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permian-tropos · 4 years ago

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hiii so im still relatively new to the pathologic fandom, i havent finished bachelors route yet but i love him. i still dont understand why he isnt in his own ending, do you mind explaining it for me? like what are the theories. also on that note, what are some of your favorite pathologic essays? on tumblr in written or on youtube anything will do, ive watched the hbomber sulmutal ragnarrox and mangaloregaming ones already. thanksss for your input <333 i really am obsessed!

Hi there anon!!! So cool of you to reach out to me!

So the explanation about why the Bachelor isn’t in his own ending comes from an online AMA with the writer/head of IPL (who I feel obliged to mention has been recently accused of some awful shit so until that gets properly investigated -- and will it? honestly I don’t know :< -- the fandom is kind of holding its breath on this matter, or at least I am, if you’re new here I am very very sorry to break that news to you).

What I remember from the screenshot I saw of it was that apparently the Bachelor doesn’t “belong” in this “weird world” he’s helped create, and that it was intentional to not show him among Maria Kaina’s worshippers during the Utopian cutscene. So that’s what I’m working with.

Daniil is a pretty complicated guy, especially when he’s the player character. I feel like you have some leeway, not just in choosing which ending, but even why he chooses various endings, including his own. He can be skeptical and concerned about a lot of aspects of the Utopians, even while he falls more and more in with them ideologically. Not helped by the fact that the Kains are, to my mind, lovebombing the hell out of him in the end, he’s just... very conflicted I think? There’s a lot of dialogue options he can take that suggest he admires the Polyhedron for what it is currently -- a place for children to explore their dreams together and express the wonder and creativity of their youth. You can have him be concerned at the idea of the Kains kicking out the kids so that they can take the Polyhedron themselves. But he thinks it would be awful to destroy the Polyhedron even if it’s about to be used by some very weird and very Sus people. Because to him it’s irreplaceable.

So... I think his relationship with the Kains is fraught. He sees the nasty sides of the other two ruling families early on and believes the Kains are the most sensible rulers of the town... but once the Kains know he’s hooked, they reveal their extremely absurd, grandiose, and rather ominous plans for Utopia for him. And he’s kind of in too deep to get out by then? He’s been through so much that I can see how it would be tempting to hope that the Kains are just being melodramatic and that they’re not actually evil... hopefully...? That the world they create will at least be beautiful and interesting. Maybe unique.

But he isn’t as enthusiastic about actually living in it himself as them. He has more rational reasons for seeing the Town destroyed -- underneath it, in the soil, is a dangerous biohazard. He thinks that preventing people from inhabiting this land is the only way to stop this plague, which is his job. It’s like if he found out they were atop a nuclear waste disposal site -- abandon it and put up a sign saying This Is Not A Place Of Honor. There’s not just one way to interpret his choice at the end but if you believe dialogue he has about seeing the Polyhedron as a way to preserve childhood innocence... he knows he’s past that point. He’s not innocent, he’s been destroyed by this plague, and whether you imagine him leaving the town in disgrace or even ending his own life, an interpretation where he walks away from the “weird world” is one where he has given up on himself. He’s one of the few fictional characters out there who pursues a dream of defeating death while never once suggesting that he wants to live forever. I’ve always found that really interesting about him. He may be a very flawed guy, but he isn’t really coveting ultimate power or even ultimate happiness for himself.

Except the one indulgence I would argue he does allow himself is constantly scamming and lying to accumulate more and more guns (seriously he can do this over and over in his route it’s so funny) and if you want to take that to be a metaphor for being transmasculine bc guns are phallic symbols, be my guest xD /j

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And regarding essays... UmmmMM well there’s a few off my personal collection on youtube that I’ve enjoyed that aren’t the big ones you’ve already mentioned: The Youtube channel Shmowder Productions has quite a few wonderful video essays on Pathologic. There’s also @loquaciouslore who has made a lot of awesome videos centered on various characters and mechanics of Patho 2 mostly. This is an analysis specifically of the plague in Pathologic 2, trying to come up with scientific/historical explanations for it (despite it defying explanation). It’s a fun time. Also big mood for Bachelor stans, trying to use science on the magic plague. I have a soft spot for this video essay on the Bachelor and his Suffering TM because it uses a comment that I made on reddit to talk about something the essayist found personally relatable. This one is I almost feel essential viewing, it’s about the relationship Pathologic 2 has to avant-garde movements in theater.

Hope you like this collection!

#asks #long post #pathologic #daniil dankovsky

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a-trying-writer · 4 years ago

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[the story of no-no II. gdi, ive been dealing with writer’s block, so i basiclaly churned this out from an idea that i struggled with writing. so im sorry about how badly paced and written it is, it just feels as if i had to do this in a very basic approach compared to before, but never was content with. so yeah. ugh. i just want to wriiiite again!]

“From what I’ve been told, nothing is wrong with you physically,” said a doctor that picked me from the rest of my villagers. “However, you’re a curious case mentally speaking.”

I stared at her in silence, unsure on what to say. I also took that time to notice how striking her features are, from her strong shaped jaw, to her dark brown almond eyes, fair skin, and long black hair, kept in a ponytail. Despite how short the chair she had was, her posture was straight, making her shoulders seem rather broad. I suppose it was the pads underneath her long coat -- a common garb that doctors often wear, no matter their actual occupation, be it scientific or medical.

Her lips curled into a smile, but I couldn’t help but notice how they didn’t reach her eyes. “You don’t have to say anything, Mx. No-No. To be quite honest with you, your case is why I wanted to speak to you alone.” The doctor’s eyes darted around my room, perhaps taking in what little I had in here.

It’s strange, but for once, I felt as if my privacy was being invaded. I couldn’t help but frown at that, even though she couldn’t see my expression through my mask.

A soft, brief laugh escaped from her when she laid her eyes on me again. “The Elder told me a bit about your history. That you arrived to the village as a child with no parents. You never spoke to anyone, not even children your own age, for a few years, until you made a... well, let’s say ‘friend’, though I assume that word is not the exact definition to describe your relationship with this person. Anyway, since he was persistent in trying to get to know you, you decided enough was enough at one point, and shouted at him. Since that moment, the villagers noticed that not only could you actually speak, but that you were rather emotionally distant as time went by, and the friend never left your side, despite how often you say you’d rather be alone.”

I bit my lip. What is she trying to say, I wonder. And what’s the point in this meeting?

“It must be weird that I’m saying all this, isn’t it?” she asked, but I didn’t bother responding. “This is your personal history, anyway, and though I know of it, it’s actually none of my business.” She paused. “But, it is, you see. Well, for me anyway.”

“What do you mean?” I said out loud, without meaning to. I quickly bit my tongue, but I noticed that the doctor wasn’t exactly surprised. Instead, she crossed one of her legs over the other, as she took in a deep breath.

“The world is big and complex,” she answered. “You lived in this village for almost all your life, but the only contact of the outside world is from people like me that come and go. You never really cared about them, did you? Well, ‘care’ isn’t exactly the word for it, but for now, I’ll use it for the lack of a better term.” The doctor leaned forward a bit, with that smile still on her face. “With that in mind, I assume you don’t know the history of daemons and humans. It seems that the rest of the village isn’t aware of them either, so it might be possible for a daemon to be living among them without knowing. However, there is... something about this place that actually repels them.”

The doctor brushed her hair over her shoulder while keeping her eyes on me. I wasn’t sure what to say, except, “Continue.”

Another short laugh. “This entire village is located on a cave inside a mountain. It’s difficult to travel up here, which is why only a few selected doctors come and go from various countries, all specialized in something. Psychology, physical health, et cetera... but I’m one of the few that actually studies something a bit more... special, you could say.”

“Special?”

“Yes. Artifacts, ruins, ancient technology, and the likes. Basically, places and things that have existed for over one thousand years, that are quite mysterious, as they are dangerous.” She paused to take in another deep breath. “You work with the dead, don’t you?”

“I don’t work with them, aside from preparing the chamber for their body to be burned,” I answered, almost immediately. I don’t know what this doctor is asking about it for, but with all the things she said, I might as well poke her for information as well in return. “Why do you ask?”

For a brief second, I noticed a glimmer her eyes. Is she... happy that I spoke up?

“It’s because I noticed the words ingrained in those stone walls are similar to the ones I’ve been studying for the longest time. As I said, there is something about this place that repels daemons from this village, and I believe, if I have the proper help, I can look into this place further... and if I’m correct, you are the only one who can help me.”

“And why is that?” I asked.

The doctor’s lips parted slightly as she got up from the chair. “You and I are the same. We are apathetic people.”

I blinked. “Apathetic...?”

“There are many, many studies of humanity and our emotions, some that have been dated far before daemons came into our world. However, it’s become rather difficult to describe ourselves one way or another, so these terms have no longer been used, so we need new ones for the sake of helping people. Apathetic, cheerful, melancholy are just a few words that we choose to apply to ourselves, if we wanted to. But, of course, it doesn’t always work that way for some people, say, a violent person that kills. Given that we live among daemons however, and they can often disguise themselves as humans, it’s difficult to really say if a person is a ‘serial killer’, or just a daemon out for blood. Humans also tend to suffer under mental ailments and the likes, which is why professionals study as hard as they can to help them. But again, it tends to conflict with daemons that take on human appearances. Do you understand?”

I paused to think it over. “No... Not really. In fact, I think you confused me so much so, that I developed a headache.”

The doctor let out another laugh before shrugging. “I expected that would happen. To be honest, I’m not a doctor that specializes in those areas, so I might as well be wrong, if not a little bit incorrect. Anyway, Mx. No-No, I have things to take care of during my stay here, but I’ll definitely need to talk to you about something important in the upcoming days. I shall see you around.”

“Very well,” I simply replied. “You didn’t give me your name, by the way.”

“I did? Oh, well, pardon me, my name is Dr. Xiao Wei, but of course, Dr. Wei is the proper way to call me.”

“Of course, Doctor. Thank you.”

Dr. Wei then gave me a firm nod before she left my home through the curtains. “Enjoy your day, Mx.”

#writing stuff #im very very unhappy with this #so please dont reblog!#but i always appreciate a like!#i just hope to break through my writer's block soon!

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codylabs · 4 years ago

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My Top 10 Ships

I’m not a very romantic sort of guy, I’m not real forgiving to departures from canon, I get easily annoyed at inconsistencies, and I don’t watch much television and movies, so in order for me to ship something, it has to be a GOOD ship. I default toward rejecting ships, so to impress ME, it must be built on logic, and evidence, it’s gotta be something I can suspend my disbelief far enough to accept. And it’s gotta have story behind it, something deep, some hefty emotional weight; if it doesn’t tickle this man’s cold reptilian heart with strong beats and excellent writing, it goes straight to the trash. I absoLUTELY will not stand for any of these weird little cute, pretty, pandering, trashy crack ships that everybody seems to be clumsily throwing characters into. Most ships are trash ships. They are not good ships.

You think your ship is good? You like your ship?

You ship it?

No you don’t.

Get out of here.

You will listen to me. I will tell you. Look at me. I’m the Captain now.

Here are the 10 good ships.

10. The Rocinante, The Expanse

A resoundingly excellent ship. Unlike most ships you see out there, this thing was actually designed with realistic space combat in mind. It’s got 6 computer-controlled gatling turrets covering every angle, it accelerates in whatever direction it’s pointing, its bridge is right in the center to put as much armor as possible between enemies and crew, overall a much better-designed vehicle than most everything you see about.

That being said, I didn’t have much connection to this ship. Its crew weren’t really interesting, the aesthetic was kinda bleak, and I basically stopped watching after the phazon showed up. And the Rocinante itself has pretty poor redundancy. Enemy bullets can literally just pass through it (as is realistic for a ship this size) so how about multiple main engines huh? Absolutely tragic oversight. And its interior looks too much like an Apple product. How are you supposed to work on it? Where are the wires and pipes??? The handholds?????

9. Ares IV M.A.V., The Martian

Almost more of a symbol than a ship. A symbol of freedom, of escape. A beautiful symbol. This is what Mark Watney spends the whole movie trying to reach, with an entire world backing him up, and an entire world trying to stop him. It’s the goal of the movie, and it just looks so beautiful when he finally reaches it and sees it sitting there in the middle of the desert, ass down, nose up; a tall, proud symbol. This ship has a special significance for me because the author of the original book really did his research on the scientific requirements and details of a Mars Ascent Vehicle, and it was actually inspired by the E.R.V. in another book, ‘A Case For Mars’, which I read when I was younger. “Makes its own methane-oxygen fuel on-site by using nuclear power to break down CO2 in the atmosphere and combining it with stored hydrogen, don’t you know.” I say as I adjust my spectacles and puff my pipe.

The M.A.V. in the movie does have a few issues, such as hallway and rooms running straight up through where the fuel tanks ought to be (instead of a lift/ladder on the exterior) and a rugged, industrial aesthetic that looks too heavy and cumbersome for a ship of its type. (And you’re seriously telling me he couldn’t have used the capsule’s RCS to literally bypass the movie’s entire climax? WHY NOT? The book never mentioned him having to drain the monopropellant!!!) But I’ll let that slide. Great movie.

8. Biggest Boy, The Greatship

(I don’t know the ship name so I had to make up a name. You know what, I think it’s actually just called the Greatship.)

So it’s a starship the size of Jupiter, empty, unmanned, perfectly mysterious, that comes gliding into the galaxy a couple million years into humanity’s future. Where did it come from? Who made it and how? Good questions. It’s powered by matter-antimatter annihilation reactions from within planet-sized internal tanks, and its engines use hydrogen and fusion exhaust as reaction mass, and its hull is made of hyperfiber, a super-strong fictional material with a 4-dimensional lattice structure, able to weather impacts by spreading them out over various dimensions where the impact occurred in a different place.

I hope that after the first few entries, you didn’t get the impression that I am somehow against futuristic, far-out, impossible technologies. Quite the opposite! I love me some hyperdrive and anti-gravity and A.I. and stuff. However! Ships must be well-designed for the technology available, and must take no creative liberties except those explicitly allowed by the difference in the setting. The laws of physics don’t disappear when the magic crystals come out, the magic crystals are merely a different tool to combat them. Engineering will always exist, should start with the tools and work outward, form follows function. Star Wars ships, for instance, are trash because they don’t mount their repulsorlift arrays consistently, they’re not aerodynamic, and their engines aren’t aligned around their center of masses.

So I like the Great Ship. Although the story is pretty far-fetched, and a lot of crazy, out-there scifi events transpire deep in the ship’s depths, the book always strictly kept its own rules in mind, and never broke those rules, no matter how outlandishly crazy things got. Thanks for comprehending something so incomprehensible, Robert Reed. You inspired me miles in my own work.

7. The Ghost, The Sea Wolf

The story may be fiction, but the Ghost was as real as ghosts can be.

Jack London did his research. No, not research, he LIVED this. The Ghost is a seal-hunting schooner much like one that he served aboard during his rollercoaster of a life, and he captured every detail of its operation, of its requirements, of its mechanics, and of the incredible toll it took on the people that lived such a life. The boat is made to feel as oppressive and claustrophobic as a prison, as if it were an extension of the monster that commanded it, directly in contrast to the expansive beauty of the sea around them. My goodness, what a beautiful book. What a moving, interesting, challenging book, with such a story! This book is one of the climaxes of fiction, and one of the inspirations for Shifting Sands, if I remember correctly. I would recommend this book to anybody. Beautiful.

6. Ferbnessa, Phineas and Ferb

Okay, so I hope we can all agree that Vanessa is nothing but bad news. But that being said, Ferb knows exactly the relationship he wants, and by golly, he goes for it. Most male characters would stutter or get nervous or lose confidence around their crush, especially if that crush is about a hundred miles out of their league or if they already had another boyfriend, but Ferb? No. Not my man Ferb. He’s slighly too much of a legend to fall for such childish pitfalls. He doesn’t posture, he doesn’t creep or flirt or try to sabotage the other men in her life, he doesn’t even speak a word, he just maintains his blank expression, cranks his own already-inhuman levels of confidence and competence up through the roof to borderline olympian levels, and continues being himself. These rare moments of Ferbly passion are some of the few open windows we get into the grandiose machinations of his mysterious mind, and he uses it to bring out the best in Vanessa as well. And in the future episode, set years down the line, wouldn’t you know it, they’re a pair.

All joking aside though, this whole ship is basically comedy. It’s a super small part of the show, it’s only in like 5 episodes, it’s a running gag, it’s hilarious. It’s great. And it fits right into the tone and the feel of the show, because P&F’s entire world really is a comedy about going for it and living your dreams. So this is just the best thing ever. It’s been about a decade since then, and I still burst out laughing at how much of a pristine picture of ideal masculinity Ferb is. Become like Ferb, boys, and you will become men.

Legendary.

Eat your heart out, Dipper.

3. Shunk, Voltron

(I don’t know the ship name so I had to make up a name)

Huge props to the voltron team for making a female alien character (even a romantic interest) with NO BOOBS. Do you have ANY idea how sick and tired I am of artists throwing a big ol’ pair of balonkadongs onto lobsters and snakes when almost everything in the real world besides folks and cows have either 0 or 8+ of them? Everything’s gotta be traditionally sexy and recognizably-feminine and GREAT now you just canonized all the porn! Disgusteg

but now look at Shay. She’s a rock person. She’s got silicon-based biology, she probably weighs 500 lbs and bleeds sand. She’s got enormous hands and weird knees and no nose and lumps everywhere, AND YET STILL the show plays all the tropes 100% straight with her being a fair young maiden and a sweet princess. And it works because Hunk is just this great guy who’s exactly as sweet and caring, and he’s not the most attractive of the Paladins either, so he probably lives his life looking past appearances. He doesn’t care that she’s an alien rock, he cares about her as a person, and she obviously worships him right back. Even though Shay is shown in season 1 and then never again until season 7, Hunk still avoids alternative romantic entanglements, citing ‘a rock I know’, and it just adds to his persona as this infinitely loyal teddy bear. I tip my hat to this, the single ship I know that’s 0% sexy and 100% wholesome.

And Hunk is the best Paladin. He’s just the greatest. I revere him. I salute him as he walks past. This man among men. Look at this guy. I don’t even care about any of the other ships in Voltron (I mean, the Castle of Lions is okay, but it’s outriggers are kinda spindly) but Hunk and Shay deserve each other.

4. Wendip, Gravity Falls

So Dipper’s 12/13, and Wendy’s 15. That’s a pretty giant age difference. Maybe you fans have fooled yourselves into thinking it’s not, but it is. She knows it. He knows it. His sister knows it. Your mom knows it. So halfway through the show, when he finally got around to confessing his feelings to her, she told him no. Sure they’re still friends, sure they like each other, and sure they have a lot of chemistry and they still have a movie night every Friday, but at the end of the day, he’s a smelly little midget who has to go back to California at the end of the Summer, and she’s a older girl with approximately zero romantic feelings for him. So the notion that it could work out is pretty obvious to everyone, and especially to him, pretty much hopeless. And he really did handle it all pretty poorly and immaturely too, he objectified her and stalked her and simped up a storm and sabotaged her boyfriend, so perhaps he deserved what he got. Perhaps it’s better this way.

And yet.

And yet Wendy never really got a happy ending in the show. And Dipper never got a conclusive romance either. So after everything, it’s easy to think about it how he thinks about it, by wondering how things could have been, if everything were just so slightly different, if she’d said yes or if they united again. She wishes she could be younger, he wishes he could be older. She’s more dominant, he’s more recessive. She has a lot of serious issues in her life, and could really seriously use a driven, heroic, intelligent friend to help her out, give her purpose, and steer her right. And Lord knows he could use somebody with street smarts and actual muscles to have his back now and again. They complement each other perfectly. They make up for each others’ weaknesses. They’re everything they ever wanted from another, and if you do the math, their children would be actual literal supersoldiers.

Or at least that’s the way a lot of people see it. There’s been immeasurable mountains of fanfiction and fanart from people who are just so sad that in a show full of happy endings and dreams coming true and old regrets being resolved and children growing up, that one ending would never be happy, one dream would never come to pass, one regret would stick with you forever, one child would never grow up. Maybe if you extrapolate out the story they’d end up together? Or maybe they’d find other, better partners? Maybe romance isn’t all that important in the grand scheme of things, and this is the best ending there could have been? Perhaps, perhaps not. But in any case, there’s a lot of very rich storytelling potential for the untold journey before them, and for the paths that could have been.

Stop drawing fetish art of Wendy, you insufferable heathen actual donkeys.

3. Kataang, Avatar: The Last Airbender

Now HERE’S a serious relationship. Not just a romantic ship, (though it is that,) not just some cutesy, funny thing or some ship-war fodder, (though it is cute and funny and did spawn a ship-war,) not just a matter of certainty and destiny, (though it is certain and was destined,) this is a real, TANGIBLE relationship, that these characters built together over a solid year of on-screen adventuring and fighting. They’ve helped each other through trauma, they’ve been there for each other in their darkest moments, they learned martial-arts together, they’ve fought back-to back against grown men, they’ve worked front-to-front sawing through steel girders, they’ve saved each other’s lives, he once ACTUALLY DIED and she brought him BACK. They end up respecting each other, and valuing each other in the intimate way that only true friends do.

And they’re shown working through all their imperfections and mistakes too. Aang sometimes oversteps boundaries and says stupid stuff because he’s a kid, and Katara sometimes scolds him and controls him because she’s motherly and orderly, they get jealous of each other, but none of those things drive them apart, and they deal with them, and they conquer them, and they keep a very legitimate and multi-faceted friendship going, and that’s the key to it all. The fact that this friendship becomes romance is just proof that it was a friendship of quality.

I think people tend to overlook or forget this ship because the last few episodes of the show found them in a pretty dark place, needing to deal with matters of life and death and justice in very different ways, and unlike all their other issues, we don’t really get to see them reconciling these differences before the story ends, which kind of leaves a sour taste between them. And Katara goes on a couple missions with Zuko around the same time, so now half of all people want Zutara, when in actuality, Zutara is a trash ship, which is a true science fact.

2. Serenity, Firefly

Only reason this ship isn’t #1 is because it isn’t constructed using a proper aerospace philosophy; it’s made of bulky machinery and steel beams and chunky plates, it looks more like an ocean vessel from the inside, and is WAY too big for its 6-12 person crew and light cargo capacity. Plus it doesn’t have any room for fuel and its got no wheels on its landing legs and no downward-facing windows and its reactor is just too dang SMOL and its engines are attached too flimsily. This all wouldn’t be too much of an issue if they were going for a far-future aesthetic, but if you’re trying to do something grounded and semi-contemporary, you need to lose some weight girl, I’m sorry.

But by gosh does it make up for it in heart. The entire inside of this ship was mapped out and made on set, with so many homely little decorations and touches to make every room feel like the person who inhabits it, sterile professional blue for the doc’s medbay, warm happy red for Kaylee’s engine room, all-serious-business-but-also-plastic-dinos for Wash’s cockpit... It hit me hard when this baby it crashed in the movie, and it felt almost real when River pretended to mind-meld with it. This ship has more soul in one buffer panel than most shows have in the entire cast, enough to make it seem like its own character, even in a show crowded with charming characters. I love this ship intimately, even if I would have built it differently.

1. Colonial Vessel 46.18′\, Gravity Falls

(I don’t know the ship name so I had to make up a name)

You didn’t think I’d leave out this one, did you? After all the fanfiction I’ve written? This is basically my ship at this point. Anyway, enough about me; the vessel beneath Crash Site Omega really is the quintessential alien ship; its perfectly cliche flying-saucer design taps into all the audience’s pre-existing fanciful notions and imaginings and disbelief-suspension, meanwhile its presentation isn’t cliche or fanciful in the slightest.

There’s not much to say about it from a technical standpoint, besides personal musings: it would need anti-gravity to stay airborne without thrusters, it would need a FTL drive to cross the distances it did, its drones would need to be made of some kind of semi-liquid to move like they do... But these sort of out-of-the-box, never-before-seen, world-expanding brain-knocks are exactly what makes this ship special. It’s an alien ship, built with technology unknown to people, forged from materials that people don’t possess, and inhabited by beings we will never meet. For all we know, this ship could be perfectly sound from an engineering standpoint, and no engineer in the audience could claim to prove it otherwise, because unlike something like the T.A.R.D.I.S., they never try and fail to explain it away with science buzzwords or canonize its details or show off some fancy glowy reactor. This ancient husk is left as a yawning pit in reason, and that’s beautiful.

Moreover, this ship is an amazingly powerful narrative tool, and a mind-blowing surprise to drop in as a setpiece during the show’s final episodes. This ship embodies everything that made the show’s mysteries special: the evidence presented so early and so consistently, the creativity in creature design, action, and worldbuilding, the yawning depths of unknowable lore, and most of all the burning, unquenched desire to know more... The imprint this ship made in the cliffs over the town has been hanging over the characters’ heads the entire series, and its hull was below their feet from day one, so when they finally revealed it, and explored it, it felt invigorating. Rewarding. This ship, and the glorious feelings and thoughts it represents, have inspired to no end, and haven’t ended yet.

Honorable mentions:

Westley and Buttercup, The Princess Bride

Ooooh man I tell you what, it was really hard trimming this down to 10 for the list, and this one just barely didn’t make the cut, and that mainly because I have a sweet spot for animation and for warrior women, and this sweetness ain’t animated, and this damsel is as distressed as they get. And they don’t have a whole lot of chemistry? I don’t know how to measure that, but I feel like there was a lot of friendship stated that was never shown? Is it sacrilege to say that about True Love? I guess I’ve never exactly had True Love, so what do I know?

The entire plot centers around his devotion to her, and her love for him, and the lengths they go to for one another. He studies fencing and wrestling and wits and tactics for years on a pirate ship as he tried to return to her, and she refused the advances and the offers of an actual prince for as long as she could, even though she thought him dead, and was ready to kill herself when she knew him to be alive and not to be hers. And just such excellent action and characters and humor and story in the entire book surrounding it. Possibly an even better movie, somehow. Happy happy happy happy. They don’t make movies like this no more, why is that? Sad.

Endurance, Interstellar

Actually a pretty realistic design, all considering. They nailed the aesthetic, and the cinematography, and the feel.

It does lose points though, firstly because the shuttlecraft require a booster stage to make it into orbit when leaving Earth, but for the rest of the movie, whenever they’re landing on planets with similar gravity and atmosphere, they can just fly away like it’s no big deal, which is a big inconsistency, both with real life, and more importantly with itself. And how did an under-equipped and struggling space program put this thing in orbit in the first place, anyway? And why don’t their ships land on their asses like proper rockets? And why not tell the crew members the full plan before leaving? See, it’s little things like that, little inconsistencies made for the sake of fitting with story beats and simplifying it for the audience’s sake, that sours this ship for me. I don’t mind creative liberties, but actual plot holes? This thing has a few plot holes, and plot holes are absolutely yucky. So although most of this ship is very yummy, the yucky parts make it all yucky.

Yucky.

Plus its heavy cargo shuttles are about the least-aerodynamic things imaginable, and that’s also yucky, and there’s porcelain tiles in the stasis bay, like what?

Couldashouldawoulda been yummy.

The Hermes, The Martian

This ship. This friggin’ ship.

A beautiful ship. A well-conceived ship. A mathematically sound and engineered ship. It had so many many good ideas behind it. So much math went into calculating its thrust and orbital dynamics for this movie, so much work went into making it fit a contemporary space aesthetic, the panels, the heat sinks, the tanks, so much PRESENTATION I could KISS IT HMWA, but taken as a whole, engineering-wise, the whole ship falls flat on its face, because it just doesn’t fit together. It doesn’t make sense. Look at all those countless modules along its length. What do they do? They don’t do anything! It’s a quarter mile long, and it’s built for only 6 people? It’s meant to carry a lander? Where does the lander dock? Why are the useful airlocks so far off the center of gravity? Why does it have a cockpit? Why is the forward airlock so looooong? Why is the entire ship so loooooong? Why is the ring spinning so slowly? It’s not hard math to figure out how fast it needs to spin! You’re telling me you did ORBITAL DYNAMICS but not the SINGLE physics 101 equation needed to figure out how fast the ring needs to spin??

Btw, let’s talk about that rotating section in the middle! Think about the rotating section! That rotating section means that the front and the back of the ship aren’t actually connected! There’s just a pair of ring-shaped slip-slidey bearings bridging the ship’s middle, slip-slidey bearings that electricity, computer signals, and water and air pipes can’t cross. Why did they design it that way?? In the book the entire ship spun, which makes so much more sense! Why does it have solar panels when it has a reactor canonically capable of 40 times their output? Why are the fuel tanks so small? Why is it always facing prograde even when canonically burning retrograde? Why? WHY? BLRRRRGGGGGRGGGRGGG

In Conclusion, Ships Are Neat

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scattered-irises · 4 years ago

Text

LONG AWAITED CONCLUSION TO THAT ZEXAL PHILOSOPHICAL CHAT I POSTED A YEAR (or two) AGO

Part i

Basically, the theory is: Tron is a figment of the Arclights’ imagination and it’s actually just Byron going around messing everything up. Tron is a symbol of the corruption of the Arclights.

****

And so, I pose you this question, Phosphorous. What if Tron never existed and was just a metaphorical representation for Byron's hatred and anger? What if the Barian World hadn't done anything to him and instead, just made him an angrier old man? So instead of this creepy, laughing child, we have this creepy man who goes around ruining people's lives for the sake of his revenge.

The child is just something the Arclight brothers made up because they couldn't stand the fact that their father had become like that. But that was why they still followed him. Because he was still their father.

I see your point there. It has plausibility, muses Phosphorous.

The reason why Tron erased their old names was because it was a way for all of them to disassociate their current selves with their past selves. They have changed too much to be considered Byron, Christopher, Thomas and Michael anymore. Christopher has turned extremely cold and calculating compared to his happier, gentle brother attitude when he was younger.

And Thomas...the poor child. He used to be a happy boy that teased his younger sibling but as IV, he masks himself as a happy celebrity loved by all in the world and underneath that mask is a sadistic monster and underneath that mask is a son that just desperately wants his father back and will do anything to get it and underneath that mask is a lonely young man who wishes to be understood.

Arguably, Michael is the one who remains closest to his original self. He's still the beloved younger brother and like when they were younger, still has a close relationship with Thomas. But he's cracked beneath his placid smile and gentle nature. When angered, he lashes out terribly and like Thomas, will do anything, even murder, to achieve his family's goals.

And so, one could argue that Tron is basically just an overall representation that their family has changed for the worse.

“How much autonomy do the brothers have? and how do they relate to others as they attempt to fulfill their families goals?” poses Phosphorous.

Ah, ah. An insightful query, my friend. They are pretty much never seen doing things of their own free will. Even when it seems like they are enjoying themselves (I.E III sneaking into Yuma's house to eat lunch and meet him. It actually was just a scouting mission on his family's next target), their actions are meant to serve ulterior motives. In the end, all of the things they do is in the name of serving the family.

A somewhat random note, Christopher looks at Thomas with contempt. They're basically polar opposites (But not really. Once Christopher gets emotional, he's just as broken and destructive as Thomas).

Thomas has a grudging respect for Christopher because a part of him still recognizes him as his older brother.

Christopher seems to care a bit more for Michael, but when Michael was being tortured, he watched the scene at the insistence of Tron. At the end of it though, he turns away, hinting at a bit of a conscience.

It's Thomas and Michael that are more of a sibling relationship. This is most likely because they have spent all of their lives together while Christopher had been absent for 5 years from their lives. He was gone when Thomas was 12 all the way to when he turned 17 and Michael was 10 and is now 15

Thomas genuinely cares for Michael, going as far as to shout at Tron for treating his brother like that. Christopher immediately silences him.

Michael also returns that gesture, although less because he ended up falling into a coma before we could see more.

“Yet all three are, at least at times, willing participants in Tron's schemes?”

Yes, my fellow thinker. Christopher is the most loyal one. He never questions Tron’s orders. Michael will go with his father in hopes that he will get his family back. He is Tron's favorite because he is a "gentle and obedient child." I find it quite sad how, although Christopher is the most loyal one to the cause, he isn’t the favorite. I suppose it is also because I am the eldest of three, yet am not as favored as the youngest.

“The youngest seems to be favored most of the time,” muses Phosphorous as they look out at the tumultuous Barian sea.

It's Thomas that sometimes goes out of line. He's the strongest of the brothers, but Tron is always saying that he is the weakest. It is most likely the fear of Thomas realizing that he's actually powerful and could turn on Tron. Hence, that is why Tron says he trusts no one.

Phosphorous stands, overlooking the gloomy landscape of crystals.

“So each and every one is then beholden to this idea of what? A happy family? Or just something different than their current state of affairs? Do all the brothers truly share this idea of a return to a happy family? Or do they don't even know that that looks like and just want something to change?”

In short:

Tron: Kill my murderers and I'll become your happy ol' dad again and we can go back to England and do happy British people stuff

Sons: Uh sure okay

Personally, I think they all know to an extent that they're deluding themselves

They're just ambling down this path of lies because the brothers are desperate to have a place to belong to after being separated for so long

But you might have a point that they might not even know what a truly happy family is anymore.

“So it's like they're chasing something that doesn't exist then?”

Exactly. Much like the couple that was running to the end of the rainbow. They are chasing a boat that has already long passed by. After all of the things Tron did to them, I'm sure they all know that they will never be "normal" and "happy" again.

“So under your theory, Tron doesn't truly exist, or at least is highly metaphorical, which makes all of their struggles self-inflicted and their delusions even more deep.”

Quite perceptive of you. Tron does exist, but he's basically Byron but meaner. They merely use the child with the ruined face to cover up the fact that their father has turned into a monster.

"Hey so dad's gone nuts but let's pretend it's a weird little boy who's nuts so it takes a bit of the pain away."

“Ah, so then they could say "Tron" instead of ‘Father.’”

Yes, exactly. They almost never address Tron as father. They only talk of their father in the past tense.

“But then,” proposes Phosphorous, dramatically turning back to me. “Why would they care so much for the new names they received? Or do they not care for them?”

Those names have become a part of their identities. They use it to cope with the fact that they've all gone south personality-wise. Thomas even uses IV as his celebrity name, perhaps as a sign that he does not recognize his celebrity persona as his true self.

Phosphorous takes in a deep breath, the acidic breeze rustling their toga. Their eyes meet mine own with a sharpness that I had always so admired.

“So these new names, they're basically masks, but do they disassociate themselves from their new identities the same way they do with Tron and their Father, or do they still think of themselves as fundamentally themselves, just forced to do things they wouldn't normally do? Though I would assume each brother is affected differently by their mask,” says my friend as they begin to pace.

Ah, they still view Tron as their father (A leader) but deep down they probably don't want to put two and two together. So it's a superficial belief of "We fight for Tron (our father but let’s not think about that.)"

Either that or,

They are fighting for their Father,

who is basically just an idea of a happy family now whilst Tron

represents a bad family.

Onto your second point, the brothers fit into their masks to different extents.

Michael doesn't seem to mind III for they appear to have the same personality, save for III's destructive tendencies.

When Christopher is reunited with his student that he abandoned and is called Christopher, he sadly smiles and says.

"It's been a long time since someone has called me that"

And Thomas probably has an extremely difficult time taking off his mask after wearing it for so long in front of so many people

“So then do their numbered names also represent a bad family? also why do they start at three, like why not 1,2,3 instead of 3,4,5?”

I still don’t understand why it’s 3 4 5 (Nor does anyone else, for that matter.), however, their numbers are probably how Tron sees them. From his scientific background, he probably just sees his son as pieces of useful data he can use to his advantage.

“Hm, the only thing I could think of for the numbers was that Tron was somehow including him and the boys' mother in his count, like their the first two so that's why it starts at three, which is something you probably already thought about,” theorizes Phosphorous futilely.

Perhaps the numbers are used as place holders. They are not Christopher, Thomas and Michael. They are merely placeholders for when Christopher, Thomas and Michael return. When their family is whole again...

“But if the numbers are place-holders then so is the name ‘Tron,’” concludes Phosphorous.

Indeed.

“But I wonder if the brothers associate the numbers with Tron, like the numbers aren't really them, just a means to an end that will be removed when they get their father back, or if they're deluding themselves,” muses my friend.

Yes, the numbers are most likely temporary to them. Christopher is deluding himself.

He knows that he’s Christopher under V’s cold exterior. Same for Thomas and Michael. They are a family of delusions, united under the promise of a better tomorrow that will never arrive.

And so I thank you, for bearing with me.

Without ceremony, Phosphorus walks away from the crystal cliff, leaving me. I stare into the depths of the sea of ill intent and allow the sounds of the waves crashing against the crystal to overtake me. Closing my eyes, I begin to meditate.

Thus we conclude our bout of philosophy and ardent beard stroking.

#zexal #analysis #zexal analysis #long post #Christopher Arclight #Michael Arclight #Thomas Arclight #Byron Arclight #Tron Zexal #Iris thinks hard

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isitgintimeyet · 6 years ago

Text

The Ties That Bind

Thanks for all your feedback on the first chapter. I loved reading it all! I hope you enjoy the second chapter.

Once again thanks to @mo-nighean-rouge for the beta

Chapter 2 : A Recreational Activity (well, a few)

The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only. -Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Jamie groaned and hoped that the banging inside his head would stop soon. This was the problem with drinking wine. Generally Jamie tried to steer clear of ‘grape’ and stick to ‘grain’. However, last night, he had supped copious quantities of both and now was suffering the consequences. He stretched his hand out hoping to find a glass of water and possibly even two aspirins left on the bedside table by his more responsible alter ego yesterday. There they were. Gratefully, he sank back onto the pillows and waited for them to do their work.

Parts of his alcohol-induced dreams came back to him… miles and miles of hotel corridors and he was chasing, chasing... a woman with the most gorgeous legs he had ever seen. He kept chasing her, but she wouldn’t stop and she wouldn’t turn round. A flash of wild dark curls and…

The banging in his head seemed to be louder now. “Unca,” a cross little voice added to the general cacophony. “Unca, get up now. Mam says now. ‘Tis beckfast and then ‘wimmin’. Mam says.”

Jamie forced himself out of bed. Fastening the towelling bath robe, he opened his door. His little nephew rushed past him and started jumping on the bed. Jenny stood in the doorway, her eyes darting all round the room.

“I go ‘wimmin’ with ye, Unca, wiv Spideyman shorts. What ye shorts, Unca?”

Jamie sighed and looked at his sister. “She’s no’ here. She didna stay. Nothing happened.” He grabbed Wee Jamie round his middle, lifting him high up in the air. “And who said I would take ye swimmin’, ye wee fishie?”

“Mam said so, she did.”

Jamie gently set his nephew on his feet. “Aye, well, yer mam makes an awfa’ lot o’ decisions fer the men in this family. But I guess I canna refuse, no’ if I ken what’s good fer me.”

**************

Claire lay on one of the day beds next to the swimming pool and wiggled her toes, admiring the newly applied scarlet polish. She set aside the copy of Hello! she had been skimming through and turned to Geillis.

“This was such a good idea of yours, G. Total battery recharge today… and we’ve even had the whole pool to ourselves. I don’t reckon we’ll be seeing any of that wedding party any time soon. Not if last night was anything to go by.”

“I am rather full of brilliant ideas,” Geillis agreed. “Although I feel we may have missed an opportunity last night. So many men...”

“... And no doubt so many wives and girlfriends!” Claire interrupted.

“Och, well,” Geillis dismissed Claire’s interruption. “Guess we’ll never know.”

“Anyway, so I’ve a body wrap, then hot stone massage in twenty minutes. I’m going to head into the sauna for ten minutes first. You coming?”

“Aye, may as weel. I don’t reckon there’ll be anything worth hangin’ round here fer today.” Geillis gathered up her belongings and followed Claire into the sauna.

**************

Jamie sat in the male changing room, blowing up his nephew’s armbands (Spider-Man, obviously a theme here) while Wee Jamie hopped excitedly from foot to foot.

“Now, afore we go in the pool, are ye sure you dinna need a wee? Ye ken what I told ye, as how if ye wee in the pool, the water turns bright blue?”

“Nah, Unca, c’mon now. Wanna go ‘wimmin’.” The little lad pulled his armbands up, grabbed Jamie’s hand and headed for the door. “C’mon, c’mon.” He paused and stared intently at his uncle. “Ye no Spideyman shorts?”

Jamie looked down at his blue checked board shorts and tried to look sad about this. “Sorry lad, I’m too big fer such a fine pair.”

As they entered the pool area together, Jamie looked around. It was totally deserted, which, Jamie thought, was hardly surprising based on the amount of alcohol that had been consumed the day before. An abandoned magazine lay on one of the day beds.

Wee Jamie pointed to a small passage way on the other side of the pool. “What’s ‘at?”

“Ah, nothing for ye. Just the sauna... it’s awfa hot and no’ fer children and the girls’ changing room is down there too. That’s definitely no’ fer us lads, eh?”

Following Jenny’s instructions to “wear the lad out, we want him tae sleep in the car going home,” Jamie stayed in the pool, playing with his nephew until he noticed the lad’s eyelids start to droop. He scooped him up and carried him back to the changing room, intending to just wrap him in a towel and leave the tricky drying and dressing to Jenny.

Wee Jamie held tightly to his uncle’s neck. “You fib, Unca. Ye did. I wee’d and I wee’d but no blue.”

Jamie chuckled. God, he loved this little lad something fierce and maybe someday, God willing...

**************

Claire picked up the two whiskies from the bar and made her way to the table where Geillis was sitting. The pub was quite empty at the moment, just a handful of people, like them, having a quick drink after work before heading home.

Geillis looked Claire up and down appraisingly. “Ye ken I love ye, Claire, but could you no’ wear something a bit, weel, more alluring when we’re out?”

Claire gazed down at her old jeans and plain black tee shirt. “G, I’ve been on my feet in theatre for the past 8 hours. I’m so knackered, you’re lucky I managed to change out of my scrubs and into this! Besides, however can I compete with your alllllluuure?” She drawled the last word out jokingly. “Maybe you have the allure for both of us? I can be your duff.”

Geillis raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“Designated ugly fat friend.” Claire explained with a smile. “According to the movie, every friendship group has one. You and me, we’re a friendship group, ergo, I must be it.”

“Claire, ye may be many things but fat or ugly never.” Geillis said, “Yer hair’s a wee bit wild, mind. Do ye no’ fancy a Brazilian blow dry?” She ran her fingers over her sleek strawberry blonde locks.

“And here’s me thinking a ‘brazilian’ was about a different part of my anatomy altogether!”

Geillis smiled, then a serious expression crept over her face. “But, Claire, ye dinna think ye’re fat or ugly really, do ye?”

Claire stared at the beer mat on the table, her fingers picking at it, ripping it into tiny shreds of paper. She really thought she’d outgrown that nervous habit.

“Well, no, but, it’s difficult to explain. Frank...” She could hear Geillis tutting at the mention of his name. “Frank had certain… er, expectations of how I should be. How I should behave, how I should look. The disapproval on his face if I took an extra roast potato, ordered dessert, poured myself another glass of wine. There was always someone younger, more self-controlled, thinner. So, for a while I tried to become the person he wanted me to be. I tried to see myself through his eyes and I saw the fat arse, the lack of control, the not-really good enough...”

Geillis leaned closer and gently placed her hand on Claire’s. “Thank God ye got out of there. That wasna a healthy place tae be, Claire. Ye know ye’re worth a lot more than that.”

“I know. And I am joking about that duff business but occasionally, old habits are hard to break. That’s why I’m not after a serious relationship. I’m not sure I’m ready to let someone see me as I really am.”

“But a fling will do ye no harm at all. It will do ye the world of good, let ye see how another man treats ye. In fact, we need a list. A checklist. When ye’re in theatre, ye dinna start cuttin’ till ye know everything is in place, all the boxes are ticked. So we make a list of what ye want and ye dinna start, er, flingin’ till a man ticks all the boxes.”

Claire finally put the mangled beer mat down. “A list, really?”

“Aye, it’s scientific, ye ken.” Geillis picked up her bag and rooted around for a piece of paper. Finding an unused paper napkin, she smoothed it flat on the table, extracted a pen from the depths of her bag and sat poised ready to write. “Ok. Point one…” She scribbled something down quickly.

“Come on, Let me read it.” Claire laughed, turning the napkin round. “Must look good in, and out of, a kilt. G, you have a one-track mind.”

“Och, it’s a fling we’re talking about, ye only need one track, I reckon. So, what about point two?”

“Well, I may as well play along. Point two must be no complications.”

Geillis obligingly wrote that down. “Next point. Enjoys a drink. Likes to let his hair down.”

Claire took the pen from her friend and added another line. Geillis read it upside down. “Really, it’s a fling ye’re after. Ye’re tellin’ me if they dinna like the X-Files, that’s it? Is that a deal breaker?”

“What can I say? The heart wants what the heart wants.”

“Fine, but I’m adding this one then. Fancies ye as ye are. No changing ye.”

The pub was starting to fill up. Most commuters had already made their way home, to be replaced by those heading out for the evening, coming into the pub for a quick drink before their evening plans properly began. Even on a drizzly Thursday evening, it was getting to be standing room only. Claire noticed several people eyeing their table enviously. She drained her whisky glass and stood up.

“I think that’s me done for this evening. Any more and I’ll have to be put to bed right here. I’ll just pop to the loo and meet you outside, G.”

As Claire crossed the room to the toilets, Geillis started to gather her stuff together to leave.

Immediately a woman rushed to the table, plonked herself in one chair, and stuffed her bag on the other chair. She eyed Geillis, willing her to hurry up and be on her way. Geillis ignored her and continued rifling through her bag, her movements deliberately slowing. Eventually, Geillis decided she’d had enough of the game, turned away and walked to the exit.

**************

Geneva caught Jamie’s eye as he moved away from the bar, drinks in hand, and pointed to the seats she had found for them. He sat down, taking a deep slug of his whisky as he put Geneva’s vodka, lime and soda on the table next to a tatty old napkin.

“Someone’s shopping list, no doubt.” Geneva dismissed it with a wave of her hand as Jamie picked it up and carried on telling Jamie about the difficulties in trying to find the correct colour for a new bedroom throw. “...Not really a teal, but not quite a cerulean colour either…”

Jamie knew his role in this. It was just to nod and murmur appreciatively at appropriate points in the story. That gave him time to think… unfortunately. Thinking made him realise that Jenny had been right three weeks ago at the wedding. Geneva was not the one, he didn’t need to try again just to see. And she did talk utter shite.

He groaned, which Geneva seemed to take as indication of his deep interest in her tale of home furnishing trials and tribulations. He should never have slept with her. He hadn’t intended to but last night, as the blood left his brain and migrated south, he had lost the capacity for rational, coherent thought and had followed his baser instincts. Which had been a very bad idea.

Jamie glanced at the napkin he was still holding. Straightening it between his fingers, he began to read. A woman with long strawberry blonde locks suddenly leaned over and gently took the napkin from his fingers.

“Thanks, it’s fer scientific research, ye ken.”

He watched as she walked to the door, to her waiting friend. Her friend with the long shapely denim clad legs and mad curly hair and her face, so full of life with sparkling eyes he longed to dive right into.

“What an odd thing to want.” Geneva interrupted his contemplation. “That couldn’t have been scientific research. On a used napkin. Some people are just strange.”

Jamie felt his breath catch in his throat. Jenny had been right - he recognised it. What to do now?

#outlander fanfic #outlander fan fiction #modern AU #Jamie Fraser #claire beauchamp #the ties that bind #chapter 2 #fluff #bit of angst #first time writing #sorry i dont know how to add links to previous chapter here

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caffeinatedgirlblr-blog · 6 years ago

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My 2019 goals

I know, it’s a bit late to write about yearly goals, but anyway) I want you to be aware of my purposes for this year in order to become more acquainted with me and probably take some ideas! I’ve categorized these goals by several groups to make reading more comfortable.

I. Health and Physical State

1. Nutrition

ღ reduce daily food intake to 1400 cal (this is all individually! please, count your own norm)

ღ consume healthy food:

include more fruits, vegetables, greenery

consume less sweets, coffee (maximum 4 cups per week), milk and bread products

ღ high-calorific foods till 4 p.m.

ღ do not eat three hours before sleep

ღ eat small portions every 2-3 hours (3 main meals + 2-3 snacks)

ღ drink two liters of water per day

2. Activity

ღ workout three times per week and rest for a day between these fitness-days

combine cardio and weight trainings

ღ do yoga and stretching in mornings and/or evenings

ღ take the splits and be more flexible

ღ learn to dance lezghinka and waltz

ღ maintain 50-52 kilograms (my height is 168 cm)

ღ get a muscle definition

3. Sleep

ღ night sleep duration is 7-8 hours

ღ go to bed at 10 p.m. and wake up at 5:30 a.m.

ღ do not take naps during the day unless you really need it

ღ sleep in a complete darkness + turn off notifications on the phone

4. Self-care

ღ clean face twice a day

morning: face-washing gel + tonic/cream

evening: makeup-removing foam + tonic + acne drug

scrub/masks once a week

ღ get rid of acne

receive treatment from a doctor

ღ take care for hairs

maintain them clean and neat

apply hair conditioner

cut edges once in two months

learn to make lovely hairstyles

ღ learn to apply cosmetics on my face and do it as rare as possible

ღ do not be cold

ღ take vitamins according the season

ღ take care for hands and nails

ღ take care for heels

II. Education and Self-Development

1. Univercity admission

ღ get results of the first examination (25.03)

ღ register for the second examination on English

ღ prepare for the English exam and get a high score (improve grammar, vocabulary, listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills)

I will write about it in more detail later

ღ prepare all the documents and... enter the university!

2. School

ღ graduate shool with excellent marks

pass state exams: maths, history, Russian, Kazakh, English

choose correct subjects (math/physics VS English/georaphy) and pass UNT (united national test) - also uncover this theme a bit later

3. Self-development

ღ develop critical thinking - solve more thinking problems

ღ watch lectures from TED talks and write summaries

ღ enrich my English vocabulary and revise punctuation rules

ღ watch documentaries and scientific films

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey - the series I really want to watch

ღ be aware about world news

ღ learn Chinese language

ღ read 10 books (now, I’m reading “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen)

read daily at least 15 pages

III. Relationships and Social Life

1. Family

ღ attend family meetings and gatherings

ღ visit grandparents more frequently

ღ respect parents and do not be rude with them

ღ spend more time with Mom and Dad

go to the nature, watch movies, go to restaurants or cafes, go to another city, discuss everything with them - at least once a week

ღ keep in touch with siblings

2. Friends and other people:

ღ make new REAL friends who will motivate and support me

I’ve been always dreaming about having adult, intelligent friend

ღ get rid of the past and learn how to let people go

ღ eliminate toxic people in my life

ღ find time for helping people with their problems

ღ less trust people and tell them what is in my heart, be it joys or sorrows

ღ meet my English teacher this summer and say thank you (he taught me via the Internet and we never see each other in reality)

IV. Spititual Life

ღ meditate daily (in mornings or evenings) at least 5 minutes

be grateful for everything and everyone I have

visualize the future of my dream

forget all problems during this time

ღ be kind, stress-resilient, patient, flexible, fun, generous

ღ create morning and evening routines

ღ create a mood board of my future life

ღ create a pleasant environment in my room

organize and clean my roon regularly: dusting, vacuuming, washing

at least once a season do deep cleaning: desk, shelves, drawers, wardrobe, digitals (laptop, phone, camera), chage pictures on my mood board

change bed sheets more often

buy green and flourish plants

ventilare regularly

ღ stay organized

make monthly, weekly, daily plans

write down all my ideas

create study plans

ღ keep on writing in my diary

ღ turn off all the digital an hour before going to sleep

V. Hobbies and Relaxation

ღ listen to inspirational music (more jazz, less rap) and create playlists for each mood

ღ watch movies and series with enjiyment (I do not know the reason, but I cannot to watch a movie from the beginning to the end, feeling that I’m wasting time)

ღ play and sing with guitar

ღ paint

ღ photography

ღ attend a museum

ღ travel more

buy Euro-tour!

ღ chose one day-off each week for relaxation and recovery

ღ find new recipes of healthy meals and try them

That is pretty all! The post is quite long, but here is literally EVERYTHING what I am going to accomplish by the end of 2019.

Also, I think I will add new ideas in this list with time.

Hope, you enjoed reading and got a tonn of inspiration!

See in the next post ❤

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vincent-marie · 6 years ago

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A Look Back on TREASURE PLANET

So recently I rewatched TREASURE PLANET for the first time in about fifteen years and… I'm not gonna lie, it's still my personal favorite of the 2D Disney animated features from the early to mid-2000s.

Let's be real. Of the 2D features Disney released around that time period, TREASURE PLANET is one of the more solid films. ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE had some interesting ideas and some really nice design work and animation, but it really needed to be at least two hours long if it wanted to flesh out the characters and the world-building without requiring supplementary material (like a special edition of Disney Adventure magazine). Hardly anybody remembers BROTHER BEAR was even a thing, and the less said about HOME ON THE RANGE, the better. (Seriously, that movie wasn't even worth the Steve Buscemi cameo.)

The only other film of that era that has really held up was LILO AND STITCH, and I'll admit it's probably a better film than TREASURE PLANET. It took more risks in terms of character, setting and originality, and emotionally it leaves more of an impact. (That scene when Nani sings to Lilo makes me cry like a baby every time.) My only problem with it is it always felt like two entirely different movies collided with each other and it never felt like they really meshed well. Otherwise, I agree with most fans that it’s a good film.

Also, of course, there was the excellent THE EMPEROR’S NEW GROOVE, which was just such a huge departure from Disney’s normal schtick and trying something more Tex Avery-esque, only for it to be a perfect storm instead of a total crash and burn. That is much to be proud of.

Going back to TREASURE PLANET, I can understand that most folks walk away saying it’s an "okay" film. I, however, am not one of those people. I've had a real soft spot for this movie ever since I saw it, but now I appreciate this film for additional reasons.

Namely, the animation and effects work. Holy crap, is this movie gorgeous! It's like watching Don Bluth's ANASTASIA, except I don't have to feel guilty about historical inaccuracies. (Now it’s just scientific inaccuracies, but STAR WARS gets away with that all the time.)

Directors John Musker and Ron Clements had apparently wanted to do a sci-fi retelling of "Treasure Island" since before they started working on THE LITTLE MERMAID. With that in mind I do feel like this movie would have fared better with critics back in the early 90s during the Disney Renaissance. However at that time they would not have had such elaborate and detailed CG effects within arm's reach. There's something I really enjoy about the use of 3D backdrops so that they may do sweeping camera movements, and that's not even getting into the lighting effects to establish atmosphere.

What's more, there are a lot of subtleties to the character animation that I never appreciated until now. You could just pick one character and focus on him or her during the whole movie and find a lot of fun little quirks in their dialogue or walk cycles.

Admittedly, much of this film’s appeal probably depends on how much of an animation fan you are. In my case I was watching John Silver’s animation and I suspected that Glen Keane was probably in charge of animating him (as there are moments when Silver looks so much like Ratigan). Those suspicions were confirmed during the end credits and I was delightfully geeking out about it.

It’s also easy to see where this film might not have had a lot of mass appeal. Most of the focus on the story is on Jim Hawkins and his daddy issues, which by the early 2000s was already a cliche of a character arc. And it’s not helped by the fact that Jim himself is... well, kind of on the bland side as a protagonist. There’s not a lot about him that makes him any more or less interesting than any other teenage male lead. But for what it is I think the movie did fine at establishing and building the relationship between Jim and Silver, which does have its warm and comforting moments. For both of them.

And at least the film is straightforward with its plot and characters and it’s not a structural mess like HERCULES, a previous venture by Musker and Clements.

Something I’ve noticed over the years is that TREASURE PLANET has a little bit of a cult following. I distinctly remember this one time when I was taking a storyboard class in college; we were assigned to do a “Master Study” assignment by recreating the key story frames in our favorite scene in a favorite animated movie. One of my classmates picked the scene when Jim is brought home to the inn by the police and embarrasses his mother. I recall being so impressed, and even a little envious, that she got the character design style down to a T. (If you’re wondering what movie/scene I picked for my Master Study, I picked the Big Ben scene from THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE.)

Then, of course, some friends and I suspect that TREASURE PLANET might have fared better if it had been released a bit later, more towards the height of the Steampunk craze. It’s not quite what I would call “Steampunk”, as it takes place in a sort of alternate universe version of the 18th century and not the Gothic era, and most of their transport is solar-powered and not steam-based. Nevertheless it’s easy to see how fans of Steampunk could find it appealing, with its mostly earth-tone color pallet to evoke the painted illustrations of the classic novel it was based on. Also that combination of a pre-20th century aesthetic with out-of-this-world science fiction elements is pretty much, in my opinion, what makes Steampunk so much fun to play around with. Also, a robot made out of copper. End of story.

In terms of why this film didn’t do so well when it was released, I suspect what stunted its success was the marketing. I could be wrong, as I was actually living in Honduras at the time of the film’s release, but we got some TV stations from Denver, Colorado. I remember a lot of the TV spots spent most of their time highlighting the goofy comic relief moments with Morph, and there was a real emphasis on the presence of B.E.N., even though he's in less than one-third of the movie. In other words, the film's success might have been partially sabotaged by a marketing team that seemed to think if you don’t take your film seriously at all that will somehow draw in the crowd.

Although speaking of the comic relief characters, I actually don’t mind them that much. I always thought Morph had a lot of cute, funny moments that weren’t too obnoxious. As for B.E.N., I kind of have mixed feelings for him. On one hand, the directing team made better use of Martin Short’s improvisational skills than PEBBLE AND THE PENGUIN or WE’RE BACK! ever did. But on the other hand, does B.E.N. have to be so loud and shouty? However, while B.E.N. is a real screw-up, he’s not so much to the point where I want to see him get smashed with a sledgehammer. He’s generally likable, not at all loathsome, and just annoying enough, but not TOO annoying.

However while we’re still on the subject of B.E.N., I’d just like to add that the CG animation on him is really nice. Making him 3D gives him a sort of sense of solidity compared to his hand-drawn humanoid compadres, and to top it off his animation isn’t at all stiff or feels like the CG is holding him back. There is some really expressive squashing and stretching going on with his dialogue. It’s so subtle in places that you’d probably miss it if you’re not looking for it. A lot of CG animation studios at the time like Pixar and Dreamworks had not quite mastered squashing and stretching themselves, so kudos to Disney for pulling it off so well.

Now if I may indulge a little on why I remember this film fondly, my favorite characters were always Dr. Doppler and Captain Amelia. They are both fun and engaging on their own, but together they are weirdly adorable. Granted, I've always thought them getting together at the end was a bit rushed, but I still totally buy it.

(What I don't buy is that they'd be so eager to have kids after Doppler showed such annoyance and revulsion towards that toddler alien girl at the beginning. I get that the creators wanted some visual shorthand to indicate that they're an official couple, but they could have just been wearing wedding rings or throw in a little more of them dancing together.)

Part of the reason I love these characters on their own is the casting. I was already familiar with Emma Thompson from Ang Lee's adaptation of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, and her character of Eleanor Dashwood was very quiet and reserved. You can imagine my disbelief and delight hearing her play an assertive, witty badass as Amelia. (As if I didn't already think Amelia’s design was cool.)

As for David Hyde Pierce, I had only occasionally watched FRASIER growing up, but when I saw this movie I was familiar with him through some other memorable voice acting roles, particularly that excellent Season 8 episode of THE SIMPSONS, “Brother From Another Series.” In other words, I already knew him to be funny, snarky and charismatic.

While I'm on about the casting, I feel like there's a totally wasted opportunity to have these two characters in a room together, say, before the black hole scene, exchanging witty banter to show how compatible they are in a casual setting. It’s a shame that Emma and David didn’t record their dialogue together, because with her being an accomplished writer and with his skills at improvisation, there could have been some good verbal combat by way of “Much Ado About Nothing-Meets-Frasier.”

But looking back, I remember I immediately loved Captain Amelia just on principal. As a kid I never really gravitated that much to any of the Disney princesses. I can’t really describe why, but it was mostly how they were marketed as just looking pretty and (arguably) kind of passive in their own stories. Not to mention how when Disney Princess became a brand, they really amped up the girly cutesy-ness to their preexisting images. Not to say there’s anything inherently wrong with cute or feminine things, but it really made me feel like a weirdo who somehow wasn’t fit to be called a girl.

Captain Amelia, on the other hand, had her own style of femininity by wearing a classy, more masculine captain’s uniform along with thigh-high high-heeled boots (that she has no problem running in). She had a no-nonsense attitude, she was focused and cool-headed in a stressful situation, she was downright snarky and took crap from no one. In other words, she was the type of woman I wanted to be when I grew up, and to this day she is my favorite Disney Lady, bar none.

And while I’m at it, I’m just going to add that I’ve always found Dr. Doppler more attractive than your standard Disney prince. Besides his character design looking like a canine version of Roger from 101 DALMATIONS, he just always seemed like he’d be fun to get a coffee with.

Well, that’s about all I really want to talk about regarding TREASURE PLANET. It’s a shame it’s not remembered by more people as it does have some really good elements to it, but in some regards I can kind of see why it wasn’t a huge critical success. If you haven’t seen it already I recommend checking it out as it’s a pretty solid standalone film that doesn’t need supplementary material and covers all the bases with the plot and some fun character moments here and there. If you’re an animation fan I cannot stress enough how you really need to watch it, or even rewatch it, because, again, the animation and effects work is just a real feast for the eyes.

#treasure planet #disney #animation #review #captain amelia #dr. doppler

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thelifetimechannel · 6 years ago

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#tlcstuck #roxy lalonde #jade harley #walkaround 3

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motiveandthemeans · 7 years ago

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Begin: Part IV

“So, Doctor Hooper, what will we be working on today?”

“I thought the whole point of that conversation two weeks ago was so you could call me by my first name without reprimand?” She replied deadpan, guzzling down a cup of coffee and she stowed her things away and donned a lab coat.

Khan had been on the Enterprise nearly six weeks now. It struck him that Molly had been spending nearly every waking hour in the lab and was looking a bit peaky.

Yet still beautiful, all the same. The pair went through phases of incessantly debating and arguing to complete silence in which one (or both) were silently fuming over what the other had said.

“Does it make you feel unfeminine being referred to by your earned professional title? Or would you rather be called by your rank?”

Molly blinked, grumbling into her coffee. “It’s too early for talking.”

Khan smirked. “You look positively exhausted, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah there’s this guy being held prisoner in my lab, he’s done some rather naughty things and now I’m stuck babysitting him.” She smarted back. “He’s insufferable on a good day, unbearable on a bad one and don’t even get me started on his incessant yapping.”

“I believe he sounds quite charming. Perhaps you should give this man the benefit of the doubt. He may very well have the best of intentions.”

“Oh I find that hard to believe.” She intoned, gathering some paperwork. “He’s not ever said one nice thing to me.”

“Has he ever said anything expressly mean to you?”

Molly froze, rolling over the last few weeks in her brain. “Well…not explicitly, I suppose.”

“Ah, so maybe this scoundrel in a cage is just trying to be as proactive as he can given the socially awkward situation.”

Molly turned around and leaned against the worktop, crossing her arms with a playful smirk.

“Khan.” She all but purred. “Are you trying to be my friend?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s obvious I’m attempting to form cordial foundation for purely scientific motivations.” He elaborated, leaning casually against his cell well, looking at her from the corner of his eye. “However, if you are so desperately in need of a more developed relationship I could be persuaded to amend my previous statement and enter a ‘friendship’ with you. Should you wish. I couldn’t care less either way.”

“Brilliant, so you won’t mind if I deactivate the speakers on your cell?”

Before Kahn could reply, the door sounded and revealed Doctor McCoy carrying an IV pole, IV supplies and a couple of IV bags that, one with blood, one smaller with plasma and immunoglobulins and a third 0.9% normal saline.

“Doctor Hooper, I thought I might find you here.” He drawled with an overtly flirtatious smile.

“Good Morning, Lieutenant Commander.” She said quizzically. “I’m so sorry, did I forget an appointment?”

He shook his head sheepishly. “Actually, I was hoping you wouldn’t mind doing your treatments now. It would seem Petty Officer Xanalie has a tooth abscess he’s been neglecting that will require more than than I initially assumed.”

Molly crinkled her nose, and Khan could not help but find it adorable. “Gross. Okay, it’s no problem. Unless you mind, Khan?”

It always surprised him how she took his comfort into consideration.

Normally, he couldn’t give a damn. However, a fire bloomed in his chest at the thought of two doctors alone.

No, he wasn’t about to let that happen. Not if he could avoid it.

“Not at all, this your lab after all.”

“How decent of you.” McCoy commented sarcastically. Khan didn’t miss the exasperated glare the pathologist threw her crew member.

McCoy was (annoyingly) highly efficient at inserting her IV’s-one in each arm to run the plasma and artificially altered PRBCs at the same time- and stayed for 15 minutes documenting his findings on a tablet. Taking her vital signs twice and drawing up a medication from a vial, leaving it capped and ready on the table beside her along with a strange pen looking object.

“Got everything you need?” Molly asked.

“Yep. You can run the NS once the transfusions are over. There’s the diphenhydramine and epinephrine should you need it, not that I anticipate you will.” He smiled.

“Thanks, Leonard. I appreciate you taking the time out to come here and do it.”

“Sure thing, Molly.” He winked. “I’ll leave you…to it.”

Molly wished him farewell and he turned to leave, but not before throwing Khan a fiery glare.

The captive was seeing red. That glare was just as territorial as it was hateful.

So the good Doctor was warning him to stay away from Lieutenant Hooper.

Well, that just wasn’t going to happen.

“He’s attracted to you.”

“Hard to imagine why.” The brunette said distractedly, examining a slide beneath the microscope.

The superhuman narrowed his eyes. “I suppose to the object of said attraction it would be.”

“Oh, I’m an object now?”

“You know what I meant.”

“Yes. It certainly sounded a whole lot like you were accusing me of soliciting the attention of my superior in a most unprofessional capacity.”

“No, that’s not what I said.” Khan reiterated. “I merely observed he wishes to become romantically and most likely, sexually involved with you. His subordinate. I did not say you shared those feelings.”

It made him want to smirk evilly as he ground her teeth in annoyance. The IV sounded, signaling the end of her transfusions. Molly silenced it with a couple of buttons and expertly removed both IV sites, taking care to bandage them appropriately.

“What is the nature of your disease process?” Khan said quizzically.

“Hemophilia-Leiden Factor V.” She replied.

“That’s very rare. In my century, people could still die from it.”

“Well, thankfully the last 300 years have proven fruitful for the health sciences and now I can lead a happy, normal life. For the most part. As long as I don’t fall or get a nasty bruise. Or get pregnant, then I would most assuredly die.”

“That must be difficult, knowing you cannot do the one thing women are supposed to be able to do.”

Molly went frigid. “Yes, it was hard at first.”

“No doubt it is what has lead to the demise of all your romantic pursuits. It must be hard, being the problem in the relationship.”

“Excuse me?” She fumed. “So because my body can’t handle the stress of pregnancy I’m the issue!”

“Why are you upset? It’s not as if I implied you’d be an unfit mother. Quite the contrary, I think you’d be an above average parent.” He retorted.

“No, but you insinuated that I was the reason my relationships don’t last.”

“Well, yes. Weak men, like Leonard McCoy, blame women for not being able to avail their bodies of their primary, evolutionary functions.” Khan shrugged. “It’s just as well, you do have a career that would hamper any real chances for making a family.”

“Just stop talking.”

“Have I struck a nerve? Can’t imagine what it must be like to have someone assume the worst about you without even knowing your background.” Khan bit back. “Much like your commanding medical officer McCoy does not go out of his way to understand my reasonings for what I do. I assumed you were different, now I see you’re just the same. After all, you have been tasked with discovering a method for killing me and my kind.”

“Stop! Just stop!” She roared. “You think I will play into your patronizing little game but I will not be intimidated.”

“Oh, no. Heaven forbid Margaret Louise Hooper give into her emotions- her anger.”

“You’re actually lecturing me on feelings? On being emotionally unavailable?” She laughed humorlessly. “That’s rich. Ever hear of a little story about a pot and a kettle?”

“You wear your loneliness like your heart on your sleeve. I embrace my isolation. Alone is what I have. Alone protects me.” He sneered. “So no, Doctor, I do not fancy your friendship.”

“You’re wrong, you know.” She said. “I think you wished you were an automaton but the truth is you feel deeper than anyone could possibly comprehend. It’s…I can’t even imagine how hard it is to know that your crew is so close yet so far away.”

“You know how it feels. To be alone. You’re friendly with the crew and have a few close shipmates but haven’t found anyone spend those long nights with, despite the obvious number of men interested in you. You’ve no family left, I took that from you.” He said, eye hard, coming to the very front of the invisible barrier that separates them. “So, why, Lieutenant Hooper, don’t you have the hatred for me that you should?”

“I did, at first. I wanted to hurt you, the way you hurt me…but then I thought, what good would it do? It won’t bring back my father. Where has hatred ever gotten the human race?” She contended staunchly. “No, I choose not to hate you, it’s far too great a burden to bear. You want me to hate you as much as you hate yourself for allowing your crew to be taken hostage by Marcus. Well, that is something that I cannot feed into.”

Khan gave her a withering look.

“I forgive you, Khan. I forgive you for killing my father and all those innocent men, women, and children caught in the crossfire, for destroying the city that I call home, for attacking the very institution that I have dedicated my life and career to…I forgive you.” She continued

“I do not want your forgiveness.” He seethed. Oh, how he hated himself. How he wished this slip of a woman could not see through him like a piece of cellophane.

“I know…and that’s exactly why I’m giving it to you.” Molly revealed.

#khanlolly #khan #sherlock x molly #sherlock holmes #sherlock #sherlolly #molly hooper #AU #i hope it’s good

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snickerl · 8 years ago

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Elixir Vitae

AU fanfic set around the time of IWTB.

Find previous chapters here: Chapter I / Chapter II / Chapter III / Chapter IV / Chapter V / Chapter VI / Chapter VII / Chapter VIII / Chapter IX / Chapter X

Chapter XI

Over the past weeks, Scully has been reading quite a few X-Files. The first one I gave her was the one to our first case in Bellefleur, Oregon. I've put together what I hope is a representative collection of our work, sparing her the most horrible cases, the ones with tortured victims or harmed children. Some make her laugh, some make her look at me with her eyebrow hitting her hairline, some clearly incite her scientific interest, some make her gasp, and some put an expression of terror and shock on her face.

What I don't like about this reading process is that she isn't talking to me about how she copes with all this crazy crap. Does is make any sense or is it all science fiction to her? Does she think that the work we were so dedicated to was nothing but a wild-goose chase? She probably doesn't remember that I once told her I hadn't made the world a happier place, and if she asked me now whether it was worth it, whether my obsession with the X-Files was worth all the pain, the grief, and the loss, I wouldn't know how to answer her.

She spends a lot of time in the huge wing chair by the fireplace these days, cross-legged, an X-File on her lap, her reading glasses on the tip of her nose, and a pot of tea on the coffee table. She sits there for hours, deeply buried in a file, unresponsive and ignorant to what's happening around her. There are days, I deliberately vacuum the living room and work extra extensively around the chair just to make her look up and interact with me, but I doubt she even notices what I'm doing. She'd said she wanted me to guide her through her getting re-acquainted with the X-Files but now she's doing it all alone, and I'm not convinced that this is the best way to do it.

The chair is empty now, after having been occupied by a reading Scully since breakfast. I'd put lunch on the table and she spoke maybe ten words with me during our otherwise silent meal. We never felt the urgency to fill the silence, to babble only to make a sound. We could sit in a car for hours without saying a word, each dwelling on their own thoughts, without feeling awkward for a second. But this silence doesn't feel comfortable, and it frightens me. After lunch, when she helped me clear the table and do the dishes, she was absentminded and again not very talkative. I even suggested she give her mom a call just to hear her voice but she shook her head and said she wanted to go for a walk. When I offered to join her, she explained that she needed some time to contemplate and rather go alone. I wasn't too happy about it but it was okay for me as I had planned to do some repairs around the house, fixing the loose contact of the living room floor lamp being one.

I'm just about to finish my job when I hear her open the screen door. I turn around, switch the light on and off and announce proudly, "I fixed the lamp."

Instead of patting me on the shoulder and congratulating me on my handicraft, she enters my personal space wordlessly, puts her hands on the back of my neck, and fondles my hair. When she leans in for a kiss I'm a bit surprised, but she tastes too good not to reciprocate adequately. So I let my tongue sweep the insides of her cheeks and my hands gently squeeze her waist.

"Mmmm, Scully," I mumble with my lips on hers, "I just fixed that cable. No big deal."

"I have something to tell you," she purrs into my ear after breaking the kiss which is obviously not meant as a reward for having fixed her reading lamp.

"Oh? Something good?"

I'm not sure. What did she need time alone to think about?

She looks at me, her eyes unreadable, and I decide not to try to imagine what she wants to say to me but just wait for her to start.

But she doesn't.

She presses her lips together and tucks her hair behind her ears. I'm glued to her lips, waiting for them to form some words, but all they do is wait to be licked once again. She clears her throat which makes me think she's about to talk, and her mouth does open but no sound emerges from it, instead, she closes it again and bites her lower lip.

C'mon, woman, don't let me starve here!

"Scully! Would you please say something!"

"I don't know how."

Her ribcage rises and falls vigorously now with her heavy breathing.

"Just spit it out! Are you leaving me?"

Has this been her farewell kiss?

"What? No! Why would I leave you?"

"I don't know. Because you still don't know who I am? Because you still can't remember us?"

I stare at her and can't keep my eyes from filling with fearful tears. Of course, our happiness wasn't meant to be for good, what have I been thinking? Of course, fate played a trick on us, taking away from us the only good thing that has remained a constant in our lives which is our relationship.

"But I do," she whispers.

I'm confused, and I bet my face is showing it.

"You do what?"

"Remember us. Us together."

I better make sure there's no misunderstanding here. I've kept my hopes low all this time, never allowed them to get out of hand, always reminding myself that her amnesia might remain permanent. I only wanted to keep myself from breaking apart completely should it ever become a reality we have to deal with. So when I hear her say she remembers something, anything, I want to be sure I'm not mishearing.

"You do?"

She nods.

I'm a bit worried because her face is so earnest despite the best of news she's sharing. She seems insecure about it, so I don't dare to rejoice over it yet. There must be a check. One way or another, my knees feel like Jell-O and I have to sit down. I lower myself to the backrest of the living room couch for support.

"You remember?" I ask cautiously.

Another nod.

"Since when?"

"Have you fallen back into the phase of two-word sentences?" she replies, grinning noncommittally.

"Don't do this to me, Scully," I beg her in more than two words. "Answer my question. Since when do you remember? What do you remember?"

"It started a few weeks ago. Shortly after I began reading the files you gave me."

"A few weeks ago? Why haven't you said anything? How could you keep that from me? My heart was breaking for you because of your memory loss and you don't deem it worthy to tell me when it's coming back?"

I guess I sound a bit worked-up, but I am! How could she do this to me?

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. They were just single, incoherent flashbacks at the beginning. More like déjà-vues than real memories. I couldn't tell whether I remembered something or whether I'd read it or had been told."

Shit! That's exactly what Dr. Pratt predicted would happen if we fed her memory with input.

I told you I didn't want you to read those damn files, Scully!

"It took a while until things began to make sense to me, until I dared to believe in what I was remembering. If I had talked to you about it, it would've left me insecure yet again. I had to figure this out myself first."

"And? Have you figured it out?"

"Not all of it. I still miss a lot of memories, I guess, but I've got quite a few of them back."

She beams at me and I marvel what I am to make of her glowing face.

"So? What do you remember?" I ask, praying for her to remember mainly the good things that happened to her. Yes, there have been a few! Of course, there've been considerably more sad than happy moments, especially since she started hanging out with me. So, from a statistical point of view, it's much more likely that the horrible moments of her life creep back into her conscience than any of the rare joyful ones. But would she be beaming like she is right now if that were the case?

"What I mainly remember is..." She takes another step toward me and positions herself between my legs as I'm still sitting on the sofa's backrest. Her eyes are at level with mine and her glance is meaningful and also full of emotion. "Us," she says.

I swallow. "Us?"

"Yes, Mulder. Us." She moves yet a little closer and entangles her hands behind my neck. "I remember when we first met. How I rode the elevator all the way down to the basement of the Hoover Building, nervous to meet the infamous Fox Spooky Mulder."

I give a short laugh.

"I remember that when I saw you hunched over some of your beloved slides and you turned around to look at me, my first thought was 'Why hasn't anybody told me how cute he is?'"

"Oh, c'mon, Scully, you're making this up!"

"No, I swear it was my first thought. But, of course, my excitement quickly turned into bewilderment when you interrogated me about my beliefs in the extraterrestrial."

She smirks at me.

"That's more like it. What else do you remember?"

Her demeanor loses all of its playfulness in an instant. She stiffens, and to me, it's more than clear that she's not only recollected the fluffy moments.

"I remember having been abducted and left in a coma, and seeing immense relief in your eyes when I woke up. Relief and joy but also guilt. And I remember seeing the very same expression again when I told you that the cancer had gone into remission two years later."

"Ugh, yes. I had my difficulties coping with the diagnoses. Both times. I was afraid I'd lose you."

"That would explain the relief and the joy, but not the guilt."

"Scully, I was the root of what happened to you. If you hadn't accepted the assignment to work with me, you-"

She puts a finger to my mouth to stop me from finishing the sentence and shushes me. "I thought we'd already talked about my making choices and being responsible for my life."

"But-" I try again but am interrupted right away.

"No but. Don't reduce me to a tiny, brittle woman without the will nor the ability to determine her own life. I might not know everything about who or what I am, but I do know I'm no such person."

"No, definitely not. Tiny, yes, but definitely not brittle. You're the fiercest, toughest, and most strong-willed person I know, and that includes the male part of my acquaintances."

Her expression softens at the compliment. I guess she noticed my admiration was honest.

"You said you remembered 'us', Scully. What exactly did you mean by that?"

"That most of my memories circle around us. Us as partners, us as friends. As lovers. Parents." Her voice trails off. Its tone has changed within those few words from firm to insecure and finally sad. The way our relationship has evolved over the years couldn't be described any more pointedly.

"You remember us with William?"

She nods, then shakes her head. "There's something I really don't understand, Mulder."

She swallows away a lump that must be the size of a cantaloupe because of the extensive gulp she's taking to get rid of it.

I know exactly what's bothering her. "You're asking yourself why I'm not in the picture much."

She closes her eyes and frowns. I can see how digging out the memories deep down from her conscience is a physical exertion.

"I have recollections of us at Lamaze class, but not when I told you I was pregnant. I see you talking to the pediatric nurse at the hospital, but not beside me when I gave birth. Actually, I don't have any recollections of the delivery room whatsoever, but I just know you weren't there. I see you holding him between us and kissing me, I see you humming a lullaby to him, I see myself feeding him in his high chair or pushing him through the park in his stroller. There are images of him at an age he's able to hold his head up, to sit, to crawl, but there are none with him being old enough to speak his first words or take his first steps. I've never heard him call me mommy, have I?"

A tear emerges from her closed eyes. I'm transfixed by the wet path the drop takes down her cheek until it comes to a halt on her upper lip, followed by another one which makes its way much quicker for it's bigger and guided by the trail the first has left behind. She catches both tears which have formed one big drop close to her mole with her lower lip and sniffs. Eventually, she opens her eyes and with a gaze so pure she asks me, her voice barely above a whisper, "how have we been able to survive this, Mulder?"

Seeing her having understood everything, seeing her getting the whole picture of our short, painful parenthood, even if some details are still missing, tears me apart. My own hurt, which I'm able to lock up more often than I'm not, is pushing itself forward with a vengeance and I feel tears filling my own eyes. I have no words to say to her. She's asked the right question, but I don't have an answer for her other than that we haven't done so much more than keeping up our vitally important body functions. We have survived the loss of our child, yes, we have stayed alive, but we haven't been able to get over it. Not in the least. And we never will.

"We had each other, Scully," I say. "We depended on the other to give our lives a meaning. And it worked. They way we loved each other helped us to cope with the pain. We learned how to be happy without him. There were days we failed miserably, but more days we managed to be grateful for having us, and we enjoyed being together. I guess we got married to make exactly that statement, that we'd decided to pull through this together, to not let fate beat us."

"Sounds like a pretty symbiotic relationship," she says, her eyes scrutinizing my face.

I give a gentle chuckle. "It was symbiotic from the moment we met, Scully. I'm dependent on you in every respect. You're my elixir of life."

I hope I'm not overwhelming her with my confession, but I've always been the more feeble one in our relationship, always more dependent on her than she was on me.

She cups my face with her hands, locking eyes. Her thumbs stroke my cheeks tenderly and I see so much compassion in her face, I fear I'm going to drown in it.

"It must have been very difficult for you when I was gone."

"Difficult?" I chuckle again, but this time it sounds bitter. "Yeah, difficult would be an appropriate word."

I almost ceased to exist. Getting up in the morning, facing another day without knowing her whereabouts or condition, was an energy-sapping exertion. I felt so lost in my world. Deserted and alone, like a toddler in a supermarket who doesn't know which aisle their mother has vanished into. The boundless fear that she was abused or tormented somewhere by this freak made me picture the worst scenarios my profiler's mind was able to come up with. It was like hell on earth.

So, yes, I definitely had a difficult time.

I believe she's divined my thoughts, at least some of them, because she rests her forehead against mine and I feel her soft breath on my face. It's such an intimate posture. At the time we still held on to the platonic nature of our partnership so eagerly, putting our foreheads together had been the most intimate way we allowed ourselves to touch each other.

"Oh, Mulder, I'm so sorry," she whispers. She presses a kiss to my forehead before she pulls me into an embrace.

I rest my head against her chest and let her stroke my hair. The regular beating of her heart soothes me.

"I'm back," she reassures me, "maybe not completely yet, but I won't go anywhere, ever."

to be continued

#xf fanfiction #msr #we're getting there

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curaious-blog · 6 years ago

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LOW SELF ESTEEM, EATING DISORDERS, AND TRAVELING

I don’t like my body.

I gained weight about 2-3 years ago and have been unable to get it off entirely. Instead, it’s been a constant rollercoaster and I’m dizzy and want to get off. I was able to lose some when I was consistently working out and “dieting” but not like in college when I could just skip a few meals and then be skinny (totally exaggerating but it was definitely easier).

I think I messed my body up. I must have done something to it’s inner workings and now it’s malfunctioning. Let me explain.

We must go back to childhood. I had precocious puberty, which basically means I was showing signs of puberty much earlier than I was supposed to. I remember being in and out of the doctor’s offices for them to fix it. Lots of injections/IVs/blood draws, but you get used to them. I actually creepily enjoyed getting shots and watching them draw my blood. No need to feel bad for me or anything though. I wasn’t sick, just a hormonal imbalance. I ended up actually having my period at a normal age. No problems there.

It’s not uncommon to gain weight once you hit puberty. I definitely did. I was a skinny kid but some time after puberty, I really started to pack on the pounds. I remember constantly being told by the pediatrician that I needed to lose weight. I also remember around age 13/14ish going on an “oatmeal diet”. I don’t know where I even got this idea. My parents never pushed me to lose weight or put me on any special diets. I don’t even think I ate that abnormally than anyone else but the fact remained, I needed to lose weight.

As I got a little older in 10th-11th grade, I did lose quite a bit of weight. I wasn’t really doing anything special except getting taller mostly (I’m 5’9). I did do track in 11th grade and I’m sure that helped me slim down some as well but no special diets.

Fast forward to freshman year of college. People talk about the freshman 15. Yeah I had that times 2. I blew up. I thought walking around campus was going to be a great exercise but they had potato bread in the cafeteria and I LOVE bread...well I did until I traveled around Europe...Anyway, I gained a lot of weight and here’s where the biggest problem began.

I was so upset and disgusted with myself. I had to do something about it and fast. So I started restricting my food intake. I started counting calories heavily. I still know calorie content of some foods from this period. I restricted most days to 500 calories and under. I knew what to buy and how much I could have to stay under. I have an entry in my journal praising myself for just having a fruit cup one day. I also fasted for 3 days once. I passed out briefly in my room and I almost passed out in a lab class once but I didn’t care because the weight was flying off. I lost about 50lbs. My high weight was over 190lbs and my lowest weight 138lbs. I would smile when people would ask me if I’m ok or if I’m eating because I knew I wasn’t and it was getting me results. This, of course, turned into a cycle. A restrict-binge cycle.

Basically, your body gets mad at you for not eating and then you get a strong, uncontrollable urge to eat and eat everything so that your body can preserve whatever it does have for the next “drought”. That’s at least what it felt like to me. This is not the full, accurate scientific explanation.

I was able to maintain a smaller weight but not for long. The bingeing was just too much. I couldn’t stop bingeing so I had to find a way to combat that too—purging. Ok pause.

I know. I know. That’s disgusting. Why would anyone voluntarily waste food and do something as gross as that? Ugh! First world problems.

I just quickly want to say that it’s never about the food. It’s always something deeper. Anywhere in the world people have coping mechanisms and they use what is in their environment.

So look. If you have never had an eating disorder, then you will never understand the desperation. I was sooo depressed. I hated myself. I literally wanted to die. That might seem extreme to other people, but it was my reality.

I was already dealing with low self esteem in other areas. I never felt like I was a pretty girl. I wasn’t popular in school. I was shy and awkward. I never knew how to have confidence in myself.

Moving along. Now the cycle was restrict-binge-purge, but I would purge even if I restricted. Very vicious cycle that eventually dwindled some over the years. Sometimes I would just restrict or binge or purge or any combination of the above. The weight was still fluctuating. I really did not know how to eat normally.

It’s probably been the last 3 years that have been the worst for me. At least before when I was depressed, I was also thin. Now I’m just fat and depressed. Fat to me at least. Everyday it switches. I can put something on or take a picture and feel good about myself even knowing I’m still bigger than I prefer. And then there are other days where I will look in the mirror and literally have a meltdown. It feels like no matter how much I work out and eat healthy, it just doesn’t want to come off. It’s like my body is punishing me for the years of abuse and honestly, I was very mean to it but I just want another chance!

I’ve been told I need to accept my body as is and that has been such a hard task. I know that it doesn’t mean you can’t change it to become better. But it does mean you should love it and treat it well. You don’t do horrendous things to it or talk bad to it. I logically know this but I can’t get my brain to accept it. It’s just really hard. I know that sounds childish but it is.

What does any of this have to do with travel? Well I was actually working out very consistently before we left. I was feeling really good about my REALLY SLOW progress. And even now that we’re traveling, we actually do get a lot of exercise in from all the walking, climbing stairs and hills, sweating profusely. We accidentally only eat one meal and usually a snack most days just due to us being busy and hot. I am going to try to do better with that. I can tell I’ve lost some weight while traveling but it doesn’t stop the insecurities.

The other day I cried (again, get used to it) while I was looking through my Santorini photos to post. I hated how I looked in ALL of them including the one I did post but it was still the best I could do. I got through it because the literal bigger picture is that I was in Santorini and that was amazing. I guess I could have not brought any attention to the dress with my caption about it freeloading through Europe, but I’m trying this acceptance and vulnerability thing out.

This is what I look like right now. That’s not going to change overnight and I don’t want to be posting ridiculous lies or lies by deception on my social media only to put the phone down and look at my real self in the mirror.

I just want to love my body. When you love your body you will want better for it, pour good things into it, do things that are good for it, talk to it with respect, and honor it. That is my dream relationship with my body.

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starlet-siren · 6 years ago

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Love was wasted on you

I've been up since 4 a.m. Some days are easier than most but I find that most days are more difficult then some. I'm tired of talking about you and I know people have grown equally as tired of hearing about you. Here I am almost 6 months later, nothing feels quite different even though everything absolutely is. I've read a scientific study that it typically takes half of the length of time your relationship was to get over said person, so if that's the case I'm certainly doing time and I'll be doing it for quite a while.. I refuse to be ashamed or embarrassed to grieve and mourn over this because at the end of the day the only thing I'm the most guilty of is being a damn fool for you and loving you. Though I won't lie, I hope I never love anyone again the way I have loved you. That self-sacrificial type of love, how I was always making sure that you were okay even though I, myself, was falling apart most of the time.

Nowadays, I don't spend too much time at home because you spent so much of your time here with me, it's almost as though these hallways are haunted with the ghost of you. This breakup has felt like a sort of death for me and I've just been forced to keep on living through it.... I know I will eventually get over it-it's just a matter of when. I'm honestly more concerned about when this will start to feel lighter for me, I mean grant it, I don't feel this way every single day but when I do feel this way I feel consumed by it.

One of the things that hurt the most is just your complete disregard for everything. It's almost scary how finished you were with me. After 3 years you would think you would need some serious time to really move on from that. But it's as though your heart didn't even skip a beat when I left, everything for you just continued, everything kept going. I wish I could throw you away the way you so easily threw me away. I'm familiar with the joy of replacing someone with someone else, just never thought I'd have to feel the feeling of being replaced. And saying "it sucks" is a sore understatement. It's degrading, embarrassing, honestly, mostly lonely because no one else has lived my life with him, they don't know the daily sacrifices, the mannerisms, the laughs, fuck, even the fights. I cant convey to anyone how this really feels. Even so, I don't think anyone really cares that much because it's just heartbreak, ya know? Everyone goes through it. But honestly, when you break it down and think about it, how fucking sad is it? To love someone this much and to have it lost like that? Personally, I think loving people is truthfully one of the most special and hopeful things that we have.. That there are people out there willing to love you for who you really are, whatever that means, your mistakes, your flaws, your shortcomings. I think that s*** is so rare. I mean I know for a fact no one has ever loved me that way... I am easy to abandon especially when the waters get choppy. I'm not a storm that anyone really wants to weather, maybe that's because even when I'm "okay" I'm not that great either... Who knows?

What I do know for sure is this whole process is changing me and I don't even know if it's for the better. I find myself being very guarded now. I legitimately do not want to care about someone else out of the sheer fear that they will not care for me. I think in this past relationship I was the most raw version of myself. I went through a lot of heartache, I had a lot of really low points. So I would even go as far as to say in this relationship, I was the most vulnerable ive ever been with a partner in my life. I just have to tell myself that I was vulnerable with the wrong one...i don't want to lose my only sense of self because it was abused and taken for granted before. That isn't fair to me. I am kind, loving, and good. I was good before and I can be good again. I'm honestly really trying to just be kind to myself through all of this. No one is really holding my hand through it, you know.

Ugh, it's so crazy how saying all of this aloud (ive been using voice-to-text, lol) can physically exhaust you. I'm ready to pass the fuck back out. ✔

(Also, posting this so I dont forget: Amanda and I were making fun of the Spotify mood playlists and we were checking out the "Life sucks" playlist and we hit shuffle to see which song would come up first.... "Blue Jeans" by Lana Del Rey. 🙄🔪His ringtone for the whole three years we were together.... Lol a sick fuckin joke the universe plays with me! I swear I almost threw my damn phone across the room)

#personalpost #jay #heartbreak hotel

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minervacasterly · 8 years ago

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Fact vs Fiction: Queen Victoria's view on pregnancy. her relationship with Prince Albert and the general Victorian view on motherhood and childbirth, and medicine:

Tonight was the season one finale of ITV/ PBS’ Victoria in the United States. Well done, and sorely missed. I can’t wait for season 2! Victoria’s attitude towards pregnancy has often been criticized and thought of as un-motherly, not to mention how she described her first children, especially her firstborn, Princess Victoria (future German Empress). Some have attributed it to Post-Partum Depression while others see it as normal, and something that women can relate to.

I have never been pregnant but most of my friends have, including my cousins and I have seen how they’ve reacted. And I have to say, reactions vary. It has to do with biology and the person’s environment. The series showed a young Victoria who didn’t like being confined to the royal palace because she wanted to be free, and didn’t want to be seen as a brood mare. However, as the first English Queen Regnant, people were right to be worried. Childbirth was more dangerous back then and the Queen’s body, as much as Victoria wished to think of it as her own, was seen as something sacred, that should be protected no matter what.

There was the whole scandal regarding her uncle, Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover and Duke of Cumberland, having a hand in the assassination attempt against Victoria. Nothing was ever proven and the official story is that this was nothing more than malicious rumors spread by his enemies. Prince Albert doesn’t believe this and neither does Queen Victoria but she has no choice but to abide by what a jury of her would-be-assassin’s peers have determined, and the lack of evidence against uncle.

Coming back to Victoria’s pregnancies, here’s a good summary of how Victoria viewed pregnancy by historian, Amy Licence, also exploring the Queen’s relationship with her husband, Prince Albert and the birth control methods that were used -or frowned upon- at the time of her union with her cousin: “Despite her reputation for demure staidness and her famous refusal to be amused, Queen Victoria was a passionate woman. Her name has become something of a byword for sexual repression but her love life with adored husband, Albert, was far from the prudery that her era has been assumed to typify. The day after her wedding, the twenty-year-old queen wrote to her confidant and Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, that ‘it was a gratifying and bewildering experience … his excessive love and affection gave me feelings of heavenly love and happiness. He clasped me in his arms and we kissed each other again and again.’ Her three-day honeymoon at Windsor Castle left her the ‘happiest being that ever existed’ and she had Albert design and install a bedside switch to activate mechanical locks on the bedroom door, so that their impromptu love-making sessions would not be interrupted. However, when it came to the consequences, or what she called the ‘shadow side’ of love, pregnancy and birth, Victoria was less enthusiastic … Victoria conceived within days of her wedding. It seems likely that neither she nor Albert had any idea about how this could have been prevented. There was a certain amount of material published on birth control by the time of their marriage, such as Richard Carlile’s 1828 Every Woman’s Book, which recommended coitus interruptus as well as the sponges that French and Italian women were reputed to wear on their wrists, so as to literally have them to hand. It was possible to purchase sponges and ‘gentleman’s nightcaps’ (condoms), cervical caps and an early American form of the femidom, or female condom, made from eel skin. Some upper-class women also practiced ‘irrigation’, which involved the rinsing out of the vagina using a syringe, although the instructions, given in Every Woman’s Book, made the process seem arduous and cumbersome. Social activist Annie Besant worked to raise public knowledge about the various options available to married couples, publishing the instructive The Fruits of Philosophy. This led to Besant’s arrest and trial for obscenity. Initially convicted, the verdict was overturned on appeal and huge numbers of the book were sold. Victoria would not have begun to suspect her pregnancy until certain physical signs began to appear and, even then, she would have been cautious about diagnosis … The late summer and autumn of 1840, spent waiting in seclusion, proved frustrating for Victoria. As she later wrote to her daughter, it had all happened too quickly and denied her the opportunity to enjoy being married: ‘What made me so miserable was … to have the first two years of my married life utterly spoiled by this occupation.’ She felt as if motherhood had ‘tried [her] sorely; one feels so pinned down, one’s wings clipped, only half oneself. In September, when she was seven months pregnant, she made Albert a member of the Privy Council and issued him with a set of duplicate keys to her official boxes, so he could take over when she was incapacitated. It was a symbolic act, recognizing her inability to act as queen during her numerous pregnancies and the tension of power this created between husband and wife. Victoria would have sought advice from her doctors as soon as she suspected her condition but physical examinations of any sort were shunned. Even the placing of a stethoscope on a woman’s belly to monitor the fetal heartbeat was considered indecent. As a result, many nineteenth-century women suffered ‘the extremity of danger and pain rather than waive those scruples of delicacy which prevent their maladies from being fully exposed’. It has been estimated that in the 1870s, married women spent an average of twelve years pregnant and breastfeeding, having borne around five live children, although many had suffered miscarriages and stillbirths. Like Victoria, 80 percent delivered within twelve months of the wedding ceremony, while only 12 in 1,000 gave birth in less than seven months, having been pregnant at the altar. Many endured multiple pregnancies, equaling the queen in having nine children under the age of fifteen, which made her feel ‘more like a rabbit or a guinea pig than anything else’. Labour conditions improved for Victoria for the delivery of her son Leopold in 1853, when she was administered with chloroform for the first time, inhaling every ten minutes from a cloth soaked in the liquid. After her experience, this form of pain relief became widely used among her subjects. Still, Victoria disliked the process of bearing children, writing retrospectively about the ‘humiliation to the delicate feelings of a poor woman, above all a young one … especially with those nasty doctors’. She also found the condition ‘quite disgusting’ in others, particularly ‘those ladies who are always enceinte’ and responded to the impending birth of her grandchild by claiming ‘the horrid news has upset us dreadfully’. It may also have been the case, with her aunt Charlotte in mind, that Victoria feared her coming ordeal; Mrs Panton certainly believed that ‘these times are looked forward to with dread by all young wife’. This attitude, coupled with her dislike of breastfeeding and small children, has led some historians to conclude that she suffered from prenatal and postnatal depression although this is underpinned by the assumption that all women must enjoy motherhood and any deviation from this model requires a medical explanation. Perhaps readers should take Victoria at her word, as her view remained unchanging, that the ‘shadow side’ of love had got in the way of her marriage.

Victoria was not alone. The fear of birth was common to many women of the time, victims of a social prudery that denied them the opportunity for proper examination, control over and knowledge about their condition. This led to an understandable dislike of pregnancy, even a sense of morbidity, and a rejection of the act which could result in conception.” *

You also have to take into account that Victoria's views on how to prevent pregnancy, coming from the Baroness, date all the way back to ancient history. Thanks to efforts by the scientific community to map the entire human genome, we know more about human anatomy, especially female anatomy than our ancestors ever did. As a result, access to things such as birth control, and preventive care are easier, especially in developed countries. But every body is different and complications could still occur.

Victoria's mission, besides making the monarchy more popular, and thus ensuring the continuation of such institution, was to provide it with heirs. One child wasn't enough and despite England already having been ruled successfully by female monarchs like Elizabeth I and Anne I; people -including Victoria- would have preferred a male heir. And Victoria knew that she needed to have more than one son, in order to secure the throne for her dynasty. There had been so many Princes of Wales who never became Kings of England because they died, and thus their younger siblings took their place. Victoria became Queen thanks to many of her grandfather -George III of England- eldest sons not having male heirs, or (in the case of her predecessor, her uncle William IV) having a daughter who died in childbirth.

It was appropriate that the last episode had one of the grooms quote Shakespeare from his play 'Richard II', "uneasy lies the head that wears the crown." Indeed, uneasy lay the head that wore a crown, especially for Queen Regnants.

*Source: Royal Babies: 1066-2013 by Amy Licence. She also wrote a good book on the Tudors, that explores women's experiences in that era, it is titled "In Bed with the Tudors".

#Victoria

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