#i’m in total inertia

[a-place-to-exist]

i feel like there are two different people growing in me and to be able to live they have to eat the other like twins in the womb. one will come out on top after having consumed its opposite

[soft-serve-soymilk]

Cannot sleep :/

[renecdote]

inertia

“Eddie.” He feels his mouth form the word, feels the vibration of it in his throat, but he can’t hear his own voice. It’s dark. Is it supposed to be dark? Yes—it was night. He was with Eddie. “Eddie,” Buck repeats, fumbling one-handed, fighting against the airbag, the seatbelt, the claustrophobia pressing in on him. He has to get out. He has to get to Eddie. He’s trapped. He can’t move—can’t—his leg—nonono, not again, not again, please— For BTHB: vehicular accident

[Read on AO3]

More than anything, Buck remembers the noise: the roar of the engine, a car horn, the squeal of tires, his heart pounding in his ears. Sirens, minutes and seconds later, and someone cursing at him before they got there, “you should look where you’re fucking going, fucking asshole motorbike riders—”

He knows that it hurt, his jeans shredded over bloody skin, his lip split, his arm broken in two places, every inch of him bruised and aching. He knows that it hurt because of course it did, it was probably agonising right up until the morphine kicked in, but he doesn’t remember the pain.

He wonders, now, how he ever could have forgotten it.

****

Eddie reaches out, fiddling with the radio until he finds a station he likes, then turning the volume up just one digit, as if that makes any kind of difference.

“Where are we going?” he asks.

Buck shoots him a grin. “I told you: it’s a surprise.”

Eddie huffs, the same way he did the first four times he asked and got the same answer. “I hate surprises.”

“No, you don’t,” Buck laughs. “You just want everyone to think you hate surprises because you get embarrassingly gooey about them.”

The flash of a passing streetlight shows Eddie’s face cast in exaggerated affront. “Gooey,” he repeats. “I don’t—I’m not gooey, Buck.”

He is. Buck has the photos and videos to prove it.

“Don’t worry, Eds,” he says. “I think you’re cute when you’re gooey.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but he turns his head and rubs at his cheek in a way that means he’s probably hiding a pleased little smile. It’s still new: making Eddie smile like that. Going on dates. Holding hands, and sneaking kisses in-between the engines, and waking up wrapped around each other. Buck wishes he could hit pause on every moment between them, just so he can live in it a little bit longer.

He slows down for a yellow light, coming to a stop as it turns red.

“Can you at least give me a clue?” Eddie tries.

“Nope,” Buck laughs. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course I trust you,” Eddie grumbles.

The light turns green.

Buck accelerates into the intersection.

Eddie’s eyes widen in alarm, a shout forming but never making it past his lips, his hand half raised like he can—what?

Buck never even sees the crash coming.

****

The Jeep is still registered in Maddie’s name. That’s Buck’s first thought when the tires skid on the icy road, adrenaline suddenly pumping hard and fast as he grips the wheel. He’s going to end up wrapped around a tree, the Jeep totalled, and it’s going to be Maddie’s problem because the car is still registered in her name.

He has a sudden flash of memory: his mom standing in the doorway, yelling at him not to run, snow cold and wet soaking through the mesh in his sneakers as he ran to the bus stop down the road. She never came with him. It was always Maddie who held his hand while they walked, heavy backpacks bouncing on their shoulders, but his mom stood in the doorway of their house and watched until the doors of the school bus closed behind them.

Buck wonders who will tell his parents that he’s dead. Wonders how they’ll react. They’ll probably be glad, he thinks. And then he feels like an asshole for thinking that. (But can’t stop thinking it.)

The Jeep is slipping, slipping, slipping.

Buck fights the gut-reaction to twist the wheel hard, arms locked tight as he holds it steady, foot off the gas, braking carefully, carefully, carefully.

The road around him is dark. Empty. The Jeep’s headlights reflect off a sign: ICE in bold letters below the squiggly black lines of a skidding car. Hysterical, adrenaline-tinged laughter bubbles in Buck’s chest. Too little too late, he thinks. He turns the wheel left and the back of the car swings to the right and—

Another hundred yards and he would have been sinking into an icy river. Would have been dead, probably, pulled out in his Jeep hours or days later, his body cold and blue. He’s lucky, really, that the snowbank got to him first.

****

His ears are ringing.

There’s a little voice in the back of his head—the same voice that points out emergency exits and fire extinguishers whenever he goes somewhere new—that reminds him that it’s normal, that it probably just means the airbags deployed. But it’s hard to hear anything through the ringing, including the voice in his own head. Buck fights against the disorientation, the pain, the starbursts of light in his vision, the high-pitched whine in his ears and the metallic taste of blood in his mouth. He wonders, for three disoriented seconds, whether he’s back in the tsunami: turned around and upside down, caught in a whirlpool beyond his control, can’t win, can’t breathe, can’t swim.

But there’s blood in his mouth.

There’s blood in his mouth, and he clawed his way out of that ocean, clawed at the muddy ground, and Eddie got shot in the street in broad daylight, and—

“Eddie.”

He feels his mouth form the word, feels the vibration of it in his throat, but he can’t hear his own voice. It’s dark. Is it supposed to be dark? Yes—it was night. He was with Eddie.

“Eddie,” Buck repeats, fumbling one-handed, fighting against the airbag, the seatbelt, the claustrophobia pressing in on him. He has to get out. He has to get to Eddie. He’s trapped. He can’t move—can’t—his leg—nonono, not again, not again, please—

Something touches him.

Someone.

Hand on his thigh, squeezing, pulling his focus. Eddie. Buck’s right shoulder is throbbing—dislocated, maybe, minimum four weeks off work, light duty for another month—and he wants nothing more than to hold Eddie’s hand, to tangle their fingers together and squeeze (I’m okay, we’re okay, it’s gonna be okay), but the angle is all wrong and he can’t get his left arm across his body to do it.

His neck hurts, too—everything hurts—and that little first responder voice is still in the back of his head—don’t move, wait for the paramedics—but he turns his head anyway, searching for Eddie in the darkness.

There you are, Eddie’s smile seems to say.

Blue and red blur across Buck’s vision, pain streaking through his head, and he has to close his eyes against the rush of nausea it brings.

Eddie’s hand squeezes his leg again. Stay awake, maybe. Or I’ve got you, we’re okay.

Buck never should have closed his eyes. Can’t get them open again. Red-blue-Eddie-pain flash behind his eyelids.

He’s unconscious again before the firefighters pull them out.

****

Buck doesn’t remember most of the truck bombing. He watched the news clip twice after he got home from the hospital, pieced together all the comments people made until they formed some kind of coherent picture, guessed at the rest of it from everything else he’s seen on the job. He knows Eddie held his hand. Knows he was trapped there for almost thirty minutes before they got him out. Knows that it’s probably a good thing that he doesn’t remember all the details. The night is all blurred colours, and fear, and the strangest feeling of being weighed down and floating at the same time.

It felt like that in the hospital afterwards too, the cast on his leg bulky and heavy, a weight more than physical, and the painkillers cushioning his mind from all of it.

“You’re lucky,” a doctor told him, scrawling notes on his chart. “Most people don’t walk away from something like that.”

Buck laughed, short and brittle, halfway to a sob. “I’m not walking, doc. I can’t even stand.”

“Yet.” The doctor had the nerve to smile as he said it. “We’ll get you there.”

Buck was only thinking about getting back to work, then.

Now he wakes up in the hospital and he’s back there for one half-conscious moment, his leg his first thought, panic washing through him, his breath sticking in his chest. A doctor leans over him, mouth moving as they ask him muffled questions, his ears aching, head aching, everything aching.

“Don’t take my leg,” Buck begs, his own voice echoing in his chest.

The lights are bright and the doctor is still talking, maybe to him, maybe to someone else, but it doesn’t matter. Buck can’t hear them anyway.

He slips back under.

Wakes up again minutes or hours later to find someone else beside the bed. Short-cropped brown hair, but the wrong shade. The wrong face attached to it. A question catches in the back of Buck’s throat—Eddie? Is Eddie okay?—and comes out as a groan, pain waking up with the rest of him, his body stiff and sore at the slightest movement.

Bobby’s head snaps up, one hand going for the call button, the other for Buck’s arm. “Hey. Hey, easy, kid, you’re okay, you’re in the hospital.”

Buck blinks and finds his lashes sticking together, tears welling up before he even knows why he feels like crying.

“Eddie is okay too,” Bobby adds, reading it on his face. “He’s better off than you are—mostly superficial cuts and bruises, possible cracked ribs, a fractured wrist, whiplash—they’re just keeping an eye on him until they can run some more tests to be sure.”

It should be a relief, hearing it from Bobby, but Buck knows the vice around his chest isn’t going to ease fully until he can see Eddie for himself. Maybe not even then, honestly, since it’s at least half from the broken ribs he’s nursing.

“You’re both gonna be fine,” Bobby says, and it’s hard to tell through the fog of painkillers, but it sounds like he’s trying to reassure himself as much as Buck.

****

The wave comes fast and hard, knocking the breath out of him, sending him tumbling. Buck tries to hold onto his surfboard, but it slips away from him, the cord velcroed to his ankle the only thing tethering them together while the ocean does it’s best to tear them apart.

He gets his head above the surface, gets one gasping breath of air, and then the board pops up and slams into his jaw. He goes under. Comes back up coughing and spluttering, his face throbbing. He doesn’t get a full breath in this time before another waves lifts him up and then bowls over him. It’s easier not to fight it. Easier to hold his breath and let it take him.

A hand around his bicep drags him back up. Drags him into the shallows and then further, onto the damp edge of the beach.

“Jesus, Buckley,” Andy exclaims, halfway to nervous, adrenaline-fueled laughter. “I really thought you were dead for a minute there.”

Buck grins, tired and squinting against the bright San Diego sun, because that’s what he’s supposed to do, right? He’s supposed to laugh and shake this off and get right back out there.

“I wasn’t worried,” he lies, and Andy does laugh this time.

“You’re a crazy sonuvabitch, you know that?” he says. Then he’s twisting, turning to yell at someone behind him, “He’s fine, Lila! The asshole says he wasn’t even worried!”

Lila kisses Buck later, her purple nails biting in at his hips, beer heavy on both their breaths. A fire crackles in the backyard and party music thrums in the walls of the house when she says, “I don’t know what we’d do if we lost you, Evan.”

Buck’s chest feels tight, his stomach bubbly, his jaw bruised and aching, but he holds Lila close and kisses her back, gives her everything she wants, even when being kissed on the cheek and left to zip up his pants afterwards feels just like that surfboard popping up out of the water to smack him in the face. It’s supposed to hurt after all. Being wanted. Being loved. It always hurts. Isn’t that how he knows that it’s real?

****

“You’re like a car crash, Buckley,” Jai tells him. “It’s all fast and fun until we end up wrapped around a tree.”

****

“You need to be more careful,” his mother snaps, as close as she has ever come to sounding like she cares. “You’re going to get someone killed one of these days.”

****

“You’re both gonna be fine,” Bobby says.

Gonna be fine gonna be fine gonna be fine.

****

Buck is awake when Eddie sneaks into the hospital room.

Half-awake.

Morning light is pressing in insistently behind the blinds someone pulled down over the window and there’s an itch right near the IV port in his elbow that he’s trying not to think about. Buck’s eyes are closed, but he listens to the shuffle of feet on the linoleum, the plastic groan of the chair beside the bed and the quiet, familiar sigh as his boyfriend settles into it. All he has wanted since finding himself in the hospital is to see Eddie, but now that Eddie is here, Buck doesn’t think he’s ready to face him.

His elbow itches. Buck tires not to grimace.

Eddie reaches out and takes his hand, warmth curling around Buck’s cold fingers. “I know you’re awake,” he says, thumb moving on the back of Buck’s hand.

Slowly, Buck opens his eyes, painkillers cushioning the ache in his neck as he turns his head on the pillow. He has to blink a few times before the room comes into focus: tired eyes, short-cropped hair, right shade of brown this time.

“Hey,” Eddie smiles. “There you are.”

Eddie looks—okay. A little bruised, a little battered, but okay. Buck takes a shaky breath and feels it fill up his lungs for the first time since that car slammed into them. Hey, he thinks, and then he opens his mouth and what comes out is, “I’m sorry.”

A watery laugh; the kind that means something isn’t really funny but the only options are to laugh or cry. “I shouldn’t be surprised that those are your first words,” Eddie says, and his smile is watery too but it’s also—fond. So fond it hurts to look at. “This wasn’t your fault, Buck.”

Buck knows that. Logically, he knows that. But.

“I’m still sorry.”

Eddie lifts his hand and kisses his knuckles, holding Buck there against his lips as he answers, “I know.”

“You’re okay?” Buck asks—needs to ask—blinking through the tears in his eyes. “Bobby said you broke your wrist.”

Eddie lifts his left arm up to show off the cast. “Clean break, no surgery required. One fractured rib. Whiplash. The rest of it is just cuts and bruises.”

Buck has to bite his lip so he doesn’t apologise again.

“We’re okay, Buck,” Eddie adds, soft and steady, and Buck knew they were, he thought he did, but hearing the words puts a lump in his throat anyway.

“The light was green,” he says, and he’d been sure, so sure, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was distracted. He knows he can be a reckless driver, but Eddie was in the car and he was smiling and Buck would never—

“The other driver went straight through the red,” Eddie confirms, soothing his doubts as easily as he caresses Buck’s hand with his thumb. “Bobby said it was a heat attack. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Buck thinks about that sign in Wisconsin: ICE. He wonders whether they’ve moved it, put the warning somewhere earlier on the road. Wonders whether it would have made any difference, seeing that sign before the tires started skidding.

He wants to ask if the other driver made it, but he’s not sure he actually wants to know.

“‘M still not telling you where we were going,” he says instead, fighting against the droop of his eyes. “Being t-boned doesn’t get you out of the surprise.”

“It wasn’t a steakhouse, was it?” Eddie asks.

A laugh catches Buck by surprise, spasming through his bruised chest, and he breaks off with a groaning, “Ow.”

“Sorry,” Eddie apologises, squeezing his hand. “How’s your pain? Do you need more painkillers?”

“‘S’okay,” Buck answers, shifting and feeling all the ways his body protests. “I’ve had worse.”

Edie shakes his head. That’s not a measure of pain, Evan, Maddie would say. Buck can see it on Eddie’s face too, but he just says, “Okay. Why don’t you get some rest?”

He shifts up, slowly and painfully, leaning forward until he can kiss Buck’s forehead, then his cheek, then his lips. Buck curls his fingers into the fabric of Eddie’s jacket, holding him there to kiss him again. Eddie relaxes into it, kissing back easily, his weight a comfortable heaviness against Buck’s tired body.

“I love you,” he murmurs against Buck’s lips.

Buck smiles. “I love you too.”

“I’ll be here when you wake up, okay?”

It hurts to shake his head, but Buck does it anyway. “No, you should go home—you should see Chris—”

Eddie stops him with another kiss. “Chris told me I have to stay with you. Pepa is looking after him, he’s okay.”

That lump is back in Buck’s throat, harder to breathe around this time. He’s not sure what he did to deserve the Diaz boys. He isn’t sure that he does deserve them, half the time, but here they are anyway. They want him—they love him—and it doesn’t hurt. That’s how Buck knows it’s real.

When he sleeps, he dreams of driving across a frozen lake, Eddie smiling in the passenger seat and Christopher laughing in the back. The sunlight is bright and clear and he thinks there’s a monster chasing them under the ice, threatening to break through and drag them into the murky depths, but it never catches them.

****

Buck’s arm flies out on instinct, pressing Christopher back into the seat while the car jerks to a sudden stop.

“Whoa.” Christopher’s eyes are wide behind his glasses. “That was close.”

Buck’s heart is racing in his chest, his hands shaking with the frissons of adrenaline running through his body. He breathes a shaky laugh, more relief than amusement. “Too close. Don’t tell your dad.”

Chris rolls his eyes. “As if you aren’t going to tell him as soon as we get home.”

The kid has a point, but.

“Maybe I’ve decided to start keeping secrets.”

“About almost being in a car crash?” Chris asks skeptically.

The car in front of them inches forward and Buck lets the gap grow before he eases his own accelerator down.

“Almost is the key word there,” he tells Chris, lighter than he feels. He’s still jittery, hyperaware of every sound, every glint of sunlight on metal that might be a car about to t-bone them or rear-end them or cause an accident in a million other ways. Buck knows car accidents. He knows what it’s like to cause them, to get caught in them, to respond to them. He knows that, statistically, it’s likely Chris will be in some kind of accident at some point in his life. He really, really doesn’t want to be the reason that happens though.

“Don’t worry,” Chris says, attention back on his phone, completely unconcerned, “LA has one of the highest accident rates in the country so it probably wouldn’t even be your fault.”

Buck frowns. “Why do you know that?”

“You and dad were in a car accident last year,” Chris shrugs, like the answer should have been obvious. “I looked it up.”

Eddie isn’t in the car with them, but Buck can hear his voice clear as day in his head: he gets that from you, you know.

“Okay,” he says, “definitely don’t tell your dad you’ve been reading about car crash statistics. You know what he was like with the Zodiac killer stuff.”

Chris grins. “He was so mad at you.”

They’re at a standstill again. Buck takes the opportunity to throw Chris a betrayed look. “I seem to remember him being pretty mad at you too, kid.”

He can feel himself relaxing, heart rate coming down and tension draining out his shoulders. Chris is fine. They’re both fine. Another fifteen minutes and they’ll be home. He flicks on the indicator then checks his blind spot twice before changing lanes as the traffic breaks out of the bottleneck and starts moving again. The blue Toyota they almost ran into turns into another street and disappears.

“So,” an impish smile in his peripheral vision, “if I’m keeping secrets from dad, does that mean we can have ice cream for dinner?”

Buck laughs. “Nice try.”

The engine is a steady rumble, its vibration passing through the wheel and up his arms, settling in his chest. Christopher reaches out and skips to the next song on the driving playlist. Sunlight glints off a stop sign. Somewhere behind them, a car honks. 

Buck breathes in. Breathes out.

They make it home in thirteen minutes.

[miloscat]

[Review] Sonic R (PS2)

Peak Saturn vibes.

I’ve now got much more Sonic experience under my belt. I’m thrilled that I can now have informed opinions about the series! But now it’s time to play some spinoffs from over the years that I’ve always meant to try out. First up is the franchise’s first racing game… that people really like (the Game Gear had the two Drift games but it doesn’t seem like they made much of an impact).

British studio Traveller’s Tales had proved themselves with the isometric game Sonic 3D Blast so Sega commissioned them for an original title for the Saturn. As it turned out this would be Sonic’s only full new game on the system as the highly anticipated 3D debut Xtreme never came to be, and the only other titles were a 3D Blast conversion, the Mega Drive compilation Sonic Jam, and a cameo in Christmas Nights. I played the version included in the Sonic Gems Collection on PS2, which is based on the enhanced PC port.

Sonic R is an unconventional racing game in that, while it still plays not unlike a standard kart racer, many of the characters are on foot, and the game includes platforming and exploration elements. While I’ve played other games that include some of these ingredients like Rayman Arena, Beetle Adventure Racing, and arguably Sonic Rivals, the mix is intoxicating here, helped by excellent track design and immaculate vibes.

Rather than multi-track cups, you just play each track on its own. Well, there's only five tracks total and one is unlockable (a consequence of a quick development turnaround) so it makes sense. You can go for first place but the more satisfying goal is learning all the side paths and shortcuts. These dense little environments, designed by Sonic Team, have depth to make up for their paucity, and finding their secrets (in the form of tokens and Chaos Emeralds) unlocks new racers and the final Rainbow Road-esque track which is more a victory lap to speed around with your overpowered unlocks. Rings scattered around can be paid to open doors or enhance your boosts, and item tokens can help a bit but there's nothing as unbalanced as your typical Mario Kart game.

The racers have an interesting amount of variance to their stats. For instance, Tails is slippery and nimble while the Egg Robo has much more inertia. Sonic double jumps, Knuckles can glide, Robotnik in his hoverpod can shoot homing projectiles (they're not very debilitating), while Amy uniquely drives a car(!) which funnily enough is relatively slow but gets a boost on cooldown. Along with Metal Sonic, R introduces new counterparts in the form of Metal Knuckles and the fan-favourite Tails Doll. I would have liked to see them go all-out with even more characters but it's a decent selection and acts as a pretty good send-off to the Classic era before the characters got redesigned in Adventure. These low-poly renditions are just adorable!

Another way of remixing the racetracks is a weather system that changes the lighting and conditions. It makes the inevitable replays that much fresher, and of course the smooth tunes will draw you in as well. Veteran composer Richard Jacques nails it with a catchy Eurobeat mix, each track accompanied wonderfully by vocals from TJ Davis. It's a transportive soundtrack that gives the game a singular feel; this is truly what video games were made for. I was shocked to learn that this game's music is considered divisive! It's great!

Anyway, I had a breeze with this one. I did turn the difficulty to easy so I could focus on the exploratory aspects without worrying too much about winning (you do need to place well to keep the emeralds and unlocks), and I have no shame. Sonic R is a lovely little treat. This is Sega at its best: experimental, collaborating with international partners, and with vibes off the charts. Also, the framerate is rock solid which I've learned is never a guarantee with Sonic games. I know that later British-developed Sonic racing games are also excellent, but in between I still need to investigate the Riders series of hoverboard racers. Until then!

[astrabear]

My labor, and my leisure too (pt. 1)

I've been poking around some ideas lately, about the difference between what feels like a happy (or at least satisfying) ending to a character and what feels like a happy (or at least satisfying) ending to the audience.

This is unedited, un-beta'd, and incomplete. I've already started working on the next bit; I just didn't want to wait to yeet it out into the universe.

********

If Nile hadn’t been frustrated nearly to tears by the time the rest of the team came in, she might have noticed that Nicky and Joe seemed oddly subdued and distracted. But she was, so she didn’t – all she could see was the endless array of charts and computer displays swimming before her eyes.

“I have run so many simulations I feel like I’m stuck in a time loop,” she said as they all gathered around the output table. “I’ve recalculated all the parameters to the limits of possibility, sometimes beyond. And I can’t find any way we pull this off.”

“But the intel we just got – “ Gert was new, had been with them for less than twenty years, and hadn’t quite let go of the idea of being a superhero.

“That intel is what makes it so hard.” Gert frowned, and Nile quickly added, “Don’t get me wrong, it’s fantastic you were able to track it down. If you hadn’t, we’d be totally screwed.”

“So what’s the problem?” Lijie asked. She ran her finger along one of the infiltration routes in the display. “This looks straightforward to me.”

“The problem,” Nile said, “is the timing. Whoever lays those charges, they’re not getting out. Any delay long enough for exfil is long enough for them to be detected and disarmed by the security system.”

“But we’re shutting down the security system. I walked you through that just the other day. I’m telling you, it’s foolproof.” Jerrah, over 1600 years old, hated that Nile still referred to him as one of “the kids,” but his temper and defensiveness had not mellowed with age and at times like this she felt entirely justified.

She heroically resisted banging her head against the table. It would only scramble the schematics. “Your plan for shutting the system down is foolproof. It’s great. It will absolutely work. But what we didn’t know until recently is that it’s on an automatic reset timer that will boot it back up after a set amount of time. You’re welcome to review the programming,” she ran her gaze around the team, addressing them all, “in fact I’d love it if you’d all review the scenarios I’ve run. Just to be sure. But I’m telling you – the numbers just don’t work. The support team will be fine, but the one with the charges is not getting out alive.”

Gert laughed. “I thought that was the point of us. We don’t have to get out alive.” They looked around and noticed no one else shared their amusement. “What am I missing?”

Jerrah answered while scrolling through Nile’s calculations. “An explosion this size isn’t just going to take out the complex, it’s going to wipe out the whole atmo dome. Anything not secured will get blasted out of the gravity well. You remember about Quỳnh? This would be infinitely worse. Literally.”

“But what about – “

Step by step, Nile walked them through it. How any equipment robust enough to survive the explosion would make it impossible to complete the mission to cause the explosion in the first place. How fast the debris and bodies would be moving with no inertia to slow them down. The number of bodies there would be, and the limits of their ship’s sensors. All of it. The inescapable physics, and the impossibility of making that choice.

“We have to scrap the plan,” she said, “start over from scratch. We’ll find another way, somehow, to – “ Joe and Nicky had withdrawn a bit from the group and were having their own private conversation. This, too, should have been a sign: they didn’t do cross-talk during mission briefings, and through all the months of planning they’d taken this mission particularly seriously.

But Nile was too frazzled and distracted for this to register, so she just barked out, “Hey guys! Are we boring you? Or do you have something you’d like to share?”

Her friends, mentors, brothers, exchanged a final loaded glance and then refocused on the group. Nicky put his arm around Joe’s shoulders, and as he did so his sleeve rode up, just a little, showing an odd patch of dirt on the inside of his upper arm. She found herself staring at it without knowing why.

“Joe and I will lay the charges,” Nicky said.

“Don’t be stupid,” Lijie snapped. “Nile’s right. Do you really think we’re going to just let you guys float around in vacuum forever?”

Three things happened simultaneously in an instant that felt to Nile like a lifetime:

…Nile noticed that the knuckles on Joe’s right hand were also weirdly dirty.

…and Joe said, “Of course not. We’re not asking you to.”

…and Nile thought Bruises. Not dirt. Bruises.

Then time slammed back into place and she cried out from the force of it.

And the room erupted into chaos.

[neoyorzapoteca]

I write from a place of pure, abject desperation and self-doubt, to be totally honest! I feel like I know nothing and I just try and get to the nub of feeling, what these characters who slowly and messily take shape are trying to convey. I’m not a plotter at all. I write in fragments and see how it goes. I find everything challenging. I find starting, getting through and finishing challenging. That’s not to say, in the sweet spot, the flow and throes of it, that I don’t find it a pleasure. Of course I do, I love writing and always have! But I don’t have a particular process, or I’m still figuring it out intuitively. I read a lot and try to read across genres and boundaries, which usually helps to stave off some of my anxiety and creative inertia. So many authors inspire me because of their strong voices and various methods of making a story hurt and glow in wildly original ways.

‘Ponti’ is About How Society Turns Women Into Monsters - Electric Literature

[dustedmagazine]

Dusted Mid-Year 2024, Part III (The Lists)

Winged Wheel

Dusted’s writers picked two for the mid-year exchange, but any of them could easily reel off a dozen or more other favorites.  Find out what else they liked in this collection of lists. 

If you haven’t read Part I or Part II yet, check them out. 

Christian Carey

Arooj Aftab —  Night Reign (Verve)

Richard Baker —  The Tyranny of Fun (NMC)

Kyle Bruckman —  Of Rivers (New Focus)

Madi Diaz —  Weird Feeling (Anti)

Julia Holter —  Something in the Room She Moves (Domino)

Hurray for the Riff Raff —  The Past is Still Alive (Nonesuch)

Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh, Tyshawn Sorey —  Compassion (ECM)

Kali Malone —  All Life Long (Ideologic Organ)

Rosali — Bite Down (Merge)

Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion —  Rectangles and Circumstance (Nonesuch)

Ches Smith —  Laugh Ash (Pyroclastic)

Waxahatchee —  Tigers Blood (Anti)

Tim Clarke

DIIV — Frog In Boiling Water (Fantasy)

Loma — How Will I Live Without A Body? (Sub Pop)

Jessica Pratt — Here in the Pitch (City Slang)

Jon Mckiel — Hex (You’ve Changed)

Winged Wheel — Big Hotel (12XU)

Corridor — Mimi (Sub Pop)

English Teacher — This Could Be Texas (Island)

Helado Negro — Phasor (4AD)

Ty Segall — Three Bells (Drag City)

The Smile — Wall of Eyes (XL)

Andrew Forell

Arab Strap — I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍 (Rock Action)

Camera Obscura — Look to the East, Look to the West (Merge)

Daryl Groetsch — Above the Shore (self-released)

Drahla — angeltape (Captured Tracks)

Geotic — The Anchorite (Basement’s Basement)

Iceboy Violet, Nueen — You Said You’d Hold my Hand Through the Fire (Hyperdub)

Kim Gordon — The Collective (Matador)

Mick Harvey — Five Ways to Say Goodbye (Mute)

Sandwell District — Where Next? (Point of Departure)

Umbrellas — Fairweather Friend (Slumberland)

Yosa Peit — Gutbuster (Fire)

Reissues:

Brion Gysin — Junk (WEWANTSOUNDS)

These Immortal Souls — Get Lost (Don’t Lie!) Mute

Bryon Hayes

Rosali – Bite Down (Merge)

Winged Wheel – Big Hotel (12xU)

Gastr Del Sol – We Have Dozens of Titles (Drag City)

Beings – There is a Garden (No Quarter)

Ambarchi Berthling Werliin – Dusted II (Drag City)

Sunburned Hand of the Man – Nimbus (Three Lobed)

Water Damage – In E (12xU)

Dun-Dun Band – Pita Parka Pt. 1: Xam Egdub (Ansible Editions)

Gerycz Powers Rolin – Activator (12xU)

Magic Tuber String Band – Needlefall (Thrill Jockey)

Alex Johnson

Rosali — Bite Down (Merge)

RE Seraphin —  Fool’s Mate (Take A Turn/Safe Suburban Home)

Uranium Club —  Infants Under the Bulb (Static Shock)

The Spatulas —  Beehive Mind (Post Present Medium)

Yohei —  Echo You Know (Perpetual Doom)

Pardoner —  Paranoid in Hell (Convulse)

NYSSA —  Shake Me Where I’m Foolish (Six Shooter)

Nowhere Flower —  Ruts the Place (Radical Documents)

Sheer Mag —  Playing Favorites (Third Man)

Cindy Lee —  Diamond Jubilee (Realistik Studios)

Oren Ambachi / Johan Berthling / Andreas Werlin —  Ghosted II (Drag City)

Winged Wheel —  Big Hotel (12XU)

Jennifer Kelly

Rosali—Bite Down (Merge)

Mdou Moctar—Funeral for Justice (Matador)

Mary Timony—Untame the Tiger (Merge)

Myriam Gendron—Mayday (Thrill Jockey)

Lupa Citto—S-T (12XU)

James Elkington & Nathan Salsburg—All Gist (Paradise of Bachelors)

Rail Band—S-T (Mississippi)

Winged Wheel—Big Hotel (12XU)

Six Organs of Admittance—Time is Glass (Drag City)

Split System—Vol. 2 (Goner)

Ian Mathers

The Body & Dis Fig — Orchards of a Futile Heaven (Thrill Jockey)

Broadcast — Spell Blanket: Collected Demos 2006-2009 (Warp)

Cassandra Jenkins — My Light, My Destroyer (Dead Oceans)

Chelsea Wolfe — She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She (Loma Vista)

Jessica Moss — For UNRWA (Self released)

Laura Masotto — The Spirit of Things (7K!)

loscil // lawrence english — Chroma (Self released)

Myriam Gendron — Mayday (Feeding Tube/Thrill Jockey)

Polar Inertia — Environment Control (Northern Electronics)

Whitelands — Night-bound Eyes Are Blind to the Day (Sonic Cathedral)

Jim Marks

Ben Allison, Steve Cardenas, and Ted Nash — Tell the Birds I Said Hello: The Music of Herbie Nichols (Sonic Camera)

Mary Halvorson — Cloudward (Nonesuch)

Demian Cabaud — Arbol Adentro (Porta Jazz)

Fabiano do Nascimento and Sam Gendel — The Room (Real World)

Francesco Sensi — In Abstracto (WoW)

James Brandon Lewis Quartet — Transfiguration (Intakt)

James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg — All Gist (Paradise of Bachelors)

Juan Pablo Alcazar — Otro Quatuor Pour La Fin Du Temps (Porta Jazz)

Michele di Toro, Yuri Goloubev, and Hans Mathisen — Trinomics (Calogola)

Tony Moreno Trio — Ballads Volume 1 (Sunnyside)

Patrick Masterson

Cindy Lee — Diamond Jubilee (Realistik)

Chief Keef — Almighty So 2 (43B)

Marika Hackman — Big Sigh (Chrysalis)

Water Damage — In E (12XU)

Oneida — Expensive Air (Joyful Noise)

Winged Wheel — Big Hotel (12XU)

Burial — “Dreamfear / Boy Sent From Above" (XL)

Gouge Away — Deep Sage (Deathwish Inc.)

Blues Ambush — Blues Ambush (Radical Documents)

Tei Shi — Valerie (self-released)

Armand Hammer — BLK LBL (self-released)

Donato Dozzy — Magda (Spazio Disponibile)

Bill Meyer

 أحمد  [Ahmed] —Wood Blues (Astral Spirits)

 أحمد  [Ahmed]—Giant Beauty (Fönstret)

Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet—Four Guitars Live (Palilalia) 

Itasca—Imitation of War (Paradise of Bachelors) 

Lisa Ullen, Heirloom (Fönstret)

Lumpeks—Polonez (Umlaut) 

Matthew Shipp Trio, New Directions in Jazz Piano Trio (ESP-Disk’)

Olivia Block—The Mountains Pass (Black Truffle)

Oren Ambarchi / Johan Berthling / Andreas Werliin—Ghosted II (Drag City)

Rafael Toral—Spectral Evolution (Moikai) 

The Handover—The Handover (Sublime Frequencies) 

Tomeka Reid Quartet—3x3 (Cuneiform) 

Jonathan Shaw

Bad Breeding—Contempt (Iron Lung)

Fuera de Sektor—Juegos Prohibidos (La Vida Es un Mus)

Cindy Lee—Diamond Jubilee (Realistik Studios)

SUMAC—The Healer (Thrill Jockey)

Thou—Umbilical (Sacred Bones)

VR Sex—“Hard Copy” (Dais)

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

It's Sunday. The day is almost beautiful, with wind. They are playing boules on the road below and I can hear the clash of the balls from my room. The world is peaceful. How nice it would be to have the heart of a boule player in a Provençal village on a Sunday! But I promised myself to tell you the facts.

It's not much, it's true. Life continues with one more guest at the meals, Michèle Halphen who has moved to the hotel. I think she's leaving tomorrow. I like her but her sadness adds to the inertia of the days here. Yesterday, after a week's absence, Dolo came to liven up the house. I took her home in the evening. Sad too: she has been waiting for S[artre] for weeks, he said he would come at the end of this month and he announces that it will be at the beginning of the next. In short, things are not going well for her. Cheerful, isn't it?

I was repeating to myself Vigny's verse: "Separated lovers were united at the altars"! Come on, it's not for tomorrow. More important news: my brother is coming tomorrow. As the G[allimard]s are still here (they leave on the 20th) I will lodge him at the hotel. I will go tomorrow afternoon to Cannes to look for him. I am happy to see him again, but worried about him. I would like him to get well again. What else? A doctor from Grasse came to dinner with his wife. She had lost her mother following an operation that had caused an intestinal obstruction. The mourning was eight days old. Now you know that the company of more than four people exhausts me. Moreover, you can't count on the G[allimard]s to animate the conversation. So I made a great effort to talk about anything. The result was that I spoke successively about the cemetery in Cabris, about surgeons who are butchers, and about intestinal obstruction (all this without thinking of the deceased, of course). To finish, I told the story of Chamfort, where a doctor talking about his deceased patient said: "He is dead, no doubt, but he died cured."

On Wednesday Gide, who is in Juan-les-Pins where he is translating an English play for Barrault invited us all to lunch. Cartier, the producer I told you about and about whom you didn't tell me anything (but you are answering less and less to the questions I ask you. Linotte!) writes to me about his projects. I don't know why I trust him. After all, maybe we'll see The Plague on the screen. Now it's my turn. I've been muddy for two days. Headaches, vague nausea, I feel like I'm pregnant. I've even lost my rested complexion, but I guess it will pass. It is true that this waiting, it is silly to say, is so anxious that it ends up tiring me even physically. I exhaust myself imagining you and living our meeting in advance. Yet I behave wisely: a well-organized schedule, regular work (which does not necessarily mean fruitful work. There are good days and bad days, that's all). But the deprivation of happiness sometimes has the effect of under-nourishment, of asphyxiation too.

All my hope, all my courage comes finally from what I expect as a total reunion, love, emotion, joy, absolute freedom between us, bodies and soul, transparency and naturalness. And I do not wait for it as a utopia. I wait for it because I am sure of it. And it is not so far, no, it is not so far. Because listen carefully: yesterday in the mountain I saw the first flowers of the almond tree. The tree was still black. But at the ends of the branches a dozen or so frail and soft flowers were already rustling in the wind. You understand, my love, Maria dear! It was the extreme point of the extreme beginning of spring. And a great impulse came to my eyes and heart, which I can call no more than an impulse of adoration. I made a vow. I looked for a long time at the crying petals. And I went home, my heart full of love. Goodbye, my beautiful and wonderful love. I kiss my Valentine and give her the few flowers that we should give on Valentine's Day to the one that we love. You are the one I love, before every spring, and I kiss you deeply, with all my love.

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, February 12, 1950 [#187]

[en-la-casademiamor]

It was a night like all the others before it

The unseen owl hooted nearby. A herd of deer grazed in the side yard. I set the table with X amount of plates.

Those in attendance, in lackadaisical custom took their chairs. They talked over one another. I did not listen, though, I occasionally smiled,

but I did not laugh on cue.

Is it possible to forget how to laugh [?] Yes, just as it is conceivable to forget how to cry. If you would have

asked me even ten years ago, I could not have answered you with wisdom, but with a foolish

sugarcoated quip that wreaked of unintended superficiality. You’ve

heard what they say about the roses and its thorns [?]

Better to know the rose having been eviscerated by her claws. I live with what she’s done. It has made

me silent and forgetful. I’m often more machine, maybe less tender, but then there are nondescript evenings in

where I have come around again to some unequivocal truth about the totality of my emotional inertias.

When this occurs, there is a ceding, a breaking of ice in the ocean somewhere off and this allows me

to truly hear the owl at dinnertime; and as if seeing through its eyes, I come into seconds of clarity:

I have been the one who has been shrieking in the dark while life goes on.

I have been like the deer who eat in packs knowing coyotes lurk; and that though laughter and tears

do not come as easily as before, I now know how to praise with every cell in my body

when the eyes release a monsoon of incomprehensible emotions that have had trouble finding its exact language.

[bluedalahorse]

Results of today’s evaluation behind cut. Feel free to scroll on by if you’re not so interested.

The results are in! I got roughly the results I expected, with some nuances mixed in.

I strongly fit the criteria for autism, so my neuropsych formally diagnosed me with that. He also labeled me as “very likely ADHD” with a hyperactive presentation. (He said he was on the fence about whether to label me hyperactive or combined presentation, but ultimately went with hyperactive.)

We then went into the specific strengths of my brain as well as some of the areas where I struggle. Generally speaking, I scored very high in verbal skills, and also was strong as far as pattern recognition and memory. Places where I scored quite low were in things like planning and starting tasks, and my processing speed is much slower than average. Overall this contributes to inertia.

I apparently totally bombed the attention test they give you on the computer, where you have to click when you see certain shapes. I expected I wasn’t doing super well, especially as the test went on, but apparently I bombed way more than I thought without realizing it. I have to laugh about that because this is the kind of perspective you can get from this kind of evaluation!

What was neat about this was I got to see the ways that the little things connect to the bigger things, so the way that like, my slower processing speed can make it harder to grapple with a lot of information at once and so on. Like I’ve known the larger things I struggle with, and now I can see what about my brain makes them hard.

For flavor, I also have mild alexithymia. I mean I knew that already but I have data to back it up now.

Anyway, I’ve got accommodations I can use if I want to use them, and some concrete suggestions for moving forward with my life in a sustainable way. I don’t know how I’m going to implement it all yet, but I’ve got time. And this feels like crucial information for how not to overstress my bodymind. So that was neat and I am pleased!

[randomvarious]

Today’s compilation:

Panic In Detroit 1992 Techno / Deep House

I feel like I'm becoming a completely broken record when I sing the praises of early 90s electronic music and how, despite how advanced our music production technology has become since then, the overall uncanny inventiveness of some of these tunes from over 30 years ago allows them to still go so incredibly hard to this very day. And I think that this 1992 showcase of mostly Detroit techno that was put out by Belgian label Buzz serves as a prime example.

This LP comes with eight songs in total and seven of them are terrific. Dan Curtin takes us on a wild techno journey under his Prototype moniker with a song called "Path" that serves up a volley of abstract sound experiments with dramatic strings and ticking hi-hats to keep it all on track; techno godfather Juan Atkins, operating as M500, innovates with rough-edged and choppy, glitchy blends of packet-losing percussion and stabbing chiptuney melodies; A Guy Called Gerald, under the name inertia, does some crazy deep house with "Satisfaction," in which he sounds like he's repeatedly hand-drumming in a circle around us as he chops up some bits of sampled vocals—even giggles—which are laid beneath a leading, uncredited female vocal; and Eddie "Flashin" Fowlkes closes us out with a sweet groove called "Pure Afro Sound" that I think can only be best described as a meshing of a Super Mario-ish vibe with a Detroit techno one.

Never sleep on this electronic stuff from the early 90s, folks. That era really seems to have yielded some of the most creative music this world's ever seen. And it doesn't matter one iota that it was made with primitive gear; the stuff's still stunning and your state-of-the-art DAW doesn’t mean shit!

Highlights:

Prototype - "The Path" Yennek - "Serena "X" M500 - "Dimensions" Eddie "Flashin" Fowlkes - "O.C.C." Lucky Charm - "Double X-Posure" Inertia - "Satisfaction" Eddie "Flashin" Fowlkes - "Pure Afro Sound"

[r1999-transcript]

A Nightmare At Green Lake 02 - Baby Teeth

Radio: Thank you for the letter, Emily. Now we’re bringing our driver friends the latest weather forecast. Ohio is having a sunny week, with a comfortable level of humidity and zero chance of rain.

Tooth Fairy: Sorry, I forgot to switch off the inbuilt radio. Sit tight and put on your seatbelt. Hold the hands of people sitting next to you. If necessary, close your mouth and clench your teeth. You can do as I said, or not. I was mainly talking to them.

Horropedia: Yes, madam.

Sonetto: Yes, Ms. Tooth Fairy. Are those little winged elves still nagging you? I remember you were troubled by them as early as when I was in school.

Tooth Fairy: They are still there. They have never left there. The good thing is that they can’t distinguish lies. They spend every second of their life overhearing me and totally believe what I say. As long as they hear me say “cover your mouth and clench your teeth”, they will never attack you.

Horropedia: We all owe Mr. Campbell a big “thank you” for this. All of his teeth were stolen when he was with Ms. Tooth Fairy. That’s when humans finally realised how vindictive and revengeful those “little things” are. They stepped across the world for the cure. Eventually, they found a solution.

Sonetto: Mr. Campbell? Who is this person, and what happened to him?

Tooth Fairy: He is my brother. I am also a Campbell, Ms. Campbell. While he is a Mister. We shared a roof when we were little. I was cursed for eating a tooth fairy. It and its fellows swore to steal all my teeth. At first, they did it. I ate nine fairies and lost eleven baby teeth. My parents soon found out. They ordered a special tooth brace for me, in case I lose all my teeth and become a horrific old lady.

Horropedia: In their second attack, those tooth fairies failed to steal the teeth from Ms. Campbell, so they rushed to Mr. Campbell. His teeth disappeared in a flash, and he never had one since then. People said it was the curse of the tooth fairy. Just like in books, the flying human-like critters are bigoted. Once gained, they will keep the love and hatred at heart forever.

Sonetto: I’m so sorry, Ms. Tooth Fairy. I shouldn’t have asked.

Tooth Fairy: Don’t worry sweetie. My brother now has his own teeth. He lives a stable life. The past is in the past. And, I don’t really think he was cursed. I’ve never heard the tooth fairies swore at him. Neither have I found any mark on him that can be detected by arcanum. Instead of being cursed, what he suffered is more likely to be a “congenitally missing tooth”, a term defined in human medical science.

Vertin: I know that case. I just never thought Mr. Campbell lost his because of this. None of my classmates or instructors ever doubted the authenticity of such a curse when they gossiped of such things.

Tooth Fairy: SPDM is a community of a bunch of young arcanists and several instructors. For those kids, a curse is more common than a disease diagnosed by human medical science.

Sonetto: As a result, they neglected what they can’t comprehend and only learned the story from a one-sided perspective. Soon enough, rumours started to spread …

Horropedia: But that was a curse, a trouble that you can’t easily shake off once you’re put under. People could hardly forget that. If tooth fairies could curse his sister, they could also curse him. Everything came naturally. That was it.

Sonetto: Kids were ignorant for lack of knowledge, yet adults were ignorant for their cognitive inertia … In a story where truth and fantasy are mingled together, it is hard to tell which is which.

Horropedia: After all, life is not a show. You won’t have a narrator to warn you of the dangers ahead …

Old Madman: Go away! Leave here!

Vertin: Careful!

…

Tooth Fairy: *cough*

Sonetto: Timekeeper, Ms. Tooth Fairy … *coughs* Are you alright?!

Vertin: We’re good. Don’t worry. Cover your mouth and nose. Get off the car.

…

Sonetto: Is everyone okay? Did somebody get hurt? Timekeeper, you …

Old Madman: Go! Go away! Get out of my woods!

Sonetto: Aaaahhh!

Old Madman: I heard it, I heard it … I’ve heard the God’s will … Oh God, I will guide your children, I will guide them … guide them … away … from the demons … uggh … from the land of demons!

Sonetto: Dilated pupils, disordered speech, and a body temperature of three degrees higher than the normal level. Presumably, he has taken some stimulants or substandard potions.

Tooth Fairy: His sanity has been taken away. We need to knock him out.

…

Tooth Fairy: He fainted out. Problem solved. But … my car broke down. We have to walk there.

Vertin: No problem, Ms Tooth Fairy. I took the map with me before we got out. But there is smoke coming out of your car. Is it alright?

Tooth Fairy: Don’t worry, Vertin. My brother bought it an insurance. The brokers will soon contact him.

[033h]

i’m moving to new york in like 5 months because i got a job offer and just kinda impulsively said yes… any advice for new ppl moving to new york :’) im kinda worried

first off congrats on the job!! That’s so exciting and will probably make things easier in a lot of ways, that was the hardest part of getting an apartment for me and the job market here (like most things) is pretty competitive.

That being said I highly recommend looking into what apartment hunting is like here well in advance. Not just researching neighborhoods (it’s good to check which trains go to where you work, if you’ll be going in) but also dealing with brokers fees and knowing what amenities you need, figuring out if you’ll want roommates, etc, since my experience was basically that you need to be ready to apply on the spot when you tour, especially in the summer. There’s a lot of resources and a whole Reddit page dedicated to renting here that I found pretty helpful. I had a sublet for 2 months so I could have time to find an apartment. Things on there go quickly but listings project can give you a good idea of what’s out there, I think I found my apartment on streeteasy but toured like 15 places altogether.

In terms of other things, you’ll figure out the trains and navigation with time. What I wish I had done differently is doing as much as possible with the initial inertia of when you first get here: reaching out to any connections, dating, buying crazy shit on Facebook marketplace, exploring neighborhoods. It’s totally overwhelming but also highly motivating because you aren’t grounded by anything yet. Once I got settled and more secure I definitely lost most of that energy and I wish I had done a bit more when I had it, I feel like I’m just now trying to explore on my own more months later. Oh and download the got2gonyc bathrooms google map, it will probably save ur life at some point.

Honestly everything else (friends, activities, go to spots) I’m still very much figuring out for myself! It’s a unique city from everywhere else I’ve lived and it’s normal to take a long time to adjust (again I still am). Say yes to any opportunity you can to meet new people and try new things. Read up on the history of where you live and the places you go and be mindful of others around you. I find that New Yorkers are not always “friendly” but tend to be mindful/look out for others and are quite willing to strike up a conversation, at least compared to the PNW where I’m from. In general, people are pretty open to meeting up but it can be hard to really get to know one person. Wishing you all the best with the move and again congrats 💓💓

[hardtchill]

For me it’s very similar to the other anon. I’m turning 25 this year and I’ve still not got my bachelors degree because I had to quit my first go around at uni since i physically couldn’t learn for my exams. Granted it was compounded by other issues such as depression and anxiety but i genuinely believe that a not insignificant part of those issues come from the fact that adhd makes it near impossible to organise myself (unmedicated btw).

Seeing this on my feed rn is kind of ironic since even though im in my third year of a degree that I actually enjoy now, I literally dropped out of an exam that I was supposed to write today cuz I couldn’t revise. It’s not like I didn’t have the time and I’ve known for weeks about the deadline, but with every assignment or exam I push my own boundaries further and further back until I can’t do it anymore. Last semester I crammed 84 pages worth of notes in under 48h, an exam mind you that I’d pushed back over a year and was literally my last shot or I’d not be allowed to continue with my studies. I barely slept, I was throwing up, but I somehow passed, and with a good grade at that. Since then my brain is like, well you managed to do that that one time so you can totally afford to wait until the DAY before an exam to finish it. Or write a 15 page paper in a day.

And you know what, maybe I can. But the problem is the cost. It’s killing me. I find that it’s also very isolating cuz generally people don’t have a lot of empathy for this? So I end up pulling back from everyone including my best friends until I’m at a point again where I can be around people without letting on how incredibly bad I’m doing. Or I just straight up lie so they don’t know that I’ve not done the things i said I would do.

And all this is not just within the framework of academia. It’s also impacted my wellbeing in a more general sense - cooking for myself is hard because I tend to not listen to my body’s cues until I’m on the verge of passing out cuz i forgot to eat or drink, or by the time I’m hungry I still have to make a meal so I end up ordering something cuz it’s faster. Same with showering daily or brushing your teeth. Getting any routine started in general and sticking with it. I’ve been meaning to start exercising again but I keep delaying it for no reason. I’ve worked out regularly in the past so I know it’s something that I enjoy and that makes me feel good but despite that I’m still stuck in this place of inertia? It’s awful.

I’ve talked to some friends who also have adhd about it and the inability to start something cuz it isn’t instantly gratifying or that doesn’t align with an interest but is an obligation is quite common. Can I binge 7 seasons of a reality show in a week if it really interests me? Hell yeah! (I do watch everything at 2x speed cuz everyone talks too slow lmao but still). Will i fly through a massive book and literally forego sleeping if it means getting through more of it if im really invested? Absolutely. 1500 puzzle? Massive Lego set? Yep! Taking notes from a textbook for an assignment? Literally kill me right now.

I’m sorry for this long ass message and idek if you’re gonna read all of this but yeah just wanted to share my experience. Adhd is absolutely not quirky or a superpower and I wish there was a better understanding of it out there because it makes me my own worst enemy every day.

Ugh anon i feel you so much. I have skipped on many an exam during my bachelors because i just couldn't concentrate, focus or start revision. It's completely miserable to literally see the time go by where you feel the stress but you just cannot get your brain to start on what you need to do.

Any time i told teachers and now colleagues that i work well with deadlines i get told i'm not motivated enough because if i was i wouldn't need deadlines. That's just so unfair! My brain is graving dopamine, it's not laziness that my brain does this, it's literally just ADHD.

This is the same reason why your brain (usually) jumps into action when that crippling anxiety hits, because you're so close to a deadline that your brain can smell the dopamine.

The only reason that i finished my 6 month thesis is because i had many mini deadlines during those 6 months. I felt the anxiety to finish a part of it every month and i had a teacher who was very nice and gave you compliments when you did (DOPAMINE). If i didn't have that i would still be writing my thesis now.

ADHD is so misunderstood by so many people. It affects every part of your life and the negative consequences are so much bigger and impactful than the potential positive outcomes. I mean yeah i'm creative and can think fast, awesome but that doesn't make up for the anxiety, stress and grief you go through anytime your brain just doesn't want to start something.

[shrekgogurt]

My brain has not been very kind to me recently so I have not had the chance to write much aside from half-heartedly dragging myself through my writing heavy coursework. I have been so exhausted and anxious and honestly quite sad that even imagining little stories in my head takes too much energy. In short, things are not great over in my swamp.

Nevertheless, here are precisely six new sentences from chapter three of Escape to Space (Simon’s POV):

His face steels into nothingness again. Why does he keep doing that? What is going on inside his head? He’s locked down like a jewelry safe, designed not to easily open. I try the Niamh trick—investigating his eyes—but they’re impenetrable. I would hate to play him at poker.

Self-Indulgent Rant & Tags under the cut:

For real though…my self-talk has been atrocious. I’ve convinced myself everyone in my life secretly hates me and that I’m bad at all my crafts. I may in fact be in my Wayward Son era which is pitiful because I mean…I didn’t kill my dad or lose my magic. But…do I ever want to get out of bed????? No, that shit is cozy!!!!! And I know it’s me self-sabotaging. And I know deep down I’m capable of all the things and I’m not totally unloveable. However, I can’t bring myself to believe it enough to kickstart the inertia which drives me CRAZY. Like girl, why aren’t you doing your work when you could just…do your work??????????? Why don’t you believe people want to actually spend time with you when they’re spending time with you????????????? What’s! Not! Clicking!? I guess…you know what they say… I Shouldn’t Ghost My Therapist

Thank for the tags today and this past week @you-remind-me-of-the-babe @martsonmars @fatalfangirl @captain-aralias @technetiumai @larkral @palimpsessed @ileadacharmedlife @thewholelemon @basiltonbutliketheherb @artsyunderstudy @aroace-genderfluid-sheep @onepintobean @ivelovedhimthroughworse @chen-chen-chen-again-chen @aristocratic-otter @confused-bi-queer + a bonus @raenestee simply because I adore you. I’m sorry if I don’t know some of y’all well and forced you to wade through my whining.

[mr-leach]

Curse of Strahd Ask Meme Part 2

Hi, it’s me again! I’m back with part 2 of the Curse of Strahd ask meme by @mandisawesome for the game being run by @inertia-raptor​!

You can see part 1 here in case you missed it! 

Question 2: How/why did you come to Barovia?

So no one in our party actually knew each other before anything went down, lmao. They were all in a caravan that was headed from the town of Beregost (in case you were wondering where the Jovial Juggler Inn & tavern is, it’s in Beregost!) and traveling North, to Baldur’s Gate. They each had their own reasons for heading North, such as:

...Some of them were more open to socializing than others.

They were stopped for the night and had a brief opportunity to talk and get to know a little bit about each other (well, most of them did, anyway) and they all forgot to actually introduce themselves by name, which was pretty funny when we realized, like, 3 sessions later. Anyway there was some singing and some attempts to share Sy’s whiskey without Sy’s permission, and Alasdair learned about not bringing your dead sister’s skull out to have tea without asking anybody if they’re cool with that first, and then they turned in for the night. It was then that the mists of Barovia arrived and spirited them away in their sleep! (The wagon driver and his horse were fine, although very confused the next morning, I’m sure)

So yeah, a bunch of total strangers suddenly plucked out of their daily lives and thrown into Barovia, having to quickly figure out how to work together while dealing with the horrors therein! What could be better than this? Just (mostly) guys being (sorta) dudes.

* They’re just friends, apparently. With benefits, so we’ve been told.