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headcans-oneshots-and-stuff · 4 years ago

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Reality check

Fandom: DC Pairing: Damian Wayne x reader Word count: 4.1k Summary: It was a normal day for you when the sidewalk literally opens up and swallows you whole only to spit you back out into a world that you thought only existed in comics before. There you meet a certain Vigilante and things get more complicated very, very quickly... Warning: I think this classifies as angst, not sure though, Definitly almost drowning tho, also multiple instances of unconciousness, lil bit of fluff if you squint, also me trying to be funny and failing Requested by the incredibly, amazing, breathtaking @dudeidkwhattoputformyusername: Hi! I love your work! is it possible for u to do a Damian Wayne x reader one shot, where reader comes from reality and bumps into Damian in Robin form. Then u can develop from there anyway u like! preferably fluff tho. thank u!!!!!!!!!!

Everything was blurry and your head was throbbing like someone was working on it with a jackhammer. The pain was the first thing that you felt during the process of waking up, no other sense quiet activated yet. Next was the realization that your body was shivering uncontrollably and wherever you were laying definitely wasn’t a bed for as far as you remembered, beds weren’t usually wet, cold and stone-hard. Following was your eyesight that finally returned to you, alongside with your smell and hearing, and as if they were high-school bullies who were teaming up against the local geek in a 90’s sitcom, they all came crashing up upon you like a train. Now theoretically seen, you were able to see, hear and smell again, but practically seen, asking you to do either of the three was like asking someone to find a needle in a needlestack, or a single straw of hay in a haystack. It was just too much, definite sensory overload. A few minutes you couldn’t do anything but lay there, shivering and cold and miserable, before slowly your brain started to work through all the input and sort through it until you were able to comprehend it. The first thing you noticed was the smell. It wasn’t a very pleasant one, it smelled like you fish, water and something rotten and if you had any more control over your body you probably would have thrown up. The sounds that you could hear now put the smells a little bit more into perspective. What sounded like screams and the end of the world before was now identifiable as the screeching of seagulls, the honking of boats and the soft crashing of waves. So you were near a harbor or port? The last puzzle piece was the view you got when you opened your eyes. The cold, wet, stone-hard ‘not-bed’ that you had been lying on was in fact a concrete jetty. Only a few feet away from you was the cold dark sea and above you was the night sky. How long have you been lying here? What happened? How did you get there? As you were staring up into the sky something about it made you uneasy, the way the stars were shining, the darkness of the universe, the fullness of the moon- Wait, wasn’t it a new moon just a few days ago? You sat up suddenly, immediately regretting it when the pain shook through your head again, re-starting the throbbin at 100%, and - after you could open your eyes again - looked down at your body. You were wearing a soaked through sweater that you had bought a few days prior and just as soaked through jeans and socks, your shoes nowhere in sight. The sea was restless and splashed against the sides of the jetty, dops landing on your sleeves and face. For some reason, the sensation of the liquid against your skin brought forth a flashback that completely blinded you. It was like you were watching from above as you relieved the last thing you remembered, how you had been going home after your part-time job at the library when the floor had literally peeled open below you and you fell into a cold nothingless, only for water to come crashing down at you from all sides. When you finally realized that you were not on the sidewalk a few blocks away from your home anymore, but in raging water, somewhere below the surface you were already only seconds away from drowning. With all the power you could muster and adrenaline rushing through your veins you managed to fight your way upwards and upwards until your hand finally broke through the water’s surface. The breath that you took when you made it up completely must have been the best and somehow worst gulp of air you had ever taken in. The adrenaline was ebbing off and the exhaustion made its way through all your muscles, but when you saw the lights in the distance you managed to keep on going until you had managed to pull yourself up a concrete jetty where you finally blacked out. Your mind made its way back into your body and you grasped the situation, even though believing it still wasn’t the easiest task. I mean the earth quite literally swallowing you up? That doesn't sound reasonable. And yet, it was the thing you remembered so you would have to live with that truth until someone could prove you otherwise. More and more questions started to swirl through your mind - an unreasonable amount of them quite honestly - but you knew you had to take things one step at a time. Okay, what did you know? You were in an unknown location so there was no new there, but your former question of ‘how long have you been there’ was now answered. Given the state of your clothes and the fact that it was still deep, dark night you couldn’t have been unconscious for long. But that didn’t help you much - you were still sitting there freezing cold and soaked with no idea where you actually were. What would you do usually when you were lost? Phone, ah, right. You patted over your pockets and actually found it, only to be very unsurprised when it only gave you a black void to stare into. Sadly you didn’t have a bag of rice to put it into in the other pocket, instead only a set of keys that you didn’t recognize along with something that looked like a keychain in form of a piece of polished wood with the letters D and (Your first initial) with a plus in between engraved into it. “Great, I can open some doors now, too bad I don’t know which,” you spoke aloud to yourself, only for the worlds to come out stuttered thanks to your teeth that were shaking just as much as the rest of you. You stuffed the keys and the broken phone back into your pockets and managed to pull yourself up and stand, even though all your muscles were screaming in despair. The thing you really wanted to do was lie back down and fall asleep again, wait for the sun to rise and dry your clothes, but you knew that with the coldness and the water all around you, you’d probably be dead or at least deadly sick by morning, so you had to find shelter, warmth and - maybe most importantly - answers. With slow, little steps you walked down the jetty, towards the buildings that looked unoccupied at that time of day, with an unknown city stretching out behind it that promised life and warmth. For what felt like hours, but was probably just minutes, you managed to walk a few feet until you were a safe distance away from the water and near a bench that must have been put there for people who wanted to watch the water or have a break from work or similar things. It looked at you so invitingly, so comfortably, so perfect. Deep inside you knew that you should probably not sit down, even if you told yourself it would be just for a few minutes, but your exhaustion took over and you sunk down onto it, falling to the side and rolling as good as it was possible together into a little roll. You’d take a nap, just a quick one, only a few minutes, then you’d get up with new energy and find the warmth you were looking for. The longer you sat there the heavier your eyelids got until you couldn’t take it anymore and the darkness enveloped you into its safety again.

The next time you woke up, things weren’t so bad anymore, it wasn’t all that blurry and the throbbing had dialed down a bit, but your body was shaking worse than before. In fact, it was shaking so bad that your shoulder thumbed against the backrest of the bench before being pulled forward again and repeating the circle, the only weird thing was that it was just your shoulder. And there was this weird pressure around it. Wait! You weren’t shaking worse, someone else was shaking you as if they were trying to wake you up. You peeled your eyes completely opened and looked into white voids surrounded by black and like your eyes were the camera of a 2000’ kids-camera they slowly zoomed out and revealed the white voids to be the eye-parts of a mask sitting on the face of a masked (duh) boy who was wearing a very, very colorful and bright outfit. It seemed familiar and the gears in your head started turning. “Habibti, you’re okay,” the boy said in a relieved tone and while he helped you sit up you mustered him with a confused look. “That’s not my name, it’s Y/N.” The way his mask contorted gave off a sense of confusion that mirrored yours, just with a little bit more worry in it, but before he could say anything else you motioned to his outfit. “What is it with the outfit? It isn’t Halloween yet, is it?” “You don’t recognize me?” he asked you and the tone of voice he used almost made you feel sorry for him, but given that you had no idea what he was talking about you would probably be able to cope. “No, sorry…” you started before the gears finally fell into place and you recognized it, “Oh, wait, I think I do, you’re playing Batman’s sidekick right? I think it was Robin. That’s so cool, I myself was always more of a Marvel fan - you know with Black Widow and all that - but both are super valid so cool hobby dude. It looks pretty rad too.” Even with the mask you could see the complete bedazzlement in his face and you wondered if your weird world-swallowing-experience had magically changed the language you spoke from English to Mandarine. “What- What do you mean?” “You’re Cosplaying right? Dressing up as a Comic Character?” you tried to explain and you could feel a slight anger building up at how stupid he made you feel without even being able to see his eyes. “I’m not Cosplaying a comic character?” he said in a questioning manner. “Yes, you are. You’re wearing the outfit and everything, like the guy in the Comics who works with Batman. I think his name was Richard or something, but you should know better, you’re cosplaying him after all,” you tried to explain yet again, seriously questioning your sanity. Now he really didn’t need the mask to hide the fact that he was seriously triggered by what you had said - even though you weren’t quite sure why. Had Robin been cancelled over twitter while you were unconscious? “I think it’d be better if I bring you to safety and get you checked out,” he averted the topic of the conversation and started to position his hands like he wanted to pick you up, but you put a stop to it when you pressed him away. “Listen, I appreciate the help, but I’ll definitely not be going with a complete stranger in a comic costume, so if you could just give me your phone so that I can call my parents or my friends that’d be great.” For a few seconds he just sat there straight, as if unsure of the best course of action, before he sight and pulled a phone out, unlocking it and handing it to you. Your fingers hovered over the keyboard as you thought about who to call, thankful that your mum had made you learn her number by heart, but when you went to dial it your whole body stopped working, like there was a physical restriction keeping you from typing. Suddenly you realized it. You didn’t know the number - you knew you should, that you had been using it for years upon years and that you definitely should know it - and your eyes grew wide. You scavenged through your head searching for more numbers, but then you realized another thing. There were none. How was that possible? You didn’t even know the area code from where you lived. “I- I don’t- what?” you looked up at the boy with tearful eyes, the reality of the situation just too much for you. “It’s okay, I’m sure it will come back to you,” he tried to sooth you, but you were too frustrated and sad to be happy about soothing from some creepy geek. “Would you please finally tell me why you’re in costume?” you asked exasperated and moved further away from him. “I-” The answer of the boy was cut short when a ‘whooshing’ sound echoed around the area and a booming voice called out: “Robin”. The boy shot you another look before shouting back. “I’m here, I’ve-” he obviously wanted to add something, but he cut himself off this time and just looked at you. A man in a black, leather suit with a black cowl over his face that you noticed to be definitely inspired by Batman and very well done came rushing towards you. Again, you couldn’t see his eyes, but you recognized the same worried look that the boy already had. “Oh no, not another one,” you sighed and pushed your hair back, “Is there some kind of Comic Convention here? Or is this a weird sexual thing?” Now the man looked at the boy even more confused, and the boy just shrugged, but instead of answering you, he brought his hand up to where his ear was under the cowl and spoke to himself: “I’ve found Robin, he’s found her, we’re going to come back now.” If it had only been the first and last part of that sentence you would have made a joke about them being into LRPG or something, but the ‘her’ part scared you for some reason. You stood up and backed away, happy that the boy didn’t keep the grip on even though his eyes were following your every move. “This was fun and all, but I’m still soaked and really cold, and I had a nice swim earlier which I want to calm down from again, so I think I’ll just go back home now, call myself a cab or something,” you turned around, more than ready to strain your muscles yet again with running away, but it never got to that point, because a second later you were ripped up from the ground and sizzled through the air. It was so surprising that you didn’t even manage to scream before you found yourself with hard ground under your feet again. You looked up at what had pulled you through the skies and found the boys face yet again and - may it have been from the scare of everything finally becoming to much - the last thing you could say before you blacked out for the third time that night was: “That’s some on point cosplay dude.”

The soft sheets of your bed gave you a sense of relief as you woke up from that weird ass dream that you were having. You were unsure about why exactly your unconsciousness was making you see these things, but you made a mental note about checking the dream meaning of getting swallowed by the sidewalk later on. For now all you wanted was to go have some breakfast and call your mom to tell her about that dream. So you opened your eyes and threw the blanket back only to be surprised by the ceiling that was definitely not yours. There was a sound beside you and you looked over to see a boy about your age, black hair standing up from his head a little spiky and green eyes focused entirely on you. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” you cursed and moved as far away from the boy as possible, “Who are you?!” “What do you remember?” the boy asked you, completely ignoring your question. Your eyes flew to the door that was right behind him and you found that there was no way for you to get to it without having to overthrow the boy - but by the looks of him he’d knock you out easily. “I was on my way home from my job when the fucking ground opened up, swallowed me, thrw me back up into the ocean and then I met two werid ass cosplayers before I woke up here.” “You still think we’re cosplayers?” “We?” “Yes,” he just nodded with complete ease. “Well, I gotta admit that flying thing was pretty rad. What was that? Are you actors and you’re making a movie? Because if so then I’m sorry for bursting onto the shooting site.” “We’re not making a movie,” he stated, still completely chilled, even though there was something else lying under it. “What then? You telling me you’re actually Robin? Because if so I’m not the only one who needs to have her head checked out,” you scoffed and rolled your eyes, arms crossing in front of your chest. The boy just mirrored your look, completely stern and serious. “You’re not serious, are you?” you couldn’t help but let out an unbelieving chuckle. He kept silent and just observed you. “You fucking are, oh my gosh.” “How can I prove it to you?” he asked, still so incredibly serious that you felt like you were a clown walking in on a job interview. “Oh, I don’t know. Call Flash, Superman and the easter bunny over so we can have tea with the tooth fairy,” you answered ironically and made a ‘cray-cray’ gesture with your hand going in circles beside your temple, but instead of being offended by your comment, he just pulled out his phone - the same phone you had tried to use earlier you noted. “What are you doing?” you asked, but he just held his hand up to sush you and raised the phone to his ear. “Hello, it’s Damian Wayne,” he introduced himself to the other person - and you noted that he was not a ‘Richard’ after all, “Yes, could you do me a favor? Could you come to the Manor real quick? Yes, yes I know, no it’s not an emergency. The suit would be great, yes. See you in a bit. You opened your mouth again when he hung up to ask who he called over, but he kept his hand up and motioned to you to wait, while he opened up the window, even though it was still cold out. A gust of wind filled the room and suddenly there was another boy standing besides the original boy - Damian as he had introduced himself - who was wearing a cape, a shirt with a logo that was definitely Supermans and ripped jeans. “H-How the fuck did he just? Was he here this whole time? What? How?” you stuttered and looked between Damian and the other boy who looked at you even more confused than you felt, but Damian waved him off and motioned for him to leave, which he promptly did. The new boy looked at Damian with question marks in his eyes, but he just waved him off. “You believe me now?” he asked, directed towards you and you had to admit it was pretty convincing. “But how? I’m in a comic?” “Y/N, this isn’t a comic, this is reality,” Damian told you with a soft voice, but your eyes just widened and you tried to move back even further. “How do you know my name?” “In your left pocket there is a set of keys and keychains. One of these keychains is a piece of wood with two letters engraved. A D and a (Your first initial), am I right?” Your heart stopped for a second and you patted the pocket where that exact thing was still lying. “H-How do you know my name?” “What do you remember about your life, about how you ended up in the water?” he avoided the question like a pro and you decided to play along, just in hope he’d answer your question sooner or later. “I was born the daughter of Y/Parents/N in Y/H/T. I grew up normally and went to school, nothing special, got a job on the side and when I went home yesterday the sidewalk started to open up like there was an earthquake and I was suddenly in the water, I told you about that part already.” “And you have never met me in your life?” he asked and sounded almost disappointed. “No, an hour ago I thought you didn’t exist outside of paper, the internet and movies,” you huffed and tried to figure out what his endgame was with this, when he pulled his phone out again and tapped on it for a bit before shoving it in your direction. “How do you explain this then?” You moved forwards with caution until you could see the screen and your breath stopped. It was a picture of you. Of Damian and you to be precise. The two of you were sitting on a bench, laughing and smiling and obviously happy, a cute dog on the ground between the two of you where something else drew your attention. In the photograph your left hand was intertwined with his right one. “W-What is this? Some sick kind of joke?” “You really don’t remember? Not at all?” he asked flabbergasted. “Remember what? What is going on here?” you almost shouted, the frustration becoming just a little bit too much, “Please just give me some explanation, please.” “You’re Y/N Y/L/N, you really are the daughter of Y/Parents/N, but you didn’t grow up in Y/H/T, you grew up here in Gotham. You went to Gotham academy, where the two of us met and...became friends. You found out about me being Robin and my father being Batman rather quickly too,” Damian explained and even though it didn’t match up even slightly with what you remembered, it felt weirdly accurate. You went to the bed again and sucked down onto it, before thinking back to the picture and raised an eyebrow at Damian. “Not that I say it’s true what you’re saying, but if we hypothetically say it was, then we weren’t just friends, right? We’re together?” “Yes.” “Okay,” a sigh escaped you and everything was feeling blurry, but you had to continue asking, wanting to know the truth, “Then how do you explain me ending up in the ocean?” “That’s where things get a bit harsher,” Damian sight too, but obviously for other reasons, “Yesterday evening you accompanied me to a party - a family thing - on a yacht and things were going great, but something went wrong. No one had an idea that the weather would shift like that, but a storm came and the yacht was thrown around and you - you were thrown off, I thought you died, I was devastated, but- uhm...well… You remembered that keychain? I gave it to you for our first year anniversary and it may or may not have a tracker in it, so that I could find you in a worst case scenario and if that wasn’t a worst case scenario then I don’t know what is.” For a few minutes silence filled the room as you worked through all of the new information, but the sad look on Damian’s face, the seriousness in his voice, the entire situation in itself? They made it hard to doubt what he was telling you. Your gaze was stuck on your fidgeting hands when you asked the one underlying question. “Why can’t I remember?” “I don’t know, I think you must have hit your head when you fell off and your mind mixed things up - mixed reality into something else and took a few actual things and made them fiction,” Damian gave you his half-assed, definitely not medically appropriate explanation, but you couldn’t blame him for that, you had no idea either. You pulled your legs up and hugged your knees close as you looked at him, really trying to see this supposed boyfriend of yours, but your mind just turned up blank. “What if I’ll never remember? What if that’s the way it’ll be from now on?” “I’m positive that things will turn out fine, we have friends who have the best medical experience you can get, we even have mind readers who could probably help you and if not, we’ll help you make new memories, I’ll help you and I’ll wait for the memories to come back just in case.” “That’s not fair on you though, Right now I’m not the girl you’re with, you shouldn’t have to go through this,” tears were now welling up at your eyes, even though you weren’t completely sure why your emotions were so strong. “I don’t care, I really don’t, because no matter what you remember or don’t, I love you and I really hope you’ll remember that you love me too…”

#Damian Wayne #Damian wayne x reader #batfam #batfam x reader #dc #dc x reader #dc universe #batfamily #batfamily x reader #Bruce Wayne #batman #robin #robin x reader #fluff #angst #amnesia

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painterofhorizons · 3 years ago

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Covid rant under the cur.

Ugh. So my boss comes back from vacation tomorrow. The first two september weeks I’m off from work. Theoretically we had talked about me going to the office once before that for a personal meet up (we’re all mostly working from home with completely voluntarily go to office currently and since I live 500km away I never do that). Also end of september should be a class related personal meet up.

And just thinking about having to go to the office soon and spent 7h in and off trains brings me close to tears. I took the local train yesterday for like 15 minutes and was already stressed out because some people didn’t wear their masks. And despite wearing a medical FFP2 mask for literal hours is exhausting as fuck (damn, my respect to everybody who needs to for their job all day every day), knowing I will be stressing about everybody else and their behaviours for two times 7+h within days just makes me want to quit. I know I am priviledged because I can fully work from home and have everything in walking distance at home and I know many people aren’t. But I really have a hard time switching back into a “normal”, non-covid behavior. Especially when we’re not past covid, and me going there would mean I would have a shitload of contacts I can avoid with not going there and staying here.

Also, the things we need to talk about and wanted to do that in person, I don’t want to talk about at all, so even just talking about them remotely will kill me.

But most of it all, I don’t want to sit in a train and see people face to face for hours and days when I can totally avoid that by just working from home. Like, the face to face meet up is absolutely not neccessary at all.

Last time I phoned with my boss two weeks ago she sounded like low key also not seeing a need for me to come over when the covid case numbers are steadily increasing here again with us entering the fourth wave, so keep your fingers crossed she will still have that mindset.

Or I’ll try to work up the bravery to just tell her that I do not feel ready to go to the office just for a talk when it’s connected to absolutely avoidable risks that don’t need to be taken.

Idk. It’s just stressing me out as fuck. I don’t mind going to the office or meeting my boss again face to face - but I totally do mind being forced to take the train 14+h for a trip for a face to face meeting that is not neccessary. Even if I am fully vaccinated. The train is being taken currently mostly by people who DECIDE they want to go on vacation somewhere else, and I’m not judging, but I do want to make the decision for myself to NOT take the risk if it is avoidable.

Also like, I totally don’t look forward to have THAT talk with my boss (aka the one where I tell her that when my current contract ends next summer, I am not able or willing anymore to stay in my field when it means constant insecurity job wise, and that I emotionally am not made for working any longer in a field where there are hardly any jobs, all of them timely limited and needing you to move, when all I want is just ANY job with an unlimited contract that allows me to stay here, which means I chose private life over career because I don’t have the mental strength that this field needs to actually make a career, and like yeah being a humanist comes with downsides... I have been miserable with the circumstances of my field for the past 10 years, it’s time for a change no matter how frightening that is...)

#corona #random work ramble

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aal-archaeology · 4 years ago

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Summary of my first term of my Ph.D. at Stanford during a global pandemic and an extremely controversial election year (Anthropology, yr. 1, she/they, 25y/o) with some toggl data analysis

Well this year was a doozy if I don’t say so myself. But we survived it, and its okay if that’s all you were able to do this year because that’s enough. As an offical 18th grader, I feel like I can speak pretty well to the toxicity of the academic environment. There is always a pressure to be working all of the time, people compete with each other with how few hours of sleep they got, every conversation with fellow students is just listing off all of the different assignemnts you have to do by the end of the week. On top of all of this, this is 2020. So, I decided that this year I’m going to give myself some mental slack.

I decided that this is the year that I’m not going to try to impress anyone. I’m just going to survive and do what I have to do to move onto the next term. I think I did a pretty good job at that for the first term, so I’ll share a bit about what I observed in myself and those in my cohort. Coming into term one having to choose classes, many of my peers were packing their schedules full of 5 Unit seminars. For those who don’t know, theoretically, a 5 Unit course is supposed to take about 5-6 hours of work outside of class hours. For Stanford Anthropology, most PhD students take as close as they can to 18 credits, and anything over that you have to pay extra for the courses. Taking more courses doesn’t really put you any further ahead in terms of completing your degree, and you’re expected to complete about 45 Units each year for the first two years of the program.

I decided to take 2 seminars (typical), a language course, and a couple filler credits that we are given the option to use if we need 1-3 units to hit 18 total. I, fortunately, tracked every hour spent outside of the classroom working on each course using toggl (i highly reccomend):

In a typical week, I spent about 5-6 hours/week outside of class on my Anthro seminars, and about 6-7 hours on Japanese. Japanese was a “for-fun” class so I would usually study more of that when I didn’t feel like reading dense archaeological theory.

Toggl was a really cool way to see where I was spending too much, or not enough, time on my classwork. If it was taking me more than 1.5 hours to get through a single article, I knew I was probably spending too much time on it and should move on to the next thing. My goal for the term was to stay true to the 5 Unit idea of 5-6 hours, and not over-work myself.

Toggl was also useful in tracking my mental health throughout the term, as it is very obvious to see when I just was not physically capable of ingesting 400 pages of reading. For example, election week:

Election week was really hard for me, and everyone else in the world honestly. I had various family things I was dealing with, typical existential dread, plus it was week 8-ish of the term when everything was already on fire in terms of workload. For one of my seminars (purple), we had to read a book for the following week which I was able to do the sundar after election day. However, for the days leading up to and surrounding the 4th, the only thing I could mentally handle was mindless Japanese vocab studying. One of my seminars really sufferend this week, and I straight up just didnt show up to the smaller Anth 310G class because I had only read the title of the pdf. Fortunately, I emailed my professor of my Theory class and was like “yo dude I cannot” and he replied that he understood and wouldnt call on me during that day of class.

I didn’t do a whole lot of journalling at all this term, but for this week I just wrote “pain” on most days and then YAY BIDEN at the end of it.

Weekly Schedule

Above is what a typical week looked like, some were a lot lot lot more dense, others not so much, but this was pretty average. Not all things on the calendar are work related, some are extra lectures from visiting professors that sounded interesting, or “Free Boba & Snacks Pick Up” put on by my residence. Monday, Wednesday, and Sunday were my big work days last term, where I didn’t have a whole lot of classes so I would do most of my reading then. On Tues and Thurs I had one 3-hour seminar, and M-F I had a 50 min Japanese class.

I woke up every day around 7am-ish, made a green tea, and sat at the computer to work, filter through emails, etc. On particularily open days I would go grocery shopping, go for bike rides/walks around campus, go buy food/boba.

On class-heavy days, I wouldn’t leave my computer for 8-12 hours, which is extremely ridiculous but that’s the new norm in school in 2020. This kind of stunk because all of the socializing was also on the computer, so even if I wasn’t working I was doing screen related things.

EVERY day I stopped working at 6pm. Rarely did I do readings past 6pm unless I was really slacking somewhere. From 6pm onwards I would do things like play Among Us or League of Legends with my discord friends, eat, watch movies with my partner, etc. And then most nights I would try to be in bed by 12am at the latest.

Social Life

Despite the online nature of things this term, I was suprisingly able to meet a lot of great people on campus. We were all being tested at least once a week, which made in person gatherings with 1-4 people a little less scary, especially when half of the people lived together in one household.

In the first week of school, some of the grad programs put on a “speed friending” zoom event, where I was able to connect with two people really well. We ended up doing a “slow-friending” zoom event afterwards and then created a FB group chat and added all of the people we had met into it. The group ended up being about 15 people, and we would message the group for park hangouts, going to get food, or going on walks on campus. We also had a huge get together in a park for Mid-Autumn Festival, where we sat in a socially distanced circle, chatted, and ate mooncakes.

Most of my socializing came from my online friends, and amongus was a huge savior to my mental health this term wher emy group would play literally every night. I also made a really good friend off of Bumble BFF this term, who I’ve hung out with a good amount for plant shopping and board games.

I’m very fortunate to be in a situation where I can get tested for COVID on a days notice, and very grateful that I could use that to stay a little sane. My Biggest Accomplishment this term, was not school related. but instead I hit my 365 DAY STREAK on duolingo. This was celebrated with cake. This streak has lived through literal hell and for that I am very proud.

Overall reflection:

This term was super rough, there were a lot of days where I just napped through it and a lot of days where I couldn’t bring myself to do any work. However, I think the courseload that I took was very manageable and I’m going to continue to go light on myself in that regard.

I really liked the boundaries that I set for myself this term, not working after 6pm and making time to do some fun things in the midst of chaos. I never felt like I was too far behind on work, or that I wasn’t doing enough, because I had a literal reminder in front of me that I had already put x amount of hours into something with toggl.

Sometimes in class I would feel like I didn’t know how to productively contribute to conversation, but I think thats a skill that will get better over time and not being so great at it should especially be expected in the first term of a program.

Socially I met a lot of wonderful people who also made me feel more comfortable will myself. I started using She/They pronouns which feel really comforting to me. I made a lot of little origami cranes every time I was feeling sad. I drank a lot of boba. Watched a lot of She Ra. Played a lot of games. It all ended up being okay despite the weight of everything around me.

I’m proud of all of you for making it through this year, I know it was really difficult for a lot of people in more ways than it was for me, but we’re still here! Sometimes all you can do it make it to the next day and thats such a big accomplishment on its own. Please feel free to reach out with any questions about time-management, toggl, phd stuff in general, archaeology, etc! Always happy to help out. :’) Thanks for reading! Lyss

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sun-sakura · 4 years ago

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I POISON KISS I A Vampire x Dust story

IChapter 1.I

Dust sighed heavily, crawling on the pile of unmade sheets that were supposed to represent what was left of his bed. The skeleton looked around, noting that the room was completely destroyed. Of all the places he could have chosen to vent his anger, he had wisely decided to take refuge in his room. He looked up to the sky, feeling a vague sense of irritation towards himself, another disaster to add to the mess he felt in his head at that moment. Speaking of mess, the excessively loud voice of his deceased brother kept buzzing in his head, shuffling through the walls, mixing and blending in with his boss's earlier words. "Papyrus shut up!" he exclaimed exasperatedly, closing his eyes, trying to make pass with the sole will of thought what foretold an immense headache.

Incredibly, once in a while Papyrus had decided to take pity on him, because he immediately stopped talking, dissolving and disappearing from his sight. Dust puffed, honestly at that moment he didn't even care so much that perhaps he had offended his brother's spirit. All he wanted to do at that moment was sleep, but of course it was a luxury he could not afford. The most significant words in the brief conversation he had with Nightmare seemed to appear and disappear in front his eyes, haunting him like the ghosts of his past. "Dust this doesn't work, you're too weak. You're starting to become a dead weight for the team" "what?! Boss, what are you saying?! I have the same level of LOVE as the others, in fact, i'd rather say that i'm even better than all of them put together!" "That may have been true until a few months ago, but now? Come on, stop avoiding the truth, you know it too. The others are making progress and getting better and stronger every day, but you? I can't remember the last time i saw you take training seriously" Dust gritted his teeth remembering those words, part of him knew that Nightmare was right, but that didn't take away the fact that it pissed him off, not even a little bit. "I want to give you a chance Dust, since you have always been one of my best fighters. You have one week to increase your power by at least 5 levels, if you don't succeed and you show me that you are no longer useful to the team, i will make sure that the word dust is not the only thing that represents your name. Did i made myself clear?" God, the need to hit him, to wipe that constant air of superiority from his face had never been so strong. Dust could still feel the slight tremor in his hands, a sign that he needed to kill someone, to gain more exp, now. He got up, opening the door of the room with the simple use of his magic, his hands still had a slight tremor. Surprisingly, however, he was not the only one present in the corridor. "Damn, what's wrong? Bad day D?" The two-eyed skeleton took an annoyed look at what was theoretically close enough to be called his friend. As close as a colleague of killing and destruction could be called a friend. The other could honestly consider himself lucky enough to tolerate his presence enough not to kill him right there on the spot. Killer's almost permanent smile did nothing more than expand to the discontent of the other. Ignoring the clear death threats that the other had thrown at him with that simple glance, the skeleton with black tears broke away from the wall where he had previously rested, hastening his step, walking alongside the other. "So, judging by your bad mood i assume that the boss has spoken to you" Dust couldn't help but raise his eyes to the sky, a verse of mockery came out of his tightened mouth. Obviously Killer already knew everything. After all, he was literally Nightmare's little dog. Dust had repeatedly wondered whether there was anything more behind the scene of the boss and his loyal subordinate. He had seen them, the signs and marks on the body of the other. He would not know whether to interpret them as positive or negative signs, considering that each time it seemed that Killer had fought against some kind of beast. However, judging by the usual slightly less cold smile with which the other one returned to his room each time, Dust had ventured the hypothesis that the encounters between the two were more than consensual on both sides. Not that he gave a damn, if one fuck was enough to keep Nightmare's bad temper at bay, then as far as he was concerned they could spend whole days locked in their rooms. The hooded skeleton shook his head slightly, it would have been better if certain thoughts had never taken shape in his head. Regardless of the lack of cooperation in making conversation, Killer continued to talk to him. "you know, i wouldn't worry too much, i mean, if you start to do something right away, maybe you might have a chance to survive" sometimes Dust wondered why he allowed such idiots to consume his precious time. That conversation was getting him nowhere, as far as he was concerned, Killer at that moment was more than useless to him. In fact, all he was doing was increasing his boiling irritation. Dust fasted his pace, in the hope that the other one would understand the antiphon and decide to give him a break, at least for once. Killer chuckled at this, but understood the message, stopping in his footsteps, continuing to observe how the other one hastened to increase, one step after the other, the distance that separated them. "I know a way that will make you become stronger" Dust stopped immediately on the spot, his gaze, although the other could not see him, still seemed impassive; nevertheless, a spark of interest had begun to shine in the luminous irises. Slowly, he turned, half of his face was hidden by the blood coloured scarf slightly worn by time and monster dust. "Speak" Killer smiled, knowing he had him wrapped right around his finger. The skeleton took his time, reducing the distance that Dust had created a few moments earlier into slow, relaxed steps. He stopped right in front of him. The two of them stared into each other's eyes for very long moments, as if threatening the other one to give in first. In the end, Killer shrugged his shoulders. One of the hands constantly hidden in the pockets of his sweatshirt came out, revealing together the contents he was hiding. Dust looked skeptically at the small piece of paper the other was handing him. He looked up, staring at the other with a blatant irritation, mixed with a hidden temptation to murder. "what the hell am i supposed to do with a piece of paper?" "heh, go to the address on it, once there, tell him what you came for" despite the seed of doubt still clearly present in his gaze, Dust finally decided to take it. The letters that were written on it made his mouth twitch in a bitter and annoyed grimace. "They say that the guy who lives there is able to give you everything you want, but like everything else, this also has a price" Killer's voice was reduced to nothing more than a whisper. They danced temptingly to the side of his head, his warm breath almost sensually caressing the area where his ear should have been. "I advise you to be careful Dust, they say his words are particularly...sharp" Killer's laughter continued for several moments along the walls of the dark corridor, even when the skeleton was no longer present. Dust continued to stare at the slightly crumpled piece of paper in his hand. The words "AU: Vampiretale" followed by a series of coordinates apparently indecipherable to him swayed slightly in front his eyes. Dust clenched his fist, watching as the paper crumpled on itself with a slight protest sound. There was no way such a universe like that really existed, let alone a guy who could give you everything you want. Killer had simply mocked him, it was certainly not the first time. Yet why had his soul started beating at a slightly faster pace? Like some part of him really believed a bullshit like that? Doubt seemed to continue to prevail in his mind, stifling his other emotions, yet he could not deny that a part of him was curious. Dust hurriedly slipped the piece of paper into his pocket, starting to walk again as if nothing had happened. His mind seemed like a tornado in a storm, more violent than usual. There was only one way to find out whether or not Killer had lied to him, and as much as he wasn't so excited about it, he realized that his options were not that wide..

To be continued...

-------------------------------------------------------

|So...I decided to write a story about one of my favourite ships. Honestly, these two should deserve a lot more attention and love, so i hope i can get other people to appreciate this magnificent ship!^^|

| CREDITS:

Dust!Sans belongs to: ask-dusttale

Vampire!Sans belongs to: vampireprinceloki

Killer!Sans belongs to: rahafwabas

Nightmare!Sans belongs to: jokublog |

|Comments, likes and reblogs are really appreciated! Always feel free to tell me what you think about my stories. I DON'T own any of the characters used in the story, credits go to the respective authors listed above. Do not repost on any other platform. Nothing in the story represents canon facts, this is a work of fiction, please respect the creators of the characters. See you in the next chapter~♡|

#undertale au #undertale ship #undertale ships #sanscest #nightmare sans #nightkiller #killernight #vampire x dust #vampire sans #dust sans #vampiredust #undertale

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annazverina · 4 years ago

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2020 Letter to the World

In 2015, I began writing annual Letters to the World to reflect on what I learned during the year. I shared my first one publicly in 2018, and since then I discuss certain topics that were relevant during the year and what they taught me. Enjoy.

***

I typically don’t start writing my annual Letter to the World until October or November at the earliest, but this year has already been a huge whirlwind for the entire world. I started writing this in April and edited it until the day it was posted. At that point, we had been in isolation for a month. A few weeks later, yet another revolution sparked within the United States. As soon as the riots and protests started, I knew this would be the hardest letter I’ve ever written.

This year I will discuss coronavirus, racism, social media, and the importance of face to face communication.

Around the time I finished writing last year’s letter, a new illness was taking over Wuhan, China. This new, mysterious strain of coronavirus was infecting people left and right. But like any other American, I didn’t worry about it, though I kept track of it on Twitter. I remember the time when there were only 600 cases, and it hadn’t spread outside of Wuhan yet. Man, those were the days. It’s amazing how much the world changed within a month, a week, and a few days.

A month before isolation, my friends and I drove down to San Antonio for the TMEA convention. Tens of thousands of music educators in the same building. At that same time, San Antonio had its first cases of COVID-19. Less than a month later, SXSW was cancelled. That’s when I realized that this was becoming a big deal. The same day the WHO declared the pandemic, my university announced it was moving to online instruction for what would eventually be the rest 2020. My first day of quarantine was 14 March. I began vlogging occasionally to document the experience.

I barely left the house during quarantine. For the first five months, the only reasons I left were to go walking, move out of the dorm, or to pick up food. My family took a trip to Colorado right before I left for school, which was our first time eating at a restaurant in 150 days. None of my family or our friends officially tested positive. At school, my roommate did, which led to a two week isolation for me. It really bothered me that those who could stay home weren’t. I get that the United States was founded with freedom in mind (even though we’re not free yet), but I don’t understand why people weren’t willing to give up a little bit of freedom and wear a piece of cloth on their face. Sometimes, you have to give up freedom for the sake of the big picture. I learned that many Americans don’t understand that. The United States shut down too late and reopened too early. Those above us care too much about money. The economy is important, but so are people. Human lives matter, including Black lives.

We all know what happened.

Every January in elementary school, we learned about the Civil Rights Movement. However, they did not mention that racism was still an ongoing problem. They implied that it was a thing of the past. God, I wish it was. I don’t think it ever will be, but the things we can do to eliminate it as much as possible are promoting anti-racism and teaching those who come after us that no matter where someone comes from, they can’t form any opinions about them until they know what’s in their heart.

That entire week after the murder was very overwhelming. It made me wonder what kind of families racist people grew up in to think that it’s okay to not be good to everyone. I live my life with one thing in mind all the time: be good to myself and others. And I think everyone else, regardless of socioeconomic background, race, religion, whatever, should do the same. And we must teach those who come after to follow those footsteps.

There was never a class in school dedicated to being good citizens. They just yelled at the students doing bad things to stop, but never explained why it was bad, nor did they tell them how to be better. Common human decency is something that should be taught K-12, and I honestly think it’s more important than STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). We cannot force the students to rely on their parents for something like this, because some parents are uneducated, some are not good people, some suck at parenting, and way too many children in the world don’t even have parents. Schools are the ones that need to teach kids how to be good… all the way through.

WE MUST BE THE CHANGE. Those currently in power appear to not be doing anything, so those who want change must RISE UP. For us civilians, signing petitions and donating is great, and being good, like I mentioned above, is also something we should do. We must change our behavior for the better. We cannot rely on other people to do stuff for us. We must do it ourselves. Change is not a process that can happen over night. So far it’s taken decades/centuries of work, but someday we will be there. Even if we don’t live to see it, the work we do now will help our future descendants.

After George Floyd’s murder and the explosion of social media, I was super overwhelmed with everything I was reading. I decided to take the month of June off of Twitter, and man, I’m glad I did. Social media in general is a toxic place to be, and cutting out Twitter and Facebook was healthy for me. In terms of toxicity, Twitter and Facebook, in my opinion, are the worst platforms. On Twitter, it’s hard to control what you see in your feed. Most of the tweets in my feed are from people I don’t follow. They’re tweets I never signed up to see, and they flood my feed with posts that sometimes feel like propaganda. Sometimes I feel like celebrities are worshipped like a deity. I often feel like I’m not allowed to have my own personal beliefs on Twitter, rather I have to conform to what the loudmouthed users believe. If I don’t, I’m racist, misogynistic, homophobic, etc. Facebook is similar, but most of the people I follow are my friends or family, so I can’t unfollow them.

Surprisingly, I like Instagram. Reposting is very uncommon, and posting more than once a day is unofficially considered spam, therefore people have to put all their politics into one single post, which I can scroll past and never see again. You never see posts from people you don’t follow, (except for the occasional advert) and overall I think people use it mostly to share photos of their lives. Most of the flaws that come from Instagram are the people who use it, but it’s easy to avoid them.

My brother shared some statistics with me recently. Only about 10 percent of Twitter users tweet on a normal basis. About 40 percent of people in the United States have a Twitter account. With that in mind, theoretically, the loud mouthed Twitter users only make up about 4 percent of the U.S. population. Or… something like that. I don’t know how accurate these statistics are, nor do I know where my brother got them from. Regardless, social media does not represent everyone in the world. Not even close.

The nice thing about living in a world of social media is being able to keep in touch with friends and family while quarantined. This whole quarantine process made me ever so grateful for face to face meetings. Some people believe no one will ever want to work again once everything ends. That’s not true. I think most people like working. Being able to leave the house every day and do something, even if it’s something you don’t like, is what keeps us sane. When it came time to return to school, I was initially really mad due to COVID. I ended up being okay with it. My school did a fantastic job at keeping COVID cases down for the entire semester (we only had an average of 20 cases a week, compared to some schools who had hundreds). Not only that, but I was able to see my family away from home again. Even though we wore masks and social distanced most of the time, things felt somewhat normal.

If you are the kind of person who could care less if you see your friends and coworkers in person, don’t forget that most people don’t feel that way. It’s hard to have group conversations on Zoom. You certainly can’t have a party where multiple conversations happen. Don’t assume everyone feels the same way about something. Let people have their social gatherings when it’s acceptable again, and don’t belittle people who feel different from you.

Everyone must do the right thing… all the time. Even when no one is watching. It’s our job to develop the habit of being good to ourselves and to others regardless. If we do that, we’ll be able to go back to a normal-ish life sooner. Lin-Manuel Miranda called America a “great unfinished symphony” in Hamilton. America, you great unfinished symphony, we still have unfinished business to take care of. The change we need won’t come tomorrow. The amount of work we have before we reach the double bar line will take generations to get to. We cannot allow a repeat sign. We must start today. May 2021 be a year of healing.

#2020 #just reflecting #reflections #fandom #lams #destiel #phan #johnlock #important #healing #beautiful #covid #fuck covid #blacklivesmatter #acceptance #respect #quarantine #zoom #2021

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iamfallinforeverything · 5 years ago

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First Love (3/4)

Sorry that it took me so long, but the past few days were actually more stressful than I thought. Anyway, here it is finally. Hope you like it 🤗 Also there is def going to be a fourth part. I wanted to finish this little series with this part then it would have taken me even longer to finish that part and I didn’t wanted that

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Fandom: The Vampire Diaries, The Originals (Kol Mikaelson)

Summary: The rest of the Mikaelson family learn about your little problem with leaving the property.

Words: + 1.9k (I missed 2k by just a few words 😒)

Warnings: swearing, i can’t think of anything else tbh

Last Time:

I didn't really remember how I got into the room either. All I knew was that Elijah had helped me. And after that, it was all just a blur. Damn alcohol.

And please, don’t ask me where the stupid blanket went that Elijah put around my shoulders because I don’t have a fucking clue.

***

When I woke up, my head was pounding. I've rarely had such a headache. But I knew exactly what helped to relieve a headache. Hopefully there would be something like what I needed.

Exhausted, I stretched and looked around. Slowly the memories of yesterday came back. So my mood sank somewhere in the area of the earth's core. I had absolutely no desire for what was coming to me in the near future. Ha, especially how should I explain to my parents that I was stuck here? Hopefully someone of my ancestors had already done so. I don't know how, but maybe I got lucky.

Why were my ancestors such assholes anyway? I hadn't done anything bad to them. Yeah okay, except for asking for help and maybe I had been a little bit naughty and ungrateful once or twice for the life I had. But who hadn't sometimes?

Defeanded I finally got up. I had no choice anyway and I needed something for the headache. Besides, if I ever wanted to be free again, I had to find a way to turn the Mikaelson siblings back into humans. And somehow I would have to convince Niklaus that being human wasn't as bad as he thought.

Surprisingly, I even wore yesterday's dress. It had just changed back to its original color. My father's spells didn't last very long. In the trunk of my car there should theoretically still be my suitcase. Maybe I could bring it here with a simple bringing spell.

A small gust of wind opened all doors for the transport and a few minutes later my suitcase was in front of me. So my car was open again. Thank God. It wouldn't help me though.

Quickly I changed my dress for my favourite trousers and top, slipped into some socks and put on my favourite shoes. I combed my hair once and breathed deeply.

At some point I had to get out of this room anyway. It's best if I just get it over.

One last time I went through my hair and made my way out. I immediately heard voices from downstairs and made my way there. I had to get through it now.

Carefully I went to the room where the voices came from. Immediately everyone became quiet when they saw me. Everyone was there, even Kol. Somehow my heart became heavy when I saw his smile disappear when he looked at me, but I just pushed that feeling aside. Right now I had far worse problems than understanding this strange situation with Kol.

"What does the little witch still want here?" Niklaus asked and pointed at me with a downward hand gesture.

"She can't leave.", Elijah replied and smiled at me friendly. At least someone.

"Pardon?"

"My ancestors bound me to this property. I can't leave until I've fulfilled my promise.", I explained.

"Oh, wonderful." mumbled Finn, rolled his eyes and sighed. "I'm off. Your problem."

I rolled with my eyes. Finn was definitely someone who was extremely annoying. I'd like to turn that jerk back into a human being. Maybe then he wouldn't be such an asshole anymore.

"So now we get to entertain the little witch and help her destroy our lives?" Niklaus asked and looked at his brothers.

"She's stuck here. Either way, she's not getting out of here. We can help her find a way back out. We owe it to her.", Elijah replied.

"You and your stupid honor feeling Elijah.", Niklaus rolled his eyes. Kol was completely silent and looked apathetic to the floor.

Silently I looked back and forth between the brothers. They were wildly arguing. As if I had chosen to be stuck here. I could think of at least a thousand things I would rather do than rot here on this property. Let's be realistic. Finding the cure for vampirism was very unrealistc. How many witches had tried and failed before me? Why should I of all people be able to find such a cure?

At some point I just turned around, annoyed, and left the three of them behind. I didn't care. So I need to help myself. I left the building and wandered around in the garden. Maybe I should call my parents first before I did anything else.

I looked for a quiet place and got my cell phone from my pocket. That would be fun for sure. I sat down in the grass and dialed my mother's contact. With trembling hands I held my cell phone to my ear.

"Y/N?", my mother answered the phone.

"Mommy.", I started crying as soon as I heard her voice.

"What happened?"

"I'm stuck here. Our ancestors tied me to the property and I am too weak to break the spell. I can't leave, mom.", I cried.

"Why? What happened Y/N?"

And then I told her about yesterday. About Esther and the Mikaelson siblings. About my promise and about Maila.

"Oh Y/N... "You've really screwed yourself, my love.", was the first thing my mother said.

I laughed and wiped the tears from my cheeks.

"I know.", I replied.

"Good. I'll talk to our circle now and get back to you, okay? Don't be afraid, you are strong. You can stand up to them if you have to."

"I know, Mom. But I just want to go home."

"I know, honey, I know. I'll help you. We can do this."

"Thanks, Mom."

"See you later. Call you soon."

"See you later, Mom.”

She hung up and I took my phone from my ear and put it next to me. I took a deep breath and wiped my face. Only I could shit like that.

***

A little time passed and I was still bound to the Mikaelson property. And I hadn't really gotten any further with that either.

I had the spell that Esther cast back then. I knew what she had used and what she had bound the spell to, but it didn't really help me.

I didn't have an antidote or a removal spell.

Elijah helped me where he could. He would get me ingredients, talk to other witches, update my parents. I had made friends with him and he was the only one I trusted here. I had not seen Finn since he left on my first day here, which I was very happy about. Klaus avoided me and with Rebekah I had already made the one or other girls evening. I got along well with her, but I could not really trust her that much. She was too loyal to Klaus for that.

And Kol was a whole other situation. I could still feel this weird bond between us. It was like our souls were bound together in ways that made no sense. Why would a witch's soul be sired to a vampire's? Who would do such a thing? Besides, soul spells were terribly complicated and hard spells. They always involved a great sacrifice. Who would willingly make that sacrifice? It was stupid. Anyone who cast a soul spell was just terribly stupid.

But today was my father's birthday and I was still stuck here. I couldn't be there and they couldn't get to me. I was bound to the property and my family was kept away. They couldn't even come close. I couldn't even see them through the barrier. Fortunately, there were other ways to see my family's faces. It was already dark and I was standing outside in the garden, one of my favorite places here. I held my mobile phone up to my face. My parents smiled into their camera and showed me everyone. It was nice to see everyone, but I just wanted to go home even more.

There had to be another way. My ancestors were little beasts, but they weren't thtat cruel. There was a loophole, there always was. I just had to find it.

After my parents and I hung up, I wandered around the garden a bit, helped some sick plants and just enjoying the fresh air.

But some time later I spotted Kol. He was standing in front of a flowerbed with an old type of flower. They were my favourite flowers and I often stood in front of the field myself.

I don't know what it was, but something drew me to him. I had a strong need to be near him.

Carefully I walked towards him and just stood next to him. That was enough for me, even if it did not calm this annoying desire.

Kol sighed when I came to stand next to him. He could feel it as well as I did.

"You are so different from her.", Kol sighed without looking at me. I knew immediately that he meant Maila.

"What do you mean?", I asked.

"You look like her. Everything about you looks like her, but your personality, what makes you who you are, is so different. She was quiet, withdrawn, good. But she could also rebel, stand up for what she felt was right, fight for what she loved."

I could do that too. Kol just hadn't seen it yet because he always avoided me.

"And you are so different. I can't describe it, but your whole personality is different."

"Is that bad?"

"No. It's just...", he didn't finish, instead he turned away from me and ran a few steps towards the house.

I could feel the soul spell right away. My heart immediately grew heavy and contracted in pain.

"Stupid soul spell.", I gasped and put my hand on my chest, right where my heart was sitting.

I looked at Kol. He had a posture similar to mine. Once you gave in, it was hard to take your distance again.

"You feel that too?", Kol asked and turned to me. Just the fact that he looked at me made my heart lighten again.

"Yes. I'm pretty sure it's a soul spell. Someone has bound our souls together so we can find each other again in every life."

"In every life?"

"There is more than just this Kol.", I smiled at him.

He just sighed and came one step closer. My heart became a little lighter again.

"There was nothing like this enchantment between Maila and me. It never felt that way between us. So why is it between the two of us like that?", Kol became angry.

His whole look and nature changed. He stood up straight, stuck out his chest and pulled his eyebrows together.

"I don't know. Soul spells require great sacrifice. Not many practice these spells."

And then it looked like a light was switched on. Like someone had found the last missing piece of the puzzle

"Of course.", he muttered and shook his head.

His posture loosened again. I relaxed, as well.

And then he just disappeared. Fucking vampire speed. But this time my heart didn't hurt. Kol had a different intention this time with his disappearance.

I waited a moment for him to return. He didn't come back.

Sighing, I turned around and looked into the field of flowers in front of me. No flower was like the other and that is why I loved this kind of flower so much. Every flower was different, unique, but somehow they were similar.

I wonder what kind of "enlightenment" Kol had before he left. I would probably never learn about it anyway.

But who the hell would link our souls together? Who would bind us together? Especially why?

And then it clicked for me as well and I wanted to kick my own ass. That I didn't think of it before.

#the vampire diaries imagine #the vampire diaries #the vampire diares imagines #the originals #the originals imagine #the originals imagines #kol mikaelson #kol mikaelson imagines #kol mikaelson imagine #elijah mikaelson #elijah mikealson imagine #klaus mikaelson #klaus imagine #First Love #lills pieces

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aziraphaleandcrowley · 4 years ago

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Tldr: me word vomiting lots of random emotions and thoughts I’ve been having about my life. Would put under a read more but tumblr mobile is shite. Ignore if you wanna, I just needed to throw this into the world cos I’ve been so socially distant from everyone in my life that I haven’t spoken to anyone about this, and I’m not sure I would’ve even if I actually replied to my friends more than once in a blue moon

...............................................................

Me: honestly convinced I’m never gonna find romantic love cos I’m ace and probably aro - at the very least I’ve never been attracted to/interested in someone enough to want to date them and the whole being sexually attracted to someone and looking a people and wanting to have sex with them sounds fake and doesn’t resonate with me at all.

Me: is theoretically a very sex favourable and positive person but the idea of sex with someone I’m not dating is just so weird to me but damn do I wish there was someone who knew me and my likes and dislikes to be intimate with

Me: is super duper disappointed to not experience love/sex but is simultaneously doing literally zero to create opportunities cos I just don’t speak to anyone outside of my family and colleagues, and the one single guy I had any interest in at work is gay and has left.

Me: reads fanfic constantly and I’m now wondering whether it is beneficial in distracting me from my loneliness or enhancing it. I think both. I think I need a break from fanfic at the very least but honestly don’t know what I’d do without it cos it’s been my go to hobby for so many years and I legit read for 30+ hours a week and that’s soo much time to fill???

Me: really doesn’t want to have kids in the future cos I don’t understand kids in the slightest and pregnancy is terrifying and I still feel like a child myself and I know this is something which may change in the future but I don’t think so and my mum bringing up wanting grandkids on a near weekly basis recently is kinda starting to put me on edge cos I’m already starting to feel like a disappointment cos I’m an only child and I’m the only opportunity for grandkids - which I know is ridiculous but it how I feel and that’s valid

Me: with my grandad in hospital (he’s gonna be fine, he would be out of hospital if he actually did what the doctors and nurses said about doing exercises etc) it has made me think about the family I do have which is: my mum, my dad, my grandad and my uncle. That’s it. I have two other uncles and several cousins etc who I see maybe once a year but they don’t really count.

Me: has a handful of really amazing friends who I haven’t spoken to in months and I don’t even really know why. They’ve all messaged me and I just havent replied. I’m not trying to actively push them away like I did with a friend in the past who I just felt drained with in the end whenever we interacted, but honestly every time I get a message I just feel exhausted at the prospect of ongoing social interaction. And it’s silly cos I know exactly the kind of thing I could message people about to start a conversation, like I could talk to Emily about finally watching Hamilton and how it’s been two weeks and I’m still listening to song on repeat and how she was right about how good it is and yet it’s been a week and a half since I’ve thought about sending that message and yet I haven’t and just uggghhhh @me

Me: is horrified by the idea of being alone for life romantically, and knowing that between my ever dwindling family and me not talking to my friends that being alone if more likely that I ever want to think about

Me: wants to live a happy life of my own but don’t know how to. I want to move out but can’t afford to on my own and it’s super impractical when I can live with my parents for £20 per week for food. But god forbid if anything happens to one of my parents I’m gonna be stuck at home forever cos I have so little family and my parents have literally no one else to turn to.

Me: wants to do a masters in gender and sexuality studies writing about representations of asexuality on screen but I know I could write and entire book which would be great for phd level but I missed the deadline to apply cos June was crazy and all I’ve been doing recently is working 6 days a week then working on my car for a day before working another 6 days. And even if I did a masters and maybe eventually a phd I have no idea what I’d actually do with it? I have so little ambition for anything right now and the future is just a void of mystery in which I don’t even know what I want???

Me: is starting to think I might actually be kinda depressed. I’ve thought it on and off for longer than I’ll ever admit but I’d do quizzes online and they’d say I wasn’t so I didn’t really think too much more about it (and yes I know an online quiz is shit and means nothing but there’s no one I would want to talk to about it cos I feel like I have to be strong for the people around me and shit but yeah). I know I’m not happy, but that doesn’t necessarily equal depressed. All I know is I’m uninspired and I feel kinda empty. Doing stuff I do enjoy, if I actually do it, just makes me feel tired half the time so I end up trying to nap instead but then I don’t sleep great either, waking up in the night or when my dad is getting ready for work so I very rarely get a solid 8 hours of sleep. I’m irritable a lot too...

Me: even if I am depressed what does it matter? Like it does matter ofc, but my mum is on media for depression and it’s taking her weeks to get an appointment with the doctor to try and get a different dosage. I’m not a danger to myself or others, I’m unhappy, but who isn’t with COVID going on and there are people who need mental health services more than me. Which is really hypocritical of me to say cos I’ve told my best friend so many times that trauma and mental health etc aren’t competitions of who has it worse but it’s the truth. Also my mum and colleagues access the only mental health resources in town and I do not want to deal with interactions with people I know whilst trying to improve my mental health.

Me: I don’t know how many times I’ve said it in posts like this but something needs to change. I was set on a good course at the start of the year. I was getting out, socialising, doing new things, inspired to cook, learn to new music and change my lifestyle, and then COVID happened and since all of that has slowly drained away and I need to find a change to revitalise that. I’d hoped getting back to having driving lessons and working on my car would be a start, and to be fair it’s been less than two week since I restarted doing that, so maybe I can find a new spark of inspiration still. Within a couple of months I will pass my driving test. Hopefully it won’t take much longer than that to get my car finished and on the road (hopefully it’ll take two weeks to finish putting the rear end back together so we can finally get my car back on four wheels, then it’s just lots of little jobs which hopefully won’t take too long). The weather is supposed to be decent this week so I might work up the effort to go for a walk down the fields which always seems to relax me a little. And the cinema reopens at the end of the month so I’d finally have an excuse to get out of the house (I know COVID is not over and things should not be going back to normal any time soon, but I need to do something other than go work for 4 hours everyday and spend 90% of my time at home and most of that time in bed because I have nowhere else to go). I don’t know what else I can be hopeful for in the coming weeks but that’s a start and just listing them out here has made me feel a little better so.

I keep thinking about Patrick from Schitt s Creek, leaving his hometown to escape a life which didn’t fit him and finding everything he needed in a tiny town in rural Canada, and wishing I could do the same, but I know I’d just end up even more alone because I am not a social person in the slightest and don’t kno how to be despite knowing that me making changes is the only way to improve myself.

And then a line from Hamilton about death is easy, living is harder, and I want to make it abundantly clear that I do not in any way, shape or form want to die, but living is hard and I have an easy life. I have enough money that I was able to loan my dad the money to buy a car, and still have more savings after that than he does, I have a good that if not particularly well paid I do enjoy and I’m good at, my family live me in their own way, even tho I feel that part of my social distance and reluctantance towards others is because no one in my family is particularly socially inclined.

Maybe I just really need a hug.

I don’t even know where I’m going with this anymore but I just had so much build of of words in my brain that they had to go somewhere and this has turned into my go to word vomit place

Things will get better. I don’t know when or how but they will. But they won’t if I don’t get enough sleep for a starters. So off to bed I go. If you’ve read all this thank you, I guess, for listening cos I’m not sharing this with anyone irl just yet. And I’m sorry this is so long but tumblr mobile doesn’t let me put in a read now but I want this out in the world even tho no one will see it

#anyway ignore me #long post for ts #sorry #tmi #rebecca speaks #again #with the amount of posts i jave like this on here im really starting to think i need to find an actual person to discuss stuff with #not sure what therapy options there are in the uk cos all my knowledge come from here which is so us centric #but i think im gonna do some research #tomorrow tho #long post #personal

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noheroes-allowed · 4 years ago

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10/22

I’m hoping that I’m actually doing ok and not bottling anything in. I’m thinking about the last time I liked someone and how I made really stupid decisions trying to get over him that were unhealthy and made everything worse. and I was so emotional back then too and so insecure and naive, and to be fair to my younger self, I still am. but I hope I’ve matured enough to just handle this situation better than I have in the past. I’m really hoping the way that I’m feeling right now isn’t just a part of me lying to myself bc I can’t deal with an emotional breakdown later down the line. overall though, I can’t believe I actually did it. and I think I was probably able to bc it came in bits and pieces, like our conversation last thursday just made me more aware of how he would probably respond and, it was truly just me needing to admit it and get it off my chest rather than getting anxious over the anticipation of his answer. which I’m hoping is better than if I told him earlier without knowing these things about him already bc maybe I can reassure myself that it’s bc he’s not looking for anything with anyone really and he gets really excited about the time before anyone admits anything rather than something being wrong about me. like him saying that before I had to say anything makes me believe him more bc if I admitted it and then he said that stuff I would’ve thought we was just trying to soften the blow. anyways I hope I’m ok. I was so close again to not saying it but I was like no, if I put it off again I’m gonna hate myself and regret not doing it again. so I told him in front of his house after our walk.

(side note, the walk was super nice. we talked for like ~1.5 hours and went down this dark trail that was not lit at all, and once we got to the end, he wanted to keep going bc I think he wanted us to keep talking. but we had to turn back for safety/road visibility reasons. like he told me about what he wants to do in life and I really like him for pursuing something that isn’t traditionally successful and he comes from a place of privilege to be able to do that, but also the thing that he wants to do with his life would’ve sent me swooning (if I hadn’t already started getting over him). but still, like I love him for that, and I love his passions and what he wants to achieve, and just talking to him bc he understands how I feel about not just wanting to work for some company and it doesn’t seem like more people in segc do even though theoretically we all should. and I told him how I really liked the work this one company was doing in dc with data science consulting for nonprofits and the public sector and he was like maybe we’ll cross paths someday. (I hope they do. I hope I run into him and he tells me about how he took his kids canoeing last weekend or how his work is going at whatever agency he’s running or how his master’s is going.) he talked about the last time he felt this way was high school senior year when he didn’t know where his life is going. like, it just felt nice to be able to converse with someone who understands how I’m feeling and to hear someone else’s worries or uncertainty too. idk, it was just a really good conversation, and he said it was nice too. I had suggested us to play overcooked bc I didn’t want him to think that all I ever did was talk about deep things? bc like yeah I love that stuff and connecting with people but sometimes I can just chill too. but the walk was the best part. also I brought those little jelly cups with me bc I wanted to share something with him. I am cute.)

anyways yeah I told him. like I just had to do it and get it over with and stop sitting on it for my sake. and I do regret some of the things I didn’t say or didn’t phrase in the way I could’ve, but I think I said enough of what was necessary. like I asked him if I could ask him something and then he suspected after I looked at him and didn’t saying anything and then laughed nervously. but yeah, the gist was I told him I wanted us to still be friends but I needed to get it off my chest and just move past it and reframe our dynamic in my head. and I didn’t really expect anything from him based on our conversation last week. and that the thing that scared me the most was him distancing himself from me and not rejecting me. but he reassured me that he wouldn’t treat me any differently. and I told him I still wanted to talk about the things we talked about before. to make me believe him he was like what should we do next. but yeah we’re going to the cat cafe next week lol

to be very honest though, I obviously wish he liked me back. but ultimately this is better for me bc I don’t need it to build up more intensely the more time I spend with him or misinterpret things bc I know I’ll just end up more hurt later on. but I feel like it’s weird bc he’s the person I’ve liked for awhile now, and the person before that was complicated, and the other person during that was complicated, and the person before that was high school. and I can’t tell if it’s part of me maturing or if I’m bottling things up and not dealing with it, or if it’s bc I kind of got my answer indirectly last week already, but I feel ok. I did like him a lot though, and I feel like I got to know him at a level I haven’t with other people I’ve liked. bc with *****, so much of it was the novelty and all the new experiences I was going through and having to leave people and just not being ready to start over. like he was a good friend and we had deep talks too, but we didn’t have that much time together to know each other in other respects. and with ****, I still can’t comprehend what was going on between us. like I knew her the most for sure, but it’s difficult to compare in this situation. keith is still confusing sometimes, but the keith I know, there are things I admire about him, and things that annoy me about him lol I know he’s not perfect, and things I like hearing from him. idk I just feel like I know this person, or at least the sides he shows me, and not just my idea of this person. so I think that’s why I wish he liked me back. but I’m also relatively ok he doesn’t bc I will (hopefully) still be spending and enjoying that time with him. I think the most I can compare him to is ****, who I got over and still hung out with and helped him pick out a valentine’s day card for another girl lol.

I think also, to be very honest here, I wish like the thought could’ve crossed his mind. like removing everything he said last week about relationships and commitment, he still has crushed on other girls. and I just can’t help but be insecure and wish that maybe if I was prettier or more attractive, the thought would’ve crossed his mind. it sucks, I wish I didn’t feel that way.

also I have this newfound respect for people who have ever admitted anything to me bc wow I couldn’t even say the words. arguably though, one of them was at the end of a program and we weren’t gonna see each other so he had like nothing to lose. and the other one, I think I was giving mixed signals to which I felt bad about, but I really wanted friends and I didn’t want to be labeled as *****’s gf in the org, and I wanted to be my own person that people got to know. yeah I think that was bad timing bc I might’ve ended up liking him. and he told me relatively early before anything intensified. anyway. I have more respect. I do think I had more to lose though bc keith is my lifeline in ithaca unfortunately and I would make some poor decisions if I didn’t have him to hang out with.

I think that’s all I have for now. reminder to my future self, there will be ups and downs and please be nice to yourself.

#remarks #lol 'I didn't even tell anyone. I mean I didn't even with you. but I've never told anyone I've liked them before'#'can you promise me you won't be weird around me?' 'yeah I won't treat you any differently.#like if you can see in my mind you'll see that it's a fact we'll still hang out.'#I asked him if he had any idea at all and he was like yeah little thoughts just based on our conversation topics. and I was like excuse me #you bring those things up too #and he was like yeah some of those conversations were probably not pleasant for you then. but like it was actually fine #bc I want him to be happy. and it made me happy seeing how excited he was about his dates. idk what does that say about me #that's part of what made me doubt my feelings for him #I'm just fucking wary about how I'm handling this though like I thought I was doing ok sept/oct and then I just fell apart #bc there were just too many emotions I was feeling and not completely understanding and processing #so I really hope this is not a repeat of that. pls don't let it be a repeat of that

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cleocat246 · 4 years ago

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Star Trek Chapter 3

Summary: Hailey Pike, a Starfleet officer and daughter goes through Life and Space while trying to help as many people as she can. With species and events trying to destroy mankind and everything in existence. She has to save the people she loves and also the universe with the help of new friends and crew members.

==========================================

"Without transporters, we can't beam off the ship, can't assist Vulcan, and can't do our job. Mister Kirk, Mister Sulu, and Engineer Olson will space-jump from the shuttle. You will land on that machine they lowered into the atmosphere that's scrambling our gear. You'll get inside. You'll disable it, then you'll beam back to the ship. Mister Spock, I'm leaving you in command of the Enterprise," My father says to us as we all speed down a corridor to a shuttle, "Once we have transport capabilities and communications back up, you'll contact Starfleet and report what the hell's going on here. And if all else fails, fall back, rendezvous with the fleet in the Laurentian system. Kirk, I'm promoting you to First Officer."

"What?" Jim responds in surprise.

"Captain, please, I apologize. The complexities of Human pranks escape me." Spock says, slightly perplexed and hurt.

"It's not a prank, Spock. And I'm not the Captain, you are. Let's go." Before going into the elevator, my father reassures, "Hailey, you take over Sulu's position, please." making me nod in understanding.

"Sir, after we knock out that drill, what happens to you?" Jim asks, also getting on next to my father as well as Sulu.

"Oh, I guess you'll have to come and get me," My father replied before turning to Spock and me, "Careful with the ship, Spock. She's brand new. Oh, and my daughter too. Hailey, don't rip anyone's heads off." The door then closes, and I shake my head as Spock starts back for the Bridge.

(3rd person)

Once back on the Bridge, Spock takes the Captain's chair as Hailey takes the pilot's chair. Spock then starts talking on the comm, "Doctor Puri, report."

A different voice that wasn't Doctor Puri came on, "It's McCoy. Doctor Puri was on deck six. He's dead."

"Then, you have just inherited his responsibility as Chief Medical Officer," Spock replies.

"Yeah, tell me something I don't know."

Hailey was getting everything ready on her console when the info for the three men of the away team came up on the screen. The three sensors popped up, making both Chekov and the girl get ready.

"Away team is entering the atmosphere, sir. Twenty thousand meters." Chekov says, working on his console some more.

"Approaching the platform at fifty-eight hundred meters," Hailey said, looking up at the screen.

"Kirk to Enterprise." Jim announces over the comm while hurling through the air, "Distance to target, five thousand meters."

"Forty-six hundred meters from the platform," Chekov says.

"Forty-two hundred meters to target," Sulu says, also hurling down through the atmosphere.

"Four thousand meters," Jim says.

"Three thousand meters," Sulu says.

"Three thousand meters."

"Two thousand meters."

"Pull your chute," Sulu says while pulling his chute along with Jim, but Olson doesn't pull his.

"Two thousand meters!" The engineer says, still hurtling toward his destination.

"C'mon, pull your chute, Olson!" Jim yells frantically.

"Not yet! Fifteen hundred meters!" Olson shouts while laughing.

"Open your chute!"

"Yeah!" Olson cheers as he gets closer and closer to the drill.

"Olson, pull your chute!" Jim yells again, trying to get Olson to cooperate.

"One thousand meters," Olson yells, pulling his chute and cheering. But instead of landing, he slams into the platform and gets sucked into the energy beam.

"OLSON!" Jim shouts.

"O-Olson is gone, sir," Chekov says, not knowing what to do. Hailey looks down on her console, messing with a few things before looking back up on the screen.

Jim lands and nearly does the same as Olson as the wind drags him close to the edge. Before making it over, he grabs on to a metal opening and retracts his parachute.

"Ji-Kirk has landed, sir," Hailey stutters a little, unable to take her eyes off the screen.

Jim starts fighting some Romulans that made their way onto the drill to stop them. After fighting and Sulu joining with a sword, they were able to disable the platform with the Romulans' disruptor.

"The jamming signal is gone. Transport abilities are reestablished." Uhuru says, working on her console. "Transporter control is reengaged, sir," Hailey says, making Spock look over to Chekov and order him to run gravitational sensors to know what they are doing to the planet. "Aye Commander, ack, Captain. Sorry, Captain." Chekov stutters but does what he was told.

Jim then comes in over the communicator, "Kirk to Enterprise. They just launched something at the planet, through the hole they just drilled." But no one replied as everyone was busy, "Do you copy Enterprise?"

"Yes, sorry, Jim!" Hailey says while working on a couple things at once and trying to see what the Romulans shot down to the planet.

"Captain, gravitational sensors are off the scale. If my calculations are correct, they're creating a singularity that will consume the planet." Chekov states as he works more on his console.

"They're creating a black hole at the center of Vulcan?" Spock asks, and you can tell that he was worried - well, most wouldn't, but he was concerned.

"Yes, sir."

"How long does the planet have?" Spock asks, staring at the Russian kid. "Minutes, sir. Minutes." Spock then gets out of his chair and walks over to Uhura to alert the Vulcan command center to signal a planetwide evacuation. Then, the Vulcan makes his way to the door, making Hailey follow suit, "Where are you going?"

"To evacuate the Vulcan High Council. They are tasked with protecting our cultural history, and my parents will be among them." Spock states, making Uhura jump in, "Can't you beam them out?"

"It is impossible. They will be in the katric ark. I must get them myself." Spock says before turning to Checkov, "Chekov, you have the comm."

"Aye. Uh, yay." He sighs.

==============================

(Hailey's POV)

I was running after Spock down the hallway while he was getting everything he needed. He put his belt on and was grabbing a gun and strapped it on. We made our way to the transporter room and walked in, seeing Jim and Sulu getting up off the ground.

"Clear the pad. I'm beaming to the surface." Spock demands getting on the pad. "The surface of what? What, are you going down there? Are you nuts? Spock, you can't do that?!" Jim shouts towards the Vulcan, who wasn't listening.

Before he can leave, I walk up to him and grab his shirt, "Spock, Cyrus was staying with your parents on Vulcan, so he should be with them. Please, please bring back my brother!"

"I will do everything to bring him back alive with the rest," Spock states, putting his hand on my shoulder and nodding. "Thank you and be careful, please," I say while walking backward toward Jim and Sulu.

"Energize." Spock was then transported to Vulcan to get his parents, Vulcan High Council, and my brother. Please let him be safe! Please bring my brother back to me! Please!

After a while of waiting and panicking, Spock finally comes through the comm, "Spock to Enterprise. Get us out now!"

"Locking on you," Checkov says, getting their location, "Don't move. Stay right where you are."

"Transport in five... four... three... two...," Alarms start blaring, "I'm losing her. I'm losing her, I'm losing her! No, I've lost her."

The Vulcan High Council and Spock are transported into the room. Spock had his arm out, reaching for someone - it was his mother. They start to get off, and I see Cyrus right behind Spock. We run to each other and hug, tears were falling down my face as I didn't let go of him.

"I thought I lost you," I whisper to my brother, making him hug me tighter. "You won't lose me, sister, don't worry," he reassures while I sniffle.

=============================

We were all in sickbay as everyone gets checked for their injuries. The Romulans disappeared, and the Vulcan planet was now gone. The Vulcan council was getting looked over, and Jim was getting his handed wrapped. I was sitting next to my brother, who was also getting checked over.

The Romulan ship, the Narada, was nowhere near us and my father was still on that ship. He is now officially classified as a hostage by the war criminal, Nero. Not knowing what's happening to him hurts, he's alone with those people, and he could either be hurt or dead... please don't be dead.

I get pulled from my thoughts when a hand landed on my shoulder, "Are you okay, Hails?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm okay, Cy," I say, grabbing his hands and looking down, "The Romulans have dad." He stays silent, just rubbing my hands, trying to soothe me.

"At least you are safe," I say, smiling up at the Vulcan, which makes him smile back, "I love you, brother."

"I love you too, sister."

'I wonder how Spock is.'

Me too, me too.

================================

"Have you confirmed that Nero is headed for Earth?" Spock asks while walking across the Bridge. We were all on the Bridge trying to figure out what Nero's next move is and what we should do.

"Their trajectory suggests no other destination, Captain." Uhura answers.

"Thank you, Lieutenant."

"Earth may be his next stop, but we have to assume every Federation planet's a target," Jim says while seated in the Captain's chair.

"Out of the chair," Spock says, making Jim roll his eyes but get up.

"Well, if the Federation is a target, why didn't they destroy us?" Chekov asks, making me shake my head and look at every one. "Why would they? Why waste the weapons? You know... we obviously weren't a threat." Sulu answers from his seat.

"That is not it. He said he wanted me to see something. The destruction of my home planet." Spock states in concentration. "How the hell did they do that, by the way? Where did the Romulans get that kind of weaponry?" Bones asks, looking at all of us.

"The engineering comprehension necessary to artificially create a black hole may suggest an answer. Such technology could theoretically be manipulated to create a tunnel through space-time." I say, rubbing my chin in thought. Everyone was looking at me in surprise, "What?"

"Dammit, Hailey, I'm a doctor, not a physicist. Are you actually suggesting they're from the future?!" Bones grumbles out.

"If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth," I answer Bones, making Spock nod in agreement. "How poetic." Bones states.

"Then, what would an angry future Romulan want with Captain Pike?" Jim asks, making Sulu answer, "As Captain, he does know details of Starfleet's defenses."

"What we need to do is catch up to that ship. Disable it, take it over, and get Pike back." Jim says, making Spock look at him. "We are technologically outmatched in every way. A rescue attempt would be illogical." Jim sighs and rubs his face.

"Nero's ship would have to drop out of warp for us to overtake him," Chekov says.

"Then, what about assigning engineering crews to try and boost our warp gear?" Jim asks

"Remaining power and crew are being used to repair radiation leaks on the lower decks..." Spock says.

"Okay, alright. There's got to be some way..." Jim started, but Spock talks over him. "...We must gather with the rest of Starfleet to balance the terms of the next engagement."

"There won't be a next engagement. By the time we've gathered, it'll be too late. But you say he's from the future, knows what's going to happen, then the logical thing is to be unpredictable." Jim states, getting frustrated

"You are assuming that Nero knows how events are predicted to unfold," Spock says.

"On the contrary, Nero's very presence has altered the flow of history. Beginning with the attack on the USS Kelvin, culminating in the events of today, thereby creating an entire new chain of incidents that cannot be anticipated by either party," I say, leaning against the Captain's chair.

"An alternate reality?" Uhura asks in disbelief

"Precisely. Whatever our lives might have been, if the time continuum was disrupted, our destinies have changed. Mr. Sulu, plot a course to the Laurentian system warp factor three." Spock commands.

"Spock, don't do that. Running back to the rest of the fleet for a-a-a confab is a massive waste of time-" Jim says.

"Orders issued by Captain Pike when he left-" Spock speaks over him.

"He also ordered us to go back and get him. Spock, you are captain now! You have to be-," Jim tries but gets cut off again.

"I am aware of my responsibilities, Mister-" Spock walks closer to Jim.

Jim then cuts off Spock, "Every second we waste, Nero's getting closer to his next target."

"That is correct, and why I am instructing you to accept the fact that I alone-" Spock says.

"I will not allow us to go backward-" Jim growls.

"Jim!" Bones yells but doesn't get acknowledged.

"-instead of hunting Nero down!" Jim yells at Spock, making the Vulcan call for security to escort him out. Two security officers grab Jim and pull him, but then he starts fighting them off. I stand up and make my way over to the shouting men, but Spock beats me to it and does his Vulcan nerve pinch. Jim falls to the ground unconscious before the officers pick him up again.

"Get him off this ship," Spock commands as the officers take him to an escape pod and shoot him out onto Delta Vega.

Well, that's probably not the best idea.

'Yeah, that's a stupid idea.'

But he still did it. We will come back for you, Jim. Please stay safe.

=================================

Spock charted the course to the Laurentian system, which we were currently warping too. It had been a couple hours since Jim was shot off the ship. I had to get off the Bridge and clear my head, but it wasn't working that well.

Walking into engineering, there was barely anyone around, so it made it easy to relax. I closed my eyes and sigh, but of course, it was ruined by a body slamming into my own.

"Seriously," I grunt while rubbing my head. Hands grab my cheeks, making me look up at the damn person who ran into me.

"Hey, sorry, sweetheart," It was Jim. But how?

"How... what?" I start but muffled yelling, and banging got my attention. I look up and see a man in the water pipes, "Holy shit!" I yell, jumping up.

"Help me!" Jim yells, running after the man. I follow until we see the pipes take him directly to the spinning turbines. I start frantically looking around until I see the release valve and a computer. I run over and start typing to open the release valve, which I open in the end, and the man falls to the floor.

"You alright? You alright?!" Jim runs up and helps him sit. I run over and make sure that nothing is broken. "My heads buzzing, and I'm soaked, but otherwise, I'm fine!" The man says in a Scottish accent after coughing up some water.

"Okay." I start, taking a breath, "Who are you, and how did you both get on the ship? We're in warp!"

"Montgomery Scott or Scotty, at your service, lass!" He says, smiling and holds out his hand, to which I smile back and shake his hand. "Hailey Pike!"

I then shake my head, remembering they didn't answer one of my questions, "But how did you get onto the ship during warp?"

"Mr. Scott here has a theory of transwarp beaming," Jim answers, making my eyes widen. "You figured out how to beam aboard a ship during warp? So cool!" I exclaim. I was going to keep talking about his theory, but a thought passed my mind, "Jim, Spock is going to be pissed once he realizes you are here."

"That's why I have a plan."

"A plan?" My face then falls, and I put my hands up, "Actually, I don't want to know... the less I know, the better."

We then began running through engineering to get to the Bridge when security officers surrounded us on a walkway. "Halt!" He yelled at us, making us stop. It was the man that beat Jim up those years ago at the bar. I was behind Jim, so I don't think they saw me, "Come with me, Cupcake!"

Frustrated, I walk in front of Jim, making the officers tense up, "Commander!"

"What seems to be going on here?" I ask sternly, making everyone flinch.

"We were ordered to bring the trespassers to the Bridge to Commander Spock," He says after taking a breath.

"Okay."

"Okay, Commander?" He asks, confused.

"Escort us to the Bridge." This made the men nod, and we start our way to the Bridge once again.

Once on the Bridge, we were presented in front of Spock, "Who are you?" turning to Scotty. "I'm with him." He says at the same time, Jim says, "He's with me."

Spock then looks at me, making me shake my head and shrug. He nods and looks back at the two men next to me, "We're traveling at warp speed. How did you manage to beam aboard this ship?"

"You're the genius; you figure it out," Jim says, making Spock irritated.

"As Acting Captain of this vessel, I order you to answer the question."

"Well, I'm not telling, Acting Captain. What di... What, now, that doesn't frustrate you, does it? My lack of cooperation. That, that doesn't make you angry." Jim says, but Spock doesn't give him the time of day.

"Are you a member of Starfleet?" Spock asks Scotty. "I.. um.. yes. Can I get a towel, please?"

"Under penalty of court-martial, I order you to explain to me how you were able to beam aboard this ship while moving at warp," Spock demands, making Scotty fidget and stutter.

"Well..."

"Don't answer him."

"You will answer me."

"I'd rather not take sides," Scotty laughs nervously, which makes Spock look over at me.

"Hailey!"

"I know as much as you!"

'Liar!'

Shut the hell up!

"What is it with you, Spock? Hmm? Your planet was just destroyed, your mother murdered, and you're not even upset." Jim says, testing the waters.

"If you're presuming that these experiences in any way impede my ability to command this ship, you are mistaken," Spock replies to the man.

"And yet you were the one who said fear was necessary for command. Did you see his ship? Do you see what he did?" Jim asks.

"Yes, of course, I did," Spock answered.

"So, are you afraid, or aren't you?" Jim asks, getting closer to Spock, who wasn't moving.

"I will not allow you to lecture me about the merits of emotion," Spock replies with a straight face trying to calm down.

"Then, why don't you stop me." Jim taunted at the Vulcan

"Jim, you are dancing on dangerous waters right now," I state, but he keeps going.

"Step away from me, Mister-" Spock starts but gets talked over by Jim, "What is it like not to feel anger or heartbreak or the need to stop at nothing to avenge the death of the woman who gave birth to you?"

"Back away from me-" But Jim keeps going, "You feel nothing! It must not even compute for you! You never loved her!"

Spock then lunges at Jim grabbing his throat and punching him several times. I yell at them, but they don't listen to me. They then end up at the helm console, and Spock was holding Jim down, strangling him. I run over and try pulling Spock off of Jim, but it doesn't work that well.

"Spock!" The said man then stops and looks behind him at his father. I pull him some more away from Jim and jump in between them. A look of realization took over his face before breathing in, "I am no longer fit for duty. I hereby relinquish my command, based on the fact that I have been emotionally compromised. Please note the time and date in the ship's log." He then leaves the Bridge with his father in tow.

"I like this ship! You know, it's exciting." Scotty then says with a smile, making me lightly shake my head. I grabbed Jim by the hand and helped him up off the console before checking his red throat.

"Well, congratulations, Jim. Now we've got no Captain and no goddamn first officer to replace him." Bones says, frustrated.

"Yeah, we do." Jim coughs before taking the Captain's chair.

"What?" Bones asks, which Sulu answers, "Pike made him first officer."

"You've got to be kidding me." Bones grumbles, shaking his head. "Thanks for the support," Jim says sarcastically.

"I sure hope you know what you're doing, Captain," Uhura says with a glare while walking next to the chair.

"So do I." Jim says lowly before talking over the comm, "Attention crew of the Enterprise, this is James Kirk. Mister Spock has resigned commission and advanced me to Acting Captain. I know you were all expecting to regroup with the fleet, but I'm ordering a pursuit course of the enemy ship to Earth. I want all departments at battle stations and ready in ten minutes. Either we're going down, or they are. Kirk out."

I walk up to the man in the Captain's chair and squeeze his shoulder, making him look up at me. I give him a small smile, which he returns and grabs my hand, squeezing it.

================================

Standing on the Bridge, we contemplated how to get on the Narada to stop Nero and save my father. But every idea got squished. Chekov was doing calculations on a board; Bones was grumbling while I rubbed my face.

"Whatever the case, we need to get aboard Nero's ship undetected," Jim says after another idea was shot down.

"And just go in there guns blazing, Jim. No..." Bones states as Sulu chimes in. "I'm telling you the math doesn't support..."

"Captain Kirk, Captain Kirk!" Chekov yells in his thick accent, getting the Captain's attention. "Yes, Chekov. What is it?"

"Based on the fastest course from Vulcan, I have projected that

Nero will travel past Saturn. Like you said, we need to stay invisible to Nero, or he'll destroy us. If Mister Scott can get us to warp factor four, and if we drop out of warp behind one of Saturn's moons, say, Titan, the magnetic distortion from the planet's rings will make us invisible to Nero's sensors. From there, as long as the drill is not activated, we can beam aboard the enemy ship." Checkov states, making me nod while going through all the calculations in my head.

"Aye, that might work," Scotty says.

"Wait a minute, kid, how old are you?" Bones asks while his arms are crossed.

"Seventeen, sir."

"Oh, oh good, he's seventeen."

"Doctor, Mister Chekov is correct," Spock says, coming onto the Bridge through the door. "I can confirm his telemetry. If Mister Sulu is able to maneuver us into position, I can beam aboard Nero's ship, steal back the black hole device, and, if possible, bring back Captain Pike.

"I won't allow you to do that, Mister Spock," Jim says, standing up and walking over to him, making me go over too.

"Romulans and Vulcans share a common ancestry. Our cultural similarities will make it easier for me to access the ship's computer to locate the device. Also, my mother was Human, which makes Earth the only home I have left." Spock replies to the blue-eyed Captain.

"I'm coming with you." Jim states making Spock raise an eyebrow, "I would cite regulation, but I know you will simply ignore it." Spock answers.

"See, we are getting to know each other." Jim pats Spock's shoulder, making Spock blink in surprise.

"Well, let's turn this duo into a trio because I'm coming with." I state, smiling at the two men, "And DO NOT try to stop me because my father is on that ship, and you both are weak as hell and can't physically stop me." Smiling, I walk past the boys who are just staring.

"Well, are you coming or not!" I yell, making them flinch and run after me.

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playunderground · 5 years ago

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Revisiting Journey and Abzu, I Found Myself More Depressed About Our World’s Future

This is from the September edition of Play Underground’s monthly digest. In that edition, we focused on walking simulators! This edition is available for our patrons starting at $5 a month. If you aren’t a patron, $6 via Ko-fi will get you a copy.

If you like what you see here, please consider becoming a patron! Thanks for reading! ❤️- PUG! editors

As the days go by, it’s become easier and easier to lose hope. I don’t want to sound like a fatalist, but it’s true. Scientists say that climate change will be irreversible in 11 years. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it seems that human civilization will crumble by 2050. Every day the world seems to be shrieking in anguish. It has become harder and harder to ignore her cries, or to know how to help.

It’s also become more common in my present day to revisit old pieces of art and media only to find that their exaggerated, absurd, or apocalyptic scenarios are simply regular, everyday life for us now in these turbulent times. My most recent experience of this was when I revisited 2 of my favorite games, Journey and Abzu. As I returned to these games with the intent of figuring out what I wanted to write about, I found myself often struck by the distinct scenarios one finds themself in when playing these games, and how much they feel like premonitions.

Journey and Abzu were released in 2012 and 2016, respectively. While neither are old games by any means, they both were released just before the moment we are currently in where we all collectively feel that nothing could possibly get worse, and then it does. Climate change has been talked about for decades now, but the painting of an apocalyptic future scientists have warned us about has been getting less and less impressionistic since 2016. Both of these games were developed and out in the world well before this moment of maximum capacity. The conversation these games have with our current culture should theoretically be over, yet upon revisiting them, I found a representation more accurate than ever before.

Let me begin with Journey, the older sibling of the two, a game praised for its music, emotional impact, and finding power in simplicity. In this game, a player controls a robed figure in a massive desert, with the goal of traveling towards a mountain in the distance. As you travel through the desert, you find relics from a once thriving civilization. Art covers the walls of ancient buildings that depict the rise and fall of the civilization that your character belongs to, which also parallels the journey of the character. The main enemies of the game that you must avoid are massive flying automatons that are left over from a war that ended the civilization.

As I finished yet another playthrough of the game, I found myself once again moved to tears. This time however, it was for very different reasons. I could not have predicted before booting up this game again in 2019 that I would be hit with such an impact upon realizing just how much this game is a potential self portrait of humanity’s future. The desert setting certainly isn’t far off from what a world ravaged by climate catastrophe might look like. What hit home for me the most was the fact that the automatons are the last thing remaining in this world after ending the civilization. The idea of military technology being our downfall doesn’t seem so fictional when the United States military is Earth’s biggest polluter. After feeling emotionally ruined in my playthrough, I went on to replay Abzu, and then fell into another emotional sinkhole. I did not know that the rug could be pulled out from under me again.

The game Abzu follows the journey of a female diver in a vast ocean. As you play the game, you explore various underwater environments, interact with sea life, and reanimate the ocean using magical springs. The story and design of the game take inspiration from Sumerian mythology and Middle Eastern culture. In the game, there are pyramid shaped devices that are harvesting energy from the ocean. It is clear that these devices are what are upsetting the ecosystem and are what caused the destruction of this game’s civilization. As you progress through the game, it is revealed that the diver is a mechanical being whose existence actually comes from the pyramid like structures that are destroying the ocean. The diver ends up teaming up with a great white shark to bring life back to the oceans, and revitalizes the world.

While the water based setting of Abzu is in stark contrast to the desert of Journey, they both seem equally accurate as potential apocalyptic futures. As the temperatures rise and the ice caps melt, it seems like we will all be living underwater very soon. Once again like in Journey, the downfall of Abzu’s civilization is due to the machinery that was created. All that’s left of the cultures in both games are the evil machines they fashioned, mindlessly continuing the uncaring and violent mechanisms they were made for.

None of this sounds hopeful, but reality never seems to be either. I do think however it would be a disservice to both of these beautiful games if I tried to argue that the main message at their cores was pessimism towards our future. Both of these games, while dystopian in nature, carry the seeds of hope within them. Journey and Abzu are both stories of sacrifice and perseverance. In Journey, you are on an emotional ride that borders on religious experience. Your character is willing to sacrifice their life for their people, their mission, and their beliefs. One of the major points of gameplay in Journey is that you can play with another player online anonymously. While this may seem like a random or inconsequential gimmick, it actually adds a comforting reality to the story: you are not alone. You are not the last of your people. There are others, and you can help one another to bring about a better future for the both of you. Your existence in the game brings a beautiful red color back to cloth based beings that help you progress through your journey as you interact with them. There is still a future and each being in the game can help you towards a good one, anonymous or not. While all of us may feel powerless in the current state of the world, none of us have to suffer in it by ourselves. By the time you reach that mountain, you are no longer the person you once were. You and your character have been reborn, for the better.

While Journey focuses mostly on what is needed for an individual, Abzu is a great companion in that the center is much more about the collective and the environment. The sacrifice your character makes in Abzu is for the greater good of the world itself. After the diver realizes that they themselves are a member of the very civilization that is responsible for the destruction of the ocean, they forego their connection to that history for the sake of a better collective future. Your character acknowledges their sins, and decides to make right with the world rather than continue down the path history laid out for them. There is a beautiful twist that occurs as you progress through the game. At first, it seems that the great white shark is one of your major enemies. You quickly realize however that the machinery you are a part of is the actual enemy, while the shark and the other natural creatures of the ocean are your true allies and friends. As you finish the game and the credits roll, you can control the diver in a pristine and beautiful ocean while swimming alongside the great white shark. The cycle of violence is broken, and the ocean is clean and teeming with life once again. I wanted to weep at the thought of a future like that, a world without something like the Great Pacific garbage patch.

It is clear to me now that the future of our planet depends on our willingness to forego everything we once knew. In both Journey and Abzu, a hopeful and utopian future only came after the destruction of a flawed present, and the depressing period thereafter. The downfall of entire civilizations in these games also meant the ending of the violent systems that had been pushing towards calamity. We must be willing to acknowledge our wrongdoings, both as individuals and as a collective. The characters you play as are all fundamentally changed by the end of the story in these 2 games. We will all have to make sacrifices, whether they be personal, political, technological, or otherwise, and learn from our past and the cultures within it. Much of the inspiration for Journey and Abzu come from non-white, non-western, and indigenous cultures, whose practices and histories are inextricable from environmental justice and liberation. War and colonialism are massive factors of climate catastrophe both in these games and in real life.

It appears to me now that we must all go on our respective journeys, to find ourselves and what our relationship to the world and one another must be. None of us will be able to come out of it clean, for none of us live in a world that is. The end of human civilization as we currently know it might just be the only option ahead of us. Perhaps though, there is a much needed future in collapse, and glory in rebirth. I pray that we all find it, if not for our own sake then for the world that comes after we are all gone.

#digest preview #journey #abzu

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mildlincrs · 5 years ago

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hi, tumblr — it's been (way longer than) a minute, but i'm back from the chaotic journey that was junior year! and with that, i wanted to continue what i started with my advice for rising freshmen and rising sophomores; i’ll be writing a final post for rising seniors once i (theoretically) finish high school.

note: i'm currently attending high school in the united states, so there are certain points i mention that may not apply to you if you aren't also studying in the u.s., but i still hope that you get something out of this post!

note 2: this post is pretty long -- a lot longer than the previous advice posts -- and also pretty personal. i go in-depth on what junior year was like for me (spoiler: not great), and subsequently, i have plenty of advice to help avoid some of what i ended up experiencing.

my junior year experience

for reference, click [here] a list of my junior year classes (along with classes i’ve taken and plan to take). i took two ap courses, and the rest of my courses with the exception of band were honors courses.

to be blunt -- junior year was one of my worse years of high school, academically and mentally. sophomore year was definitely one of my lowest points, too, but junior year was really shitty in a lot of ways. i was busy working (trying to) nearly all the time, and i found myself constantly under stress, struggling to maintain my grades -- especially in my calculus and physics classes. at a certain point in the year, i subconsciously stopped caring, i think, to the point where i couldn’t focus at all when i was working, instead opting to do things that were considerably less productive. i’d study for up to five minutes at a time, only to stress myself out of studying and go to sleep -- yes, i stressed myself to sleep. other nights, i’d stay up doing absolutely nothing, in spite of the massive amounts of work and studying i still had left to do. i was close to failing my physics class, at one point, too, and physics was arguably the class i studied and worked the hardest for.

another reason that this year was pretty terrible for me was the fact that i was recovering from several injuries. in june of 2018, i injured my knees -- for reasons i’d prefer not to disclose -- and though they were healing over the summer, with marching band, the injuries were only exacerbated. if you want an idea of how bad they were, i struggled to simply walk short distances if i didn’t have any sort of support. marching band is basically dignified, faster walking, so you can imagine the kind of stress that i was under. because of this, i had to stop dancing and take a season of winter guard off -- two of my biggest emotional releases in life. without both of those things for over six months, i felt pretty directionless, and i ended up relapsing (i have chronic depression). that along with the business of junior year made life feel pretty damn miserable. physical therapy didn’t help me, i had virtually no time to schedule a meeting with a therapist or other mental health professional, and i was exhausted 24/7.

all this being said, junior year still had its good moments! i got to take two astronomy semester courses, both of which only reinforced my love for astronomy -- i’ll be doing astronomy-related research in the fall - i got to play some pretty damn good music in band, qualified and made all-state band for the first time, and i became closer with my best friends and got to make new ones. i completed a year-long research paper (while missing quite a few deadlines on the way) that turned into what’s probably the most vulnerable piece of writing i’ve ever produced (message me if you’re interested in reading it!), and i didn’t fail any of my classes. good stuff.

more on not failing my classes: 2nd semester was kind of weird for me, in that my grades went up in some classes, but slowly sort of decreased in others. for example -- i studied and worked my ass off trying to improve my calculus grade during 1st semester, but my exhaustion caused me to fall asleep during a lot of classes, meaning that i would always miss the material being taught, and by the time i got home that day, i was so exhausted that i would just fall asleep until the next morning, not even bothering to figure out what i had missed during class. with physics, worked harder than i ever had during 1st semester, but i continued to receive low scores on tests and heavily relied on my lab and quiz grades to keep me afloat. i cared less about japanese more and more, (which SUCKS because i really loved the class and language but my effort just went downhill) and i can distinctly remember not studying for several of the tests that were administered, and as such, receiving subpar scores. i did, however, pass all of my finals and ap exams, which was definitely a plus.

tldr: my work ethic went to shit, and i salvaged it somewhat, at the cost of losing a lot of sleep and not eating for multiple days at a time WHICH IS NOT HEALTHY. DON’T DO THIS PLEASE. junior year was worse than sophomore year in a lot of ways, but i fucking MADE IT so who’s the real winner here

advice for junior year

my number one piece of advice is to take care of yourself. you’ve probably heard it before, but that’s because you should do it. i’m 100% serious when i say that it can really make a difference. i mentioned that i lost a lot of sleep and didn’t eat sometimes during the school year, and because of that, i was super super sick at one point which only made my mental health worse, which only decreased my ability to focus and work properly. please stay healthy ahh like hydrate, get some mf sleep, and eat well! if you have to choose between studying for a test and sleeping at 3am, then go the fuck to sleep. and it’s not just about being healthy enough to do well in school! it’s literally your own wellbeing. put your physical and mental needs first, no matter what.

for ap courses: highly recommend looking on the collegeboard website for practice questions! the website also outlines the test structures, which i found helpful for me when i was studying for the exams. if you’re hoping to score a 4 or 5 on your ap exams, it’s in your best interests to go in prepared as possible. iirc the website also provides overviews of all the content that should be studied/is covered on the exam, which can help structure your studying, too!

another thing on ap courses: while if you score well enough on ap exams, you might be able to transfer those credits to your college courses (if you enroll at a u.s. college), i wouldn’t recommend loading your schedule with ap courses. they’re college-level courses for a reason; they will be fast-paced and involve a lot of work on your part. a rule that i used when deciding what ap courses i would take in high school: if i didn’t particularly like the subject, then i took the honors version of the course. otherwise, if i felt like i could challenge myself, was interested in the course, and if it was available, then i signed up for it. i knew from sophomore year that i wasn’t good at dealing with both school and my mental health, so i recognized that i’d need to lessen my ap coursework as much as possible so that i didn’t throw myself into an even worse situation (i took zero aps sophomore year).

don’t spread yourself too thin involving yourself in things in and out of school. sort of similar to my philosophy of not overloading my schedule, i made sure that i only committed myself to extracurriculars that i cared about and enjoyed doing. i personally marched my third season of marching band, and remained involved in my school’s urban dance club as much as possible (though when i took a break from dancing, that was definitely harder, but towards the end of the year, i was able to participate in a few performances with my friends). i also participated in an outside wind ensemble every week, and that was plenty for me -- i had a lot of music to practice both for that group and my school’s band, and then i had to balance THAT with practicing music for private lessons & auditions, and with schoolwork. i know there are people who are involved in so many extracurriculars, which i wouldn’t recommend. devote yourself to what you love in high school; that will also give you something worth writing about in things such as college applications! better to pursue what you love with passion and authenticity than to sign-up for a club for the clout even if you’re not remotely interested in it.

if it’s offered where you live, i would recommend taking the sat and/or act during your junior year. i’d also recommend taking subject tests if you have the time for it. the earlier you take these tests, the more likely you are to have an opportunity to retake them if you don’t score as well as you hope. you can also start taking these tests during sophomore year -- i took sat subject tests in june of my sophomore year, took the sat twice during junior year, and i will be taking the act in july. i’ll also be retaking an sat subject test and taking a completely new one.

while it may be daunting, start thinking about college -- whether you want to go to college or not, where or what you’d like to study, etc. since i plan on majoring in music, i started researching sort of early so that i could give myself enough time to finalize a list of the colleges i am applying to and the repertoire i need to learn and practice for auditions. but regardless of what you decide to do with your future, no one is expecting you to have every step of your life labeled out. things can change, and that’s okay! that’s literally how life works. definitely reach out to your counselors if you want advice from them! i’d also recommend sitting down with your parents and talking about the college application process with them and what they can do to help you.

there’s a lot of pressure during junior year -- it’s the last full year of high school before college applications, and typical for students to be busy 110% of the time. that said, find time for yourself to destress and do nothing school or work-related. if it helps, schedule specific times of the day where you just relax and do something that makes you happy. finding a work-life balance can really make a difference (i say, not having one, though i have many friends who talk about this to me).

if you need help with anything at all -- talk to someone about it! feeling super stressed and shitty? talk to someone you trust, whether they’re your closest friend or a teacher (which reminds me, if you plan on asking a teacher for a rec, take time to talk with them if you can, it makes a difference). you are not alone. i know for some people (especially for me, actually), it can be super difficult to open up about what you’re dealing with, but it’s arguably better than trying to push your way through it all on your own.

best of luck during your junior year -- i believe in you<3

love, fei

#mine #mmp #mp #studying #studyblr #high school #study #studyspo #advice #tbhstudying #studyquill #lookstudyblr #obsidianstudy #heysareena #focusign #study tips #school

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donutsandbagels · 6 years ago

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WWHSTEO Report

It all began on Monday last week, when @introvertedpedant told me that she was able to purchase one ticket for Saturday, and suggested that I check the website regularly because a few tickets were becoming available. Well, on Thursday night I was able to purchase the last one available for Saturday’s matinée! My hands were trembling, and I started to pace my apartment up and down. After about 20 minutes of pacing I calmed down (thanks to some grappa) and purchased plane tickets, train and hotel. At 4:30 am on Saturday I left for the airport and arrived in London around 11 am. After a quick breakfast I took the tube, got off at Embankment, and while crossing the bridge on a freezing sunny day I saw it: the National Theatre!

I was already overexcited and directed myself to the ticket office. And finally it was in my hands: my most precious possession!

It was early for the play, so I thought I would spend some time exploring the city. Turns out I could not make myself leave the theatre’s area. I felt compelled to stay. And it was the right decision! It was freezing outside, but I saw the “stage door”, so I started pacing up and down in front of it (lots of pacing in the past days LOL), until when… I saw him. Coming from the river side, orange hood popping out of his jacket, brown boots and a few locks of grey hair flowing out of his blue beret. My heart stopped. Our hero was walking pretty fast – and looking somewhat disoriented (and UNBELIEVABLY ADORABLE) – along the building. I followed him, keeping a certain distance, still in disbelief about what I was witnessing. When he went inside I snooped on him through the glass door:

The way he walked, the way he moved, the way he leaned toward the reception desk when he got inside... I don’t know if I am too biased, or too obsessed, but I swear he’s so unbelievably adorable, so simple and charming, unpretentious, fascinating, spontaneous, magnetic... You can add a whole page of synonyms because he really is all of those things. Following this shocking moment, I felt like crying. It’s his fault. He’s too perfect.

Well! After a while I entered the Dorfman

where I met @introvertedpedant : we were both very agitated and we encouraged one another to be strong during the play and - most of all - remember to breathe! LOL I was seated in the pit, 8th row. Good seating.

So, the play. I can’t be impartial because you know why, and also because I was paying attention only to him. Say he was standing motionless on the side, I would be looking at him, not at poor Cate who, center stage, was reciting her part.

What I loved about the play: the stage setting in the garage with the big Audi on one side, the clothes swapping (Stephen looks terrific in everything he has on - women’s lingerie, black maid dress with white apron, blonde wig with white headpiece) and the roles swapping. I really don’t think there is anything I didn’t like!

As for the actors’ performances, CB was excellent at playing her part and delivering her lines, but Stephen’s performance felt really on a different level. It was like the words SD was saying, line after line, were creating the character. Reflecting on it some time after the play, it made me think about that Charlie Rose tv interview he did in 2000 with Jennifer Ehle (I call it “the gesticulating interview”):

"if you really say the lines, if you really speak the words as opposed to kind of glancing onto (...); the more you get into a bigger space, the more you have to become the words (...); you do have to say the lines with the rhythm, and there is a kind of truth inherent in that"

I would describe what I saw as a process in which language was materializing itself into the voice and form of “Man”, the character played by Stephen. If I close my eyes now, and think back about the play, I am sure there were moments in which I have witnessed perfection - I know theoretically it shouldn’t exist, but hey, there it was, in front of my eyes..

After the play, I met again with @introvertedpedant and together we headed to the café to have a drink together. The story now revolves on @introvertedpedant , who cleverly noticed Conor Lovett in front of her queueing for drinks and asked him about How It Is (Part two), the play that has been announced for September in Cork. Conor was very nice and told us that hopefully they will be able to bring it also to London in March 2020 (let’s keep our finger crossed!).

After we got our drinks (for me it was a big glass of Chardonnay, I needed some alcohol after all the shocks I had endured until then) we sat at a table to discuss the play we just saw. However, this did not really happen. Because… SOMETHING CAME IN THE WAY !!!

Yes, that’s him, HIM!!! Again, thanks @introvertedpedant for noticing him, because I was totally oblivious.

You can imagine, we were panicking. Should we go speak to him? No, we cannot interrupt him, it’s rude. But we have to speak to him! We cannot lose this one-time opportunity! After a few minutes of internal and external debate about what we should do, my hero @introvertedpedant took control of the situation and bravely went up to him. I duly followed. As @introvertedpedant will tell you, Conor Lovett kind of spotted her then introduced her to Stephen as the lady who had asked him about How It Is (Part Two).

When it was my turn… gosh, I was not nervous at all. What? Nervous?!? I was much more than that!! I was stuck. Literally.

Exhibit A: Initial situation (around the table: SD, CL, two women, @introvertedpedant and me)

Exhibit B: as soon as @introvertedpedant went back to our table, the situation changed as follows:

You can see very well the unfortunate position of “me”.

At that point I had very little control over myself. I didn’t realize that I needed to move, take one little step ahead. No, I was too busy awkwardly excusing myself for interrupting and blathering “thank you for making our lives better” to Stephen and then “no, really, thank YOU” when he thanked me (aww he’s so kind). The problem was that he had to twist his neck and eyes just to look at me… and I was even wondering why he was giving me that look LOL

He gave me a little smile when I told him “Sorry but I had to tell you, in person!!” (I must have looked like a hopeless fool). Then I asked if he could sign my WWHSTEO booklet – of course I couldn’t find my pen… so Stephen searched in his jacket’s inside pocket and used his (HOW ADORABLE). He asked me “What’s your name?”. At that moment I realized : OH MY GOODNESS STEPHEN DILLANE IS USING HIS VOICE TO SPEAK TO ME !!! So, I told him my name (bending ahead and speaking in his hear like a prompter OMG) , he asked how I spelled it then proceeded to spell it himself E-L-E-N-A? “Yes, perfect!”, I told him, again bending over and talking in his ear. OMG WHY?! WHY?! I am still so ashamed...

[/insert purely fangirl note]:

I had read from other fans who’d met him that he looks even more handsome in person than on the screen, and I can guarantee he does. Doesn’t even look his age. If only I could have touched him. In an ideal world I would have given him two very Italian cheek kisses. Just like that:

[/end purely fangirl note]

I have so many feelings about this experience, I think about it constantly. And if I calm down from the excitement of seeing, meeting and talking to him, I can say that what impressed me most about Stephen was his performance in the play. He didn’t exceed my expectations simply because my expectations were tremendously high. I was actually scared about what my reaction would be. Stephen’s performances in movies and tv affect me so deeply that I really feared how I would react to a live performance. I wasn’t even sure I would be able to handle it. Fortunately, I was able to get a grip on myself. For the whole performance, my eyes were fixed on him, my ears open, my senses heightened. I don’t know how much it’s me with my fondness for SD and how much he really is that good. Biased as I may be, he was truly spellbinding. If I think about what I felt the moment he entered on stage… I want to bang my head into the wall because he was so good and I want to see him again.

You remember that interview that he did for Fugitive Pieces, where he says that, differently from film and tv, theatre gives him more narrative power and is a much more integrated experience?

Well, I say: please give this man all the narrative power he wants.

You won’t be disappointed.

#stephen dillane #when we have sufficiently tortured each other #wwhsteo #fangirl #report #2nd february 2019 #london #uk #theatre #national theatre #personal

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67midnightwriter · 6 years ago

Text

Ketch and Release Chapter 4

A/N: Here we go 2019! Lets get K&R finished this year! Holiday parties have wound down, I have more time to devote to writing now, and life is going good.

Warnings: Sassy reader, as usual

W/C: 1,509

Series Masterlist

Previous Chapter

“Do you two know each other?” Castiel asked as he turned toward Y/N with a raised eyebrow.

“No.” Y/N closed her eyes, willing for this to all be a bad dream that dissipated when she opened them once more.

It did not.

“How is this your idea of backup? You think two people are going to make that much of a difference?”

“They helped us with Lucifer, so I just fig-”

“Lucifer? The Lucifer?” Mick raised an eyebrow and Y/N fought to keep a straight face. She still didn’t trust him.

“Yes.” Castiel’s answer was short, stress causing him to lose what little patience he normally had.

“Wait, so you’re telling me what happened in Indianapolis was you took on the bleedin’ devil himself?” Mick scoffed in disbelief.

“Yes.” Y/N sensed Cas’s restrained eyeroll. Under other circumstances, she would be biting back a grin at his frustration, but she was impatient to move on.

“Did you win?” This time it was his posh accent that filled the air.

“Yes.” Castiel blew a breath through his nose as the two backups exchanged impressed glances. When they returned their attention, not-Mick tilted his head ever so slightly, his gaze ghosting over her body, burning with curiosity.

“Bravo.”

“Sam and Dean were taken.” Y/N tore her eyes from his face and turned her attention back to Mick. She closed her eyes, swallowed hard, and took a deep breath. She hated needing help, but they were up against a wall. “We can get them back, but we need help.”

“So we’ll help.” Mick smiled at her, his voice soothing.

“What’s the catch?” She asked after a pause. Mick sighed.

“Miss L/N… Y/N.” He took a small step forward, his hands raised in peace. “I came to this country to do one thing-- Make friends. But you American hunters, you’re… you’re a different breed than our sort. You’re surly. Suspicious. You don’t play well with others-”

“That’s accurate.” This time it was Cas’s turn to interrupt, but Mick didn’t so much as blink in his direction. Y/N’s glare could have sent his trench coat up in flames.

“You don’t trust people you don’t know, even when they come bearing gifts. Now I can’t help that, but I can help you. And if word were to get out that we did our part to save Sam and Dean Winchester, well, that’s just good business, innit? And who knows? When all this is over, we might even be friends.” Y/N scoffed, noting how Mick’s partner stayed back, regarding them with a piercing gaze and inquisitive eyes.

He was studying them.

“Who are you?” She asked, pulling a small, proud smile to his face.

“Where are my manners? Arthur Ketch, British Men of Letters, as I’m sure you’ve gathered.”

Y/N narrowed her eyes at him, the wheels in her own mind turning. After their first run in with the group, she didn’t trust any of the Men of Letters, but she also vividly remembered her night with Ketch. She was wary, but they were calm, and she was desperate.

Y/N exchanged a glance with Castiel, trusting the angel and his ability to read feelings better than she could. He gave her a small dip of his head and a slight shrug his shoulders. What else have we got? She looked away, off into the trees to her left. Nothing. She turned back to the Men of Letters, her shoulders drooping slightly in defeat.

“At last contact they were in the Rocky Mountain National Forest-” She began.

“Site 94? It’s a government facility, off books. Shadow ops. One of those places that officially doesn’t exist.” Ketch nodded as though they were discussing the weather. She ground her teeth at his arrogance, less annoyed at him and more frustrated that after all her searching she hadn’t been able to find that information by herself.

“Then how the fuck do you know about it?” Y/N saw the slight clench in his jaw, and he narrowed his eyes in her direction.

“We gather information. It’s our job.” Mick answered, directing her attention back to him.

“I searched and scoured and hacked into every government website that I could think of and I didn’t even stumble across a whisper of a ‘Site 94’. How do you know about it?”

“That’s the benefit of friendship Y/N.” Y/N opened her mouth to retort back, but thought better of it and shut it once more. She tilted her head slightly, intrigued by the new layer of Mick peaking through.

“They told us to meet them off State Route 34.” Castiel rejoined the conversation, getting them back on track.

“Well, that’s a long stretch of road. Where, exactly?” Ketch’s response was smug.

“That’s where the term ‘help’ comes in.” Y/N took a half step forward, and a smile crawled across Mick’s face and he felt her relax slightly.

“I’ll get our techs to put a satellite over the area.”

“Wait you can do that?” Y/N asked as Mick turned to get to work. He looked back at her over his shoulder, sending her a wink.

“And so much more.”

Castiel followed Mick as he walked away, leaving Y/N and Ketch alone together.

“I should get ready.” Y/N turned away from Ketch, heading to the back of her truck and pulling out the gear she had haphazardly put away when she received Cas’s call.

She heard Ketch follow her, and she felt him behind her as she began pulling out her weapons. She lined up various arrow tips, bullets, guns and knives, pulling them out of the false bottom of the bed of her truck and laying them on the tailgate.

“Can I ask you something?” Y/N turned to see Ketch observing her work.

“If I say no is it really going to stop you from asking?”

Ketch took a step forward, closing the distance between them. “I don’t understand your hostility. I’ve been nothing but kind to you, even after you stole from me.”

Y/N bit her bottom lip and took a deep breath. “You’re right. What’s your question.”

“Why Annie?”

“It’s a nickname.”

“How does one go from Y/N to Annie?”

“Not that kind of a nickname.” Ketch was silent for a moment, his eyes drifting over the things laid out in front of her as she worked.

“I’ve never seen anything like this.” He indicated to the arrow tips she had designed, carefully picking one up to examine it.

“I engineered them myself. They’re made mostly of silver, a high enough percentage to take down a werewolf. Silver on its own is too weak to be used as an arrow tip, so it’s carefully infused with titanium to help strength the metal and keep its point.”

“How did you formulate the correct metal balance?”

“I pissed off a bunch of werewolves.” She took the tip back from him and placed it with the others. She picked up another prototype, handing it to him as she tried not to seem overly enthusiastic. “These are what I’m working on now, for vampires. That space in the middle holds a capsule of dead man’s blood that will theoretically break on impact, immobilizing them from a distance.” Ketch nodded before replacing the tip in its box.

“Follow me.”

He turned and walked away without looking to see if she was behind him. Disheartened and annoyed, she followed him to the back of his Bentley. As she walked past she noticed how Cas was looking over Mick’s shoulder as he appeared to be looking at a satellite image of the forest, talking on the phone about switching image modes to look through the trees. Y/N peered into the trunk of the Bentley while Ketch pulled out a gun case.

“Is that a grenade launcher?”

“What is with you Americans? Are you all obsessed with explosions?” He placed what could have been a B-rated sci-fi movie prop in her hand. “Here. This will work better than your arrows. It’s an extra, you can keep it.”

“What exactly is it?”

“It’s a gun. It irradiates vampires, turning their own blood against them. Ghastly to watch but very efficient.” Y/N flipped the weapon, inspecting it briefly before raising her eyebrows and looking up at Ketch.

“And what do you do if you have to interrogate the vampire for information? How do you overtake it without killing it? What if the vampire is one of your comrades that’s been freshly turned and you need to subdue him in order to administer the cure?”

“The what? There’s a cure?”

“Oh, so you don’t know everything?” She handed Ketch the weapon and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m not a damsel in distress, I’m a damsel doing damage.” She let him watch her walk away as she made her way to Mick and Cas, eager to find out if they made any progress on finding the boys.

The Whole Enchilada: @impala-dreamer @sculptorofbeginnings @curly-haired-disaster @rideandwritethings @adoptdontshoppets @supernatural-idjit-95 @team-free-will-you-idjits-67

K&R: @cinnamonrollsforlife @time-travel-bouqet @cutelittlepurplesouls @armieggedon @marianita195 @cloverhighfive @supernatural-teamfreewillpage @liv-the-artist @chloesamxoxo @probably-writing-something @ambx2 @klinenovakwinchester @beautifulbowleggedangel

#Arthur Ketch #Ketch and Release #ketch #ketch x reader #arthur ketch x reader #spn fic #spn fanfiction #Supernatural Fan Fiction #Supernatural fanfic #British men of letters #spn bmol

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preserving-ferretbrain · 6 years ago

Text

Sarah Monette, the Victim Dilemma, the Aesthetic of Suffering and the Uncanny Valley of Arse Rape

by Wardog

Monday, 27 April 2009

Wardog fails to finish Sarah Monette's Corambis.~

Massive massive massive massive spoilers for about 1/3 of the book. Also, as the title suggests, this article is about nasty things so don’t read if you’re likely to be upset

Preramble (like a preamble but … d’you see?)

This is a bleak day indeed. I just got my hands on a copy of Corambis, the much-anticipated (by me at least) concluding part to Sarah Monette’s Doctrine of Labyrinths quartet and the truth of it is, I don’t think I can finish it.

Oh, Sarah, what happened? I do still love you, I just don’t think it’s working out.

I think it’s partially problems associated with reading through a series over a lengthy period of time. When I read Melusine, The Virtu was already out in hardback and I tore through at them enthusiastically, so drawn into the world and the characters that I barely noticed they were so heavily saturated in angst and woe that one could drown in it by simply opening the book a little recklessly. There was a bit of a wait for The Mirador – which I seem to recall I felt slightly less positively about but still adored – and I fell upon Mehitabel Parr’s I’m sure welcoming bosom to save me from the tidal waves of A&W. As much as I love Felix and Mildmay, it was Mehitabel’s narrative voice that made The Mirador bearable for me. It was such a necessary contrast to the boys: someone with some redeeming sense of self-irony, hurrah!

Of course, Mehitabel isn’t in Corambis. And, God, I miss her. There is a new viewpoint character, Kay Brightmore, blinded and imprisoned and weighed down by the terrible military failure that kicks off the book. He’s basically lost everything that ever mattered to him, can no longer fight on account of being blind and, needless to say, he has angst out the wazoo about it. I was broken and crying by Chapter three.

And, quite frankly, I just can’t take it. I know there is redemption in the future of these characters (characters I really care about, having spent three books with them), I know there is self-actualisation and the potential for happiness, I know because I cheated and looked, but I’ve really really struggled with Corambis. The worst of it is, I’m sure it will be a triumphant and satisfying conclusion to the quartet. Sarah Monette is an excellent writer, I love her world, I love the way she uses language, I love her characters, I love everything about her but I think I’m going to have to accept the fact I simply can’t read her.

Oh, Sarah, what happened? I do still love you, it’s not you, it’s me.

Maybe in a couple of years we’ll be able to work something out.

I think circumstances might be playing into this unhappy state of affairs as well. When I read the early books, there wasn’t a cloud in my sky. But having emerged from a rather bleak year, there’s something a little too close in all that guilt and grief and self-loathing and despair, and I can’t distance myself enough from it to enjoy it. There is a systematic aestheticisation of suffering to be found in all of Monette’s books. I’m not going to try and argue that as either a positive or negative quality in her work. I think it’s probably neutral: it’s

something

art

does

sometimes

. I acknowledge the difference between literary suffering and real suffering, in that there can be a romance in the former which is impossible in the latter. Also literary suffering exists in a wider, symbolic and allegorical sphere than that of an individual having shitty things done to them by life or others, mainly, I suspect, because it’s not real. Take madness – there is something deeply attractive and romantic about the artistic representation of madness (like Felix’s madness in Melusine) and it’s perfectly possible to appreciate that, and to find in it a kind of beauty, without ignoring the genuine distress suffered by the mentally ill. In short, Ophelia is not my friend who killed herself last year.

But the boundaries between the fictional and the real are not comprehensively signposted. There isn’t a traceable spectrum between Lavinia, daughter of Titus Andronicus, and Elizabeth Short. And ultimately I think there comes an impossible point when the literary and the real collide, corrupt each other and prove they are utterly irreconcilable and yet simultaneously inseparable. Yes, they must be understood as different things operating in a different way – a painting of St Sebastian is not the same as footage of the prisoners at Guantanamo bay – but there comes a point when it is necessary to remember what it is that’s being aestheticised and ask yourself why.

Page 152

Okay, so, there’s a gang-rape scene in Corambis.

Felix – former prostitute, broken gay wizard with ex-cruel master and traumatic past - ends up subjecting himself a thaumaturgic orgy in order to earn money to pay for his ailing brother’s medicine.

It’s awful.

It’s not that it’s explicit, just awful.

And I’m no wuss, okay. I’ve read Last Exit to Brooklyn. I’ve read The Wasp Factory. I’ve read American Psycho.

But something about this scene in this book bought me a first class ticket on the ARGH! Train and whizzed me straight out of my comfort zone.

It’s strange to say that something is “outside your comfort zone” in that it feels like a confession of personal failure (also something that’s outside my comfort zone). And then I thought about it more, and I thought: hey, so what, gang-rape is outside my comfort zone. Surely that’s normal. Gang-rape is absolutely something that should be outside all our comfort zones. But here’s where it gets complicated: in fact, fictional gang-rape is not outside my comfort zone. I play H-games, for God’s sake, where they’re ten a penny. You can’t take two steps in an H-game without stubbing your toe on a gang rape. So it’s something more specific than that. It was something about this particular portrayal of it.

It’s not shock value. Felix gets himself sexually abused on a pretty regular basis, so much so, in fact, that it’s kind of part of the fun, and it’s very much tied into Monette’s aesthetic of suffering.

I could not see, and I could barely hear, save for my own harsh breathing. But I could feel. I could Malkar’s hands like silk, running up and down my back, tracing the scars, the old palimpsest of pain. I could feel his body arching against me, his bulk, his heat. I felt his hands slide under my hips, stroking, exciting, felt the stiffness of him against my thigh. Pain, then, but not too much. Pain … and arousal all woven together like a tapestry. I was moaning, gasping; the only word I could form were “Please, Malkar, please, lease,” and I didn’ tknow if I was begging him to stop or continue. Not that it would made the slightest difference either way.

Let’s pin our colours to the mast here. That’s beautiful. Terrible, but beautiful and absolutely literary in its unrealness. It’s also about as accurate a portrayal of sexual abuse than St Sebastian up there is of martyrdom. Perhaps I’m just an irredeemable sicko but I’m pretty sure it’s there, to an extent, to be enjoyed, partially as spectacle (straight women do not generally write about beautiful gay boys sexing each other manipulatively because it’s a Serious Social Issue) and, also, partially as vindication for all the crappy things that have been done to innumerable female characters in a seventy years of fantasy fiction. I’m not, of course, advocating backlash (more manrape!) but there is something compelling and, even perhaps comforting, in characters like Felix, Alec and friends, these beautiful men, who are as sexually vulnerable as women, suffer and fear the sort of things women suffer and fear, and are very much created to be subjects of an extra-textual female gaze and the intra-textual male gaze. I’m not saying that men don’t get raped and looked at, but the sheer saturation is demonstrably less. I am not trying to say that what happens to Felix at the start of Melusine isn’t dreadful. It is. But it’s a literary violation, and it reduces him to a literary madness that is as terrible and as beautiful as the horror that creates it.

But let’s talk about gang rape. Now there’s something you don’t say everyday.

The scene itself written in a very similar style – opulent, not too explicit although more explicit than above, and contains the same awkward issues of dubious consent. In Melusine, Felix chooses to go to Malkar in a fit of self loathing. In Corambis he agrees theoretically to an orgy in order to raise money for Mildmay’s medical treatment. In both cases what ends up happening to him is far more devastating than what he originally signed up for but, equally, there’s an element of complicity to it. If you return to your abusive master, expect to get abused. If you agree to be the centerpiece of an orgy, expect to get fucked. This abject stupidity is granted a psychological plausibility because Felix is a messed up little bunny, with a supposedly tragic conviction of his own profound worthlessness.

Obviously I don’t want to get into real issues here, but I think the reason the dubious consent became one of the bothering aspects of the scene in Corambis is that the sex abuse came plot-approved. I mean, if Felix was walking down the street and happened to get jumped and gang raped by a bunch of guys I think many a reader might rightly cry “Sarah Monette, what the fuck?” as there are very few occasions in which it is either appropriate or necessary to get one of your characters gang raped. But this way he has a “real” reason to put himself voluntarily into a position where he might be. It’s even, perhaps, meant to be on some level noble – in a hopelessly fucked up way, of course. So what you end up with is a deeply uncomfortable situation in which everything conspires, including (conveniently) Felix himself, to create a scenario in which a horrible but beautifully written gang rape is, to an extent, okay. And this is where the aesthetic of suffering starts to come apart at the seams.

Essentially this scene falls right into the uncanny valley. If it was purely designed for titillation I wouldn’t have a problem with it, but as it is there are elements are titillation and elements of horror. We are meant to be shocked and appalled – and it is shocking and appalling – but it’s framed in such a way that we are simultaneously liberated to relish the aesthetic. And quite frankly that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I think there’s something profoundly hypocritical and, indeed, deeply disturbing in the idea of enjoying both moral outrage and illicit sexual excitement (see Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse). The scene bears all the hallmarks of erotic non-con (there are elements of psychological exposure as well as physical, the victim is physically aroused throughout, the abusers are appreciative of his beauty and his apparent eagerness, and so on and so forth) but worked through a guilt-appeasing filter of “oh gosh, isn’t this terrible.”

My ankles were still chained and somebody had me scruffed like a kitten; I was keening in protest, but I was dragged upright, forced to straddle someone’s thighs, while he continued fucking me with the same relentless steadiness. I was displayed for all of them, my arousal jutting out shamelessly, the tear tracks on my face attesting to my weakness.

Now, I know that, unlike erotic non-con, Felix is not secretly into what’s being done to him and that he’s breaking and being broken here but you still have a scene that’s running in two directions simultaneously and trying to have its cake and eat it. It goes out of its way to tick the non-con wink-wink boxes but then slaps you face in the face with its insistence that this a terrible and traumatic event. Essentially you can’t have a gorgeously written gang rape that positions itself within a carefully constructed aesthetic framework and a psychologically accurate and traumatic portrait of a terrible ordeal.

And, ultimately, I guess you have to ask yourself if it’s okay to have an aesthetic gang rape scene full stop. The idea bothers me less as pornography but here, I would argue, that it gains an added erotic piquancy from the fact it really is annihilating Felix, which, again is troublesome. Essentially it’s why raping Clarissa is so much more interesting than raping Justine, and why it’s all right to get off on the latter and not the former.

The more I’ve thought about this and tried to articulate my issues with it, the more complex and convoluted it has become. There is, of course, an element of the purely personal about – I didn’t like it and it upset me – as well as these more abstract, intellectualizations of it. I dug around on Monette’s Livejournal – on which is usually charming and sensible – to see what I could find and, lo and behold, she has written quite comprehensively on the subject, which I shall now quote pretty much in its entirety:

I knew from very early on that Felix was going to turn back to prostitution to get the money for a doctor for someone he loved (I knew this was going to happen before I knew Mildmay existed), and I knew that he was going to end up in a situation that was completely out of his control and that hurt him badly. Because Felix is reckless and self-destructive and because under all his vanity, he doesn't think he's worth protecting. And because it is a kind of answering horror to his being raped by Malkar at the beginning of Mélusine. And because he needed something that would force him to confront these issues--force him to see that he doesn't deserve to be abused--and it had to be something superlatively unbearable if it was going to get through to him, because Felix has way too much experience at ignoring his own pain.

Say what? So it’s redemptive gang rape, the sort makes you a stronger and better person? What … the … fuck? It’s like those Hollywood amnesia plotlines (one blow to the head gives you amnesia, another blow cures it) except with sexual abuse. I know, again, we’re operating in a fictional sphere but this is so made of wrong that I’ll just content myself with linking to Dan’s article on

the victim dilemma

and throw my hands up in despair.

I quite enjoy Monette’s aestheticisation of suffering, I could probably navigate the uncanny valley if I really had to but I am sick to death of male fantasy writers using sexual abuse as a textual shortcut for character development and I’m damned if I’m going to deal with women doing the same thing. Sarah Monette, you are better than this.

Sexual abuse is not good for you. It happens and people react. Constantly depicting characters who react to it in courageous and life-enhancing ways is not empowering, it’s fucking demeaning to people who struggle along every day as best they can.

I’m sure in a different time in a different mood I’ll pick up Corambis again and I’ll get to page 152 and I’ll shrug and go “gang rape, meh” and read right on.

But not today.Themes:

Damage Report

Books

Sarah Monette

Sci-fi / Fantasy

bookmark this with - facebook - delicious - digg - stumbleupon - reddit

~Comments (

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)

Arthur B

at 14:44 on 2009-04-27It's depressing when series go south like this. It's especially annoying when they burn down the virtues of the earlier volumes. I was looking at your first Monette review and you were saying how you were impressed by the fact that Felix was gay, but it kind of wasn't a big deal; I'm getting the impression that as the series goes on that becomes less true, since that LJ extract makes it sounds like Monette intended all along to reduce Felix to a weepy gay man being abused by angry gay men. (If I'm interpreting that right - if Felix pimping himself out predates the existence of Mildmay, that means that Monette was planning to make this happen since before the first book, right?)

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Wardog

at 15:11 on 2009-04-27Mmm, that's part of the problem though. I don't actually think it's "gone south" - despite the Xtreme angst I was quite absorbed until page 152. It was merely that scene that tripped me out. I'm sure if I could put it behind me and just get on with the book, I'd probably really like it.

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Rude Cyrus

at 20:32 on 2009-04-27Great, now I need a shower.

While I suppose rape can be presented as being aesthetically pleasing, like in erotic non-con, I still don't like it. I've always found consenting sex between happy, willing partners infinitely more pleasurable -- don't ask me why. This sort of stuff just makes my skin crawl.

What's funny is that I can make it through The 120 Days of Sodom without blinking, but I think that's because De Sade insisted on using the driest, most tortured language possible.

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Wardog

at 21:15 on 2009-04-27Sorry Cyrus. I'm not sure but I think it's probably easier to be into erotic non-con / rape fantasy if you're a woman than a man, either because you're more likely to imagine yourself as the rapee rather than the rapist which is slightly easier to deal with morally speaking or because the world seems generally reluctant to admit that women can rape people too. Whereas if you're a man who fantasies about forcing women to have sex with him ... well ... hostility many ensue from quarters unwilling to concede the very real difference between fantasy, reality and simulated non-con.

Hmm, I think the thing about 120 Days of Sodom is that, as you say, it's incredibly dull. And de Sade is a terrible writer. There's only one thing worse than a rape scene and that's a badly written rape scene!

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Arthur B

at 21:18 on 2009-04-27I do wonder sometimes whether deSade was an early pen-and-paper troll. Most of his books seem to be the literary equivalent of telling someone a particular link goes to an interesting and thought-provoking philosophy website when actually it points to goatse or 2girls1cup.

I mean, he went to jail for it, but you have to make sacrifices for "the lulz", as I believe the young people call it these days.

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http://roisindubh211.livejournal.com/

at 02:43 on 2009-04-28"Constantly depicting characters who react to it in courageous and life-enhancing ways is not empowering, it’s fucking demeaning to people who struggle along every day as best they can."

I have to disagree here- not with the point you make, but with the accusation being levelled at Monette. Felix has spent three books getting abused and every reaction to it has been, basically, "I was right all along, I am worthless. Hmmm, should I hurt myself again or just re-alienate everyone who cares about me tonight?" The enormity of the gang-rape is something he's not prepared to consider his just desserts, and it isn't the only influence on his growth as a person. A lot has to do with having Mildmay -who has been developing his own self-confidence, on his own, without the help of shitty things happening to him- be there for him and push and push to get him (Felix) not to hurt himself any more.

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Wardog

at 09:13 on 2009-04-28

The enormity of the gang-rape is something he's not prepared to consider his just desserts, and it isn't the only influence on his growth as a person.

I do see your point and I wasn't really dissing Monette, who I actually adore. There was just something about this scene, or the way it was presented, or *something* that was a bridge too far for me. And at first I was inclined to just ignore it and tell myself to stop being a wuss and then I got interested in *why* this scene was so problematic and, secondarily, I realised that, on a wider level, it should probably be okay to stand up and say "for me, this gang rape is not okay."

I will at some point finish Corambis, because I have *hugely* enjoyed the Doctrine of Labyrinths quartet (I have some reviews knocking around here in which I give much sweet sweet love), I think I just need some time to get away from the gang rape.

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Wardog

at 09:29 on 2009-04-28

I do wonder sometimes whether deSade was an early pen-and-paper troll

Dan and I like the idea of historical trolls, and also explains the Marquis far more than most of pop-psych nonsense I've read does =P

Lucifer, of course, would be the first troll - complaining about the mods.

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http://miss-morland.livejournal.com/

at 11:54 on 2009-04-28*giggles at the thought of de Sade and Lucifer as trolls*

I haven't read Monette's books, but I still found this post very interesting - it articulates my issues with non-con and dub-con in fiction very well. (I do wonder, though, if ambiguous portrayals of rape scenes are sometimes meant to make the readers think and question their own attitudes, instead of jumping to the safe reaction of 'OMG so horrible'?)

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Dan H

at 14:25 on 2009-04-28

I do wonder, though, if ambiguous portrayals of rape scenes are sometimes meant to make the readers think and question their own attitudes, instead of jumping to the safe reaction of 'OMG so horrible'?)

You might well be right, but even if that is the intent, it's a deeply flawed one.

Perhaps I'm just an arrogant shit, but I really hate it when people try to make me think about stuff unless it's in a medium *specifically designed* for that.

If you want to challenge my preconceptions about rape, write a book that is *about* challenging my preconcieved notions about rape. Don't try to do it in the middle of a fantasy series that is mostly about hot gay wizards gettin' it on.

If I want to have my ideas about absuse challenged, I'll read Lolita, or possibly I'll track down some abuse-survivors' weblogs. I won't read an otherwise ordinary fantasy novel or, for that matter, watch

Dollhouse

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Dan H

at 16:05 on 2009-04-28

The enormity of the gang-rape is something he's not prepared to consider his just desserts

I can't speak for Kyra, but the problem I have with this is that it suggests, falsely, that the more traumatic an experience is the less likely you are to blame yourself for it. I'm by no means an expert on the subject of abuse survival but from my limited experience people's tendency to self-blame for things is wholly unrelated to the severity of the abuse suffered. For that matter, the whole idea of rating abuse experiences in order of severity is a bit of a dodgy precedent.

Essentially I think there's an important, and worrying, difference between "Felix has experienced things like this before but, because he has grown as a person, and because of the influence of Mildmay, he does not blame himself for this experience" and "Felix has experienced things like this before but, because this experience is so much worse than the others, he cannot blame himself for it".

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http://sistermagpie.livejournal.com/

at 21:38 on 2009-05-01I haven't read this last book yet, but I'm glad for the heads-up. Having read the other 3 I can definitely see how this kind of thing would play, and I'm not surprised that she'd planned something like this from the beginning. It does make you think thought, about the idea that this character is constantly going through situations like this, and it's finally when he acheives the kind of abuse he might have always thought would be what he deserved, that he realizes he didn't deserve it. Even if Mildmay and other experiences are also part of his turnaround, I don't know whether that kind of catalyst will click for me the way another one might.

Like, rather than having him be in a situatio that's the same as before, but with one clear difference that makes him see it clearly, it's almost like Helen Keller at the well. Repeated fingerspelling over and over and finally he gets it.

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Wardog

at 15:28 on 2009-05-11I lost this temporarily in the deluge of comments about other things.

It is possible I've over-reacted to the gang rape; I suppose responses to these sort of motifs are always going to be extremely personal. I feel almost hypocritical because, as you say, there's plenty of indication previously that we were on the Sex Abuse Superhighway and something like this was probably bound to happen. But the way it's framed and written, combinated with its narrative function as a catalyst for change really really squicked me out. I know it's not necessarily meant to be psychologically plausible but there's something deeply worrying in the idea that there is a scale of sexual abuse, the extreme end of which teaches you self respect.

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valse de la lune

at 14:04 on 2011-07-12I tracked down

this interview

and I'm now extremely, thoroughly grossed out with Sarah Monette:

I think this does happen to gay male protagonists (the most obvious example is Mercedes Lackey's Last Herald-Mage books). And I think Felix does fall into this trap to a certain extent, although in my defense I will say that the reason he gets raped is because I was interested in the tension inherent in a character who could be both rapist and victim. Which could have been a woman, or a heterosexual man, but it was most obvious and easiest to mobilize with a gay man. I also chose a gay male protagonist because my abiding interest is in the power dynamics of human relationships, especially sexual relationships, and it is VERY VERY HARD to write about that with a heterosexual female protagonist without pigeon-holing her and yourself into either a re-inscription of patriarchal gender roles (male dominant, female submissive) or a simple gender reversal (female dominant, male submissive) (which I did work with some in my novella, "A Gift of Wings," in The Queen in Winter). A lesbian relationship is also a possibility, but it's far more interesting and attention-grabbing to take power away from a man than it is to give power to a woman. [...] Also, because we live in a patriarchal society and have for several thousand years, there's nothing new or shocking about the idea that women are victims. (I'm not saying this is a good thing, mind you.) You can get more narrative charge out of victimizing a man and you aren't reinscribing the same old gender role patterns into that ever deeper groove of men act and women suffer.

What the fuck, Monette? My word, lesbian relationships aren't just ~hawt~ enough unlike slender

yaoi stereotypes

wizards sexing it up and... female empowerment is just too boring? Female victimization is just too

banal

to write about so gay men being degraded (and in this case, often raped by women) has more "narrative charge"? There's also something toward the end that basically goes "well, if you are writing about male rape it's super

titillating

shocking so people will recognize RAPE IS HORRIBLE whereas women being raped is just so

every day

so... hey, manpain! That'll get people

thinking

, right? Right!"

I don't know, all of this reads like the slash fangirl's justification why she's not interested in writing girls but wants to write hot boys instead, all disguised under a pretend layer of ~*soshul justeese*~.

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Wardog

at 23:33 on 2011-07-12Oh dear. I'm actually really annoyed with myself that it took me to Book IV to unpack what was going on with the, err, sexay mainpain and all the arse rape. I did quite like Monette initially - I think partially because when I first read Melusine I was still under the impression that gay characters were pretty rare in fantasy. To give Monette credit, when she actually bothers to be interested in them, she does write interesting female characters - I mean I *loved* Mehitabel from this series.

I think what freaks me out the most is that, as you observe, it's blatant titillation under the label of trangression. I have no problems with people getting their kicks from whatever they get their kicks from, as long as it's a carefully demarcated fantasy space, but pretending it's anything else is deeply toxic.

Also that interview was just awful :(

Maybe it's just because it doesn't apply to me but I don't understand why so many women find two dudes so unbelievably hawt but two women apparently tedious. Ho hum.

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valse de la lune

at 05:06 on 2011-07-13I think gay characters are still pretty rare in fantasy, but the gay dudes all seem to come from the same wellspring of fanfic tropes. I've read all the arguments as to why dudeslash is a female-positive space that enables women to explore their sexuality and I do get some of it, but I can't shake the feeling that so much of that is hot air; no matter how hard a slash fan argues I can't really see how spamming rape at gay dudes is particularly, y'know, feminist. Maybe it plays with power dynamics and whatnot but, on the other hand,

rape culture

I don't get the thing with YAY HAWT BOYS EWW GIRLS ARE BORING either, though it's been explained to me that most female characters aren't decently written so people'd sooner generate fanfic about boys instead. But that doesn't fly because fandom churns out great volumes of fanfic dedicated to minor male characters, even though some of them barely have a presence in the book/show/movie--see Figwit of the LOTR movies fame--whereas women, primary or tertiary, still get written out or villified. There are even

bingo cards

. Somewhere in that

a valid clause regarding how we're trained to look at media through male gateways thanks to patriarchy and we internalize that. Still don't get it on a personal level because I've always preferred female characters over male, but there it goes.

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Melissa G.

at 06:30 on 2011-07-13

Maybe it's just because it doesn't apply to me but I don't understand why so many women find two dudes so unbelievably hawt but two women apparently tedious. Ho hum.

Speaking as a straight woman who gets paid to translate yaoi, I can understand that pretty well. :-) It's not that I find girls boring as characters, but as someone who isn't sexually attracted to women, I find myself gravitating toward situations where I can look at/write about two sexy boys instead if I'm looking for smexy times. (Though I'm very, very picky these days about yaoi because of tropes I'm sure I've mentioned before.)

I feel some sympathy for Monette because I do have a hard time verbalizing my tastes without resorting to those same basic arguments about power play or feeling the need to judge the female character and how she is portrayed specifically because she's female (which I wish I didn't, but I do so...). What I find odd is the fact that everyone insists on asking me *why* I find male-on-male romance so appealing, and then I'm stuck in this hem-hawing, putting-on-airs defense because I'm too embarrassed to just go, "Two guys doing stuff to each other is hot?"

(Uh-oh, now I'm having Dorian Gray flashbacks. Oh, Ben Barnes, you scamp, you!!)

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Steve Stirling at 07:07 on 2011-07-13

I don't get the thing with YAY HAWT BOYS EWW GIRLS ARE BORING either

-- you get exactly the same in reverse from male writers a lot, so I don't see that there's any mystery about it.

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valse de la lune

at 07:20 on 2011-07-13I don't think Kyra's asking "why male-on-male?" but more "why do people find women inexplicably boring?"

but as someone who isn't sexually attracted to women, I find myself gravitating toward situations where I can look at/write about two sexy boys instead if I'm looking for smexy times.

That doesn't make sense to me because, even outside of sexual context, a lot of slashers just don't want to write women period and I'm sure we don't always only write about what's sexually/romantically attractive to us (or no straight man would ever write male characters).

It also doesn't really answer why women are so villified and hated by fandom at large: why people like Monette believe "it's more interesting to take power away from a man than to give power to a woman," or why slash is passed off as some wonderful female-positive space when it involves a lot of female-negative things, including but not limited to slut-shaming and othering women. Ogle hot boys, whatever (but even so, why so much fucking rape all the fucking time? Why the infantilizing tropes?). But I think you can do that without contributing to misogyny and rape culture.

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Steve Stirling at 07:24 on 2011-07-13

I don't think Kyra's asking "why male-on-male?" but more "why do people find women inexplicably boring?"

-- I don't. I actually had to start flipping coins at one point to make sure my characters weren't predominantly female.

Maybe it's because I was in single-sex schools for a lot of my adolescence, but I just find women more interesting than men. More complex and variable, on average.

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Steve Stirling at 07:38 on 2011-07-13

Ogle hot boys, whatever (but even so, why so much fucking rape all the fucking time? Why the infantilizing tropes?). But I think you can do that without contributing to misogyny and rape culture.

-- I don't read much (any, really) slash, but the actually-published equivalents like the book described here don't seem particularly misogynist to me. Just obsessed with Hot Boys in Chains.

As for the rape and stuff, a lot of people get off on that. Trying to tell people that the sexual fantasies which ring their chimes aren't permissible is roughly equivalent to trying to scold water until it voluntarily runs uphill. Much effort, little result.

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valse de la lune

at 07:45 on 2011-07-13

I don't. I actually had to start flipping coins at one point to make sure my characters weren't predominantly female.

Thank you, Minority Warrior, but if you are a bloke that's not exactly addressed to you.

I don't read much (any, really) slash, but the actually-published equivalents like the book described here don't seem particularly misogynist to me. Just obsessed with Hot Boys in Chains.

I've only read the first book and the gang-rape scene in the fourth, but a lot of the women in this series like to rape gay men for some strange reason.

Melusine

opens with an anecdote about the pure, true love between men. Two women get between it; one proceeds to rape one of the men repeatedly until he wants to kill himself. So, yes, both fandom slash and published slash perpetuate a lot of the same crap. Then there's Monette's interview and strange leaps of illogic which read sexist as hell to me.

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Melissa G.

at 08:48 on 2011-07-13

I can't speak to that. I don't know why so many writers are so anti-female characters, and it would take me pages of musing to try and come to a conclusion. I was referring specifically to sexual situations (by which I mean stories centering on sex) because the comment I was particularly responding to was "why do so many women find two dudes so unbelievably hot but two women apparently tedious". Which I read as "why do so many women love writing about two guys (sexually) but find writing about two women so boring (sexually)". Perhaps I misinterpreted what Kyra was saying. I stated clearly that I don't find women boring as characters to read and write about, but that I understand why many women gravitate toward male homosexual relationships and why they might find it arousing when they are writing merely to titillate themselves/others.

I haven't read the series in question so I take everyone's word for it that the rape isn't handled well and misogyny abounds. And trust me, I'm the first person to get fed up with the kind of tropes male-on-male stuff tends to come with - especially when written by someone who's probably never even spoken to a gay man before. I got fed up with one author in particular because her protagonists kept falling for their rapists, yuck. But just because a lot of it sucks and perpetuates some seriously shitty stuff doesn't mean that it's not okay to find guy-on-guy stuff hot. And I really don't appreciate being made to feel like because I like it, I am somehow in danger of losing my feminist card.

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valse de la lune

at 09:57 on 2011-07-13I don't think I have been suggesting that if you like slash, you're in danger of losing your feminist cred; being a feminist doesn't exactly mean everything you consume must be feminist, after all, and we all enjoy things that are problematic to some degree. I just don't like how it's put forward as a YAY WOMEN field when it's not really. Likewise, I've been shouted down in fandom spaces for calling out misogyny in slash, something along the line of

you will find it is you who is misogyny

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valse de la lune

at 10:06 on 2011-07-13(Sorry that I'm coming down harshly such that you feel you're being discredited as a feminist, though.)

One more thing--I've been told over and over that there is a strong presence of queer women in slash circles, so for some it's not so much a matter of "I'm straight so more cocks yay!!!" In fact, with so many queer women around--so many lesbians even--you'd think there would be more F/F fanfic. But there isn't, so...

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Melissa G.

at 10:23 on 2011-07-13

I don't think I have been suggesting that if you like slash, you're in danger of losing your feminist cred

I think I was responding defensively to this comment:

Ogle hot boys, whatever (but even so, why so much fucking rape all the fucking time? Why the infantilizing tropes?). But I think you can do that without contributing to misogyny and rape culture.

It basically felt to me like my entire sexual preference/fetish/whatever was being boiled down to "ogling hot boys". It’s those kinds of dismissive, judgmental comments that make me feel like I need to somehow justify what I find arousing. That’s why you have people arguing that it’s pro-women or empowering or whatever to write and read man-on-man love stories. When an attraction is called into question, I think often women in particular feel the need to base that attraction in something intellectual and philosophical. Because it would be wrong for a woman to just find something titillating or arousing. Because women aren’t supposed to like sex just for sex.

I think there are ways that it can be empowering (I wouldn't go so far as to say 'feminist'), but most of it fails in this regard. For me, when I read a story with a male bottom that I can relate to as far as sexual behavior, it makes me feel less weird. There's something freeing about the behavior being related to the position and not the gender, for me anyway. I think that also relates to why an author might find it more interesting (and by interesting I mean because they find it hot) to take power away from men. For some women who are attracted to men, there is something very fascinating and seductive about a man submitting (either sexually or emotionally), probably because it's something so commonly associated with female behavior. So again, it becomes less of a gender thing and more of a relationship role thing. If that makes any sense....

I just don't like how it's put forward as a YAY WOMEN field when it's not really.

I totally understand that. I actually avoid fan written slash like the plague because most of it is just not good. Most of it is (I think) influenced by yaoi, which oh dear god, has such problems. There is so much rape and questionable consent and a lot of "I'm only gay for that guy" and such overly traditional female behavior (even though one of them is male, go figure). And the kind of people you've probably argued with are likely the kind of people who make me afraid to admit I'm part of the yaoi subculture.

But there is good stuff out there. I promise. :-)

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Melissa G.

at 10:26 on 2011-07-13

Sorry, I made my long post before I saw this! That is odd. Why don't they focus on yuri? Yuri is slowly becoming a more female dominated genre. It's kind of cool actually that the female authors are slowly co-opting a genre that was once basically male-written lesbian porn for men. To each their own, I guess?

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valse de la lune

at 10:59 on 2011-07-13

It basically felt to me like my entire sexual preference/fetish/whatever was being boiled down to "ogling hot boys".

But... I said that because I think it's pretty dandy if you're just in it for the ogling of hot boys, or balls being cupped gently, or even self-lubing anuses. I don't think you, or anyone else, need to justify it any further than that. Think it's hot? Go for it! That's excellent. Objectifying

men

in and of itself, separate from the concern over straight people fetishizing homosexuality, doesn't really bother me. I'm not questioning the appeal of slash: I'm questioning some of the tropes, the homophobia, the misogyny. Which certainly aren't universal, but there sure is a lot of them to go around. Hell, gay male characters written by straight men also get raped an awful lot (hi Richard Morgan, thank you for that graphic schoolboy gang rape).

Disclosure: I think lesbians are awesome. I'd like to read more stuff with lesbian representation. Being homoromantic does have something to do with it, though.

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Melissa G.

at 11:11 on 2011-07-13

:-) I think it just came off as hostile because of the swearing, lol. To be honest, I was probably overly defensive because it's kind of a touchy thing for me.

I'm not questioning the appeal of slash: I'm questioning some of the tropes, the homophobia, the misogyny.

Yes, I'm with you here. I have a lot of trouble with a lot of boy/boy stuff that's out there.

Re: Lesbians

If you're looking to try out some yuri, I can lead you to some scanlation sites. I haven't read much yuri so I can't totally vouch for the content, but these are sites that I know of:

Lililicious

Payapaya

Just be sure to check for ratings and such. There was one on Lilicious I read years ago that I was enjoying.

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valse de la lune

at 11:14 on 2011-07-13OMG yay :D :D :D Thanks for the links. My friend's been sending me some too. I'm also quite pleased to see that a lot of yuri writers are female. Awesome.

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Cammalot

at 15:23 on 2011-07-13I JUST WANNA WATCH DUDES EMOTE. ;-)

I actually got into yaoi (not slash for whatever reason) because I was attracted to what I thought was the innate equality in such a a relationship. There are a variety of reasons I don't really seek out much fanfic anymore (one of which is the decade-plus that has gone by) but one of them is that I don't really see that equality getting embraced. (I'm necessarily truncating this, I have to imitate being a productive employee at the moment.)

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Melissa G.

at 19:40 on 2011-07-13

I JUST WANNA WATCH DUDES EMOTE. ;-)

Ooh, yes, good observation. I like that too.

I actually got into yaoi (not slash for whatever reason) because I was attracted to what I thought was the innate equality in such a a relationship.

Ditto. That's what I really like about it too, which is why I hate when they skew the power dynamic too far in one direction without somehow compensating for it in another way. I've never been into fanfic, but I do love doujinshi.

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Cammalot

at 19:48 on 2011-07-13I wrote up this whole long comment yesterday, but today with you guys' further conversation I realized I was addressing something that Pyro was not talking about, so I'm tweaking, but I don't think I'll have a chance to get to it today.

The extremely short version is that there's a very definite blockage that some women seem to have about writing women, and I had it myself for some time (and that some more extreme versions of it outright baffle me), and have spent a lot of time trying to process, discuss, and debate what the fuck that is about. With theories. I have theories.

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Melissa G.

at 19:53 on 2011-07-13

The extremely short version is that there's a very definite blockage that some women seem to have about writing women,

Definitely noticed this myself at times. I gravitate toward writing male characters, or at least I used to. I'm very interested to hear your theories whenever you find the time to write them up. :-)

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Sister Magpie

at 20:07 on 2011-07-13

I would guess that that's probably not all that related to the whole "that's my kink" thing, only not all kinks are sexual. That is, expecting them to explain it would probably be similar to having anybody explain why they find one thing more hot than another.

For instance, I like het and I like slash, but there are certain kinds of stories that could definitely be considered non-sexual kinks that I am more likely to read about in a m/m pairing than a f/m pairing or f/f pairing. I suppose I could try to relate it to power issues with gender IRL, but it's probably more just a kink if it's something I've pretty much always been drawn to.

I don't find that rape or "I'm only gay for that guy" seems to dominate most of the slash I come across, but I think that might often come down to different pairings leaning towards different dynamics. Or else also some authors being better than most.

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Steve Stirling at 22:44 on 2011-07-13Pyrofennec:

-of the women in this series like to rape gay men for some strange reason.Melusine opens with an anecdote about the pure, true love between men. Two women get between it; one proceeds to rape one of the men repeatedly until he wants to kill himself.

-- that is odd. I'd say it was evidence of misogyny if a guy wrote it, but I have trouble -imagining- a guy writing it, even a gay man. You'd need a very strange set of quirks to do so.

#Ferretbrain #Corambis #Sarah Monette #Wardog

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