#love when my interests are like. actually really disturbing and engaging w them has an equal chance of appeasing the brain gremlins | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

well-its-not-human-anymore · 4 years ago

Note

Hi! Could I get HC from the guys? 👀 How they would always react to catching the reader seeing them "badly", in addition to the fact that he usually avoids them, but with his brothers it is incredible and they feel bad because they think they do not like him. But she actually likes them and she looks at them like that because she "studies" them to draw them and she is too clumsy and shy to talk to them, that's why she ends up avoiding them. Until finally he catches her drawing them with lots of hearts or maybe they'll find her notebook with lots of portraits of them.

It's kind of funny because when I study people to draw them, they think that I look at them with hatred xd maybe I should increase my glasses prescription

God, glasses are such a pain in the ass but I have to wear them. If I don't anyone within my near vicinity doesn't have a face. But why they gotta get dirty so easily???? Makes me wanna explode or something

TMNT Headcanons

The boys w/ a quiet reader who is fine with his brothers but acts cold around him and stares a lot

Michaelangelo

mikey couldn't describe his disappointment upon realizing that you didn't want to be friends with him

well, you never actually said that to him

but he was pretty sure it was the case

you'd never made an effort to be friends with him

stared at him an awful lot though, but there was always something off about your gaze when you looked at him

like you were sizing him up, scrutinizing him, like he was an opponent

it kinda worried him

to add to that, you didn't even attempt to look embarrassed when he caught you staring

you'd just stare harder

on your end it was quite the opposite

you always found the brothers fascinating and you LOVED studying their anatomy, you'd confessed this to Donnie early on and he happily indulged in your questions

and you loved how easily you got along with the boys

well, except for Mikey

but it wasn't for a lack of trying

whenever the orange sporting turtle came around your normally flamboyant personality crept back into its little corner and hid

any words of excitement that had previously been with you died in your throat

for the longest time you didn't understand it

and you hated not understanding things, so you turned to your only outlet

that's how you ended up with an entire sketchbook full of the youngest brother in vastly different styles and poses

you had a separate book for the others, none of them as detailed as this

and when you stared to analyze you'd fallen into a habit of not looking away when caught

by your logic, if you stared back hard enough he'd look away first or just assume you'd zoned out

he didn't

and on one hectic day you'd left your sketchbook open on the kitchen table in your rush to get to work

you hadn't even noticed the slip up until Leo texted you to let you know during your shift

instant panic

in truth, Mikey was the one who discovered the book upon waking up from his nap and he'd spent the next three hours analyzing every drawing

when you finally dropped in after work to grab your book the turtle was waiting for you with it in hand

he'd asked you if you hated him

you told him no and accepted your sketchbook from him

he was relieved and screaming excitedly, just in his head

"Do you maybe wanna hang out sometime?"

You sighed in relief and nodded

"If you're cool with it- you don't think I'm weird do you?"

"I mean- you are talking to a turtle..."

you lightly shoved his chest and smiled, although it faded within a second

"Oh hush, 10 o'clock tomorrow? I'll bring snacks."

he was so stunned he could only shoot you finger guns in approval

Donatello

Donnie genuinely couldn't understand your unease around him

he'd followed all the proper expectations of holding a conversation

he was polite and engaging

so why wouldn't you talk to him?

this boy has read so many social blogs to try and figure out what he was doing wrong and he just couldn't put his finger on it

you were fine with the rest of his brothers, you'd stay up for hours laughing and gaming with them

you'd even sat still long enough to listen to Leo explain some old Japanese myth that he'd read about in a book

but with him it was always a quick, cordial greetings and farewells with bland small talk in between

Donnie had picked up pretty quickly that you weren't interested in any sort of interaction with him

and he convinced himself that that was okay

but that didn't explain the staring

he'd caught you in the act several times, eyes narrowed and locked on him

especially when you were alone with him in a room or just in the lair

the poor turtle just couldn't put his finger on it

then he caught you drawing, he noticed early on that you always carried a small sketchbook on your person but he didn't think much of it

and it wasn't so much that he caught you drawing, in fact, he wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't snapped at him while he was trying to do a sudoku puzzle

"Damn it Donnie! Stop moving! If I fuck this arm up one more time I'm gonna decompose!"

he'd quickly moved back into the position he was in prior

"sorry?"

but you'd gone silent again, occasionally glancing up from your work and running your eyes along his frame before looking down again

nearly twenty minutes later Donnie had finished the puzzle and it seemed as though you had finished your drawing

"Uh- can I ask what are you-"

"I'm drawing you but you kept moving your arm and making me mess up. You always do that when I draw you so every damn picture I have of you stays a sketch because you always come out looking like a fucking octopus."

He just stared

"Sorry, I uh- I didn't mean to explode on you like that. I'm just- I'm really bad at talking to you okay? It's so easy with everyone else but you've just gotta be so damn smart all the time and I worry that you'll think I'm boring so I just... don't talk to you?"

Donnie is stunned™

You refuse to show him the drawing until you can complete the line art and color it

But at least he knows that you don't hate him

Leonardo

To be completely honest Leo didn't mind that you were distant from him

You created an aura of calm when you were around and you always managed to distract his brothers while you were present

And he enjoyed the alone time

But after a few months that calm acceptance turned into jealousy

Not that he would ever admit it

He would just push it off and ignore it, that usually seemed to work

So why wasn't it?

And your obvious staring problem didn't help at all

Leo didn't spend much time considering his appearance but something about your gaze made him self conscious

And he hated that with a passion

Why was it that you could hold entire debates with his siblings? Even his dad for gods sake. You'd have hour long conversations on almost everything but whenever he tried to say hello you'd make up some lame ass excuse and scamper away

He just wanted an explanation

It appeared that the answer resided in your sketchbook

You'd left it open on the couch when Raph had called you away to spar with him

Leo very delicately flipped through the pages, careful not to disturb some of the polaroid pictures of his brothers

He was admittedly surprised to find pictures of himself among the pages

One of him in a handstand, another of him meditating, there was even one of him mid sneeze that you'd recreated with pencil and paper

The image of his eyes was the most startling, but the book held no polaroid of his eyes

You drew them from memory

And he was shocked when you returned to the room and didn't immediately panic

But that might have been because he didn't try to withhold your book from you

"It took me three months to color them, your eyes. I could never get the shade of blue just right."

"I'm gonna be honest with you y/n, I really thought you didn't like me."

You had the nerve to roll your eyes and follow it with a laugh

"I don't. I mean- I do but no, you just remind me a lot of myself and I haven't exactly figured out why yet. I thought that maybe if I drew you it'd be easier to figure you out..."

"Well did it help?"

You grinned

"I'm talking to you, aren't I?"

Raphael

If there was one thing Raph hated it was not understanding something that was right in front of him

which is ironic, as a much younger version of himself probably couldn't care less

and a part of him wishes he didn't care about it so much

he wishes that your blatant avoidance of him didn't upset him

but shit, it got under his skin better than any needle ever could

was it too much to ask for you to just tell him what he said or did wrong?

was he asking too much of you?

but on the same scale you'd never shown obvious dislike towards him, you were never rude and you sure as hell didn't talk shit about him to his brothers

you got along great with them

in fact it was getting more difficult to remember a time before you became a part of his family

he'd become so used to your presence that it no longer put him off when he found you hanging around the lair

but in another sense he was certain that you hadn't spoken more than three sentences to him in your time knowing him or his family

so what was the reason

several months in he finally caught onto the staring, your narrow, glassy gaze locked onto his body and refusing to look away

he stared right back at you

this annoyed you for several reasons

because within five seconds your very peaceful drawing session had turned into a staring contest and your eyes were getting VERY dry

then you exhaled in a half-sigh and looked back down at your paper

"Huh, I guess your head is more of an oblong shape..."

he took offense to this

"What tha' hell is that supposed t'mean?"

now your eyes held more of an amused silent judgement, you begrudgingly held up your sketchbook

"I'm drawing you, you fucking walnut."

"Oh..."

now you rolled you eyes and tossed the book to him, he nearly dropped it and fumbled with the pages

your annoyance was quickly growing

"Careful with that."

He flipped through the pages at a snails pace, assumingly because he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing

you had some real talent

when he looked back up at you he was wearing that crooked smile

"and here I was thinkin' that my eyes were just green."

Hope I was able to get this down pretty well! I really enjoyed writing this one! Thanks for the patience!

-Mars 🌠

#tmnt bayverse #tmnt headcanons #tmnt x reader #writing blog #writing requests #askbox #ask response #tmnt leonardo #tmnt donatello #tmnt raphael #tmnt michelangelo

359 notes · View notes

sweetchup · 4 years ago

Text

Monarch Butterfly

Anonymous asks: Chrollo and his so that both think they’re playing each other... maybe she’s sweet and cute looking so she plays into it and he thinks she dumb and naive and she thinks he’s just a rich kid that took one philosophy class

Type: Chrollo Lucilfer x theif! Reader

Au?: None (same universe as Cute Little Princess (pt.2) and N.E.R.D.S (pt.1))

Word count: 4,000+

Warnings: Smut, Unprotected sex, Chrollo being a Sapiosexual, Dom/Submissive, Angst, angst and angst. Yay, I’m so sad.

Author Note: welp. In a simple sense I went overboard, hehehe, since I instantly got an amazing idea. I might actually make a part 2 to this one if it gets popular enough. I honestly fell in love with the concept once I started writing. I hope you like it anon.

“(Y/n), are you thinking of trying something stupid again? Don’t think I can’t see that look on your face.” Clementine says, blowing a puff out of her cigarette as she looks over to you. You only laugh at Clem, reaching over to pull one of her short blonde corkscrew curls. You watch it bounce back and forth for a moment before answering. “I don’t think it’s stupid. I’m just thinking of having a little fun, that’s all.”

“A little fun my ass. Do you know where we are right now?”

“A party?”

Clementine sighs and shakes her head, “You idiot. We are in a fancy hotel at a party, being hosted by Emperor Fushi who is crowning his eldest daughter, Himiko, and her future husband, Tai.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s that serious.”

Clementine squints her eyes at you as she exhales one last puff of her cigarette before putting it out. “How so. Enlighten me Miss (Y/n).”

“Well,...” you pause for a minute to gather your thoughts, “this is the second time Himiko has been engaged in less than a month. Her first husband was Phinks Magcub who randomly went missing around a week and half ago, along with Emperor Fushi’s youngest daughter.”

“Yeah, they apparently fell in love and ran off into the sunrise. Like so cheesy comedy”

“I don’t think that’s the case,” you murmur. Finally spotting your target again. Clementine lets out an ‘Hah?’. You ignore her noise and just signal her to move down the stairs with you, “I do believe they fell in love and disappeared but I don’t think Mr. Magcub was actually in love with Himiko. Mr Magcub and Himiko got engaged about three ½ weeks ago and Mr Magcub disappeared 1 ½ weeks ago. What do we know that happened in between that timeline?”

You hear her gasp and you smirk a little bit. “T-the theft of The Dragon Eyes Collection!”

“And who do we know that’s crazy enough to do that?”

“The phantom troupe! Wait, (Y/n) is one of them—“

“Yep, one of them is here,” You squint as you go to search for him again. Oh. There he is, “And it’s their leader.”

“(Y/n) wait don’t. We don—“

You act as if you're checking something in her hair and whisper into her ear. “Clem. He already has the two Crown Jewels. That’s our mission and I need to go retrieve them. We may also get the info on the Dragon Eye Collection. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, please hold down the fort while I’m gone.”

You pull away and Clementine sighs before smirking. “Don’t be a stupid ass though.”

“I won’t.” You whine as you sashay away. Your heals click down across the tile floor as you get closer and closer to the bar. You hear a whistle and look to your left to see some young prestigious men eyeing you. Practically undressing you with their eyes. Bingo.

As you finally come to the bar area, you locate him. You can’t see his face right now, due to his back facing you, but it’s obvious it’s him. His bulb-like earrings give him away from like a mile away. You smirk before giving your best sweetest smile. You poke the black haired leader on the shoulder causing him to turn around.

“I-um. Oh god. I’m sorry but can I sit next to you?”

Chrollo gives you a smile. “Yes, of course. Is something the matter, Miss?”

“Oh, no. I’m just not a fan of parties and I was trying to go back to my room but, I got a little scared when a couple of men were staring creepily at me.”

“But, wouldn’t I make you nervous as well? Afterall you don’t know me.”

“Ah I guess-s you do. I’m sorry you are just the first one I saw. I guess I’ll leave, I’m sorry to disturb—“ you say, attempting to get up.

The black haired man grabs your wrist. “Oh. I don’t want you to leave. I was just curious.”

You sit back down. That worked perfectly, he reacted just as you thought he would. You once remembered a person telling you that the leader of the Phantom Troupe has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and his curiosity. And you could tell just by watching him from the balcony, that stealing the Crown Jewels was just like child play for him, so he was bored sitting here at the bar. And even if he didn’t look like it, He was practically looking for anything to possibly entertain him.

So, you walk in, a rich looking damsel in distress waiting for someone to come save her. Chrollo will, of course, take that. You check off all the marks needed to satisfy himself and he had many possible ways to do it. He could steal your Nen, break down your mind, use you, steal from you, or simply just do all of them.

This was where he messed up though. He never would have imagined he would run into someone just as intelligent as him, you.

“I’m Chrollo, Chrollo Lucilfer, by the way.” Chrollo says, leaning against the bar counter.

“Oh! Nice to meet you Chrollo. I’m (y/n). (Y/n) Okage.” You murmur the last part under your breath as if you don’t want him to know. But, he definitely caught it. Perfect, he took your bait. Now he thinks you're an Okage.

“An Okage huh? Wow, call me impressed.”

“Ahh it’s not anything that impressive. It’s just a last name after all.”

Chrollo raises an eyebrow as if he’s saying really. So you’re an Okage, huh? Now he is really interested. The Okage family is a prestigious military family that is known for their very rare Nen. Chrollo is definitely not letting you out his clutches now, he’s going to quietly lure you into his web and pounce. But the question is how…

Ah, that’s how. Chrollo eyes the group of men on the left side of the room, whistling and eyeing every woman that passed by. This worked even better because they were also blocking the exit.

“Would the group of men that happen to be eyeing you, them?”

He points to the group before looking quickly back at you. He watches your doe like eyes blink a couple of times before looking off in that direction. You seem to shudder and clearly show your fear as you see them.

“Y-yes that’s them.” You say, clutching tighter onto your purse. You hear Chrollo let out a small ‘ahh’ as you finish talking.

“Well I was just wondering how you're going to get back to your room without them noticing. After all, they are blocking the door.”

“Oh no. Your right. Do you know if there’s any other doors that lead to the hotel part of this building?”

“Sadly there isn’t. But...,” Chrollo suddenly stands up and extends a hand out to you, “I’d be happy to escort you back to your room.”

“Really?!? Thank you so much!” You say, taking his hand as he leads you away. As you're about to leave you spot Clementine and, secretly, use your hand to signal her.

Clementine smirks into her drink as she notices it. So, the spider has been beaten at his own game eh? Man she might call you stupid but honestly you are the smartest partner she could ever as for. It also doesn’t help you make this job ten times more interesting when you're around.

She just hopes you didn’t get him too caught up in your fun. He’s definitely not like the others you’ve faced.

———🕸—🕷—🕸———

“C-chrollo, W- Wait. I haven’t even taken out the keycard.” You murmur, let out soft moans into his ear as he bites and sucks on your neck. Maybe you made yourself a little too appealing to this guy. Though, at the same time, you can obviously tell him lusting over you is all fake. He just wants you to let his guard down so he can steal from you. Also, you can feel he doesn’t even have a bulge right now.

“Give it. I’ll take care of it.” Chrollo groans, grabbing the card. Once the door to the hotel room is unlocked, Chrollo picks you up and throws you onto the bed. You squeal as he pulls your dress off you and then takes off his shirt and bandanna. Huh. Honestly he’s not half bad, he’s got some nice chiseled muscles going on and an interesting forehead tattoo. Though his patience could use a little work.

You moan out his name as he gives small open mouth kisses all the way from your stomach to your lips. Once he reaches your lips he stops and gives you a passionate kiss.

Honestly, even though this is nice and all, you have a job to finish. Sorry Chrollo. Hope you’ll forgive me on this one.

One moment, Chrollo is pushing you down onto the bed and in charge but in the next, his body feels a hundreds of pounds and it’s even hard to move an muscle.

“W-what?” Chrollo murmurs confused as to what’s going on. You huff as you roll him off of you and he lands next you on his back.

“Fuuuw, Damn Chrollo you weigh a lot. You should lay off the muscle training for a while,” You say, stretching your back. Now, let’s see where those Crown Jewels are. Scurrying through his clothes you find two tiny marbles stuffed into his pant pocket. You bring both up to your eye and examine them as you sit down on his lap. As you look into them you spot the two crowns in one and the Dragon Eye Collection in the other. Score!, “Ooooo! What an interesting ability. Conjures never cease to amaze me with what they come up with.”

You see Chrollo tense, attempting to move, as you throw them on top of your dress on the floor. “Don’t try Chrollo. My Nen won’t be making you move for quite some time.”

“How so?” Chrollo asks, his face blank, unreadable. But, it won’t work, you can see right passed that little trick of his.

“Now I wouldn’t want to tell you that silly goose. I’ll meet one of your conditions if I do so.”

You see Chrollo eyes gleam for a second. He was surprised. He’s had people figure out what his Nen is before but no one has been able to find out his conditions. Not his enemies, not the people of Meteor City, not the Zoldyck’s, not even the troupe. Only he knows what they are. Chrollo licks his dry lips, he’s knows he’s walking on shaky ground right now. “A condition? Are you talking about my Nen? (y/n)? If that is really your name. Though I highly doubt that’s your name. Afterall—

Aww how cute, little Chrollo is trying to change the subject last minute. You decide to cut him off in the middle of his rant, “Yes it’s really my name and yes, I’m talking about your Nen and conditions. Honestly, I already knew you could steal abilities around 3 people had already told me. So it just left me to how. How did the infamous Chrollo Lucilfer, Leader of the Phantom Troupe, steal people’s Nen without their knowledge? Well, it can’t be something that catches them off guard. Afterall, that will grab too much attention and you would have found out already. Yet it also can’t be something too far from the topic of “Nen” either since you need to steal it. So I just observed you as you walked around the party today, after all their is an—“

You pause for a second as you feel something. Is this really happening right now? You test the waters and spread your legs a little bit more wider. Chrollo has definitely gotten a boner while you were talking, it’s a fully hard one too. You decide to roll your hips a little and watch as Chrollo let’s out a moan. You laugh a little at his reaction, “Wow. I’m not sure if I should be happy or offended that me talking turned you on more than the flirting and grinding we did all the way in the elevator.”

Chrollo chuckles, his hair sprayed around on the pillow below him. He’s still trying to keep his tough act up, even now. “Well, there’s a word to describe that actually. It’s called Sapiosexual. By definition it means that someone is attracted to their mind over-r… shit.”

Chrollo clutches onto the sheet below him as you start to slowly grind on top of him. “You know, I’m starting to believe you just really like to hear yourself talk. Either that or you just like to avoid confronting things you don’t know how to figure out in that moment.”

Chrollo doesn’t respond. He just chooses to close his eyes while you smile down at him. “Not talking? Aww sorry I didn’t mean to hit a nerve, Chrollo. Here let me make it up to you.”

You lightly lift yourself off his lap and slowly begin to unbuckle his belt. Looking away quickly, you tried to see Chrollo for a reaction but there was none. Oh well, you can’t rush the good things after all. You’ll have him a mess eventually.

Finally, you pull down his pants and boxers off. Leaving his hard length out in the open; you reach out and hold it lightly in your hand. Wow, he really was a Sapiosexual. The tip of his cock was a pretty red shade with light drips of precum spilling out, showing he was practically craving for release. Hmm...You know what you’ll do. “Wow Chrollo, you're really straining for release. I should help you out. Hmmm... I’m not sure if you're a germaphobe or not so I’m just going to start with my hand….”

Chrollo still had his eyes closed so it gave you the perfect opportunity. As you continue talking, you pulled your panties to the side and lined him up with your entrance. Careful not to get too close so he figures out your plan. Honestly, you were soaked, his cock was honestly really thick and big so you knew it was going to feel absolutely amazing. Also, Chrollo is an entertaining man. You wouldn’t mind have sex with him multiple times if you have to.

“....so Just let me know if it’s not enough ok? I’ll switch to my mouth if so.”

You wait for a second for him to respond but he only lets out a chuckle. Still trying to play it cool. Oh well, you brought this on yourself Chrollo. You take a deep breath and sink down onto his length.

You hear chrollo let out a loud groan as you sink every inch Chrollo has to offer inside you. Even while you are just staying still it makes you feel as if you are about to burst. But, that’s not the important thing right now. You bring your hips up and start off with a slow rhythm, watching as Chrollo is attempting to bring back his composure.

“So,... where was it I left off again? Oh yeah. So I was observing you at the party. Be extra careful to catch changes in people’s aura and listen to what you were saying to them.” You say, rambling off your thoughts. You feel Chrollo twitch suddenly inside you as you speak. You decide to reward the poor man by moving your hips at a faster pace. Maybe you got a bit too excited coming across someone like Chrollo. Clementine will definitely scold you later but, oh well. “I noticed you had stolen the Nen ability of 6 out of the 21 Nen users you talked to at today’s party. Observing you is how I determined the conditions. The first condition I found out was when Mr. Noz and Mr. Casey wouldn’t show you their Nen, and theirs weren’t any of the ones that ended up being taken. The 6 you did take however did show you, meaning one of your conditions is the user has to show you.”

You flinch as you feel Chrollo’s hands grab onto your waist, a bruising clutch against your soft skin. Crap, your Nen was warding off faster than you thought. You have to quicken this up, as much as you didn’t want to. You lean forward onto chrollo’s chest, allowing him to be squeezed more and sucked deeper into you. It definitely made you more vulnerable since it meant his cock was bashing against your g-spot with every flick of your hips but it was also working well on him. You could tell since he was panting and groaning into your ear like crazy. You just needed to hold on for a bit longer.

“T-the second condition I confirmed also with two people. One being a woman whose husband explained to you her Nen ability. You didn’t end up stealing hers so that meant one of the conditions had to do with the person telling you about their Nen. T-Then—then when you went to…”

Oh god, you hide your head into Chrollo’s neck. It was too good, you were honestly begging for mercy. You would slow down the pace but Chrollo has gotten feeling back in the muscles of his hips so he was just thrusting up erratically into you. Chasing after his release.

“What’s wrong (y/n)?” Chrollo murmurs into your ear, causing you to whine and shiver at his mesmerizing voice, “W-what did I do next that 100% confirmed the second condition?”

You don’t respond as your brain was practically melted at this point. Though, Chrollo won’t take that as an excuse. Chrollo, with most of the feeling back in his body, flips you over so he was on top. He stops his thrusts and holds your legs down so you can’t move. You whined as you looked at the silvered eye man above you. “I asked you a question, my little butterfly. And I expect you to answer it.”

You pause and don’t say anything, not wanting him to boss you around. He smirks and pulls all the way out before bashing right back into you, hitting your cervix. You grunt, pain flickering through your body.

You glare at Chrollo above you and he only does it again. And again. Waiting for his lovely little butterfly to answer him. On the 6th thrust is when it gets interesting, this time when he bashed in, your cervix had eased up. Allowing him into the depths of your womb. Your eyes widen and Chrollo chuckles, both of you knowing what this means.

You try to fight against it but Chrollo successfully cross your legs. Making it so you squeezed around him even more. He lets out a sigh, losing his composure as he begins to make small little thrusts, trying to stay in your womb. “Answer me my little butterfly. You and I both know what’s highly likely to happen if I cum this deep in you. There’s no way around it if I do. So answer me.”

He was right, there was no way around it if he does. You’ll just have to follow his orders, waiting for him to drop his guard again.

“T-then I confirmed it when Mr hansu wouldn’t explain to you how to function his ability after you saw it, only about how flashy it is. Meaning your second condition is the person has to tell you the general function or uses of the ability. The third—“ you let out a small sigh as you feel the knot in your stomach about to explode. It also didn’t help you could feel Chrollo begin to twitch inside you, if you came while still explaining there was no question he would cum, hard. “The third, I confirmed through your expressions. Sometimes you would do the first two conditions but not follow up with the third condition since you hadn’t found the ability interesting to you. But when you did, you always had them touch the handprint on your conjured book. The ones that didn’t touch it, didn’t have their abilities stolen.”

You let out a sigh, you were done. You listed all of his conditions. Now he just needs to stop thrusting into your womb.

“And the fourth? The fourth condition?” you blink as he says this. T-there was a fourth condition? Oh god you had forgot strong Nen ability usually had 4-5 conditions not 2-3. Your heart races up as you flicker fastly through your memories.

Nothing else was similar between all the people he talked to. Which means that it’s either a time limit or a magic word that you hadn’t caught. It’s more likely the time limit so you’ll go with that.

“Y-your fourth is a time limit. I confirmed this because strong Nen types need 4-5 conditions and nothing else was similar between the people you talked to. T-This—this means the only likely answer is a tough time limit. From what I observed it took you about 45 minutes to steal from one of the businessmen-men so it’s something higher than that but it has to be shorter—oh~ than 3 hours since that gives too much time and isn’t as strict. Hah-ha-Happy now?”

Chrollo humms for a minute thinking, before he lets out a groan. Come on Chrollo, pull out. You can tell he’s about to burst.

“Chrollo pull out-t, you're about to cum.”

Chrollo groans as you say that, leaning his forehead against yours. Damn, you felt your walls twitching and tightening. You were going to cum.

“You can tell little butterfly? You're so smart my butterfly. All mine.” Chrollo murmurs, pressing kisses against your collar bone. “ I enjoy you, you are so entertaining, so smart, so special. Like a rare specimen. My special butterfly. Trapped in my web forever. Fuck—”

As he says that you finally feel him cum, also allowing the knot in your stomach to finally burst. You bite down, hard on his shoulder, as your whole body shakes underneath him in ecstasy. You thought your brain was mush before, but now it had completely melted into a liquid. It also didn’t help that you loved the feeling of him pumping hot cum into you. The feeling of something so dangerous that also felt so messy and primary sent a flame through your nerves.

You let a couple of pants out as you finally come to. Turning to your right you see chrollo his eyes close since he was out cold. You had hoped when you bit his shoulder and broke the skin that, with your nen, you could put him to sleep before he had cum in you but it seems that hadn’t worked out. As you're trapped underneath the handsome man, you decide it wouldn’t hurt to observe him for a little. Ever so carefully you lightly run your fingers through his hair and then to tracing his features before finally running them across the tattoo on his forehead.

“(Y/n)…” your heart clenches and your fingers tremble as you hear him whisper in his sleep. This is bad. You finally decide it was time to get him off you and it was time for you to make your leave. With a huff, you roll him over before covering with the sheets. You give him one last look before you begin to get dressed, deciding not to even bother cleaning up the cum he pumped into you. You would deal with it when you got back home and we’re able to take a shower, right now you just needed to get the hell out of here. Though before you leave, you decide to neatly fold Chrollo’s clothes and place them on the nightstand beside him, a parting gift if you will. As you place the clothes down and go to leave, a hand grabs your wrist.

You turned, shocked, as you looked at Chrollo. He was hardly able to keep his eyes open and was struggling to even hold onto you. “My Little butterfly… you aren’t going anywhere… you're mine”

You look at him blankly for a couple of seconds before letting out a sad laugh. Damn it. This was supposed to be a fun time but nothing can ever have a happy fairy tale like ending can it?

You lean down placing your forehead down on his. Looking deeply into his silver eyes. “Chrollo. I am your little butterfly. I bet I forever will be but…but…”

You turn your head to the side and savor the last kiss you'll ever share with this man. This extraordinary man that gave you a night you’ll never forget. You slowly pull away watching as his eyes begin to droop again.

“But, Chrollo, you have to be careful. Afterall, A monarch is deadly to a spider.”

And, with that, Chrollo was out. And so were you, not a single trace of you remained in that room. It was like the monarch had never been trapped in Chrollo’s web in the first place.

But, the scars left on those beautiful butterfly wings of yours, Is enough proof that you were there. And that you left, damaged.

#hxh #hunter x hunter #phantom troupe #hxh scenarios #scenarios #chrollo #chrollo lucilfer #chrollo lucilfer x reader

323 notes · View notes

quidfree · 4 years ago

Note

this is kind of out of the blue but since you’re (or were) planning on goldfinch fic at some point i was wondering if you could disclose some thoughts on it? love your commentary in your author’s notes

god anon i have so many thoughts on that book it could fill half a tartt novel ! where to begin? upon consideration i’ve decided to drop some of my controversial goldfinch opinions below but feel free to ask again if you wanted to hear my thoughts on something specific

1. the single most disturbing and poignant part of the book is actually theo running into platt and learning the details of andy’s death. no spiralling addiction or parental death quite hits that surreal, cold sweat horror of andy barbour, loather of boats and reluctant passenger, swept overboard into the black seas. i love the water and it still made me viscerally discomfited. and the layers to it- kitsey should have, could have been there, would not have died, could have avoided any deaths- deliciously cruel. i know the barbours are not primary characters in the book but i think there’s really a lot to be analysed with regards to them and the way they play off theo. kitsey herself is a very fine character that i liked very much to have on the page. and i loved andy.

2. theo and boris might love each other very much (which they explicitly do) -> be in love with each other (which they arguably are), but that doesn’t mean that they’re devoted to each other in some grandiose love-conquers-all type of way. i mean this in the sense that a lot of people take the snideness and the bite out of their interactions but also in the sense that, for eg, when boris and theo run into each other in ny and they’re in the car, boris doesn’t trust theo (thinks theo knows about the painting and is trying to get back at him) to the point where he goes calculating and cold and makes significant mobster eye contact with his driver. like, people tend to ignore this scrupulously when they characterize them but boris is a cool pragmatist beneath the effusive emotiveness (hello, not running away to new york in the first place) and his seeming undying friendship has its limits. this is just one example but they’re both selfish, suspicious creatures. and i say this as a ride or die theo/boris type. it just makes their dynamic all the more messy and interesting.

3. theo’s relationship with pippa is actually extremely important and it’s hard to say who would come first to him if he had to choose. yes, pippa is correct to say that they’re fundamentally caught together on the basis of their trauma, but the same goes for boris and theo in many regards, so discarding theo and pippa’s clear muddled infatuation/affection because of the theo-boris thing is turning a blind eye to one of theo’s most telling relationships in tgf. i would also argue that pippa is a foil to theo, kitsey AND boris all in one, at a relatively obvious level of the text. people not mentioning pippa at all in their goldfinch adjacent works is just misogyny.

4. the goldfinch ends on an extremely dour philosophical note, but it is possible to write stories that get to a happier point without ignoring the ideas that theo engages with at the end of the book. the most obvious way to do so is just to take theo for the sour and unreliable narrator that he is- we have literal chapters of his warped perspective that get in-text corrections from boris, so we know he lies constantly. the end of the book is an accurate reflection of theo then, just back to the city stuck on some tragic plan for pippa’s hand and trying to restablize after the implosion of his new reality, but try again in two months, a year, five, you know? the second method of choice would just to have this perspective challenged and debated- whether by deus ex intervention, direct dialogue (boris, hobie, kitsey, pippa, whoever) or just events unfolding in such a way that theo budges on some point or other, maybe accepting the beauty he revolves around in slightly broader forms than he’d surmised. my point is really just that it feels disingenuous not to acknowledge his mentality by the last point we see him.

5. the best character by far is actually mr bracegirdle. second best character is popchik. any other suggestions are incorrect.

6. i think my favourite bit of fanon (in a surprising way, actually, considering how i usually veer clear of anything too openly sweet or cutesy w tartt characters) is hands-down theo giving boris the emerald earrings. it works because there’s ways to make it work, and symbolically it’s just too good. what’s mine is yours is mine and theo post-kitsey drunkenly and bitterly thinking about the necklace, and pippa, and what a bad idea that would be, and so just thrusting them at boris (“here, bet you know someone to sell these to”) in a moment of poor decision-making (“always black moods, potter”); boris knowing theo and knowing quality jewellery and so not selling them at all, wearing them as cufflinks or one dangly earring or a pendant enough time later that theo has to blink twice to recognise them. boris maybe even knowing, from pictures, from memory, seeing how canon boris still recollects so much of audrey with ease, and so boris being careful. or not. either way it’s lovely stuff.

incidentally after my exams this week i plan on finally reading TSH so if it hits the same way goldfinch does expect great willingness to discuss the subject too!

#the goldfinch #tgf #qui parle #qui repond #anon #theo x boris #goldfinch meta #donna tartt #qui analyse

31 notes · View notes

jadelotusflower · 3 years ago

Text

Roundup: August 2021

This month: Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Don’t Call it a Cult, The Secret Garden, Showbiz Kids, Masters of the Universe: Revelation, Lucifer.

Reading Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) - I’ve been meaning to read the Wide Sargasso Sea for a long, long time, but first I thought I’d revisit the source material. I find my opinion hasn’t much changed - I still love the prose, still love Jane as a character, and still find Rochester extremely unappealing. The section with Jane at school is the most engaging for me, and her early time as a governess at Thornfield, but as soon as Rochester shows up I just find him so irritating I have no idea why Jane loves him so much (other than he was the first man to ever show her a scrap of attention). I mean, I know to an extent - I've read the Takes, and part of fiction is accepting what you want for the character as a reader and what they want for themselves can be two different things, and that's not the fault of the text. I can be satisfied by the ending because Jane gets what she wants, I just can’t help but wonder about a Jane who was found by John Eyre before she went to Thornfield, or who took her inheritance and made her own way after Moor House. Byronic heroes just aren't my thing I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys) - The first Mrs Rochester of Jane Eyre strikes an uneasy tone to a modern reader; she does not utter a word in the novel, is depicted as animalistic and almost demonic, her story only told in a self-serving manner by Rochester, and conveniently disposed of so Jane can return to claim him. Rhys reimagines Bertha as Antoinette, a “white Creole” of Jamaica in a postcolonial take on the racial/social prejudices and hierarchy only hinted at in Eyre, where Bertha being Creole primarily an aspect of her Otherness, and in which Rochester describes himself as being desired as a husband because he was "of good race" . In Sea, although Antoinette is white (passing, perhaps), he sees her "not English or European either" and this contributes to his rejection of her (and perhaps his willingness to believe she is mad). The novel is surprisingly short - it skips over the meeting and courtship of Antoinette and Rochester (tellingly unnamed in the novel) entirely, jumping directly from her childhood/coming of age to the couple already married, and over much of Bertha's (renamed by Rochester) sad life in the attic. Still, there's a density to the writing, much is implied beyond the sparse use of words and recurring imagery - subjugation, reflection, and of course, fire - when freed slaves (Rhys changes the timeframe to after the passing of the Emancipation Act of 1833) set fire to Antoinette's family plantation, a pet parrot whose wings have been clipped by her English step-father Mason, cannot flee and falls to a fiery doom, in a grim omen of Bertha's fate. It did, however, leave me wanting more - I understand Rhys' stylistic choices and restraint, but in her effort to give voice to the voiceless, Antoinette/Bertha remains somewhat an enigma. Don’t Call it a Cult: Keith Raniere and the women of NXIVM (Sarah Berman) - I continue to be disturbed but intrigued by the NXIVM case, not only because of my abhorrence of MLMs/pyramid schemes, but my bafflement as to how this thoroughly unremarkable man was able to hold sway over so many women. My mild criticism of the two documentaries on this subject was that they tended to jump around in time so you never really got a good idea of what happened when. This book provides a well researched, detailed summary of events and linear chronology of Raniere’s perverse pathology reaching all the way back to childhood, and so is both an excellent supplement to the already informed, and broad overview to those new to the case. Berman is a Vancouver-based journalist who was present at Raniere’s trial and gives insight into witness testimony, supported by her own interviews and extensive research. There's less of a focus on the sensationalised celebrity members, with greater emphasis on the lesser known victims - including the three Mexican sisters who were all abused by Raniere, one of whom was kept confined to a room for years. It's difficult reading, consolation being the

knowledge that Raniere is rotting in prison and that his crimes finally caught up with him. Watching The Secret Garden (dir. Marc Munden) - Spoilers, if one needs a spoiler warning for a 110 year old novel. One of those stories that is adapted every generation, and generally I have no problem with this, since new adaptations can often bring something new or be a different take on old material (see Little Women 2019). But a part of me can’t help feel why bother with this when the perfect 1993 version exists. There is an Attempt at something new with this film, moving the setting forward to 1947 (Mary’s parents having died during the Partition), and turning the garden from a small walled secret to a mystical, huge wonderland full of ferns and flowers and endless sun. But in doing so, the central metaphor is lost - rather than Mary discovering something abandoned and run wild, gently bringing it back to life with love and care, she merely discovers a magical place that requires no effort on her part. There’s also less of a character arc for Mary, remaining unpleasant far into the proceedings, forcing Colin to visit the garden instead of it being his true wish, and generally succeeding by imposing her will on everyone else. In many ways she’s more like Burnett's other child heroine Sarah Crewe - the film opens I’m with her telling stories to her doll including Ramayana, which is eerily reminiscent of Alfonso Cuaron's (also perfect) 1995 adaptation of A Little Princess. But I suppose a sliver of credit where it's due - Julie Walters' Mrs Medlock is less of an antagonist, with Colin Firth's Lord Craven being Mary's primary obstacle. There's also a subplot with Mary's mother's depression following the death of her sister being the reason for her neglect (and Merlin alum Rupert Young shows up briefly as Mary's father) but like shifting the time period, there just doesn't seem to be a point to it. The climax of the film involves the Manor burning down (writer Jack Thorne stealing from Rebecca too, lol), with Mary and Craven have a very calm conversation as fire and smoke surrounds them. It’s all very bizarre, but also…rather dull? Don't bother with this, just watch the 1993 film again. Showbiz Kids (dir. Alex Winter) - a really interesting documentary on the titular subject - Winter was himself a child actor on Broadway before his film career kicked off in The Lost Boys and Bill and Ted, and has been able to assemble a broad range of interview subjects - Mara Wilson, Evan Rachel Wood, Wil Wheaton, Jada Pinkett Smith among others - former child actors, those still in the business, and some up and comers like Disney star Cameron Boyce (who I was sad to see in the coda has passed away). We also follow two young hopefuls - Marc, attending acting classes and auditioning in pilot season, yet to book a job but his parents are invested in "his" dream, and Demi, already established on Broadway but having to start to make choices between a career and a childhood. There's no voiceover, no expert opinions in this, letting the actors speak for themselves, but there is a telling juxtaposition of Marc returning home, jobless but having fun in the pool with his friends, while Demi has to cancel the summer camp she had been so looking forward to because she has booked a new role. The film is fairly even handed, but ultimately I took away that there just seems to be more harm than not in this industry, and abuses of many kinds. It does make you wonder about the ethics of child acting, at least in the current system where the cautionary tales are plentiful. Masters of the Universe: Revelation (episodes 1-5) - Mild spoilers I guess? I was never really into He-Man as a kid, other than the Secret of the Sword movie, so most of the in jokes and references in this went over my head. I have to admit, it was actually seeing all the outrage that made me want to check this out and see what all the complaining was about. I actually…really enjoyed it?!? I’m sympathetic to the complaints of a bait and switch (creators really need to learn to say

“just wait and see”), but other than that in my view the rest seemed completely unfounded. Adam/He-Man being killed in the first episode and the impact that has on Eternia and those left behind is actually a really interesting premise. This isn’t a TLJ situation; in contrast everyone (except Evil-Lyn) is always going on about how much they miss Adam, and the whole point of the first arc is him coming back. There’s also a nice little detail of Adam in Preternia (heroes heaven) choosing to remain as he is rather than as He-Man where all his predecessors have chosen their “ultimate” forms. I love him and his Magical Girl transformation. As for Teela - female characters can’t win, it seems. If they are perfect, they’re Mary Sues, if they have flaws, they’re unlikeable. Teela is Going Through things and is on a journey, but I often feel (and it seems the case here) that people confuse a character arc with author intent. No! Just because a character says/does something it doesn't mean you're supposed to agree with them! Some of Teela's actions may be petty and her demeanor less than sweet, but people make bad choices as a response to grief, and I actually thought her anger over Adam never telling her his secret and how that manifested was a pretty interesting take. I'll be interested to see the next half of the season, and ignore the ragebait youtube commentary. One more thing - Evil-Lyn (perfectly voiced by Lena Headey) was an absolute delight. Lucifer (season 5 part 2): They’ve basically given up on the procedural side of things by now and are leaning heavily into the mythology, which works for me since the case of the week is always the least interesting part of any show. It also struck me this season that there’s gender parity in the main cast (Lucifer, Amenadiel, Dan and then Chloe, Maze, Ella, Linda) - and actually, that’s more women than men. How often does that happen?!? I can’t say I’m particularly engaged with the Lucifer/Chloe pairing, but am happy to go along with it since that’s where the whole plot revolves. The best scenes for me this season were with God’s Dysfunctional Family, even if the lead up to the finale felt rushed (I understand the need to wrap things up in case of cancellation but still). I would have liked to see more of the sibling dynamics between the angels and less romantic drama, but hey. The character death got me, as well. I didn't see it coming and I didn't realise how much I had enjoyed that character until they were gone and well...it got me. I see the last season is coming soon, I'm not exactly sure where they can go from here, but looking forward to it nonetheless. Writing I was actually quite sick this month with a throat infection, so wasn't in the best frame of mind to get anything finished like I had planned to. I'm going to hold off posting the word count this month and roll it over to September when hopefully I've actually posted things.

#roundup #reading watching writing #august roundup

6 notes · View notes

briarrosescurse · 4 years ago

Note

a side of xiangvinh w my happy meal blease

pre-relationship (2), general (2, 4, 8), love (8, 9) domestic (1, 9)

BEWBEHEHEHHEHEHEHEHEHEH 🕺🕺

I'M LATE BUT HELLO MY WIFE... I GLADLY BRING YOU DA XIANGVINH FOOD !! 🤤

PRE-RELATIONSHIP

2. What was their first impression of each other?

first impressions, huh... well, for vinh i imagine that she hadn't much... initial interest in interacting with xiang or even associating herself with him. his reputation isn't a particularly unknown or clean one. but xiang on the other hand instantly thought oh how charming vinh is - even if he was met with weird stares. an absolutely enigmatic beauty, keeping to herself - he just had to know more.

'that sounds awfully poetic' ahah. don't tell him that.

in other words though; vinh, someone actively refusing to engage with him, made him all the more curious.

GENERAL

2. Did they have an official first date? If so, what was it like?

i like to think that because of vinh's reluctance, xiang had to do some convincing to get her to go on a date with him - or he just 'tricked' her by barging into her room and interrupting her usual work for 'something more urgent' (read: he was bored and craved her attention)

it wasn't particularly romantic, if anything it was more casual hanging out, but of course, xiang's flirting and playful touches increased a little - letting her know his intentions.

like a true charmer, he lets the date end on the note of 'let's do this again - you clearly had a lot of fun with me, pretty lady'

4. Were they each other’s first anything (kiss, relationship, etc.)?

well, it's very safe to say that they weren't each other's first 'anything' - with vinh's long lived existence and with xiang's... adventurous side.

hooowever, even though xiang himself won't admit it; his relationship with vinh is his first proper and actually serious relationship - a big step for him! the 'relationships' he had before were extremely casual and free from any rules or strings. so in all technicalities, he hadn't been in a 'traditional' relationship before. 🙈

8. Who gets jealous easier?

oh xiang. 100%. once it gets more serious, xiang starts to notice the possible threats that could crack his already fragile relationship to vinh - so he can't help but grow easily jealous. he only feels really jealous when someone is making full on advances on her. he won't grow jealous over really little and petty things(*), because he does trust vinh enough to be earnest. even if she is a little (big) pushover.

LOVE

8. What are some songs that apply to their relationship, in-universe or otherwise?

:) HAHHEHEUEH U KNOW WHATS COMING

line without a hook by ricky montgomery of course 💕

a man in love with a woman, recognizing the beauty she bears, wishing to be with her, he and his self-image are in his way. he is his own hurdle to be able to love her.

imagine you found your special lady, but you know you just are not enough for her - you aren't enough to be able to love her the way she deserves to be loved.

now apply that to xiangvinh 😳

xiang truly is in love with vinh - but he just is 'some boy', a 'line without a hook', unable to give her, the lady of his heart, the love she truly deserves.

9. What kind of nicknames do they call each other?

vinh calls xiang by his name - xiang, obviously - but xiang brings out a whole storage of stupid yet strangely endearing nicknames. his favorite one and all-time classic is "pretty lady", really simple but it's surprisingly enough unique to vinh only. other than that though, he sometimes calls her vinhnie pooh (he got that from draco) or stick-on-legs.

however, the closer they grew, the more xiang started to use her actual name. that first time he actually called her by her name was... quite something. (xiang brain shattered for good)

DOMESTIC

1. If they get married, who proposes?

xiang ! but um. he is xiang, so the journey to that proposal has been a rather tedious one. he went around a lot and asked for their friends opinions, his own family for advice (xiang's older brother thought he was joking until vinh showed him the ring) and he even asked for vinh's family's approval. but um. you imagine that this went rather rough. after their long history of problems, it's no wonder that especially vinh's sisters and mamaphrodite had quite some trouble to believe in anything he said.

and god, the proposal itself - xiang tried to avoid a big gesture, for once, since he had no idea how to even go about it without disturbing vinh, but it ended up rather awkward and with lots of questions ("wait, so please clarify this for me; you are proposing to me?" / "vinh, please, don't make me say it, oh my god")

9. Who’s the better cook?

vinh for sure. xiang in the kitchen is not to be trusted, because he will be irresponsible and accidentally use too much spice or let the good chicken burn up until it looks indistinguishable next to coal.

that being said though! he does try to occasionally cook for his wife as well and even though the dishes are either a hit or miss, vinh seems happy enough by the gesture alone to try them. (her poor tummy...)

#ship questionnaire asks #[xiang/vinh]#GAHSJS IM SO LATE BUT HIIII XIANGVINH FOOOOOOD #WOOOOOO #twst oc #[my writing]

15 notes · View notes

lilydalexf · 4 years ago

Photo

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Mary Ruth Keller

Mary Ruth Keller has 42 stories at Gossamer, plus her stories are at AO3. She's written a number of short standalone stories, but she's thought through the X-Files mythology and written about it probably as much as anybody ever has. So if you want to dive into the mythology and all its drama, you need to go read her mythology fics ASAP. (But read this long, interesting interview first!) Big thanks to Mary Ruth for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

Quite frankly, yes. The Kuxan Sum Cycle branches off the actual series following the Third Season episode Syzygy. I took the myth-arc as it stood at that time, post Nisei-731, and the agents in mid-Rift. Although I didn’t quite realize it when I started out, I was most interested in moving the myth-arc forward in a continuously unfurling narrative, one where Scully and Mulder became an effective investigative team who support each other as partners and friends again. After I started writing in my little corner of the X-F universe in 1996, there was a lot of stuff on the show that just happened, with no real storytelling logic to it I could fathom, but that seemed to be popular. I stopped writing in 2000 because I was frantically busy at my new job (which consumed far too many twelve-plus-hour workdays and weekends) and because my sister and I were trying to take care of my elderly, increasingly frail, Mother. So, I never expected, when I started writing in 2018 and posting again in 2019 (I reposted all my stories, in order, to AO3 and fanfiction.net, because Chermera would never have made sense without them) for readers to take an interest in myth-arc and character issues that the series writers had simply abandoned to go chase, well, anything else, especially if it made no coherent sense whatsoever. What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

The fandom was a lot of fun. There were many interesting, engaging discussions I took part in with other fans of the show, some of whom I am still in touch with.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

All of the above. I spent a lot of time discussing writing and characters with other writers on ATXC, except when I was actively working on my novels. Since I was doing basic research into microwave remote sensing of the Earth while working at the Naval Research Laboratory at the time – yes, I was one of those dreaded Department of Defense scientists the show had a love/hate relationship with – my writing happened at night and on weekends. Novels, especially the longer ones, take me about a year from first words on disk until release, which meant I didn’t have all the time to participate on-line as I would have otherwise. But, I enjoyed chatting with the fellow denizens of the Endies Board, and on the EMXC, Scullyfic, and Je Souhaite mailing lists. I’ve saved some of those posts and conversation threads on my older computers, where it’s fun re-reading them from time to time. What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

There were a lot of generous, funny, very intelligent fans involved with X-F back then (not that there aren’t now; there are, of course). I started writing because I wanted to get the myth-arc and the characters back on-track, the long-term story moving forward and the agents again being the smart investigators I loved hanging out with on Friday nights. But, outside of having read a lot of myth, literature, fiction, and non-fiction, I didn’t know enough about the mechanics of writing fiction. Several authors were willing to help out, some explicitly through E-mail conversations, and some from general comments about crafting stories that were posted to ATXC. I had a real problem with how I initially handled dialog, which I had some E-mail guidance on, that was very much appreciated. I also had two quite diligent beta readers, one an on-line fan, and one a real-life friend, both male, who helped me with the direction of the Scully-Mulder half of Anath. I was, at the time, utterly exasperated with how the pair of them had become such complete morons on the series, both totally incapable of investigating anything successfully, which was affecting my writing the characters in that story. What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show? Ooh, boy. I’d like to say I started watching with the show with the Pilot, but I didn’t, quite. Tom Shales was the Washington Post TV critic at the time the Pilot aired – yes, not only was I a government scientist, I was living in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1992. He was intrigued by the characters and premise and found Duchovny and Anderson engaging while playing their roles. At the time, I was wrapped up trying to work on a PhD while still employed at NRL, so I tucked the review away, waiting until I had Friday nights free to check it out. I’m a great lover of science fiction, so I thought to give the show a try, eventually. [Lilydale note: I found a couple things Tom Shales wrote about The X-Files premiere in 1993: Fall 1993 TV preview article and a “Pilot” episode review.]

The first episode I sat down to watch was the First Season Darkness Falls, where Mulder and Scully get trapped at the logging camp with the Earth Firster, Doug Spinney, the logging executive, Steve Humphries, the Forest Ranger, Larry Moore, and the gooey green bugs. I was amazed by that story. It was as perfect a little piece of science fiction as I have seen on TV (except for one bit toward the end), with an environmental moral to it as well, where all the characters make good and bad choices, and they all suffer or succeed because of them.

What hooked me, really hooked me, were the first/second acts, specifically, Dana Scully’s actions, once they find the desiccated logger in the tree. The investigation is handled logically, in that it’s not the big male agent who goes shinnying up the trunk to look at the evidence while everyone else stands around watching and wailing, “Whatever shall we do!” No, it’s little Dana Scully who takes the ride to the upper branches. This made oodles of sense, in that she was this tiny woman whom two men could lever up that far with a rope, a hand winch, and pulleys. When she gets there, after grimacing (who wouldn’t, considering what she saw), she starts investigating. She does an on-the-spot post-mortem exam, while Mulder makes an ooky male-body-parts joke, but everyone takes her results seriously. I was thrilled. Here was a female character I could really relate to, someone who could hold her own in a difficult situation, unlike most of those on the tube, then or now.

I made a point, over the following summer, of watching as many re-runs as I could, catching up on the episodes and characters. The stories ran to science fiction and horror, which are my preference. Further, although there was an emphasis on the paranormal, several of the first season episodes were written so both Mulder’s wanting-to-believe-but-needing-proof intuitive, emotional approach and Scully’s logical, scientific, justice-oriented viewpoint each got the narrative coherently from initial crime to identifying and apprehending a suspect. It was some spectacular, complex writing, and I was hooked, hopelessly hooked. I discuss this some on my old author web-page, which still exists, courtesy of the Wayback machine), so I won’t belabor it. What got you involved with X-Files fan-fic? The shenanigans within the Third Season, quite honestly. The myth-arc wasn’t moving forward, as it had during the Second Season, which I really couldn’t understand. Carter had given us this bang-up start in the ABC Trilogy with all these new fictional possibilities to explore, but instead, bupkis. The MOTW’s were retreads with no depth or moral/ethical weight to them, except for Darin’s stories. The intelligent agents I had enjoyed spending time with while they pursued their oddball investigations were evaporating before my eyes. Mulder had always been this deeply intuitive character who cared about others and knew he could get it wrong, so needed Scully’s logic in their investigations, even if he didn’t always want to hear her observations and questions. But that character was being replaced by a cookie-cutter misunderstood anti-hero, who wasn’t thinking, just running off to chase butterflies, who was always right because he was The Guy. Scully, as an investigator, the little agent who could, was simply being sidelined. Sure, she’d argue with Mulder, but the writers had stopped giving her and her logical viewpoint a real role in their cases, Darin excepted, again. As the series went on, the Agent and Doctor Dana Scully I respected was replaced with this snappish little female whose only notable skill was running in high heels, who spent her time standing around with her arms crossed, and made pruney faces at Mulder if she were required to do any actual investigating. I hated that character, but, apparently, the all-male writing staff just loved her.

I knew about the on-line fandom, so I thought to check out if anybody else had noticed these “improvements.” First, I spent time at ATXF, discussing the changes with the series, that disturbed a lot of folks, not just me. Eventually, I tripped onto ATXC. There were writers there who understood the two characters, quite well, but weren’t that interested in the other problems with the show that bothered me deeply.

Like many fan-fiction writers, I decided to try to bring in, or in my case, bring back, what I was missing in what was being aired. Sins of the Fathers was the result. As I mentioned above, it was a far from perfect story, but I learned much putting it together, and it got a lot of positive feedback. So I kept writing and trying to improve what I wrote. Folks appreciated it, then and now, surprisingly, which was endless encouragement to keep going. What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom? With work and my Mom, as I mentioned above, I dropped out for a few years. My new job is still microwave remote sensing of the Earth, at a University-affiliated laboratory, not working directly for the government, but the NASA/NSF-type funding for the research I like to do is much harder to come by, so it takes up a lot more of my time to keep funded and working. Adding to that, I haven’t found places like ATXC in the 90’s or the Endies Board, but I suppose lightning only strikes once. Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

Not really, no. I’ve enjoyed other TV series, but, I never felt those shows were just throwing away essential parts of themselves as X-F did, or, if they went bad, I simply stopped watching them. A fandom is, or can be, a huge time commitment, which, as I’ve noted, I don’t have that much of. I discuss this quite extensively in my author’s notes at the end of Chermera, so I won’t repeat myself. [Lilydale note: the long author notes are at the end of the story’s last chapter, not in the AO3 notes section.] Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

As a child, I loved reading myths and legends from many different cultures. So many amazing stories, so much that touches on truth. Greek myth, Norse legends, Islamic tales, Celtic fables, all of them. It goes without saying that discovering Tolkien’s fully-realized Middle Earth in my early teens was like falling into an river of endless delights.

In literature, perhaps the character I enjoy most is Sherlock Holmes. On television/in movies, I’d have to say: Beverly Crusher, (early) Dana Scully, Susan Ivanova of Babylon 5, Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan and (early) Aeryn Sun on Farscape, Samantha Carter on Stargate SG-1, Hermione Granger, and most recently, Lagertha on Vikings. Dunno, there might be a pattern there. Possibly. Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

Yes, absolutely. I started rewatching the series when it ran on BBC America, enjoying the first two seasons again. I’d actually never stopped thinking about Mulder and Scully; I just lost the time to write about them, until two years ago, when I managed to land some long-term funding so I wasn’t staying up nights writing proposals every few months. I’d have a thought about how to advance the story that became Chermera, so I’d make a mental note and play with it in my head. I also have two more novels and a satyr play left to go in the sequence of stories I want to write, so I’m turning over plot-lines and potential arcs in my head all the time. Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom? I do read X-F fan-fic. Since the series has wandered so far away from what engaged me, and most fan-fic keeps up with that, I don’t read very much. As far as other fandoms, one was enough. Do you have any favorite X-Files fan-fic stories or authors?

Reaching back into the dark ages, I’d say Pellinor and Nascent. They may both be available on Gossamer. [Lilydale note: Fortunately, they are!] What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise? Zurvan is the favorite of my older stories. It, like Twelfth Night (Denha on AO3 to avoid confusion with another X-F story named Twelfth Night), builds on the past stories in their trilogies and brings the overall arc to new places. It’s fun to uncover surprises when writing and develop challenges to address in the future, which both of those stories did. Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I’d certainly like to. I had planned to write three trilogies with their satyr plays, each of them focusing on an aspect of the mythical Triple Goddess: Maiden, Matron, and Crone, in the X-F universe. Only, being me, I turned it around. Sandra Ann Miller (Samantha) is the Maiden, but I’ve just started telling that part of the arc with the transitional Anath and the first trilogy story Chermera. I’m approaching this trilogy as a coherent tale spread across the three novels, which is different from the other two. The Caroline Lowenberg Trilogy didn’t really get organized until Twelfth Night. It was only the third story I’d ever written, so perhaps I can be excused. The Dana Scully Trilogy was all interconnected, but that was more of an organic, rather than a pre-planned and deliberate, effort. I didn’t really grasp the full arc of what I was creating there until I was writing Chermera and looked back over the threads running from Rustic Suite through Anath. The next story in the Sandra Ann Miller Trilogy involves the exposure of the Japanese arm of the Consortium, but, I need to read up on Japanese history, myths and legends, and world view before I write it. After finishing and posting Chermera, that’s what I’ve been doing. The conflict between Amaterasu, the Sun goddess, and her ne’er-do-well brother Susanoo-no-Mikoto, the god of, among other things, storms, marriage, and love, as told in the Kojiki and the Nihongi (both written down in their near-final forms at the same time as we in the West were just recording the first skeletal versions of the Arthurian Legends), will definitely get worked into the Sandra Ann Miller Trilogy. I’m starting to put the arcs and plot-lines together, but, I’m not ready to begin writing yet. Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work? As I’ve discussed, I do. Part of why I take my time is because Mulder and Scully are owed real, challenging cases to solve - the two intelligent agents with their own approaches, strengths, and weaknesses, remember. Partly, because I have original fiction ideas I’d like to pursue. Trying to do the best I possibly can in the sheltered world of X-F where I attempt to create stories with universal themes, well-realized settings, coherent plot-lines, and original characters who resonate with my readers is practice for the original fiction. I’ll never write the Great American Novel (whatever that is), but I’d like to write stories that are as good as I can make them and fun for my readers, so I keep plugging. Where do you get ideas for stories? Reading and thinking, mostly. I try to look for ideas that haven’t been done to death, or different approaches to old themes. I have four original novels I scribble mental notes on. After I bring this myth-arc I’ve been working on to its (to me) logical resolution, I hope I’ll be able enough of a writer to get started on them. What's the story behind your pen name? Actually, it’s my real name. At the time I started writing, I didn’t think to do anything else. On ATXC and Gossamer, I wrote several of the shorts that are separate from the Kuxan Sum Cycle under the pen name Lise Meitner. She was a Twentieth Century theoretical physicist who explained nuclear fission, then was cut out of a Nobel prize because the judges of her day thought Marie Curie and Irene Joliot-Curie were “enough” women physicists working in radioactivity to be so honored. [Lilydale note: here’s her Wikipedia page. Among many other fascinating things talked about there, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize 48 times in two different categories and had the 109th chemical element, meitnerium, named after her. She also escaped Nazi Germany in a plot involving trains, boats, planes, and an emergency diamond ring. You really ought to read about her.] Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

I’d shared the first five of my novels with my family back in 1996. They liked them, my sister especially. I’m not sure they knew what to make of them. I haven’t shown them to my in-laws, but, I think my sister-in-law found them on her own. We haven’t discussed them, as they aren’t her usual preference, which is Romance. One distant blood relation was thrilled to discover them on-line and wrote me about them. My sister, though, is my (self-admitted) biggest fan. When we were kids, she and I shared a bedroom, where I’d make up stories to tell her at night so she could fall asleep. She and I correspond regularly by E-mail (she’s in Florida and I’m in Maryland). Back while I was working my way through Chermera, she asked out of the blue if I was ever going to write any more. She was thrilled to hear I had been but she doesn’t have regular Internet access other than at her job. I made printed, bound copies of all my stories to mail to her last Christmas. She loves them, bless her. Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

I’ve sent Chermera to Gossamer, but, it hasn’t been updated since July 2018. All the rest of the stories are there.

At AO3, my stories are under: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrkeller. The Kuxan Sum Cycle is linked together at: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555492.

I’ve published the Lise Meitner stories under my own name there: Faustus Mulder; Late Night Thoughts on Evolution, Hard Times, and Lost Pets; You Just Don’t Understand; and Lux Perpetua. Since I could separate out the trilogies into their own cycle, it just made sense.

At fan-fiction.net, they’re under: https://www.fanfiction.net/~maryruthkeller

Again, the Lise Meitner stories are under my own name. Since fanfiction.net doesn’t have a linked series option like AO3, I’ve added a header to all eleven of the stories in the Kuxan Sum Cycle so far explaining the order. The novels all are tagged with thumbnail versions of the covers I made for them. Also, the literary quotes I started each chapter and begin and end each story with, are kept in the AO3 versions, but are removed at fanfiction.net to avoid potential copyright issues. Shakespeare, Christine de Pisan, the Popol Vuh, the Ugaritic myths around Anath, and others are all long out of, or never were in, copyright, of course, but, just to be on the safe side, I’m following fanfiction.net’s rules.

If folks care to write, I’m still at my old eclipse address: [email protected]. Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

Enjoy it, use it as an opportunity to make connections and expand your horizons as a storyteller. Fan-fiction was much more of a home-grown effort back in the 90’s than it is now, when there are how-to books, of all things. But, don’t get so wrapped up one forgets about real life. That’s where all the best stories are.

(Posted by Lilydale on October 27, 2020)

#new post #old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #mary ruth keller

42 notes · View notes

illia-ast · 5 years ago

Text

[34]Music Meme: Illia

THE RULES:

You have to randomize, so no hand-picked theme songs! [Break the rule if you want though, because why leave this stuff to chance??]

Copy the text and post as your own! DON’T REBLOG! Give it some pizzaz! Grab a screenshot! Have fun with this~

Tag meeeee [@myymsaetayuun] [please?] so I can see the wonderful music that you all connect with your characters! I absolutely love seeing all the inspirations that everyone has out there. I also really love music!

It’s 34 prompts long. Why? I dunno, it seemed like a cool number to stop. Also, they have no rhyme or reason to the order to facilitate the shuffle effect! If you have more to add, ADD THEM! Go wild! Now then, let’s get started:

[[I didn’t want to handpick so this will be... terribly not IC for her at all. I don’t remotely have a playlilst for/about her and my jumble of music... really isn’t suited for her lol]]

Illia Astraea

1. How the world sees them

Florence + The Machine - I'm Not Calling You Liar (DA 2 Version)

2. A song to play on a good day

Dark On Me - Starset ( ( Oh no it’s sad. ; - ; ) )

3. What acquaintances and the random person thinks of them

Halestorm - Do Not Disturb ( ( *eyes emoji* w a t ) )

4. A song for those who want them [sexually]

Nothing More - Go To War ( ( *squints* ) )

5. When they make others happy

Utada Hikaru - Don’t Think Twice

6. When they are happy

Apocalyptica - Broken Pieces ( ( Oh no another sad match. ; - ; ) )

7. A theme for a life goal

Rescue Me (How The Story Ends) · Kerrie Roberts ( ( *cries* Why is it putting so many sad things on her. ) )

8. Giving bad advice

Written By Wolves - Explode ( ( This one... isn’t that bad actually. ) )

9. Giving good advice

12 Stones - World So Cold ( ( This one... also isn’t that bad?) )

10. What they think their theme song is

Céline Dion - Ashes

( ( *incoherent sobbing* ) )

11. Their funeral song

Everybody Wants To Rule The World · Lorde ( ( ... kind of... weird for funeral, but alright.) )

12. What everyone else thinks is their theme song

State of Mine - Rise ( ( ACTUALLY, I like this match up. ♥ ) )

13. When they see someone they love

Nero - Into The Night ( ( Oh goodness... this is actually a pretty good match up too. ) )

14. When they are having a bad day

Three Days Grace - Never Too Late ( ( This is also a good fit. OOC This song is very dear to me and I’m glad it’s on this list in a... not too painful spot lol ) )

15. A song about their life’s purpose

My Name (Wearing Me Out) - Shinedown ( ( I just... honestly, a lot of these are much more fitting for the burnt out WoL/WoD version instead of just the fluffy kitty. This list wants her to be full of angst and anger. ) )

16. When someone reminisces about them

Felix Cartal & LIGHTS - Love Me ( ( OKAY this kind of happy beat is fitting and more of the exact kind of feel her character is supposed to have. ) )

17. A song that might be constantly stuck in their head

Mihka! X Kyoto Black – Kodokushi (孤独死) ( ( *wheezing because this is stuck in my head* ) )

18. A song someone might serenade them with

Ruelle - The Other Side ( ( Just... ow. ) )

19. A song they would serenade to someone else

DIAMANTE - Haunted ( ( I.... *sweats* not accurate but damn this match up. ) )

20. A song they might hum or sing along with

Killswitch Engage - The End Of Heartache ( ( PLEASE let me hear the tiny miqo singing along!! ) )

21. A song they would perform, or at least karaoke

Heaven in Hiding - Halsey ( ( *fans self* Okay, this... might actually be a good one for her performance-wise. ) )

22. A theme when they are in the general public

Gasoline - Halsey ( ( Two Halsey in a row but this one is painful. ) )

23. A theme for them in private

Battle Cry - Imagine Dragons ( ( Another painful one. D: ) )

24. A theme for their deepest desires

In For The Kill (Skream's Let's Get Ravey Remix) · La Roux

25. Thinking back on a traumatic, sad, or unpleasant memory

Five Finger Death Punch - Wrong Side Of Heaven ( ( *incoherent sobbing* ) )

26. A song to their best friends

The Future Is Now · The Offspring

27. Waking up in the morning [Or night if they are nocturnal!]

Across The Line - Linkin Park ( ( SHE IS NOT THIS ANGRY ALSDGARGA ) )

28. Finally being able to fall asleep

Billie Eilish - Bury A Friend (Zeds Dead Remix) ( ( This.... is an interesting match. ) )

29. When they fall in love/lust

ZΛYDE WØLF feat. Ruelle - Walk Through The Fire ( ( Another interesting match and kind of fitting for her actually. ) )

30. Thinking back on a happy, serene, or pleasant memory

Halsey - Without Me ( ( Another sad match, why. D: ) )

31. A song to their family

Broken Iris - A New Hope ( ( For her birth family, o u c h ) )

32. Dissociation music

Halsey - Control ( ( f i t t i n g goodness gracious. ) )

33. Manic music

State Of Mine - Killing Me ( ( *squint* ) )

34. A final theme that means everything to the character [it’s especially okay if you cheat for this one]

Starset - CARNIVORE ( ( This is the true random and damn. ) )

( ( I was going to add in a chosen song for her, but I don’t really have one in mind. The closest I could think of was this maybe? ) )

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thoughts: This was really fun! And a neat thing to do, even if most of it is far removed from her character. Would really fit better on a WoL/WoD that’s burnt out from all the stuff that’s happened. Thank you @thegildedgun for the tag! ♥

Your turn!

Tagging: @gildedandgolden @blood-of-the-dragons @a-sharlayan-abroad aanndd anyone reading this! ♥ I mean it!

#answered prompt #kinda #music meme #i want to tag #basically everyone it'll let me #but i don't want to be spam annoying #so if you see this DO IT PLEASE #more like #answered tag #?

3 notes · View notes

dillydedalus · 6 years ago

Text

books i read in october

will i even read anything this month? MAYBE NOT (i did.)

der gang vor die hunde (going to the dogs), erich kästner the restored full text of kästner’s fabian, a satirical novel about late weimar berlin and how it is.... going to the dogs. it’s witty, everyone is dancing (and uh, fucking) on the edge of the abyss, fabian sees the end of europe everywhere he looks, but my favourite bits were honestly kästner’s incredibly sharp & funny postscripts (one to the moral censors, one to the art critics - ‘this book is not for confirmees, no matter how old they are’), and the blurb calling berlin ‘der zärtliche moloch der moderne’/’the tender moloch of modernity’. 3.5/5

hier ist noch alles möglich, gianna molinari longlisted for german book prize. a short novel about a woman who decides to become a nightguard at a rundown factory where a wolf has been seen (maybe). mostly, it’s ramblings about borders/boundaries, intrusions and separations of space (the wolf coming into the factory, the fence of the factory, islands etc). it’s interesting, but it’s a bit too long for what it did. 2.5/5

when hitler stole pink rabbit, judith kerr i’ve had this book for like. probably 15 years? god. anyway, somehow i never read it and picked it up now to get it off the unread shelf. it’s a fictionalised account of kerr’s childhood as a refugee after her jewish family leaves germany just before the nazis come into power, and their struggle to make a living and find their place in the countries they escape to. it was really well-done, not overly didactic or sentimental & i should have read it as a kid i guess! 3/5

die liebe unter aliens, terézia mora short story collection. i listened to the audio book, which only has 5 of the 10 stories (which i didn’t know before), so that’s a bit disappointing. anyway, the title means ‘love among aliens’, but sadly there were no aliens :(. just alienated people trying to find something/themselves/etc. i liked mora’s style, but the only story i rly liked was one about a japanese prof who falls in love with a goddess. 2.5/5, gave it 3/5 on goodreads bc i only heard half the stories

buried in the sky, peter zuckerman & amanda padoan i find mountaineering disasters morbidly fascinating & am kinda obsessed with them (throwback to last year when i read into thin air & told everyone who’d listen not to climb everest & they were all like.... wasn’t planning to but okay??). k2 is only slightly less high than everest but much more difficult technically (all the climbers r like.... oh everest is so easy i wanted a real challenge like.... k). anyway this book is focused on a particular disaster on k2 during which 11 people died, as well as on the position, history, culture etc. of the indigenous ethnic groups that live in these regions & work for mountaineering expeditions (Sherpas being the most well-known but there are others as well!). since the authors weren’t on this expedition, it’s not quite as harrowing and immersive as into thin air but it’s still plenty harrowing! horrible deaths! the deaths of the high altitude workers were incredibly tragic & while obvi the mountaineers’ deaths are sad too, i feel like they know what they’re getting into & they’re not doing it out of economic necessity but for like... fun? the rush? pride? idk. but anyway if you don’t wanna die... don’t go into the DEATH ZONE. it’s literally called the DEATH ZONE DON’T GO THERE. anyway yeah i find everything about extreme mountaineering super fascinating & terrifying & this is a good one, tho into thin air would be still my #1 rec. 4/5

wenn es nur licht gäbe, bevor es dunkel wird, iunona guruli tbh i mainly got this on overdrive bc i hadn’t really read anything from georgia (the country in the caucasus, not the american state). it’s a short story collection (mostly about/set in georgia but written in german) on themes like drug abuse, gendered, sexual & domestic violence and depression, so... not much fun here! there is a dreamlike quality to some of the stories which i think contrasted well with the quite dark themes, but overall the stories were too similar & blended together too much for me, and sometimes the style seemed a bit too laboured. 2.5/5

unter weißen, mohamed amjahid really good, persuasive & engaging examination of racism in germany, accessible without being basic. i haven’t really read a book like this about specifically german racism and its particularities, especially one so recent (it was published in 2017 & the context of the ‘refugee crisis’ is rly important). amjahid (who’s a journalist with die zeit currently) works w/ a lot of personal anecdotes and they are uh. horrible. like, one chapter is about the paternalistic side of willkommenskultur, where he goes to munich train station to interview volunteers welcoming refugees and some of them immediately cast him as ‘helpless ignorant refugee in need of our benevolence’ & dehumanise him to the point that they don’t even register that he’s speaking to them in german like. fuck. 4/5

desintegriert euch!, max czollek (actually finished this a bit later but it goes well with the amjahid book) while amjahid discusses racism in germany both in general terms and specifically islamophobia, czollek focuses on german antisemitism and advocates for disassimilation & alliances between different marginalised groups in rejection of german ‘leitkultur’. also he talks about daniel kahn in a chapter on jewish revenge & i love daniel kahn. 4/5

the white guard, mikhail bulgakov (tr. from russian) look, the situation in kiev after the russian revolution and the multiple military take-overs of the city is interesting and all (tho incredibly confusing if like me you don’t know who any of the factions are or what they want), but where’s the devil? where are the witchy vibes? where is the demonic talking cat? 3/5

der vogelgott, susanne röckel so this was shortlisted for this year’s german book prize and i can totally see why. it’s disturbing, compelling, has a lot of conceptually interesting weird stuff going on and it almost really worked for me. it’s a story about three siblings haunted by a strange & horrible birdgod after their father, a hobby ornithologist and taxidermist, kills a bird he shouldn’t have. while the siblings live very different lives - one goes to a fictional african (?) country to work for an ngo, one is working on her doctoral thesis on a medieval german painter, the third is a journalist researching strange fears and dreams that are troubling the city’s children - all of them become entwined with this birdgod and the cult(s) surrounding it. my problem is mainly that the book uses the ‘too horrible to describe/comprehend’ trope way too much, which is effective the first few times but eventually wears off & just becomes annoying and like.... so what?? also, the first sibling’s chapter uses some very colonialist tropes about the savage religions and customs of the uncivilised natives, and while there is an attempt at subversion here (e.g. the same cult being present in medieval germany apparently), it didn’t feel like enough for me. but overall this is a really interesting, disturbing little book. 3.5/5

king lear, shakespeare (for uni) honestly... i expected more from this, tho to be fair reading it in a rush for a seminar (that ended up getting cancelled anyway) probably wasn’t ideal. overall i just.... didn’t feel anything about anyone (except the YAAAS BITCH vibes for regan/goneril/edmond’s shenanigans), many characters’ choices & actions didn’t make sense to me & i was disappointed that cordelia wasn’t a character as much as a ~pure selfless angel for lear to have feelings about. 2/5

currently reading: the bloody chamber by angela carter which i’m high-key loving, white dancing elephants by chaya bhuvaneswar, also two comics/graphic novels: john lewis’ march series and saga book one

#the books i read #in which i have a lot of feelings about mountaineering disasters #long post #der vogelgott frustrated me so much there were several scenes were something is being revealed to the siblings #and they are like 'what i heard/saw was so horrible that i literally almost fainted & have almost no memory of it'#which..... okay so why should i be scared then #i didn't even want more answers/certainty just more.... pay-off??

4 notes · View notes

paulisweeabootrash · 6 years ago

Text

New Year’s Cleanup: End of 2018 Mini-Reviews

It’s a mini-review pack!

Sometimes I watch shows that I have something to say about, but I don't feel like writing a real review of them. Let's close out 2018 with some short appraisals of a few shows I watched this year that fit that bill. Happy New Year, nerds!

-----

1. Chu-Bra (2010)

(based on 3 episodes)

I found this show purely by scrolling alphabetically through VRV's catalog of Crunchyroll shows. The synopsis sounded like a total disaster, so I clicked on it, and it pretty much is, but surprisingly it's mainly because of the execution, not the premise. This school life comedy follows Nayu Hayama, a middle schooler who aspires to design underwear. It seems like it's trying to use an otaku-friendly mindless fanservice format as a vehicle to sneak in some endearing friendships and surprisingly informative information about puberty, ordinary adolescent insecurities, and, uh, how to properly fit bras. But if you want that, just go watch Please Tell Me! Galko-chan instead. It is a much better show that won’t leave you feeling nearly as uncomfortable afterwards.

Classic W/A/S: 2 / 6 / 7

Weeb: There's a little bit of particularly Japanese attitudes and references that pop up regarding how others react to Nayu, but anyone who has gone to school with judgemental classmates or teachers should understand.

Ass: Brief actual nudity, plus tiresome levels of conveniently-timed gusts of wind and/or pratfalls lifting skirts, and groping that is played for laughs but ultimately pretty uncomfortable, especially because of the age of the characters.

Shit: The "ass" score, and how it’s executed, is closely related to why the show falls apart for me. The whole show just felt icky.

-----

2. Love and Lies (2017)

(based on 4 episodes)

A complicated love story set in an alternate present where Japan decided to boost its birthrate through algorithmically-enforced matchmaking. Drama ensues as a forbidden romance between a couple who are not matched to each other, Yukari (who, by the way, is named after the Yukari Law — the law that authorized the matchmaking system!) and Misaki, gets cheered on by Yukari's assigned wife, Rinina. It's a beautiful and engaging work of speculative fiction and criticism of overconfidence in automation with varied, believable, and lovable characters and please just go watch it.

Classic W/A/S: 3 / 3 / 1

Weeb: There are some very distinctly Japanese allusions, most commonly and notably the "red string of fate", but if you're watching the subtitled version, anything likely to need explanation is explained on-screen. The most foreign concept to an American audience might be the idea of a government agency that is widely trusted and assumed to be competent.

Ass: Brief partial nudity and allusions to sex because of course there are, the show is about romantic relationships. Little that's fanservicy or gratuitous, though.

Shit: The only complaints that come to mind are a few off-looking facial expressions and the weirdly variable competence of the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare — not in their matchmaking, but in their ability to find Yukari in a park at midnight but not find Misaki's legal address. But maybe that's intentional, and it seems almost in character, given their supreme confidence in the perfect system and obliviousness to anything being wrong with it.

-----

3. KADO: The Right Answer (2017)

(based on entire series — 12 episodes)

Speaking of great works of speculative fiction you need to go watch, this is that, at least for most of its run. Watch Ministry of Foreign Affairs negotiator Shindo Kojiro accidentally become humanity's ambassador to a radically-non-human alien while he's trying to go on vacation! Explore the social and political implications of sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic! Ponder the disturbing implications of being unaware of higher spacial dimensions but still existing in them! Then nosedive into a poorly-set-up, literal deus ex machina ending that defeats most of that development and speculation and exploration!

Classic W/A/S: 1 / 1 / 3 for most of the series, then suddenly 9 at the end. Seriously guys this ending is baaaaad.

Weeb: Not so much Japanese as just very sci-fi geek. Not in references, but in topic. This is a show for the committed sci-fi fan.

Ass: I watched it pretty early in the year and wasn't actually planning on reviewing it, but I don't remember any nudity or innuendo or anything at all. If the mere mention of sex is too much, that’s the only thing I can think of justifying a point of Ass for this show.

Shit: Other than the terrible ending, my biggest complaint complaint by far is some aspects of the CGI. The entire show is 3D rendered, which makes the intricate and shifting surface texture of KADO, the alien craft, look incredible (and suitably alien), but the human characters often end up looking oddly robotic, maybe due to a failure by the animators, maybe due to the software itself. It’s frequently unpleasant to look at, but the story was so interesting I wanted to keep watching!

-----

4. Magical Girl Ore (2018)

(based on entire series — 12 episodes)

A couple of aspiring idols, Saki and Sakuyo, become magical girls... who are ridiculously muscular men after they transform. A love triangle immediately ensues, with Sakuyo crushing on Saki, Saki crushing on Sakuyo's brother Mohiro, and Mohiro only returning Saki's feelings when Saki is in her transformed male form. The rest is an over-the-top parody of magical girl shows, full of twists on or outright subversions of the usual tropes of those genres and frequent tangents and fourth-wall breaks. But I think I've seen a lot of these jokes before in Excel Saga (which is such an old favorite of mine that I really should review it sometime), Pop Team Epic, or both. A somewhat-surprising plot twist later and we're at a climactic showdown with the Big Bad.

Classic W/A/S: 7 / 4 / 3

Weeb: Jokes may still work in a "lol so random" kind of way, but are much funnier if you get the references. The show relies heavily on familiarity with not just magical girl shows but several anime in other genres, the formulaic expectations set up by recent anime across genres, and even to some extent the animation industry. This is a show by otaku for otaku.

Ass: Most questionable content occurs in the context of occasional parodies of fanservice — spun not to be genuinely sexy but to laugh at the way typical anime fanservice portrays women by treating male bodies the same way. There's also quite a lot of partial male nudity in the obligatory hot springs episode, which is treated sexually because of the aforementioned love triangle. (Psst, anime writers and directors: more fanservice shots of men in other shows, plz.)

Shit: A lot of gags are kinda just low-hanging fruit of "haha, look at this, it's a thing you recognize from other shows". The things that aren't are pretty well developed, and a few things that appear to be art errors turn out to actually be part of the joke.

-----

5. Polar Bear Cafe (2012–2013)

(based on 6 episodes)

This mellow slice-of-life follows a group of humans and surprisingly-realistically-drawn animals, focusing on the patrons of Polar Bear Cafe (run by — surprise! — a literal polar bear named Polar Bear), especially on the terminally-lazy Panda's attempt to work part-time as a zoo exhibit. Its slowness is a nice part of the atmosphere, but it's also not a show suitable for binge-watching. You might end up falling asleep, and the running jokes get grating after a while. Watch only an episode or two at a time when you need something happy and relaxing.

Classic W/A/S: 5 / 0 / 1

Weeb: Polar Bear constantly makes puns that only make sense in Japanese, which are explained as on-screen notes, but seeing a pun accompanied by a note is not nearly as funny as actually getting the pun. I don't think I've ever seen an American show from any time period or genre that is similar to this show's format or pacing, so I'm also going to maintain that "mellow slice-of-life" is itself a concept that deserves a few weeb points.

Ass: Near-constant nudity... by the non-human characters. Seriously, guys, this show is far more innocent than your typical Disney movie.

Shit: I'm sure there's something wrong with this show, but I'm blind to whatever it is because it's so cozy.

#weeaboo trash #mini-reviews #chu-bra #love and lies #kado: the right answer #magical girl ore #polar bear cafe #happy new year #anime review

1 note · View note

ijustwant2write · 7 years ago

Text

This Is My Idea Of Fun-Robb Stark x Reader One Shot

(GIF credit to owner)

Masterlist

Summary: Requested by @lachicadelamanzana: ‘Hi! I requested the Jon Snow imagine stand up for yourself, but I was wondering if I could have another one with Robb? I have this idea about the swan princess, the film, where Robb is derek’

Characters: Robb Stark x Reader

Meanings: (Y/N)= Your name (Y/L/N)= Your last name

Warnings: Bit of arguing and violence

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Please father, don’t make me go!” I whined as he dragged me by my arm.

“(Y/N), I will not ask again. Get in the carriage. You are acting like a child.” father’s fingers gripped my skin, making it red.

“You make me go every year and I hate it.”

He suddenly stopped, pulling me closer to him.“(Y/N) you must realise that this is very important. You and Robb Stark have been betrothed since you were young, you will be married. His parents and I did not have to set up these meetings every summer but we did because we believe it would be beneficial if you knew each other.”

I glared at him. I didn’t want to fall out with him, I loved my father, but when he made me do things like this, I could sometimes despise him. Doing as he said, I stopped resisting, finally getting in the carriage. Trying not to show my anger, I stared out the window, hoping that this journey would be long. Winterfell wasn’t the problem, who lived within the walls was.

As my father had said, Robb and I were planned to be married from birth. Our parents decided that every other summer, we would visit each other, they hoped that we would fall for one another or at least become good friends. In a series of unfortunate events, that did not happen. All I remember of him is how I would be left out of games, teased and left behind by him. It was embarrassing. I did not like Robb, not in the slightest. He didn’t show any respect.

After a few days of traveling, we finally made it. I knew the route like the back of my hand now. Entering the gates, we were greeted by the Stark family as well as some of their servants. It had been at least two years since our last visit (there had been far more important matters at hand), though I could see how the children had changed; especially Robb. Although I was not fond of him, I could still see how he had matured into a handsome, young man. Standing beside my father, I watched as the typical greetings were traded, waiting to be announced.

“Lady (Y/L/N), it is always lovely to see you.” Lady Catelyn smiled.

I returned the smile, curtsying slightly.“The pleasure is mine. Thank you again for allowing us to stay in your beautiful home.”

Lies, all lies.

Settling into my room, I took a moment to sit on the bed. Forgetting all of my lessons about how a lady should compose herself, I let my posture slouch, letting out a deep breath. This felt like such a chore. I may have not wanted to sympathise with Robb, but I could see how it was tormenting both of us. Neither of us wanted to marry. After the first few meetings, I thought our parents would have given up. That definitely wasn’t the case.

Someone knocked on the door and I instantly knew who it was. Standing from the bed, I called them in, trying not to drown when I saw Robb.

“My lady, I hope I am not disturbing you.” he started, closing the door behind him.

“No my lord, I have just finished unpacking.” I said.

He hesitated.“How was your journey?”

“You do not have to ask me any questions. I know your mother makes you come up here every time. Go back to playing with swords or whatever it is you do.” Crossing my arms over my chest, I expected him to leave.

He scoffed slightly.“Actually, I do not always do as my mother says.”

That threw me off.“You mean you came here intentionally?”

“Yes.”

“Oh…why?” I let my arms rest by my side, genuinely interested in his answer.

“We are getting married no matter what, we both know that.”

My gaze went to the ground.

“I have been thinking over the past couple of years, and I have come to the conclusion that all of this arguing is foolish.”

I stayed silent.

“I do not want to constantly fight when we are married. It just doesn’t seem right.”

“Um…well, I understand.”

He smiled slightly.“I’m glad you do. I must go attend to some duties, but I shall see you at the feast tonight.”

He still seemed arrogant throughout that conversation, as if all the arguing was solely by fault. Huffing, I walked over the window, looking out across what would be my new home. All these new people, new duties, new husband; it was too much to bear.

Later in the evening, my handmaid was preparing me for the feast being thrown. I knew how the evening would go. Robb and I would be forced to sit together, engage in conversation and dance at least once. I wondered if it was plainly obvious to those around is that we hated each other? Of course it was, who was I kidding? Staring at myself in the mirrror, I stayed silent as my hair was plaited, trying to think of how to speak to Robb tonight. It seemed that he really didn’t want to argue. Our parents were probably growing tired of it too, we could cause a lot of embarrassment in one night.

Robb was to escort me to the hall as he always did. They used to make us do it as children too. When he knocked, I tried to smile as my handmaid opened the door. Without a word being said, I looked my arm through his, walking in step. We were silent for a while, obviously not sure how to talk without bickering. It turned out we didn’t speak until the doors opened to the hall. My eyes widened at the amount of people in there.

Robb saw my discomfort.“There are a lot more bannermen than usual, I know. Father has been making many new alliances.” We entered the room, pushing through the crowds.

“Yes, I can see that. W-why are they all here?” I was beginning to get nervous.

“He always invites them to feasts, just to keep them on his good side.” Eventually making it to our seats, I spotted my father sat next to Nedd, Catelyn on his other side. Robb and I sat together too, waiting for the food to be brought out. I was cringing from the awkwardness. How the hell was this marriage supposed to work out if we couldn’t even have a normal conversation? Nedd saved us by making an announcement, welcoming us once again before starting the feast. The food was magnificent as it always was, giving me an excuse not to speak to Robb. However, when the music changed from a calm background noise to a fast paced, upbeat melody, I groaned. Now it was time for dancing.

I didn’t miss the glare Catelyn sent her eldest child, gesturing for him to take me down to where the dancing was commencing. He cleared his throat, asking me to dance before we unenthusiastically walked away. Taking our place amongst the other couples dancing, we got into the position, waiting for our que. We started to waltz to the rhythm, still avoiding eye contact.

“You look beautiful tonight, my lady.” he suddenly said.

I was caught off guard, blushing profusely.“Oh, thank you my lord.”

“I am sorry that I have not made such an effort to get to know you. It would benefit us both, don’t you think?”

Where was all of this coming from?

“Well yes, that seems wise. May I ask why the sudden change of heart?”

He smiled.“Why, I’m marrying a gorgeous woman. It just seems right to out our differences aside.”

“Robb, why do you want to suddenly marry me? Is it just for my looks?”

His smile faltered slightly.“W-what else is there?”

I immediately stopped dancing. Yanking my hands out of his, I shoved past him before running out of the hall. The looks I was receiving didn’t phase me. I needed to get out of that room, far away from Robb. For a moment I thought things were going well, that we could maybe work through it. Obviously he had only one thing on his mind and it wasn’t my personality. Slamming the bedroom door shut, I let out a muffled scream into a pillow, frustrated and upset over how my life was going to turn out. I was going to be stuck with a man who didn’t love me for me, his only interests were how I would look standing next to him.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

No one but my father disturbed me that night. He attempted to comfort me, though really it was him trying to convince me that Robb didn’t mean those things, he was just intimidated. Even my father wouldn’t show sympathy.

I woke unusually early, the sun was just rising, slightly warming the harsh, North night. My back ached as I had slept in my dress (which included a corset), the pins in my hair were digging into my scalp and I couldn’t believe that my heels had stayed on. Rubbing my eyes as I stood, I decided to strip off this outfit, opting for something a lot comfier. Settling into my riding clothes, I plaited my hair again. I may have looked a little rough but that really didn’t matter to me. I just wanted to get out of there.

There were some people already up, preparing their stores or heading to work. This wasn’t a terrible place, it was quite lovely actually. Heading to the stables, I spotted one of our horses, smiling at the thought of having some time to myself. The stable boy wasn’t present, though I didn’t need him, it just meant one less person to worry about seeing.

Riding had always been fun for me. The horses were always kind hearted and well trained, perfect companions for long rides. I would only travelling to the Godswood, I knew the way after all these years. I didbt rush there, wanting to take the peacefulness in. But I knew I couldn’t dawdle, I would have to be back in time for breakfast. Deciding to walk the rest of it, I slid off my horse, grabbing the reins, letting it trail slightly behind me. This was soothing, calming.

I spoke too soon.

Two men jumped out at me from behind the trees, startling my horse as well as me. I let out a scream as they charged for me. Whipping out my knife, I tried to defend myself but was easily taken down. As I went to swing, one of them grabbed my arm and twisted it backwards, a cry of pain echoing throughout the forest. The other stood in front as I was restrained, stupid smirk on his face.

“Stupid highborn, you shouldn’t be out here all alone.” he teased.“You just make it too easy for us.”

I struggled against the man’s hold, stomping my legs to try and hurt him. Nothing I did was working, it was hopeless. The man in front of me had my knife as well as his own, having a much higher advantage than before. He waved them around as they both laughed, happy that their victim was of a high status.

The one restraining me whispered in my ear, making me squirm.“We’re going to hurt you and your father will give us a lot of money in return for your safety. Perhaps he might pay more of we do some really nasty things to you.”

As he finished his sentence, his accomplice let out a grunt, blood spilling from his mouth. Looking down to his chest, an arrow poked through, his body collapsing to the floor. The man held me tighter, weaponless now that his friend was dead.

“Let her go and no harm will come to you.” a voice called out.

It was Robb! He stood in front of us, wielding a bow and arrow. His face showed immense anger, a dangerous look in his eyes. The man instantly let go of me, shoving me to the ground.

He started to plead for his life.“Please don’t kill me! I-I was f-forced into this-”

An arrow went flying into his torso. Slowly getting onto his knees, he looked down at his chest, falling backwards. I scrambled onto my feet towards Robb, suddenly crying.

“Are you ok?! Did they hurt you?!” He rushed, pulling me close to him.

I couldn’t reply for a while, too in shock. All I could do was nod.

“Why were you out here alone?”

“I-I just needed some time to myself. After last night…”

He gently put an arm around me, guiding me away from the dead bodies. My eyes were fixated on the ground until we stopped walking. Raising my eye line, I recognised the bright red leaves and grey tree before me. We were in the Godswood. He sat down on a fallen log, gesturing for me to do so. He didbt ask any other questions until I had stopped crying.

“I am sorry that I upset you. It was not my intention.” he started.

I sniffed, wiping away tears.

“Apart from the last thing I said to you, all my other words were true. I really do think that we could make this marriage work.”

I looked at him.“I just don’t understand why you said that? Well actually, I do, you were always horrible to me.”

“I know. It was childish behaviour. I was young, I wanted to hurt you in hopes that our parents wouldn’t make us marry.”

“Yes, you were a little shit.”

He quietly laughed.“Indeed. As for my words the other night…I was scared about it all. I can fight men with swords, bows and arrows, my bare fists even, but when it comes to expressing his I feel….I become a coward. I am genuinely sorry for the sadness I have brought upon you, especially since it made you come out here alone and almost get hurt.”

I sat a little straighter.“I hope you are telling the truth because I really want to have a happy life. I don’t want to be stuck in another home with a husband I can’t even stand to look at.”

“Nor I.”

“I know that it’s going to take a while to trust one another, though I believe we can do it. But for now, friends?”

He nodded in agreement.“Yes, friends.”

#game of thrones #game of thrones imagine #game of thrones imagines #game of thrones one shot #game of thrones x reader #jon snow #jon snow imagine #jon snow imagines #jon snow x reader #jon snow one shot #theon greyjoy #theon greyjoy imagine #theon greyjoy imagines #theon greyjoy x reader #theon greyjoy one shot #ned stark #catelyn stark #robb stark

432 notes · View notes

sightofsea · 8 years ago

Text

this is rly dumb and there is the HUGE chance im going to regret this but ok

basically when i was 15 i wrote an approx. 200k OC doctor who fanfiction featuring a kind of half self insert/half attempt to subvert mary sue comapnion stereotypes named jenna quigley. and ive been thinking about it more lately like the general storyline bc like. idk. n i figured i should write it out.

i should mention this is all 11th doctor era bc i was a huge fan at that time, and it takes place between that time he leaves amy n rory to when he does his farewell tour bc i wanted to try n add some canonical irony that ill get to later

so basically its all narrated from jenna pov as kind of stories she’s telling to the tardis database via recording. why, we don’t know yet. she;s. ok so in the plot she was from our universe n was an AVID fan of the show which like tacky i know but whatever. she starts out 15 and in basically my house and neighborhood (this fic started from a constant daydream i would have of going on adventures w the doctor bc i was a nerdy 15 yo so like. sue me) and there have been a disturbing amount of disappearances in the surrounding area that local police are stuck on. so everyones kinda afraid to go out into their own homes and at one point, jenna is doing something out in her backyard and actually witnesses one of the abductions, but is surprised to see the kidnapper looks like the silence, aka the television show shes been watching. she thinks shes going bonkers. her family leave her alone for the day to go to a thing for one of her siblings and she’s just kind of ruminating on this event when--lo and behold, an officer arrives at her door.

and jenna, she’s very skeptical about this guy. like, given recent events she doesnt trust her own eyes. and the guy is...off. like his badge n credentials, if she concentrates, looks like something else for a flash of a second, and for some reason the figure of him is kind of hazy whenever jenna tries to look directly at him. he is shown to have a quirky, friendly demeanor n jenna figures well, i gotta tell someone about what ive seen, so she invites him in. they have a brief chat n its obvious to the reader that this guy is someone VERY familiar (mostly due to my bad writing at the time) and jenna begins to explain what she saw and how its like this one show she watches, and this guy suddenly becomes very very interested in this before realizing he’s got it all pieced together and asks for jenna’s help in navigating the area to find what is, ultimately, a silence space ship.

jenna agrees and over time realizes this guy is most definitely connected to something in the whoniverse and originally believes he might be a time agent bc that seems more likely given their number as they travel to the ship. its also revealed that the officer has brought jenna along bc the key thing about what she saw is that she actually remembers the silence and can see past perception filters due to the qualities of alternate universe, slightly alternate brain chemistry and so on. its not exactly perfect--she can’t get through perception filters rly, especially good ones--but its enough to know something is wrong n remember certain things others from the dw universe might not be able to like the actual silence aliens themselves.

anyway they make their way to the ship, which has come through a massive tear in reality that the officer came through. in the fic lore i guess tears are seen as usually benign things meant to leak ideas of universes into other universes as a kind of waste disposal system, and as a side effect create inspiration in those who are close to them. this tear, though, became too big, kind of like a leaky pipe, and actual material was able to get through by keeping a frequency from both ends of the tear as a kind of safety rope. and to maintain their energy as a stranded ship the silence have been using humans as batteries. i put a lot of thought into this, i know.

SO once theyre in the ship the “”officer”” (we know who he is by now lets just face it) and jenna are captured n separated. jenna is held hostage and it is revealed she is a part of a second half of the “silence will fall when the question is asked” prophecy which goes “the unexpected shall follow the guided task” (i loved rhymes) which is further revealed to the be the following: change the timeline and destroy the doctor. and jenna, being jenna, is like “listen u guys i dont even know the guy so uh failed step one i guess”. she’s saved by the “”officer”” in the nick of time through work of faulty electrical work (like? i know its for style but the silence have all those lights on the floor n it is VERY dangerous) so the whole ship is blacked out n she hears the differently pitched speech patterns (”why do u sound all different” “they took my equipment nevermind lets go”) and after doing some work to reverse the frequency and basically make the ship implode back into its original universe they run back to jenna’s home in the dark, seeing as she was out for quite a bit. her family is conveniently not home yet n decided to hang out with some friends. and when she gets back n is finally in the light SURPRISE!!! turns out the officer was the doctor all along in disguise from the silence using a perception filter. 15 year old me was a literary genius.

n u might think hannah this is rly long is it done now and of course it isnt!! that was just the intro!! after the initial shock jenna kind of parses what era the doctor is from, which is pre-silencio but after finding out about it n in that 200 yr stretch that was never rly shown. and jenna’s like, a whole season ahead of him basically and knows all this stuff and is trying to engage with this guy she’s a huge fan of without like accidentally spilling the beans on his future. she sits him down to explain the whole tv show thing n lets him watch an episode while she goes to her room to pack like clothes n her laptop because its not every day the doctor just flies in and she’s 15 so shes like hellz yeah im gonna be a COMPANION not even THINKING of the consequences in terms of the multiverse, the prophecy and her family (she does leave a note but its self centered n kinda lame tbh just like be back whenever). afterwards she walks the doctor back to the tardis and is like so where we gonna go n the doctor looks at her like jenna you are a literal child im not taking you anywhere and jenna though some MASTERY of writing that was basically hey look over there! and doing it anyway sneaks into the tardis when the doctor isnt looking n becomes his stowaway.

for the next few weeks she just kind of chills in the tardis with this fear that the doctor will immediately bring her back home so might as well have fun and kinda sneaks around him and keeps couch hopping from room to room. the tardis does not like her one bit due to the whole different universe funky energies thing (and this was pre-clara and i really wanted to see a companion the tardis didnt like so) and has multiple conversations with it via the interface hologram which meant i could write cameos for classic companions and write the tardis as a character bc i was a nerd.

SO after weeks of casually avoiding the doctor eventually she gets caught by him and hes not happy about it so shes like well ok then send me home n then she gets the real kicker which is the tears all mended up. after the material was put back in place it went back to being benign n too small for anything to travel between. so jenna basically stuck in this foreign universe with a very slim chance of returning back to her old life and her family and friends and she mistakes the doctors anger at the situation for anger at her so shes like basically im all alone here oh god n has a crisis n has a dramatic run off into the bowels of the tardis hallways

eventually the doctor finds her and they bond over being kind of the last of their kind in a way and he takes a kind of fatherly role and is like well youre already here and im miserable on my own so why dont we two birds one stone it n just go on adventures for the time being and takes a kind of fatherly platonic role with jenna bc i was sick of seeing companions hook up with the doctor and was confused as to why they wanted to hook up with him (spoiler alert: huge lesbian)

so they set off on their adventures. the first one was about the doctor and jenna accidentally boarding a ship of genetically engineered soldiers called evos being shipped off to a galactic war and finding out some of them had rebelled and had been camping out in the ships underbelly. they had no mouths but were able to communicate via sign language n empath touch powers of transferable memories. the captain was a bitch who didnt see the evos as living things n eventually in a stand off either offered them a chance for the other, still podded evos to live and for them all to live a horrible life or have the podded evos be ejected into space in return for them to have a chance to fight for their freedom. the choice ended up coming down to jenna, somehow, i think, and she chose freedom and cost the lives of like 200 evos but were able to get the ones they were able to save (about, like, 100 i think) to safety and create their own civilization away from harm on a distant planet and their success and triumph to live their own lives i guess canceled out the fact that jenna played a part in the deaths of 200 beings. it was. i dont even know

the next “episode” after a brief interlude of less impactful adventures and discussing mortality was a sherlock crossover episode that im too embarrassed to go into detail about but did reveal jenna’s newly formed abandonment issues due to her stranded in a strange universe situation and the fact she had a self harm problem that, surprise, mirrored mine. her n the doctor went on some more adventures over the next few months that were mentioned in passing. it should be noted that this first “act” i guess takes place over a solid year

the next episode featured river song bc i was gay for her without knowing it and i had just learned about easter island in history class and i decided to expand on one of the adventures said in passing during the series to kind of root my fic in canon bc i was a smarmy bitch. it involved being perceived as gods and the silence and using the flesh as a means of luring villagers to be used as human batteries and also putting a percetion filter on the ship so what was actually a crater was perceived to be a mountain. through this episode we saw the doctor again facing his own mortality, river sitting jenna down after a series of events pieced together her abandonment issues n harm problem n being like you cant rely on the doctor for this alone trust me i know its fun but when it starts ending it wont be. jenna gets kidnapped again by the silence n is reproduced as flesh to try and steer the doctor n river away from saving the day but overcomes that impulse and eventually pulls herself out of it and helps save things.

this episode also imports an important plot device of misplacement, which i shouldve put in earlier if im honest. the basic idea of it, within the fic lore, was that the universe, multiverse, whatever had to compensate for temporal displacement all the time when choices were made, but when big things that would alter history happened--like a giant supposed mountain blowing up 200 years after it had already blew up--it had a fail safe to transport the object causing the harm to the exact place but in a different time where the event would have less of a temporal impact. theres also an important note here where the doctor doesnt recall jenna being with him on their first adventure together. both are setting up the larger plot.

after the deal with the kidnapping and the flesh and all their adventures the doctor becomes kind of protective of jenna because i mean the dude also has abandonment issues like lets be real. so he kind of tones down the danger in fear of jenna dying or getting hurt. i mean, its been a year and theyve kind of become these friends who snark at each other like a family would and its nice that jenna has this person she can trust because she watched the show and like, knows him and knows his tells and calls him out on his bullshit before he can even get started and feels a kind of responsibility for due to the prophecy she was given and the doctor has someone to talk to and someone he also doesnt have to hide from really because she already knows almost everything. theyve been equally protective of each other--jenna keeping the doctor in the dark about the prophecy about her and keeping mum on the fact that she knows he isnt going to die, and the doctor worrying about jenna’s safety and trying not to screw her up like he has past companions to kind of try to atone for his past mistakes and make it up to this girl whose life he kind of unintentionally ruined. ok honestly idk why im getting in depth but i spent. years on this fic you dont understand

so. after a while jenna just kind of calls the doctor out like come on lets at least go somewhere fun and end up spending christmas eve in new york in the forties and befriend this newly single mother and jenna fakes a REALLY BAD accent to get across that her n the doctor are related n poor to gain sympathy. they do all the things she wants like times square and macy’s, where surprise! she sees amy n rory n their son and just kind of like. guides them away from the doctor like guys. this aint ur guy. and it would fuck EVERYTHING up also hi i know your guys’s entire life story, cute kid, etc. they give jenna some advice dealing w the doctor and she tells them that she’ll try her best to make sure he doesnt like, go self hating n all that bullshit n they part ways. her n the doctor meet up again and throughout this whole first part jenna’s been noticing people following her? with like, these weird orange-y eyes. and she thinks like fuck ok this’ll ruin the adventure, maybe theyll leave but they end up starting to go after her and reveal themselves to be a species called the visicheck

after escaping and dumpster diving because the visicheck hunt based on scent, jenna and the doctor start heading towards the single mother’s place for refuge (she had seen their situation n offered a place to spend christmas eve) and on the cab ride over the doctor explains that the visicheck r these ancestors of the family of blood, and basically are lifeless specks that latch onto living things and possess them until they burn them out and move onto the next one. they consume what is the basic energy a thing needs to exist and be alive, and for different species there’s different levels. lets say a dw universe human is ur basic ten on the scale. because of different circumstances in different universes, jenna is basically a 120 on the scale. like, these things could possess her body and use it for centuries to wreck havoc with the kind of energy she holds. and jenna, thinking about the prophecy of changing the timeline and also not wanting to basically be the living dead is like yeah ok fuck this is bad.

they find some brief refuge in the single mothers apartment for a time and enjoy a lovely christmas eve dinner but eventually the visicheck catch up to them. the doctor escorts the single mother n her kid into a cab to get as far away as possible while jenna is just supposed to keep holed up in the apartment, but things arent so easy and they end up breaking in. she’s able to hit them over the head with a pan n kind of stave them off for a bit and heads for the roof, but is eventually backed into a circle. knowing the visichek can’t possess something that is dead and not wanting to potentially endanger the universe just to keep her life jenna jumps off the building in a dramatic fashion that i wrote to play with the carol of the bells because i thought it was cool, and you know what? it was. it really was.

and so jenna dies

at least for a bit

she wakes up in the tardis, rly confused because like, she died. like she knows she did. and the doctors not speaking n acting all broody and she finally gets the story out of him that after she died (posted as an anonymous person in the newspaper, i should note, and put in an unnamed grave to keep the whole “written in stone” thing in line) he kind of. went off on his own for a bit before rly hating himself for letting jenna die right in front of him and went back to catch and save her before she landed, therefore altering the events as it happened. and jenna is...not happy about this. like, one bit. because, in a twist of fate, because she is both living and dead the universe must compensate by going to misplacement, but jenna can’t fully complete the misplacement “”process”” i guess until she is in the exact location she is misplaced from, only different time and all, and in this case she’s in the tardis which almost always has its shields up, so she can’t even complete that bit. so, as explained, the universe will start the process over whenever the tardis decides to fly off again, and send jenna to a different time within the tardis’s general vicinity.

basically, she’s gonna be stuck hopping around the doctor’s timeline. like, all of it, until she finally meets up with the right doctor who knows her n has been past this point. which could take years for her. and, mind you, the task she was “assigned” in the prophecy was to change the timeline, and as a result destroy the doctor. so this is basically jenna’s worst nightmare, and she finally spills the beans about the prophecy in a fit of anger before trying to say goodbye and being whisked off

and this is where the angst stuff happens

basically, for the next year or so (when i rewrite in my head its two years, makes more sense) jenna is thrown around one end of the universe to the other, trying to stay out of the way of the doctor’s events while also trying to, you know, survive and eat and drink and sleep. she’s basically a homeless vagabond for most of it, and her abandonment issues and self harming kind of escalate. she begins leading a really lonely life, and grows this kind of love/hate relationship with the doctor where she really hopes to see him again but also grows bitter against him for putting him in this situation. she visits companions before their time with the doctor, like donna, by accident and stumbles through meeting them and trying to just keep going. in her loneliness she starts talking to a version of the doctor in her head, which starts taking more and more of a form to her before its a fully grown kind of hallucination she’s created out of loneliness (which was kind of based off of me being a lonely kid and having pretend conversations with characters to simulate human connection which is. sad. i know. really sad. its a lot).

for a time jenna is stuck with the doctor and martha during the months leading up to human nature/the family of blood, and inadvertently meets martha and gets a job at the school as a fellow maid through helping martha drag the doctor to the place. she figures its the only stability she’ll have for a while and since she was never shown in the show it isnt rly affecting the most important bits of the timeline, and resolves to stay as far away from john smith as she can and just live out her life until the events of the episodes start happening and she’ll vamoose. she adopts an accent to blend in and when she has free time finds the stashed away tardis, which initially does not recognize jenna as a companion until finding archived recordings from the future bc duh its a time machine, which brings the whole pov thing full circle, and interacts with the interface to get answers about her growing questions about the silence and her situation and learns about a device called the cage, which has been alluded to in previous “episodes” only by name, as a great machine created by the silence that is meant to basically make it so that anything inside of it would be erased for existence, past present and future, using energy form the cracks in the universe. this was still at a point in the actual series where we knew nothing so i just kind of went buckwild.

anyways

jenna ends up having to interact with the tenth doctor as john smith once, and kind of aims all of her bitterness towards her future self at him and realizes that isnt fair, apologizes, and has a cathartic moment of finally moving past a grudge with the wrong version of the doctor. eventually the events of the episodes start happening and she vamooses before getting sent off to god knows where again, yippee

eventually through the next year jenna kind of begins to rly lose hope. like, it’s been a year already, she doesn’t know if she can keep living like this. so she makes a deal with herself to wait out until the end of this second year of time travelling vagabonding before she decides to off herself to save herself and the universe the trouble.

she keeps going through the motions and actually stumbles upon a future, post-silencio doctor, with rory and amy in tow, and in a fit of like oh my god relief she kind of runs up to him and is like i found you, finally, holy shit n the doctor looks at her like im sorry but i dont...know you? like i genuinely dont know who you are. you might have ur timelines all switched up. and jenna knows this isnt true and freaks out and kind of just is like, theres like fifteen days until the deadline, all hope is lost, gonna just completely self destruct n cuts her hair and stops eating, but on the day of the actual deadline she keeps stalling as she zaps from place to place before finally deciding to end how it should end by jumping off a building n she has this heartfelt convo with this imaginary figure thats kept her company all this time

so she makes the journey up this apartment building in this basically abandoned future...chicago, i think? yeah. and you know, is about to do when whaddaya know, a familiar voice is calling out for her. she thinks its just the hallucination but eventually realizes that its actually the doctor, one that knows her, and they have this really heartfelt hug before she punches him square in the face

after the fact is a lot of secret keeping on jenna’s side. she doesnt want to be a burden and just kind of wants things to eventually get back to normal after a period of just resting finally and lies about her time being thrown around the doctors timeline, telling him it was only a few months instead of two years, and hiding the evidence of her self harm and other forms of self destruction to try and get things back to the way they were. the doctor can see through jenna’s bullshit though and over a month of just kind of chilling in the tardis and getting better she eventually tells him and after being pulled into an adventure with alien bees and a prison break and characters very much based off of the captor brothers from homestuck they kind of find their original rhythm

the next adventure was the one where i stopped writing mostly bc the plot absolutely sucked. it was a beach adventure episode, involving aliens and aliens who were mermaids and being stranded on a remote island. also, at the time i was going through a sexuality crisis and decided jenna was gonna go through it too and made her realize she was gay for one of the alien mermaids and totally made out with her. you can see how the plot was failing a bit, and the only thing i dont regret is the whole mermaid makeout thing really.

the rest of the series from that point on was supposed to go something like this: jenna has to go back to her old high school, except in the dw universe, and finds out she actually doesn’t exist in this universe??? which is weird. the doctor plays teacher and they live in the prop attic of the school investigating a counselor that literally feeds off of emotions until the students are a husk and die. there was going to be a filler where the doctor and jenna start the doctors farewell tour (it is revealed when they finally find each other at the end of the timeline jumping debacle that the doctor has like two years left until silencio happens, with like a hundred years passing between new york n finding jenna) and the doctors mortality is discussed and jenna begins to wonder what happens to her since she isnt at the event or anything going forward, and begins to worry about the prophecy again.

the finale of jenna’s adventures was supposed to go like this: they end up tackling the silence again, only with the help of the cage, after jenna notices the doctor beginning to forget more and more things about her. they get captured and the silence plan to place the doctor in the cage and eradicate him from existence so that the question to be asked never existed to begin with. i hadnt figured out how yet, but basically jenna would finally click everything together and realize it was her destiny to do this, and even had a better chance since it eradicated her from this universe, and she still had a life in another one and could maybe start over and appreciate her family and friends a bit more, and would pull a switcheroo so that she would be put in the cage and slowly eradicated from existence. from that point the silence ship would kind of go haywire from the power being used by the cage and jenna would drag the incapicitated doctor back to the tardis and saying she has to go record something real quick, and then we dont hear from her again.

last scene would be of the doctor, years and years into the future, during one of his alone periods, sifting through the tardis database and happening upon the archived recording files and listening to them, not remembering exactly but living through these events with a person that was there but also never there to begin with, and the last recording being an actual face recording of jenna saying you know, she doesnt regret a minute of it, go out there and have a nice life and dont feel bad for her before saying goodbye and zapping out of existence.

last “scene” i guess would be a fifteen year old jenna, rather than the 18-19 year old we’ve come to know, waking up the day it all started and realizing she accidentally napped through the whole day when her parents wake her up. it seems apparent she doesn’t remember a thing, but her parents say something offhand that wouldve been a prolific line and she has a sense of deja vu and hints towards her someday maybe remembering but also having a chance to live a life without the trauma of her life lead in the other universe

so uh yeah. idk why i decided to write all of this. actually i do i have an essay i have to write but. idk this fic was a huge part of my life for like. a good amount of time and despite its tackiness im actually very proud of it and just wanted to share its story without having anyone ever have the link to it and read it because despite my careful planning i did narrate like a superwholock for most of it and it was REALLY annoyin. but this fic and the character of jenna actually helped me work through a lot of my own bullshit and im still kind of in love with it. and in the years to come actually m*ffat fucking used these plot points like the tardis hating the companion n the doctor forgetting about a companion like years after i wrote this shit but i think i wrapped up the cracks in the universe n silence thing pretty fucking well so uh. petition for fifteen year old me to rewrite the last half of season 6 i guess. anyway its 2 in the morning and i just wrote honest to god a full 5,000 words about my doctor who oc fanfiction so uh. yeah. fuck.

#so dumb

16 notes · View notes

quietborderlineinfo · 8 years ago

Note

Hi I have a question or want your perspective on something please. So I've seen myself in other people's descriptions of bpd for a long time. My t thinks I might have it. If I have it it's the quiet type. But there's just some things that I can't see fitting? Or understand how they would be "quiet"? And some of the criteria I only experience very rarely or with certain people. 1/?

alright hey stargazer!

i can totally appreciate how much thought and detail you’ve put into this - i remember being in that place, and its so confusing and frustrating and frankly exhausting. breathe; from what youve said it sounds like your T is paying close attention and wants the best for you. over time, you’ll figure out what diagnosis & treatment(s) may work for you. until then, just focus on getting better one step at a time.

keep in mind that below i just discuss how the things you said relate to the diagnostic criteria, but no one here can diagnose you. definitely talk to your T (and if theyre not a psychiatrist, try to talk to one of those if you have access to a good one, since theyre more inclined to diagnose, in my experience)

also remember that you only need 5/9 for a diagnosis - so two people w bpd may have only 1 overlapping symptom. (so if you dont see yourself in everything you read, thats normal)

For instance 1 (frantically avoid abandonment) only w/ 2 relationships I’ve ever had, and these are more feelings than actions I take 2 (pattern unstable intense relationships) I’ve only had one significant relationship in my life and it was very intense and unstable, but I have no history of it but I also have no history of what I would call “close” relationships. I’m mostly avoidant of them) 2/?

1 & 2: saaame. i once asked a T if never letting yourself feel close to people was a form of attempting to avoid abandonment, and was told that it can be, if that’s why you do it. it can be hard to figure out why you do something you may have always done though, so it helps to both try to analyze past experiences and definitely to try to look at your feelings and how they’re motivating you as you go forward.

I’m not sure on the whole feelings vs actions thing; ask your T cause i think there can be a lot of grey area. and for #2, i had the same experience too; everyone who treated me seemed to think that the one relationship was enough evidence, i guess considering that avoidant behaviour.

3 (id disturbance) I’m not sure exactly how this manifests or is separate from depersonalization. Like I don’t feel real when I try to engage in hobbies. I only exist when I’m doing things with others and then I feel fake and two dimensional (but this is getting a lot better and I’m afraid that means the symptom isn’t real) I’m not sure of my own hobbies and I have no internal motivations or knowledge base to make my own decisions. 3/?

. I can hardly tell right from wrong a lot of the time and use clues from others to help me. And I can change depending on the people I’m around. Is that what this means? This isn’t all things but some things 4 I am not in the slightest impulsive except if you count the impulsive texts I would send to that one intense relationship to make sure she didn’t hate me every few weeks 4/?

3. so depersonalization is a type of dissociation, so that’d fall under criterion 9. symptoms can get better and that absolutely doesn’t mean that you are now or have ever been faking; remission of symptoms with time and/or therapy is actually more likely than not. not knowing right from wrong is interesting cause at first i thought that was entirely unrelated, but realized it could come from not having an internalized moral system, which would definitely sound relevant.

what does fit the description is both not being sure of your hobbies (esp since it sounds like means youre not sure of what you enjoy/care about?), and changing depending on the people you’re around (if you feel like its more of an internal change than say, changing from business-appropriate speech patterns to something more casual when around friends vs at work).

the wiki page describes ID disturbance really well i think, but if you still have questions, definitely send them your T’s/our way.

4. neither am i, and i was still diagnosed. some people seem to think that it’s one criterion that has to be met though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it is possible that it manifests only very specifically, like w me I’m only impulsive w self-harm or recklessly crossing the street.

5 (self harm) I’ve cut in the past but I can go years without cutting, but the urge to cut will always surface every few weeks whether I act on it or not 6 (affective instability) not sure I understand this. My emotions are so intense that I have a hard time doing anything but engaging in avoidant behaviors. Focusing on school and work is extremely difficult around my thoughts and feelings, Is that what this means? I can change really quickly too based on one thought or one outside occurrence5/?

Hi stargazer anon again. Sorry I’m all over the place with this I just get confused. So missing might be the part that addressed diagnostic criteria #7. basically yes I experience emptiness. I think The end of message 5 is relating to diagnostic criteria #6 (instability of mood) and message 7 is relating to diagnostic criteria #8 (anger). Sorry it’s a mess. But I don’t think there is anything important in the missing piece. I was just going through each symptom and comparing my experience w/ it

5. that certainly counts! (proud of you for keeping it to a minimum, hope you’re working w your T to eliminate it entirely!)

6. “Patients often describe affective instability as an “emotional roller coaster” that relates to a subjective sense of strong affects and emotions experienced in an uncomfortable, rapid sequence.”

what you described sounds intense, and to clarify the changeability i think it can have a lot to do with reacting really strongly to things in the environment/in relationships. you didnt talk too much about the changes, so id say it sounds like this likely fits, but warrants more discussion just to clarify.

7. aight √

But i don’t get angry at people usually. I used to have this pattern of withdrawing from my relationships because I was convinced they didn’t really like me and I wanted to see if they would come talk to me to sort of “test them” but knowing the whole time that I was a horrible person who didn’t deserve their love anyway and if they didn’t really love me then I didn’t deserve it (though have gotten way better at this with therapy). Is that what is meant by the cold shoulder? 7 I think/?

8. see idk, it’s possible that that’s anger for you, but it sounds like you’ll wanna think more about it. i think cold shoulder is more about refusing to engage someone because you are upset at them. to me, what you described sounds more like fear than anger, but only you can know that. idk about other quiet borderlines but for most of my life I’ve had anger far repressed 🤔

9. (for the sake of completion) depersonalization, which you mentioned in part 2, is a kind of dissociation

Sorry for this essay if not ok just ignore and delete. Sorry I’m just having a hard time cause so much of this feels like me but then so many of the hallmarks don’t at all, or only rarely appear. I think I have aVpd too and it makes it hard to know because some symptoms cloud each other. Thanks can please tag stargazer if you do answer it? 8/8 I think it was?

sorry for taking so long to respond! yeah its useful to have a full discussion with a psychiatrist about this especially when multiple disorders are in question. also remember that as much as we may seek the sense of identity labels can give us, you dont need to fit something specific to have valid pain that deserves to be treated and warrants a break from work.

please let us know if you have any follow-up questions. good luck - it’ll get easier with time & work!

#Anonymous #stargazer #mod abby #self harm tw

4 notes · View notes

csrgood · 5 years ago

Text

Expressive Writing Is Good for Your Mental Health

We know that writing with pen and paper is good for your brain. But it’s also good for your heart and soul. Researchers have found that people who practice expressive writing — that is, writing to help make sense of your thoughts and emotions — can experience mental and emotional benefits, including a reduction in stress, anxiety and depression and greater clarity and focus. They may even experience physical benefits. What better reasons to put pen to paper?

If you’ve been paying attention to paper trends, you already know that handwriting and journaling have made a huge comeback in recent years. Daily journaling can be calming and peaceful at the end of a busy day or in the midst of an emotionally difficult time.

“Especially with social media, a lot of people are recognizing that being digitally connected is eating up a lot of time and energy,” says Tammy Tufty, Domtar’s communications manager for paper advocacy. “They’re seeing that maybe we should go back to journaling, reading more books and just being more present.”

Why Is Journaling Good for the Soul?

James W. Pennebaker has a Ph.D. in psychology and is Regents Centennial professor at the University of Texas at Austin. His groundbreaking research on the topic of expressive writing showed that journaling not only improves our sense of mental wellbeing but also triggers actual physical benefits, such as improved immune function and faster healing.

While Pennebaker and his colleagues are focused on the scientific evidence of the benefits of writing, there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence that the act of journaling helps people better understand their emotions.

“Writing has a healing effect, like a nice massage,” wrote a blogger for ADDitude, a magazine and website that focuses on ADHD. “It is comforting, like a cup of tea or a warm fireplace on a chilly night. … Journaling helps me make sense of happy and sad moments.”

Journaling can also help people with ADHD solve problems more efficiently: “Typically, we problem-solve from a left-brained, analytical perspective. Sometimes the better answer is found by engaging the intuition that comes from the right brain. Writing unlocks this side of the brain and brings an opportunity for unexpected solutions.”

The benefits aren’t limited to writing full sentences, either. Doodling on paper can also provide a sense of calm and help improve concentration.

“I’ve seen it with my own kids and with other professionals,” Tufty says. “While they’re doodling or drawing, it seems like they’re not paying attention, but actually they are because that activity is helping them stay focused.”

Begin Your Expressive Writing Journey

Whether you’re actively working through some emotional trauma or you just enjoy the calming effect of expressive writing or doodling, it’s clear that putting pen to paper is a great way to improve your mood.

Start your journaling journey by choosing your pen and paper. You don’t need anything fancy, but you should choose tools that make it easy and enjoyable to sit down to write. Maybe it’s a gel pen that writes smoothly in a color you love, or perhaps it’s a leather-bound journal that makes you smile when you touch the cover.

You might even choose a new journal with a cover design that uses Pantone’s color of the year: Classic Blue. “Blue is a really calm color,” Tufty says. “I find it interesting that Pantone chose it in a year where everything seems so unsettled. But it could be really helpful to choose a journal design with a calming color that inspires creativity and encourages you to connect pen to paper for journaling.”

Pennebaker, whose work on expressive writing and healing continues to influence psychologists, counselors and other mental health professionals, offers some practical advice for expressive writing.

Find a time and a place where you won’t be disturbed. Pennebaker suggests picking a time at the end of your workday or before you go to bed, but really any time of day can work as long as you can write without interruption.

Commit to writing for at least 15 minutes every day.

Once you begin, write without stopping to correct spelling or grammar. If you run out of things to write before your time is up, you can repeat what you’ve already written.

What you write and how you write it is completely up to you. There are no rules.

When you have finished your expressive writing, you can save it, burn it, erase it, tear it up or shred it. Since your writing is for you and you alone, you can decide what to do with it.

source: https://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/43714-Expressive-Writing-Is-Good-for-Your-Mental-Health?tracking_source=rss

#CSR #corporate social responsibility #social good #philanthropy #employee engagement #workplace givi

0 notes

bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

Text

This is an unbelievable read of how military commanders really feel about the "Mad King" Commander-In-Chief. Trump is a national security threat and MUST be REMOVED from the Office.

"In the most crucial areas, the generals said, the military’s experienced leaders have steered Trump away from disaster. So far."

“The hard part,” one general said, “is that he may be president for another five years.”

Top Military Officers Unload on Trump

By MARK BOWDEN | Published November Issue | The Atlantic Magazine | Posted October 8, 2019 |

The commander in chief is impulsive, disdains expertise, and gets his intelligence briefings from Fox News. What does this mean for those on the front lines?

For most of the past two decades, American troops have been deployed all over the world—to about 150 countries. During that time, hundreds of thousands of young men and women have experienced combat, and a generation of officers have come of age dealing with the practical realities of war. They possess a deep well of knowledge and experience. For the past three years, these highly trained professionals have been commanded by Donald Trump.

To get a sense of what serving Trump has been like, I interviewed officers up and down the ranks, as well as several present and former civilian Pentagon employees. Among the officers I spoke with were four of the highest ranks—three or four stars—all recently retired. All but one served Trump directly; the other left the service shortly before Trump was inaugurated. They come from different branches of the military, but I’ll simply refer to them as “the generals.” Some spoke only off the record, some allowed what they said to be quoted without attribution, and some talked on the record.

Military officers are sworn to serve whomever voters send to the White House. Cognizant of the special authority they hold, high-level officers epitomize respect for the chain of command, and are extremely reticent about criticizing their civilian overseers. That those I spoke with made an exception in Trump’s case is telling, and much of what they told me is deeply disturbing. In 20 years of writing about the military, I have never heard officers in high positions express such alarm about a president. Trump’s pronouncements and orders have already risked catastrophic and unnecessary wars in the Middle East and Asia, and have created severe problems for field commanders engaged in combat operations. Frequently caught unawares by Trump’s statements, senior military officers have scrambled, in their aftermath, to steer the country away from tragedy. How many times can they successfully do that before faltering?

Amid threats spanning the globe, from nuclear proliferation to mined tankers in the Persian Gulf to terrorist attacks and cyberwarfare, those in command positions monitor the president’s Twitter feed like field officers scanning the horizon for enemy troop movements. A new front line in national defense has become the White House Situation Room, where the military struggles to accommodate a commander in chief who is both ignorant and capricious. In May, after months of threatening Iran, Trump ordered the carrier group led by the USS Abraham Lincoln to shift from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. On June 20, after an American drone was downed there, he ordered a retaliatory attack—and then called it off minutes before it was to be launched. The next day he said he was “not looking for war” and wanted to talk with Iran’s leaders, while also promising them “obliteration like you’ve never seen before” if they crossed him. He threatened North Korea with “fire and fury” and dispatched a three-aircraft-carrier flotilla to waters off the Korean peninsula—then he pivoted to friendly summits with Kim Jong Un, with whom he announced he was “in love”; canceled long-standing U.S. military exercises with South Korea; and dangled the possibility of withdrawing American forces from the country altogether. While the lovefest continues for the cameras, the U.S. has quietly uncanceled the canceled military exercises, and dropped any mention of a troop withdrawal.

Such rudderless captaincy creates the headlines Trump craves. He revels when his tweets take off. (“Boom!” he says. “Like a rocket!”) Out in the field, where combat is more than wordplay, his tweets have consequences. He is not a president who thinks through consequences—and this, the generals stressed, is not the way serious nations behave.

The generals I spoke with didn’t agree on everything, but they shared the following five characterizations of Trump’s military leadership.

I. HE DISDAINS EXPERTISE

Trump has little interest in the details of policy. He makes up his mind about a thing, and those who disagree with him—even those with manifestly more knowledge and experience—are stupid, or slow, or crazy.

As a personal quality, this can be trying; in a president, it is dangerous. Trump rejects the careful process of decision making that has long guided commanders in chief. Disdain for process might be the defining trait of his leadership. Of course, no process can guarantee good decisions—history makes that clear—but eschewing the tools available to a president is choosing ignorance. What Trump’s supporters call “the deep state” is, in the world of national security—hardly a bastion of progressive politics—a vast reservoir of knowledge and global experience that presidents ignore at their peril. The generals spoke nostalgically of the process followed by previous presidents, who solicited advice from field commanders, foreign-service and intelligence officers, and in some cases key allies before reaching decisions about military action. As different as George W. Bush and Barack Obama were in temperament and policy preferences, one general told me, they were remarkably alike in the Situation Room: Both presidents asked hard questions, wanted prevailing views challenged, insisted on a variety of options to consider, and weighed potential outcomes against broader goals. Trump doesn’t do any of that. Despite commanding the most sophisticated intelligence-gathering apparatus in the world, this president prefers to be briefed by Fox News, and then arrives at decisions without input from others.

One prominent example came on December 19, 2018, when Trump announced, via Twitter, that he was ordering all American forces in Syria home.

“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump presidency,” he tweeted. Later that day he said, “Our boys, our young women, our men, they are all coming back, and they are coming back now.”

This satisfied one of Trump’s campaign promises, and it appealed to the isolationist convictions of his core supporters. Forget the experts, forget the chain of command—they were the people who, after all, had kept American forces engaged in that part of the world for 15 bloody years without noticeably improving things. Enough was enough.

At that moment, however, American troops were in the final stages of crushing the Islamic State, which, contrary to Trump’s assertion, was collapsing but had not yet been defeated. Its brutal caliphate, which had briefly stretched from eastern Iraq to western Syria, had been painstakingly dismantled over the previous five years by an American-led global coalition, which was close to finishing the job. Now they were to stop and come home?

Here, several of the generals felt, was a textbook example of ill-informed decision making. The downsides of a withdrawal were obvious: It would create a power vacuum that would effectively cede the fractured Syrian state to Russia and Iran; it would abandon America’s local allies to an uncertain fate; and it would encourage a diminished ISIS to keep fighting. The decision—which prompted the immediate resignations of the secretary of defense, General James Mattis, and the U.S. special envoy to the mission, Brett McGurk—blindsided not only Congress and America’s allies but the person charged with actually waging the war, General Joseph Votel, the commander of U.S. Central Command. He had not been consulted.

Trump’s tweet put General Votel in the position of telling our allies, in effect, We’re screwing you, but we need you now more than ever.

Trump’s tweet put Votel in a difficult spot. Here was a sudden 180-degree turn in U.S. policy that severely undercut an ongoing effort. The American contingent of about 2,000 soldiers, most of them Special Forces, was coordinating with the Iraqi army; the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, consisting primarily of Kurdish militias and Syrians opposed to President Bashar al-Assad; and representatives of NATO, the Arab League, and dozens of countries. This alliance had reduced ISIS’s territory to small pockets of resistance inside Syria. America’s troops were deep in the Euphrates Valley, a long way from their original bases of operation. An estimated 10,000 hard-core Islamist soldiers were fighting to the death. Months of tough combat lay ahead.

Votel’s force in Syria was relatively small, but it required a steady supply of food, ammunition, parts, and medical supplies, and regular troop rotations. The avenue for these vital conveyances—through hundreds of miles of hazardous Iraqi desert—was truck convoys, protected almost exclusively by the SDF. To protect its troops during a retreat, America could have brought in its own troops or replaced those truck convoys with airlifts, but either step would have meant suddenly escalating an engagement that the president had just pronounced finished.

For the American commander, this was a terrible logistical challenge. An orderly withdrawal of his forces would further stress supply lines, therefore necessitating the SDF’s help even more. Votel found himself in the position of having to tell his allies, in effect, We’re screwing you, but we need you now more than ever.

Field commanders are often given orders they don’t like. The military must bow to civilian rule. The generals accept and embrace that. But they also say that no careful decision-making process would have produced Trump’s abrupt about-face.

Votel decided to take an exceedingly rare step: He publicly contradicted his commander in chief. In an interview with CNN he said that no, ISIS was not yet defeated, and now was not the time to retreat. Given his responsibility to his troops and the mission, the general didn’t have much choice.

Votel held everything together. He took advantage of the good relationship he had built with the SDF to buy enough time for Trump to be confronted with the consequences of his decision. A few days later, the president backed down—while predictably refusing to admit that he had done so. American forces would stay in smaller numbers (and France and the U.K. would eventually agree to commit more troops to the effort). The 180-degree turn was converted into something more like a 90-degree one. In the end, the main effects of Trump’s tweet were bruising the trust of allies and heartening both Assad and ISIS.

II. HE TRUSTS ONLY HIS OWN INSTINCTS

Trump believes that his gut feelings about things are excellent, if not genius. Those around him encourage that belief, or they are fired. Winning the White House against all odds may have made it unshakable.

Decisiveness is good, the generals agreed. But making decisions without considering facts is not.

Trump has, on at least one occasion, shown the swiftness and resolution commanders respect: On April 7, 2017, he responded to a chemical-warfare attack by Assad with a missile strike on Syria’s Shayrat Airbase. But this was not a hard call. It was a onetime proportional retaliation unlikely to stir international controversy or wider repercussions. Few international incidents can be cleanly resolved by an air strike.

“How did we even get to that point?” one general asked me in astonishment. What kind of commander in chief would risk war with Iran over a drone?

A case in point is the flare-up with Iran in June. The generals said Trump’s handling of it was perilous, because it could have led to a shooting war. On June 20, Iran’s air defenses shot down an American RQ-4A Global Hawk, a high-altitude surveillance drone the Iranians said had violated their airspace. The U.S. said the drone was in international airspace. (The disputed coordinates were about 12 miles apart—not a big difference for an aircraft moving hundreds of miles an hour.) In retaliation, Trump ordered a military strike on Iran—and then abruptly called it off after, he claimed, he’d been informed that it would kill about 150 Iranians. One general told me this explanation is highly improbable—any careful discussion of the strike would have considered potential casualties at the outset. But whatever his reasoning, the president’s reversal occasioned such relief that it obscured the gravity of his original decision.

“How did we even get to that point?” the general asked me in astonishment. Given what a tinderbox that part of the world is, what kind of commander in chief would risk war with Iran over a drone?

Not only would a retaliatory strike have failed the litmus test of proportionality, this general said, but it would have accomplished little, escalated the dispute with Iran, and risked instigating a broad conflict. In an all-out war, the U.S. would defeat Iran’s armed forces, but not without enormous bloodshed, and not just in Iran. Iran and its proxies would launch terrorist strikes on American and allied targets throughout the Middle East and beyond. If the regime were to fall, what would come next? Who would step in to govern a Shiite Muslim nation of 82 million steeped for generations in hatred of America? The mullahs owe their power to the American overthrow of Iran’s elected government in 1953, an event widely regarded in Iran (and elsewhere) as an outrage. Conquering Americans would not be greeted by happy Persian crowds. The generals observed that those who predicted such parades in Baghdad following the ouster of Saddam Hussein instead got a decade-long bloodbath. Iran has more than twice Iraq’s population, and is a far more developed nation. The Iraq War inspired the creation of ISIS and gave renewed momentum to al‑Qaeda; imagine how war with Iran might mobilize Hezbollah, the richest and best-trained terrorist organization in the world.

Sometimes, of course, war is necessary. That’s why we maintain the most expensive and professional military in the world. But a fundamental reason to own such power is to avoid wars—especially wars that are likely to create worse problems than they solve.

General Votel, who commanded American forces in the region until he retired in March, told me that if the U.S. had carried out a retaliatory strike, “the trick for the military in this case would be to orchestrate some type of operation that would very quickly try and get us to an off-ramp—give them an off-ramp or provide us with an off-ramp—so we can get to some kind of discussion to resolve the situation.” Trump’s attack might have targeted some of the Iranian navy’s vessels and systems that threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, Votel said, or it might have leveled a measured strike against the air defenses that struck the drone. Ideally it would have been followed by a pause, so diplomatic processes could kick in. The strike would have demonstrated to Iran that we have the capability and willingness to strike back if provoked, and made clear that in a serious fight, it could not prevail. But all of this presumes a sequence that would unfold in an orderly, rational way—a preposterous notion.

“This is all completely unpredictable,” Votel said. “It’s hard for me to see how it would play out. We would be compelled to leave large numbers of forces in the region as a deterrent. If you don’t have an off-ramp, you’re going to find yourself in some kind of protracted conflict.” Which is precisely the kind of scenario Trump has derided in the past. His eagerness to free the U.S. from long-term military conflicts overseas was why he made his abrupt announcement about pulling out of Syria. Evidently he didn’t fully consider where a military strike against Iran was likely to lead.

The real reason Trump reversed himself on the retaliatory strike, one general said, was not because he suddenly learned of potential casualties, but because someone, most likely General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, aggressively confronted him with the extended implications of an attack.

“I know the chairman very well,” the general said. “He’s about as fine an officer as I have ever spent time around. I think if he felt the president was really heading in the wrong direction, he would let the president know.” He added that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo may have counseled against an attack as well. “Pompeo’s a really bright guy. I’m sure he would intervene and give the president his best advice.”

III. HE RESISTS COHERENT STRATEGY

If there is any broad logic to Trump’s behavior, it’s Keep ’em confused. He believes that unpredictability itself is a virtue.

Keeping an enemy off-balance can be a good thing, the generals agreed, so long as you are not off-balance yourself. And it’s a tactic, not a strategy. Consider Trump’s rhetorical dance with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. No president in modern times has made progress with North Korea. Capable of destroying Seoul within minutes of an outbreak of hostilities, Pyongyang has ignored every effort by the U.S. and its allies to deter it from building a nuclear arsenal.

Trump has gone back and forth dramatically on Kim. As a candidate in 2016, he said he would get China to make the North Korean dictator “disappear in one form or another very quickly.” Once in office, he taunted Kim, calling him “Little Rocket Man,” and suggested that the U.S. might immolate Pyongyang. Then he switched directions and orchestrated three personal meetings with Kim.

“That stuff is just crazy enough to work,” one of the generals told me with a what-the-hell? chuckle. “We’ll see what happens. If they can get back to some kind of discussion, if it can avert something, it will have been worth it. The unconventional aspect of that does have the opportunity to shake some things up.”

In the long run, however, unpredictability is a problem. Without a coherent underlying strategy, uncertainty creates confusion and increases the chance of miscalculation—and miscalculation, the generals pointed out, is what starts most wars. John F. Kennedy famously installed a direct hotline to the Kremlin in order to lower the odds of blundering into a nuclear exchange. Invading Kuwait, Saddam Hussein stumbled into a humiliating defeat in the first Gulf War—a conflict that killed more than 100,000 people—after a cascading series of miscommunications and miscalculations led to a crushing international response.

Unpredictability becomes an impediment to success when it interferes with orderly process. “Say you’re going to have an engagement with North Korea,” a general who served under multiple presidents told me. “At some point you should have developed a strategy that says, Here’s what we want the outcome to be. And then somebody is developing talking points. Those talking points are shared with the military, with the State Department, with the ambassador. Whatever the issue might be, before the president ever says anything, everybody should know what the talking points are going to be.” To avoid confusion and a sense of aimlessness, “everybody should have at least a general understanding of what the strategy is and what direction we’re heading in.”

Which is frequently not the case now.

“If the president says ‘Fire and brimstone’ and then two weeks later says ‘This is my best friend,’ that’s not necessarily bad—but it’s bad if the rest of the relevant people in the government responsible for executing the strategy aren’t aware that that’s the strategy,” the general said. Having a process to figure out the sequences of steps is essential. “The process tells the president what he should say. When I was working with Obama and Bush,” he continued, “before we took action, we would understand what that action was going to be, we’d have done a Q&A on how we think the international community is going to respond to that action, and we would have discussed how we’d deal with that response.”

To operate outside of an organized process, as Trump tends to, is to reel from crisis to rapprochement to crisis, generating little more than noise. This haphazard approach could lead somewhere good—but it could just as easily start a very big fire.

If the president eschews the process, this general told me, then when a challenging national-security issue arises, he won’t have information at hand about what the cascading effects of pursuing different options might be. “He’s kind of shooting blind.” Military commanders find that disconcerting.

“The process is not a panacea—Bush and Obama sometimes made bad decisions even with all the options in front of them—but it does help.”

IV. “HE IS REFLEXIVELY CONTRARY”

General H. R. McMaster, who left the White House on reasonably good terms in April 2018 after only 14 months as national security adviser, is about as can-do a professional as you will find. He appeared to take Trump seriously, and tailored his briefings to accommodate the president’s famous impatience, in order to equip him for the weighty decisions the office demands. But Trump resents advice and instruction. He likes to be agreed with. Efforts to broaden his understanding irritate him. McMaster’s tenure was bound to be short. Weeks before accepting his resignation, the president let it be known that he found McMaster’s briefings tedious and the man himself “gruff and condescending.”

Distrusting expertise, Trump has contradicted and disparaged the intelligence community and presided over a dismantling of the State Department. This has meant leaving open ambassadorships around the world, including in countries vital to American interests such as Brazil, Canada, Honduras, Japan, Jordan, Pakistan, Russia, and Ukraine. High-level foreign officers, seeing no opportunities for advancement, have been leaving.

“When you lose these diplomats and ambassadors that have all this experience, this language capability, this cultural understanding, that makes things very, very difficult for us,” one of the generals said. “And it leads to poor decisions down the line.”

Trump so resists being led that his instinct is nearly always to upend prevailing opinion.

“He is reflexively contrary,” another of the generals told me.

According to those who worked with him, McMaster avoided giving the president a single consensus option, even when one existed. He has said that he always tried to give the president room to choose. After leaving the White House, he criticized others in the national-security community for taking a different approach, accusing them of withholding information in hopes of steering Trump in the direction they preferred. McMaster has not named names, but he was most likely talking about Mattis and General John Kelly, who, after serving as Trump’s homeland-security secretary, became the president’s second chief of staff. McMaster has said that he considered such an approach tantamount to subverting the Constitution—but if his allegation is true, it shows how poorly equipped those people felt Trump was for the job. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report records numerous instances of civilian advisers trying to manage the president, or simply ignoring presidential directives they deemed ill-advised or illegal.

During his brief tenure on Trump’s staff, McMaster oversaw the production of a broad national-security strategy that sought to codify Trump’s “America first” worldview, placing immigration at the head of national-security concerns, right alongside nuclear proliferation and terrorist attacks. The idea was to build a coherent structure around the president’s scattershot diplomacy. Trump rhapsodized about the document at its unveiling, according to someone who was there, saying, “I love it! I love it! I want to use this all the time.”

He hasn’t. Like its author, the document has been dismissed. Those who were involved in writing it remain convinced, somewhat hopefully, that it is still helping guide policy, but John Bolton, McMaster’s successor, said scornfully—a few months before he, too, was ousted by Trump—that it is filed away somewhere, consulted by no one.

Trump is no more likely to have read the thing than he is to have written his own books. (Years ago, after he published The Art of the Deal, he asked me if I was interested in writing his next book. I declined.) Trying to shape this president’s approach to the world into a cogent philosophy is a fool’s errand. For those commanding America’s armed forces, it’s best to keep binoculars trained on his Twitter feed.

V. HE HAS A SIMPLISTIC AND ANTIQUATED NOTION OF SOLDIERING

Though he disdains expert advice, Trump reveres—perhaps fetishizes—the military. He began his presidency by stacking his administration with generals: Mattis, McMaster, Kelly, and, briefly, Michael Flynn, his first national security adviser. Appointing them so soon after their retirement from the military was a mistake, according to Don Bolduc, a retired brigadier general who is currently running as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire. Early on, the biggest difference Bolduc saw between the Trump administration and its predecessors, and one he felt was “going to be disruptive in the long term,” was “the significant reliance, in the Pentagon at least, on senior military leadership overriding and making less relevant our civilian oversight. That was going to be a huge problem. The secretary of defense pretty much surrounded himself with his former Marine comrades, and there was, at least from that group, a distrust of civilians that really negatively affected the Pentagon in terms of policy and strategy in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, by following the same old failed operational approaches.” Trump’s reliance on military solutions is problematic because “there are limits to what the military can solve. I think initially the Trump administration held this idea that general officers somehow have all the answers to everything. I think the president discovered in short order that that’s really not the case.”

Bolduc also pointed out an unusual leadership challenge caused by having a general of McMaster’s rank serve as national security adviser—he did not retire when he assumed the post. “McMaster, for whom I have tremendous respect, came in as a three-star general. Leaving him a three-star forces him on a daily basis to have to engage with four-star generals who see his rank as beneath theirs, even though his position is much more than that.”

The problems posed by Trump’s skewed understanding of the military extend beyond bad decision making to the very culture of our armed forces: He apparently doesn’t think American soldiers accused of war crimes should be prosecuted and punished. In early May, he pardoned former Army Lieutenant Michael Behenna, who had been convicted of murdering an Iraqi prisoner. Two weeks later, he asked the Justice Department to prepare pardon materials for a number of American servicemen and contractors who were charged with murder and desecration of corpses, including Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who stood accused by his own team members of fatally stabbing a teenage ISIS prisoner and shooting unarmed civilians. (He was ultimately acquitted of the murders but convicted of posing for photos with the boy’s body.) Trump subsequently chastised the military attorneys who had prosecuted Gallagher, and directed that medals awarded to them be rescinded. All of the generals agreed that interfering with the military’s efforts to police itself badly undermines command and control. When thousands of young Americans are deployed overseas with heavy weaponry, crimes and atrocities will sometimes occur. Failing to prosecute those who commit them invites behavior that shames everyone in uniform and the nation they serve.

“He doesn’t understand the warrior ethos,” one general said of the president. “The warrior ethos is important because it’s sort of a sacred covenant not just among members of the military profession, but between the profession and the society in whose name we fight and serve. The warrior ethos transcends the laws of war; it governs your behavior. The warrior ethos makes units effective because of the values of trust and self-sacrifice associated with it—but the warrior ethos also makes wars less inhumane and allows our profession to maintain our self-respect and to be respected by others. Man, if the warrior ethos gets misconstrued into ‘Kill them all …’ ” he said, trailing off. Teaching soldiers about ethical conduct in war is not just about morality: “If you treat civilians disrespectfully, you’re working for the enemy! Trump doesn’t understand.”

Having never served or been near a battlefield, several of the generals said, Trump exhibits a simplistic, badly outdated notion of soldiers as supremely “tough”—hard men asked to perform hard and sometimes ugly jobs. He also buys into a severely outdated concept of leadership. The generals, all of whom have led troops in combat, know better than most that war is hard and ugly, but their understanding of “toughness” goes well beyond the gruff stoicism of a John Wayne movie. Good judgment counts more than toughness.

Bolduc said he came up in a military where it was accepted practice for senior leaders to blame their subordinates, lose their temper, pound on desks, and threaten to throw things, and the response to that behavior was “He’s a hard-ass. Right? He’s tough. That is not leadership. You don’t get optimal performance being that way. You get optimal performance by being completely opposite of that.”

Bolduc worries that, under Trump’s command, a return to these antiquated notions of “toughness” will worsen the epidemic of PTSD plaguing soldiers who have served repeated combat tours. Senior military officers have learned much from decades of war—lessons Bolduc said are being discarded by a president whose closest brush with combat has been a movie screen.

The military is hard to change. This is bad, because it can be maddeningly slow to adapt, but also good, because it can withstand poor leadership at the top. In the most crucial areas, the generals said, the military’s experienced leaders have steered Trump away from disaster. So far.

“The hard part,” one general said, “is that he may be president for another five years.”

0 notes