#this is my favorite secular christmas song and i do not apologize for it

[rothjuje]

Today was a much more manageable day. No therapy, Lyss was back at school (was home yesterday because she caught another cold), and favorite neighbor came over and it was sooo nice to have company.

I still can’t believe Hef is gone. This evening there was a little round shadow from our patio table and every time I walked past I thought Hef was curled up on the deck. I just can’t believe he’s gone. A week today.

Alyssa falls asleep easily at night but tosses and turns some nights. I can’t find any correlation to the previous day. The mornings following her restless nights are...challenging. Would melatonin help her to sleep more soundly? I don’t want to start it if it won’t help anyway or if it’s habit forming.

Therapy part two. I have been so afraid of George having echolalia that I panicked yesterday. From everything I’m reading though it appears that George does have meaningful (unique) speech. It is just more gestalt than natural. George’s brain is so fascinating. He loves books and is attempting to memorize his favorite ones. His babbling is full paragraphs with a very serious tone (but plenty of intonation). If you’re counting and stop, he will say the next number for you. Which surprises me every time. I’m trying to soak all of this in because he really is so cute, I want to be present and not so worried about the future.

I had the most cringe conversation with George’s therapist yesterday. It requires some back story. George was playing with a Hanukkah music toy, therapist mentioned that she didn’t know the song, so I mentioned that it was a Hanukkah song. And then she mentioned that we were the most observant family she knows because we don’t celebrate Christmas or cut kids’ hair until age 3. Then we started talking about Santa and egg hunts being secular vs religious and how the religious Christians she knows don’t like to celebrate the secular stuff etc. It was all interesting and good until I mentioned that I thought it was neat that our neighbors released red balloons and sang happy birthday on Christmas. She mentioned oh no, the releasing of red balloons is for stillbirth. And I asked, but what about singing happy birthday? And she said that her religious friends sing happy birthday to their miscarriages/stillbirths. I mentioned that we release balloons to my deceased family member on their birthday. And she said exactly, that practice is for the deceased. I must have given a very confused look because things got serious quickly.

I have so many regrets. Really. Why do I even talk.

She stares at me. “I think you should know that believers think Jesus is alive.” “Oh?” “Yes. He rose on Easter.” “Oh. I thought he ascended to Heaven.” “Yes.” “Doesn’t that make him...dead?” And then she explained the concept of people being alive in Heaven and the connection between Passover and Easter and Jesus being the sacrificial lamb, which I should know all about from seders but I was so unprepared for this conversation that I blanked.

Plus, we don’t call it the sacrificial lamb, we call it the paschal lamb, and I hadn’t had coffee yet. Not even a drop.

Anyway. I should have known this. I went to a private Christian high school and we had chapel every Wednesday. But I napped through chapel. Well, that’s not even true, napping would have been cooler than what I actually did...which was stare across the gymnasium and give people visual makeovers. That is literally what I did for an hour every Wednesday. I wish I could go back in time to have prevented this conversation from happening instead. Just. So awkward. I did apologize (at least twice) but what a terrible note to end her last session on. Cringe.

[swaps55]

What's your favourite character to write?

Wheeee, I’m gonna cheat and give you more than one. 

Let’s get the obvious one out of the way. Kaidan is a filthy soft-hearted paragon with integrity coming out his ears, loves carefully but deeply, is tough but kind, has been through trauma and hardship but found his way through to the other side. He’s steadfast, warm, funny if you pay attention, and the type of character who gives an excellent opportunity to observe others. So, basically, if you wanted to trap a Swaps in the wild, Kaidan Alenko is the friggin’ template you should work from to do it, Plus, when he’s with Shepard I get to go ham with old soldier imagery, which I have discovered is one of my absolute favorite things. Not surprisingly, I write Kaidan eagerly and often. Virtually all of my mShenko is exclusively from his POV. When I do it from Shepard’s it loses its magic somehow. 

The less obvious one? ASHLEY. I was never satisfied with Ashley in the games. I knew what I wished she would be, but the games never quite...gave me that. So a goal for me when I sat down to write Exordium was to create the Ashley that I’d wanted to see in the games. How surprised was I when all of her scenes basically wrote themselves? She was effortless for me to write - in fact I had to be very careful that she didn’t dominate POV characters when she shared scenes with them. She’ so fun and freeing to write. Loud, funny, confident, uninterested in worrying about what people think of her. She just...does her thing. And doesn’t apologize for it. It’s a blast. 

Honorable mention? Garrus. I love Garrus. I love him as a romance, I love him as Shepard’s best friend. In my stories I work his snark and sense of humor, and I’m always happy with the results. I very badly want to write more ME2-era fic, where he’s got Shepard’s back no matter how dark it gets, and in my ME2 canon things get really dark for Shepard. (Not Fine is my favorite example.)

Couple of snippets that I love for each character: 

Kaidan, from Celestial Navigation: 

Shepard’s body is familiar, but only as it functions in a hardsuit. Where it’s weak. Where it’s strong. How long before his amp overheats, how much punishment his barrier can take before he’s spent and vulnerable. He knows Shepard’s weak left hip – still weak, even after he’s been rebuilt from the ground up, because the man doesn’t know how to roll to the right every now and then – and how to protect him from it.

Now instead of gauntleted hands searching ablative for a breach to seal, Kaidan’s fingers skate over bare skin, find where it’s whole and where it’s broken. Instead of checking his biofeed and reading Shepard’s pulse he feels it under his palm, flesh and blood instead of numbers in his HUD.  

This is better. This is much better.

Ashley, from Exordium, Chapter 24 - Corpora Numerandum:

When Kaidan crawled his way back to groggy consciousness, he discovered he wasn’t alone. In the dark confines of Dr. Chakwas’ office there was a small rectangular glow of light from a datapad. The smell of eggs and sausage filled his nostrils, eliciting a growl from his empty stomach. The vice around his skull had loosened into a dull, throbbing ache. With a groan he rolled over and reached up to thumb the switch of a small lamp on Dr. Chakwas’ desk. In the sudden light he saw a pair of neon green boots propped up on the frame of his cot.

“Good morning, Sunshine,” Williams drawled, not looking up from her datapad. “Did you know Dr. Chakwas likes celebrity gossip? I think she has half a dozen entertainment mags on this thing.” She swiped at the screen, head cocked to the side with one eyebrow raised. “Apparently Varesh Onek and Chan’Dren Yara vas Naroma of Fleet and Flotilla fame may be a real life couple.”  She looked up at Kaidan. “See, they’re assuming I have any idea what the hell Fleet and Flotilla is.”  

“What are you doing here?” Kaidan replied, sitting up slowly as he waited for his brain to shake off some of the cobwebs. The aftermath of a migraine felt a little like what he imagined coming off a three day ryncol bender might be like.

She lifted a tray off Dr. Chakwas’ desk and removed the cover with a flourish. Beneath it was a steaming pile of scrambled eggs, sausage, and pancakes dripping with syrup. The smell was heavenly. She smirked. “The Doc said you’d be coming around soon, and I hear biotics like to binge eat.”

“You brought me breakfast?” he said, surprisingly touched by the gesture.

She raised her chin proudly. “Reconstituted it myself. I figured I’d save you the trouble of shambling through the mess to get some grub. Someone might mistake you for a plant zombie.”

“How chivalrous,” he said dryly.

“Right. Cute. Because of the knight in shining armor comment. I get it.” She pulled the tray out of reach. “You can’t have this now.”

Garrus, from Noel: 

“I bet there’s a few turian traditions that sound more than a little odd when you try to explain them to outsiders,” Liara prods.

“As odd as a single person visiting the homes of an entire planet in one evening?” Garrus asks. “Liara, we’re talking physics here.”

She gives him a withering look. “Ok. Then tell me about the turian belief in Turak Selar.”

His mandibles twitch. “You mean the spirit that snatches the souls of ill-mannered children and traps them in lizards?”

Liara is silent.

“How is that weird?”

She sighs and turns back to the monitors. “Christmas seems like a multi-layered tradition. There are even hints of fertility rituals in there, though I’m not sure humans still acknowledge those origins.”

Garrus shudders. “I really hope fertility has nothing to do with this.”

“The Christmas tradition appears to have both religious and folkloric derivations,” EDI’s offers helpfully over the comm.  “The human Christian faith honors it as a birth commemoration for the offspring of their deity. The occasion is marked with religious services, re-enactments of the child’s birth—”

The turian’s mandibles flail in alarm.

“—communal singing of relevant songs and reuniting of families. However secular influences appear prominently throughout the holiday’s history as well. The date coincides closely with a winter solstice. Several related ancient customs therefore have been adopted as part of the festivities, such as interior decorations with greenery, feasting, and gift giving.”

The AI’s voice quirks with interest on the last comment.

There’s a knock on the door, and Tali enters. “You said you wanted to see me?”

“For solidarity,” Garrus quips. “Shepard and the rest of the humans apparently neglected to tell us they secretly worship an immortal fat man who rides around in a hover sled dragged by hapless mammals, distributing presents to young children by breaking into their homes.”

Tali is so still Liara feels out the room’s gravity well to see if she’s somehow accidentally put her in a stasis field. “Is…that a joke?”

“No, Tali,” Garrus says with a sigh. “We’re actually friends with these people.”