! it's in my main main masterlist <3

#sam wilson #sam wilson x reader #sam wilson x y/n #sam wilson x you #sam wilson imagine #sam wilson imagines #sam wilson fic #sam wilson fics #sam wilson drabble #sam wilson drabbles #sam wilson fluff #mcu #marvel x reader

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vibraniumphoenix · 4 years ago

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my stars know about you. [ s.w ]

a sam wilson x fem!reader blurb wherein sam finds the old videos the reader has when he was snapped away.

WARNING: a bit of angst and tfatws spoilers for those who haven’t watched but aside from that, nothing else.

updated a/n: BYE I FORGOT THAT I WROTE THIS AKDFNKFJN my heart is so soft hhhh

---

“hey sam, it’s me. it’s一 it’s been exactly five days since Nat called me about how you were one of the people who, unfortunately, got snapped into non-existence.”

The way you spoke caused goosebumps to form along his skin, realizing that these were probably videos you’d made five years ago, when the snap happened. Sam’s heart was shattered at how lost you looked from the other side of the screen, wanting nothing more than to cradle you in his arms.

He wanted to stop from diving deep into the videos but his curiosity was stronger. He scrolled through some more videos, randomly clicking on one.

“hey there, handsome. i surely hope you can recognize where i’m at right now, if not, then i guess i’m kicking your ass.”

“i’ve told the stars about your laughter. it’s niche and cliche, i know, but mom told me to tell them all about the people i treasure the most whenever i can’t tell others about them.”

“I do and I love you so much more, Sam.”

---

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taekooktimeline · 4 years ago

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December 31st, 2019 / January 1st, 2020

Following New Year’s Countdown, members take turns to talk about their resolutions. Tae says he wants to occupy himself with activities that heal his mind, although we understand it’s simply to maintain or - if possible - increase the level of happiness he experienced during 2019 as he said it was a happy year.

Jungkook interjects, interested in knowing whom he would do such activities with. If we go over prior events we can see that Tae had been going on trips with his family and various friends, including him & the wooga squad on a yacht, while Jk saw his own friends and relatives, complaining about Jhope and Jimin being the only members he had seen during their 1 month-long vacation on mid 2019, which could or could not be true, but if Taekook briefly saw each other they wouldn’t have been able to go anywhere outside an apartment. Jungkook could be bothered by this lack of private adventures and shared experiences (disregarding their variety shows). Wooga squad had also met up during Christmas Eve. Again, we don’t know if Tk spent some little time together or not.

Tae responds by saying there are many things that he can do alone. That answer doesn’t quite satisfy Jungkook who asks “not with us?”. It seems like Jungkook thought that they could be hanging out more than what they were and that Taehyung was going overboard with the closeting to the point of slightly distancing himself (although not reaching awkwardness like they later tried to sell).

Jungkook actually wrote a song that could give insight into this situation since it could have been written around this time. The Japanese demo was finished before March 2020 since it was first mentioned then, probably written only a few months before. Jk drew a big, artistic eye on a whiteboard on Dec 4th, which suggests he was already working on the songs’ adaptation to the Japanese film which gave it its name. This means he wrote the Korean version before December of 2019 and it had nothing to do with the pandemic. “Your Eyes Tell” talks about Jk being fearful of someone leaving him, even crying over it. He wants this person to believe him when he says that he wants a future with them no matter the hardships, even if he can’t say it out loud yet (meaning not ready to come out yet?) and his past demons haunt him sometimes (his lowest being late 2017/ early 2018). To believe him when he says that he finds this “darkness” to be beautiful if they are together. He says the world would be dull without the other and that he won’t take his eyes off of this person making sure that they don’t leave his side. If we assume this person to be Tae then, for whatever reason, Jk sensed that Tae was doubting Jk’s determination to keep going with their relationship, maybe due to the added difficulties that came with living in different apartments since around July 2019 and the weight of the prolonged closeting strategies. Jk may have interpreted the beginning of what seemed like a distancing as some sort of test where Tae gave him an easy way out or feared that if the situation progressed in this direction Tae would end up falling into thoughts that went something like “I should be the one to put an end to this for Jungkook’s sake” so he instead reassured him about his love through a ballad. It’s unclear whether Jk had real reasons to worry or he was just insecure about the changes in their relationship (living situation + heavier closeting = less private time together) and linking them to Tae’s past tendencies where he thought Jk would be better off without him.

Continuing with the topic, the night prior to this vlive Tae announced that he had recently written the first version of a song. It was written somewhere between the 14th & the 31st of December of 2019 and it seems like he was talking about “Sweet Night”, a song that was said to be completed by the start of March 2020 for the drama “Itaewon Class”. While we think that this song is based on Tae’s past experiences (finding common ground with the drama) from when he first realized he was deeply in love, unsure if the other still felt the same way, it was necessary for him to be able to relive the emotions he once felt, as he explained about his general creation process. The song tells that they had already crossed the line or grazed it at some points, but the sentence “are you my best friend?” & the part where he regrets realizing he’s in love only after the opportunity had passed are much more fitting to earlier in their relationship when things had never been labeled as romantic nor gotten serious, prior to an actual relationship ever ensuing which only happens at the end of the drama (not compatible with their mutual, unwavering gestures of love & compromise done throughout the previous years in addition to them “hiding” things like them sharing hotel room = having a serious relationship). The adaptation of Tae’s beloved webtoon inspired him to rediscover these emotions as it was also an opportunity to be part of an OST for a drama that his friend had a role in, but it also makes you wonder if he was truly in danger of going through the regression that Jk feared, Tae’s mind going back to the time they missed out on love. The song includes phrases such as “now my forever is falling down wondering if you’d want me now”, “I wonder if you are too good to be true” & “guess we were ships in the night” (meeting for a brief moment, or coming close to doing so, but then losing sight of each other due to the darkness). This last sentence is perhaps the most worrisome because it feels timeless, easily applicable to his musings at the time of writing, knowing they have to hold on tight to not part ways again because, as Jk reassuringly says in YET: “even this darkness we see is beautiful”.

”Sweet Night” opens with the lyrics “on my pillow/can’t get me tired/sharing my fragile truth”. On the 14th of December of 2019 Tae said he couldn't sleep well those days and that it could be due to it being the end of the year. It’s something he recouringly has trouble with so it can remind him of other occasions in which he had that problem. He usually writes down his emotions in his diary and revisits them. He also mentioned Itaewon Class.

On the 31st of December he then said he wrote a song.

The 6th of March of 2020 he talks about “Sweet Night”. He was saying it was hard to convey how he wanted the instrumental to sound to the staff (“express what’s in his mind”), but it was completed briefly before this vlive.

Regardless, “Your Eyes Tell” tries to retain someone BEFORE the end approaches, acting as a reassurance in case the other doubts (similar to “My Time”, released in February of 2020, where he promises they’ll overcome the restrictions), and we don’t think they broke up in 2019 due to many reasons, among them Tae saying in his final comments that it was a happy year with no particularly sad moments. January 25th was then the start of Tae being quite loud on Weverse throughout 2020 by mentioning Jungkook the most out of the members on free will (disregarding their iconic public exchange initiated by Jk on the 15th) and giving special attention to Jk-related questions as well as Taekook-related usernames. An indication of Jk’s efforts having an effect and Tae feeling encouraged to add subtle ways in which he could play with or challenge the exaggerated closeting limitations? An interesting set of rings also appeared within the month of January and it must’ve been Tae who gave Jk two rings out of the set of five that he initially wore himself. Jk held dearly onto them.

#taekook #taekooktimeline #191231 #December 2019 #2019 #theories

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vanillabutspicy · 3 years ago

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Hi! Happy FFWF!! Is there a sentence or scene that you can vividly see in your mind while reading it? Is it from your own fic (and ofc add a shameless plug in if it is) or is is from someone else's fic? Also, what made you interested in drawing and writing fanfic?

(Peaches made me curious lmaooo, also sorry for the bombarding of questions!)

Happy ffwf croisty!!

I like this question because I can talk about someone else's writing!! The first thing that came to mind is the beginning of Just A Taste by @tofuandtattoos which lives rent free in my mind and yes I see it SO CLEARLY. It's one of those moments that lasts so long but in the best way because it's so loaded and the tension just keeps escalating from the smallest gestures. I love it. They're just standing in the kitchen making dinner and then suddenly it's erotic. Um, I live for that.

As for how I got into fan art and fanfics, omg wow this answer turned so lonngggggg I need to put it in after a cut.

It was sort of a bunch of things that came together for me to land here. I watched ATLA for the first time in 2018, and it was so long after it aired that I didn't even think to look into the fandom of it all. Then when it was put on netflix, that was right around the same time that I started to figure out reddit, so I realized I could find an ATLA community!

At the same time, I was enjoying the summer weather by working outside on my deck in a lawn chair every day, with very poor posture, and it led to a back injury because of a preexisting vertebral defect that I had no idea I had! PSA: ergonomics are important!!!!!! Anyway, I had to change my way of being and existing and spending time in the world to avoid pain. I needed a sedentary hobby and I also needed an outlet for the fact that there were things I wanted to do that I couldn't physically do without severe pain for a while.

Plus, in those reddit ATLA communities, I was very disappointed with what I found when I went looking for some spicy content. Kataang was so underrepresented! As if their relationship is too boring. And most of the art that I saw (of any of the pairings) often put female characters in poses/scenarios where they were objectified or demeaned. Not at all the kind of scenes I would associate with a relationship like kataang. (I did find some wonderful kataang art but it was from artists who stopped drawing them years ago, which was also very sad... and when I think of how much was potentially lost in the tumblr purge I'm just fjkhdsghkjdsg ugh it's tragic.)

So the name "vanillabutspicy" was really inspired by my spite against the reddit content that I didn't like LOL. And I started drawing it to prove a point, to keep myself entertained, to scratch an itch, and just to wallow in the wonderful goodness that is kataang. Because oh boy you just know they'd have the most fulfilling times.

I started writing for similar reasons. I liked reading fanfic, but I hadn't found the exact story that I wanted to read, so I wrote it myself. Writing and drawing have both been so great for me personally. I honestly don't know what I'd be doing with my free time right now if not for this fandom. Probably knitting I guess? My friends circle would look different for sure. Life be cray sometimes, in the best ways.

#ffwf #happy ffwf!#I love my fandom friends #uwu #croisty

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maryannechisholmart · 3 years ago

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An Artist Emerges

This is a story about my past.

The idea of telling my story is so immense, it is almost insurmountable, overwhelming. It was painful for all involved. For me personally it was a time of self examination, and self-destruction.

My story was not told in the traditional sense, it was told through art.

In the beginning I remember feeling so much anger, and so much despair. I didn’t think I would ever believe in anything, or anyone again.

I was in prison, after being sentenced in 2005 to 27 to 32 years, for white collar crimes another man I confessed to. While this was happening more and more charges were piled on. I watched the real time destruction of my character; our lives and everyone I loved. I watched people I had considered friends sell my freedom, in exchange for keeping material things.

The longest charge I had was for corporate board of directors insurance fraud, 19.25 years. My signature stamp was used on a form, and the only claim filed was not by me. It would have only paid in the event of my death. After this, It was actually rescinded, no damages were claimed. I was given 19.25 years for that charge. In Arizona, ignorance of the crime is not defense of the crime. In Arizona the CEO is culpable.

The first thing they did was take all of our money. The second thing they did was disgorge all of our attorney fees so we had no representation. The third thing they did was file a civil lawsuit and said if we defended ourselves, it would be used against us for prosecution. We were forced to stand back and watch. The state only wanted the money, and they took it all, including our home.

My husband was not allowed in the courtroom My entire support network were named witnesses so they could not appear in the courtroom to support me. On the last day I finally burst into tears which was reported in the papers.

Through this I felt like I couldn’t even speak. So my speaking came in the form of paintings. This is the story of my collection of days, of emotions, I’ve survival and forgiveness not only of the ones who did it to our family, but also for myself. Other people were hurt because I fought back. In the end I realized it didn’t even matter. There was no truth that anyone cared about other than my family. It simply did not matter.

I befriended Mexican national girls so that I wouldn’t have to talk to people. I could smile, or cry, and the language barrier prevented explanations. It was healing. I did this for the majority of the years I was first there.

I spent years alone. Living indoors, not able to see or speak with my family for weeks, if not months, at a time. I thought of taking my own life, although I never would’ve done that; for it would’ve been the ultimate act of selfishness. The thoughts were always there, though.

Later, I thought of it as karmic punishment for bad choices. I always defended my innocence in the charges themselves, but I had made so many poor decisions. The most paramount of which was not seeking treatment for my mental illness, and allowing compulsive behavior to destroy my life and others. I was sick and tired of being unhappy, I did not want to be a victim.

I decided to use my time in prison to help other people. To channel that instead of hate, or rage. I painted to lift spirits, I gave paintings to people who have lost loved ones. I joined up with the ACLU to sue the department of corrections in the state of Arizona for improved medical care for prisoners. We won a settlement which did not include any money for any of us, all the settlement included was improved medical care for the prisoners in the state of Arizona. I felt that I needed this time in my life to count for something. I felt that I could show my children that they could be done even in this horrible place.

I waited for relief in prison for 14 years. On December 11, 2018 I was finally released. I survived by creating art to describe how I coped with each day. It is an odd thing to be defined by other people. To listen to other people tell a story that they have decided is truth.

I will use the space to talk about the paintings I made, on the days they were made, and why they were such an important part of my past. They were my diaries, they were my communication with spirit and with the world.

I created “the agony of faith, while life hangs in the balance” to convey the excruciating effort faith required in prison. This was not a place for a person who was once an optimist. I had to make a conscious decision not to listen to anyone who is negative. Pretty much everyone there was negative.

I wrote a poem and painted, and drew in ink, every tiny nuance of this chaos and miserable stress in this painting. The gears were my need to be a machine in this time. I could not have human emotion, I had to be robotic.Wake up, survive till the evening…then sleep.

Underneath that, I was still a human being that was hurting, and felt that I just might not have a reason to survive after this. When my thoughts were that dark, this little voice inside of me would say “No”. I forced myself to think of flying away with the victory of appeal. Forced myself to think of bright colors that existed in the real world that I couldn’t see in this grey existence. This was an expression of my soul pleading for reasons to continue to have faith. It is why I chose this piece to be the first ever exhibited.

I’ve created an animated GIF as the NFT, but this piece also comes with a high resolution static image, and an original oil painting. It is one of the last oils I will do with an NFT. I wanted to memorialize it. I believe it has resonated with people as it has over 1.3 million views (Twitter/GIPHY)

The agony of faith, while life hangs in the balance “

"I have known,

While numb

The sweet anguish of hope.

The return of love

The reward of unconditional faith

A decision

That it would not all end in despair."

2008 - Maryanne Chisholm

https://foundation.app/@MCArtist/the-agony-of-faith-while-life-hangs-in-the-balance-52055

Maryanne Chisholm

August 2, 2021

#maryannechisholmartist #maryannechisholm #mcartist #StoryOfMaryanneChisholm

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daggerzine · 3 years ago

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A chat with Kiki of Kiki’s House of Righteous Music in Madison, Wisconsin (by Eric Eggleson)

A friend and I recently had the pleasure of attending a show at Kiki’s House of Righteous Music. It’s truly amazing what Kiki Schueler has put together in her basement (and in her backyard as well). I had heard about her shows, but I never got the chance to go to one. When Jason Ringenberg was scheduled; I knew I had to go. Think of a bunch of friends gathering together in someone’s basement listening to music you love. There are gig posters all over the walls from many great concert venues in the Midwest. And then, in walks a national recording artist who begins sharing his life and his music. Needless to say, we were amazed. Kiki welcomed us into her home and her love of music is obvious when you meet her. I asked her if she would answer a few questions for Dagger and she agreed.

When did Kiki’s House of Righteous Music start?

Back in 2005, I had just read an article about house concerts when my friend Tim Easton sent an email looking for show ideas in between Chicago and Minneapolis. I cautiously offered, “you could play here…” He immediately wrote back, “I was hoping you would say that!”

How do you choose artists?

It has to be someone I love. I don’t book artists I haven’t seen. I’ll do a show anytime someone I want to play can play. Sometimes I contact them; sometimes they find me.

Which artist has played the most?

Jon Dee Graham. He first played show #3 in 2007 with The Silos and has played a total of 23 times. Although Robbie Fulks (18) and Jon Langford (21) are threatening for the lead.

What are some of your most memorable artist performances?

The Baseball Project show after Scott McCaughey had recovered from a stroke. It was their first show outside the Seattle area, and it is always surreal to have half of REM in my basement. Robbie Fulks has brought some truly amazing musicians with him, and his shows are always transcendent. Andre Williams with the GoldStars; he’s still the only artist to have changed his outfit for the encore. The Figgs have played marathon thirty plus song shows, and no one is ever ready for them to stop. Jon Langford and John Szymanski playing for a dozen people in the backyard last fall. This was the only live music anyone had seen in months.

Who would you like to perform?

Lou Barlow, Joe Ely, Dave Simonett, MC Taylor, Craig Finn, Bill Kirchen, John Darnielle, the list goes on, some more realistic than others.

How has Covid-19 affected you?

I watched a lot of streaming shows in the last year and a half, and it totally worked for me, so I didn’t miss live music as much as some people did. I still went to work most days. I missed doing the shows of course, but I was just as happy reading books and watching movies. Turns out I might be an introvert, who knew?

How many shows have you lost because of it?

I think I had to cancel about fourteen. Since I usually do thirty plus shows a year, it’s safe to say I lost at least that many.

What’s your day job?

I work at UW Madison as a researcher in a lab in the Biochemistry department.

You have a great situation happening, what suggestion would you give to help other people to start doing what you do?

It never hurts to ask. If there is someone you want to play, just ask.

A good place to start is with Undertow (https://undertowshows.com/pages/about-undertow). They set up living room shows for a number of artists, and they make it really easy to do your first show by walking you through the how to’s. Bonus, they take care of tickets.

For the show I went to, Jason said he gets all the ticket sales. Who pays for the sound guy? What’s in it for you?

I’ve been very lucky to find sound people who volunteer their time in exchange for dinner and a few beers. And of course, a great show. For me, I get to see a band I love in my basement.

Have you had any backlash or bad situations with artists/neighbors?

Never anything bad with the artists, everyone has been great and very happy to be here. Most of my neighbors think what I’m doing is cool. In the early days, they would see all the cars, but no people inside, so I think they were happy to find out that I was having music in my basement and not something else. There have been a few complaints about parking, but none about noise.

I loved the Sessions at McPike Park concert you set up in Madison with Chuck Prophet and Bonnie Whitmore. How did that come about? Do you do this kind of thing often because of your connections?

Bob Queen asked if I’d be interested in curating a night of the Sessions back in 2018, though I still don’t know what prompted him to ask me. I think he was looking for someone with a different perspective. This year was my third, and every show has been a blast. I don’t do it often, just the Session once a year; for the most part, the basement is big enough for me.

Top Ten desert island discs? (If you were stuck on a desert island, what 10 albums would you HAVE to have with you?)

There’s only two I have to have- Bob Dylan Blood on the Tracks and Chris Mills The Silver Line, three through ten probably change on a daily basis.

First record or piece of music you bought?

Billy Joel The Stranger

What are some of your favorite concert venues?

The Hideout in Chicago, Fitzgerald’s in Berwyn, The Turf Club in St Paul and Café Carpe in Ft. Atkinson.

Favorite live shows? Bob Dylan, Robbie Fulks, Ha Ha Tonka, Dead Man Winter, and Hiss Golden Messenger.

Finish this sentence: I want to be remembered for…

My band T-shirt collection? I don’t need to be remembered, I just want everyone to have a good time right now.

That is so true. Kiki’s love of music is something she has to share with other like-minded people. At first I thought it was the joy of finally seeing a live show because of Covid-19 cancelling so many concerts; but watching, fully masked, made me realize it’s the warmth Kiki’s shows brings to the music scene. My friend and I hope to go back soon. We missed Steve Wynn, but maybe we’ll catch him next time around.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/363474586571/

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lumisnowy · 4 years ago

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I am telling you my story today. And maybe you will find help and advice.

Hey, I'm sam.

I know we don't know each other and you're going to read the story here for a second.

It's a dramatic love story. A love story where two people loved each other more than anything. At least I thought so.

I met a nice boy two years ago. End of 2018. We became good friends. We had a lot in common, a lot of fun and joy in our presence. We wrote rpg, talked about deep stuff and were actually on the same wavelength. We liked each other. And everything was perfect. Very perfect.

At some point something else became. At some point the boy confessed his love to me. After a relatively short time. Even though we knew each other since elementary school. We never got closer. Until we started writing rpg. And there we were already twenty years old. So he confessed his love to me. It threw me off track relatively, flattered me. I didn't feel a thousand percent the same. But I liked him just as much. And that also showed him, I showered him with my love. Special love. I was there for him, healed his wounds, licked his blood, caught his tears, he was always allowed to call. No matter when, where and how. Always. I often slept with him. His body warmth was wonderful. He was unique. But at some point it got weirder, but I never really saw or noticed that.

But others noticed it. Through my behavior. I was kind of drained of energy. But I didn't hear it. Because maybe I did not want to hear it? I wanted to be there for him. And I promised him that. And I always take my promises seriously. Even when people said he was no good for me. I didn't care. I was in love.

So much in love that I let it happen to me. Stupid, right? I was being beaten up, pushed on the floor and jumped on. I was killed inside. But I was smiling. And in my head: he is so great, sweet and loving. I can't live without him. I don't want to be without him. I won't be without him.

I went through it until I realized it myself. Noticed what happened. But I still don't care what.

He went to a psychiatric hospital in 2019. I came to visit him almost every day. He said he was the first one who really came to visit him so often. That made me special. I always wanted to be special for him. So I stayed with him.

This year became even more different. He became weird, strange and even more hurtful. He said things like: your illness is not as bad as mine.

I did not care. And then came August-October. I was ignored. My problems and worries did not matter. No matter how many times I said it. It didn't matter, but I should be there. I just couldn't do it anymore. My I was broken.

Finally we had a conversation. I count sentences that he said to me:

You wanted to scare me away.

You were to blame for the last two years.

I can't stand the sight of you.

You are a bad person.

Everything that happened is your fault.

I depend on you, that's why I'm still here.

You don't interfere with my life, so I'm letting you stay.

My reaction:

I love you. But however much I love you... I have to go. I took his face in my hand. I kissed him tenderly on the forehead. and I left.

And now after a month he has someone new. He told me he loved me in November. And had someone new right after that.

And me? Sitting here and crying. I cry after someone and am lovesick. And that person has replaced me.

And what do we learn from that?

Trust only yourself. Take care of yourself. Only yourself. People are cruel no matter what you are or what you do. Take care of yourself. People can look like an angel, but act like a monster.

#love lu #i hate everything #i hate you

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jewish-privilege · 6 years ago

Link

...This was the last day of the year for the class of 2018 at Glenelg High School. There was going to be an awards ceremony, a picnic, that end-of-a-journey feeling that always made [principal David Burton] so proud of his job. But as he was on his way to work at 6:25 a.m., the assistant principal had called, agitated and yelling about graffiti...

...Beneath his dress shoes, there were more swastikas. Spray painted around them were crude drawings of penises.

Then Burton saw the letters “KKK.” He saw the word “Fuck” again and again next to the words “Jews,” “Fags,” “Nigs” and “Burton.”

He kept walking, following the graffiti around the building’s perimeter. It was on the sidewalks, the trash cans, the loading dock, the stadium around back. There were more than 100 markings in total, though he didn’t bother to count.

He turned a corner and saw something written in large capital letters on the sidewalk: “BURTON IS A NIGGER.”

...A quarter of all hate crimes reported to the FBI, more than any other category, are similar to the attack discovered at Glenelg on May 24, 2018. Vandalism and destruction of property, a physical marking of an age-old threat: You don’t belong here.

...In one of those homes, 72-year-old Susan Sands-Joseph was watching. She knew Glenelg well. She was one of the first black students to attend the school after desegregation. Suddenly, all the memories that she tried not to dwell on were dredged up again: the words she was called, the tomatoes thrown at her head, the looks her parents gave her when she came home saying scalding hot soup had been pushed into her lap again. “It’s okay,” she had promised them. “I’m fine.”

...Panicked, [Seth Taylor, one of the vandals,] started Googling:

“How long do you go to jail for vandalism?”

And then: “Can you get a hate crime for painting swastikas?”

...He had already begun to separate what he’d done from who he believed himself to be. He hadn’t intended to hurt anyone, he said. He would always maintain he wasn’t an anti-Semite, a homophobe or a racist.

...At 11:35 p.m. on May 23, the students’ IDs began auto-connecting to the WiFi. It took only a few clicks to find out exactly who was beneath those T-shirt masks.

“You have the right to remain silent,” an officer said to Seth before long. “Anything you say or do . . . ”

They told him to remove his graduation cap and gown. They cuffed his arms behind his back.

Seth realized they were about to march him outside, past the windows of the cafeteria. By now it would be filled with students eating lunch.

“Can you cover my face so that the kids don’t videotape me?” he asked.

“No,” an officer replied. “You deserve this.”

...Most are unaware of the history that came before Columbia [a planned community founded on the principles of integration and inclusion in Howard County]. ... An estimated 2,800 people were enslaved in the county at the beginning of the Civil War. A century later, when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 that schools must be desegregated, Howard County was so resistant that it took more than a decade for the black-only school, Harriet Tubman, to close its doors. The opposition to black students learning alongside white ones was so fierce, a cross was burned. It happened outside a school dance at Glenelg High School.

...Among black families like [Tyler Hebron’s], there were doubts that the white teens would face the kind of punishment black teens receive for similar crimes. Two years earlier, a group of students had painted swastikas on a historic black schoolhouse in Northern Virginia. A Loudoun County judge sentenced them not to jail time or community service, but to reading: along with visiting the Holocaust museum, each had to choose a single book about Nazi Germany or the Jim Crow era and write a report on it.

...Two of [the vandals] had tried to have the hate-crime charges dismissed. Their attorneys claimed that their First Amendment rights were being violated. They could be punished for the vandalism, the argument went, but not for what they wrote.

It didn’t work.

Now, it was [Judge William V. Tucker’s] job to answer a question the community had been debating for nearly a year: What consequences did these young men, now 19, deserve?

...Seth said he just wanted all of them to understand: He is not a racist.

Later, he would explain himself this way: “I never really understood the symbol of the swastika. I knew it was wrong to plaster it somewhere. I didn’t learn exactly what [the Nazis] were doing to the Jews until I went to the Holocaust Museum. I never learned that they were mutilated. I knew that they were, like, burned. But I never learned that they had experiments done on them, were injected with diseases. The school didn’t include that. They just included the burning and the train cars.”

His understanding of the KKK was limited, too, he said. “Some people think it’s just a word, or a symbol or three letters put together. . . . But they were lynching people, hurting people for no good reason.”

...“I spray paint one racist thing and, suddenly, I become a racist? Just because I did it doesn’t mean I hate Jews, gay people or black people.”

He was standing before the judge, pleading guilty to a hate crime, but he would not admit that he harbored any hate.

...Behind her, Principal Burton was listening. He’d heard Joshua Shaffer’s attorney give a similar speech. When Matthew Lipp was sentenced, he would hear it then too. Tyler Curtiss had written it in a Facebook apology the day after the crime...

They all believed it was possible to do what they did without really meaning it.

Burton wanted to look them in the eye and say: “You did something very racist. How you don’t think you’re a racist, I don’t know.”

...He believed what possessed them to draw those words and symbols that night wasn’t a lack of knowledge, but something deeper, something ugly, something taught to them, consciously or unconsciously, along the way. If they couldn’t admit that now, maybe they never would. But it wasn’t his responsibility to educate them any more.

When it was Burton’s turn to speak at Seth’s sentencing, he didn’t say the word “racism.” He talked about all the people the crime had affected — the teachers crying in his office, the parents who pulled their kids out of his school, his daughter in tears, and for just a few moments, himself: “I know I give up my time, my effort, I give up my life for my students,” he said. “I think the only thing I am asking in return is just a little bit of respect.”

...[Burton] had to focus [this year] on his 1,200 current students: the LGBTQ kids who still felt isolated. The Jewish girl who told the local paper she still wishes she could transfer. Whoever was still scrawling swastikas on the bathroom stalls.

In the past year, he’d created a task force of diverse students to work on the school’s climate. Soon every freshman would go through an empathy workshop. And nearly 40 of his employees had spent the year meeting to discuss the book “Waking Up White,” a memoir of a white woman who comes to understand that racism is a system that she had been shaped by and contributed to her entire life without even realizing it. Maybe, he thought, that lesson would get passed on to Glenelg’s students...

[Read Jessica Contrera’s full piece at The Washington Post]

#anti black racism #antisemitism #homophobia #uncensored slurs #n word #white supremacy

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midnight-aether · 4 years ago

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Why Vox by Christina Dalcher is not a good novel: Review & Analysis

The premise of this novel is incredibly interesting, don’t get me wrong: Vox (2018) is about a dystopian future, in which US American women are only allowed to speak 100 words per day and must wear a bracelet that shocks them if they go over that limit. Women also aren’t allowed to write, read or use sign language. The main character is a genius linguist called Jean who hates every man in her life, including her husband Patrick and her own sons.

The first sentence already tells us three things about this novel: (1) it’s told from a first-person perspective, which means the reader will be aware of the protagonist’s every thought, (2) the oppressive regime in the novel goes by the name of Pure Movement, so it’s probably going to have something to do with religion, and (3) the action takes place in the span of a week, which I feel like it’s a huge spoiler for the fact that I won’t care for any of the characters at the end of the book, since there’s only so much character development that can happen in that time.

If anyone told me I could bring down the President, and the Pure Movement, and that incompetent little shit Morgan LeBron in a week’s time, I wouldn’t believe them.

There will be spoilers from this point on.

The Setting and the Protagonist

The main character in Vox, Dr. Jean McClellan, is a specialist researcher in the field of aphasia, that is, according to Wikipedia, “an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions”. At some point in the novel we are made aware that a colleague of Jean’s, with her help, has discovered a cure for aphasia, even though they are both linguists and neither a chemist nor a medical researcher. However, she was unable to publish this discovery, due to the conveniently timed sexist apocalypse that stripped her of all her academic titles, as the reader is often reminded.

Jean is married to her husband Patrick and has four children with him: three boys and a girl. Jean evidently resents every man in her family, especially Patrick and their 17-year-old son, Steven. Apparently they’ve all been very quickly indoctrinated to believe women shouldn’t be allowed to speak, so they treat Jean and Sonia, the daughter, accordingly.

There is a whole subplot about Steven, but it’s so plain and uninteresting that there isn’t much to say about it. Basically, he is all for the Pure Movement and their ideals of purity for women, but then still sleeps with his high school girlfriend and proceeds to tattle on her. When she is taken away to a camp, he realizes his mistake a leaves to save her. At some point he is captured by the Movement and ridiculed on TV. Jean doesn’t really care that he’s gone, but is pleasantly surprised when he reappears at the end safe and sound.

At this point, the Pure Movement has only been in power for less than a year and a half. This movement is very overtly described as a Christian uprising that originated within the bible belt and had spread to the entirety of the USA. The followers of the Movement also adopt overly conservative views on gender roles, marriage and sex, leaving very little doubt about the roots of the oppressive regime in Vox.

The Plot

The main intrigue in Vox begins when the brother of the US president starts suffering from aphasia after a “skiing accident” and the government comes to Jean for help, despite her being a woman in a society that literally won’t let women speak. Why do they come to her instead of going to any other male scientist? Because apparently Jean is the best linguist in the whole country... even though, as far as the government (and the reader) knows, she’s only been researching aphasia for a couple of years and hasn’t found a cure yet. Well, the author herself has a doctorate in linguistics (not in the field of aphasia), which brings me to my first problem with this novel: the blatant and, quite frankly conceited, self-insert.

You may have noticed that I wrote “skiing accident” in quotation marks on the last paragraph. That’s because it’s hinted a couple of times throughout the novel that the president’s brother was actually injured on purpose by the government, but this turns out to be false. Later it seems like he was never even injured in the first place, but this is never clearly resolved, as the character himself never appears “onscreen”; however, it’s not a cliffhanger that perpetually haunts the reader.

Back to the story: Jean agrees to help because, by taking the job, she and her daughter get to remove the shock bracelets for the duration of the research. The government then proceeds to give Jean one week (remember the novel’s first sentence) to produce a cure that, to the best of their knowledge, hasn’t even been found yet. If that sounds like a stretch, they even let her work with her old research team of three people, which is supposed to fully convince the reader that a week is a completely plausible time frame to discover, produce, test and approve a cure for an illness.

The Side Characters

This team is composed of Jean, her former colleagues Lin and Lorenzo, and their supervisor Morgan, who you might remember from the novel’s opening sentence. Morgan is apparently an idiot linguist who is very unfit for his position, which is supposed to show how twisted the society in Vox is, as they put the dumb people in charge just because they’re men, and silence the smart women. What it actually does is show that this version of the USA apparently only has a handful of linguists and no other skilled scientists.

This is the novel’s description of Lin:

Lin Kwan is a small woman. I often told Patrick she could fit in one of my pant legs – and I’m only five and a half feet and 120 soaking wet, thanks to the stress diet I’ve been on for the past several months. Everything about her is small: her voice, her almond eyes, the sleek bob that barely reaches below her ears. Lin’s breasts and ass make me look like a Peter Paul Rubens model. But her brain – her brain is a leviathan of gray matter. It would have to be; MIT doesn’t hand out dual PhDs for nothing.

Here we learn that Lin is small, not conventionally attractive (read: small boobs and ass), and finally that she is incredibly intelligent. For some reason, Jean finds it important to describe Lin’s curves, as well as her own, before mentioning Lin’s intelligence. No, this novel was not written by Michael Bay. Also, for representation’s sake, Lin is Asian and a lesbian, yet every other major character in this novel is a white straight person.

Well, there is another lesbian in this story, actually. Jean’s old college roommate, Jackie Juarez, who Jean hasn’t seen since before the machocalypse. We get to know Jackie through flashbacks: the novel tries to portray her as this loud, over-the-top feminist who often tries to make Jean join the rallies and protests against the growing Pure Movement. Alas, Jean chooses to focus on school instead of going to protests and forever regrets this, thinking that if only she had fought, she might have changed history.

I don’t know how to feel about this novel’s depiction of Jackie. She is made out to be a stereotypical feminist lesbian, who actively protests against the uprising of the Pure Movement, and yet whose efforts are in vain. Here is an excerpt that characterizes how Jean sees Jackie, and therefore how the reader is supposed to see her:

“You have to vote, Jean,” [Jackie] said, throwing down the stack of campaign leaflets she’d been running around campus with while I was prepping for what I knew would be a monster of an oral exam. “You have to.”

“The only things I have to do are pay taxes and die,” I said, not holding back the sneer in my voice. That semester was the beginning of the end for Jackie an me. I’d started dating Patrick and preferred our nightly discussions about cognitive processes to Jackie’s rants about whatever new thing she had found to protest.

Here you can see that Jean clearly dismisses Jackie and “whatever new thing she had found to protest”, and instead muses about what an intellectual she is. I understand that this is a flashback, and it’s supposed to show that Jean was wrong not to care about protesting the Pure Movement, but this is told from present Jean’s perspective, so it’s clear she still rolls her eyes at Jackie’s activism in general. It feels like Vox is trying to say that actively expressing your ideas and concerns is useless, since Jean eventually overthrows the government with science and not through activism – and it even takes her no longer than a week to do it, as we learn at the beginning of this novel. There is a lot to unpack here, but I still wouldn’t recommend thinking too hard about the ideas in this book.

Jackie only becomes relevant to the plot towards the end. At some point she is held hostage by the government, so that Jean is forced to finish her work. Why the government chose to kidnap Jean’s old college roommate who she hasn’t seen or spoken about in years instead of, say, her daughter, we will never know. In the end, Jackie is only there so that Jean can save her and “redeem” herself for not having been there for Jackie in the past.

Lorenzo, the last member of the team, is Jean’s love affair since way before the Pure Movement effectively took over. The novel likes to remind the reader that Jean is with the Italian hunk Lorenzo because she despises her husband Patrick, so that makes cheating okay. Eventually we learn that Jean is pregnant with Lorenzo’s child, so he offers to let her escape with him to Italy as his wife. Yet Jean can’t allow herself to leave without her daughter Sonia – she’s fine with never seeing any of her sons again, though. She considers this for a while as she works on the cure for aphasia.

The Ending

At some point during the week, Lin disappears (we later learn she was imprisoned due to big gay activity). Jean and Lorenzo announce that they’ve discovered the cure and even test the serum on a random neighbour of Jean’s who happens to have aphasia as well. Also, Jean’s mother had an aneurysm earlier that week and also started suffering from aphasia. The government is pleased with the results and take the serum away.

Later, Morgan, the supervisor, takes Jean and Lorenzo to a strange lab underground to have them further develop the cure. There they walk through a hallway full of chimpanzees in cages, and there is a bizarre scene in which Jean gets too close to a cage and is attacked by a chimpanzee. There is no purpose to this scene other than to shock the reader, honestly. Here, the novel briefly, yet disrespectfully brings up a very real woman who was mauled by a chimpanzee in 2009 and managed to survive (Wikipedia link, no pictures), by having Jean think something along the lines of “oh no, I don’t want to end up like her!” during the attack.

Jean is fine, obviously. We’re over 200 pages in and nearing the end of the novel when the first interesting development happens in the form of a plot twist: the government has been using their cure in order to create an anti-serum that gives people aphasia. Their plan is to create a more effective means to silence women, of course, since they wouldn’t be able to comprehend or formulate language any more. When Jean discovers this, she wants to quit, but is forced to stay when they reveal they’ve been keeping Jackie, Lin and Lin’s girlfriend hostage in the same building for this very occasion. And maybe also Steven back at that camp, but we don’t even care about him at this point.

The climax of the story arrives, and everything happens so quickly the reader doesn’t have time to digest it. I had to reread what actually happened at the end, because I couldn’t remeber it anymore. I’ll try to recreate the pacing of the ending in the following paragraph, so you can understand what I mean:

Jean and Lorenzo save the lesbians (who are the only likeable characters, so that made me happy), Morgan dies, I think, and they escape with the anti-serum. Patrick appears and decides to help, so they send him to the White House with an anti-serum bomb that suceeds, giving the president and all evil politicians aphasia. Patrick is killed during this, freeing Jean from their marriage and allowing her to escape with Lorenzo and all of her children, whom she suddenly stopped resenting. The Pure Movement collapses and all is well, thanks to... well, thanks to Patrick and Lorenzo.

Conclusion

Vox is a mess of a novel. The characters are unlikeable, the plot is badly paced and the ending is too sudden. I really didn’t care about what happened to any character at any point, which is incredibly disappointing. Additionally, there are many things wrong with the political message in Vox, namely the idea that all religious people are inherently evil and that men generally wish to control and silence women. The premise was good, the writing was fine, but the performance was terrible, unfortunately. Vox feels like it was rushed to come out in time for the dystopian fiction craze of 2017-18 caused by the release of The Handmaid’s Tale TV series. Hopefully we’ll see better work from the author in the future.

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ljandersen · 4 years ago

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Hi! I was wondering if you’d be willing to share a little (or a lot! I’m not picky) about your process for writing Burning Barriers? Things you researched, things that gave you inspiration, any of it. I’m having a blast reading it and I’m so curious about what all went into writing it! (And it’s totally okay if you don’t want to! I just had to let you know how much I’m enjoying it!)

Wow! I’m incredibly flattered by this ask. I think it’s the first time I’ve gotten an ask about my writing that wasn’t part of a game. I was ecstatic to see it in my inbox. Thank you for taking the time and interest to send it. “Burning Barriers” is my favorite posted story. I love talking about it. I’m humbled when anyone actually wants to know something about it. Anyway, seriously, I appreciate getting this ask. It made my day!

On to the actual question though: The inspiration for writing the book had a lot to do with what lead into me writing fanfiction. “Burning Barriers” was the first piece of fanfiction I wrote and the first novel-length story I finished. In a lot of ways, it was a turning point in my writing. I’d written my whole life, but for the most part, I’d gradually given it up during grad school and internship rotations. It turns out, though, corporate healthcare can be quite dehumanizing and impersonal. My career wasn’t what I thought. I decided I needed to return to what I loved doing, which was writing.

Initially, I decided it was time to write that masterpiece of literary fiction I’d always planned on writing. I made detailed outlines and character sheets. I had each beat perfectly aligned for a four-act story structure. I had the character arcs. Subplots were variations on the theme and parallel to the main story, just like the writing books recommended. Everything was set to finally write The Masterpiece. And . . .

I stalled out.

I was too overwhelmed to write this overblown piece of art. I knew I couldn’t live up to my own expectations. I’d decided to return to writing, but nothing as happening.

I loved writing, but I also always loved video games. I’d played all the Dragon Age games as each came out. I had no idea Mass Effect existed. In 2018, my sister came across it. After playing the ME trilogy, she recommended it to me. I loved it. With the three games tying together and having the same protagonist, who spoke and had a name, I became enthralled. Then came the ending with Shepard dying on the Crucible.

The credits rolled. Moon boy had just asked about “The Shepard,” and this was it. Was Shepard alive or dead? What about her love interest, in this case, Kaidan? What about their story? What about Shepard’s story as a person? It just ended. Cut off.

While I appreciate the bittersweet nature of the ending, I didn’t have any closure. I kept thinking, “How would I have ended it?” There were a few elements in particular that I thought would be interesting to explore more: fraternization and biotics. It’s always interested me when a super hero loses her power. What if Shepard couldn’t use her biotics? As for fraternization, I understood it being dismissed in ME-3, but what about after? They want to be together but rules are falling back into place. It’s always interesting when two people are forbidden to be together by external forces. There were so many interesting way to play out these different ideas.

I kept thinking about this hypothetical ending for my game. Finally, I decided I should just write it. It was going to be a short story for myself. I just needed it out of my system. Maybe it would be a good warm up to finally writing The Masterpiece. I started writing my ending for ME.

I had a very vague plot in mind. As I started writing, the plot became more than just a vehicle for finding closure with Shepard and Kaidan’s love story. I had only planned on writing Shepard’s POV, but as I drew closer to a section in the story that I knew Shepard couldn’t tell, I realized I needed someone else to take over the story. Skipping forward in time as I initially planned wouldn’t be satisfying. I decided to make the story three parts, and Kaidan would tell part two. I would return back to Shepard’s POV for the last part.

I was nervous switching POV and thought a lot about how Shepard and Kaidan would tell their story differently. Shepard is fast, goal-oriented, no-nonsense, and avoids uncomfortable, emotional rumination. Kaidan, however, is more self-aware and honest with his feelings. He’s reflective, cautious, and has a deeper internal life. The idea of contrasting the POV while keeping a consistent narrative voice was a interesting challenge. In the end, switching POV didn’t turn out to be as difficult as I thought, and I really enjoyed writing a part of the story from Kaidan’s eyes.

As I approached part three, where Kaidan’s POV would end, I realized dropping his side would feel disappointing in a way. The story had become as much Kaidan’s story as it was Shepard’s. They needed to tell the ending together. The decision to alternate POV in part three even gave the story cohesion: 1. Shepard 2. Kaidan 3. Shepard and Kaidan. It felt right. I was surprised I hadn’t thought of that from the beginning.

The story was starting to become big. Somewhere into writing part 1, I realized this was a more serious endeavor than a throw-away short story. So I got serious. I knew my ending for the story, and I decided to dissect apart what would make the ending truly satisfying. What were the barriers to it feeling the best it could feel?

Once I identified those elements, it influenced the story quite a bit. I had to include new pieces to the story, like Kaidan’s family, and I had to emphasize character arcs in some of the secondary characters. I also realized the thing keeping Shepard and Kaidan apart had to be more than fraternization regs. I had to be something internal in addition to external to feel believable.

As I wrote, there was one big development I hadn’t planned but that felt organic. It worked for the character arc I was creating, and I let it play out. While there was one big surprise, a lot of the story’s details sprang up and were little surprises while I was writing. I knew the points I wanted to connect, but I discovered the details as I wrote it. It was like I had this skeleton, but the discovery process as I wrote gave it the flesh and beauty of being something worthwhile.

The story’s ending was everything I hoped, which was a huge feat for me. I took a long time reflecting on how all the elements could come together at once in a way that felt right. I needed to incorporate a lot of external elements into one moment: the Mass Effect shard, the Scorpion terrorist leader, an object they’re looking for in part 3, and all the secondary characters (Council, Alliance, Shepard’s companions). I needed it to bring Shepard and Kaidan’s internal conflict keeping them apart to a moment of clarity, which would be easy if it was just about realizing they loved each other. They already knew that. Shepard needed to confront her fears and realize her false reasoning wasn’t just wrong, but that actually the opposite was real truth. It was a lot to achieve in one ending, but as far as I’m concerned, I felt like I was successful in bringing everything together into one moment. I was able to resolve many questions, external and internal, with one answer.

Honestly, I have compared Burning Barrier’s ending to my current big WIP and felt like I can’t live up to my own benchmark of satisfaction in an ending. Granted, all of that’s really talking up my own ending, and readers may or may not feel like the ending brought everything together in a satisfying way. But for me, I was pleased with the ending to a story I was telling myself. Since I had never finished a novel-sized story, it was huge moment.

I wrote "Burning Barriers” in notebooks over the course of four months. I had no idea of the word count when I finished. It all come together so naturally and simply, I actually thought my story would fall short of being novel-sized. All three parts together I expected to fall into the novella range. I was wrong. I started typing it up and watched the word count climb. This story that felt so simple and quick to me turned out not only to be novel-sized, but each part was novel-sized. I was thunderstruck. I realized: not only had I finished my first novel, I finished three of them! It was huge for me.

Writing fanfiction and not trying to live up to this inflated, self-imposed ideal of creating “Art” had finally set me free. I could finally write and finish a novel. I even did it with a method I never expected to work for me. Being an organized and kind of methodical person, I always assumed outlining was the best way for me. It was the responsible, better approach. It turns out, knowing my direction but finding my way as I go was what worked best. It gave me joy in discovering, and knowing I could edit it later, freed me from every word being perfection in the first draft.

“Burning Barriers” had three major drafts. After writing the story in notebooks, I knew what I needed to emphasize and cut away as I typed it into a second draft. I could foreshadow and set up the ending. I could fill in missing scenes. It was a major overhaul. I then read through the whole story a third time focusing more on the writing-level, sentences and wording choice. Then it was done.

Now I needed to do something with it. After a certain point of writing this story, maybe halfway, I realized I was putting enough effort into it, I actually wanted someone to read it. My sister, who had recommended Mass Effect to me, was also a writer. As I wrote and finished editing my story, I had her in mind as the one person who would read my story. Unfortunately, fanfiction is stigmatized and on a much lower level than if I wrote The Masterpiece. After I was finished with this story, by sister felt embarrassed for me writing fanfiction. The idea of reading fanfiction was demeaning for a serious writer and it wasn’t her thing. It’s fair to feel that way, I suppose, but I was disappointed.

My other sister who isn’t a gamer but was aware of fanfiction as a thing suggested I post online. The game had been out for so long, I doubted Mass Effect fans were still reading fanfic, but I decided to try. I had written 300 K words that no one would ever read but me if I let it lay forgotten on the hard drive.

I went ahead and posted it on FFN. I made each part it’s own book, and I posted all three books and all the chapters all at once. Then I sat back and waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing. It was deflating. I had a few favorites or follows scattered here and there, but it felt pretty silent. I could see stats that some people probably had read the whole way through, but that was it for spending months writing this 300 K fic. I actually felt worse than before I’d posted it online, because this felt more like a rejection. My fear, my story actually being awful, could actually be true.

At the time, I didn’t know anything about fanfiction culture. I didn’t know people posted before they finished a story or that it was common practice to post chapter by chapter to gain readership. I had no idea my posting method could be playing a role in why the stories were lost to the void.

My sister who had suggested posting online recommended looking for Facebook groups to information on other places to post. I joined some FB groups and asked for recommendations where else to post. I heard about AO3. Now, I still didn’t know about this whole posting chapter-by-chapter thing, so I posted my story on AO3 the same way as before. Unlike FFN, I decided this time to keep all the parts together, since so much of the story relied on in-jokes and references from earlier parts. Plus, the story and plot arc were made to connect over the whole story. Other than that, I posted “Burning Barriers” as one giant chunk of 124 chapters, like I had on FFN, and sat back again. This time there was one difference: someone commented.

I got a comment from someone who read the first chapter, liked it, and said she would put it on her reading list. That one comment changed my whole experience. I replied to the comment, and I through a back and forth via email met my now very good friend @ripley95things . She introduced me to another wonderful friend @rpgwarrior4824 . Their comments on “Burning Barriers” made all the difference. I went from feeling kind of devastated and being embarrassed about my story to being glad I wrote it. It was a complete 180 just by having two people who cared. It made all the difference.

They welcomed me into the fandom. I learned so much about the fanfic culture and started reading other Shenko fanfics. I haven’t stopped since. With all the encouragement I got from talking with them, I decided to write more Shenko fanfiction myself even. I hadn’t planned to write anything more than “Burning Barriers,” but suddenly I had a new plot-heavy story I was writing (am still writing *sigh*). I wrote a one-shot and some lighter, shorter multichapter fics. I eventually joined Tumblr. But it all started with “Burning Barriers.”

That’s a lot of extra information on “Burning Barriers” than just my inspiration and approach to writing, but haha, I guess, I got on a roll. The story has a lot of meaning to me, and the history surround it feels integrated into its DNA. If you read this far, I really appreciate you reading not only a very long book with “Burning Barriers,” but also a very long monologue about the very long book. Haha. Thank you!

Anyway, I’ll end here. Thank you for your wonderful question. It was fun to reflect back on this story that has so much meaning to me. I appreciate your interest in “Burning Barriers.” It means more than I can say that you read my story, and even more, to know you’re interested enough to ask a question about it (thought you probably didn’t expect how much you’d get! Lol! :D) Thanks again!

#my writing #mass effect fanfiction #writing ask #Burning Barriers #Thank you so much for the ask!

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