#new irish writing

[ballyhubbock]

A Living Legacy  

Kari Rosvall is an amazing living legacy of a most frightening kind.

A Living Legacy  Mark Rice 500 words The story that follows is unbelievably true and not the work of this writer’s imagination. Would you be surprised if I told you that a survivor of World War Two is still alive and living locally in Dublin? I was. The war ended eighty years ago. I met Kari Rosvall as she talked about her book and her life in our local GAA club. Would you be surprised if I…

[winterspiderpurrs]

The post was getting a little long BUT @illogicalkat and @smidnite are so amazing for this!

Previous posts from the last addition done here:

And cause I loved it.... imma add a little more :D

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Steve went to get Sarah; his mom on the phone. She was always a voice of reason with him. He was hopefully she could shed some positive light in this situation.

"-That child has known you practically his whole life. You're his papa. Doesn’t matter what some... DNA test says A leanbh. " her Irish accent became more prominent, the more she talked.

" But a man has a right to his child. I know it's going to be hard. And poor Peter! Having to face that man again! I woulda hit him!"

Steve coughed a little and rubbed the back of his neck.

" Well, uuhh.. no problem there."

" Steve Grant Rogers Barnes! That temper of yours is always getting you in trouble!"

" Ma!"

" Could be making the situation worse."

" I know, Ma, I know..."

Steve could hear her sigh on the other side of the phone.

" Well. Was it at least a good hit?"

Steve laughs and moves back toward the dining room where Peter and Matt are still at.

" Yeah, it was a -"

Clatter.

The phone slipped from Steve's hand as he stared at Peter.

~

While Steve had wondered off to speak to him mom, Bucky had gone back up stares to check on Harley and May after seeing that Tony had gotten in the car and was a long ways away from the house.

Peter gathered up the paper they had, scanning it over to Matt's office for him so he could review it again in Braille once he got it to his special machine.

" I uuhh... have another question since it's just us."

" Of course. What is it?"

Matt tilted his head toward Peter, sensing that he was nervous again.

" I umm read before that you cannot uhh get divorced if your... pregnant?"

Matt blinks.

" Oh,"

Peter nervously gathers the papers and puts the extra copies in Matt's briefcase for him.

" It's not his. Obviously, but umm, I just wanted to be sure."

Matt smiles and shakes his head.

" You're fine. The state of New York lets you. And as he has no rights to you anymore... you're safe. Congratulations."

Peter smiled in relief and pressed a hand to his stomach. Laughing a little.

" Yeah... I just found out last week. Was gonna wait a few more weeks. Before saying anything to Steve and Bucky. This one definitely was an oops surprise pregnancy."

Clatter.

Peter and Matt turn toward the door to see Steve standing there staring. Cell phone on the floor.

" You're pregnant?!?"

Meanwhile, upstairs, Harley is pacing his room. Why would THE Tony Stark be here? Was it for Dads metal arm that Mom helped create? Was it the scholarship program his school had?

Was he coming to expand his art collection with one of Papa's paintings? Mom had gone back to school and gotten his degree and had written a couple of papers. But would that be enough to get Tony Stark's attention?

He looks at the magazines cut out he had of Tony Stark from a few years ago when he was on the cover of Time magazine. Dad had bought it for him while they were in line at the store. He frowns a little. Now recalling the wide-eyed stare his Mom had when he came into the room and saw it the first time. He seemed oddly nervous when he asked where that came from and why he had it.

The look on Tony Stark's face downstairs, he seemed scared, nervous, and hopeful?

He pulled his laptop up and hesitated a moment. Then he started typing away.

' Young Tony Stark photos'

The more he looked, the bigger the pit in his stomach grew.

He felt like he was going to throw up.

Across town, Tony was once again looking through the paperwork and looked at the copy of the birth certificate.

Father spot was blank on it.

But when he saw the name on the certificate, he rushed towards the trash can and threw up. It all just became too much. Everything that he was robbed of. And how much at least at the time of Harley birth that Peter obviously cared for him deeply.

Harley Edwin Anthony Parker.

[raven-runes]

Samhain is the time to open ourselves to the past, to let our ghosts walk with us, dwell with us and haunt us before letting go and watch them slip back into the night.

May the time of your haunting give way to the time of your healing. 

May the time of your healing give way to the time of your blooming. 

May your ghosts slip gently into the night. 

A very prosperous Celtic New Year to everyone. 

Athbhlian Cheilteach faoi mhaise dhaoibh go léir!

[daftmooncretin]

so i watched the will ferrell nascar movie and now i cant get nascar! dean winchester out of my head (feat disgruntled sports journalist cas who does not want to be here)

[blairbarely]

[andyridgeley]

[shih-coulda-had-it]

my sister and i made a book bingo for 2024 and one of the categories she chose was romantasy and i rarely, rarely do this, but i MUST tell you that my pick for romantasy (a far wilder magic by allison saft) has me looking up one-star reviews on goodreads to validate my feelings.

[mariocki]

Play for Today: The Cry (BBC, 1984)

"It's best forgotten about."

"You're not gonna be making a complaint?"

"Complaints? We're not making any complaints! We don't want to know about any complaints."

"Complaints against who?"

"Well, the police."

"Who should I complain to about the police?"

"Well, the police, I suppose."

"What good would that do me?"

[everlywrenstories]

The Search For Crann

Hi! I'm Everly Wren and this is my first published book! It's an fantasy book set in modern day rural New England with lots of different types of abilites and a hard magic system.

All alone on her graduation day with a linguistics degree and no job prospects, Eira wondered what she would do with her life.

That is, until three strange women with magical powers show up in the parking lot and kidnap her.

Now, Eira is thrust into a world she doesn't understand. Who are the Ritires? Why does her blood make magic symbols work? Why are her three new friends saying they're now trapped in this world, with no way back to Crann?

And who are those shadow beings chasing after them?

Tropes: Found family, reluctant hero, ancient magic, celtic magic

Trigger Warnings: blood is a common component of magic, mild violence.

Currently only $3.99!

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

i do think it's kind of funny that ao3 seems to have made a blanket change to all the "mythology" tags to make them "religion and lore" (not a good change) EXCEPT the "arthurian mythology" tag, which remains intact despite a Number of people trying to get that one reworked or at least different wrangled for ages. they're like "we're taking mythology away from all the contexts where it might be applicable. and leaving it in the context where it's dubious. this is a sensible change"

[yandere-sins]

me, writing a scenario with Ghost for the first time: well, this is fun! I love imagine him talking bc his voice is so nice.

british english: yes, but can you write his accent? are you sure you know where to cut of the words and what forms to use?

me, who has learned british english first in school before being forced into american english, so now there's just a double use of it both inside me with very little differentiating between them, also no one teaches you accents and dialects:

[ballyhubbock]

A Night Out

A night in town, travelling in by bus brings an unexpected encounter.

[renee-writer]

The Irish Lass and the Scottish Lad Chapter One

A/N Good morning. This is a rewrite of From a Shamrock to a Thistle. Sigh. As with the original, Claire is bi-racial. Here we go

AO3

“Seriously Gel, I don’t think I can handle one more sprain. If the blokes don’t know how to play rugby, they shouldn’t be doing it!”

 

Her mate, Geillis laughs. “Claire, my love, you are in Scotland now. Rugby is practically a religion.”

 

Nurse Beauchamp re-secures her curls into the falling bun. With her black and white heritage, they are loose with a mind of their own.

 

They exit the loo and are meet by the head sister. “Nurse Beauchamp, there is a patient waiting in x-ray. He is being checked for a dislocated shoulder. Please see him back to the treatment room.”

 

“Yes Mistress Fitz.” She walks away, mumbling under her breath, “probably another rugby mishap.”

 

Entering x-ray, she sees him straight away. His arm, cradled to his side, is a dead giveaway. Looking down at the chart, she finds his name, “Mr. Fraser?”

 

He looks up and feels time stop. The lifting Irish accent drew his attention. Her beauty holds it.

 

“Aye.” His mates, Angus and Rupert stand.

 

“Aye lass, this be Jamie. Messed up his shoulder playing football. Slammed down on the pitch trying to stop a goal.” Angus explains  “Aren’t you a pretty one. After your shift, you wish to come back to mine?” He waggles his sizeable eyebrows.

 

“That is no way to talk to a lady.” Rupert pushes him away, “Forgive my mate, miss. He was raised in a barn.”

 

She has heard worse and tells them so. That is when her patient speaks up, “A shame my lady. No one should speak anything but kind words to you.” It isn’t a line. He means every word. A passing doctor reminds her where she is. Her patient and his mates need escorted to the next stage of the NIH shuffle.

 

“Come.” She directs. Angus whispers something and Rupert hits him again. She simply shakes her head.

 

It isn’t easy being bi-racial. Most people treat her as either a goddess or a whore, with very little in between. She is exalted or vilified. Her dad has brought her up to be strong. Her mum taught her to take no shite. Between them, she is an Irish African warrior. Comments like Angus ‘ roll off her. It is only racial, not sexual slurs, that affect her.

 

She takes him to the treatment room. “You blokes can wait in the waiting room right there. He shan’t be long.”

 

They move that direction.

 

“You aren’t to be messed with, are you?” Jamie asks.

 

“No. It helps, in this profession, to have a stern outside.”

 

“And inside?”

 

“That depends on how I am treated.” She set up what will be needed to place his shoulder back in place. “It is dislocated. You will be seen to soon.”

 

“But not by you?” he makes a pouty face that makes her chuckle.

 

“No, by a more senior sister and our orthopedic doctor.”

 

She walks out and he watches her arse. He will see her again. He knows he will.

[cave-cryptid]

I keep hesitating to dig into Hozier's new releases because I keep telling myself that I'm mentally incapable of consuming them at this moment in time.

I'm incapable of fully appreciating them.

My brain capsule is simply unprepared

Too Feeble

My Palate too Unrefined

To cronch the bones and savor the blood and marrow of their mighty and potent lyricism

It's like I need more and more time to fully prepare myself for the hymns of a mystical forest entity. Are any of us ever prepared? I just don't know

[tartigglez]

foreign friends: "omg why can't you speak Irish??"

Irish speaking friends: *makes fun of me for speaking in Tyrone dialect*

I CAN'T WIN

[itsnotthatdeepc]

January 1st 2025: Castlebar to Ennis via Galway (bus)

Quarter-century of living is coming around the corner and despite what everyone says, I'm more acutely aware of how fractional time is.

Essentially, all going well, I'm a third of the way through of what statistical averages suggest I have in the bank of good health for my lifespan, so I finally have to get the boot under my arse and start looking after myself better. This is the point where I don't have the cushion of playing off youthful resilience while I play poker with my own physical and mental state.

So, even though I don't like to make lengthy lists of resolutions- habit-forming and habit-breaking are the bane of life for someone with executive dysfunction- I am going to at least set aside a few good sense ideas that I can bounce back to whenever I start feeling the carpet pulling underneath my feet.

Consistency: whatever I do this year, whether it be objectively constructive or destructive, I should at least try to maintain it at a similar level for the sake of stability. Naturally, I don't want this to be a way of encouraging harmful behaviours but I don't believe I'll ever truly break from the pattern of indulging them if I don't reach a stage where I don't demonise myself for falling into them. Patchwork skills profiles and falling into extremes of achievement or disappointment are intense enough to disrupt large swathes of my time. I don't want to spend next December looking back at gaps in my memory or stagnant weeks of barely surviving. Even if I reach that stage, I want to be able able keep making the incremental efforts to move from survival to actually living.

Active living, not passive: A skill I have only in recent years begun to appreciate is the intensity at which I can hyperfocus. Enough that I can dissociate entirely from my environment and solely take in information from whatever I put my focus in. Although that state isn't triggered with any great regularity, that sense of detachment and dissociation is something I've become a lot more conscious of in the last few months. I've somehow reduced myself to a background observer of my own life; allowing other external circumstances and other people's choices and decisions dictate my life because it conserves my mental energy. It has its uses, certainly; using that coping mechanism has definitely been a factor in reducing the frequency of my migraine episodes. But the downside is that by doing so, I've almost unlearned how to do things for myself, to bear responsibility for my life and how I utilise my time. Too many days have been left in a paralytic state of dormancy; no sense of progression or regression, which completely throws my temporal awareness off balance in the moments when it becomes necessary to attune myself to societal obligations. 

Know the limits: 2024 was a year of stretching all the limits I had, whether they were deadlines, comfort levels, physical exertion or opportunities, to their maximum capacities. This isn't sustainable long-term. Instead, knowing what a hard limit is and internalising the consequences of hitting the wall is something I could badly do with working on. In another sense, it's also something I need to explore in other areas of my life; being able to decide what's a reasonable amount of leeway to give myself if I fall short of expectations or better judging when I have given too much of myself in a situation is something I have been improving at, but there's still a long way to go.

Be kind to myself: This is not the same as being nice to myself- that would mean letting myself chicken out of doing important stuff, which favours absolutely no one. I've spent so much of my life on this earth repressing aspects of myself, molding like a chameleon to fit the contexts and situations I find myself in. While on the surface, that allows for smoother interactions, the reality is that I have lost so much of my sense of self that I have a fragmentary collage of facets in place of a solid identity. I mold to suit expectations set by others, while chastising myself for not meeting them when I don't actually set them for myself. I say things that I think others would say, while not sharing my own opinions and feelings without a modicum of self-censorship. Writing has done a lot for releasing some aspects of myself that I keep locked away, but I could do well to have more good faith in people on a whole. Everyone wants to be understood as themselves on a level and I am coming to realise that you can only be encouraged by others being brave enough to share themselves truthfully with people.

Motivating life goals: since I was a child, I have always had an internal belief of “If I try hard enough, why shouldn't I be able to accomplish the goals that I set for myself.” There have been times where this innate determination has been sorely tested in various ways but ultimately, I have more or less been very successful. Barring my PhD- which I sincerely hope I can have completed next year- I have accomplished those internal, little-spoken of but dearly sought-after achievements that I expected to achieve within my lifetime. At the ripe old age of 24, I've made it further than my brain has ever considered planning for. Which says many things for my efficiency but is somewhat neglectful of how I look to live my life into later adulthood. I think it could be beneficial to settle on a new set of developmental milestones and career trajectories that I can follow. I have been very lucky in the opportunities and experiences that have come my way so far, but I can only avail of them if I can prepare myself for them. Now is a good time to think about the next decade of my life and what I can do to balance security with independence in a way that allows me to settle comfortably.

Relationships: As I get older, I have come to really value the people I choose to spend time with. I have some very important friendships and post-undergrad, I'm actually very proud of how I've been able to cultivate new and meaningful friendships. Having spent so much of my later childhood and adolescent years holding people at a distance and trying to avoid falling to surface-level situational friendships, be it due to geographical proximity or for the sake of not being alone, it feels immensely gratifying to know that having held out for nothing less than people whose principles I share and trusting that I will meet the people that I need to meet was worth it. Despite the social challenges and my own insecurities, I can indeed form meaningful relationships that have proven to be a lifeline in the darker moments of my life. I love them all more than I can probably express in any language and having finally understood the importance of interpersonal relationships, I hope to continue growing them and perhaps work on repairing those that are challenged or damaged. Life really is so much shorter than people credit it with and if we've made it to this moment in time, no matter where we are in life, then we owe it to ourselves to take advantage of it as best we can, no matter how you measure your best or how that measurement can change from one day to the next.

I don't know how often I'm going to write this blog. My travels are likely to be of a lesser distance and frequency, as my academic obligations start to stack up, but I have found that with transportation, generally a contradiction of travelling somewhere while conversely remaining stationary, I often find myself thinking over various situations; considering alternative interpretations of past events or positing variations of possible future ones. It can be a stimulating exercise and I think it could serve me- and perhaps somebody else- to be able to categorise and compile these thoughts somewhere from time to time. Even if it's just to remove the burden on my mind on occasion. After all, I don't do well with habits. But I do have a penchant for overthinking, so perhaps this can be a starting point for working on that consistency. 

Slán go fóill agus athbhliain faoi mhaise daoibh 🎆

C ~