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dalekofchaos · 4 years ago

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The complete lack of Anakin Skywalker in the Sequel Trilogy is an insult to the story of Star Wars, Anakin’s story and in the end they destroyed Anakin’s fall and redemption

The fact that Anakin is never mentioned by name, let alone shows up as a force ghost. Just shows how much Disney, JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy were so afraid of the Prequels and couldn’t even bother to have the man who is the main focus of Star Wars to be featured in the sequel trilogy period. The Star Wars Saga was about Anakin and his family. I will forever be bitter and disgusted that Disney went out of their way to erase his presence.

Disney did everything to show what Anakin trained for, struggled for, went to the dark side for and sacrificed everything for was pointless. They introduced force healing, force resurrection, Rey taking the prophecy for herself, his family was tormented by Palpatine until his bloodline became extinct and now we know people can communicate with Tusken raiders. If all of this existed in the prequels, Anakin would’ve never even become Darth Vader. They made Anakin’s entire fall and redemption completely pointless.

I don’t know what it is with Disney, but apparently they get off with backhandedly disrespecting Anakin at every opportunity they get.

I do love Rey, but I agree with this YouTube comment I found a year ago “Rey single handedly destroyed Anakin's entire legacy, and made his whole life a joke. - you don't need to train to be stupidly powerful with the lightsaber or the force. Training isn't necessary anymore, as Rey proves in TFA and TLJ, and in some ways in TROS since I doubt Leia taught her force heal, force skype or force lightning. Thus, Anakin's tough decision to leave his mother in slavery while training to be a Jedi powerful enough to one day save her is made pointless. - you don't need to be in control of your powers. Hell, fits of unexplained anger are encouraged and other characters love you for it. Rey can be rude, destructive and irrational all she wants, and everyone supports her, while Anakin was always taught to obey orders and not think for himself, furthering his feeling of being enslaved and controlled. But nah, he was just wrong I guess. - the path to the dark side is no longer the easy and fast one. Everyone can just decide freely, flip flop between allegiances and do whatever the fuck they want to. I don't know what Anakin was tempted by, Rey is angry all the time, uses force lightning, a power only the most powerful sith can do, and is never tempted in the slightest, always making the morally perfect decisions and never giving in to any temptations. Just be incorruptible, Anakin! - You can force heal easily at no cost. Anakin's mother died for nothing, as did Padme. Anakin's whole turn to the dark side was made utterly ridiculous by this movie. Anakin trained for years, mastering everything he could, striving for more knowledge and wisdom to be powerful enough to save and protect those around him, when he could have just done everything he wanted by closing his eyes. Fucking hell Rey, is there anything you aren't perfect at. - He didn't even kill Palpatine. He didn't redeem himself. He didn't bring peace to the galaxy. He did bring order though, the First Order. Fucking hell, did he actually do anything right or did Rey seriously outclass him in every _single thing he ever did This trilogy just shits on everything that came before. Everyone in Star Wars sucks because Rey is just perfect at everything she does, and all the other characters, with their flaws, struggles and problems they have to overcome just look stupid compared to her and her god powers. I hate this trilogy so much omg words can't describe it”

Let’s look at how much damage was done by not showing Anakin and how much the Sequels destroyed Anakin’s story and legacy

Anakin never warns his children about Snokeatine preying over his grandson, just think if Anakin told them a powerful and ancient dark side user was targeting Ben, Han, Lando, Chewie, Luke and Leia all would’ve gotten together and killed Snoke and by doing that, killing the First/Final Order in the crib.

Anakin never tells his children Palpatine himself is alive. If Anakin told them the truth, he could’ve directed Luke and Leia to his wayfinder, then Orchi’s ship and the stupid knife map. They would find both wayfinders and Luke and Leia would’ve killed Palpatine on Exegol.

Anakin doesn't warn Leia that visions are not all they seem or how he lost himself because of a vision and tells her not to fall for the same trap he did.

Anakin never once visits his grandson during his Jedi training or his time as Kylo Ren and tell him his story, Anakin appearing before his grandson and telling him HIS SIDE of HIS STORY could’ve prevented Ben’s fall

Anakin by name is never mentioned

Rey, someone who believed Luke was only a myth. Suddenly knows that Luke redeemed Darth Vader(again, Anakin is never mentioned by name)

Anakin does not appear before his son in his time of need. Instead Yoda does. Anakin knew all there is about failure and what happens when you fall to the dark side. “failure, the greatest teacher is,” is bullshit. Yoda never learned this lesson to begin with. Yoda is the last person who should be saying anything like this to Luke. Anakin should have went to Luke, not Yoda. You know who would have been the perfect person to tell Luke that failure is the greatest teacher? His father, Anakin Skywalker. If anyone deserved that moment, it was Anakin Skywalker. Both because this should have been his chance to speak with his son AND because when someone is the embodiment of the failures of the Jedi Order, they’re really the one best qualified to call out the bullshit of that organization. Anakin would’ve been the best person to tell Luke to confront Kylo, his grandson. He knows failure more than anyone. Failing to save his mother, failing to save Padme, his failure into giving into the dark side and his fall. Anakin would’ve told him. “It wasn’t your fault what happened to Ben, I’m asking you to come back and save your sister, my daughter. Leia needs you. You never gave up on me. Don’t give up on your friends, your sister or even yourself. You saved me when I thought all was lost, there is still time to make things right. Remember you are a Jedi, like me. Not the last of the old Jedi, Luke. The first of the new.“

Anakin died to save his son. He does not attempt to save him.

The fact that Anakin didn’t even show up to speak to his son when he was at his lowest or when his son was literally dying , was just proof that Disney Lucasfilm didn’t care about him as a character or his story. Anakin’s redemption was saving his son, yet for some reason he just didn’t give a shit about him. There is not even a reason given as to why he didn’t show up.

Anakin does not appear before his grandson in his turning point. It should have been Anakin who met with Ben, not Han. No one knows more about Palpatine and the dark side than Anakin and revealing the truth could have destroyed the dark side’s hold over his grandson and brought him back to the light and unlike Harrison, Hayden actually wanted to be there. We needed the one moment between Anakin and his grandson. All they did with Han was make little to no sense and just repeat lines from TFA. Harrison is clearly there to collect that sweet Disney money lol he doesn’t like Star Wars or Han Solo, he returned to have Han killed off. Hayden Christensen, however loved Star Wars despite the hate that was directed towards him. He wanted to return to play Anakin one last time. and the perfect way for him to return and to guide his grandson back to the light was Anakin. Anakin knows more than anyone what the dark side can do and what Palpatine is capable of and how much pain he has inflicted. Kylo has always admired Vader, and Anakin can show the truth of how he was manipulated into betraying everything he loved and why the dark side is not the path he should be taking. I really hate to toot my own horn, but I wrote out a scene where Anakin’s force ghost visits his grandson and helped along his redemption. “I never wanted you to repeat my mistakes. That pull to the light you were feeling was always me. I wanted you to be better than I was, who I could have been” and showing Ben his memories and what he had to go through. His life as a slave, meeting Padme, meeting Obi-Wan, becoming a Jedi, losing his mother, Order 66, losing Padme and being saved by Luke and finally destroying Palpatine(lol but not really). And telling Ben “Let the light in. You still have a chance, no one is ever really gone“ Ben would then tell his grandfather “I know what I have to do, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it.” Anakin puts his hand on his grandson and says “this time we’ll do it together.”

Anakin does not play a role in the defeat of the monster who destroyed his life. Anakin’s redemption, victory and the fulfillment of the Chosen One Prophecy is now meaningless. He doesn’t even return to face Palpatine or to even power up Ben and Rey. When Rey says "be with me" in the final fight. What should've happened is the force hears her pleas for help and sends Anakin to confront Sidious. Just imagine Palpatine:It cannot be....Lord Vader? Anakin:That name no longer has any meaning for me No, I am Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Master and the chosen one. Palpatine:So be it, "Jedi" Anakin with the help of Luke, Leia, Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon and Yoda help Ben rise and empower Ben and Rey. Rey and Ben rise. Ben with his Grandfather’s lightsaber and Rey with Leia’s lightsaber deflecting Palpatine’s Lightning Palpatine"I AM ALL THE SITH! Rey and Ben:And we are the Skywalkers And together they deflect it back at Sidious. Once and for all, Anakin fulfills the prophecy, while not doing it directly, he guided his grandson and Rey and together they destroy the SIth and brings balance to the force. Then Anakin brings back Rey, and bids farewell to his grandson and fades in peace knowing that balance has been brought back and the force is in the safe hands of Rey and Ben.

The entire Skywalker Family goes extinct and everything Anakin fought and sacrificed for is completely meaningless

Anakin's Lightsaber is not recognized as his lightsaber, it is recognized as Luke's Lightsaber and Rey's Lightsaber. Luke has a Lightsaber of his own. He even used it for most of his life after the war as a Jedi master, yet it never makes it into the Sequel Trilogy outside of flashbacks. Where is it????? NO SERIOUSLY WHERE THE FUCK IS IT??????? Rey has a lightsaber of her own as well, but for SOME REASON, they needed Rey to have the Skywalker lightsaber and Leia’s Lightsaber throughout the whole movie. Rey cannot be defined on her own. She needs the Skywalker Lightsaber, she needs the falcon, she needs to be related to be Palpatine and she needed to take the Skywalker name in the end. Anakin doesn’t even get to be acknowledged as the master of his own lightsaber.

Rey steals Anakin's legacy as the chosen one. A PALPATINE STEALS THE SKYWALKER PROPHECY

Anakin’s Lightsaber was buried on Tatooine. Make all the “I don’t like sand” jokes you want. But this is like burying a possession of a freed slave in the remains of a slave plantation. Anakin and Shmi were slaves on this planet, his mother was brutally tortured and murdered, his step-brother and sister and Luke’s aunt and uncle were brutally murdered and his daughter was a Hutt’s sex slave. This is the absolute last place he’d ever want his Lightsaber to be buried. Every Skywalker and Solo hated Tatooine. Anakin wanted to escape a life of slavery and see the stars. Luke looks at that double sunset, longing to escape his mundane life, wanting to travel the galaxy to fight the good fight. Rey looks at the double sunset because it's supposed to pander to the OT fans. Bury Anakin’s Lightsaber in his wife’s mausoleum and his spirit would be at peace. But oh no, we can’t have that, the money needs it’s OT nostalgia and we can’t legitimize the prequels because this movie was made by a prequel hating asshole. I don’t understand why Luke’s Green Lightsaber was never used again. Could’ve been given to Finn and when he’s done, Rey helps him build a Lightsaber of his own. Then Rey can bury Luke, Leia, and Anakin’s Lightsabers in Padme’s mausoleum with Rey, Finn and Ben looking on as the force ghosts of Anakin, Luke and Leia looks on them in peace and it would be a fitting way to end the Skywalker Saga.

Anakin does not appear as a force ghost. He doesn’t see his grandson. He doesn’t see Rey. He doesn’t appear with Luke and Leia at the end of the movie. It’s like JJ Abrams has some sort of vendetta against the Prequels. This is what happens when an OT purist is given power.

Ben Solo dies and is not given a chance to earn his redemption and thus the Skywalker family dies out. He did terrible things as Kylo Ren, but if you want him to redeem himself, actually give him a redemption arc. When he feels his mother die, let him truly feel remorse for his actions Let him see the force ghosts of Luke and Anakin. They set him on the path to make things right. Ben and Rey stop Palpatine together, they kiss and Ben goes on a path of atonement. Ben gets in the falcon and takes Leia’s lightsaber and goes to every known First Order base with the intention of righting his wrongs and making things right. When he returns to Rey, they go to Naboo to place Anakin, Luke and Leia’s Lightsaber’s in Padme’s mausoleum and it ends with Rey and Ben holding hands as the Skywalker family looks on proud and happily that the future is in good hands. Like....Anakin, Leia and Luke would’ve wanted their family to live on and wanted Ben to live. It isn’t rocket science, Anakin would’ve wanted Ben to be given the chance he wasn’t given to redeem himself and live to tell the tale.

Bringing back Palpatine back destroyed Anakin’s entire arc. I don’t care if it happened in Legends. It was fucking stupid then and it was stupid now. The impact of Order 66? The Sequel Trilogy ruined it. I hate how the Sequel Trilogy really shat on this moment. Order 66 was a tragedy for the Clones, Jedi, Separatists, Mandalorians, Night Sisiters and even Maul. Everyone lost except Sidious. When Darth Vader threw him over the railing he was avenging basically everyone. But the Sequel Trilogy rewrites that moment and makes it redundant. In my book, the series timeline ends at the Mandalorian. The Prophecy of The Chosen One? It’s no longer about Anakin. He is no longer the one to destroy The Sith and to bring Balance to the Force. His fall and redemption? It’s now pointless, Palpatine’s clone body was the one that got destroyed, not Palpatine himself and he returned and built up the Empire stronger than ever. Anakin saving Luke and finally killing Palpatine was beautiful. Something that really makes Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker saving Luke beautiful in my mind is actually Anakin/Vader’s perspective. Qui-Gon was killed, his mother died a senseless death that he couldn't prevent, the Jedi Council was always wary of him and never took him seriously, Padme spurned him after he became Vader -- which he only did to protect her from dying -- and died anyway, his best friend hacked off all his limbs and left him to burn to death and Sidious manipulated and lied to him from the time he was a kid, only wanted him for his force powers to use as a glorified hitman and openly contemplated replacing him constantly after he lost his duel to Kenobi on Mustafar and was maimed. The dude either lost or was (in his mind) betrayed by basically everyone he ever knew and cared about, except his son, who even to the end never lost faith in him. He was beaten and helpless and Luke had just severed his hand. Sidious then goaded Luke to finish Vader off and become his new apprentice, but Luke refused to turn on his father. The minute he realized Luke was the only person who hadn't betrayed, used, abandoned or left him was the minute Vader died and Anakin returned. This, in a nut shell, is the story of Star Wars. It is the story of a child from Tattooine who was finally able to save someone he loved. Anakin has been manipulated by Palpatine since the moment he became a Jedi. Palpatine put visions of Padme’s death in his head until it was a reality. He went to the dark side to save his wife and children. He manipulated him into destroying the Jedi. He turned Anakin into Darth Vader and used Darth Vader as his enforcer. Until a moment of hope. His children lived. He thought all was lost until his son believed in him. In his final moments, his life, he saved his son and fulfilled the prophecy. Darth Vader is the ultimate villain deconstruction. He started out as a faceless monster to be defeated, a demon to be slain so peace would be restored. But Luke managed to look beneath the mask of intimidation and saw his father for what he truly was; a broken man who had been a slave his whole life and had lost all hope of redeeming himself. In the end Luke brought Anakin Skywalker back not because he convinced Vader to love him, because Anakin loved Luke since the moment he knew he would be born and never stopped loving him. And the decision to reveal that Palpatine didn’t really die and manipulated his grandson to kill Luke, that honestly cheapens Anakin’s arc. Just think with how he was brought back. They didn’t have an explanation. He is just there in the opening crawl. We didn’t hear his message in the movie, we heard it in fucking fortnite. And Poe’s line. “Somehow, Palpatine has returned” plays like a line from some kind of parody to Hollywood franchises. It’s actually... insulting. Like they are basically slapping us with “this is happening, we don’t have an explanation, just watch the damn movie and get us paid” without even the decency of trying to hide it. That line didn’t have to be in there. It revealed nothing, it provided no character development... it was literally just there to admit that the film really is as bad as you think. And of course, it’s something we HAVE to read in a book to figure out. If it’s not in your fucking movie, don’t fucking bother having it. Bringing back Palpatine made the first 6 movies entirely pointless. Palpatine outliving Anakin, Obi-Wan, Padme, Han Luke and Leia is the ultimate desecration of Star Wars. “it was always the plan to bring Palpatine back” and that is the problem. Its actually amazing how little the folks at Lucasfilm, Bad Reboot and Disney “get” Star Wars. Having the ultimate bad guy of the first 6 films live to see Episode 9 when the heroes who supposedly defeated him are long dead. It literally destroys the core mythology of the Star Wars universe and makes the selfless choices our characters made unrewarding. That’s just depressing. Their sacrifices and triumphs are ultimately undermined, devalued and utterly pointless. Moral of the story, nothing you did mattered, let the new generation clean up your mess because the money says so. And making Rey Palpatine’s granddaughter, killing EVERY LIVING Skywalker and having a Palpatine steal the legacy of the Skywalkers is desecration of Star Wars. Rey isn’t related to the Skywalkers it’s so creepy that she stole everything from them. She stole the falcon, she stole Luke’s lightsaber, she stole their family name. She stole Anakin and Luke’s ultimate victory over Palpatine. Their legacy. Palpatine won…..This is disgusting. The Skywalkers all dying and Rey taking the name is an exact summation of this trilogy. Tearing down all the old heroes and everything they did just for the new ones to do the same exact thing. Just to prop Rey up? You CAN build up new characters without tearing down the old characters and their legacy. Everything in this trilogy was done to break down and humiliate the characters we cared about and imitate something that was done in the past and has no substance.

Rey didn’t need to be a Palpatine or take the Skywalker name. This isn’t me hating on Rey. Rey can be a great character by standing on her own. Rey being related to NO ONE was powerful and shows us that even someone who came from Jakku can be a powerful Jedi. She doesn’t earn anything on her own. She downloaded all of Kylo’s abilities. She took the Falcon, she made Chewbacca her personal uber, she took BB-8 from Poe and buried Anakin and Leia’s lightsaber on the literal symbolic oppression of the Skywalker family instead of something peaceful like Naboo or Ach-To. She has her own Lightsaber, but never uses it. Rey being a Palpatine and taking the Skywalker name undoes the beautiful story the revelation TLJ had does. She didn’t need to be a Palpatine and she didn’t need to take the Skywalker name or even their relics. Rey Nobody works. Here’s why. Rey’s story is her own, it is not her parents, it is not about where she came from, it’s about where she is going, and who she decides to become. Maz Kanata said “The belonging you seek is not behind you. It is in front of you.” Rey in the TFA trailers said “I’m no one” Rey never thought or wanted her parents to be important in TFA, she was literally going to pass up adventure and being important to stay on Jakku because what she wanted was her family to finally come home. She didn't want to be important or wanted her parents to be important. The audience wanted that. Any more lingering discussion of the possibility of Rey’s parents being ‘somebody’ only is distracting you from the actually beautiful story that is being told. Rey is a story of a girl who raised herself, who held onto hope for people who didn’t deserve it, she is a story of how light can be born from darkness, and Rey is story of someone who was scared of her own truth—but then finally faced it. Rey being a Nobody is the story I was skeptical of at first, but grew to love, the story that gives me more hope than any Rey Skywalker or Rey Solo story ever would. Rey calling herself "Rey Skywalker" was so forced and unnecessary because all the whiny pissants did not like that a girl was skilled and powerful in her own right and because Rey did not have a good relationship with Luke in the first place. JJ was so set in just making Rey a Luke clone that it just undoes character development. If Rey had to take a name, Solo or Organa would make the most sense since she actually had a relationship with Han, Leia and Ben. Say what you want about how RIan Johnson handled Rey in TLJ. At least he treated Rey like her own person, with her own journey, and her own desires and fears, rather than consigning her to be a vessel for OT nostalgia. And at least he allowed her to actually have a new outfit and new hair style. At least he let her change. Like him or not, Rian Johnson treated Rey with more respect and identity than JJ Abrams ever did. It means more than making her related to anyone because Rey was every lonely girl who wanted to be a part of something but didn't feel like they belonged. Every woman who learned to make her way in the world alone. Every person who clung to hope when they had nothing left. She is so many things to so many people. Rey Nobody can be fierce, angry and powerful without it connecting to a man or evil bloodline. She can love, be curious and emotional without being weak. She is a scavenger, a Jedi, and one half of a powerful Dyad. She is Rey of Jakku and that's all we needed. Rey calling herself a Skywalker denied her every last inch of who she was. Her character arc was ruined to please men that thought her power needed to be connected to a man for it to make sense. All we needed her arc to be was Rey accepting that she needs to be her own hero and loving herself for who she is, rather than who she wanted her hypothetical parents to be. And honestly Rey in TROS was a huge disappointment. Her entire character arc was regressed, she's back to wearing the buns and dressed all in white and sticks to the glorification of the Jedi. It's like everything she learned in the last movie never happened. And honestly her character in TROS is what men think a "strong female character" is She fights, but they don’t have to deal with her processing internal pain. She loves, but they don’t have to deal with her fully exploring her desires. She’s a “badass,” & for them that is enough. When I say "A Palpatine is left and steals the legacy of the Skywalkers" I am not suggesting she doesn't deserve the title. I am saying that essentially, Palpatine won. Anakin, Padme, Luke, Han, Leia and Ben are all dead. Leia died for nothing. Leia deserved to see her son come home, and to see the end of the monster who ruined her family. She didn’t deserve to feel her child die. The entire line of the family is now extinct. The wiki even says "the extinction of the family name" what kind of depressing garbage is this? JJ Abrams ended the entire Skywalker saga on Palpatine successfully using love to manipulate, corrupt, hurt or kill every single Skywalker across three generations, ultimately resulting in the total eradication of the Skywalker, Solo and Amidala bloodlines, whilst Palpatine's heir lives on and claims the Skywalker name and legacy. Rey calling herself "Rey Skywalker" was patronizing and insulting and demeans what Rey's journey meant in the first two movies to everyone who loved her. Rey coming from Jakku and nothing but rising up as a heroic Jedi means more than "you have his power...you are a Palpatine" or "Rey Rey Skywalker" ever will. Women Of The Galaxy author Amy Ratcliffe says it best. “Even beyond the trappings of the Star Wars saga — the First Order, the Resistance, the Force — Rey’s story is inspiring, familiar, and timeless. Just because you come from nothing doesn’t mean you’re not part of the story. You’re not no one, because anybody can save the galaxy. Anybody.“

If anyone still cannot understand my problem with bringing back Palpatine and why I find it narratively offensive. Just imagine this. What if Harry discovered that Dumbledore was wrong and Voldemort had far more than 7 horcruxes? Ashamed and afraid, he hides Ginny and the Potter children among the muggles. A defeated Ron returns to the burrow, while Hermione spends her days searching for Horcruxes. Years later, a 17 year old, Rachel Marvela Riddle, begins discovering her new powers, despite never receiving her Hogwart’s letter. Her magic is incredibly strong, but she is everything Tom was not. With the help of some friends, she tracks down the remaining Horcruxes and finally destroys the true Voldemort, for good and realsies this time! Also she starts calling herself the Girl Who Lived. This is the plot of Disney’s Star Wars Sequel Trilogy.. What if Harry didn’t actually destroy Voldemort? What if The One Ring survived Mt. Doom? Interesting concepts, but they would devalue everything that came before. The entire point of the Sequel Trilogy is disregarding generations of storytelling because no one behind this trilogy had any original or creative stories to tell. This is how Star Wars dies, with uncreativity and greed.

Anakin Skywalker’s story and family was destroyed, belittled, insulted and stolen by a Palpatine. Hell, even from a certain point of view PALPATINE WON! AGAIN!

#Anakin Skywalker #Anti Lucasfilm #Anti TROS #Anti TFA #Anti TLJ #Anti JJ Abrams #Anti Rian Johnson #Anti Kathleen Kennedy

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unfriendlyamazon · 3 years ago

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tagged in this thanks to @dominocity and i spend more time looking at my ao3 stats then i care to admit...

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

36 works on AO3, plus one on my super secret (not really) second AO3 so I don’t contaminate my fandoms.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

165,078

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Baby Dragon - jurassic park if it was a romcom

Liking You and Me - this one is one of the earliest kaijou fics i wrote (besides the one i deleted), and i don’t even know if i like it anymore... but i get frequent kudos and comments so i guess it’s good!

In Awe of Flowers - they don’t even kiss!!! also @jadenvargen drew me a comic in the comments and i never thanked him for it because i was too scared to talk to him and tagging him now so long after the fact seems pretty ridiculous but um thank you jay for real.

Sweater Weather - kaijou for when you had a bad day

A Hand to Hold - kaijou hand kink this one i am actively embarrassed of (also, before i saw the light on trans joey)

4. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I try really hard to! If the fic is really old I don’t (i don’t know why i can’t explain it), but I really appreciate when people take the time to comment and I want them to know it.

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I don’t... really have any?? I write plenty of angsty situations. Competitionverse (my duke/seto business business au) is probably the angstiest one and the one I have the worst plans for. I have some secret fanfic of 1930s gangster Joey that I’ve kind of put out in the world so maybe that?

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Haaahaha what drew me back to fanfiction after not writing it for at least a decade was domestic portraits of kaijou so, like, that’s what I write. Probably Baby Dragon or In Awe of Flowers.

7. Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

Not crossovers but I write... a lot of AUs and in fact did an entire compilation one year for NaNoWriMo I never finished. Most niche is the Black Tapes AU that yes I do have a full outline for including timelines for every characters and how they intersect with the grand conspiracy, and maybe the wildest is Long Way to a Small Angry Planet just for making Joey a feathered reptile alien.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I’ve gotten some comments over writing Duke as non-binary and kind of a weird one on my super secret FE3H fanfiction fighting me on a plot point??

9. Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I didn’t, but now I do. I don’t post 90% of what I write, which is maybe weirder? It’s been really good to be pushed there by friends and develop that part of my writing, so maybe I’ll post more. Probably not tho. I feel like I’ve branded myself as the KaiJou hand kink person but I still don’t write it enough to be anyone’s go-to.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No?? I don’t think so???

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No but it’d be super cool.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I guess not technically. Me and @saggiclowns bounce ideas off each other, write fanfiction for each other’s fanfiction, and have definitely developed things together, so maybe that counts? But our IP is individualized.

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I have almost exclusively written KaiJou so you think that’d be the obvious answer. I think my actual all time favorite ship that sends me to the moon is probably Marceline/Bubblegum from Adventure Time (the history!!!! the animosity!!!!! the friendship!!!!!!!), I just... don’t want to read AT fanfiction.

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Hahahaaaaaaa. I am WIP queen!! Back in the day I’d start a hundred fanfics just to abandon them! The same’s true of today I just don’t post every thought that comes into my head. Star Trek AU deserves so much more of my attention and I do have a plan for it and I bought a special little Star Trek notebook to keep all my thoughts ideas and notes in and then when it comes to writing it I struggle.

15. What are your writing strengths?

Genuinely, to toot my own horn, I feel I write very naturalistic dialogue and for the longest time writing dialogue was the easiest thing in the world to me, to the point that sometimes I would skip over anything else. Also, gosh I love world building. I could go from a blank screen to a fully articulated society complete with maps, pantheons, and intricate histories for every location. The problem is then writing it.

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

I tend to get very stuck on things and struggle to skip over them. Last year’s NaNoWriMo was a testament to that, and I kept rewriting and getting frustrated and will inevitably end up trashing the whole thing. I pick up new ideas constantly and then discard them for the next thought in my head. It’s part of why I’ve only really let myself write one shots and short fic, but I do have some longer WIP I’d love to actually finish.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

This is a tricky one and I’ve read and listened to a lot of people talk about how other non-fluent languages are presented in all kinds of different art. I personally don’t have a strong opinion. Best practice is to find someone who is fluent in that language to help you translate it (and there used to be whole blogs dedicated to helping people with this, I don’t know if they’re still around), but that doesn’t mean I’ve never jammed anything into a translator.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

This... is interesting because the answer is YuGiOh. Back in my middle school days my friends were very into ygo and wrote silly like chat formatted fics that we posted on DeviantArt (???) that were just really bad and stupid and silly, and the only reason I even thought about ygo was because all my friends liked it. The first fandom I actually really got involved in was Teen Titans, and ATLA I was, like, a recognizable presence. I fell off extremely hard probably thanks to college and have spent most of my life focusing on original fiction and writing my own characters. Then my best friend sent me a piece of fanart that unlocked my childhood memories, and here we are now, in the only fandom.

19. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

I wrote Bite Hard and it might be one of the best things I’ve written... and now I’ve kind of repurposed it into an original fiction??? I think the main characters might always be buddies no matter how much I’ve manipulated them, but it’s kind of spun off into it’s own thing? That’s what fanfiction’s for! Experimentation, playing with ideas, having a sandbox to build in! And then I EL James it and make millions! (jk)

@saggiclowns doesn’t post to AO3 that much, and i don’t know if @danieco even has an AO3 but they are extremely good writers!! also if you write fic, please share your own!

#i also totally forgot about my one single fear street fanfic on ao3 #this is from waaaaaay before the movies i made it my goal to reread every single one and ended up making an ultimate universe for them #i've gotta a few kudos on it since the movies came out which is pretty hilarious #you can thank october for putting me in ygo hell i never would've gotten here without them #i abondoned my old life and started new #my fic #i guess #i forget all my tags

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stevethehairington · 4 years ago

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Tagged by: the lovely @scimitar-and-longsword 💕💕

Name(s): my name is Mack, and if this also includes like usernames too then my ao3 is macksdramaticshenanigans and obviously yall can see my tumblr url lol. i have a fandom twitter but i hate twitter so i barely go on it lmao.

Fandom(s): oh boy haha this is a loooong list. as of right now, the main fandoms i’m involved in are The Old Guard and Trust FX, but in the past i’ve written for Skam, Marvel, Good Omens, Love Simon/Simon vs., Shameless, and IT. and ofc there are some fandoms i have not written for that i casually enjoy as well.

Where you post: all my fics are posted on ao3! or are sitting in my wips folder lol. i’ve ocsasionally posted some snippets of writing here to tumblr, but none of those are like full on, proper fics, mostly just me rambling off some thoughts i had about whatever characters in whatever scenarios

Most Popular One Shot (by kudos): Imagine Being Loved By Me (918 kudos) ((so close to 1k holy shit!!!! if it got to 1k i think i’d actually die of happiness omg)) this is my Good Omens smut fic lmfao, crowley is fantasizing and aziraphale makes it a reality skgjsd. i’m actually pretty damn pleased with how this one turned out, and i never expected it to get that many kudos so that makes me ridiculously happy sfjgfg. (and also podfixx made a podfic of this fic which made me INSANELY happy like that is the coolest thing ever)

Most Popular Multi-Chapter (by kudos): I Have Hella Feelings For You (697 kudos) ahhh this one!! this one is actually my very first ever chaptered fic!! it’s a skam fic, and i have the most distinctive memory of me sititng in my dorm bed freshman year of college, furiously typing away at my laptop everyday for a week because i somehow managed to post a chapter every day until it was finished, which meant i was writing a new chapter everyday. like damn, i really peaked with that huh? lmao

Favorite story you’ve written so far: ahh okay not to like. toot my own horn kgfldg but this question is HARD bc i have a lot of favorites. i’m going to pick a favorite from each of my main fandoms i’ve written for because i’m an Indecisive Hoe okay fdjdf.

- From Marvel: Just Called To Say I Love You this one is my wrong number stucky fic and i actually adore this one so much, and also it actually ended up being WAY more popular than i expected it to? like i was lowkey shook by how many people liked it

- From Skam: If You Love Me, If You Hate Me so. about this one. it’s probably my favorite skam fic that i’ve written. but. it also is the utter bane of my existence bc this is the one and only fic i have ever written and posted that i haven’t fnished gskgjfdlfs. it’s going on soon to be a little over 2 years of sitting on my account as an unfinished wip, but i REFUSE to mark it as abandoned bc i really genuienly DO want to finish it, i just havent written for this fandom in a while and inspiration/motivation is tricky yknow? but anyways. this fic is my soccer au!! it was a gift for a secret santa exchange i believe to a dear friend of mine and i still feel awful that i never finished it but. one day!!

- From Love Simon/Simon vs.: Where I Like You Best i am actually obsessed with this one. is that weird to say about your own fic? i enjoy reading a good soulmate au, but writing them has always been SO daunting to me bc i never feel like my ideas are original enough or like things that havent been done a lot for that trope. but for this one!!! omg i found the BEST prompt for it and it fit these characters SO well and i wrote it and i ended up absolutely loving how it turned out, and i was so proud of myself for writing a pretty successful soulmate au.

- From Shameless: Wooden Floors, Walls, and Window Sills so this one was my second ever gallavich fic, and it’s probably my favorite because i think it’s the best characterization i got of them in all of my fics, and good characterization is one of the most important things to me when i write fic.

- From IT: To What We Might Do is my favorite reddie fic i’ve written! i definitely projected onto richie a teeny tiny bit in it for some parts lmfao, but yeah idk i just love how this one turned out a whole lot, and i enjoyed how i ended it too (esp since endings can be very difficult for me lol). ((BUT also a special shoutout to my fic Imagine Me and You, I Do bc that one is just pure fluff and i adore the concept of someone being just so absolutely in love with someone doing something so incredibly simple and it just rocks their world)

- From Good Omens: I Want To Know What Love Is (did i use the most cheesy title ever? absolutely. do i love it? absolutely.) anyways this fic is one where crowley the demon experiences love and promptly thinks he’s dying.

Fic you were nervous to post: ooh, i mean i’m always pretty anxious about any fic i post because i never know if it’s going to be recepted well or if people are going to like it or hate it or if anyone is even going to read it or repsond to it. especially if the fic is a gift for someone, because i just really want that person to like it yknow? but yeah idk if theres one in particular i was more nervous to post than any others... i guess maybe any smut fic? just bc i never know if the smut is even any good lol

How do you choose your titles?: eaaaaasy, i usually pick song lyrics lol, ocassionally i’ve used lines from a poem, and a few times i’ve gone with a pun, but mostly it’s song lyrics. i usually find a song with lyrics that i think will fit, or if there’s a particular song that vibes well with the fic or that i listened to repeatedly while writing the fic i’ll try to pick the best lyric from that one.

Do you outline?: yes and no lol. it honestly depends. sometimes i outline extensively, but other times i just sit in front of a doc and let whatever happens happen.

Complete: on my ao3 account i have 80 works completed (will be 81 once i finally finish that one single unfinished wip i have posted gahhh). but i know in my wips folder i have a at least one finished fic that i have not and probably will not post. there are also some other things in my wips folder that like technically could be conisdered finished too, but it’s not up to my posting standards so until i fix it so it is it’ll just sit there lol.

In-Progress: honestly there are too many to count lol. i have a shiiiiiit ton of wips (as yall will know if you saw that one ‘tell us about ALL your wips’ tag game post that was going around that i did lol).

Coming soon/not yet started: tbh see above answer bc it’s pretty much the same lol.

Prompts?: so the thing about prompts is that i would LOVE to take them, but it’s very very tricky bc i’m a super specific kind of gal and if i don’t vibe with the prompt it’s very difficult for me to write anything for it. but then there’s also the fact that inspiration/motivation are fickle bitches and they come and go as they please and so taking prompts is hard bc i never know if the stars will align and all that jazz for me to be in the ~ right mood ~ to work on a prompt. this is the exact reason why i have SO MANY sitting in my inbox right now, and i feel so bad for just letting them sit there but ughhh brain function?? how?? lol

Upcoming work you’re most excited about: sooooo i don’t necessarily have any specific works in progress right now (i’ve been so busy lately that writing has been the last thing on my mind and so i haven’t touched anything in weeks) but. i guess if i can ever get my shit together and finish the primo fic i’m close to finishing i’m pretty excited to post that! or honestly if i can actually get myself to finish any of the tog wips i have i’d be suuuper excited to post any of those bc i have not yet posted any tog fics!!

anways!! if you made it to this point thanks for sticking w me and reading through my long winded rambly answers lmao

Tagging: @peachykoya @wandering-scholar-lad @raynertodd @cluelessheroes @pinesboi @thewolvesrunwild @1derspark

#tag game #my wips #mack writes

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deeahhnuh · 5 years ago

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2019!

I've done this year-in-review thing since 2007! 2007-2012 are over on my old LiveJournal, and 2013-on are right here on my Tumblr. :)

2020. 2020! That year sounds space-age or something lol, and not like it's just, well, tomorrow. Happy New Year, Tumblr!

What did you do in 2019 that you'd never done before?

Not too much, lol! I guess I just kept doing the things I usually do, but tried to do them better/improve them (when it comes to work!), or do more of them (fun times and family times!).

Did you keep your New Years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Every year I mention that I don't really make New Year's resolutions - more like little goals all year! - but hey, it's a new decade! This year I think I will make a resolution that I will hold myself to. In 2020, I resolve to work hard - like really hard - on being healthy! Eat right, exercise, lose weight, work on maintaining less stress - be good to myself! I know everyone makes that kind of resolution, but it's a good one for a reason. :)

Did anyone close to you give birth?

Aw, no new babies this year!

Did anyone close to you die?

Sadly, yes... my uncle (my dad's oldest brother) passed away in May. ♥ We also lost a beloved neighbor in August.

What countries did you visit?

Lol, none!

What would you like to have in 2020 that you lacked in 2019?

I seemed to lack the ability to chill this year, haha - I stressed out about everything! :O So I’m ready to go with the flow better in 2020!

What date(s) from 2019 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Can’t think of any big dates, but this December marked 5 years since I graduated (and gave a speech at the departmental ceremony, to toot my own horn lol!) from the University of Maryland! Time is bizarre - 5 years feels both forever ago and also not that far back!

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I’ve been working in the registrar’s office at a community college for three years now! I love it, and I’m proud of the work I do!! :)

What was your biggest failure?

Everything’s a learning experience of course lol, but thankfully I didn’t goof too bad this year! ;)

Did you suffer illness or injury?

Oh my goodness, I started off the year with a thumping in my right ear (the name for it is “pulsatile tinnitus” - which somehow makes it sound scary!). :O Happily, that mess dissipated in a few months’ time, but it sure did worry (and annoy) me! Other than that - all good! :)

What was the best thing you bought?

I was very fortunate this year to buy a few things that really made me smile!

I do love a perfume! Dior Addict is a stunning, spicy vanilla (I love ‘em sweet!) that really hits the spot.

I’m also pleased, on the “I stan goofy dance music” front, to have found a couple of old Ministry of Sound compilations that I’ve had bookmarked on Amazon for awhile - they came back in stock this year and I snatched ‘em up. Anthems Sound of Dubstep (2012) is brash and obnoxious fun, and Sessions Ten (2013) is slightly less brash but just as obnoxious so I love it. They’re both releases from the Australian arm of MOS!

Oh and one of my fave used record stores had a copy of one of DJ Rap’s “Bad Girl” CD singles with mixes I didn’t have; I was kinda shocked to see it and very very happy to buy it! It was only 99 cents. Wow!! I do like a ridiculous deal! :)

Whose behavior merited celebration?

My mom is amazing, as always, and so are my dad and brother! I love my fam!!

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

No one!

Where did most of your money go?

See above - my more frivolous spending went toward perfume and goofy dance tunes, haha!

What did you get really, really, really excited about?

I will never, ever forget opening a very special present for Christmas this year. I love and adore It’s a Wonderful Life, and I even wrote a paper about it in college. I used a fabulous book as one of my sources - The It’s a Wonderful Life Book by Jeanine Basinger - and since then I’ve always had it in the back of my mind to purchase it someday. It’s a fantastic keepsake kinda thing for a fan of the movie. Unfortunately it always seemed to be out of stock, or way too expensive to consider, so over time I kind of just put it on the back burner.

But just a few days ago on Christmas morning as we all opened gifts, I tore wrapping paper off a box, pulled off the box top, and bam - there it was. Decorative tissue paper obscured it, but I could see the book cover peeking through - The It’s a Wonderful Life Book! My mama, the best mama, found this awesome book for me! My Christmas - my year! - was made! ♥

What song will always remind you of 2019?

Here’s a Spotify playlist of the songs that I loved this year; most are old releases lol. New(er) songs and albums I loved this year:

“Like Sugar” by Chaka Khan. Funky!

“Lost in the Fire” by Gesaffelstein feat. The Weeknd. Cool and atmospheric!

“Lights Up” by Harry Styles. Boy band guy makes good lol! Great tune.

Mazy Fly (2019) by SPELLLING. Dark, richly layered, weird, beautiful.

The Destroyer - 1 and The Destroyer - 2 (2019) by TR/ST. Two EP-ish releases that make up a whole album-ish listen. The Destoyer - 1 slightly edges out the second release, but I just like hearing so much synthy TR/ST goodness!

Compared to this time last year (2018), are you:

Doin' all right, and hopeful for a great start to 2020!

What do you wish you'd done more of?

Listen to more albums - new or old! The last few years I seem to listen to a handful of albums a year, then spend the rest of my music-listening time playing dance music compilations. Ah well, maybe I'll catch up on my massive "to listen" list in the next decade lol!

What do you wish you'd done less of?

Stress (see above lol) - but I'm def working on it! :)

How did you spend Christmas?

Family time!! ♥

What was the most embarrassing thing that happened to you in 2019?

Nothing, yay lol!

How many one-night stands?

None lol

What was your favorite TV program?

My silly cartoons! Family Guy, American Dad, Bob's Burgers, and SpongeBob SquarePants (lol idk, nostalgia is hard to kick!) still make me laugh even though I am otherwise a perfectly reasonable adult. :)

Bravo's Real Housewives - all of 'em! - crack me up and bring the totally ridiculous drama!

The Orville is fantastic, one of my fave more recent shows. I love the cast! Each episode really adds to their stories and builds the show's world. Looking forward to the next season!

Emergence is a great new sci-fi show with a strong cast - especially the sensible, big-hearted lead Allison Tolman - and suspenseful storyline!

I haven't seen the first season, and to be honest I don't think I'd be able to explain what the heck it's actually about because I'm easily confused, but American Gods caught my attention this year! The cast is excellent - even if the plot escaped me, lol, I really got into the characters.

And What We Do In The Shadows! Such a delight!!

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2019?

I love a classic, slightly minimal style, but I'm just happy to look decently put-together lol!

What kept you sane?

My fam, my entertainment stuff (music, movies, TV, magazines), working with wonderful colleagues... ♥

Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

No! :O

What was the best book you read in 2019?

The It’s a Wonderful Life Book was probably the best book I read (well, most of it!) this decade. ♥

What was your greatest musical discovery?

SPELLLING is awesome - definitely an artist I'm excited to hear more from!!

What did you want and get?

I won't say The It’s a Wonderful Life Book again! :)

On a more serious note, I had my first MRIs in a while for MS maintenance - my previous neurologist retired and my new doctor wanted to get a baseline. I was very, very anxious about getting the results. My former doctor last ordered an MRI in 2011, so this was definitely a good and highly necessary step, but very nerve-wracking! I'm so fortunate to not be experiencing symptoms - and haven't since my initial occurrence of optic neuritis in '09 (though I was actually diagnosed with MS in 2011) - but what might the MRIs (brain and T- and C-spine) reveal?

I wanted to receive good results - a report of stability, not progression. And would you believe it? I did. My (amazing!) neurologist gave me the greatest news I had all year - stable, no new lesions, all good!! Of course this is for now - who knows about the future? - but I'm thrilled, and thankful. As this year ends and I reflect on all the good, this takes the cake!!

What did you want and not get?

Pffft, nothin' lol! I've got so many lovely things and reasons to be thankful - who could ask for more?!

What was your favorite film of this year?

Lol I did not see many new movies, but of the '19 films I saw, my fave was Knives Out! I only just saw it yesterday - what a fun way to close out the year! Fantastic cast, clever story, funny - just all-around entertainment.

I also loved Yesterday. All the Beatles references and the obvious affection for the group and their fans just felt like a great big hug! So good!

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

Girl I'm well and truly a thirty-something now - 33!! I had fun! I did lots of little fun things with my fam - like shopping, watching movies, that kind of good stuff!

What three things would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Like I said above - who could ask for more? Not me! :)

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I'm late to the David Harbour bandwagon - but better late than never!

And also Daniel Craig in Knives Out was a good thing.

What political issue stirred you the most?

Ew, there's something stirring like every hour or so.

Who did you miss?

Losing my grandmother at the end of last year really colored a lot of this year... and then losing my uncle added more shadows. ♥♥♥

What is a valuable life lesson you learned in 2019?

I always answer this one with a twist on the Pet Shop Boys song title and my life philosophy - "Happiness is an option." So here we go! The chorus of the song acknowledges that "it is not easy," and some times are definitely like that. This year had those moments, and next year will too, because that's how life is! It is often not easy.

But! The last bit of the chorus follows "it is not easy" with "happiness is an option." Things can stink, but they can be okay too. That's what "happiness is an option" has always meant to me, and it means that just as much this year. Maybe even more!!

What quote can be used to sum up your year?

See above haha! "Happiness is an option” has been my fave quote for years, and I’m gonna keep on living it! :)

#year #deeahhnuh #2019

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megannicoledesire-blog · 5 years ago

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I think that any new blog should start out as if no other blog had previously existed. Many may be wondering why I removed my main blog while others may wonder who I am exactly. A fresh start was needed; one cannot always pick up where they left off. I am not that person anymore. We can always look back out our former selves but they are memories, no longer existing.

Life is a constant process of change and hopefully within that change there is growth. So many things have shaped me between now and then. Some of these things were seemingly negative and dark and some were beautiful and light. Nevertheless, here I am. We humans have been conditioned to see things as either a negative or a positive instead of accepting the neutral- some things just simply are. Labels confuse and place expectations on outcomes instead of allowing us to focus on what the actual outcomes are themselves.

So who am I? If you have never heard of me or followed me on other social media, then let me introduce you to who I am now. I am first and foremost a mother. I am a model. I own a modeling company that produces multimedia content. I am a former dancer and current dancing coach as well as fitness trainer. I am a former wrestler who still dabbles within that realm from time to time. I have worn many hats in my lifetime but these are the constants that have stayed with me throughout the different phases in my life.

That was quite a lot of “I statements” for one paragraph but they are not written out of ego. These are pieces of the whole. These days I try to stay humble and not toot my own horn, instead I use my skills and experiences within these broken down categories of my life to help and inspire others. My life’s mission is to motivate others and aid them in seeking out their own successes without trying to take credit for their accomplishments.

In my former life, before I was a victim of domestic abuse, I wrote all the time. There was a time when I was able to pour out my emotions and thoughts like a rushing brook. There has been so much damage done to my psyche and to my heart and root chakras that I have been experiencing the worst types of writer’s blocks. Throughout my life there has been trauma but never has any of it been able to stifle me until then. As I continue to heal and understand the ordeals I went through, I am able to power through with the help of my usually overactive throat chakra.

A lot of people do not like the term ”victim” but that is what I WAS. Now, I am a SURVIVOR. I choose actively to not stay in that place and to close that door. Trauma binds us to the timeline where we experienced it until we can cope and move on. Though some days are better than others, I am not in that place anymore. A concept even harder than moving out of that state was to also understand that where I am no longer a victim, I am also no longer the person I was before that trauma. Knowing this, looking back on my former self, I can still remember the qualities that made me the amazing human being I was before someone crushed and destroyed her and utilize them to find the person I am now.

My greatest hope is to inspire others who have suffered domestic abuse to rise above that trauma and become the people they were born to be. Grieve the person you once were, grieve the person that was hurt so badly, and welcome your own rebirth into something even more beautiful than your old self could fathom. It is by grand design that we experience these traumas in order to shape us into greater beings, to be in service to others.

So that is why I removed my old blog. That is why my website is undergoing major changes. I shed all my old followers and removed my ego from my work. It is still okay to celebrate the memories of my past achievements but I cannot live in the midst of old victories and not then work towards new ones. A lot that I do now is for others and not for myself. I am able to live out my dreams in new aspects of my industries and allow others to take the spotlight and shine. It is just as rewarding to aid in someone else’s journey as to reach a peak on your own.

#megannicoledesire #megan nicole desire #thetoxicdiva #thetoxicdivacom #the toxic diva #model #modeling #entrepreneur #boss #bossbabe #diamonddiva #diamond diva #diamonddivamedia #diamond diva media #oregon #domestic abuse #domesticabuse #survivor #influencer

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lronhusbands · 8 years ago

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Raise A Glass to Freedom

@kahuna-burger said:

I wanna read more stories where Barnes is free of HYDRA’s control after TWS, but he’s still the Winter Soldier. Like, his memories are coming back, but they’re memories of 70 years ago, and he’s changed a lot since then. And when he runs into Steve (working as a mercenary for anyone but HYDRA) he’s got some residual fondness and doesn’t wanna kill him, but the “this isn’t you, Bucky, please, come back to yourself,” bit pisses him off. (And Tony getting it and winteriron)

The Asset looked back at the blonde on the shore of Potomac, there was something about him, something familiar shifting around in the back of his head. He wasn’t quite ready to pull that thread. It was too much too soon. For now, he had to get away from HYDRA. He wasn’t theirs anymore.

The Asset kept journals for his memories. He had a lot of them know. They were fuzzy, and most of the time he felt like her couldn’t properly grasp on to them. He wrote them down to keep them with him. To remind himself that at one point in time, seventy years ago, he’d been a real person.

He read about himself in the Smithsonian. His name had been James Buchanan Barnes, he went by Bucky. At that time it had felt like he was reading about someone else’s life. Then the memories came.

He had been a real person.

The Asset remembered the man he used to be. He wasn’t that man anymore. After seventy years of having his brain scrambled and having other people use him to be a mindless assassin, it was impossible to go back to the man he used to be. But he could figure out who he was supposed to be, a new man.

The Asset started to call himself James. James was safe. His old name, Bucky, it held too many connotations. James tried to call himself Bucky at first, but he wasn’t Bucky anymore, it didn’t make sense to keep calling himself that. James was a better fit. James was something new. James could be anyone he wanted to be.

James moved to Bucharest. He had an apartment and worked at a small store. It was a chance to figure out who he was.

James gave himself missions sometimes, when he had nothing else to do. He would go take down HYDRA cells. He felt as it was the best form of revenge. Take everything they did to him, take the Winter Soldier, and use it to tear them down.

It was on one of those self-given missions that he met Steve Rogers. James didn’t want to kill him. He had lost that urge the moment HYDRA had been burnt to the ground. There was even a little bit of fondness for the blonde. Or… for the kid he used to be. James remembered him just a little.

“Bucky!”

James blinked and looked over at Steve Rogers. He remembered a scrawny kid that never backed down from a fight. He didn’t remember this new giant.

��Is this where you’ve been this whole time?” Steve demanded.

James frowned. Steve was his old friend. From seventy years ago. The man in front of him now didn’t feel like the Steve he used to know. Maybe he could use a new name as well.

“Yes,” James said slowly.

Steve- no, the Captain- moved forward and hugged James. James didn’t know how to react. Had it been the old Steve he might have been more inclined to hug back. But this was not his old Steve. The Captain pulled away from him, huge smile on his face. James could only muster up a small smile in return.

“What are you doing out there? You gotta come home Buck,” the Captain said.

There was that name again. Bucky. Clearly the Captain still saw him as his old friend. But James was not.

“Home?” James asked.

Home was his small apartment in Bucharest. With the kind old lady who lived beneath him and always gave him a slice of whatever pie she decided to bake that week. James already decided that he would gladly take a bullet for her.

“New York! We’re all at Stark Tower right now. You’d love it there Bucky,”

Stark Tower. Tony Stark lived there. James killed Howard and Maria. He had been trying to make amends for seventy years of assassinations, mainly by taking down HYDRA cells, but perhaps he should apologize to Tony.

“It’ll be just like old times,”

How could it be just like old times if neither of them were the same person they used to be.

James tried to tell the Captain that he wasn’t Bucky anymore. But the Captain kept insisting that he was, that nothing had to change. He seemed convinced that they could go back to the way things were before James fell. They couldn’t. They were to different. The Captain didn’t want to listen to James.

The Captain was right about Stark Tower, it was amazing. James had never seen anything like it. Not even during his time with HYDRA. James liked Stark Tower. He made sure to jot that down in one of his journals. He had one where he jotted down everything he liked. There wasn’t a lot on there. He was still figuring himself out.

The Captain brang him to Tony Stark’s lab. James was greeted by three different robots. They were fascinating things. They beeped and chirped and tapped on his metal arm with enthusiasm.

“Back! The lot of you! Stop crowding him you fucking children!”

It was Tony Stark who shooed the bots away. James took a moment to study him. He looked a lot like his father, Howard, but James could see some of Maria in him. He had ridiculous brown eyes, and a very intricate goatee. To James, it seemed a tiny bit unnecessary and a little extra. It suited him.

“Sorry about them, they’re usually so well behaved but when someone new walks in… well… they’re like puppies,” Tony said.

James looked at the bots for a moment. He felt a smile tug up on his lips.

“I like them,”

“That won’t last long,”

“So what brings you to my lab, Buckaroo?” Tony asked.

James didn’t bother correcting him. He didn’t want Tony to take it like the Captain did. James didn’t like that.

“He brought me here,” James replied.

“Rogers,” Tony said.

James nodded.

“How’s your arm? I doubt you’ve had it serviced since HYDRA fell, and not to toot my own horn but I’m pretty good at this whole mechanical thing,” Tony said.

“It glitches,” James admitted.

“Let’s take a look at it,”

He moved toward James but James jerked back. He had to tell Tony. Tony paused, worry flitting across his face.

“There’s something you gotta know,” James said.

Tony looked at him expectantly. James steeled himself to try and ready himself to tell Tony that he’d killed his parents.

“I killed them,”

Tony said nothing, he just continued staring at James.

“They told me to, so I obeyed orders,”

“You killed my mom?” Tony whispered.

“No witnesses,” James replied.

“I understand if you don’t want me here,”

“You’re going to have to give me some time to accept that,” his voice was flat, devoid of emotion.

“I’m sorry,”

My name is James Buchanan Barnes. These are the things I like:

1. Peach cobbler 2. The market in Bucharest 3. Fuzzy socks 4. Cats 5. Music from the 40′s 6. Killing HYDRA agents 7. Cooking 8. Movies 9. Flowers 10. Stark Tower 11. U 12. Butterfingers 13. Dum-E

It was three weeks before James saw Tony again. In that time he was introduced to the rest of the Avengers. He had a few memories of Natasha, but not many. The majority of the Avengers were wary of him. He didn’t mind. He was wary of them.

He liked Bruce. Bruce was nice. Bruce called him James and didn’t seem to mind when James joined in on his yoga sessions.

James tried to stay away from Rhodey. The Air Force Colonel was best friends with Tony and wasn’t overly pleased with James at the moment. James didn’t blame him in the slightest.

James started to see a therapist. Bruce said it would help.

22. Bruce Banner 23. Yoga

“Sergeant Barnes, the sir would like to see you in his lab,” JARVIS said.

James looked up, mildly surprised. JARVIS rarely spoke to him. He made his way to Tony’s lab and the door hissed open on it’s own. Tony was at his workbench. One of the bots hurried over to James and greeted him with a poke on his metal arm. It was U.

“Hello,” James said quietly.

He patted the bot gently and it chirped. Tony turned from the table to face James.

“Hello Bucky,”

“James,” it flew out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

“What?” Tony asked.

“James,”

“Bucky… I’m not him anymore. People call me Bucky like I’m the same person I was before HYDRA, but I’m not. I don’t know exactly who I am, but it’s not Bucky,” James told him.

“Ok,” Tony said simply.

“James. I can’t forgive you for what you did to my mom. But I know you were brainwashed when it happened,” Tony took a shuddering breath.

“Is your arm still glitching?”

“Yes,” he said quietly.

“Alright, sit down, I have to attach some sensors to your arm so I can get data,”

28. Tony working on my arm

Tony explained everything he was doing to James. James was nervous at first. But Tony was gentle, and kind, and always asked permission before he did something to the arm. Bruce joined them halfway through to help Tony. It took them a few hours to finish up their work on the arm, but when they finished it felt a lot better than it had.

“Let me know if something feels wrong,” Tony said.

“Thank you,” James said.

“It’s nothing,”

James wasn’t ashamed to say he was trying to avoid the Captain. It was draining to be around him. The Captain kept bringing up old memories, he kept expecting James could be the same man he used to be. That man was dead and gone and the Captain didn’t seem to understand that. So James avoided him. Instead he spent more and more time with Bruce, Tony, Sam, and even Rhodey. It seemed to make the Captain sad.

“What’d you make this time Jamesy?” Tony asked.

“Fajita’s,” James replied.

“The others?” was his next question.

“Bruce has a time sensitive experiment, and Colonel Rhodes and Sam are training. I saved them both some food,” James responded.

“Then it’s just you and me tonight sweetcheeks,”

James smiled a real smile. Tony grinned back.

“God damn James, these are fucking good,”

James’ cheeks felt warm at the praise. That was a new reaction to one of Tony’s praises. This was something he would have to bring up to his therapist.

43. JARVIS 44. Eating with Tony 45. Tony giving me nicknames 46. Tony Stark 47. Watching movies with Tony 48. Tony’s smile 49. Tony Stark

“Movie night sweetcheeks, you wanna come?”

James looked up from his journal where he’d been detailing the latest memory to assault him. There was a smile on Tony’s face. He looked like he’d just woken up.

“You don’t have to,” Tony said.

“No, I’m just about finished,” James said, he closed his journal and tucked it away in his desk.

“New memory?” Tony guessed.

“About my sister. Rebecca,” James told him.

Slowly they made their way down the hallway to the communal living room.

“You had a sister?”

“Don’ remember her too well,” James admitted.

“If it’s ok with you, James, I can have JARVIS look into her. He can tell you if she’s… ah… well-”

“Thank you,” James said.

“That’d be real nice,”

They made it to the communal living room. The Captain greeted James enthusiastically, called him Bucky while he spoke.

“His name is James,” Tony said.

The smile on the Captain’s face slipped away.

“He’s always been Bucky!” the Captain protested.

“I’m not the man I used to be. I’m not Bucky. He died on the ice,” James said slowly.

He was frustrated. He just wanted the Captain to understand that he wasn’t the same person he used to be.

“But you can be Buck!”

“But I’m not. I’m sorry you can’t understand that. I don’t know who I am but I’m trying to figure it out! You should try to get to know this me instead of hanging onto the old me,” James said.

His therapist was right. He should have told this to the Captain a long time ago instead of just bottling up his frustration. The Captain seemed at loss for words. James walked out of the communal living room.

It was Tony who found him in the gym. His knuckles were bloody and raw, and the remains of three punching bags littered the floor. He cooled himself down with a few yoga stretches.

“Is he angry with me?” James asked.

“He’s upset,” Tony replied.

“It’s about fucking time you told him to fuck off. You have the right to be your own damn person,” Tony said.

James smiled at him. Tony sat down next to him and for a few moments the two were silent.

“My therapist said I should have done that earlier,”

“Yea?”

Tony didn’t think very highly of the study of psychology. There seemed to be a lot of guesswork to it. But if it was working for James then it must have some merits.

“What else did your therapist say?”

“That I should probably ask you to be my fella before I miss my chance,” James replied easily.

“Then why haven’t you?” Tony demanded.

“You wanna be my fella?”

“Thought you’d never ask,”

James smiled and rested his head on Tony’s shoulder. Tony kissed the top of his head.

fin

#kahuna burger #my writing #winteriron #Tony x Bucky #Tony Stark #Bucky Barnes #Steve Rogers #Bruce Banner #JARVIS #the bots #marvel #fan fic #therhodeynet

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katesficnotes · 5 years ago

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For the ask: 1, 3 & 15 for Wild for to Hold!

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

I did toy with writing this other ways!!

For a time, I thought of pursuing an epistolary approach to the story (since, for most of it, there’re lots of ppl away from one another, etc.), but I found 1) I wanted to delve into the characters’ minds in ways they might not write down 2) I’m really frickin lazy hahaha and for whatever reason this more standard approach is easier for me - esp bc I can feel a little more content w myself in writing more modernized dialogue rather than letters: since I’ve never heard a Tudor person speak to me, I can pretend its ok accuracy-wise, whereas I can read Tudor letters and KNOW they don’t sound like that hahaha I’m a perfectionist and I torture myself w these weird details that I fully realize matter to no one else hahaha But I’m ultimately glad I didn’t do that. I don’t think the story would’ve flowed as well since, that way, you’re always removed from the action ++ you know certain things: for instance, whoever’s writing the letter had enough time to experience said event AND write it down, so they’re probably alive, etc.

The other thing I thought of doing - and almost did!! - was writing it in present tense. Actually, a lot of the earlier chapters I initially wrote in present tense and then went back to edit into past tense. I actually sometimes wish I had stuck with the present tense for certain scenes - for others I’m glad I didn’t. I write differently, depending on the tense in which I’m writing idk hahaha which works better for some things than others.

I did also struggle with where to begin the story, proper! I thought about following the journeys of the entire Tudor family during their exile and of showcasing the transition from rebel!Perkin to king!Richard and his consolidation of power, regal priorities, etc. As you can see, the story is way long enough withOUT all of that so that was the primary reason for cutting it and going with the time-jump to the Tudor bros arriving in France hahaha

3: What’s your favorite line of narration?

WOW!! Truth be told, I’ve written 201,564 words of this fic and probs remember a whole fifteen of them and most of that’s dialogue hahaha ;DDDD But I mean...I won’t lie to you...almost every chapter I have some lil nugget I’m quite proud of hahaha and if its not too spoilery for the given chapter, that’s generally what I put in the chapter description hahaha so reading those will give you a collection of my favorite quotes, for the most part, but yeah!!

So I LOVE this question bc it has me analyzing my own writing which is GREAT bc I’m gonna get to the editing segment of this project soon so I need to be up for that!!!!!!! Again, not to toot my own horn hahaha but I do have a number of narration quotes I quite enjoy - I mean, there’re nearly 100 chapters!! which is nuts!! so I’m glad I feel that way hahah - so I narrowed it down to my more recent chapters to find a quote and here it is!!

Her husbands all were dead and now, so was she, dead and buried and already replaced. It seemed so strange and so predictable: she’d replaced her own husbands again and again and another time yet: now it was her time to be covered over and forgotten. This, too, was her duty: to give way to another woman…even one born from so small an estate as the one that was coming. Yes, Anne would replace Catherine as Catherine once had replaced Elizabeth and on and on and on it went. Perhaps Elizabeth was right. Perhaps, even now, they all lived only in the memories of those who once had known them.

Which...small ironies bc we know, historically CoA DID give way to Anne Boleyn as Queen of England but, given the v different circumstances, seeing it in opposition of (many things hahah including) her duty, she wouldn’t relent whereas here it is in alignment with (many things including) her duty, so she ~does. I try, w this fic, always to be mindful of what really did happen, even while building a different sequence of events.

15: What did you learn from writing this fic?

So much!!!!! I’ve just...learned so, so much! For one, keeping to a v strict routine and schedule (I MUST have a chapter by midnight on Saturdays each week unless I have a very good reason why not - such reasons being limited to v srs situations such as deaths in the family, etc) works really well for me!! Things like, powering through writer’s block is the only way to get shit done!! Things like...writing about the real stuff can ultimately be super healing even when it hurts, hurts, hurts!! Things like: I am actually capable of finishing a book. I’m not there yet, but I can see the finish line, I can almost touch it, it’s so close (now, watch, it’ll take me two years to write the ending jk jk ;DDDD) And that’s not even counting alllllll the research I’ve done for this! I mean, not to toot my own horn here, but I knew a LOT of things going into this, particularly about Henry and Anne, but woW will I come out of it knowing things esp about Perkin Warbeck!! The whole thing has just been such a ride, really, I’m not gonna know what to do with myself when it’s over!! ;DDDD

#wfth

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ntrending · 6 years ago

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Why our devices make the sounds they make

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/why-our-devices-make-the-sounds-they-make/

Why our devices make the sounds they make

Brian Eno was in a rut. The English artist had built a career producing legendary acts like David Bowie, The Talking Heads, and U2. But in the early 1990s, “I was completely bereft of ideas,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I’d been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually.”

Then Microsoft called.

At that time, the Redmond, Washington-based technology company was preparing to launch Windows 95, it’s most user-friendly operating system to date. And they need a startup song, for the moments between a user pressing the “on” button and the computer actually being ready to use.

“The thing from the agency said, ‘We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,’ this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said ‘and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long,’” Eno told the Chronicle. “In fact, I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music.”

The instantly-iconic end result clocked in at 6 seconds long and had a vaguely Mr. Rogers-ish sensibility. By December 1995, it was playing for a staggering 100 million Windows 95 users.

The project, which Eno says liberated him from his creative block, marked an important moment in the increasingly close relationship between our devices and our ears. While we rarely reflect on the sounds our laptops, cell phones, and tablets make—and few today play “piece[s] of music” quite like Eno’s Windows 95 composition—every click, clack, and whoosh is crafted crafted. Across platforms, software engineers, user experience designers, and sound branding experts share a common goal: to help us make sense of our technology, and keep us coming back for more.

Age of the earcon

Companies have use sounds to subtly reinforce their brand’s message for almost a century. Early examples include the NBC chimes, which received the first trademark for sound alone from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and MGM’s lions, which first roared in 1928.

But the field really rose to prominence in the 1990s, alongside the rapid development of new consumer technology. Phone companies may have all offered the same service, but they wanted to stand out from their competitors, and hopefully draw more customers in the process.

“There’s a huge element of branding with sound,” says Karen Kaushansky, a user experience designer with more than 20 years of experience. “When you’re building a product for a certain company, what is the meaning we want to put into that sound? And does the brand itself have some audio characteristics or components that can go into the sound?”

In the late 1980s, Apple was faced with its own sonic branding problem. Every time Macintosh computers rebooted, they played called “the devil’s interval.” “It’s any two tones that are three whole steps apart and played at the same time, like middle C plus the F# above it,” the authors of The Sonic Boom: How Sound Transforms the Way We Think, Feel, and Buy explained. “It’s disconcerting, provoking a feeling of agitation and anxiety.”

So Jim Reekes, one of Apple’s engineers, decided to change it. “I thought, I gotta have this meditative sound,” Reekes told The Sonic Boom authors Joel Beckerman with Tyler Gray. “I used to joke about it being a palate cleanser for the ears.” He found what he was looking for in a fading C-major chord in stereo. Company executives were opposed to the “earcon” (a word that means, roughly, “sound icon”), but Reekes managed to sneak his calming chord onto the Macintosh Quadra 700 computer, which debuted in 1991, anyway. Just as Reekes anticipated, the sound was a hit with users.

Attention-seeking design

Sound has proven a natural fit in a UX designer’s attention-grabbing toolkit. Bright colors and lights keep our eyeballs hooked, and variable content means our brain’s itch is never totally scratched. It’s even easier to attract our ears. “The specific range, where a baby cries—a lot of devices are tuned to that frequency,” says Amber Case, a user experience designer and author of the forthcoming book, Designing Products with Sound: Principles and Patterns for Mixed Environments with Aaron Day.

The Marimba ringtone is just one example of sound design capitalizing on our sensitivity to these frequencies. In the 1950s, Bell Labs, which grew out of telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell’s research facilities, was hard at work studying ringers. They tested sounds of all stripes, from musical trills to buzzers. They found that sounds in the range of human hearing that pulsed from near-silence to full sound over a period of 3 to 5 seconds were most successful at capturing our attention.

The Marimba meets all of these criteria, which is why it became one of iPhone’s most successful ringtones. “The sound is unique enough that the human brain could easily detect the sound even when layered in a crowded soundscape,” sound consultant Brian Rommelle wrote in a short history of the tone. “It is as annoying perhaps to us today as the original [B]ell telephone ringers were to our grandparents, but in the end, that’s the point.”

Sounds of the future

Sound design is also important in guiding a user through a potentially complicated interface. When an iPhone user types, for example, they hear a click-clack sound like the keys on a keyboard or typewriter. “You need to have these metaphors,” says Cliff Kuang, author of the forthcoming book “User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play” with Robert Fabricant. “This is how new experiences get introduced.”

The keyboard sound, and others like it, are examples of skeuomorphism, a common device that builds associations by mimicking an action’s real life counterpart. It’s the same principle behind the crumpling sound you hear when you put a document (that looks like a paper file) in a waste bin (that looks like a real garbage can, loaded with already crumpled papers) on a Macbook.

“The most famous examples among UX designers is the actual sound of the lock screen on an iPhone,” Kuang says. “It was an association between, ‘Oh, yeah, I can feel that lock snapping because I heard that sound.’ There was a sort of synesthesia to it.” Of course, brand still matters—every platform has their own sound dictionary, with slightly different dings and pings—but usability is at the core of this practice. “A whoosh is a whoosh is a whoosh, but everybody designs that swooping sound slightly differently,” Kuang says.

In recent years, some UX designers have begun to question whether sticking with the familiar skeuomorphic approach still works, or if it’s time make more useful and intuitive sounds from scratch. For her part, Kaushansky is currently hard at work on designing sonic experiences for robots and autonomous vehicles. When asked if driverless cars will mimic sounds in current cars, for nostalgia’s sake or the comfort of passengers and pedestrians, she’s skeptical.

“Horns are kind of dumb. There’s no meaning in the horn you hear. You hear a honk and look around, like, was that for me? There’s no way to know right now,” she says. “We could be doing a lot better job between a ‘toot toot’—a ‘thanks’—versus and ‘errr’—a ‘get out of the way!’”

By disentangling emerging technology from ineffectual practices of the past, Kaushansky thinks “we could make our roads safer, or better, or even more interesting.”

As certain chirps become familiar, tastes change, or design theory moves in a new direction, many sounds are eventually retired. Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 95 in 2001. And Apple phased out startup sounds for Macbooks in 2016. But the best earcons live on, in countless YouTube clips and the memories of old school users. And if designers and engineers have their way, the sounds currently under development for autonomous vehicles, robots, or revamped social media platforms will have the same effect on users of the future.

Written By Eleanor Cummins

#Technology

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balancednotclean-blog · 7 years ago

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Defining Who I Am

I came across a technique to find out what’s most important to you and who you are in the unlikeliest of places - the YouTube comments section. I actually feel ashamed in that I didn’t write down the name of the individual who shared this idea, but nonetheless - I shall discuss it anyway. Just give me no credit for it, because its conceptualisation was not from my mind, even if this application clearly links to my thoughts.

The concept itself focusses on creating a timeline of memories, beginning from when you were first aware of your existence. You should then analyse these memories to distinguish the reasons why they are so significant to you. The reason why then links to who you are as a person. Other memories which would have stuck in somebody else’s mind prominently may not have stuck in mine, and vice versa.

To make this really effective (rather than trying to dredge up every memory I’ve ever had), I’m going to use the first five memories I can think of, in whatever order I like.

In my blogging dashboard, I’m going to write down these five memories as headers first, and then flesh them out. However, you’ll read it as five distinct sections. Thank you for reading, by the way!

1. Being Thrown Against a Metal Fence

I was quite surprised that this was the first memory that popped into my head.

It actually relates to my second primary school. I was in Year Three - we had just moved up to Lincolnshire from Cambridgeshire in the summer, so I started my first day that September at a new primary school.

I remember I settled in fairly well, except for one person - let’s call her Hayley for anonymity (I’ve never known a Hayley in my life).

In this particular instance, I happened to be out in the playground. It was one of my first days at this new school, so I hadn’t quite integrated into a group of friends just yet, although a few friendly smiles had been passed around, and I was already settling into the work fairly easily (it was primary school stuff, after all!).

This school wasn’t very large. I’d say there was about 70 pupils IN TOTAL - not just in one class. 70 pupils, from Reception right up to Year 6. It was a tiny school, and in many ways I think that’s what made the bullying more of a shock. Although it would be feasible that there’d be fewer people with similar interests, I thought there’d also be fewer people who would be inclined to bully! Guess I was wrong there - because one person in particular took a real dislike to me.

So much so, that I remember strongly how she grabbed me and threw me against some solid, metal railings several times the very first time she met me. Over and over. I can feel the rattling of my body against the cold steel now. My skeleton jolted with every lunge.

I can’t actually remember quite how it stopped. I remember that a few people were just sort of watching - not directly, as such, but in the corner of their eyes as they played Stuck in the Mud - but none of them intervened. I had a feeling that Hayley may have lashed out at them at some stage, but I have no proof of that. Still, that particular episode did end, and in lessons and suchlike I was very happy.

Her behaviour as a whole remained hostile and unapproachable, however. But one thing I’ll forever remain proud of is how when I went home, I explained exactly what was happening to my parents, and I wrote the school council a letter. I wrote it on a piece of bright yellow paper with a blue crayon, and essentially described (in Year 3, 7 and a half year old language) how this behaviour was unacceptable, and I wanted it to stop.

It did stop, and actually, my classmates started to reject her. They completely turned their back on her, and were quite mean to her for our remaining three years at that school. Unhappy events still occurred at that school (that I have discussed briefly in previous blog posts, particularly to do with the eve of my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and food problems), but not because of her. I’m actually filled with guilt now when I think back to that, as I didn’t stand in to stop them turning on her like they did. I know she was cruel to me, and that perhaps in some way I should feel like justice was delivered, but I do not. I almost feel like I made her life worse than she ever made mine, simply because I became friends with everybody else, and we all excluded her.

Why does this stick in my mind?

The physical pain of it has to be why it sprung to mind at first, but equally the regret now leaves an emotional scar. I’ll never forget that look on Hayley’s face when I was standing at a bus stop in Year 8, and I saw her bus drive past. She was looking out of the window with one of the most sorrowful expressions I’ve ever seen in a human being.

How does it relate to who I am today?

In terms of bullying as a whole, I am wholly against it. I seek to comfort people and treat people well, because I know what it feels like to be an outcast. That goes for some of my experiences at secondary school as well, not just at primary school. I try my best to be a good person, especially since I have reflected upon how I perhaps could have done better in terms of reconciling with Hayley (rather than leading to her being shunned).

How does it relate to who I want to be?

I want to make sure that I have thought through my actions so that I do not just think of myself, but think of others too. I want to help others build their self confidence, regardless of if they were the bully, or the person that was bullied.

2. Swimming As a Baby

I don’t think this is an organic memory, because I see myself floating in third person. Clearly, if this were an organic memory, I’d be seeing it through my own eyeballs. It is therefore likely that I have constructed this through what I’ve been told by family.

My mother is there, and I’m floating with those armband thingimabobs doughnutted around my flobbiling baby limbs (do you like my word inventions?). II have a big smile on my face, and a mop of curly black hair splatted on my head (it is wet, after all).

That’s the extent of that particular memory, however it does link to my later meanderings into swimming as a child. Although I had to stop due to my health, I was actually a very successful swimmer for my age and had a lot of talent (not tooting my own horn or anything here, by the way ;-)).

Why does this stick in my mind?

I suppose I see this as the first real example of where sport and activity was integrated into my (family) life from a very young age.

How does it relate to who I am today?

I love being active, and whenever my health has prevented me from being active, I have been deeply upset. I now weight train regularly, both as a mental release and as a way of staying strong despite my diagnosis of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

How does it relate to who I want to be?

If I ever have any family of my own, I want to guide them to be active from a young age. Professionally, I see myself having activity as a keystone of my career - with my first goal being getting qualified as a personal trainer. As for myself personally, I want to remain as active as I can for as long as I can in relation to my health.

3. Asking For Help to Learn How to Bench Press

A lifting-related memory was also one that immediately sprung to mind today. When I first started weight training, just after my sixteenth birthday, I had no clue how to bench press.

I swaggered (read: meekly shuffled) into the gym, and plucked up the courage to ask a personal trainer how exactly you are supposed to bench press.

This particular personal trainer was extremely kind - she spent more time than she had to showing me exactly what to do. I remember this was before this gym had been renovated, and they had odd-numbered weights - my barbell was 17kg, and that’s what I started bench pressing with before I moved up to the proper bench press station.

Why does this stick in my mind?

My upper body has always been weak, and recently I’ve been improving considerably in my upper body strength. It’s crazy to think how shy I used to be in the gym, when now I’m probably obnoxiously loud at times!

How does this relate to who I am today?

Bench pressing is now actually my favourite exercise in the gym, despite my love for squats, deadlifts and hip thrusts too. It has to be because it felt like the underdog exercise to me. I love it with dumbbells too - not just a barbell.

How does this relate to who I want to be?

I clearly want to keep getting stronger and stronger, both mentally and physically. I remember people telling me that girls ‘don’t get strong upper bodies’, and I wanted to prove them wrong. I want to keep proving them wrong, and I want to keep pushing myself to limits I wouldn’t have ever imagined would be real for me.

4. Admitting My Anorexia

We’re jumping around ages here somewhat, but that’s fine. Back to… fourteen, I think this is? Maybe thirteen. I truly can’t remember the when as much as I can the what. I wouldn’t be surprised if my anorexia damaged my memory capacity at this time somewhat.

Anyway, this was my first hospital appointment regarding my eating disorder. I think I’d been dragged to the doctors’ (after initially being confronted by my parents and being made to ‘confess’), and they almost immediately set up an appointment for me at Grimsby Hospital to speak to some specialists.

I was still at that stage then when I didn’t really believe that I had anorexia, and I wasn’t sure what the fuss was all about. I was hell bent on continuing the way I had, until eventually I died.

Except - at this hospital appointment, I think I must’ve had an angel of a doctor leading the consultation. I think she was a junior doctor, and I also have an inkling that perhaps she had shared similar troubles when she was fourteen. She kept it simple for me - kind and simple. Rather than making me utter the words ‘anorexia’, ‘anorexic’, ‘starve’, or any other related food - she structured her sentences carefully so that I would only have to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Even though these hidden utterances of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ still felt incredibly scary to say, they were masked enough to enable me to admit I had a problem. I could reply factually - yes - without having to acknowledge the diagnosis itself.

Why does this stick in my mind?

I think this appointment was the real turning point in my treatment and recovery from anorexia. I think she gave me just enough of a confidence boost to head forward with recovery.

How does this relate to who I am today?

Clearly, I’m not dead - I was able to adhere to my recovery from anorexia. And although I still have real, serious problems with an eating disorder and my mental health now, I am still firmly on the path of recovery. I also see her actions as an example of how people with mental health issues should be treated - with kindness, courtesy and a solid foundation of support.

How does this relate to who I want to be?

I want to be in a position where I can support others and help them reach a ‘turning point’ in their mental health journeys, so that they too can walk the road of recovery. Clichéd or otherwise, this would fulfil me more than anything.

5. When He Left Without Saying Goodbye

The final memory I have to share is another one from primary school - but this is one from Cambridgeshire, at my first primary. I will use a real name now, because I have no idea what his surname is, so if anybody else actually does know his surname, I’d be happy to get in touch and say hello again.

Anyway. I once had a best friend called Benjamin, and we were pretty much inseparable (at least at school). I view my time in Cambridgeshire with a huge amount of nostalgia, for this was the time that I was swimming, dancing, playing tennis and playing around at school with much joy and freedom.

I’d go to those awesome parties with Pass The Parcel, I’d play on trampolines and I’d build the best things with Duplo or Lego or a bunch of sticks and clay and mud. I’d climb over things (although I was never able to crack monkey bars) and otherwise treat life with that childish glee that I was lucky to have in a mostly peaceful and developed country.

However, my best friend Benjamin was to move away to America. I moved away myself at the end of Year 2, but Benjamin left at the start of Year 2. As a class, we made him a book of memories and I was the one that got to present it to him. I bloody bawled my eyes out, but at lunchtime we played together as normal and things seemed to be fine for a while.

But, at the end of the day, when I rushed to the gates to say goodbye to him, he had already left. I don’t think I’d taken too long at the cloakroom to grab my bag and coat, but he had already gone. Not on the playground, nor the field, nor under the chestnut trees, or on the winding path leading out of the school grounds. This was yet another small school - about 150 pupils in total here - so there weren’t many places he could be… but he had already gone.

I had already said goodbye, but I wanted to say goodbye again. I wanted to give him a hug. I wanted to keep in touch with him somehow. But he was gone - and in some childish sense, I felt like I had been abandoned - even though it was never really his choice to move anyway.

Why does this stick in my mind?

The beautiful nostalgia of a time I would really consider childhood, without mental or physical health difficulties, and the memory of my first best friend will always stick with me.

How does this relate to who I am today?

It’s only very recently, at eighteen years old - rather than five or six - that I‘ve started to build close friendships again. But nothing has ever felt as close as my friendship to Benjamin, even though I’m now older and can have more meaningful conversations and suchlike as a young adult.

How does this relate to who I want to be?

I try and be real in my friendships, and let my friends know what I truly think. I don’t hide away from conflict and instead seek practical resolutions to things, because I don’t want there to be a time where we may get caught on a bad feeling without being able to move forward if circumstances separate us.

That’s the good kind of retrospection. I think recently I’ve been too retrospective in the sense of degrading my every choice and questioning why I didn’t act differently - but that felt more like I was simply wondering both who and how I am today.

So, to conclude - I’m going to finish off on five points (in no particular order) that sum up who I am now, and five characteristics or goals I want for the future.

Today

Loyal to those I value

Energetic at heart, but easily distracted

Empathetic to others’ situations…

… but I still choose to be selfish at the wrong times

Determined (and at times, stubborn!)

The Future

An empathetic expert in my field

Stronger; physically and mentally

Focussed and driven

Disciplined

Prepared to take a risk

Overall, although this took some time, I think this was a very empowering use of my time. Give it a go!

#mindset #personal #childhood #personality #growth

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