#trying to get some of my old papers published in a journal

[isfjmel-phleg]

Here's the tentative outline of the TSG paper, as okayed by the professor whom I've been discussing the project with:

intro to the trend of recent adaptations/retellings reframing TSG as a story about grief

an assertion that the book is really about healing from childhood e m o t i o n a l n e g l e c t (CEN) (my thesis?)

defining CEN and distinguishing it from traditional grief

an analysis of CEN in the text

how this interacts with what these adaptations/retellings are doing

conclusion about the importance of the text’s depiction of CEN and why it’s worth acknowledging/exploring

It's a relief to pin this down and be able to go into this with some kind of focus. I've already got a start on the first paragraph. I'm trying a method of drafting by just constructing the basic argument and then working in all the evidence and research later. My college papers tended to take forever to write because I drafted them with Finished Perfection in mind for each sentence, which is stressful and easy to get bogged down with. We'll see how it works. The paper needs to be completed by October, probably the end of the month at the very latest, but I'd like to get it finished in enough time to fully polish and not have to stress about a tight deadline.

I can do this. Probably. It's been a few years but I might still have it in me.

[librarycards]

hello! i apologize in advance this is probably something that you get asked a lot. but do you have any recs on literary magazines to submit to? im a trans poet, ive been writing for over a decade but never shared anything and ive been wanting to try to send my stuff to get it published somewhere. obv ive been google searching but theres so many big and small publications and i was wondering if you have ones you like especially and/or tips on how to choose a magazine/journal to submit to. thanks a lot! <3

no worries, thank you for reaching out!! i've been publishing for like 8 years + an editor for almost 4, so i always appreciate the opportunity to help people new to the world find ethical publications that will treat their work with the care it deserves.

first and foremost: there are going to be pubs out there that are awesome and i don't know about. you may be the one to discover them for yourself! one aid in finding the best mag for your work is the wonderful, writer-created chillsubs. it's a fantastic platform that keeps a huge list of mags and presses and their relevant stats, and lets you create an account and bookmark those you're interested in. everyone i know uses them, and it's very worth it given the sheer volume of mags out there.

i also have some recs of my own, ofc. i'm going to list them below. if they pay (which i prioritize) I'll mark them with a $. some are trans/queer focused and some aren't, but all are pubs i've either edited and/or published with and can confirm their ethics + respect for writers.

manywor(l)ds - my mag! i'm co-founder and eic. break genre _ shapeshift with us. ($)

Sinister Wisdom - old, well-regarded lesbian+ lit mag, now open to everyone who is/loves a dyke. I'm guest-editing an issue on Madness with them, now open for submissions!

fifth wheel press - run by a beloved friend and comrade of mine. i've published here. excellent transparency, care, great for first-timers. ($).

kith books - headed by trans literary icon kat blair. a mag/press/community centered around bodymind non-conformity and noncompliance.

Honey Literary - QTPOC-centered, unabashedly pop-culture + social justice oriented. the vibes are simply immaculate.

Whale Road Review - not queer/trans focused, more oriented toward....'grown up' poetry/prose/pedagogy papers. Katie Manning (eic) is a fucking gem.

Graphic Violence Lit - just had my first experience publishing with them, and their care + consideration for the whole writer is amazing. they publish boundary-pushing work.

beestung - one of the brainchildren of Sarah Clark. nb/gq/2s SFF. I just edited a few guest issues w them and have published with them. amazing work. ($)

A Velvet Giant - genrequeer work. the editors are experienced, enthusiastic, and amazing at promoting writers long after publication. it's a family! ($)

Ethel Zine + Press - handmade with love by Sara Lefsyk (as you can see, trans/nonbinary/2s sarahs dominate indie publishing, as well we should :3). Sara is a sensitive and care-full editor and bookmaker whose every publication is a work of art.

Protean - pro- as in proletariat. awesome left mag with a mix of politics and culture and everything in between. they take reprints! ($)

Mudroom - publish your work along with a picture of your mudroom/shoe rack. very responsive editors who will hype you tf up. ($)

The Institutionalized Review - for psych survivors. the editors concreteness of vision and dedication to their community know no bounds.

Just Femme + Dandy - queer and fashion-focused! led by the inimitable Addie Tsai. They pay *handsomely*. ($)

In addition, there are also some "big" mags I have had excellent experiences publishing with and wanted to shout out. These are harder for a beginner to break into, but worth keeping on your radar + have been fantastic to me as a writer.

Electric Lit

Split Lip Magazine

The Offing

Nat. Brut

Santa Fe Writers' Project

Bodega

New Orleans Review

Augur Magazine

I hope this is helpful to you + others! the literary world is ever-changing and this is just a snapshot. Hopefully you find some that you like!

[goodluckclove]

Hey so like I get I might be unqualified to say this, but if you're an artist frustrated by the lack of feedback on your work and considering reacting by publicly berating/threatening/guilt tripping your audience - probably don't? Probably don't do that?

Like I get it, art is vulnerable and it can be tough not to get feedback from the dopamine machine that is social media. At the same time, I have literally never seen someone execute that strategy in a way that was remotely successful.

When a standup working my old open mic said "I have better jokes but I'll save them for a better audience", he found an efficient way to look like an asshole and not get a laugh in the process! Likewise, when an artist online says they're quitting their dreams of animation because we're assholes that won't fund a very loose premise for a comical amount of money - it's not a good look!

Maybe this applies less to fanfiction. I don't know about fanfiction. And I don't necessarily believe that everyone has to solely write for themselves - though I am pretty confident that should be the main driving force in a successful work ethic. I have, however, published and produced my writing enough to know that you do have to get comfortable with a lukewarm, or even silent reception.

I've published short stories to online literary journals I'm not convinced that anyone reads. I wrote a column for a culture website for like three years - solely because the editor kept asking for me to keep writing. I never got any feedback on anything I wrote. I later found some of my old articles republished on other weird websites, which was odd, but since my editor silently deleted all my old articles without saying anything I was just glad they still existed somewhere.

I think my only experience I have with instant mass validation in art was through theater, and those were only in cases when an audience knew ahead of time that I was the playwright.

Is this a cool situation? I don't know. I go back and forth on it. I mean I want to be appreciated as much as anyone, I want to know my art is being valued the way I value it - but I'm also weird about compliments sometimes. That's beside the point. What I mean to say is that when I get in the headspace of wanting more feedback, my impulse is not to complain about my audience on the same platform where I'm trying to establish and cultivate a relationship with them. This account is under my actual pen name. I don't censor myself really, but I am cognizant about what I say in terms of - you know - an online paper trail.

But yeah when I really want to complain I talk to my friends. You can be petty as shit to your friends, online and in real life. No one gets hurt, and if you decide later that you overreacted you don't have to meekly crawl back and retcon a bunch of Hard Takes.

This isn't really a moral lesson because it's not a flaw to want praise, or even just acknowledgement. It's more, like, professional? For people with career or career-adjacent aspirations? There are definitely a lot of professional artists who act pretty wildly, and unless they've already proven they're capable of quality work it doesn't really turn out great for them. So it doesn't hurt to be at least surface-level chill in more visible spaces.

[steviewashere]

I don't want to wait until WIP Wednesday, so here's the first journal entry in my Steddie Vecna Apocalypse AU. Just so you know, the piece is a 5+1, five journal entries from during the apocalypse and one that's an epilogue. There are non-first person POV scenes following each entry. So, no, this is not a first person POV fic. <3

CW: Possible Non-Canon Character Death, Mention of Prescribed Medications

————— April 16th, 1986

I don’t know what I’m doing with this. I’m not much for writing. Fuck, I couldn’t even write an essay for my senior paper. Nancy had to coach me through eighty percent of it. But I’ll go insane if I don’t speak. And I’m being careful with my voice for now. Those demogorgon things are blind, but aware. They can sense the heat of our bodies, the sounds of our movement, the smell of our fear and our blood.

Many people I’ve had to rescue have ultimately faded into nothing. They scream and they cry and they shake. They get too close, they stray too far. They reek of sweat. Even though I tried to get them away, to get them back towards the safe houses, they weren’t savable. I tried, though. Believe me, please, I tried.

Hawkins may not be salvageable. I don’t think this town is meant for saving. We try anyway. There’s the safe houses, like I mentioned. One bordering the exit sign, that’s where they put the women and children. They being the feds, by the way. Didn’t make that clear, should do that by now. Anyway. There’s the safe house across from old Forest Hills; the victims from the sinkhole crevice tearing through the trailer park go there. And then the final safe house is Hawkins High.

Our group is between Hopper’s cabin and my house. Everybody is safe there. Eddie’s no longer in hiding, but he still sleeps down the hall from me. Max is out of the hospital, her old bed now taken up by an elderly woman; the woman will probably die—a demogorgon got her with its claws—and Max is with El. The Wheelers are with their parents in the exit sign safe house, same with Henderson and his mom, the Sinclairs are there, too, and Mrs. Hargrove. Jon and Will are here with Hopper, El, Max, and Joyce. I wish we could take Max back to her mother, but she’s under constant supervision—El believes her newfound blindness is connected to Vecna. Wayne is no longer at the high school, he’s been forcefully relocated to old Forest Hills, but he’s welcome around here any time. Robin’s with her parents at the high school; that’s where Vickie is, so that’s where she’ll be.

I haven’t seen my parents since before the earthquake. They were out of town on a business trip. Mom went with Dad because she still doesn’t trust him alone. They called me the day Dustin brought me along to find Eddie. Told me they were on their way home, were driving back from the airport. I can hear back the message on the answering machine, as long as I keep the generator up and running.

Mom told me she loves me in it.

I can't help but think that they should’ve been back by now. I’ve checked with the soldiers on the edge, see if they saw a black Lincoln come through. Told me no. Told me they found remains of a car; a black car. I stopped checking after that. Couldn’t stomach the meaning behind that.

Our town is in ruin. I’m not alone, I have to remind myself. I’ll go out on monster hunting duty tonight, first time on my own. We’ll see how that goes.

I have to go, I can hear Eddie rousing. Time to check his wounds. Make sure he has his dose of antibiotics. See if he needs Tylenol; opioid free now…yay!

————— I'm really excited to finish and publish this at some point. Let me know what y'all think <3

[ygodmyy20]

Hello, I hear you have many thoughts on open access publishing? 👀

Okdoki Texas I have had enough time to gather my thoughts!

BIG caveat. I haven't worked in academic publishing sphere in over a year. Things change often and there likely are things I just (not being in the industry any more) don't know because I am not in the thick of it. I also am not an academic, I have never published in a journal. I just worked in the industry.

another also (so many I just, want to make sure I am super clear) anything with academia is complex, and there is no one perfect answer. There are a myriad of things that academic publishing is grappling with that isn't just OA publishing. But I'll just touch on OA publishing here!

Useful links that can probably give better definitions on things than I ever could:

^ DORA is related to publishing but i won't talk much about it here. Another issue with academic publishing is how journals are ranked. Which.....i am not gonna go into but if you search Journal Impact Factor you can find more info. (legit its like, academic publishing is a big iceberg hahahah)

First off, a brief def of what Open Access Publishing is:

OA Publishing is "A publication is defined 'open access' when there are no financial, legal or technical barriers to accessing it (source)." That is the best definition that exists. But OA journals are also characterized by funding models which do not require the reader to pay to read the journal's contents, relying instead on author fees or on public funding, subsidies and sponsorships. 

Within that are many types of OA publishing. Gold, Green, Diamond and more. You can find those definitions in the source link above on OA publishing.

Now, non-open access journals cover publishing costs through access tolls such as subscriptions, site licenses or pay-per-view charges. These are paywalled journals.

Open Access Publishing was created because research and knowledge was and is getting locked behind paywalls. For example, if I want to look up research on say....ADHD medication.

I do a search. I find this:

Paywall. Luckily I can gleam a good bit from the abstract they provide and they share some key highlights. But I cannot read the full text.

So now where do I go? I can try and dig around and find reddit or other articles on other sites, but what if I really wanted to read the research? What if i don't want to read an opinion piece on it? I can't. I have to pay for it (cuz I am not affiliated with a university) or find it somewhere else.

Open access reduces those paywalls so I can read that research if I want to.

However, worth noting, it isn't always a perfect model, as certain side effects have come up like an increase in predatory journals, incredibly high author costs, "double dipping" by large publishers (i.e., a journal charging an author fee and still charging libraries and institutions a subscription cost to the journal) and others.

At the same time, I fully back OA publishing over the old model because the locking of knowledge behind paywalls is too big an issue to ignore. Everyone deserves to be able to access research. And publishers are making so much fucking money off of research they didn't DO. (IN some cases an author is PAYING a journal to publish their journal and then the journal charges others to access and its like I AM SORRY????)

Reminder: You can always email an author and ask for their paper. They likely will send the PDF to you. They WANT their research to be read (bc my god the time it takes to publish a paper is insane.)

I am not the right person to give recommendations on how to publish. It is so dependent on your field of study, the journals in your discipline, etc. Most often, a professor or advisor will help with those decisions, but I think more younger academics should ask questions. Understand what OA is, and see if there are any OA journals in their field that would be a good fit for their research.

Anyway I hope that was helpful or interesting, Texas!! Again I am not sure I have any hot takes, I still just feel strongly about the dissemination of research to the public.

[starset21]

Standard Disclaimer: I only own my original characters, I've done some research but there will likely be Navy/military inaccuracies, and I do not consent to the posting, translating, or publishing of my work to any 3rd party site, the only place it may be found is on tumblr and Wattpad under @.itswildflower

A/N: This story is heavily inspired by the hallmark movie of the same title and is very self-indulgent. I'm also trying a different format than I'm used to using so it may change in the future chapters.

Looking for the other chapters? U.S.S. Christmas Masterlist 

Summary:  Kate and Jake stumble upon a mystery in the ship's archive room.

Chapter 4: A New Story

“Wow. Look at all this old stuff,” Kate marveled.

“I have never been here,” Jake muttered.

“Oh, yeah? Wow, check this out,” Kate handed him a picture frame from one of the boxes she had began going through.

“Wow, cool. B29. Hmm. Found some Christmas photos,” he told her, passing the loose photos to Kate.

“These look like fun performances,” she told him.

“Yeah, you know, we've had all kinds of dancers, singers, celebrities… Presidents, even,” Jake told her.

“Yeah?”

Jake nodded. “You really never went on a tiger cruise as a kid?” he asked.

“I didn't want to give up even one day at home. All the baking, decorating the tree… I remember driving around looking at all the neighborhood lights. Christmas is the best,” Kate smiled.

“I'm just surprised we never met as kids,” Jake rubbed the back of his neck.

“Oh. Well, I never really went to military functions as a kid. I met a few kids but I was always buried in a book or writing stories… It's kind of my escape,” Kate shrugged.

“You cover corrupt bankers committing fraud, right?” Jake asked.

“That and some other... Questionable people. Did someone look up my latest story?” Kate teased.

“Yeah. Yeah, I mean… I do read the paper. You should write about the pilots on the Polaris. We're the best of the best. That's inspiring.”

Kate laughed. “Yeah, an ego as big as a fighter pilot's. Look, an old journal. It was written by… A pilot named Jonah in 1965. Wow, she's beautiful. Looks like a dancer,” she said as she passed him the picture.

“Wow. Great artist, if he drew this. What's the journal say?” Jake asked. 

"We returned home from Vietnam just in time for operation tiger cruise. December 18th, 1965. It was the first time our families are allowed to stay with us… To see what we do every day for this country. I've missed everyone so much. Today the most beautiful woman I've ever seen boarded the ship, and I helped her with her bag.”

“He only got her first name. Dorothy,” Kate told Jake. 

"I can't explain. The moment I saw her, I felt like I was looking into my future. There was just something about her."

“It's so-” Kate trailed off.

“Undisciplined,” Jake cut her off but Kate shook her head.

“No. Romantic. You know, there actually might be a story here, maybe a Christmas story. You mind if I borrow this?” she asked.

“Yeah. You heard what my dad said. Anything you need,” Jake waved to boxes in the archieve room.

“Great. I want to see how Jonah’s story ends,” Kate smiled as she set the journal next to her bag.

“Is that a Santa suit?” She asked as she saw the red and white in a box. Jake shrugged.

“Oh! Jake, you know, I think this looks like it's just your size,” Kate laughed.

“Yeah, if I wore two life preservers under it,” Jake shook his head.

“I think that you should dress up as Santa for the kids on the ship,” Kate suggested.

“It's not gonna work,” Jake says seriously.

“What's not going to work?” Kate asked.

“Look, I'm sure my dad wants me to get in your love story and suddenly discover the spirit of the holidays, but I'm just not a Christmas guy. Fourth of July. Hmm! Ten thousand pounds of crackling explosives up in the air. Now, that is way better than caroling and candy canes,” Jake tells her.

“Who doesn't like candy canes?” Kate asks confounded.

“You're not gonna change me. The Navy is my life. Christmas on a ship is a distraction. End of story.”

"Last night I ran into Dorothy in the mess eating dinner. I finally had the courage to talk to her. She lives in New York City and works as a dance teacher. She's as sweet as can be. But her brother told me Dorothy has a fellow back home. I hope it's not serious, because there is something about her smile that gives me hope for the first time in years."

“Hey! Your mom said I could find you here,” Jake greeted as he joined Kate at one of the various desks in a ready room.

“Yeah. Nice flying today, it was pretty awesome,” Kate told him.

“Thanks. So, any update on our Christmas couple?” he asked.

“Oh, curious, huh?” Kate smirked.

“Hmm. Look, I'm interested in the historical aspect of it,” Jake told her but Kate wasn’t buying it.

“Okay. Well, I ended up reading the journal from the beginning, and it turns out that Jonah did talk to Dorothy. But he just found out she has a man back home, so not really sure how it ends,” Kate tells him.

“Well, I went down to the archives room to see if I could find anything else, and take a look at this,” Jake hands her a turquoise sparkle covered star ornament.

"To Dorothy, 1965. Wonder if Jonah made this for her?” Jake hummed.

“Makes sense. Your dad said there's a senior chief who handles all things Christmas, maybe he could help us,” Kate asked. 

“Yeah. But the post office closes at 1800,” Jake tells her after looking at his watch. “That's ten minutes from now.”

Kate stood quickly, putting the journal in her satchel before taking Jake’s hand and pulling him along. 

“Senior chief, I found this old ornament in the archives room. We know it's a longshot, but we were wondering if you might know who Dorothy is… Her name's on the back,” Kate asked handing him the ornament.

“Well, 1965, that was the very first Christmas tiger cruise. Looks like it could be from the ornament decorating station. It's a tradition on the cruise. Gosh, I have no idea who Dorothy is, though,” the senior chief told them.

“We think a pilot named Jonah made it for her. We're looking for him too,” Jake added.

“You know, my brother has access to military records. He works for the VA. He just went on vacation today, but he does owe me a favor for decorating his house last year for Christmas,” the senior chief told them.

“Great!” Kate smiled. “What's Jonah's last name?” the senior chief asked.

“Unfortunately, we don't have it,” Kate told him, her face falling.

“Well, that's a tall order of eggnog, but I'll see what I can do,” the senior chief reassured.

“Oh, and this is his journal. There's a picture he drew in here, we think it might be Dorothy,” Kate handed him the drawing.

“A dancer,” the chief clarified.

“You know, some years the uso performers come on the ship for Christmas,” the chief told them. “You think she might have been one of them?” Jake asked.

“Maybe. There's a bunch of photographs and memorabilia down on the quarterdeck,” the chief told them.

“I saw them when we boarded the ship,” Kate nodded.

“Yeah, exactly. You could check there. Meanwhile, I'll give my brother a buzz,” the chief assured.

“Thanks, Nick,” Jake told him.

“Senior chief,” Kate shook his hand.

“Merry Christmas,” the chief called out before they had left the room. 

“Wow, these photos are great. This ship has so much history. This could be Dorothy,” Kate pointed to a picture on the wall.

“Sure looks a lot like her. You know, there's a historical building for the Navy in New York City,” Jake told her.

“Yeah? Any chance you want to go with me? I mean, we're docking there tomorrow anyway, so I could call ahead?” she asked.

“Four years at the naval academy to serve on the Christmas version of the love boat,” Jake sighed.

Kate gave him a look.

“Not funny?” he asked. “You know my Dad'll throw me in the brig if I don't go with you.”

Kate grinned. “Great!”

[u2fangirlie-blog]

Reading Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook

I haven't played Dungeons and Dragons in 28 years. Recently, I've been invited to play again. I have thoughts about the handbook. What's it like reading the Dungeons and Dragons player's handbook? Some sections are written like an instruction manual written by engineers who assume the reader has a certain level of background knowledge. It's difficult to read. From the perspective of a community college English instructor who taught students to write research papers, this the same problem as reading texts that are unfamiliar and written in a style that is specific to an academic discipline or industry that outsiders find difficult to comprehend. Students often struggle with reading journal articles and give up reading. They misunderstand the content, misrepresent the authors' ideas, and use information incorrectly or out of context. I wonder if this is the same for players and Dungeon Masters.

In the way the D&D handbooks are written, sometimes the rules and spells don't make sense to me. I think this is because the game is decades old and the manuals have been revised so many times by different people that they have lost perspective on making the rules clear to outsiders and newbies. Is it intentional? I don't know. (I suspect that might be a form of gatekeeping.) I do understand that some rules and spells are written vaguely so Dungeon Masters can apply their own interpretation during gameplay. This allows the game to be modified to the group's needs and preferences.

In my opinion, unclear rules are the result of word economy and trying write as concisely as possible. Book publishing is expensive for the parent company (Wizards of the Coast) and the cost of books for the gamers. If books are pricey, people won't buy them. However, in trying to reduce costs by using fewer words, context is lost in the effort to avoid wordiness. The player's handbook is free on the D&D Beyond website, along with information from other manuals. The handbooks could be improved by adding context and clear explanations. They need to use more words for us dummies.

When I get confused reading the D&D rules multiple times, I feel that old math anxiety take control of my brain. I can't think clearly and get frustrated. I feel stupid. It's like my brain is Teflon coated, and the words slide off. Then my brain shuts down. It feels like there's a wet towel or heavy blanket over my head. (Actually, that's a physical sensation of anxiety and depression.)

Thank goodness for the internet. I can research the rules. This information wasn't readily available online 30 years ago when I started gaming in college. Today, the message boards on D&D Beyond and fan-run webpages often are no better than the handbook. People write responses and regurgitate the rules in the exact same wording for confused gamers who ask questions.

However, some websites write articles explaining the rules more clearly, giving definitions and context, and providing examples of using the rules during gameplay. YouTube has many D&D video creators who explain the rules and demonstrate gameplay. I'm grateful to those writers and video creators who understand what their audience needs. Sometimes I save reader friendly versions of webpages as PDFs. Later I print them out and take notes in my own words. (Yes. I still print articles. My brain processes text better in print rather than electronic text.) Those are my thoughts about the D&D handbook.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[profoundlyfaded]

WIP Folder Game

RULES: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it!

Thanks @gale-force-storm

Now, my WIP is all in a handwritten journal and I type it up as the second draft and edit and publish, and at present my WIP Journal consists of snippets from what might one day be Songs, Swords and Sorcery. I’ve always written like this for creative work, there is a synergy for me between pen and paper - honestly, my relationship with reading, writing and music is a large part of why I am so often a Bard in rpg when allowed!

So what snippets do I have?

All of them are from the Ayressa Aedihle playthrough as this is my canon Tav.

So we have, in order of my journal -

- Gale and Ayressa discussing Netherese Magic found in Balthazar’s Study.

- Ayressa musing on vampires in the wild (and a reduction in her magical abilities)- post finding the boar but before discovering Astarion (although headcanon wise, she has encountered Astarion in BG and knows exactly who he is).

- Gale and Ayressa ‘then live’ which is adaptation of her convincing Gale not to become a God. Actually I really love this-

- ’It’s beautiful, but is it truly living? The passion and pain of life is a blessing but is it something that is felt here or is this just mere existence? I want to live, Gale, not rule over a dominion. I want you as you are now, as you will be in ten, twenty years from now. I don’t need a God.’

- Gale musing on Ayressa’s exes. Actually hilariously savage, I think.

- Meeting Jaheira - and some context here, Ayressa and Jaheira are ‘old friends’ and it’s at this point Ayressa’s secret is revealed to the gang. I love this segment,

- It segways into a scene where Ayressa gets grilled from everyone about her secret (which is that she is a hugely famous Bard known as The White Nightingale whom most of the gang have seen perform/heard of) and further revelations about what she does in her spare time (she’s an investigator in the city which is how she knows Jaheira)

- Then moves into an impromptu second magic lesson with Gale and their first kiss (look, with writing fic, let’s face it, we can still have a slow burn with a little more burn)

- Astarion and Ayressa arguing over her hunting him a number of times in the last 150 years - all of Cazador’s spawn really. Not really hunting them but looking for their various victims - how dare she.

- The Act Two romance scene adapted for the fanfic.

- A snippet from a post BG3 idea involving Gale being kidnapped and a very furious Ayressa.

- Ayressa musing on Gale’s actual surname.

- A snippet from post BG3 of Ayressa meeting Morena Dekarious.

- Snippet AU for Ayressa where she is not Tav, but her history largely plays out the same however Ayressa’s paladin sister Torhana is Tav. Torhana is searching for Ayressa to help them and lets Astarion pick her lock earning a crossbow bold to the shoulder. ‘I was expecting cultists.’

- Ayressa trying to find out more about the Orb from Gale.

- Gale visiting Ayressa’s home for the first time (where she has an even more interesting secret to share) (Act 3 - post attempting to heist the book)

- Ayressa attempting to lull the Orb with her magic when it’s clear Gale is struggling to hold on.

Quite a lot of disjointed stuff here.

I’m kinda new to the fandom and don’t have many folk in following so please play along without invite :)

[quill-of-thoth]

The Years When I Wrote Stuff

So it’s the wake of the year 2022 and as of two months from now it will be two years since I spent a significant amount of time writing anything. I watched The Glass Onion last night and I want to write a mystery so badly that my stomach hurts, but also I want to go home and time travel is not an option. Feel free to skip the introspection but I miss Livejournal, and I thought other people also waiting for a dead year to be buried who have also tried to make stuff during the last eternity might find this a little cathartic.

I spent my morning rereading some stuff I previously wrote, back in college, approximately a decade ago, and it’s... good? In ways that I didn’t expect, given a whole host of personal factors like ten years experience, the fact that some of what I wrote then was fanfic for a very small and insular writing and reading community and not actually fanfic of a property that exists*, and that what I remember as communitywide engagement is an average of five unique commenters per chapter. (*People who never lived on Live Journal: there were several of these sorts of emergent meta fandoms, long before Goncharov. I was in a handful of them. One of them was the Sims 2 legacy challenge community, where there is no canon, everyone is trying to win points on a spreadsheet while playing a completely different game, and people just straight up borrowed each other’s characters to write combination screenshot and text stories about. It was considered flattery to do it if you could write your way out of a paper bag. Or if your forum threads / livejournal entries got enough engagement to be equal to or more ‘popular’ than the original author. Other metafandoms involved sporking [critical reading of another work with jokes worked in], and meta-fanfic like protectors of the plot continuum.) So, what did I have in twenty mumbleteen that let me write, and do it pretty well for my level of skill at the time? 

I was not less depressed: the year that I wrote 48k of cathartic mystery investigation that I still like was not a good one, personally, and the year before it was definitely top three worst. I also wasn’t just astronomically talented at the time: I was concurrently writing a non-fanfic attempt at a novel that has fully earned its position in the mental compost bin. (The physical location is somewhere in a folder within a folder on a thumb drive, probably labeled “junk” and “old junk” respectively.) 

I was not less busy: on top of classes I was writing a thesis that was so bad, the singular time any other living human mentioned they’d read it after I graduated, I blurted out “Oh god WHY?” (I got that job anyway.) In contrast since the beginning of the pandemic I have been unemployed off and on and not exactly super busy otherwise. I may have been doing a less overwhelming amount of the work of living, since I was living in dorms at the time, but... (checks my apartment) I think I’d better not investigate how much work of living is technically getting done around here.  I honestly think the major difference has been community. Don’t get me wrong, I like tumblr. I like twitter too. There is not a lack of people joyfully engaged in making stuff and talking to each other about it on either platform. We are (probably, at least in my case) a little cooler about it too: twitter’s villain of the week and the eternal problem of internet harassment aside, the dominance of short form and mostly public posting has made a lot more people than I remember aware that joining secret locked fandom groups devoted to hating specific members of your community is a bad thing and not a badge of acceptance into the Big Name Fan inner circle. Also, the first time Diane Duane turned up to my livejournal I acted like an embarrassingly star-struck teenager. Given that I was an embarrassingly star-struck teenager and have since managed to have actual conversations with published authors, I think I may have matured some. But with shorter, faster posts, and an internet economy that is increasingly about advertising, and single streams of information, we’ve definitely lost an aspect of the previous writing and fannish community. Not just the ability to off topic chat in a forum or a comments section with days or weeks between replies instead of wading through the discord, or community reading lists instead of reblogs and quote tweets, or spending hours uploading photos and gifs to new third party hosting sites and re-linking them every time free hosting got discontinued. From my perspective here on Tumblr we seem to have lost a huge amount of support for each other’s projects. Let me explain: back in the days of Livejournal there was fandom, meta fandoms, and original work. The three nations lived in harmony until - okay, technically they weren’t three nations, because we were a bunch of individual people doing a bunch of different things and even if you didn’t tag for shit, if you stuck around and commented enough you met other people. You would get invested in one of their projects, or they would get invested in yours. Most importantly, you would talk about things in the comments section. If you went looking for book reviews you would go to the comments for more recommendations. You’d also get arguments between people you’d never met, essays written by someone who appeared to be commenting on the mirrorverse version of the post you’d just read, and a decent number of bots. But you would be at the party talking about your favorite movies, the novel you were writing, and your thesis in the corners with photos of someone’s cat, instead of shouting across the width of the internet. You can still DM people, yes I know. You can still, if you’re too experienced to be embarrassed by being perceived like @seeingteacupsindragons and I, have a loud personal conversation in public via reblogs and tagging other people. It can even be a relatively private conversation if you’re deep enough into twitter replies or you’re only notable to a few dozen or few hundred people who only follow you in case you have more confessions to make about your former feral gremlin exploits back in the years when you wrote things. I can’t imagine writing the usual fandom disclaimer of “don’t own: don’t like don’t read” the way I used to during a spork or analysis. I legitimately once advertised the story that kicked off this round of introspection with “I obviously don’t own [book series we were dissecting to see why we hated it] because if I did you guys wouldn’t love me anymore.” Not just because it’s assuming my audience has strong feelings about me (easy to assume when there are seven of them and they loyally keysmash every chapter,) but because the firehose of social media feels very impersonal. Not on a caring about other people personally level, but on a level where, outside of fandoms, which aren’t built as sturdily as they used to be, it seems a little absurd to assume people care about your ongoing projects.  I’m not saying prior fandom iterations were better. Fandom problems and blog and social media problems have always been the same community building problems dressed up in different posting limits. Human nature has always been that of miscommunication, self interest, and sarcastic asides no matter how low you can sink the stakes. People have always struggled to organize community in the face of corporate censorship, societal bigotry, and Russian government takedown bots.** I’m saying that the things that used to go hand in hand with fandom, like your own oc’s and the ability to spend six months in a fandom and come out with a writing group passionately keysmashing over each other’s original characters and original stories are much, much harder to find than they used to be.  (**The bots are not always russian but false DMCA reports and the other apparatus of modern internet bot problems is not by any means new. And the eventual deathblow of Livejournal was struck by Russia. For more information I’m afraid you’ll have to google it all, due to me failing to locate any of the tumblr posts that filled me in on specifics long after the fact, on the very same day I successfully found my old Livejournal story I had forgotten the time of via a string of related tags. Irony, it turns out, cannot die.) AO3 and tumblr have kept fandom going, arguably stronger than ever, and it’s not like metafandom has died, given that it hasn’t even been two months since a critical mass of tumblr users decided to collaboratively write a summary of a movie based on a pair of bootleg shoes. I’m almost guaranteed to get more “interaction” with this post than my average original story in livejournal days.  But goddamn it, I miss the comments section. I miss replying to people demanding to know what was coming next with cutesy replies like “well you see, next chapter, [redacted] will [spoiler].” I miss having to break five thousand word conversations into multiple comments and the accompanying ability to trade theories and refute assumptions point by point without either flooding the dash or having to shove it all behind a readmore. (I miss customizeable readmores and the ability to put up a summary to click on or make a cryptic comment about the plot. Upon reflection, I don’t miss breaking up comments, I miss having collapsible threads to discuss specific points of speculation.) Most of all, I miss the semi-private space where people overwhelmingly were not shy about saying “hey, this reminds me of some things in my original story, you want to read some?” and where the link you received when you said yes ended either with you giving out a polite comment about the similarity to the original conversation and ‘I might not keep up with it, but good luck!’ or falling madly in love with someone else’s blorbo. I’ve tried to recapture the magic here and elsewhere, but as lovely as most people in writeblr are there is just so much advertising that it hasn’t worked for me, as a vehicle of actually talking to people about writing. Without a word written of the actual story there’s a moodboard and a playlist and a near-constant feeling of talking to yourself in front of a microphone. We all might want to publish this some day: have two paragraphs and an entire tag of endlessly recycled promotional material about the aesthetic. Everything is a pitch contest and the rules of engagement are written down in a completely different post: above all else act professional. Well, professional enough. You can be a clown and you can be a jerk but you cannot just hang out and expect that everyone will get their own turn to talk about their OC’s, regardless of whether you’re seriously hoping to publish or not. I’d love to talk about the process and art of writing again with people I only sort of know, instead of only doing it in DM’s with my oldest friends. I’d love to drag my OC’s out of the metaphorical compost bin and tell you that I don’t currently have a WIP that is anything like ready for public consumption, much less publication, but that if you watched Glass Onion last night and cried over the idea that you can’t have justice for the ones you love and you can’t bring them back but you can damn well be sure their work was not in vain, you’d love them. They’re my children and they’re my self, they live in my brain and they’re in love and better yet they’re best friends who will never, ever loose each other. Whether that’s to the slow diaspora of having to move across the country to make a living or finding that a dumbass billionaire pulled the plug on the liminal space where they gather. They’re part of a family of orphans and outcasts and they’re the spiritual descendants of a lot of people who taught me a lot about community. They know way more than me about how to help the friends who are suffering yet another pointless accident and wring some kind of catharsis out of a world that has not stopped ending in a thousand different ways since before any of us were born, and it’s only partly because one of them can literally do magic. Mostly it’s because when you write for five people who all hated the idea that resistance to the cruelties of the world is pointless even in fiction the exact same way you can actually give them a single webpage where justice exists, the people who are supposed to keep people safe care more about that than maintaining their structural power, and rich assholes who ruin people’s lives are the ones who go to jail. Now if only my perfect, (but not too perfect) darling, useless daughters would bring me a plot so I could actually use the sadness and anger for something. Even if no one ever reads it.

[ursbearhug]

A strange white person (badge of shame lmfao) rambling caused by comment section of a video;

So obviously there is not an ounce of any other race than white in me. And I'm sure even if my mom, who let's be clear is still doing her dandest, was any more successful with tracking the lineage of either of her family trees I'm beyond certain that at best the family would be different mixture of slavic people, or maybe, mix of otherwise european (idk?) fractions; all of them explicably white. Thing that I'm saying that continuously pisses off certain sub group of leftists, is that my country and motherland has very weak understanding of racism purely because it has 0 colonial history and while other European countries were preoccupied with colonisation, it was either chilling or actively trying to sink itself. This obviously is not an attempt at exonerate or absolve of the guilt of, sadly, very often being racist. But I think it is something to consider why exactly it struggles with understanding what actions are racist and why exactly are they racist. Though, of course, you'd assume a body that is almost 1100 years old would put a little bit more effort into learning.

I've always found learning about cultures that aren't mine fascinating and as I grow older I find the indigenous people and their culture and stories more and more fascinating. Thus I see why their stories seek to be told, as they should be, and why sometimes there is a want to read them. Because white people always been like 'ooh, so exotic' all the way back to ancient greece. I also see how some people would rather take the praise of telling these stories themselves, rather than, letting the very people they belong to do that. Especially in the year of our God 2024 in 21st century when the racial card is constantly used for the 'benefits'; whether it be social leverage in a slap fight on twitter dot com or when they try to get their publishing deal. Of course it is always about unseen, intangible and famed benefits of being a different race, never about the struggles. Sure, it is extremely easy to put on blackface and act as if you shat gold with your half assed, literal shit, experiment and journalism, and forget that black folks cannot, in fact, just take their skin off when it no longer suits them.

So reading comments from different tribes of indigenous people, I don't know, competing? Arguing? Contesting? About the validity of their indigeneity is somehow strange experience. Not because 'huh, who could have guessed that race and belonging is nuanced' but because some of them seem to genuinely struggle with their non whiteness or their mixed heritage or, most interesting, what does it really mean to be indigenous. Why different tribes have different requirements to prove whether an individual is of this tribe or not? Why some of them are really just a bunch of sometimes impossible paper work and some of them are trying to prove their validity with blood or genealogy. Some point out that despite being enrolled into particular tribe they're not exactly any more [tribe name] than their peers who are not enrolled or vice versa. And I had no idea that the conversation within these groups can be so vast. I knew of the conversations about mixed asian or black or latino folk and how sometimes there is the conflict of 'am I X enough?' or 'why am I being treated racistily despite my best attempts to fit in with white folk?'. Wondering if they're asian enough to complain back in 2020 or having to defend their black heritage when they act or don't act 'black enough' whatever that even means. But seeing tribal people talking about or even arguing over the rules of belonging and not belonging is truly fascinating. I wonder if I can scrounge up some time to look into it further.

As a ending note, I'd like to remind that despite not liking Yellowface by RF Kuang, I feel the need to point out it is not, in fact, tutorial or how to guide, Zeus Almighty.

[eggshell-skull-rule]

Bemoaning the fact that I can't access my university server without two- step authentication.

I prefer a low- tech life. I often like to leave my phone at home. My notes are on paper, bound in folders. I prefer to have physical textbooks (though I only buy the ones I think will have long- term use if the library has a copy).

All of my topic resources are online. We don't even have in- person lectures, they're all recorded. I do have fantastic use of electronic databases through the library, though. Imagine how much longer all this would take if I had to physically locate a case among thousands of others- when other students are also trying to read it?!

I see the case and law reports in the library. Rows and rows of them. Handsomely bound, some of them are very old (which in Australia doesn't mean much more than 200 years at a push, but). Some are even foreign. I could find a case among them if I had the citation but I don't know how to research with them.

If you need a precedent for falling leaves as a nuisance, how do you find one? Is there a reference card system gathering dust somewhere?

How do you find the Act among rows of books? How do you check if it's still in force? Do they publish up- to- date registers? Surely.

Then do they have copies of the delegated regulations and codes? Where do you get them if they don't- the state library? the Department?

Oh god what about the legal journals?!

I've been taught how to use the right keywords in a search bar, and that feels kind of sad.

But still. I just hate phones.

[cherokeegal1975]

I made this book.

Made with mostly recycled materials I had on hand. Everything from wrapping paper, plastic beads, old useless printer paper and old jeans. Worked pretty well, especially since I didn't really have any instructions on how to do it. Just figured it out pretty much on my own. This book eventually became a journal instead of a book to draw in. I'm thinking someday when I'm in a better place both mentally and physically, I might consider going through those entries and typing them up to be published in a journal made by Blurb. Not to sell of course. Still debating if I want to or not. I'm really more interested in putting my artwork in a book instead.

I don't remember exactly when I made this thing, but my best guess is around 2002-03. Been a while. I've only crafted three books. One was destroyed because I was extremely bored and was trying to get enough paper to take on animation and that failed. The other was made from recycled denim shirts a pair of old jeans and some other bits with its core being made of an extra-large Strathmore art pad that got peed on my one of our cats. I only got to use one of its pages before it got damaged. The end result was lovely, but ultimately useless. I eventually gave it away to a nice neighbor's mom who I never told that the reason why I made that book was because a cat peed on the edges of the papers.

[piosplayhouse]

Holy absolute fuck for some reason this random ass post with pretty much zero relevant tags struck complete discourse shitfest rabbit hole GOLD so I'm taking you all on the wild journey I just experienced.

So this person who I've never seen in my life but seems to run a surface-level innocuous watercolor art blog commented this under this post:

I thought whatever, it is extremely contentious ongoing science that's still awaiting new developments and research results to this day. The papers do indeed address the fact that no solid research on the topic of whether or not it's antibiotics or birth conditions (or, likely, a mixture of both and many other factors as we know how life is) and even cite a variety of contradicting experiments to add depth to the research, but it's true that there is no One Truth in emerging science. I replied this:

rocksmorelikefood also replied to them with an extremely neutral and polite response informing them that the linked papers were not experimental, but reviews of other experimental data, meaning the authors themselves would not be in charge of the experiment design or control. They also reasserted that (hopefully) no one's having intestinal gestation babies there's wombs involved even if they connect to the ass

They replied with this extremely normal (/s to the maximum) response:

I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt at first but these replies definitely made me like. Huh. extremely weird hill to die on to claim these peer-reviewed scientific papers actually published in proven scientific journals are "publishing for the purpose of publishing".

I've known a lot of STEM people in my life and I have to say I don't think any of them have ever said "Fuck yes!! My favorite part of science, writing a 20 page long report to be submitted to a board of reviewers who will rigorously henpeck the work I've put blood, sweat, and tears into!" or such. Extremely suspicious anti-science stance for perhaps one of the most niche subjects in the world.

The further assertion that a fantasy mpreg uterus MUST share tissues with the intestine but they CAN'T because PEOPLE WOULD DIE was also so ??? You are the only person saying intestinal gestation I promise you no one else was thinking about that at all. Nobody, especially not the literal scientific papers here, brought that up except for you.

And then I realized. Are they making some sort of insane extrapolation that mpreg is a gateway to like. intestinal gestation surgery??? Do they seriously think scientific research into CIS WOMEN'S birthing methods will somehow lead to ?? A uterus made out of intestines??? What kind of American Mary shit is going on here

So then I did a one second tumblr search and, ladies and gentlethems, enjoy the insane rabbithole that is the controversial legacy of havekat / rad-bad-and-dangerous-to-know / have-a-hygge, a terfy artist with accusations of everything under the sun from being a radfem to scamming (it seems this also led to an event of terf infighting in which radfems began trying to get her kicked out of communities for scamming people? idk terfs hate her, normal people hate her, the world's against her basically and she's clearly learned nothing) to RACE-FAKING. Truly an insane tag to scroll through

Anyway, in summary, no matter how bad you feel about yourself sometimes always remember that you're a billion more times more dignified than this random ass pathetic terf with every controversy under the sun feeling so threatened by the mere notion of a fantasy man getting pregnant and giving birth out of his rectum for presumable kink reasons that you inadvertently make a whole new omegaverse biology concept while trying to reject genuine scientific research into, and I cannot stress this enough, CIS WOMEN and their circumstances around giving birth (you know, the thing that terfs love) on some low virality Tumblr post made by a niche fandom blog. Truly admirable.

when the biology assumes that the person would give birth via the asshole it breaks immersion for me and i stop reading simply because it makes NO sense for a species to give birth via a method that would expose their newborns to the germs in the asshole? (via the mpreg poll)

Um. I'm really really sorry to have to break this to you but there's actually a very heated and still ongoing scientific debate over whether or not children born via c-section have a higher risk of childhood immune-related disease due to lack of exposure to birth canal/adjacent fecal matter germ not populating their gut microflora

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4464665/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5050524/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091674908009408

[tallmantall]

#JamesDonaldson On #MentalHealth – Why Are #Teenagers So Sleep-Deprived?

A perfect storm of biology, technology, and homework Writer: Juliann Garey Clinical Experts: Allison Baker, MD , Max Van Gilder, MD What You'll Learn - How much sleep do #teens need to be healthy? - What part does biology play in #teens’ #sleep? - How does screen time affect #sleep? - Quick Read - Full Article - What’s going on here? - Biology - Technology - Homework - Over-scheduling - Earlier #school start times Most #teens today are living with mild to severe #sleepdeprivation. #Teens actually need more #sleep than little #kids. Experts say #teens need over nine hours a night to be healthy. But over a third of #teens get only five to six hours a night. The major reasons for #sleepdeprivation in #teens are biology, screen time and unreasonable expectations. Because of hormone changes, #teens are more awake at midnight and would wake at 10 or 11am if they didn’t have to get to #school. When #kids try to catch up on #sleep on the weekends, it messes with their #sleep even more. Another reason for #sleepdeprivation in #teens is the time they spend on screens. The light coming from the screen keeps their brains from making melatonin, which is the #sleep hormone. Between doing homework on computers and socializing on phones, that means a lot of screen time. And then there’s the #anxiety of #kids who want to be perfect in #school. Staying up all night to study becomes competitive among some groups of high-achieving friends. We also live in a culture that values activity over #sleep. #Teens often participate in more activities than they have time for. A lot of times that’s because they’re being told that colleges want them to be well-rounded. But the more they do, the less #sleep they get. This is made worse by the fact that some #highschools start as early as 7:20 in the morning. In reality, studies show that #teens don’t function well before 9am. My 16-year-old daughter is finally entering the homestretch of sophomore year, and she has been chronically #sleep deprived since September. The reasons are multiple but when you add together 45 minutes of homework per class per night, plus a few extra-curricular activities, plus the downtime spent everyday watching a John Green video on #YouTube or chatting with friends, and a normal amount of procrastination, it adds up to between 5 and 7 hours of #sleep on an average #school night. Throw in a term paper or heavy exam week and the average can easily drop to 3 or 4. My daughter is hardly atypical. In fact, multiple studies have shown that the vast majority of #teens today are living with borderline to severe #sleepdeprivation. According to #sleep expert Mary Carskadon, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at Brown University and director of chronobiology and #sleep research at Bradley Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, #teenagers actually need more #sleep than younger #kids, not less. Nine and a quarter hours of #sleep is what they need to be optimally alert. According to a 2010 large-scale study published in The Journal of #Adolescent Health, a scant 8% of US #highschoolstudents get the recommended amount of #sleep. Some 23% get six hours of #sleep on an average #school night and 10% get only 5 hours. In studies conducted by Dr. Carskadon, half the #teens she evaluated were so tired in the morning that they showed the same symptoms as #patients with narcolepsy, a major #sleepdisorder in which the #patient nods off and falls directly into REM #sleep. When you consider the fact that many of these #kids are getting behind the wheel in the early morning and driving themselves to #school, the issue of #sleep becomes literally a matter of life and death. #James Donaldson notes:Welcome to the “next chapter” of my life… being a voice and an advocate for #mentalhealthawarenessandsuicideprevention, especially pertaining to our younger generation of students and student-athletes.Getting men to speak up and reach out for help and assistance is one of my passions. Us men need to not suffer in silence or drown our sorrows in alcohol, hang out at bars and strip joints, or get involved with drug use.Having gone through a recent bout of #depression and #suicidalthoughts myself, I realize now, that I can make a huge difference in the lives of so many by sharing my story, and by sharing various resources I come across as I work in this space.  #http://bit.ly/JamesMentalHealthArticle Find out more about the work I do on my 501c3 non-profit foundation website www.yourgiftoflife.org Order your copy of James Donaldson's latest book,#CelebratingYourGiftofLife:From The Verge of Suicide to a Life of Purpose and Joy www.celebratingyourgiftoflife.com What’s going on here? So what exactly is keeping #teenagers up so late? Unfortunately biology, technology, and societal expectations together create a perfect storm for the chronic #sleep deprivation. The major contributors to #adolescent #sleep debt come down to these: Biology Along with the more obvious hormonal changes that transform your #child into a #teen, are shifts in the production of melatonin, the #sleep hormone. That is why your #teenager actually seems more awake at midnight than at dinner and left alone would probably #sleep until ten or eleven. It may drive you crazy but, says Dr. Max Van Gilder, a #pediatrician in Manhattan, “that is the normal circadian rhythm for 15- to 22-year-olds.” Effectively, they are in a different time zone than the rest of us. “It’s a major contributing factor to #sleep deprivation which is unique to #adolescence, ” says Dr. Allison Baker, a #child and #adolescent #psychiatrist. “The typical #highschoolstudent’s natural time to fall asleep is 11pm or later. We really need to adjust the environment instead of asking #teenagers to adjust their physiology.” The problem is compounded when many #adolescents, like my daughter, try to make up for lost sleep on the weekends, sometimes sleeping upwards of 12 hours on Friday and Saturday nights, which only further disrupts their sleep cycle. But who has the heart to wake them? Technology It’s not just that #Facebook, #Twitter, #Instagram, #Tumblr and #YouTube are distractions that keep #kids up later, it’s the actual light coming off all the electronic devices they’re exposed to, especially late at night. Electronics emit a glow called blue light that has a particular frequency. When it hits receptors in the eye, says Dr. Van Gilder, “those receptors send a signal to the brain which suppresses the production of melatonin and keeps #kids from feeling tired. And #adolescents are low on melatonin and start producing it later to begin with.” Dr. Van Gilder says he’s seen #adolescent bedtimes pushed back an hour to an hour and a half over the years since #teens started doing their homework on computers. On average, my #teenage #patients are going to bed at around 12:30 now.” #Teens who are up late writing papers on computers or chatting with their friends are effectively creating an even more stimulating environment that will only keep them from being able to fall asleep when they want to. Homework Andrea Pincus and Andrew Multer consider it a good night when their 16 year-old son, Jake Multer, a sophomore at The Dalton #School in Manhattan, gets to bed by 12:30. And there’s lots of fighting that goes on around the issue of homework and bedtime. “He tells us we micromanage him,” Pincus says. “He tells us we’re helicopter #parents, but does he mention he stays up until 5 or 6am writing a paper?” Pincus and her husband are torn between making Jake go to bed and encouraging him to finish his work regardless of how long it takes. “There’s the #anxiety of a #kid like Jake who cares about the work. He works with a very nice group of #kids on certain assignments and it’s great that they have each other but they also on some level add to the #anxiety because you always have one #kid who’s staying up later or pulling an all-nighter, putting in more work on a paper or studying for a test and it creates this extra #anxiety and competition.” His brother Sam, 13 and an eighth grader at Hunter College #HighSchool in Manhattan, is more or less resigned to being #sleep deprived. He figures his current bedtime—anywhere between 11pm and 12:30am—which is so late “for the most part due to homework,” will only get later as he gets older. He says his #parents want him to go to bed earlier but “they recognize that if I did that I wouldn’t get my work done and it’s important to me and it’s important to them.” Sam however also admits to having a procrastination and time management problem, some of which he believes comes from being so tired in the afternoon. Over-scheduling We live in a culture that values activity over #sleep and there is no part of that culture that reinforces that idea more than the #college admissions process. #Teens are constantly being told that they have to be “well-rounded” which, in an age when #colleges are becoming ever more selective means that the more they do, the better their applications will look. And for some #kids, being involved in a lot of extracurricular activities may truly be a matter of pursuing a diversity of passions. Either way, the result is an ever-narrowing window for #sleep. Katrina Karl, 16, is finishing up her junior year at Joel Barlow High School in Redding, Connecticut. She takes 5 academic classes, participates in the three theatrical productions her school puts on every year and volunteers at the middle school in her town. On top of that she works 13 hours a week at a local grocery store to help pay for summer theater camp and to save money for college. This past year, she says, was brutal. “I was lucky if I got 4 to 5 hours of sleep a night,” she says. On the nights she worked, Karl wouldn’t get home until 9 or 10 o’clock. Then she would start doing several hours of homework. Katrina’s bus picks her up at 6:15am and the first period bell rings at 7:20am. Karl says she’s been living this way since about halfway through freshman year. “Everyone at my #school is exhausted,” she says. Earlier #school start times Very early #highschool start times, like Karl’s, are not uncommon, despite the fact that they run completely counter to the biological needs of #adolescents. “Multiple studies have shown that #highschoolstudents aren’t functional before 9 am,” says Dr. Van Gilder. Cathi Hanauer, an author and the editor of the anthology The Bitch In The House, has been at the center of a 7-year battle to change the 7:20 start time of her North Hampton, Massachusetts, #highschool. “It started before my daughter got to high school. She’s now one year out of college. My son is a sophomore. The resistance has been huge,” she says, “despite the fact that 60% of the #students are falling asleep in #school.” According to Hanauer, it all comes down to bussing and #sports. The #school buses used for the #highschool are used for the middle and elementary #schools that have later start times. Pushing back the start time for the #highschool would mean either making the younger #kids get up earlier or adding more buses which is not in the #school budget. Then there are concerns that later start times will compromise the practices of #sports teams. Hanauer and some of the other #parents got a consultant in who designed an affordable busing plan and in 2013 the #school board finally passed a resolution to move the #highschool’s start time to between 8:00 and 8:30. They have since overturned the decision. “I’m done,” Hanauer says. “It’s been the most frustrating thing I’ve ever been involved with.” With more than half of #American #teenagers living with chronic #sleep deprivation, #parents and #teachers tend to overlook the profound effects it has on #kids’ physical, #mental and #behavioralhealth. The #sleep deficit is not in fact, a normal part of being a #teenager. It’s part of an invisible epidemic that we need to start addressing. Read the full article

[ms-demeanor]

Hi Ms Demeanor. I read your recent news post and was wondering if you knew any websites/newspapers that have generally reliable stories, but aren't super overwhelming? I know I should be better informed on what's going on in the world and my own country (I'm American) in ways that aren't looking at what people on social media are mad about, but a lot of news outlets I've heard about have just so much stuff. Hopefully this source would be a stepping stone to later feel less lost. Thanks a lot

1 - Whatever your local basically unaffiliated news provider is. This might be a local paper, it might be a local radio station, it might be a local TV station, but it is NOT the local alternative weekly or the local talk radio station.

This is difficult because a lot of local media is actually owned by bigger, biased distributors (in the US this is Sinclair Media with broadcast TV, for example).

Start super local, as local as possible - there is probably a weekly local newspaper that prints three thousand copies that get distributed at grocery stores and your closest library. Start with that, whatever that is. That is going to be the place where you actually learn about what's going on with your specific city council.

From there, branch out to whatever free, good-ish quality websites are local. I'm in LA so look at KTLA5. I'll also read the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the San Jose Mercury News. Generally you're looking for something that isn't screamingly biased, full of talking heads, 24-hours, or paywalled.

2 - READ. Even if I'm looking at KTLA, which is a TV station, I do not watch the stories I read the headlines, click the links to the stories, and will investigate further. Usually TV stories are sourced from newspapers or stringers so sometimes this means clicking over the AP to read 500 words of a story that only got 200 words on the broadcast. But READ. Broadcast news, ALL BROADCAST NEWS, has a time limit. These days there is less of a restriction on story length in print because it's all online, so you will get more news by reading it.

3 - Go regional. Look at the big regional paper's headlines or maybe even get a subscription. For me this is the LA Times, for you it might be the Chicago Tribune or the New York Times.

4 - Go national. READ (do not watch) the headlines on a national news station. CNN or Fox is actually better than the New York Times for this. You just wanna see if there's anything huge that you're missing that's being reported on by a national outlet. Read the World headlines and the US headlines, and hopefully everything big has been covered by another one of the things you've looked at.

5 - Go international. Go to a news source from in a language you speak that is not specifically produced in your country and look at the "US News" section. I like BBC, Al Jazeera, ABC.Net.AU, SCMP, and AP News for this. It is fucking BONKERS how isolated the US is in our news when it comes to looking at things from an international perspective. Go look up some of the coverage of the 2020 election from the BBC. It's so incredibly useful to see how other countries are describing your country AND it's also useful to see how other countries prioritize and organize world news.

6 - Find someplace that publishes in-depth investigative pieces and read at least a couple of them a month. I'm talking LONG investigative pieces. Five thousand words minimum. Buzzfeed on FinCen or Mother Jones reporting on prisons or the DailyBeast covering Qanon kind of long. DEEP investigations. Read OLD investigations. Read new investigations. Read about people who went undercover at Amazon.

Break this up into little chunks. If you get overwhelmed by the news in general (i can relate!) just look at the headlines and a couple stories in your local area and then check out US headlines on the BBC.

You don't have to read everything, it's impossible for everyone to be informed about everything, but start by at least checking local headlines and then check US headlines from a source outside the US.

Honestly, really, seriously, Buzzfeed News is a pretty okay way to get started looking at the news. They have a good mix of very short, superficial stories and in-depth coverage and they usually don't have so many stories in a day that you'll get buried just refreshing the page.

I'm hesitant to endorse all of their coverage because a lot of it is inane celebrity shit, even on their news page, and they do some stuff that I cannot fucking stand (the editorial decision to perpetually refer to Qanon as "the quanon mass delusion" makes me want to tear my hair out) but overall they aren't bad. Maybe check headlines on Buzzfeed and then search the headlines that you're interested in from Buzzfeed on the AP site.

Anyway, I don't do this all every single day. I will usually read headlines on one or two sites every day and probably find three long-ish stories to dig into, but I try to rotate through a lot of sources and if something from one source sounds weird I will check it against at least three other sources with different perspectives. It is actually, genuinely extremely useful to see how Fox-the-news-channel is reporting on immigration compared to how Fox-the-entertainment-channel is reporting on it compared to how Al Jazeera is reporting on it compared to how the LA Weekly is reporting on it.

But yeah, if at all possible you should be reading news from a variety of local, regional, national, and international sources. Once you get into the habit of reading news it is actually pretty easy to stick with, and the more news you read from a wide variety of sources the better you'll get at spotting inconsistencies, editorializing, and the absolute fucking crime that is headline writing.

(I have been a person who writes headlines, but not in this utterly toxic online media environment and I do not envy modern headline writers but I also cannot forgive them; knock that shit off dudes that shit is an ethics violation)

Anyway, that's probably a lot. Good luck.

[pretty-boys-book-club]

Bylines to my heart - Chapter 1

Summary: You are a young journalist navigating the turbulent job of reporting for a local newspaper in D.C. What happens when you constantly bump into a cute boy genius? Can FBI agents befriend journalists? Can they fall in love with one?

Pairing: Spencer Reid x journalist!Reader, Spencer Reid x y/n

Trigger Warning: Mentions of death of love interest (Maeve) and some strong words, but besides that there isn’t really any other for this chapter. Mostly fluff.

A/N: It's my first published fanfic, so let me know how I can improve! I am using some of the themes from season 11, but with adaptations for the story. Overall, some of the themes used for Joy's story. The team in this version includes Emily and Derek, plus all the members that appear in season 11. Joy Rossi is mentioned slightly, but you can decide if she is a journalist as well or not. 

Special mention to my beta reader, @sweetandsunny​ who is an absolute angel and has helped tremendously with this!

Meet Cute

“There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.”

― Sarah Dessen 

You usually look forward to the long train ride to your apartment every afternoon. Even during rush hour, when the trains are bustling with people, you can’t help but feel comfort by knowing you’ll soon be at a place you can call home. A place where you, finally, feel at peace. Being a journalist, you expected to have a job that demanded you to be away from home, but taking up this new job at D.C., so far from friends and family, was proving to be another kind of difficult.

You have mixed feelings about your current job, on one hand, being happy to be employed as a reporter in times as hard as these, when press all over the country is striving to make ends meet, on the other, you’d never felt as alone as these past few months. Sure, you had grown closer with some of your coworkers, but not enough to want to spend time together outside of work.

The ride in the Washington metro reminds you of your days as a student at Columbia, and all the trips in the NYC subway. Once you had passed through a subway tunnel so filthy and crowded that the poem inscribed on its ceiling seemed like a cruel joke: 

“Overslept, 

so tired.

If late, 

get fired. 

Why bother? 

Why the pain? 

Just go home 

Do it again.” 

The Commuter’s Lament. 

Back then, it seemed like the poem made the already grim ritual of getting to and from college positively Dante-esque. You suppose you always were the person who was more interested in words and ideas than in making friends. Even at journalism school, you often found yourself too busy with books and essays, a contrast to all the other students who were into cultivating their online presence and interviewing for jobs at TV networks. Even though you heard repeatedly that "the press is dead", you have always been too stubborn to give up on your dreams. So you persevered, working as a waitress and at retail to pay for your way through school, while most of the other students had daddy and mommy finance their stay at the Ivy League school.

Now you found yourself long gone from your days as a student, working for a paper as a reporter, making enough to pay for a lonely single-bedroom apartment that's waiting for you after a long day at the office. You can't help but feel proud of how long you came. Your thoughts are interrupted by your train pulling into the station. You quickly board it, miraculously finding an empty seat. You get ready for your daily routine of people watching, a habit you adopted in college and have never quite let go of.

You settle into your seat, like you do every single day, occupying your mind trying to imagine what each of the passengers were doing, where they were coming from or going to. Taking note of the old lady who is clearly on her way to a Bingo game night with all her retired friends. The mom and child who are very tired after an afternoon spent at some museum. The girl who is probably meeting her friends for drinks and a good time. The big guy who most decidedly is going from the gym, for probably the fifth time this week, if you can judge from how big his arms look and how sweaty he seems. The cute guy in front of you, with a purple sweater, that you can’t tell if it makes him look endearing or reminds you of someone’s grandpa. His messy hair falling covering his eyes but leaving enough of his face available to your curious eyes to roam free over it. You notice how he is focused, very quickly flipping through a book, hands sliding over each page before turning to the next, as if looking for something on the text and… Oh, no, he noticed you staring.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Time to look at your phone like a normal person and pretend that you have a very important text message that needs your full attention. You unlock your phone, thinking how ridiculous it is to pretend to text, but lo and behold, much to your surprise, your boss has indeed texted you a few minutes ago.

7:15 P.M.

John Williams (work): Hey, Y/N. Sorry for reaching out so late. You'll be covering a beekeepers conference on Monday. Be ready at 9 and don’t be late. Have a nice weekend! 

Oh, well, you suppose there are worse things to write about. Except how the hell are you supposed to know enough about beekeeping to write an entire article about it in less than 48 hours? Just your luck. 

That's far from what you had in mind when you got this job. You suppose a local newspaper would focus on events and conferences at the city, despite that, part of you was hoping your job would look a lot more like covering political conferences and corruption scandals than writing a review on the newest puppet show in town, but this is definitely not the first time your editor has asked you to cover local events. Sigh. Well, better think of a way to know all there is to know about bees by Monday, you suppose. Maybe you can use this as an excuse to go to that nice bookstore a couple of blocks from your apartment? 

Before you have enough time to think, the sound system announces that your stop is coming up next and you have to stand up from your seat. You barely make it to the door before you realize that the cute guy from before is standing beside you. Oh, and he’s tall. Not only that, but his tall self is also very much looking at you. 

He’s looking at you. You feel your cheeks warm up. You suppose it’s fair enough, as you were not very subtle at staring at him moments before. And anyway, how many people take the D.C. metro daily? There’s no reason to think you’ll ever see him again. Even though he’s getting off at the same station as you are. Does he live nearby? Is there a chance you might bump into each other again? You ask yourself as you’ve done a thousand times before, falling for a different someone on every single one of your commutes. Just another stupid subway crush. 

Before you can fantasize about whether he’s a nice guy - he must be, as people who read that passionately can’t possibly be jerks, you decide - but soon you find yourself stumbling for a bit as the train reaches your destination. It’s not a movement strong enough to leave you completely out of balance, but it’s enough that you bump into the cute guy, brushing up against him, instinctively reaching out for something to hold - his arm - feeling the soft fabric of his sweater, that by the way, has no business being that soft as well as he has no business smelling that good, is that a hint of cinnamon? And, wow, his eyes are very pretty- 

“Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry.” You mumble, looking undoubtedly like a fool. Before he even has a chance to reply, you’re flying through the subway door and walking up the stairs that lead outside the subway station, without catching a single breath. In a couple of minutes, who feel suddenly like hours in your embarrassment, you get to your apartment building, air rushing through your lungs. You are not used to power walking that fast after a long day of work. Oh god, why do you always make things weird with strangers? That’s why you’re single, you suppose. Guys must hate girls who stare at them in public transportation. 

As you’re greeted by the sight of your empty apartment, you put down your bag and take off your shoes, wishing any of your friends had moved to D.C. so you at least had someone to laugh about the embarrassing encounter at the subway. Well, seems like this will be another night of ordering a whole pizza with extra cheese for one and watching Netflix. There are worse ways to spend a Friday night, and since tomorrow you’ll have a Saturday off for the first time in weeks, being a reporter and all, you plan to enjoy it.

—

Spencer always enjoys planning what he’ll do on his Saturdays off work. It’s been such a long time since the team had some time off, he'd literally dreamed of finally being able to go back to his favorite book store and losing himself in there. He decides that, after spending a peaceful morning playing chess and drinking coffee, it’s time to get out of his apartment for a bit.

He adores being able to lose himself in the shop whilst Mrs. Kazinsky, the owner, sweeps the floors and greets new faces. He was her favorite customer, after all, most people don’t buy twenty books all at once, but he supposed most bookstores didn’t carry Dostoiévski in the original Russian either.  

He’s been there enough times to know all the employees’ names. There’s Hannah, a middle aged woman working as the cashier who always made sure to add a lot of free bookmarks in his bag each time he bought something. Liam, a man around his age, who works mostly at the back of the store and avoided Spencer like the plague (after an accident when he let it slip that he was in fact an FBI agent specialized in catching serial killers, much to Liam’s shock and horror), and lastly, Bryan, the teenager who helped around the store part time and was always too busy cleaning up on the children’s section to pay Spencer any mind. 

He loves the fact that the employees left him alone and unbothered at the store, so he has perfected his routine of going through a list of books he wants to buy and leaving them scattered all across the floor of the foreign language aisle - no one seemed to pay any mind to the strange guy, and more than once people had thought he worked there. The fact that he has memorized where all the different sections of the bookstore has been proved useful more times that Spencer would like to admit to himself. 

So he wasn’t all that surprised when he could see out of the corner of his eye someone browsing through the shelves - most people would lose themselves around a shop filled with so many different books. “The foreign languages books are here so I don’t think you’ll find what you’re probably looking for.” He says, hoping the person will thank him and walk away as many had done before. 

“Oh, thanks, I almost thought it was my eyes deceiving me.” A female voice  replies and Spencer looks up, only to be met by the same face he had seen the night before. She is kneeling, looking at the books on the shelf closest to the floor, but she looks radiant. He is breathless for a moment. What are the odds of them meeting again? 692,683 to one. And she managed to defy those odds. "I had no idea this store had so many books, I’m having such a hard time finding the one I want… “ The end of her sentence hangs in the air as her eyes meet his. 

“It’s you!” Spencer exclaims, before realizing that this sounds very strange. He has no reason to be happy about meeting a complete stranger again. 

She looks embarrassed, so he is certain that he has offended her by bumping into her the night before. He wants to apologize before she starts to talk again.

“I’m so sorry about last night. Oh, I didn’t know, I mean, I’m not stalking you or anything, I actually live a few blocks away and… I know this might sound weird, but I really should have figured you worked at a bookstore, huh? With you being so engrossed in your book at the subway. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Just an observation…” she talks really fast, reminding him of himself. 

Before his mouth can form around "Wait, I'm not…?”, she’s already launched herself into another ramble. 

Spencer doesn't even know where to start. What can he tell her? 'I am an FBI agent'?  As if.  'I'm a cop'? Technically correct, but not what she wants to hear, he's sure. He wonders whether it would not be better to leave this alone and assume this other identity. The version of Spencer that actually works in a bookstore, what would he be like? He supposes it would not be so different from who he is. After all, he has always loved to read and his knowledge of literature is well-above average. In the heat of the moment, he decides it is worth it, to be that version of himself for a moment, to assume this other identity, if it means he has an excuse to talk to her. He’s taking the fact that they’ve met again after last night as a sign. So he won't take any chances of spoiling his, possibly, only chance. His attention goes back to what the girl is saying, willing himself to memorize every detail of this encounter. 

“Anyway, do you?” She shyly asks, surely noticing how his mind was miles away an instant before. He notices her beautiful voice. He's surprised by how pleasant she sounds. 

“Sorry, do I what?”

“Do you have any books on beekeeping?” She asks again. 

“Oh, I think so, they probably are on the shelf with all the natural sciences. Let me walk you there.” He drops the book sitting on his hands and leaves it at the pile by the floor. 

“Shouldn’t you pick that up first?” 

“No one will mind, don’t worry.” He walks towards the back of the store, his back to her, hiding the heat on his face as well. “So, why do you need a book about beekeeping anyway? Not that it’s any of my business, or that it's weird, it’s just that’s not really that common.”

“Don’t tell me about it, I think the only beekeeper I know is Sherlock Holmes and he’s fictional.” She jokes. Spencer feels his lips curl into a smile almost involuntarily. Oh, she is beautiful, funny and smart? He feels his heart ache in his chest as his mind immediately identifies this as a divine sign. A sign that the Universe and all those watching over him are pushing him towards her. What a coincidence that she would make such a comment. This has to be a sign that even Maeve would approve of this, wherever she is now. Maeve's opinion is something important to him even after her death, something that he thinks about several times throughout the days. It is part of the reason why he has not made the slightest effort to meet new people in recent years. But this? A single, random, innocent little comment, but Spencer takes that and runs with it. It has to mean something. 

“I need it for my job. It’s kind of a long story, but I need it for something at work. I need to know everything there is about beekeeping in the next 24 hours, or I’m screwed.” 

His mind quickly tries to list all the possible professions that might need this kind of information. If she were a beekeeper, she wouldn't need a book on the subject. A biologist would certainly be more specific about the type of bee, he decides. She is a layman, he concludes. But what lay person would urgently need a book on the subject? Someone with a deadline. But she seems too old to still be attending university, he guesses they are around the same age, perhaps with her being a couple of years younger. Ah, it's obvious. A writer. That's it. A writer with a deadline. No, better yet: a reporter. Uh-oh. That smells like trouble. 

“A very unusual job, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess it’s kinda odd.” 

They quickly reach the desired section of the bookstore.

"The books are here, I'll let you have a look," he says, trying not to let her know he is disappointed that the conversation is coming to an end.

"Oh thank you so much, you didn't have to come all this way with me, I can manage my way inside the store, but I suppose it's part of your job" she giggles and Spencer feels like his heart was doing somersaults. He stares at her, memorizing every corner of her face, making mental notes of how her hair falls over her shoulders.

"I didn't ask your name..."

"Y/N..." she says, already turning her gaze to the books, her back facing him, certainly she is more busy hoping to find what she came looking for in the first place to talk to him. 

"Nice to meet you, Y/N." he says, quickly walking off, certain that he somehow had managed to screw up. He finds himself back at where he was, alone in the middle of the Russians and the Italian authors. But his mind is wandering to the most important word at the moment: your name.

—

You want to ask his name in return, but as soon as you turn around, you find yourself all alone in the aisle of the store. Deciding that you had definitely made the moment uncomfortable and scared the poor boy away, you quickly picked up the book you had gone to get and headed for the cashier. 

You can barely disguise your disappointment at yourself for not having the nerve to ask him more about himself, finding your way to the cashier. Even though fate gave you a second chance, you blew it once again. You can’t shake the feeling of stupidity. 

You get to the cashier and deposit the book on the counter, already pulling your wallet from your purse, preparing to pay. 

"Hi honey, is that going to be all for today?" the checkout lady asks you, a welcoming smile on her face. She gives off the vibe of being someone that brightens up everyone’s day. You find yourself reluctantly smiling as well.  

"Yes, that's all."

“It comes up to twenty nine dollars and fifty cents. Did any employees help you today?"

"Oh yes, a tall brown haired boy, he was around the foreign literature section, I didn't register his name..."

The girl makes a surprised face, “Do you mean Spencer? Spencer helped you?"

"I think so," you reply. 

"Okay, then, I hope you found what you wanted. Have a great weekend!” she hands you your bag, with a couple complimentary bookmarks.

“Thanks, you too”, you take it and leave the store. As soon as you step into the street, you mutter to yourself what’s playing in the back of your mind: “Spencer".

A/N: Please let me know what you think and how i can improve my writing! English is my third language and although I have studied and taken courses on writing, I'm a bit rusty. Also, I plan on making this a series, so let me know what you think of the MC as I tried to make her have a personality but being pretty vague as well. Thank you for reading this far! <3

Taglist: @lil-stark