#its alleviating the stress ngl

[natandacat]

New incentive to procrastinate going to bed: pushing back the risk of waking up in a PEM

[paperbackphoenix]

2017 best happenings tag

2017 was possibly the most difficult year of my life, and when difficult things happen, it’s not easy to find the positive moments

BUT the wonderful @shadowtearling and the brilliant @bvkspine tagged me to do just that. and so I will!

(the “and so” was honestly just a ref to when u read my project ally and probably got pissed at how often I said that)

jan: I’mmmm ngl this was actually the toughest month of them all but since I need to be a happy gal, my dad was the best person in the world and sat on the computer all morning to get me and my parents tickets for hamilton in london!!!!!! april 2018 I’m shook

feb: it was my blog’s 2 year anniversary! I can’t believe I’ve had this trash blog for nearly 3 years how wild. I think I reached 3.5k followers or something? also I started doing dance in drama enrichment and it was actually really fun! I didn’t pick drama for my alevel but I could still experience it and get friendly with all the drama kids which was wicked

march: saw 2 gr8 films this month, and I finally felt like I was getting to grips with my alevels. the start of alevels (sept 2016) was HARD and I wasn’t doing as well as I expected, but this was when things began to align

april: this month was mainly easter holidays, which was GREAT, and also I got to hang with a lot of my friends from secondary school. college is v busy so its hard to meet up outside of studying, so getting to see my friends again was really lovely

may: BUSY month! mocks, signing up for volunteering at the library, and ALSO I starting rehearsing again! like in feb, I got to do more drama. my friend needed an extra actor so I stepped in for shakespeare’s ‘the taming of the shrew’. I met new people, and it was super fun.

june: I read my new favourite book in the whole world, ‘the name of the wind�� by patrick rothfuss, and also performed ‘the taming of the shrew’! it reminded me just why I love performing. the adrenaline rush as you walk on stage is always super thrilling

july: I read a bunch this month, because the summer holidays started mid july. also I got my mock results back and received 2 a’s and an a*, which, let me tell you, was such a joy. I had been stressing about university and whether or not I would get the grades (aaa) needed for my dream uni, and these mock results were such an utter comfort to me. I also had my birthday this month, and had 3 really great days with family and friends

aug: jam packed! once more I read a lot, and also went to berlin and london! berlin was beautiful and absolutely bursting with history. in london we stayed with some family friends and went to see harry potter and the cursed child at the west end! the theatre always has and always will have a special place in my heart.

sept: I never enjoy september, because it means going back to work and inevitable stress. BUT I read the sequel to ‘the name of the wind’ this month, and loved it just as much as the first book. I also got my new teachers and classes, made new friends (jiff i’m looking at u), and began to get super excited at the prospect of going to university

oct: busy busy busy month! somehow I read a lot this month? I also went to the theatre, accepted an award at my dream university, went to my first ‘‘‘‘teen’’’’ party (which was actually really fun) and FINALLY sent my ucas application off

nov: one of the best months of the year. I got an unconditional offer from my dream university to study english and creative writing, and, much like in july, my stress was alleviated. I still can’t quite believe it?? oh AND I started to learn to drive, but who cares about that?

dec: I always love december. christmas is the holiday I look forward to most, because it’s a celebration everyone can get involved in, rather than a birthday, which is focused on one individual. you spend time with family and friends, the german market opens, it snOWS! I also finally handed in a project that I had been working on since februrary, meaning I wrote the longest finished piece of creative writing of my life. 17k words about female pirates??? I’m immensely proud.

I can feel in my bones that 2018 is going to be a better year. I have so many great things happening in just the first few months, so I feel it will set the following months up for success

I’m going to tag: @chilledcake @phoebe-does @boneseasonofglass @celesteantu @kat-from-minasmorgul

[astoryaboutwar]

I know you said you wouldn't do a complete companion fic/alternate POV, and this doesn't have to be in fic form either, but could you elaborate on when/how Victor and the rest of the team figured out that Yuuri got captured?

I’m…cautiously sliding out my pretentious author card right now, lol. I’ve mentioned this in the fic author notes, and in various replies and comments - our doubts is very, very experimental. This means it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and also means it makes me pretentious AF, but lmao, it’s fanfic, I think I’m allowed a little more leeway?

This…is probably going to get really long, because I ramble a lot, so I’m going to chuck it under a cut, oops. (God, I’m already cringing at my reply.)

So, uh. Here goes:

One of the main things I set out to experiment with in our doubts was the unreliability and tunnel vision of a single character’s perspective and everything that entails. I wanted/want to see how cohesively and cogently I could construct a story with minimal exposition - so readers would go in, smack in the middle of things, and be left to figure things out for themselves. One of the things that this approach sacrifices is a certain…wholeness to the picture, clearly, in that all readers know is what happened to said single character. I’ve tried to alleviate this by providing critical plot details and contextual clues, but this also means that a lot of the rest is left to the reader to decipher.

And all of this boils down to the other thing I wanted to try my hand at, with this fic - reader interpretation. This was very significantly influenced by Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman, in the absolutely genius way Fowles ended things off. If you haven’t read it and don’t mind the spoiler, Fowles (very rudimentarily explained here) ended the book with two endings, each equally plausible. One ending comes first by physical necessity, but he emphasises that neither takes precedence over the other, and whichever the reader chooses to believe is equally the right ending as the other. I promise our doubts will have one definitive ending, but the gaps - that aren’t plot-critical - that lead to that ending are…up to you to decide how to shore. My wonderful Literature tutor always said: the author doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what the author thinks about their work, it doesn’t matter what I think about this fic. The minute I let this out for public consumption, I relinquished the right to be the lone authority on its interpretation. Anything you want to interpret this to be/to have happened can be true, if the text supports it.

I’m aware this will probably gain me detractors in deriding this as lazy writing (and, okay, I know, trust me, I know it’s seriously, seriously pretentious), but…eh. I’m honestly having a blast (and headache, ngl) writing this, and I’m pretty sure I’ll never attempt anything on as ambitious a scale as this for the next, long while, simply because it’s incredibly difficult (and stressful!!) to wrangle.

*glances back* Yeah, that got loooooong. TL;DR - at the risk of sounding facetious, it’s…up to you to decide? *winces* That sounds flippant, but I swear I’m not blowing you off, and I love your comment, and bear with me, this is just…something new I’m trying out, because I’ve always longed to write something like this. All of that said - the next chapter will have slightly more on the whole Wong fiasco, so...hopefully that’ll answer a least some of the question? Oops.

THANK YOU SO MUCH, TRULY. God, I am so embarrassed I wrote any of that. How much of a pretentious literary shit am I? (A huge one, I’m aware.)

*FLEES AND HIDES*