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positivelybeastly · 8 months ago

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X-Force #50

All right, well, we finally did it, gang. We hit the big 5-0, and it's all done. And guess what?

It's all up hill from here! Wednesday spoilers below the cut, and . . . quite a lot of rambling? If I'm honest?

So, we open up on X-Force trying to kill good Hank and Simon, because they are dumb, despite Kid Omega and Sage asserting their genius. They blow up their little gay boat of love, and our intrepid heroes get pitched into the drink.

So . . . this is . . .

Why is Simon wearing a rebreather/oxygen tank?

Dear reader, I implore you to open this link, and scroll down to Simon Williams' powers and abilities.

Immortality: Williams is functionally immortal. Because of the ionic energy that empowers him, he no longer ages and is immune to disease and infection. This same energy sustains Williams' physical vitality far more efficiently than the biochemical process that sustain ordinary human life.

Self-Sustenance As a result of his transformation he no longer requires food, sleep, water or oxygen to survive. Simon is now a fully energized entity who can sustain himself indefinitely without nourishment, easily able to live outside habitable planet orbit.

Benjamin Percy, writer; Drew Baumgartner, Assistant Editor; Mark Basso, Editor; Jordan D. White, Senior Editor.

All four of these men are incapable of Googling basic facts about a character that Marvel has owned and been using since the 1960s. Basic facts that are available if you do so much as a basic skim of the man's Wiki page.

So, why is Simon wearing a rebreather/oxygen tank? So that evil Beast can destroy it and send Simon up to the surface, and good Beast and evil Beast can talk uninterrupted. That's the only actual reason. This is laziness from both an editorial and a writing standpoint, since you could have easily just had evil Beast use some kind of gadget to achieve the same effect, but don't worry! This won't be the most egregious lack of attention to detail this issue!

Yaaaaaay . . .

"My Beast," huh, Simon?

Gay.

Also, this scene makes X-Force look fucking pathetic, because Simon could literally wipe the floor with every one of them and not break a sweat. Simon 'my fists are LITERALLY as strong as Thor's hammer' Williams has nothing to fear from fucking Omega Red. His pacifism is the only thing keeping you from looking even stupider than you already do.

Orchis attacks to give the rest of X-Force something to do. I don't care.

But we do get this funny fuckin' shit.

Tie him up?

Logan, did you forget the last time you fought Simon? Or the time before that?

Anyway, the Beasts talk. It's not a particularly interesting conversation, for the most part.

God, this plan is just so fucking stupid.

But.

There is one moment that actually kinda works.

It's really funny to me that two of the worst Beast writers of all time, Brian Michael Bendis and Benjamin Percy, both managed to grok this essential fact - Hank McCoy loved being this version of Hank McCoy.

He was happy.

He was comfortable.

He was loved.

Feline Hank, as much as I love him, as much as he's my favourite iteration of the character, was never happy in his skin. How could he be? It wasn't something he chose, it was forced upon him. To save his life.

Well, what if he didn't want to be saved? What if he felt his life was so miserable that he might've thought, perhaps I should just let it all end?

He had moments, sure. But he never really escaped this feeling. This fear, this anxiety, this trauma, this pain. He carried it with him for the rest of his life. Just constant trauma, death, misery, regret, mistakes, chances not taken, failures.

But he would never be the same again. It's funny. He's the version I love most, but he's the version of Hank who could never love himself.

Which . . . is partly why it bugs me when people say Hank has internalised mutantphobia. Like, he kinda does, but I honestly don't really feel like it's quite that simple. He's comfortable in his simian form, he loves it, he only very occasionally angsts about it, he is happy. It's when he turns feline that he hates his mutant 'gift,' because now he has to worry about what might come next.

This is not the same as, I hate my mutant powers because they make my life inconvenient, because it means people hate and fear me. He can deal with that. He's been dealing with that since he was seventeen and nearly beaten to death by an angry mob for saving a child.

This is, I hate my mutant powers because they are turning me into something less than human or mutant. Because I am a danger. Because I am in danger.

And his fears are validated. He nearly kills Blindfold and Armour. He eats Logan's leg, tastes human flesh. He spends the last seven issues of Whedon's Astonishing X-Men with the taste of human skin and meat on his lips. How the fuck is he meant to be happy like this?

Anyway, back to X-Force. The two Beasts fight. Orchis shit happens.

Fuck off, Logan. Stop acting like you're at all relevant to proceedings.

Gay.

"X-Force ain't the ones you root for. But we get the dirty jobs done."

You didn't fucking do anything.

Hank and Simon could have fixed this entire mess without you. The only reason you were fighting a Sentinel was because you drew it to your location with your jet, firing at a gay little blue man and his fruity ionic boyfriend! You didn't contribute anything!

And then, as if to cap it all off . . .

What a self-aggrandising load of wank.

Hey, what was Colossus' plot arc through this series?

He spent 5 years being mind controlled and killed his girlfriend.

What was Domino's plot arc through this series?

Well, she got hurt a lot. There was that one time she got skinned. That was fun.

What was Laura Kinney's plot arc through this series?

There were entire issues where she didn't speak a fucking word.

You had.

50.

ISSUES.

And this is the best you could come up with?

"The plan was always for the war without to lead to the war within these two characters."

Is that why Wonder Man was more important to the climax of your book than Logan?

Go step on a fucking Lego, Ben.

This was allegedly a run all about black ops wetwork, the sacrifice of your soul to the harsh work that protecting your country requires, the inexorable slide towards moral degradation that comes from compromise.

It ended with a blue man in a stupid plant suit sacrificing himself to save a D-list actor from a bomb that would have crushed Mars into a pocket dimension, all so that his clone can go and become roommates with said D-list actor.

Ben Percy, of all the writers the X-office has welcomed into its midst, you were certainly one of them.

I just . . . this was what was worth jettisoning 40 years of Hank McCoy's personal history for? This cockamamie bullshit? This excuse for you to whip your dick out and pretend you're Larry Hama, when you can barely measure up to Chuck Austen?

Also, Jonathan Hickman, you're kind of on my shitlist for this, too. You may write a halfway decent comic book every now and then - and make no mistake, they're mostly halfway decent, I think he scrapes greatness with his ideas, but his execution is. Dry.

But that's better than his eye for talent, clearly.

I hate being negative. I feel guilty every time. I don't enjoy it. I hate to dwell. I hate to spiral. I hate to obsess over things.

But X-Force is just . . .

X-Force was, just shit. I will go to my grave telling anyone who'll listen that it's not worth reading.

"It'll read better in trades!" No, it won't.

"It has such a good team!" If you burn a pie made of good ingredients, you still have a burnt pie to eat.

"The art is so good!" And if you put sprinkles in a toilet bowl, it's still a toilet. It just looks prettier now.

Oh, and just in case anyone from Marvel ever reads this - they won't, they only hang around on Twitter so people can jerk off about the panels they write explicitly to be shared by the X-stans - I've pirated every comic I've read in the last 10 years. Every issue of X-Force? Pirated. All these caps? Pirated. Every time someone asks me where to read comics, what to read? Pirate links.

I didn't pay a dime for this series. I still feel like I got ripped off.

I almost can't believe it's over . . . what am I going to do with my life now that I don't have X-Force to complain about?

Oh, yeah. I can just read good comics. Nearly forgot about that.

But hey. That leads me to . . . I don't know, I guess, the end of an era.

Because Hank didn't get his memories back. Maybe he will in the future, but I don't have faith that there's anyone at Marvel that feels this strongly about Beast, so I doubt it. I need to write this down, anyway, for the catharsis. It'll help me say goodbye.

Rest in peace, Hank McCoy, 1985-2018.

You were the Beast I fell in love with. You were the man who taught me to be gentle when the world was unkind. You were the man who taught me that sometimes you don't have to love the body you're in, you just have to want to keep on going, because it can get better. There's always that chance. You were the man who led me to my boyfriend of 12 years, who I love more dearly than anything else on the planet. You were my friend when I didn't have many, and you've helped me make a lot of friends I quite appreciate. People I'm proud to know.

You're gone now. A lot of people aren't going to mourn you. They don't appreciate what was lost. But that's okay. I'll tell anyone who'll listen how brilliant you were. I'll try not to hold it against the version of you I'm left with, that he isn't you. He was you once. He could be like you again. Maybe better. I'd like that. I hope that's the case.

I'll keep writing you. I honestly don't think I could ever stop.

I'll try my best not to be sad that you're gone.

I'll try my best to instead be simply glad that you happened.

I'll give the past its due.

Which is all you can do, in the end, for the dead and for the past.

Well.

That, and live.

#outofmuffins #hank mccoy #wednesday spoilers #blood tw

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ernmark · 11 months ago

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Who was in charge of marketing for Harry Potter?

(This isn't about She Who Must Not Be Named or her bigotry. This is purely about the business of bookselling.)

If you were a YA reader at the time, or you're into fandom history, you might know the story: July 16, 2005, in the wee hours of the morning a car pulls up to a bunch of teens and children standing outside a bookstore, and some jackass shouts at the top of their lungs: "Snape kills Dumbledore!" and then speeds away.

That story was infamous. THE biggest plot twist of THE biggest book series in the world, spoiled before anyone could even crack the pages.

Which is... actually kinda weird, right? How'd they know?

Had they read an advance copy? Did they stand in line since like 4 PM to get their hands on the book, and then the second they got their hands on it just frantically start skimming the last hundred pages or so until they found a particularly devastating bomb to drop? (Trolls being trolls, this was not considered particularly extreme behavior).

Or were they paid to do it?

This is adult me with conspiracy goggles on, but consider: The message that was sent is not that a character killed another character, but that no matter how hard you try to avoid spoiling your favorite story, some bad-faith actor is going to jump out of the bushes and do it anyway. There's no time to wait for your library's copy to be available, no time for your friend or your sibling to finish and hand it to you-- you have to buy your own copy right the fuck now.

And everybody and their sibling (literally, people were buying multiple copies per family) around the world buying the same book in the space of the same two weeks? That is how a book guarantees a spot on every international best seller list for a long ass time.

The thing is, whether this was a deliberate move or an amazingly convenient and lucrative bit of trolling does not matter. Regardless of the source, the marketing department pounced on an opportunity. Every brick-and-mortar bookstore left had piles of bookmarks and buttons, posters plastered on the windows, dividing readers into one of two teams: either "Trust Snape" or "Snape is a Bad Man". People wearing those pins sparked conversation and debate in real life, to say nothing of what was going on in the forums. Essays and treatises and manifestos were written. Books were published-- both officially licensed materials and unofficial ones full of theories and details.

When that next and final release was coming out, you bet your ass everybody on the planet was going to be there (or risk another drive-by spoiler). When the next movie was released that November, it didn't matter that what had come before was kinda iffy in quality-- people were showing up in costume.

Even before The Drive By Spoilering, the marketing team was honestly the stuff of legend. Gorgeous hand-illustrated covers and chapter header artwork, branded title fonts that could be recognized from a mile away in the dark, big fancy displays present in every single school book fair, and then that website-- the official website was a thing of absolute beauty, especially in that time. It was colorful and had a million moving parts and secrets to uncover, it was updated frequently and with a lot of little secret extra tidbits on the character and world, and oodles of essays from the author herself that were often very endearing to the readership. It was a gathering place for fans as much as the fan-run websites.

(I should point out that with marketing this robust, I have no doubt in my mind that all those tidbits and essays were themselves run past the team for approval, to make sure nothing particularly egregious slipped through the cracks. But that kind of editing isn't cheap, and I suspect it would only really have been employed during the Important Years for the franchise.)

I remember wanting to be a writer as a teenager, embarking on that career as I got out into the world and started querying books I'd written, and for every single one of us in the writing community, that kind of marketing was the dream. The midnight releases in full costume, the gorgeous custom covers, the posters in every library and bookstore, the breathtaking website. But all of those things turn out to be heinously expensive, and for every franchise that returns on that investment, there were dozens, perhaps hundreds, who didn't make back enough, or cover their expenses at all. And that's where you get to the point where querying authors were advised to establish massive followings on social media in order to demonstrate that they were a safe bet, that half the work was already done if the publishers would just give us a chance-- and sure, for some of them that effort did get them publishing contracts. At which point, even if the publishers felt inclined to spend more than a pittance on promoting new authors' work, there wasn't any point in doing so to the degree that the Harry Potter books received. There's little room to stand out in a saturated market; a flash in the pan is only impressive if the pan isn't already on fire.

These days there's little hope of any one new author rising to that kind of fame, though with self-promotion and self-advocacy, a lot more diverse authors are starting to carve out places for themselves. But marketing yourself is exhausting, and it's expensive, and it makes you vulnerable to all sorts of stupid blunders and career-ending missteps.

I'd rather stay indie. But I wouldn't say no to that marketing team.

#harry potter as a cultural phenomenon #the business of writing #writing woes

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stupidpianist · 6 years ago

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5 november 2018

13:02: We made it to 40,000 words. Don’t know why this is any more of a landmark than, say, 30k, or 50k, but it felt like a good point to mark our progress. It’s like, wow, we got this far; not without hiccups, of course, and, like, off days when we just didn’t update the blog, but for the most part it’s been pretty consistent, these last two days notwithstanding (haha irony). Wanted to do something “big and new” for this one, something therapeutic, that might help “sort some things out” that I need sorted out in my life right now. Don’t really know how I’m going to do this, but just going to sort of let things “flow out naturally” in this update, I guess?? This isn’t going to be like the other updates, it’s going to be even more egocentric and it’s going to be entirely focused on “me myself and I” in a way that even thinking about it now I’m finding disgusting. Considered writing something like this and then just not posting it, but then was like, no, include this in your experiment, “get it all out there.”

Just forewarning you that this is gonna be really annoyingly self-centred, it’s just going to be an update of me trying to figure out what the heck I’m doing with my life, because I really don’t have a lot of time and I have a lot of things I need to “fix” or “repair” or at least “amend” a bit in this bit of time that I have, before, like, I need to send out applications and whatnot.

But, since this is still a liveblog update, here’s, really briefly, what I’ve done, and what I’m gonna do today:

-Woke up at seven in the morning after getting three hours of sleep

-Felt in a complete dream state, physically couldn’t lift myself off of the mattress

-Continually shut off alarms while still being consciously dreaming (didn’t commit the dreams to memory, though, can’t remember what they are now…)

-Finally got out of bed at 10h50, knowing that I had to make it to my 11h30 class

-Decided against showering, thought, “you shower too much,” splashed water on my head and hair, “chugged” some water, brushed, put on work clothes

-Checked weather via Google Home Mini device, had a brief conversation with Google Home on how they were doing

-Went to piano pedagogy class, stopped for a Monster “Zero Ultra,” which I’ve never had before, was pleasantly surprised at taste; chose it because I didn’t want anything with sugar, even if I know about the detriments of sugar substitutes. Was focusing mainly on not wanting more cavities.

-In library now working on “commemorative” “we made it to 40k liveblog update”

-After this, going to send out a bunch of administrative-related e-mails, read some Foucault (bought a copy of Surveiller et punir finally, really looking to “get into it”), go to my work shift, finish my work shift, practice piano, go home, work out, shower, try not to feel worried

-At some point will also go get a banh mi or something from the music cafeteria because I neglected to pack a salad

So here we go, I guess. Going to put another warning:

!!!!DO NOT READ THIS, LIKE, it’s NOT GOING to be FUN, it’s not going to be interesting, just going to be me ruminating on my own life and trying to work through some stuff, THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING!!!!

Okay, so, feel like I need to be honest with myself, yeah, which is not something I think I’ve done in a while. Need to really analyze what I’m good at, what I’m not good at, and, from both lists, what I want to work on. Reminded of scene in Nightcrawler when Jake Gyllenhaal’s character has a monologue, asking the question, wait, hold on, let me just pull up the script, actually--“Last year I took an online business course, for example. I learned you have to have a business plan before starting a business, and that why you pursue something is as important as what you pursue. The site advised you to answer the following question before deciding where to focus your abilities. The question was ‘What do I love to do?’ The site suggested making a list of my strengths and weaknesses. What are you good at? And what are you not that good at? Maybe you want to strengthen and develop knowledge about the things you’re already good at. Or maybe you might want to strengthen your weaknesses.” Not that I’m trying to, like, model my life after that character no not at all I just was thinking about that scene and that I’m doing something similar.

I think one of the worst aspects of my personality is that I’m particularly disagreeable by nature. After taking a psych personality assessment test with a pool of more than 10,000 samples, I scored in the 2nd percentile of agreeableness. I mean, interpersonally this poses a lot of problems to address, but I think right now I need to slap myself in the face because a lot of my issues stem from the fact that I can’t, or, like, historically, cannot seem to get myself to do anything that I don’t want to do. I don’t think it’s laziness--though I’m definitely also lazy--because I’ll, like, read for eight hours on a topic I’m interested in and not feel drained or exhausted, but on the other hand, if I’m taking a course and we’re on a chapter that doesn’t interest me, the amount of effort it takes to get me to even skim the summary of said chapter seems egregiously high, compared to most people I know. Especially after taking all these psych courses this semester, and learning about the concept of personality, feels like I need to somehow grapple with this, because I can’t keep going through life only doing things I want to do. This leaves a lot of other things in a state of disarray, and if those things aren’t sorted out, it makes it a lot harder, or, sometimes, even impossible, to do the things I actually want to do.

Like, as an example, I already made a list of the professors I wanted to ask for recommendation letters. This list has been in existence for a long time, like, a l-o-n-g time, but I neglected to e-mail them to ask them for the recommendation until just a few days ago. This gives them just a month to write the letters, which isn’t ideal. The only reason I didn’t send out the e-mail, took the tiny amount of thirty minutes to send them out, was because I was like, “I hate doing administrative/bureaucratic things, hate communicating in this way, hate the application process, I’m not going to do it, I refuse.” Until, I was like, “okay, George, if you don’t send out these e-mails nOW, you’re not going to have recommendations, and if you don’t have recommendations you’re literally not going to be able to complete your applications, and if you don’t complete your applications, you will literally have 0 chance of getting into any school, let alone one you want to actually attend.” So I finally did it. And it was just because I was in my disagreeable little bubble of, “I’m not gonna do it, I refuse, I don’t like this.”

So this is now something that I’m hyper aware of. I think the solution to this is to acknowledge that I have a personal responsibility to myself, and to others, to accomplish these tasks, if for no other reason than they facilitate the ability to do whatever the hell I want. If I remember that, if I keep just telling myself that there are some things that are just unfortunately non-negotiable GIVEN THAT I want to do x, y, and z, then I’ll be more likely to accomplish the non-negotiable task to get to x, y, and z. I can feel this working, and it’s a small step, but I’ve never contended with being disagreeable before, I always just accepted it, like, “yup, too bad I guess.” And I am not saying I want to change that, it feels extremely inherent, to me, or, like, it’s immutable in my personality, I just want to adapt and find more ways to operate in the world so that I don’t only have one manner of being, which in itself is extremely constricting, and I want to be as adaptable as possible, just personally, it’s something that I value.

So that’s one thing that’s been on my mind, the other is that I’ve got to admit to myself when I’ve got too much to handle. This is something else I always do with myself, I always downplay everything as if I was smarter than I actually am, I’ll go, like, “oh, that’s going to be a cakewalk, you don’t have to study at all for that,” and, “you know the piece better than you think, just wing the performance, you got this, it’ll be fine.” And then if I have a bunch of tasks that I have to do, like right now, I’ll just keep lying, I’ll keep going, “whatever, George, you can handle this, this is nothing, this is a breeze,” but it rarely ever is a breeze, and if I’m really thinking honestly, I carry pretty consistently high levels of stress and anxiety that I know would be lower if I just accepted that I’m really not as smart as I think I am, and that I need to put in more work than I think I should.

Also need to be like, this isn’t a sign of weakness, or something, like, it’s far weaker to consistently lie to oneself about their abilities. Need to be like, it’s okay to acknowledge, internally and externally, that I’ve got a lot of things to do and I’m not sure I can accomplish them all to a good degree, and that I’m really struggling, because right now I’m actually struggling a lot. Have to prepare and record my prescreenings, finish application packets, on top of keeping up with my five psych courses with finals coming up real soon, and an increased work schedule since my promotion. That’s, for me, okay I’m going to say it, that’s a lot of work for me. And the amount of work that anyone can handle varies from person-to-person and that’s fine, it has no bearing on how “weak” they are, how “weak” they are is only in how they approach the work that they have, right? So I’m freaking out, yeah, if I’m being honest I’m freaking out a lot, and I’m extremely bad at expressing myself, especially face-to-face, with most people, and it’s not that it’s “difficult for me to say these things,” it’s more like, how should I say… It’s more like it doesn’t even occur to me to say, because I’ve gotten so adept at lying to myself that, in a lot of circumstances, I genuinely think that I can take on more than I actually can.

There, that felt good to write, I liked writing that, even if it made me a little sad. Don’t know why it’s making me sad, but I’m going to let myself feel that, just going to let myself feel that way.

Then it’s also like, what are my value systems? What are my frameworks for life? Why am I even applying to master’s programs? Am I doing it for myself, or am I still doing it for my parents? What do I want to get out of life, and how should I go about accomplishing that? So, like, it’d be amazing to teach piano at a university level, it’d be great to be a professor, so it’d be really great to have at least a master’s degree. I want to publish papers and I have a lot to say about a lot of music-related topics, so I want to continue in academia, but on my own terms; there’s so many issues I have, and I’m sure everyone has, with the way the academic sphere is currently run, and I want to do my best to change it, hopefully, for the better. But then, what school do I want to go to?

Going to say something here now that will probably upset my parents a lot, but I really don’t feel that the school, to me, matters nearly as much as the people I’m around. Of course, if the institution is terrible, then it’d be extremely difficult to operate there, but, after a certain baseline, which I cannot really computatively compute and put down in definitive terms, all these institutions feel like small variations of each other. I know it when I feel it, I guess, like, if a place has faculty I like, and facilities that are up to a certain level, then the school itself matters less to me than the location of the school, and the people I’m going to be around. If I got into a “top-ranking” school and got a huge scholarship, but it would mean extricating myself from significant people in my life, I would voluntarily take out a massive student loan on myself and attend a school that would put me in closer proximity to those people.

I think this is because, with more time, I’m more receptive towards the random-seeming nature of everything; people’s lives change on a second-to-second basis, without any provocation or planning, and even when people plan out an intricate future, the reality deviates in such immediate and harsh ways that those predictions 99.99% of the time just are never accurate. So, like, if I’m confident in my own abilities as an academic and as a pianist, then I’m going to a location which I feel would provide me with the most stimulation, the most possibility for personal growth, the best people that I want to keep in my life, and not relocate myself to a place with an ostensibly better “school,” because who’s to say, ever, if it would actually have any positive impact on my later life??

This isn’t making much sense, I’m reading this over and it sounds like blither. It makes sense in my head, trust me, and I’m trying to put it down as clearly as I can. Maybe I’m being too verbose. I don’t know, does it make sense?? All I’m trying to say is, whatever school I choose, the criteria for why I’m going there is going to depend more on the location (how’s the architecture? is there night life? is there a cafe in the area within walkable distance of campus that i really like? are the library chairs comfortable?), more on the people (are they stimulating? do i empathize with enough of them? do i feel comfortable amongst the local culture?), than on, like, the supposed quality of the institution.

I’m making a big deal out of this, I know, but it’s just because to me it is a big deal; it’s a really new mode of thinking that I’ve never really interfaced with, I’ve been told, growing up, consistently, that a “good institution” is what to strive for, and I’m understanding that my worldview simply isn’t compatible with that notion.

So now I’m going to need to create some kind of support network for myself, which is another thing I’ve stubbornly avoided doing, just telling myself, “you’re tough enough not to have one.” This is a lie, and an impossibility. I need to put myself in positions where I’m more likely to have a positive outcome. I don’t trust myself nearly enough to consistently make healthy choices in my life, because that’s not something historically I’ve ever done, so I can’t expect myself to start doing it. What I need to do, I think, is to try and frame the things I do in the day in such a way that they’re conducive and lead to more positive things, on a purely, like, mathematical level. So, like, I can’t trust myself to eat breakfast or lunch. So, a way that I can try and make sure I do in fact eat breakfast and lunch is to wake up at an earlier time than the 10h/11h that I wake up most days. That way, since I’m naturally up more hours, I’ll naturally be hungrier, so I’ll naturally seek out food for breakfast and lunch.

Or, as another example, I can’t trust myself to practice piano for an adequate amount of hours. Like, I really like my playing, and I have a really high-resolution and clear understanding of where I slot in, in terms of pianistic ability, but it could definitely be better if I just made sure I practiced even just a bit more a day. So, if I make a seemingly unrelated decision, like, instead of going to McLennan, make sure you use the music library to a 2:1 ratio that you use McLennan, just by virtue of being in the music library, surrounded by scores and reminders of music, I’ll naturally just be like, “oh hey, I’m itching to play that piece right now” more.

That’s what my plan is, going to try and “set myself up” for inadvertent-but-positive decisions, rather than just naturally going through each day doing “what I want to do,” which usually results in, like, some productivity, and I am still usually getting things done, but it also leads to consistently poor decision making, like, procrastinating on tasks, or spending too long on YouTube.

This is a nice segue, I guess, into my relationship with technology. For years I’ve always used the internet a lot, like, a lot, and in a way this has been great, I’m pretty fricken good with technology, and not just, like programming, or something, but like, I’m fluent with the hardware, and with, like, a staggering amount of software. If I need to figure out how to do something new related to technology, I’ve used it to such a degree that it’s preternatural, and I can sort of “feel out” how to do it intuitively. This is a positive, I think, a definite positive. On the other end of that spectrum, though, is that I interact with social media, and with other people, in a way that I am starting to feel personally disgusted with. I use it as an outlet to feed my personal ego, to try and “be funny,” and to be provocative. Everyone has a public persona, and there’s nothing wrong with this, but I don’t want to view the general public in such a staged way anymore, I think. I used to get a lot out of it, but now, it just feels like I’ve foregone actually interacting with people in favour of, like, experimenting with them.

I want to use social media less, and this has already happened. I wrote a script that deleted every one of my Facebook posts I’ve ever made, like, they’re permanently gone, wiped, so I’ve got a clean slate. And I’m going to use this opportunity to use that clean slate to push updates on things that I’m genuinely interested in, not just in things that I think will make people laugh, or something. I mean, I love making people laugh and feel good, so those things will still come, but I need to stop thinking and participating socially in a manner that, sometimes, focuses exclusively on people’s reactions. I am far too concerned, in a really damaging way, what people think of me. Sometimes this isn’t a bad thing, like, I’m hyper aware of trying to be polite and to not do anything that would annoy the people around me. I am constantly thinking about how to be a respectful person, which I think a lot of the time is good. But it’s also really debilitating because it also means that I’m constantly assessing if what I’m doing is impressive, if enough people are intrigued by me, if people find me fascinating. I need to stop caring about that. The people who find me genuinely interesting will still find me genuinely interesting just by virtue of me being myself. I don’t need to constantly be putting on some kind of act, reassessing the value of that act via the reactions of the people around me.

So I’ve really cut down on my use of Facebook and Instagram, this was, surprisingly, not difficult to do; it felt really natural, just a natural progression in my life, and it’s actually made me feel a lot better, a lot less anxious, a lot more comfortable just operating and going through each day.

I guess everything that I’ve said above could just be summated in that I’m trying to be honest with myself. I guess it’s been a long while since I’ve made an attempt at this; I have a perception of myself that’s gotten so skewed and off that it’s not only inaccurate, it’s dangerous. I can’t keep operating life with this false supposition that I’m actually a lot better at things that I’m not. It’s fine to be bad at things, it’s not fine to lie about being good at them and then, by extension, refusing to grow as an individual and improve on those things. It’s not fine to make excuses for one’s own behaviour, in order to reaffirm a framework of existence that’s only there because one is too lazy, or unwilling to modify it to make it better. I need sleep, I’m not someone who can operate on four hours or anything. I need to eat, I can’t pretend that eating one meal a day is somehow acceptable. I lack mathematical ability, and it’s difficult for me to understand, let alone implement, mathematical concepts, without significant effort. My writing tends to be over stylized, not well thought out, conceptually relying on low-hanging fruit. My papers rely on handfuls of small observations without ever materializing to anything significant. It’s easier, and more pleasant, for me to lie to myself, rather than want to actually work on myself. I’m far too judgmental of everyone. This list could go on forever yada yada wow jesus did I really just write all that about myself?

Feel like this is a good place to stop with this. “Got this out of my system.” Apologising again, I feel weird just penning an entire blog post to such obvious revelations, but I feel severely underdeveloped as a person, especially compared to some other people my age that I interact with, so while this might have been discovered a long time ago by a lot of you, I’m only just now coming to terms with it. Going to stop it there, that’s a whole lot about me, and I’m exhausted at writing about myself.

Hey now seems like a good time to get a sandwich, I think!! Going to go do that, grab a banh mi and a coconut water or something, going to eat it while listening to music and maybe reading some Foucault. Still have three hours before work starts, so I’ll go to McLennan, up to the top floor that I love, to some unused grad student’s carrel, where I’ll be able to look out over this part of Montreal. Then I’m going to alternate between reading and sending out these e-mails I’ve been putting off. I feel like I’ve grown more in this past semester than I have in the entire other years of my undergraduate “career.” Don’t know why this is happening, but I like it, even if it’s been an extremely difficult period in my life. Getting a mental image of animals molting, thinking, like, “it’s always difficult to move into the next stage of your life,” or something.

Can’t live as someone you dislike, or you’re going to be miserable all the time. Need to continue working, not pretending that I have the traits that I like. Need to actually work to attain those traits, to deserve those traits, to possess those traits, so that I actually like myself. Feeling good, yeah, yeah, I’m grinning.

Will update this later. Feeling myself “maturing,” or something silly like that hahah. Feeling a pleasant resignation of something I can’t place. Feeling good.

15:06: Okay I actually have less time than I thought, I misread the work schedule, the event starts at 17h which means I have to get there at 16h. Also forgot that I have to do an assignment for my behavioural neuroscience course that I’m ages behind in. The assignment itself shouldn’t be hard but it’s a reminder that I need to start studying for the upcoming second midterm thing for it. But since I only have, like, forty minutes or so right now I think I’m going to use that time to try and get through a bit of the Foucault? Feel very interested in that right now, seems like a good way, too, to act as a bit of an intermission of other tasks I need to do today. Just as a way of getting organized here are the tasks I need to remember:

-sleep earlier to get up for 08h30 lecture, need to wake early

-do psych assignment

-respond to e-mails

-practice piano

-if time, work out

-shower

-cook dinner

This list isn’t in any particular order, just wanted to, like, “get down on paper” this so that I don’t forget, like, I just remembered the psych assignment while walking to the library, is how “out of it” I am today.

18:34: In practice room now after my work shift. I really like working with my bosses, both of them are great. Did a gigantic training shift yesterday, today’s shift was only two and a half hours, so that was nice that I didn’t have to stay in the booth for HOURS AND HOURS, which is a good environment but also like, if it’s for hOURS AND HOURS it can feel a little oppressive.

Feel excited to get some practicing done, feel like what I’ll do is practice until I can’t concentrate anymore (thinking of Tao Lin’s Can’t Concentrate Manatee, will post a pic of it below), which won’t take very long given that I barely slept last night. Then I’ll head to the music library and do my psych assignment so that I don’t just go home and immediately slack off (always harder to slack in public than slack alone). Feeling myself “setting myself up” for a more productive environment, if I don’t go home immediately after piano I have a statistically higher chance of not immediately going on YouTube, or something.

Okay time for finger exercises.

#liveblog #blog #writing

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lalainajanes · 7 years ago

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kink list prompt: 39. klaus & caroline don't know how to react after engaging in some unsatisfactory sex.

+ andI have a prompt for you: Klaus and Caroline getting drunk at a bar and goinghome to have clumsy, drunken sex ;)

This one will be posted in parts (today and on Sunday) because I wanted to get something up before work. It’s a SUPER belated gift for the delightful @howeverlongs based on her fave trope gifsets. This is friends with benefits which I don’t think I’ve ever actually done!

You’re The Nicest Thing (Part One)

Caroline (11:28 AM):SEND HELP. I’M GOING TO SLAUGHTER THEFRESHMEN.

Klaus (11:31 AM):All of them? Surely there’s at least apassable paper or two.

Caroline (11:32 AM):I’m on the tenth. They’re all TERRIBLE.SOULSUCKINGLY TERRIBLE.

Klaus (11:33 AM):Soulsuckingly is not a word.

Caroline (11:34 AM):Neither was elbow before Ol’ Bill wasstaring at the bendy bit of his arm and thought hmmmmm while writing King Lear.

Klaus (11:36 AM):I’m screenshotting this text. The nexttime you call me egotistical I’m going to remind you of the time you directlycompared yourself to William Shakespeare.

Caroline (11:37 AM): You can’t remind me of anything if I’m inprison. Do you have lunch plans?

Klaus (11:38 AM):Meeting with an author at one. She likesmy portfolio but has some questions.

Caroline (11:39 AM):Klaus! THAT’S AMAZING.

Caroline (11:39 AM):Everything in me is DYING to send you astring of emojis but I’ll refrain since you hate fun and happiness.

Klaus (11:40 AM):No, just emojis.

Klaus (11:41 AM):And thank you, sweetheart. I’ll stop bywith coffee when I’m done. Try not to murder anyone before then.

Caroline (11:42 AM):You’re a lifesaver!

Caroline’s a veteran T.A. having accepted her first positionher senior year of college. Every year she tells herself not to be surprised bythe inept bullshitting the freshmen tried to sneak into their first paper butthe badly constructed arguments and ludicrous examples still manage to have hertearing out her hair.

Honestly, how hard was it to just read the freaking book?Some of them clearly hadn’t even bothered to do much more than skim Wikipedia.

She took a great deal of pleasure in scrawling semi-sarcasticobservations in red pen alongside the slashes and grammar corrections. It was apublic service, really. Caroline was graduating this year and her harshnesswould save another T.A. some aggravation. Assuming, of course, that any of theparticularly egregious offenders could manage to actually learn.

Experience had taught her that certain brands of dumb wereimpenetrable.

There’s a tap at the door, one she recognizes as Klaus’ andshe gratefully hops out of her seat to let him in. She grins at him when sheswings the door open, “My hero!” she croons, once she sees the red cup in hishands.

Klaus hands it over with an indulgent smile, “Yes, I heroicallybraved the crowds at Starbucks for fake pumpkin rubbish masquerading ascoffee.”

She eyes him severely over the rim of the cup, “It’sdelicious and only available for a limited time and I love it.”

“I know.”

“Seriously, Klaus, thanks.” He really was a kick ass friendconsidering he was a weirdo who didn’t even likeStarbucks.

He glances towards her desk, the neat stacks of paper. “Anylight at the end of the tunnel?”

“A very faintly flickering one. Do you want to come in?” Shetips her head towards the ratty couch that sits under the window. “My officemates are actually pretty cool this year.”

“You were likely due for a relatively normal set.”

“I really was.” She steps back so Klaus can come in, then walksacross the room and flops down on the couch with a sigh. “So, do you have good news? Maybe that you’re about to start an exciting new project?”

“I don’t know about excitingbut it pays better than the last few.” He shrugs off his jacket and helpshimself to her guest chair and she’s going to need a little more excitementfrom him.

“Woo hoo!” Caroline cheers, lifting her free arm in an exaggeratedfist pump. “So I might only have to bring oneextra sweater when I come over to this winter?”

“You never actually bringextra sweaters. You just invite yourself into my bedroom and raid my closet.”

Caroline looks away, studying her cup more intently that sheneeds to. It was just like Klaus to spoon feed her a great joke that shecouldn’t utter. All because of that one time Klaus had been doing the invitingand things had gone terribly awry. In the past she wouldn’t have hesitated,would have let her voice turn throaty and tease him about how an invitation intohis bedroom should really include something more exciting an offer of layersfor warmth. Klaus would have responded with something equally flirty. They’dhave gone back and forth, neither willing to back down, until Caroline’s earsfelt hot and it took a ton of effort not to look at his lips.

He’s been her friend since the second semester of her firstyear in college, one of the most consistent. They’ve always had buckets ofsexual tension and, being a practical sort of girl, Caroline had always figuredit would, at some point, lead to more. Unfortunately, her racy fantasies aboutKlaus - of his hands and his mouth and his voice in her ear uttering tempting,toe curling promises – had been a total bust.

She really hopedthey got to the point where they could laugh about the worst sex of theirlives. Soon, if possible.

She glances up to find him studying her, resists the urge tofidget and possibly make things awkward if he realizes her mind had flittedback to the sex that shall not be named. It had taken them half of the summerto get back to normal and Caroline had missed him terribly in the weeks wherethey hadn’t quite known how to be in the same room. She takes a sip of herdrink to cover the extended pause, “That’s just because you’re a good host.Unwilling to let your guests freeze to death even if you’re chintzy with thethermostat.”

“Unwilling to let someguests freeze to death.”

“It’s an honor to be included on the short list of peopleyou don’t actively want to die, Klaus. Truly.”

He smirks, rolling her chair closer to the couch, “Then you’llbe happy to know you’re near the top.”

Caroline lays her hand over her heart, sinks back into the cushionslike a swooning maiden in an old movie. It was another opening and she decidesto push a bit past the boundaries she’d been enforcing. “Such charm! With sweet talk like that I haveno idea why you’re still single.”

“Really? I have apretty good idea.”

Huh. Not what she’d expected. Klaus had a healthy ego, wasfully aware of his own appeal and she’d seen him use it to great effect overthe years. A flash of his dimples, some careful space invading, many a womangot giggly and wide eyed, hanging on to his every word and not-so-subtlytugging at their necklines to bare a little more cleavage. She’s about to makea crack asking if he’s been watching self-improvement infomercials whilesketching again (Klaus tended towards late night productivity) when her phone’salarm begins trilling as it buzzes against her desk. A quick glance at theclock above the door tells her she’s got a class to get to.

Klaus has spent years teasing her about her rigidlyorganized schedule so he’s well aware of the alarms meaning. He tips his head towardsher phone, “Your ten minute warning?”

“Yeah. Sorry to have to dash out on you after you deliveredme the greatest of coffee based beverages.”

“It’s not a problem. My student days only ended last year. Whereare you headed?”

“Just down the hall,” Caroline tells him, standing andstraightening her skirt. “It’s my kid lit seminar so it’ll at least be fun. Doyou want to meet up at the bar later? I want to hear all about your project.”

“Sure. Seven or so?”

That gave her enough time to knock out a couple more papers.The alcohol would be a welcome balm to her soul. “I’ll even buy the first roundsince we’re celebrating.”

She’d have to remember to cap it off at three drinks. DrunkCaroline tended to say things she shouldn’t andwas a shameless snuggler. It had been the celebratory booze, and her wanderinghands, that had led to disaster last time.

Never let it be said that Caroline Forbes didn’t learn fromher epic fails.

#Anonymous #klaroline #klarolineauweek #klaroline drabbles #ytnt

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