#the dragons are basically teenagers when they make their selection. for better or worse... they are teenagers

[ranticore]

Then, why did Breakneck pick him anyways? 👀

a combination of teenage rebelliousness and just liking the guy's vibes a lot. matriarch says no, immediately making that option a million times more tempting

[sapphicbookclub]

Author Spotlight: Shannon McGee

I’m happy to spotlight an author of our future book club read! Shannon McGee who wrote Of Gryphons and Other Monsters and Of Dragon Warrens and Other Traps, talks about what and how much representation affects LGBT people. Read on if you’re interested in just how similarly we all feel when turning to specific representation in media.

How Representation Affected My Coming Out Process

Growing up I was shy. I had a very tight relationship with my family, but I wasn’t great at talking with people outside of it. I even went through a few years where I was That Kid™ who had a stack of books on either side of her desk and didn’t talk to anyone. As I was trying to find myself, I had an almost gluttonous attitude towards books. Books helped me understand not only other people, but also myself. They gave me the courage to form real connections by showing me the ways in which we’re all alike.

I feel incredibly lucky to have grown up in a time with a surplus of kick-butt females in books—not to mention television. Those books gave me role models who were loving, smart, funny, reserved, and strong. Lady knights and California mediators alike showed me that there were all kinds of ways to be a woman and that none of them detracted from my potential bad-assery.

However, there was one aspect of myself that I could never seem to find represented in the way I desperately wanted. My books never seemed to show me how to fall in love with a girl and not have that be my whole life. With the Amazon.com nowhere near the comprehensive powerhouse that we know and love/hate today, and Barnes and Nobles’ “LGBT” section consisting of one shelf of books tucked in next to the “Self-Help,” section, my choices in queer books always seemed to boil down to teenage depression or adult pornography. It was discomfiting, to say the least.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that there’s no place in the world for those stories. Normalizing sexuality between women gets a big A+ from me. As an adult who has become fully comfortable with myself, I’ve read my fair share of romance novels. I can also see the necessity writing about girls who come out and are subsequently thrown out by their family. Stories about girls who profess their love to a friend and get rejected are relatable as all get out.

Some people really need to read those stories. They need to read that yes the sexual aspect of their sexuality is valid, and also yes finding love when you’re not straight can be hard and the pain of rejection feels unbearable and that’s all normal too.

As an unemployed teenager who wasn’t “out” yet, romance books were not an option. Even if I had wanted to read adult romance novels, (which I didn’t, gay or straight) I wasn’t about to ask my mom to buy me a book where two women were having sex—heck no. And I definitely wasn’t interested in a book which was basically designed to make me cry. Pass.

As someone who used books to help me see the heights of what was possible, what I gathered from this selection of books was that loving women was either raunchy—not my bag—or… survivable. Which was bleak. It made the idea of coming out even more nerve-wracking. Especially since I had so little to go off of! What if I came out, and then realized I was wrong? All signs pointed to the fact that there was only one way to know for sure and whether I was or wasn’t the consequences would be huge and terrible.

As a lover of all things fantasy, what I really wanted to read was the hero’s journey. I wanted wise-cracking knights, gruesome but manageable dragons, and a hero defying the odds. I wanted action-packed fight scenes, and romantic professions of love with maybe some tasteful fade-to-black moments all wrapped up in a happy ending. I wanted all the things the other books promised me was possible as a straight girl. I just wanted the girl protagonist to fall in love with another woman by the end of the series. I wanted to know that was possible.

For a long time, I just gave up looking for that kind of content. It was too hard to root out. Instead, I put a pin into that aspect of myself. It wasn’t exactly something people talked about, it wasn’t something I could try out without hugely terrible consequences, and I couldn’t read about it to get a better idea of if those consequences were worth it, so I just had to resign myself to never knowing.

I dated boys. When I didn’t want to kiss my first or second boyfriend I remember thinking, "Well this could mean anything.” I mean I could do it, there were just other things we could be doing besides stupid kissing. True, that wasn’t how the girls in the books felt about kissing their boyfriends, but maybe longing was something I would

grow into. Not wanting to hold my boyfriend’s hand or spend… any time with him… That didn’t have to mean anything.

Then, sophomore year of high school I kissed a girl at a party. We’d been drunk. Had that meant something? I still wasn’t sure. I took the pin out, and I went looking again.

By that time, the landscape of the internet was changing. Fantastic advancements had been made. Communities had formed. Lists of resources were being compiled. Fanfiction had roared into life. Tumblr? Click. Click. Wooh boy! I saw myself all over the place. For the first time I began reading my own thoughts coming from someone else’s brain. A stranger described the way my insides rolled when the girl with the short brown hair looked up and smiled at me. They talked about how falling in love with her didn’t hurt, and how it felt like warm sunlight in my chest. They wrote about suddenly understanding why people were so ga-ga over kissing, when it never meant anything before.

It meant something, and it didn’t have to mean something bad. Over the next four years I came out.

These days I have a “Battleaxe Bi” pin attached to a string of rainbow crystals that hang from the rearview mirror in my car. However, to start, my coming out was slow, and to only a select group of people. Don’t ask don’t tell culture was still really prevalent, and in a lot of ways it was how I lived my life.

I have a lot of thoughts on what it means to be a writer who is also a part of the LGBTQA+ community. For me, part of being a writer means being vulnerable. It means taking out some of your more personal hopes and dreams and sharing them to see if anyone else can relate. Growing up without seeing a lot of my own feelings represented, I understand fairly acutely why that vulnerability is important.

With that in mind, I’d been writing for years by the time I came to Taryn’s story, and it was normal for me to write my characters with my shared experience of being queer. It was basically a given. Whether they were fluid, bi, or a lesbian, if I was going to write a character she was going to like women in some way.

Still, when I came to the decision that I would be publishing this story, I had a few concerns. I think a lot of them boiled down to that old anxiety that my experiences were… well… abnormal. I mean, I still wasn’t finding many queer books at the bookstore. And what if it was worse? What if who I was truly was hate-worthy?

By 2015 seeing queer characters was becoming mainstream, and that filled me with joy, but I had also seen the backlash. Videos on Youtube of Naomi and Emily on Skins and Brittany and Santana on Glee had just as many negative comments as positive. Over the course of my life, among other things, I’d witnessed a girl I only knew in passing get kicked out when she came out, and I’d seen a friend’s grandmother harangue her on Facebook, saying she was going to Hell.

As someone who generally flew below the radar, I was afraid of being targeted and rejected.

I didn’t even advertise “Of Gryphons and Other Monsters” as a queer book before it came out, except in specific places online and to specific family members. It’s funny. Even though at its core I wanted my writing to show Taryn being a lesbian didn’t make her different I also desperately wanted readers to have a chance to get to know Taryn before finding out she was gay. I didn’t want either of us to be pigeon-holed.

Sometimes I joke that I basically used “Of Gryphons and Other Monsters” to come out to my extended family. I didn’t tell basically any of them who she was going to fall in love with. I just let them read the book and find out. They didn’t care. Turns out, it wasn’t a big deal to them, not like it was to me.

Once “Of Gryphons and Other Monsters” was out in the world though I finally let those fears go. Reviews came in and people reached out and said they loved her. I realized that I’d been acting out of a fear that was built into me in a different time. A fear based in sensibilities that we’re moving away from at a wonderfully brisk pace. Never fast enough, but faster than I can believe sometimes.

After that realization I felt way more comfortable marketing “Of Gryphons and Other Monsters,” and “Of Dragon Warrens and Other Traps,” as exactly what they were: Queer YA Fantasy. The response was immediate. My sales sky-rocketed. Turns out, in couching who Taryn was, not only was I doing myself a disservice, but I was also doing a disserve to everyone else out there who was looking for that same validation I sought as a teenager.

I know we’re not there yet, but I truly believe that we are rapidly approaching a time when that specific kind of loneliness and isolation of being a kid and not seeing your love portrayed—anywhere at worst, or as lewd or depressing at best—is vanishing. Already Garnet, Korrasami, and Bubbline are on my television—cartoon characters meant for kids, not adult character co-opted for lack of better options. My Goodreads “Want to Read” section is brimming with books starring queer ladies. The storylines available today are an ever broadening and deepening river that I get to swim in the rest of my life, and it’s only going to get better.

If you’re reading this and you’re a writer who wonders if people really want to read that gay fantasy book you’ve been writing… there are a lot of us out here, and we are always ravenous for more content. Please write. Please share. We are interested.

(As a side note: I wrote the first rough draft of this blog post before looking over past Author Spotlights and I almost laughed out loud at the common theme in our writing—we don’t want our sexuality to be the defining characteristic of our books. It’s important and in some ways it shaped me into who I am, but to quote Cosima of Orphan Black, “My sexuality is not the most interesting thing about me.”)

You can find Shannon on:  Twitter @WriterSTMcgee - Instagram @aquanaba - Facebook at facebook.com/shannontaylormcgee - website   shannontmcgee.com

[rorykillmore]

what would u say are the different ways your characters show affection, love, etc.

thisis gonna be a roller coaster…

 whenit comes to most people, lucille is super reserved in her shows of affection. herview of love was so messy and unhealthy for a long time that now she’s prettywrongfooted when it comes to? showing it properly? plus she’s english,

nobut i’d say while there are a select few cases of overt familiarity where she’sa little more tactile and maternal, for the most part lucille shows her affectionby watching out for people, doing what she needs to do to make sure they’resafe. she’s also fairly articulate and thus not too bad at talking peoplethrough things, telling them what they need to hear, supporting them that wayas long as it doesn’t require too much introspection on her part.

gloryis about as disinclined towards physical contact as lucille is, but she doesfind it easier to be a bit warmer. towards people she loves, she’s affectionatewith words if not in gestures – yeah, she’ll get real with you if she thinksyou need to hear it, but she’s also not afraid to point out people’s strengthsand positive qualities and let them know that she believes in them. with certainpeople she’s even inclined to be quite open about how fond of them she is, likewhen she calls moon one of her favorite dragons. needless to say, she’s also fiercely protective of the people she loves, and her affection can shinethrough that way even if it can be… a bit scary…

karareally has no qualms about showing her affection as openly as possible. she’svery physical, very happy to indulge in hugs and kisses and other affectionategestures as long as the other person is comfortable with them. she’s also just,pretty much always open about how she feels when it comes to people she likesand loves, and more than willing to offer them support or compliments or justremind them that she loves them if they need it. there’s really no mystery orsubtlety involved; you’ll know if kara holds any amount of affection for you. thoughone thing to note is that talking about krypton or sharing kryptonian cultureis something that’s… really personal for her, so people she does that withshould know they’re Next Level.

 siobhancringes away from affection whenever possible, and –

nahbut obviously, she’s not particularly skilled when it comes to communicatinghow she’s feeling, at least when it comes to the mushy stuff. but while shemight have a hard time telling someone that she loves them, she’s a little betterat showing it, even if not directly – she attaches a lot of stubborn loyalty tothe people closest to her, and will do like, incredibly dumb things for them.she’s actually a bit reckless and self-sacrificial when it comes down to it.her shows of affection also manifest in a particularly chaotic brand ofride-or-die that means picking a fight with anyone who so much as pisses offsomeone she cares about (see: lin hu having to deal with her after insultingrocket).

whenit comes to physical affection… she uuusually doesn’t really indulge in it,although there are some exceptions with people she feels really strongly about,but even then it’s pretty clumsy and usually only in really impulsive moments.

 caitlintends to come off to most people as, well, kind of cold. she’s not very tactile,and on top of that she’s very… blunt and professional and not really inclinedto go into mushy feelings too much. you can tell she really cares about someoneif she’s a little more willing to be vulnerable and… well, human, around them.people who see her sweeter, more supportive side are definitely seeing itbecause she loves them. as for killer frost, well, it’s hard to decipher ANYTHINGshe does as affectionate, really. mostly her positive feelings for someone willmanifest in her like… bothering to pep-talk them while they’re down, and eventhen she can be a little harsh. she’s not… very good at being affectionate… oropen about her feelings in general, really

sarausually shows casual affection through teasing, sometimes flirting if thesituation calls for it, but when it comes to the people she’s deeper levels ofride or die for she’s… actually a pretty loving and affectionate person, if inher own way. she’s not SUPER cuddly, but she can be physical if she thinks it’llhelp the other person, or to make a point. namely, though, she’s really good atverbal support, and shows a lot of her affection through pulling people up withthat and emphasizing their better qualities and their worth to the peoplearound them. she’s very… empathetic; she’s good at being able to tell whatother people need to hear and being understanding of their mistakes. and she,unfortunately, also falls into the “stupidly self-sacrificial” category andoverly extreme gestures such as almost crashing the waverider to save apotential teammate,

bramblestar…well he’s a cat, so even at his most casual a lot of his affection is tactile.warrior cats comfort and reassure each other with nose touches, licks, etc.apart from that, he’s gotten really good at… well, Dad-ing other people. akaworrying about them a little too much and occasionally being overprotective,but also giving out good advice and just being kind. also, as a clan cat, hehas loyalty pretty much ingrained into him, so he very much believes in showingaffection through that and stuff like hunting, protecting, making sure everyoneis well-provided for, etc.

heatheris a bit aloof on the surface, at least emotionally. just her not being kind of…dismissive and rude is a good indication that she likes you, because she’s atLEAST learned to be nicer to people she has positive relationships with. physically,she indulges in a lot of casual gestures of affection the way teenage girls tendto do with her friends, but even that itself is an indication of a prettypositive relationship because… if she doesn’t like you, she doesn’t want youtouching her :/.  but yeah, just casualstuff like shoulder bumps, arm linking, the occasional hug or sprawling out allover someone (like the cat she is). when it comes to the people she… reallycares about there’s this streak of protective ferocity that rears its head whenthey’re in a really shitty situation, or even just doubting themselves a lot

madelineshows her love by being the most ride or die person on earth, basically. onceshe’s attached to someone, she feels pretty compelled to treat all of theirproblems as a cause she should feel obligated to solve, which… can result inimpressive amounts of resolve and loyalty, but on the other hand, canoccasionally make her way too hover-y and inflammatory. she does mean it out oflove, though. she’s very protective of the people she cares for and very muchbelieves in showing it. if you’re close with madeline, she’ll most definitelyhave your back in any given situation, but… you should probably keep an eye onher so she doesn’t accidentally make things worse,

badgerstripefalls under the same types of physical behavior as bramblestar does, though sheis perhaps even less reserved with that than he is. she grew up learning to be pretty tactile with her sister, and she’s willing enough to extend that to other cats she’s close to. i think, if this makes sense, a lot of her love for others also shows through her willingness to like... steel herself. because badgerstripe has a lot of downplayed insecurity and she has trouble overcoming that when her only motivation is herself, but she draws a lot of strength from wanting to help the people she loves.

trish is a little tricky because she has a good heart, and a lot of compassion for other people, but she’s a bit... withdrawn about showing affection openly. i think a lot of that comes from her upbringing. she doesn’t like to be touched, for one thing, and there are people she can overcome that and be comfortable with but even then like... reaching out in that way is not her first impulse? and i think her relationship with her mom taught her to be more reserved about being verbally affectionate too; she can be very earnest and frank but she has a harder time being really... emotionally vulnerable. it’d probably be good for her to learn to navigate that with people who aren’t jessica.

but mostly as it stands now, one way she was taught to show her fondness for other people is... idk if “gestures” is the right word but like, more material stuff, like how she’ll just swoop in and pay for some of jessica’s shit or fix her door or whatever even without jess asking. and then on a deeper level, she shows love through quiet, unwavering loyalty even in pretty terrifying circumstances, but that’s reserved for... more dire stuff

anya is a little bit like a skittish cat. she’ll kind of... skirt around things and keep her distance even when she’s fond of people until she’s convinced that her feelings are reciprocated without some kind of catch, and then she can be slowly coaxed into showing affection more broadly. up until that point, she kind of does this thing where if she REALLY likes someone but doesn’t want to own up to it, she teases and prods at them and gets a lot more easily drawn into bickering and banter and that sort of thing. 

and dolores is... actually pretty openly affectionate and all around Soft with people she’s close to! you don’t get much of that on denny because she’s so jumpy around most people and wary of them getting too close to her (physically or otherwise) but she is very touchy-feely; if she wants to express affection for someone she’ll touch their face or hold their hand or do something sappy like that. she also has a tendency to be pretty open about how she feels; if she really cares about someone it’s not really in her nature to downplay that. she’s kind of all or nothing as far as Feeling Things goes, and thus a surprisingly... direct and uncomplicated entry on this list. it just all comes with the caveat of “she really has to trust you first” so again, not really stuff you’d see much of on denny yet (though she is a little more tactile and gentle with maeve just on the basis of maeve being a host)

[the-blackest-spider]

Writing Challenge

Day 11: THROUGH THEIR EYES

Describe your muses personality through your eyes, based off of interactions, character developing self paras, etc.

I’m going to break this down in a little bit, talk about her core traits which don’t change too much from verse to verse and AU and then talk about things below the Read More that are specific to some of her different verses. Also a lot of my muse’s personality and traits have actually been discovered off Tumblr in rps over Skype.

Some of Natasha’s personality core traits are honestly not what one would expect from an assassin and spy. She’s generous, kind and loving. Self-sacrificing and fiercely protective. But it’s important not to let these aspects blind you. She can also be cold and very cruel when it suits her. She has a unique sense of humor which at times can come off morbid and also cynical. She finds laughter in darkness, beauty in pain. She sees beyond what’s in front of her and she’s more curious than she cares to admit to, sometimes to the point of dangerous levels.

The Red Room tried to fix certain parts of her personality, make them more amendable, her stubbornness and independence. They were two aspects of her personality she had to learn all over again once she was free from that life.

She’s also very private, secretive and closed up. She doesn’t just open to anyone nor does she easily when she does, often it is in steps or levels, a little at time for two reasons, one not to overwhelm herself and two, to not scare off the person she is opening up to. Still even as she opens up there’s a lot she keeps hidden, afraid that if someone gets too close either she’ll lose them or they will see her for what she truly is.

She has a lot of guilt in her about various things, she blames herself for a vast amount of situations believing that she should’ve been able to right them somehow. It’s a ridiculous burden she places on her own shoulders and she’s more vulnerable than she lets on emotionally.

Sometimes she can have very narrowed focus. Especially if revenge is on her mind, she will stop at almost nothing to see it through.

When she loves someone, it’s entirely. She isn’t someone who half asses anything, especially emotional dependent things, which includes trust. She has to trust you first before she can love you in any way.

Sometimes her decision making skills are not the best. She means well and usually there is a method to her madness, but it sometimes gets muddled along the way. Also she can lie far too easily, it’s honestly as second nature to her as breathing.

And lastly, she is very full of sass and tends to be very blunt and to the point as well as confident in herself and her abilities despite her reluctance at times.

Star Wars Verse: In this verse most of the above applies, only her private, secretive and closed off aspects are far stronger and she’s a lot more fearful. She’s a walking secret as it is, honestly her level of maintaining sanity in this verse is astounding because of everything she’s been put through and the choices she makes which the consequences of she will have to face at some point.

Sith Hetaera: This verse explores a lot more of the darker corners of her personality. Basically take the above things, her core traits and twist them up. She can be very cold in this verse and she honestly doesn’t care about anything except what directly affects her. She’s been deeply scarred in the metaphorical sense and she doesn’t hide it.

Padawan AU: She is a little brat in this verse and rather naïve in a way. A teenager who well, lives up to that fact. She’s a mess of random emotions, feelings and all she wants to do is please her Master in every way possible. She’s obsessive, compulsive and honestly makes Anakin Skywalker look like a well-adjusted human being. She also gets a bit too big for her robes in a lot of ways, doing things without stopping to consider the consequences at all which gets her into all sorts of trouble.

Parlor Verse: In this verse she’s more open with her caring and generosity, but she’s very foolish with her choices when it comes to decisions and matters of the heart and her not so great decision making skills are quite a bit worse in some ways, and she’s a little more trusting in this verse.

Dragon Verse: In this verse there’s not a lot of difference except her temper is far more to the forefront whereas normally it’s very contained. Also she is far more secretive, but she’s also better with her patience which usually runs selective in regular type verses.

Hero Verse: Honestly this is the verse my muse has had the most growth in. She’s truly come into herself and a lot of the negative aspects of her personality have been righted. Becoming a Mother mellowed her out in a lot of ways and the responsibilities with being married to the Prince of Asgard has settled her into a better sense of herself, who she is and who she wants and needs to be. She’s become more open and communicative as well and is often a voice of reason for Thor.

Arranged Marriage AU: In this AU, my muse is very refined and respectful, but also in some ways naïve and trying to figure out who she is, especially under the circumstances of the situation, which is a good one. She is less prone to being ridiculously stubborn in this AU also and is more level headed.

Royal Affair AU: Quiet and very unsure. She’s doing her duty, but she doesn’t know how to feel about it and she has this sudden compulsion to have her cake and eat it too even though she knows better. So a bit naïve here as well, which is something she is definitely not in all other verses save this one, the Arranged Marriage and Padawan AUs.

Viking AU: Another AU where her decision making skills are so not stellar and she’s compulsive as well. Also she’s very lonely in this verse, something she doesn’t want to admit because she’s comfortable in it. Also she’s extremely stubborn and temperamental and constantly feels this need to prove herself.

[togetherinsolitude]

I write to you from the night’s solitude in the privacy of my home. Although I’ve been self-isolating since the 12th of march, my first diary entrance mentioning the pandemic was on the 24th. This virus made a globally shared awareness and reality that I’ve been busy failing trying to escape. So I have been quiet, spending a lot of time in my head, which has its own special pleasures and terrible nightmares. At this point, I have said little in response when it comes to the crisis, although I have been listening a lot in the sudden boom of zoom and jitsi meetings. So let me share my thoughts on this topic that I dread to you here, in an attempt to be together with you and co-exist for a while.

So, I am staying at home these days. I am grateful to have a home where I feel safe, loved and warm. My thoughts are often with those who are locked in with their abusers, with the question of battling domestic violence. I don’t know what else to do than spread the info of hotlines and shelters online and plaster them on the streets.

For me, my home is where I can be with and alone at the same time. It’s one of my places for solitude and privacy. For many I guess, like those with kids, a bit of privacy is rare. I don’t think my upstairs neighbors get much of that these days, with five little monsters stuck inside their three room apartment. I need solitude to stay sane and happy, like I need solitude’s opposite too. That is a harder to come by these days. Of course, I miss going out and being around my friends and family, but at the same time it’s like we’re actually talking more than we used to. For a while, I felt frozen since plans I had are not possible now, worse, they didn’t seem to be relevant anymore or even make sense. It will remain frozen I guess, until this thing has blown over.

At the moment, here in the Netherlands we are three weeks into the Corona measures, but we don’t really experience a heavily enforced lock down. We can still go outside, we’re not allowed to school together or move around in groups larger than three, but I haven’t seen any cops giving out fines yet where I live. There are no megaphones every hour urging people to stay indoors like in Spain and Italy. Most of us are just following government’s advice. Few people are wearing masks, not even in the hospitals, only the ones working with the corona patients. People look at you strange when wear one, I’m wondering how to make it hip, because you cannot know when you carry something and it’s better to be safe than sorry. I saw a woman in the market yesterday who was selecting lemons wearing a glove. The alcohol sprayed on the bars of the obligated shopping carts rubs off on people’s hands, but I don’t think it’s enough to keep all the germs at bay. They don’t clean the produce and so I thought it was a nice gesture of her.

The Dutch government has been terribly slow in responding to this crisis for which we have been warned so well in advance. These white people are acting superior as usual, thinking they are untouchable using words like ‘intelligent lockdown’, as if the Dutch are smarter than everyone else in the world, meanwhile ignoring good practices and experiences from the Asian countries who already passed the peak of this crisis. There is some security for those of us with the right residency permits, to fall into a shadow of the dwindling welfare state’s social net that is still catching many who end up not being able to work with special measures for freelancers. Yes, it is weird how they conjured up all that money to give to the people not working right now. Since that kind of money is just there, then why can’t we just get the basic income? No matter how wealthy this country is, our government refuses to support the southern European states. Ikke ikke ikke en de rest kan stikken, or me me me and the rest can choke. Another crisis, another selfish response from the stupid people in power.

The prime minister and his liberal party is gaining support, even my mother who despises the party thinks he’s doing well. I haven’t watched any of his press conferences, cannot stand their voices speaking with those potatoes in their throats. They’re still just fascists to me, hiding under their polite smiles, saying suddenly there is a society, while they built for no such thing. Their hypocritical faces nauseate me, as they’re praising the health care workers whose budgets they’ve been cutting and cutting for years on end, as if they haven’t been exploiting all these “essential” workers of the world, these people they call low-skilled in normal times while they continue to break down them and the other workforce they depend on from our undocumented circuits. I haven’t heard anything about whether the Dutch state is still deporting refugees, in Germany at least last week they were still organizing flights to Iran for that. The family prison in Zeist, whose function is literally to keep the strangers locked up (vreemdelingen bewaring), remains open 24/7, although their services and hours may differ due to COVID-19. I wonder if they wear any masks or stopped sharing cells.

A few days ago, when I was biking through the city center after almost three weeks at home, I saw there were still shops open selling trinkets, clothes and chocolate. What’s essential next to food? The local feminist bookshop took to delivering and reading out loud online, the anarchist library opens a window for pick up on the weekends and set up a solidarity kitchen serving free food every day. Most of the food supply to the homeless people in the city is cut off. The municipality is championing the volunteers for picking up their slack, without acknowledging they are slacking when it comes to support the vulnerable groups. The shop that sells the wool I like is closed, so I’m making due with what I have left. My mother thinks I’m bored out of my mind and had a puzzle delivered to our apartment. At some point I picked up an audiobook and let myself disappear to a world with witches and dragons, feeling like a teenager again, while looping soft threads of wool with a hook to make a waffled scarf. What’s the English word for crochet? in French from croc means hook, from Dutch too it translates as hooking. What’s the word?

I don’t mind the at home life. Although it’s hard facing the demons of my administration, I think I’m skilling up in my reproductive work, yes, taking care and trying to find structure, tweaking my rhythm. We started making plans for food in advance, are cooking most days and doing the laundry regularly instead of it piling up for weeks. I’ve even been consistently picking up all the stuff I tend to leave behind me in trails. I’m up late, but sleep as long as I like. Anyhow, it’s not a bad thing to slow down, it’s been a revolutionary cry for almost a century, because slowing down is a strategy to resist, refuse, rattle and collapse this sick system we live under. I wouldn’t mind to keep this part of how the virus has affected me, giving me time to rest and reflect when I thought I didn’t need it.

Now, I’ll have to think about work again, but since I don’t need the money, I promised myself to take things easy for a while. In the first week of isolation, I rearranged our guest room to make another place to work aside from the living room table. It’s not finished yet, because the table needs screws and also extra shelves would be nice. I want to go buy those things, but don’t want to go to the construction market and line up with all those other people. Infections are rising and we don’t have enough tests and beds for all those people that are going to get sick. So far, it’s mostly the south struggling and there are still beds in the north.

Better don’t risk contamination before things are past the peak. Patience never hurt anyone.

5 april, Utrecht