#its meant to be a dennis character study more than anything

[dennisboobs]

i have been inspired and i'm continuing my longass dennis in north dakota fic catch you on the flipside motherfuckers

[skinnyloveneverlasts]

☕️ The Coffee House ☕️

Dennis chose a coffee house for the date, a small brick building in a cozy neighborhood of Philadelphia. Both of you had come here several times before, usually when you got off work or during Sunday mornings after leisurely leaving bed. He had planned the meeting in advance, thinking over the perfect place, the way he would ask you, what he would order. He arrived half an hour before your agreed-on meeting time to ensure he got a good table near the windows, his chair facing the door so he could observe every person who went in and out of the cafe.

He didn’t like sitting with his back toward doors. A few of the others may not have minded it, but he did. He liked being aware of his surroundings and all the people in it, especially when you were with him; the thought of anyone causing you harm started the pulse racing at his wrist. Even though he felt Patricia’s presence edging against the outskirts of his mind, knew that she was sitting in her chair in the room waiting to enter the light, he was in control today.

When Dennis entered, he had ordered drinks for the both of you before sitting down among the other customers. The coffee house was a popular one for good reason. This time of day it was crowded with locals buying drinks and food from the chalked menu on the blackboard above the counter. Dennis didn’t completely mind the talkative throng of patrons, though they had initially grated on his nerves. Their noise would only serve to make the conversation between you two more intimate.

As soon as he arrived, Dennis had ordered your favorite drink and a pastry for you, something light and sweet he hoped you would enjoy. While he waited for you he wiped the chairs clean and swept the table free of crumbs, leaving the stack of folded napkins for the waitress. Then he settled into his seat, adjusted the wire frames on his nose, and began to leaf through the leatherbound planner he had brought. Every once in a while, he looked up to the door before lowering his eyes back to his book. The cream-colored pages held lists of items for him to purchase and tasks he needed complete. He had color-coded them by level of necessity, red being the most urgent and blue meaning the things that could wait longest.

Dennis greeted you with a tight embrace before you sat down across from him. You had been particularly stressed the last few days, your thoughts overwhelming you; you had been forgetting to eat and care for yourself, and despite your trying to put on a good face, Dennis noticed it. He was very attuned to your changes in mood and behavior, always had been; there was no point in lying to him or trying to hide things from such meticulous observation as he possessed. Despite his temperamental nature, the care he felt for those he loved--you being at the top of the list--was unmatched by anyone else you had ever met.

While you were lost briefly in your thoughts, looking out the window with your chin resting in your hand, one of the coffee house waitresses had appeared at the table’s side. She bore a friendly smile and a plate with a flaky golden pastry in its center.

“You ordered a spring croissant?” she asked, turning to direct the question toward Dennis.

“Yes. For them,” he answered, nodding at you.

The woman placed the plate before your place, gathered the napkins, and smiled again. “Alright, enjoy.”

As she pivoted to cross the room, Dennis glanced over at you with a curious expression. You hadn’t noticed him looking exactly this way before. A mixture of love, thoughtfulness, and concern played upon his handsome features. He seemed like he was about to start speaking, but a strain of hesitancy kept the words from lips.

You lifted the knife that the waitress had laid on the edge of the plate and asked out of politeness if he wanted part of the pastry. Dennis raised a hand, indicating that you could have the treat to yourself.

“We got it for you,” he said quietly. “Please, eat it.”

A smile rose across your face as you began eating. Dennis watched you in silence, his pale blue eyes never leaving you, even when a rowdy group of teens entered the coffeehouse directly behind your chair. He had always defended and looked after you, putting you before anyone else as much as he could. You knew other alters cared for you, but none of them so much as Dennis; his love ran so much more deeply. Sometimes he surprised you with his intensity, when he acted on the darker impulses of his personality, but the rest of the time he was your guardian and protector. You knew that nothing harmful could happen to you in his presence.

“We noticed,” Dennis began, his voice still soft, “that you haven’t been caring for yourself as you should.”

He had leaned back slightly in the chair, his gaze still intent upon your face, unwavering in its careful study. His words were low enough that no one else at the tables surrounding you would have heard. He knew the sensitivity of the subject with you, and as much as it damaged him to see your struggles with self-care, he hesitated to bring it up directly. The last thing he wanted was to cause you further anxiety, but today they had decided it was time to talk to you. He felt the particular support of Barry--who adored you--behind the choice, and was relieved to see that your reaction was calm, given the circumstance.

You had shrugged and dropped your eyes to the tabletop, but you looked up again when Dennis continued just as softly, “We saw that you didn’t touch the breakfast we made this morning. You should keep up your strength.”

You started to speak, but Dennis lifted his hand again and went on. His face was still thoughtful, his pale eyes so intent upon you that the rest of the crowded shop seemed to recede into the background and fade. “We know how difficult it can be to care for ourselves adequately. But we don’t like to see you experiencing the same difficulty. Tell us what else we can do to help you.”

You flushed slightly under his gaze, indicating the plate in front of you. “Thank you for buying me this. The surprise, inviting me here, has made me happier. I just. . .”

Your voice halted and trailed away. You searched without success for the perfect way to explain the bouts of sadness, the undereating and the drops in motivation you struggled with at times.

As if reading your mind, Dennis murmured, “It’s difficult, we know. Caring for something that seems impossible. If you could see yourself as we see you, we’re convinced you wouldn’t allow yourself to suffer like this.”

He kept one hand over your own for the remainder of the time you spent at the table. You had the rest of the pastry and some of your drink while you drifted easily in and out of conversation. Dennis didn’t push you to talk more than you wanted, allowing you to choose the topics you were comfortable with and guide the discussion how you felt best.

When you were ready to leave, Dennis got up first and waited for you before making his way toward the coffee house entrance. As the two of you moved around the other people and tables, he murmured in an undertone only meant for your hearing, “When we get back, we want you to take a hot bath and have a nice long rest.”

He finished effectively clearing a path to the door and opened it, holding it for you.

“You are going to relax this afternoon, even if we have to make you,” he warned half-playfully as you stepped past into sunlight.

On the sidewalk you turned to face him, smiling at his words. Dennis had stepped outside, the leather book beneath his arm, his eyes seeking you out again immediately.

“How are you going to do that?” you teased.

Dennis raised his brows, and for the fraction of a second you saw the wicked smile cross his face.

“Whatever means necessary.”

* * *

@song-asleep

I hope you liked this! I tried my best to convey my interpretation of Dennis’s character and how I imagine he acts with you in this setting. it was fun to write! 😄💞

maybe I’ll make another blog for fics

also my mind wouldn’t give me anything creative for the title so I went with that 😭

[gstqaobc]

CBC THE ROYAL FASCINATOR

Friday, April 09, 2021

Hello, royal watchers and all those intrigued by what’s going on inside the House of Windsor. This is your biweekly dose of royal news and analysis. Reading this online? Sign up here to get this delivered to your inbox.

Janet DavisonRoyal Expert

Prince Philip’s life of duty

(Adrian Dennis/Getty Images)

For so many years, Prince Philip was at Queen Elizabeth’s side — or walking just behind — deeply devoted in his duty as consort to the woman who is now the longest-reigning monarch in British history.

But the Duke of Edinburgh, who died this morning aged 99 at Windsor Castle, was seen by many as having his own role in helping an institution steeped in tradition try to find its way toward the future.

Much of that began nearly 70 years ago, after the former sailor who gave up a successful naval career saw his wife ascend the throne.

“What Prince Philip did was help modernize the monarchy in the 1950s,” Michael Jackson, president of the Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada, said in an interview this morning.

“It was still a very tradition-bound institution…. We can credit Prince Philip, with the Queen’s full support, of course, with modernizing [its] finances, protocols, how Buckingham Palace was run … its outreach to the Commonwealth.”

Philip pushed to have Elizabeth’s coronation televised in 1953, an idea she did not wholeheartedly welcome at first.

“He was the modern person,” John Fraser, author of The Secret of the Crown: Canada’s Affair with Royalty, said in an interview this morning. “He was in touch with real people, non-royal people, and so he always had the instinct to reach out. He understood both the dark side of the media presence as well as the necessity of it.”

Fraser credits Philip’s profoundly unsettled early years, after he was “born in poverty and insecurity,” with how he looked toward the future of the Royal Family, and the monarchy.

“I do think those early years were the single biggest factor in his life and how he approached life,” said Fraser. “I think he never assumed things would last forever because he didn’t make any assumptions like that, and I think he certainly assumed the monarchy wouldn’t survive if it didn’t reach out more to the constituency that it had to serve.”

Fraser met Philip, and recalled him as a man who would revel in asking questions and challenging others.

“He was — charming is not the word I would use — but he was an invigorating person to speak to.”

Jackson, who was Saskatchewan’s chief of protocol from 1980 until 2005, met Philip during four visits to the province — three with the Queen and one on his own — and remembered a man with “a great sense of humour.”

“Sometimes people found him a bit abrasive, a bit abrupt, but that’s the way he was,” said Jackson.

“He was a straight shooter and he complemented the Queen beautifully because the Queen is a very soft-spoken, more laid-back person. Prince Philip really spoke his mind and occasionally made jokes and … put everyone at ease. I found him very refreshing, good to work with.”

With Philip’s death, there is an inevitable sadness for the Queen, and inevitable concern for how she will cope with the passing of her husband of more than 73 years.

Both Fraser and Jackson say the Queen will carry on, with Jackson noting “That’s the way she is. She’s a very strong person” with a deep religious faith that will sustain her.

“She’ll do her duty,” said Fraser. “And I think that’s the big lesson of him. He did his duty.”

For a full obituary of Prince Philip, click here.

For photos from Prince Philip's royal career, click here.

Family dysfunction

When Philip Mountbatten married Princess Elizabeth in 1947, the family he was joining was in marked contrast to the fractured one he had known in his youth. His parents' marriage broke down and offered him nothing like the nuclear family arrangement (mom, dad and two kids) that Elizabeth had known throughout her childhood. "In marrying the Queen, [Philip] gained that sort of stable home life that he didn't have when he was younger," royal author and historian Carolyn Harris has said in an interview. Philip's parents were Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Alice of Battenberg, a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Philip was born a prince of both Greece and Denmark on June 10, 1921, on the dining room table at Mon Repos, a villa that was the summer home for the Greek royals on the island of Corfu. He was the last of five children — his four older siblings were all girls. At the time, he was sixth in line to the Greek throne. But life in Greece didn't last long. His father, a professional soldier, was exiled from Greece in 1922 as his uncle, King Constantine I, was forced to abdicate. Philip's family fled, with the story being that Philip was nestled into an orange box as the family was evacuated from Greece on a Royal Navy ship. They eventually made their way to Paris. Philip's childhood took a "dysfunctional turn," author Sally Bedell Smith wrote in her book, Elizabeth The Queen, when he was sent by his parents at the age of eight to England for boarding school. The family eventually broke down. Philip's mother, who was born deaf, was ill periodically, diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent time in a sanitarium in Switzerland. His father went off with his mistress to Monte Carlo, where he died in 1944. Philip was left to be brought up in the U.K. by his mother's family, shuffled among various relatives and boarding schools throughout his youth. He didn't see or have any word from his mother between the summer of 1932 and the spring of 1937. "It's simply what happened," Philip said matter-of-factly in an excerpt from a book by Philip Eade, Young Prince Philip, Turbulent Early Years, published in the Telegraph. "The family broke up. My mother was ill, my sisters were married, my father was in the south of France. I just had to get on with it. You do. One does." As life went on, there really was no father to guide, consult or do anything else a father can do for his child. Several other close relatives died in his early years, including his favourite sister, Cecile, and her family in a plane crash in 1937. The following year, the 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven, his uncle and guardian, died of bone cancer. That left the marquess's younger brother, Louis Mountbatten, to bring up Philip. His family ties also extended into Germany. Three of his sisters were married to German princes involved in the Nazi party. Cecile and her husband, Don, had just joined the Nazi party before they died. Those family alliances had a visible repercussion when Philip and Elizabeth were married in 1947. "His sisters were not invited to the wedding as they were married to German princes who had been involved in the Nazi party during World War Two," Harris said. Philip's mother, Princess Alice, however, was at the wedding, and in her later years, came to live at Buckingham Palace. Alice had her own moment in the cultural conscience in 2019, as an episode during the third season of the Netflix drama, The Crown, focused on her. "She's just the most extraordinary character," Crown creator Peter Morgan told Vanity Fair. She set up charities for Greek refugees and later established a nursing order of Greek Orthodox nuns. During the Second World War, while her son was serving with the Royal Navy and her German sons-in-law fought for the Nazis, she was hiding Jews in Athens. As much as there was the distance between Philip and his mother in his younger years, there was a closeness later. Alice came to live at Buckingham Palace in 1967. Alice died at the palace in 1969 and was interred in the royal crypt at Windsor Castle. In 1988, her remains were transferred, as she had wished, to the church of St. Mary Magdalene in east Jerusalem. In a 1994 visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Philip planted a tree in his mother's honour and visited her gravesite. "I suspect that it never occurred to her that her action was in any way special," Philip said during his visit. "She was a person with deep religious faith and she would have considered it to be a totally human action to fellow human beings in distress."

No stranger to Canada

(Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press)

Prince Philip's last visit to Canada was a short one in 2013 — on his own, without the Queen — to present a ceremonial flag to the Royal Canadian Regiment's 3rd Battalion. It came as something of a surprise. Philip had experienced a few health scares in the 18 months prior. So overseas travel was not necessarily a given for the Duke of Edinburgh at the time. But given Philip's feisty personality, dedication to his role and some of the interests he showed over the years, his return to Canada — he made more than 70 visits or stopovers between 1950 and 2013 — may not really have been a complete surprise. The 2013 trip was billed as a private working visit and was only a few days long. But while he was here, he was finally able to pick up the insignias he had been awarded as companion of the Order of Canada and commander of the Order of Military Merit from David Johnston, then Canada's governor general.

To read more about Philip’s time in Canada, click here.

Royally quotable

“He is someone who doesn't take easily to compliments but he has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years, and I, and his whole family, and this and many other countries, owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim, or we shall ever know.”

— Queen Elizabeth, publicly acknowledging Prince Philip’s importance to her during a speech on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary in 1997.

To read more on what Philip meant to the Queen, click here.

Remembering Prince Philip

Royal Fascinator readers are welcome to share their thoughts on the passing of Prince Philip, and any memories they may have of meeting him over the years. We’ll include some in the next edition of the newsletter.

I’m always happy to hear from you. Send your ideas, comments, feedback and notes to

royalfascinator@cbc.ca

. Problems with the newsletter? Please let me know about any typos, errors or glitches.

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦🇬🇧🇦🇺🇳🇿

[snowdice]

The Horror of Stereotypes (Part 2)[Dice Roll 6]

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Remus/Logan/Patton with Remus/Logan focus (more pre-romantic considering the situation), Remus & Roman, Logan/Patton (established, but not at the forefront for most of it)

Characters:

Main: Remus, Logan

Appear: Roman, Patton, Deceit (but blink and you’ll miss it)

Summary: There had always been a certain stereotype about people like him for as long as anyone could remember. After the Heart War of 1963, those stereotypes had been legalized and places like this had been created to enforce the universal truth: everyone had a soulmate. One soulmate. No more and no less.

At least they were supposed to.

When Remus’s brother gets arrested because of his two soulmarks, Remus risks everything by infiltrating the facility he legally should be in as well due to his own two soulmates to save him. There he meets Logan and it turns out they have a lot in common: they both got hired this week, they both have two soulmates, and they’re both here for the same reason.

Oh. And as it turns out, they’re each other’s soulmates too.

Universe: Soulmate AU

Genre: Horror (Yeah, it’s a fun combo. The horror vibe is mostly contained to chapter 3 though. It’s all still horrifying, but that specific tone is pretty much only there.)

Notes: Torture, Torture of a main character, Dystopian, Blood, Guns, Gunshot wounds, Leg wounds, Mentions of Desecrating an Animal Corpse by a Main Character, Imprisonment, Mentions of Cannibalism, Genocide Suggested, Sexual Innuendo, Fear, A tasteless but not serious incest joke, Medical procedures.

This is part of my Roll the Dice Event which is where I do random ships, universe, and genres for the Sanders Sides fandom. For more details see this post. I posted a few days ago my results from this dice roll here.

You know when you have that one annoying coworker that can’t take a hint?

Part 1

Remus was careful to keep an extra special eye on one specific coworker all day and did his best to glean as much information about the man that he could from his other coworkers without seeming suspicious. They didn’t really seem to know him too well especially since they hadn’t been working with him for very long.

According to Remus’s office mates, Logan was cold and no fun but at the same time was one of the best engineers the government could find. They’d been chomping at the bit to hire him since before he’d even graduated college last spring, but he’d apparently insisted on applying to many different places even with everything the government had offered him. Silly, everyone Remus talked to seemed to think (sufficient survival instincts, Remus countered in his head), but he’d eventually accepted only two days ago after realizing how much of a lucrative career he could have here. Remus smiled and nodded along all while wondering what had happened to make the man suddenly willing to risk being in this place. He wondered if it was the same reason Remus was.

Also, Logan had apparently already met his soulmate. At least, according to Dennis over by the water cooler. Though Dennis (who was now on Remus’s would-let-you-get-eaten-by-a-zombie list) claimed that nobody could figure out why someone would love that stick in the mud, let him tell ya, but he had a butterfly filled in on his wrist to prove it.

That… probably explained why he’d looked so scared when Remus had touched his hand. He was probably worried that Remus would mention it and out him, either on accident or on purpose. It wasn’t often, but sometimes people would out their own soulmates especially if they themselves ended up not being a “multi.” There was even a movie last summer about a tragic tale of two people who both shared a soulmate making the valiant decision to turn their shared soulmate in. They ended up together in the end and Remus wondered why that was any better than if they’d all just made one big fuck pile, but everyone seemed to think it was a great ending.

Remus and Logan barely talked the entire day. They spoke briefly when Gavin stuck them together to brainstorm, but it was rough and stilted and not at all the conversation they both likely wanted to have. When they weren’t working together, Remus often caught Logan studying him with an unreadable expression. The times he caught Logan watching were the only times his face wasn’t completely blank, but the expressions were always gone before Remus could start to identify them.

They both stayed late, probably with the same thing in mind. Everyone else in the office went home by 5pm until the only people left were Remus, Logan, and, annoyingly, Gavin.

Remus didn’t like Gavin, he’d decided. Not one bit. He was annoying as hell, hung over everyone constantly to listen in to their conversations (which meant he was breathing down Remus and Logan’s necks when everyone else left), and he wouldn’t fucking leave.

Remus pulled out every strategy other than physically forcing the man out of the door to get him to go. He sprouted off the most horrible ideas he could come up with, quoting old horror stories he’d written in high school. That sort of think usually worked on everyone even if Remus wasn’t trying to get them to leave, but it didn’t work on fucking Gavin. He just smiled more and more at Remus’s stories as the evening progressed. He didn’t even flinch when Remus started to talk about blood and guts over the spaghetti they’d ordered in for dinner. Remus winced when he saw Logan subtly throw most of his dinner away, feeling a bit bad, but honestly, Remus himself had trouble eating more than a fourth of his plate and he was the one sprouting off the nonsense.

Gavin, on the other hand, just happily slurped up the noodles and chewed on the garlic bread while Remus talked about how much it looked like human flesh and have you ever tried cannibalism Gavin?

“You’re perfect for this place,” Gavin complimented him in a dreamy sort of way that made Remus’s blood curdle under his skin. “You’ll really be an asset against all of these multis.” He spat the last word like a curse.

“Well, that’s what I’m here for,” Remus said with a lavish smile and a wink.

“That’s what I like to hear,” Gavin purred. If Remus ever managed to take over the world, he’d be the first one with his head on a spike as a warning to all of the other assholes on the planet. “I like your brain buddy. Though, if I’m being completely honest, I think we should just kill them all outright. No offence to your chosen career path of course. I mean, I guess I understand why someone might want to try to get information from them first. You know, make sure we’re culling them all, but it just seems like a waste of time ultimately.”

“I’ll respect your opinion on the matter,” Remus replied cheerfully, absolutely unable to deal with this shit any longer. “Anyway. I think I’m going to go home now. Get a little rest in before coming back for a productive day tomorrow.”

“Oh, of course. I’ll walk you out,” offered Gavin.

…

“Great.” Gavin grabbed his car keys. Remus turned to Logan while he was distracted and mouthed ‘stay here.’ Logan blinked at him once and then turned back to his computer. Remus hoped that was agreement.

“Alright, let’s go,” Gavin said clapping him on the back.

Gavin led him through the facility toward the parking lot and Remus’s eyes caught on the bathroom right before the exit. “Hey, I’ve gotta go to the bathroom. So, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I’ll wait for you,” Gavin offered.

“Ya know, it’s a stinker. So, you go ahead.”

Gavin looked at him with his cold dark eyes for a moment before shrugging. “Yeah sure. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yep!” Remus replied before ducking into the bathroom.

He waited in one of the stalls for around 10 minutes before poking his head back into the hallway. No Gavin. Remus sighed in relief and then went about retracing his steps to the office. This part of the building seemed like a normal office building, but Remus knew what rot it hid underneath its linoleum floors. That knowledge made the sound of his footsteps clanking in the dark vacant space send shivers up and down his back more than it normally would. He wished the monsters his instincts told him frequented these halls weren’t real.

He managed to get back to the office without meeting anyone else probably because it was after 9pm. He swiped his keycard and the doors slid open. Logan had thankfully listened to Remus and had not left. He was still typing on one of the computers in the office and didn’t look up when Remus entered. “Remind me to fucking stab Gavin if I ever get the chance,” Remus requested while walking into the room. “Do the world a favor.”

“You two seemed to be getting rather chummy,” Logan replied blankly.

Remus winced. “Sorry about all of that talk and stuff. I was trying to freak him out, so he’d leave but he just… like it.”

“He did,” Logan replied, and his hands shook just barely on the keyboard.

“And not like in an abstract way either. He actually. He wants to do it,” Remus shook his head and half collapsed on one of the seats near Logan. “He wants to do it and he can do it. What is wrong with these people?”

Logan paused, hands hovering over the keyboard. “I don’t know.” He turned in his chair to finally look at Remus with scrutinizing eyes. They stared at each other for a long moment. “Thank you for not saying anything to them.”

“Well, the mark on my forearm’s the one on my employment papers not the one on my back so I think that would have been bad for both of us.”

His shoulders dropped a bit in relief. “You are like me.” Remus nodded. The mask the other man had worn all day had cracked through their conversation and despite the tension that still pulled at his expression, Remus thought he could see a bit of the person he was behind the façade. His eyes bore into Remus’s and Remus wondered what he saw. “Who are you here for?” Logan finally asked. Not what. He clearly knew the only reason someone like them would willingly walk into these walls.

“My twin brother Roman,” Remus divulged. “He’s… like us too. Who are you here for?”

“My… Patton,” Logan replied.

“He’s your…?” Remus jerked his head at the man’s wrist where the butterfly soulmate mark was. Logan’s opposite hand went to cover the mark as though to hide it from the world. He just nodded. Remus took a breath. He wondered if that meant… Well, it didn’t matter at the moment. “Allies?” Remus offered.

Logan nodded. “Between the two of us maybe we’ll actually stand a chance here.” That is all they said about it that night.

Want to read more? Click below!

AO3 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

[kootenaygoon]

So,

Aslan was coming.

My headspace continued to be a roaring dumpster fire, but there was nothing I loved more than visiting the schools in SD8 and interacting with the children. I was mostly done with the adults of the Kootenays, disgusted by everything, broke and on the verge of fleeing back to the coast. The thing that kept me working was a legit, deeply felt love for those students. Especially the kids at Elephant Mountain. I’d been doggy-piling them with positive coverage, worried about my complicity in blowing up the grad cancellation story. I wanted to protect them.

I engaged with C.S. Lewis pretty hard as a Christian, consuming at least six or seven of his books. Mere Christianity was more important to me than the Bible. Typically, if I had to choose between the Oxford giants, I would go for J.R.R. Tolkien over him. But I had a special affection for Narnia as a concept, despite how little I actually liked the books and movies. It was a magical otherworldly place, and here at the high school you had to actually enter through a wardrobe that had been constructed by the teachers.

Before the play started, I got a few moments with the principal. He was jovial, Dennis Quaid-ish, but still remarkably raw about everything that had gone down. His voice broke a few times as he was speaking to me and I felt it, in my body, his pain. But the enemy wasn’t a White Witch or anything like that, it was just the fucking basic circumstances of living in the Kootenays sometimes. As Narnian as it may be, it still harboured wraiths far scarier than the ones you’d see in movies. I wanted to tell him that he made the right decision, or that it was out of his control, but I still wasn’t sure what to believe. If that kid had come to me, what would I have done?

While I sat in the audience, freshly stoned from the parking lot, I watched people file in. I recognized everyone from the grad. There were at least 20 people there I knew personally, their families all entangled in this fucked up story. That poor kid. The mental health fund thing was a silver lining, but it was all just so sad. I began to cry, silent tears, my face still. This was the sort of raw emotion that overwhelmed me, that made me act in stupid ways. Multiple times throughout my relationship with Paisley I’d flown into maniacal rages on her behalf, gorilla-pounding my chest at her perceived enemies while I made a fucking fool out of myself. I went berserk, for no reason. I hated it.

Then the play began. I felt a new energy enter the room. There was this girl Shasta who I knew from one of the school board meetings, who was leading the Green Team and starring as Aslan. We were friends on Facebook. She had intensely red curly hair. As I watched, she entered with a giant lion mounted on her skull. She was using a microphone, but her presence was commanding enough without it. She really embodied this saviour character with her easy authority. I thought it was an incredible performance, and within moments of the play starting I felt a quiet joy slip into my thoughts.

That week I put her on the front cover.

There was nothing I enjoyed more than splashing my happiness across the newspaper pages, sharing all the delightful things I encountered while working at the Star. In my off hours I was depressed, but during the day I was having the time of my life. I felt like I was starring in The Wire, with Ed acting as my Gus. He challenged my prose, tore apart my logic, pressed me when I was wrong. I could tell he must’ve been a really good father. I respected him more than most people I’ve ever known.

But then afterwards I would go home to the dumpster fire that was Twitter. I hated how mean everyone was being. With this whole faction thing, suddenly expressing any sort of opinion felt like a career misstep. I tried to just stay the fuck out of it, because honestly who knows what happened? I told myself Steve wasn’t that important to me, really. I mean, we were estranged when all of this happened. Why would I go to bat for some dude I didn’t even like?

Eventually my thoughts turned to MC. It didn’t take me long to figure out who she was, and my heart sunk when I figured it out. She was one of my favourites, this dainty little blond thing with fiery workshop opinions. When I shared my story “What I look like naked”, she dismissed a bunch of my storytelling as ineffective and encouraged me to throw away my whole experimental structure. I was pissed.

“Now, one thing I’ll caution everyone to remember is that there are many different ways to approach creative non-fiction,” our teacher Andreas said. “Will’s experimental structure is one approach, and we should be judging it on its effectiveness, not whether we like the approach to begin with.”

MC shook her head. “That was not what I meant at all. Just to be clear. I’m fine with his experimental structure, I just don’t think it serves this particular story. It seems a little show-boaty to me.”

I wasn’t allowed to say anything, so I kept quiet. The conversation continued but I stewed, studying MC from across the room. She had an elegant confidence, a sort of swagger, that I admired. The non-fiction piece she had handed in was easily the best one I’d read so far in this workshop, and the best part was how raw and honest she was about her personal life. The scene that stuck out in my mind involved her partying on some beach in Southeast Asia and going “feral”. I had been disappointed by many of my fellow students in the program, finding them understandably self-serious but also horrifically lazy, but MC was a writer who was definitely going places. I wanted to be around people like that.

Sure, I was mad she didn’t like my essay. But that just made me want to write a better essay, one she would like. I felt a child-like need to be accepted by her. When the discussion ended, I thanked everyone and made a point to thank MC. I told her I really valued her feedback and I was going to incorporate it for sure. My other friend Sierra was sitting right next to me, and she gave me a surprised nod that said wow, you just thanked the person who stabbed you in the face.  

Afterwards, she came up to me with her books pinned to her chest.

“I hope I didn’t come off as too intense there. I did like your essay, I like the content. It’s just the structure I was questioning.”

“I get it,” I said. “I’ve been fiddling with the structure non-stop. I’m going to give it some more thought. I meant what I said, about appreciating your feedback. Half these people don’t even fucking read the stories, but you put in the work. I appreciate that.”

She smiled, and it was a beautiful thing. “You’re welcome, Will.”

The Kootenay Goon

[lofihifiproject]

An essay explaining my intentions.

Firstly, I think it’s appropriate to start this essay by explaining what my practice is. However, I don’t know how to because I’m still not sure what my practice is yet. All I know is that I want to combine performance with art.

Therefore, for the rest of this essay, I’m going to discuss three theories that I try to incorporate into my work. These theories are: ‘Anything That Conveys Feeling is Performance’, ‘Association Theory’ (John Watson, 1913) and  ’Performative Acts’ (Judith Butler, 1986)

‘Anything That Conveys Feeling is Performance’ is a statement I created myself during the LOFI/HIFI project. I began to think about performance in these terms and came across a Polish theatre director named Jerzy Growtowski.

He believes that there is a “rich” and “poor” theatre. ‘Rich Theatre’ (Growtowski, 1970) is “contemporary theatre that heavily relies on artistic kleptomania”, for example: props, lighting, make-up, costume, set, puppets and animatronics.

Whereas ‘theatre can be stripped down to its bare minimum’, meaning that performance doesn’t need anything more than a ‘relationship between actor and audience’ - which has become to be known as the ‘’Poor Theatre’’ (Growtowski, 1970).

Therefore, HIFI performance is performance with added ‘’kleptomania’’ (Growtowski, 1970) to become known as theatre- meaning that, LOFI performance doesn’t need those added effects.

Once I had learnt this, I started to question what LOFI performance could be. I started to draw on my GCSE drama experience and thought about how our performances were simple. Our production of ‘’DNA’’ by Dennis Kelly relied more on tone of voice, gesture and moving. Which are all types of movement.

Gesture and moving around can be classed as performance because you are physically moving you’re hands and arms to convey a certain emotion. Which is similar to moving around a space, people move in a certain way to convey a specific character.

I decided to think of tone of voice as movement because to control this you use your diaphragm which causes a change in pitch and your voice goes higher or lower. Thus suggesting that the voice can be moved around.

This then meant that I was thinking about performance as the study of movement. Whether that’s physical movement, facial expressions or mark-making.

When I create art, I move my hands to make something. Therefore, I can argue that my art work is performative because I am moving my hands to create something that shows emotion. Which was something I tried to implement into my varied practice.

However, before I could fully use this theory that I created. I needed to understand how to do so in order to strengthen the production of my work.

‘’Performative acts and Gender Constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory’’ by Judith Butler uses Edmund Hersserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and George Herbert Meads ’phenomological theory of ‘acts’’’ (Butler, 1986) and Simone de Beauvoirs theory ‘’one is not born, but rather, becomes a women’’ to explain how ‘gender identity can be classed as a mundane performance act’. Thus suggesting that our body is a basic form of performance and that gender is a product of our performances as humans. Meaning that gender is a performative act as we have little things that show who we are.

However, if you disregard gender. ‘’Performative acts’’ (Butler, 1986) can be any small act carried out by the body (Gesture). Which is why I chose to investigate mark making as performance.

There are two examples of this in my work for unit 2.

The first example is two different types of mark-making. One style of mark-making used colour. I got different types of pen and ink and began using different types of hand gesture but I felt that the results were being too easily manipulated by colour. Therefore, I chose to do a similar experiment but only with black and white materials.

The second example was origami pinhole photography.

I adopted a very experimental approach to the pinhole photography. Instead of using an actual camera; I took photographic paper and scrunched it up so that the light sensitive side of the paper wouldn’t be exposed to light. Then before making an exposure, I ensured I cut a hole or a small shape to act as the pinhole.

This can still be classed as performative mark-making because I was using a ‘’performative act’’ (Butler, 1988) to physically create the pinhole camera and I was using light to mark-make with. Also, the results of the second example, produced marks that looked like other forms. For example a bullet hole.

Both of these experiments were key to my final performance piece for the LOFI/HIFI project, for two different reasons. However, for this essay, I think it’s more appropriate to discuss the latter even further because of its relation to ‘Association Theory’ (John Watson, 1913).

As I previously stated, the origami pinhole outcomes looked like everyday forms (bullet hole etc) but I wanted to understand the relationship between the outcome and the gesture.

So, according to John Watson, the brain makes associations through ‘’Classical Conditioning’’ (Watson, 1913) which happens in three stages.

‘Stage one: unconditional stimulus (event)  + neutral stimulus (instant reaction) = unconditional response (work created).

Stage two: the unconditional stimulus and the neutral stimulus combine together to create a conditioned stimulus (feeling).

Stage three: conditioned stimulus (feeling) + unconditional stimulus (event) = new conditioned response (act carried out e.g mark making).’

Therefore, in relation to origami pinhole photography, ‘’classical conditioning’’ (Watson, 1913) is a chain reaction, thinking about an event causes an emotion which creates a response. So emotion then becomes associated with the event. Resulting in the association between feeling and event when creating work.

Which explains how I was influenced by my environment when creating the origami pinhole work.

Initially, I scrunched up the photographic paper into a ball, which is a gesture related to anger. Therefore; I was thinking about an event that made me feel angry, which manipulated how the light hit the photographic paper. Resulting in an outcome about the emotion and the event.

For example, I could have been thinking my own experiences with the army cadets. Which caused me to automatically scrunch up the photographic paper to create an origami pinhole photograph that looked like a bullet hole.

However, my brain cannot make the same associations as others. Meaning that the final outcome could mean different things for different people. Which shows that ‘’association theory’’ (Watson, 1913) works in two ways.

As part of an extended experiment, I began using other gestures. Instead of scrunching up the photographic paper before I exposed it to light, I started folding and tearing the paper. Which produced something that resembled the female form.

Personally, I associate the tears and folds with trauma to the body. However, other people would not have gone through the same things as me. Thus, they would not be able to see the same things within my art work. Proving that each person has a different association between the outcome and what story they think of.

Showing that ‘’association theory’’ (Watson, 1913) and ‘’performative acts’’ combine together to create art that makes people think of their past events, memories. Memories can be classed as performance because they make us feel.

Therefore anything that conveys feeling is performance. So, once I had proved this, I began working towards final pieces based around memory performance. Memory performance, plays with the idea that spoken word causes associations to memories, that are a sequence of images played through in someone’s mind.

‘’I guess being in the public eye, I found it hard, There are moments when going through a difficult time at home- you get a lot of backlash.

People were making stuff up about our marriage being on the rocks, it was complete nonsense. Once upon a time, I might’ve struggle being a single mum with a string of broken marriages and children who suffered because of them but that doesn’t mean that my new marriage is going to be the same.

I’m not my sister; I don’t get everything handed to me on a plate, I work 5 days a week! I don’t get to go jet-setting off with my designer bags so I’m going to be a little bit stressed out.

Of-course she’ll tell you that I’m just intimidated or jealous of her but that’s only because she doesn’t want to let anyone know she’s hurting too..

It was 5.15pm on the 9th February 1988 and her daughter was due home. Gale-force winds had been going for most of the day so naturally we all wanted her home safe but she never showed. At 9.30pm she was reported missing to the police, ‘please help’ my sister begged.

At 4am; a car pulled up but it was just the police asking for more information and photos, then the next thing we knew it was all over the tv. No-one wanted to believe it but according to the police, she made her usual journey home and just vanished.

Eventually, the detectives did show up with one of her earrings that she was wearing that had been found in a car boot.

They’d also found traces of blood in the car.

Blood-stained clothes were found in a canal.

Even her favourite green mittens showed up

But never a body.

To this very day they have never been able to find her body.

How is she supposed to say goodbye?

How is anyone supposed to say goodbye?

If we can’t accept the things that have happened to us, how are we supposed to move on? If my sisters bullshit is her way of healing then I’m okay with it…

because

I’ll always love my sister.’’

For this spoken word poem, I used the process of erasures. As I wanted there to be an emphasis on the language. The words used needed to be powerful and emotive, in order to ignite the association to someone’s repressed memory. I felt that my own style of language wasn’t enough, so I got some magazines and selected articles I felt worked with appropriate themes for people’s repressed memories. Then, I read the articles and got rid of the unnecessary information- which led me to my sister.  Which is about sisters who don’t get on, but one of the sisters puts up with the others bullshit because it turns out that the other sisters daughter was killed.

I made the choice to have the piece about death, family and love because these were three common themes that came up in a questionnaire I sent out. Which was asking for people to recall difficult memories and I feel that this brings in an element of truth to something that is fiction to me. I choose to work with fiction, as not everybody can relate to my experiences. Which would make it harder for people to make associations to their own memories.

In the beginning, my character speaks with a lot of disgust about her sister which I related to a triangle shape. Then my character starts being a lot more honest about what happened to her sisters daughter, which I related to a square. This actually creates the shape of a house, so I got some black and white washi tape to stick on the floor of the space I was using. As I was using the tape as a path, I created a visual method for people to associate with. Meaning that, both shape and language caused associations to people’s memories about love, family and death.

However; I had no way of recording what was really happening in people’s minds, which is a stage I would like to try and develop next.

Therefore in conclusion, I have started to explore Memory Performance through LOFI techniques that incorporate :‘Anything That Conveys Feeling is Performance’, ‘Association Theory’ (John Watson, 1913) and  ’Performative Acts’ (Judith Butler, 1986).

       BOOKS

Grotowski, Jerzy. (1970) Towards A Poor Theatre. 1st ed. New York: Simon and Schuster. P15-27

Butler, J (1986) Performative acts and gender constitution: an essay in phenomology and feminist theory p.519-521

Watson, John B. (1913) Psychology as the behaviorist views it. p158-177.

Kelly, Dennis (2008) DNA