#.......actually that's just a physicist who am I kidding

[iclosedoors]

okay okay. let me explain

so me and my friend juno have this au where we mash the magverse and ars paradoxica together

so jonathan sims is some physicist that gets sent back with sally and nikhil (in this au nikhil lives longer than five seconds in 1943!!!!!)

nikhil also went to oxford with jon, so naturally he knows about his old band

feeling nostalgic for modern music, they band together to form the band Nikhil MinSaJ. Theyre essentially the opposite of postmodern jukebox.

jon sings most of the songs (except the few that are simply TOO much like the cupcakke songs and also WAP), sally sings the rest because nikhil is TERRIBLE

actually there was this one time they got helen to sing a song. five nights at freddys, the jazz version. she was very perplexed

sally plays the kazoo, passionately. nikhil knows a little guitar. he is not so good because he relied on guitar tabs. there are no guitar tabs in 1943.

i made a cover for their album:

the green crayon is actually stolen from petra (jon stole it)

idk who threy got to draw the main part of it, but they only really drew the green parts

here is their entire discography. we take suggestions

here is a couple other facts from our au:

- after nikhil attempted to seduce sally, he turned to jon who was shoved in the back. this went as smoothly as you can imagine

- jon visibly winces anytime he has to refer to martin (who he left in modern times) as his wife, Margaret. everyone just thinks he really hates his wife. only nikhil, sally, and esther know about martin.

- nikhil and sally started doing this thing where everytime the time piece would fuck up or they just fucked it up on accident theyd excuse it by saying jon was simply throwing ass too hard and damaged it. no clue where we started with this headcanon. anyways jon always just goes along with it without question.

- they make up other insane shit about jon that he just accepts and carries on with

- they take jon to las vegas and he loses all his money gambling

- jon will openly tell chet wickman to kill himself in front of everyone because he really just fucking hates chet whickman. in fact he would be so pissed to find out that in protocol they refer to him as chester. he does not want to be associated with that man

- jon keeps a really shitty drawing of martin in his wallet, much like how a soldier would keep a black and white photo of their wife while out at war. sometimes he stares blissfully at it, pining helplessly. no one can tell what the drawing is of, except him.

- jon roasts the shit out of anthony partridge because his wife left him. he will NEVER let that down. anthony is very disturbed by this little man and grimaces anytime he walks in the room

- jon really struggles to conform to the standards of the 1940s but they cant just let him do whatever cus he will ACTUALLY die

- the magnus institute kids from tmagp (gerry, sam, and presumably alice) are all part of the plasticity kids group

- they all live together with the cat and everything. every once in a while they will run into each pther in the kitchen at three am. jon will always walk in and say the most insane shit ever. i actually drew one of these moments here

as you can see jon is very disturbing

oh tjis is how jon draws petra and carmen

oh here is just a drawing of them brainstorming

oh i also made a fuckass edit of them

you may not get many of yhe references in it becahse it was never meant to see the light of day really

anyways cringe culture is dead i made this for anyone just as brain rotted as we are.

i hope this makes someone happy

[accirax]

initial thoughts on DCAS episode 7

very notable that this was within the context of being about "love" specifically. (at least) one-sided trevek canon? (i'm not even a huge trevek shipper i just think this whole plotline is funny)

okay, so Yul's foot injury IS real. or at least, he's using it as an excuse to complain. still, the fact that it was brought up again an episode later makes me think that it's going to have SOME relevance to the plot.

any time that Yul has to parrot something in Emily's "you go girlfriend ;D" manner of speaking i cackle. he didn't choose the home decor saying any time is wine time lifestyle, the home decor saying any time is wine time lifestyle chose him.

Grett i am... genuinely confused. how can you possibly think that Yul is actually in love with you? did you really receive THAT little love in your home life? you have no ability to distinguish catty and fake praise for your accomplishments from real ones because your family gave you THAT little recognition? man. now i made myself sad :( ily Grett

okay, confirming that 1) it was Tom's trap, 2) they are willing to eat squirrels, 3) Tom is serving as the provider for the Cyan tribe. all things to take into account for any upcoming Cyan eliminations.

why

and how does said boyfriend feel about you kissing another man on television, Tom? this is a stupid lie.

again, why? it's probably already apparent from my earlier comments, but i changed my mind; i'm fully with Jake in this argument now. sure, Jake is really insecure and overly emotional, but what the HELL is Tom doing? making up a boyfriend is a really shitty thing to do, whether Tom had a legit reason for not calling Jake these past two years or if he didn't contact Jake due to his own mixed feelings/indifference. in either case, he should have told Jake the truth. at least when Jake was acting immature in S1, he was 24. Tom is a nearly 30 year old man. ACT LIKE IT.

Fiore slay

this is a really interesting response due to how vague it is, including in the vocal performance. was he taken off guard by his boss being nice to him? does he believe that she's telling the truth? does he feel bad for Trevor, or will he come to believe that he IS way better than Trevor? i'm glad that they're continuing on with the concept of the hosts having a plotline, because imo that was one of the highlights of S2, but they aren't doing it in a way that eats up as much of the screentime as it did in S2.

if Will was out of the picture i would be shipping these two so hard. who am I kidding, i kind of still am anyways.

Ally's other gf is here :,) glad that they got to reconnect (and neither of them were eliminated for it)

Fiore slay

the confirmation that Aiden thinks that the idea of him having any attraction to Tom is laughable and disgusting is HILARIOUS to me. bro really said, "why the hell would i be into YOU when i have JAMES lmao" straight to Tom's face. tbf, James and Tom are like... opposites in terms of personality and appearance (beyond being generally handsome and athletic young men).

"silly me, i keep forgetting that not everyone met their super cool and attractive boyfriend on reality TV. my bad!" (/pos)

(i tried to type "hubby" instead of boyfriend but i spared you all. it was too cringe even as the one subjecting others to the cringe.)

okay this was very fitting for her. iconic.

honestly, Alec and Riya's villainous alliance/friendship is really fun. leave it to Alec to always find himself in the least likely but most entertaining duos. Riya really benefits from being paired with a legitimate strategist, and someone who won't just let her totally get away with stuff.

we had to get in one last Fiore taking unnecessary damage for the road :,(

feeling like Jaiden is going to be winning the starting couples' survival roulette. and Wishley, to the extent they count.

now i'm no physicist, but how did this work? shouldn't the ball be a fast and heavy enough object at this point that it would jump over the log, not ricochet off of it? i suppose if the ball is made of something more like wicker than yarn, it could be a bit more likely to do that. but then why is it going to the side? it hit the log straight on!

... are you not allowed to help him anymore? what?

ellie is going full villain mode fr. if her and gabby's relationship gets messed up, that would definitely be karma. but, i suppose she survives this episode...

this is funny because nobody strikes me as the pizza and soda loving type. Alec, Grett, Yul, and Riya all seem like people who would want to eat something that's both fancier and healthier.

communication W (for both of them)

Fiore is such a best girl that she's not even a salty juror. she's not mad at them for so long that she can't use her final moments to throw a wrench in the works for everyone else. the grind never sleeps, clowns <3

and she even conquered her greatest nemesis, the bus, this time. fly high, queen. i'll miss you.

well, as a Fiore stan, this episode was a bit sad for me. but, i do totally understand why Magenta would both vote for Fiore and lose the challenge. (damn you, Ellie...) Fiore already did super well in both S1 and the original Adventure Camp, so i understand why they wouldn't have her go super far again in this season, especially when everyone knows she's such a threat.

i just hope that we can still get a little more closure for her and Alec than we got already in this season. all it has to be is, like, him being sad at her elimination for reasons other than pure strategy and maybe a nice conversation at the finale. it doesn't have to be Alec finally adopting her... even if i did want that to happen... i'd just prefer to know that they leave things on good terms.

anyways, another really solid episode! i look forward to the next one. thanks for reading!

[jell0buss-37]

My Peter B headcannons!

General HCs, however I will take requests for different HCs (only for Headcannons rn though 👀)

He's a reporter rather than a physicist in his universe.

He was probably more of a jock type, who knew more about sports. When he got bitten he got more active, but never played any team sports because he was still scared of his bullies.

He had asthma before he was bitten.

He loves the color blue, but specifically navy blue.

Loves classic rock, but like 70s sort of classic rock, so definitely more of a Kinks, Rolling Stones, Queen sorta fan.

In his Universe, Harry was his Green Goblin.

He's very emotional.

He is a HUGE horror movie buff.

Is actually a very big bookworm, especially mystery books. Growing up he was a big Sherlock Holmes fan.

His parents were actually alive, but they couldn't take care of him, and so they sent him to live with his Aunt and uncle when he was 5.

He's actually from Nebraska.

He's not a fan of his birthday, so he never makes a big deal about it.

Also gets butthurt when nobody makes a big deal about it.

His universes Gwen was actually a babysitter he had a fat crush on when he was 9. She was 8 years older than him.

He likes funny women, it makes his stomach flip whenever a spunky woman can joke with him.

More of a grease monkey than a lab rat, however he somehow is and actual whizz when it comes to many subjects. Except for Arts of any sort. He actually is not creative at all.

He has the most useless facts stored in his head, it can literally be the most out of pocket thing ever, and yet doesn't know basic things.

"Did you know that Pelicans can pull their spines through their unhinged jaws to cool off?" ".... Peter wha-"

"What do pelicans eat?" "Idk, broccoli?"

He can't sing or dance for the life of him.

But he can play the harmonica

And he likes colorful drinks. Alcoholic drinks or not.

That and Root Beer

An absolute Mug Root beer fiend

Also really good at video games, doesn't matter what game, he picks it up so fast

Looks like big dumb, but really that's just him not caring.

Has a fear of Michael Cera.

"Where are his eyebrows???"

Is literally just Nick Miller, actually.

He's a cat dad

His cat's name is Tyler

"I am sick of Tyler just jumping into the shower and getting freaked out and scratching me-" "Woah, WHAT?? Like your roommate!?" "No. My cat. Why would my roommate attack me-"

Uses punctuation when he texts so you can never tell what tone he's using when he texts

'omw now want me to get u smth from the store'

'No. Drive safe.' (so menacing???)

Has a Ned in his universe that is his office buddy at the Daily Bugle

Ned is an intern and he and Peter have horror movie marathons, and he is also an artist

Peter can't drive. Also he's literally Spiderman so that doesn't matter anyway. But if you ask him, he will not know how to drive. He fixes cars, doesn't drive them.

Never went to college, but got a degree in quantum physics online

That and a wedding licence as spiderman. He thought it'd be funny if Spider-Man could officiate weddings

Is actually scared of kids until Miles

After Miles, he is so good with kids

In his mind

Is writing his own book about a detective from New Orleans (iykyk)

Is Irish-Italian

Likes Baseball a lot because it reminds him of his Uncle Ben

His universe doesn't have reality TV

He's also a DM for Ned's DND group

Totally LARPs, but doesn't admit it

Doesn't like Apple sauce and hasn't eaten it since he was 8 because he ate too much of it and threw it up

Genuinely loves his friends interests, and will genuinely try them out or watch whatever it is they like so they can gush together or debate

Has a barber shop he goes to where he just talks with the old men there, he's been going since he was 12 because Uncle Ben took him

Can Bake really good and sew because of May

He actually asked her to teach him these skills

Has a dream to live in the Oscar Meyer Weiner mobile one day

[chihirolovebot]

idk if it’s ever been talked abt before but i was suddenly gripped by physicist in the love hotel thoughts like. what would be their ideal??? what would go down???

the love hotel is actually an insane concept but now i can’t help but think about it with physicist (and physouma, of course)

phys in the love hotel .... i dont think ive talked abt it before ? at least not at length . probably bc the love hotel is Slightly Weird to me , even if u hc the characters as adults which i do, there's still like . shinguuji, shirogane and iruma's which are just certified dr freakishness all over.

HOWEVER i think ive said before im a big fan of some of them. i love ouma's for character reasons and bc when i played the game i was a much bigger saiouma shipper than i am now ( not that i dont ship them anymore they just dont take up as much space in my head + i prefer kiiruma lol ) . i loved amami's , kiibo's, harukawa's, and momota's too :3

PHYS THOUGH . ok lets think. lets ponder together. we r those monkeys holding hands and spinning rly fast in a circle. you mentioned with physouma BUT i wanna quickly explore what a canonverse phys kamasutra event would look like, which would be with saihara.

i think it would be one of the events that kinda . border on romantic ? but is never explicit. definitely one of the more wholesome ones that would maybe revolve around them bonding or opening up to each other and ends with some slight physical touch ( which is sort of a big thing for phys ) like them resting their head on saihara's shoulder or them cuddling up in bed together and falling asleep. i think that could be kinda cute :3 as for the 'ideal' saihara would play for phys i can imagine it being maybe a childhood friend or a classmate they've known for a while, so they dont have to do the building blocks of building intimacy or small talk . which makes them anxious.

OKAY PHYSOUMA TIME. claps hands. the 'ideal' ouma would be playing would probably look different, since it's implied a big part of phys's initial attraction to him is trying to solve what makes his brain tick. they're a lot like saihara in that sense , and i feel like their love hotel event would take a similar form to the saiouma event in the game, with ouma playing like a phantom thief and saihara as a detective . very classic. but phys doesn't suit the role of a detective , exactly...

ok angsty thought . it's been mentioned that phys has passed through a few orphanages and foster homes so what if ouma as their ideal was another kid there . one who was super mysterious at first but is implied through phys's dialogue to have gradually opened up, and is now at the point where they have a fully trusting relationship. like phys makes comments on 'i'm so glad you opened up to me eventually' and 'i feel like getting to know you was such a puzzle... but i'm glad i stuck with it in the end! because it was worth it, for you.' AHHGHGHH sticking my head into a drain and screaming so my agony is reverberated throughout the entire street. just . so much emphasis on how phys's ideal for ouma is one where he trusts them entirely and their relationship is based on open and equal communication.

i can also see phys confessing and that being like the central kind of .plot point for lack of a better word. like the whole thing is kinda building up to it and ouma's getting progressively more nervous as he realises what they're getting at. i think he would try to evade it at first , do his normal tricks, but it risks the dream ending because phys's ideal of ouma is one that Doesn't Do That. so he very uncertainly relents and allows them to express how they feel . and at this point he's all I've Made A Big Mistake because its gotten way too emotional and intimate and theyre looking at him for an answer and it feels so real .

would he confess back or let the dream end . i guess it depends on how far in the story we are . sickening as it is. in a non killing game au i think he would confess . i think far enough into the story he also would , knowing that he cant and wont in real life because of what he plans to do in chapter 5 . but who knows ! who knows.

[valyrfia]

hellooo deviating from the usual a little bit here, sorry, but would it be okay w you to share a little about your academic career and yk all that because im applying for a STEM degree too so any insight would be really cool!! thank youuuu <3

Hi anon! Sure thing! I'm a little flattered honestly.

I'm currently working towards my PhD in physics (hence my obsession with data haha) so I can really only give advice in that field. In terms of my journey, in school I pretty gifted academically, 99th percentile and all that bullshit and it came to applying for unis/degrees and I had an option between doing a History & English or a physics degree. In school I definitely enjoyed the humanities more, but I've never regretted my decision to go with STEM, physics especially, because it teaches you a certain way to think. In my undergraduate degree I was trained to look at a situation, evaluate the context of it, try and collect data that is unbiased as possible, and draw conclusions, and that's a set of invaluable transferable skills that can be applied to a multitude of fields.

To someone who's just starting out in STEM now my advice would be: network, network, network. My partner and I are both doing PhDs that we got not through applying but through networking. Everyone is as smart as everyone else in STEM. Everyone was an honours kid, everyone did the "smart people" extracurriculars, so STEM, especially academia, runs on who you know. Networking these days can be as simple as asking someone slightly senior than you to grab coffee, as agreeing to go bouldering (for example) with a group of people in the same field as you. Be confident in your skills and abilities, (but beware that arrogance won't get you very far in the being liked game, especially if you're anything other than a white cis man). Don't let your studies get in the way of you being an interesting person! For example, I met a colleague from another university a couple of weeks ago and she and I bantered over our F1 teams, with her defending McLaren and me ride or die-ing for Ferrari, and I've since been roped into her mailing list and am collaborating with her on a grant application, things I'm SURE would not have happened if F1 wasn't an interesting hobby of mine that I can and will take every chance to yap about.

As a final aside, don't let yourself get too discouraged. STEM is NOT for the faint of heart and definitely not the place to go if you want to keep feeling smart. The first two years of any STEM degree are designed to break people in a specific way so that they let go of their ego, yes it is part of the process and YES everyone is struggling just as much as you (that's actually want they want you to figure out!), so that then they can enter the world of research with as little ego as possible (this works to varying degrees of success). But honestly, STEM is so rewarding. To have this really in depth knowledge of how part of our world works is fascinating. Your friends who work in non-STEM fields will understand absolutely none of it, and you'll get to a point where even the effort of trying to explain it to other fields of STEM is too monumental (for example, I understand enough about basic aero in order to get to grips with F1 cars, but a friend of mine is doing aero research and he spent about ten minutes the other month trying to explain push/pull bars in F1 cars to a group of PhD students comprising of: theoretical physicist, astrophysicist, plasma physicist, a quantum physicist, and mechanical engineer before the poor guy almost gave up and had a nervous breakdown because none of us were getting it). I think part of the beauty of STEM is realising how little you know, and how much of it there is for us to still work out.

You got this! You're at the beginning of a beautiful journey and I KNOW it'll turn out brilliant <3.

[doodles-with-noodles]

*I show up at your doorstep in the middle of the night, wearing a suit absolutely covered in bees.*

I am here to reach out about a recent interview.

Would fight someone over a minor inconvenience?

Who would you like to hug?

Do you have any other ship names besides Jeanemies to jovers (My beloved)?

How do they feel about death?

Which of the stories did you first come up with?

Who has the healthiest diet?

So what's everyone's actual space jobs now'

Character that likes swimming the most.

Someone who has been on a hike and sworn to never do it again.

Did Cecil learn for going on the space station or did he just get rich kid privilege?

*As you look up from the paper, you realize that the bees aren't only outside but also inside of the jacket. I am made completely of bees. Bzzzzz bzzz bzzzzzzz.

*Flies away*

The hell dude I was sleeping (lying)

Umm I’m not sure? I think Morris.

2. That question already came up once but I’d like to hug Jules specifically and a group hug with the Icarus crew.

3. I don’t have shipnames, but I do have some ships! Jules and Malik have something going (they’re absolutely adorable), we have Mathildis and Treeve the disasters, Norna who I think has a girlfriend (not really mentioned), Lachlan who is probably a divorced simp (does that count), and Cian and Vera, who are the ultimate „we call eachother out on our bullshit“ power couple.

4. Most characters are terrified of it. Jules is angry about it. So angry she tries to defy it. Mathildis sees it as a necessity and doesn’t care that much at times (and survives and has to learn to live again). Treeve is fascinated by it. The crew are afraid but if the others were to survive, they would sacrifice themselves. Morris and Lachlan have the usual fear stance on it, Cian on the other hand sometimes thinks about dying but keeps on going like a desperate animal, unable to escape its instincts.

5. The Museum Archives- they have survived the longest in their original form.

6. The Icarus crew. They mostly all eat the same stuff and have a good schedule.

7. Maura= commander, part-time botanist (they’d all get scurvy wouldn’t they be growing plants), Roscoe= second in command and flight surgeon, also checks on the crew’s mental health, Anthony= pilot and flight engineer, Ed= computer scientist, Cecil= physicist, Norna= engineer.

Norna and Cecil were also trained pretty extensively for the EVAs to be the ones to inspect Icarus 1. (The two other probes send signals which are received by the Icarus 8-B so there’s no real spacewalk needed)

8. I’d say Anthony. He probably misses it in space.

9. Mathildis. He just sometimes forgets that he has to do stuff like sleep, eat or hydrate (basically survive) so a hike would probably make him feel pretty bad.

10. Correction: it’s a ship. Also it’s an official mission- there is no rich kid privilege there, luckily. He worked pretty hard for this because u need a degree to go to space, probably because he was passionate about it and didn’t want to continue whatever family bullshit there is.

The only thing that would have prevented him from going was the psych exam that somebody botched. Like, he’s perfectly capable of going to space but mental-health-wise he shouldn’t be there. At all. The mission is also pretty important- going so close to the sun, retrieving years worth of data and giving closure to the family of the Icarus 1 crew.

[doctorbrown]

Also I have no words to explain how in love I am with the scrapped part of the fourth draft script for BTTF where Doc was actually known as a world famous nuclear physicist.

One of the world's greatest!

And while I do have him down in the history books as a renowned (nuclear) physicist due to his work on the Manhattan Project (and you will find his name in texts, photographs, and eventually textbooks/other works as the years go on and more light is shed on the project), unless you're really looking him up, most people don't know what Doc's specialty is. He's that scientist who does everything. (Ask him, though, and he'll say he's a physicist and not specify unless pressed further, but even then he might just leave it vague unless it's Marty or someone close to him asking.)

He's also known in the scientific community where his reputation is mixed given his particular areas of interest, but Doc has published a number of scientific papers, both in his original field of study AND in quantum mechanics. (His fellow scientists can say whatever they want about him, but they cannot deny, given his accomplishments, that Doc is a genius.)

There are people enough in Hill Valley that are familiar with his name beyond the crazy lunatic on JFK drive, Dr Brown because there are rumours that the kids throw around that involve bombs and/or nuclear radiation to some degree.

Strickland knows, though, nosy busybody that he is, because he's the type that needs facts to justify why he's always right and it's why he's so adamant at the beginning of the film that Doc's dangerous. He's caught up on it way more than just people thinking he's a lunatic, a crackpot, what have you. Sure, those viewpoints are thrown in there too because there are so few people in Hill Valley that don't feed into the rumours about Doc, but it's a little more than that. It's like the way he says so-called Doctor makes him believe that despite his clear and obvious qualifications, he doesn't deserve to be a doctor because he's different from the others. But Strickland goes so far as to emphasise his point, even saying that you hang around him and you'll end up in big trouble. (Yeah, fun foreshadowing from a film perspective given how pt.1 plays out but shush.)

Anyway, the point of what turned into one of my (in)famous rambling incoherent posts was that that detail is canon and should've stayed in the film and Doc deserves that

[petrichor-idyllic]

So, y'all seemed to like my last TMR OC/idea prompt list thing, so I thought I'd do another one.

But actually focus on OC ideas this time.

Okay, so here are some cool OC ideas because there's actually a lot you can do with this universe, but everyone does the same shit.

And I am here to provide:

A transfer character. Can be used for either the books or the movies, but an OC that starts off in one Maze and then gets moved to another with no warning could be an interesting concept. WICKED has made giant simulation Mazes, monsters, flesh eating floating metal balls and teleportation windows- I don't think it's that far-fetched that they could scoop a kid from one Maze and throw them in another.

So, Thomas and Teresa obviously built the Maze, so prodigy characters are a staple of the series. I think an OC that has a lot of knowledge about anatomy and biology, who could work as a Med-jack or a Slicer, who actually designed and made the Grievers, and obviously doesn't remember it, could be a interesting concept.

More male OCs pls. I love seeing these ladies, don't get me wrong because it makes things more interesting. But I think fanfiction can just be for fun and I love seeing some casual normal guy OCs kicking it around the Glade. (Saying this as someone who has male and female characters for this universe.)

I'd also love to see a trans character.

An OC that snuck into the Maze could also be fun. I feel like I need to explain this one more. Picture this: your character is like Teresa and Thomas and has enough of watching their friends be tortured and killed, so they set themself up to go into the Maze early. So they rock up early, like in the middle of two Greenie days and it freaks everyone out. (This could also be an easy way to make it make more sense for fem! OCs to end up in the Glade.)

OC with a cyborg limp of some kind. WICKED could make it happen, don't tell me they wouldn't.

Also, lemme give some names 'cause there was a phase a while back where OCs had the most random names and people completely ignored the fact that all the characters in the Mazes are named after famous people.

(I have used some of these names for my own characters, but I will not be revealing the name of my main OC because she is too precious to me and I am protective over her name. I may one day post about her if people are interested.)

MASCULINE

Otto - Otto Hahn: A German nuclear chemist who is often referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and nuclear fission.

Leo - Leonardo da Vinci: This one is obvious but just in case you don't know; a famous polymath of the High Renaissance who had several talents, including painting, engineering, science and sculpting.

Dalton - John Dalton: An English chemist, physicist and meteorologist. He introduced the atomic theory into chemistry and researched into colour blindness (also known as Daltonism in many languages).

Al/Alan - Alan Turing: Cryptanalyst famous for his work during the Second World War.

Micky- Michael Faraday: A philosopher who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.

GENDER-NEUTRAL

Clerk - James Clerk Maxwell: Scottish mathematician responsible for the theory of electromagnetic radiation.

Coper - Nicolaus Copernicus: A Renaissance polymath who formulated the model of the universe with the Sun in the middle.

Andy - Anders Celsius: A Swedish astronomer who invented the Celsius temperature scale.

Mo - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Famous composer.

Hol - Andy Warhol: Famous artist.

FEMININE

Mea/Marie - Marie Salomea Curie: A pioneer of radioactivity.

Barb - Barbara McClintock: A famous cytogeneticist.

Emmy - Emmeline Pankhurst: A suffragette and women's rights activist.

Octavia - Octavia Hill: An artist and radical who pioneered affordable housing and can be considered the founder of the modern social network.

Lia - Amelia Earhart: The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

Yeah, okay, there ya go, hope some of y'all find this useful, or maybe even interesting lmao.

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

top 5 animals, top 5 comfort movies, and top 5 books atm? ^_^ (feel free to pick just one or two of these if it's too much!!)

Animals! :D Again I will probably think of several more once I list these...

Hawaiian Bobtail Squid my absolute beloveds

Crows!!! Any species I just love crows!

Cats. Any cat. I just love cats!

Pine Martens

Storm Petrels

Hmm... you know. I don't think I really have comfort movies. I'm one of those people who rarely rewatches a movie (though this does not extend to shows for some reason - I'll want to rewatch a show immediately after I finish it...). My mom has comfort movies so we usually end up rewatching those, but this is the only one I can think of for me:

Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - this is the movie I watched more than anything as a kid. I used to pull up to the tv as close as I could to take in the snow and the scenery. It's still a cute movie! The soundtrack is beautiful! I should rewatch it sometime I think hehe

Books! I've read a lot of books and I'm having trouble thinking of favourites so I'll just tell you five I've read recently or am currently reading that I enjoyed:

Rashoumon and Other Short Stories - Ryuunosuke Akutagawa (out of all of these, I really liked Loyalty! They're all quite good though - I don't think there was a single story that didn't intrigue me)

The Keeper of Lost Causes - Jussi Adler-Olsen (this is actually the first book of a mystery series - the detective gets demoted to solving cold cases - the one he picks up is one where the victim may actually still be alive! I enjoyed that it switches perspectives - so you actually get a little of what happened to the victim from her perspective. pretty cool I thought)

The Devotion of Suspect X - Keigo Higashino (suspense novel where a genius mathematician attempts to cover up a murder committed by the daughter of the woman he likes, but his opponent is an extremely gifted, also genius physicist/detective. It's really entertaining and fascinating to watch them dance around each other, kind of Death Note-esque, but sadly not as gay. They were kind of friends though before. It's an "I know you know" situation but the detective can't prove it just yet. I'm still finishing it!)

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle (I binge read all the stories in this collection in a single night. I went to bed at 6 am. I had school the next day. I don't recommend this... recommend the books though! I went back for a re-read recently and forgot how funny they actually are)

The Fall - Albert Camus (...yeah :) )

(Also I'm working my way through Dostoevsky's works because they are so so good. But I didn't want to take over the list with Dostoevsky.)

[starlighnes]

15 Questions 15 Minutes

thank you @lu-inlondon and @neverland-in-space <3

1.Are you named after anyone?

nope, i just know that my cousin whos about 2 months younger than me was supposed to be called hannah too, then i got that name and then they called her johanna

2.When was the last time you cried?

probably yesterday or the day before that reading fanfic (multiple times) reading and watching movies or tv shows make me cry super easily

3.Do you have kids?

No. i dont think i want kids, my cat is enough <3

4.Do you use sarcasm alot?

sure do.

5.What sports do you play/have played?

im about as unathletic as they come but i used to swim regularly until i was 18,now i just do it in the summer when i find time to go to the public pool and i love it a lot

6.What is the first thing you notice about someone?

probably their style/vibe of their look?

7.What's your eye color?

a mix of blue and green, the blue come through more bc of the slight blue tint of my contacts tho

8.Any special talents?

maybe befriending almost all cats that i meet (this is more me trying really hard than having a talent though)

10.Where were you born?

In a hospital thats like 3 streets from where i live, i was born on the same day as one of my childhood best friends (we met because our mothers got along in the hospital and they're still best friends to this day!)

11.What are your hobbies?

i love knitting and making art (not that im necessarily good at any form of art making but i really wanna capture how beautiful life is, whether through mediocre drawings, gluing things together in my journals, writing, taking photos, anything really) and im unsure if it counts as a hobby but looking at the stars makes me super happy (and i will tell everyone what constellations that are easy to spot are currently visible)

also reading, im really trying to get back into actual books again

12.Do you have pets?

i have no flattering pictures of him hes the orettiest babyboy<3

this is my cat timmy

13.How tall are you?

1,68cm

14.Favorite subject in school?

maths and chemistry.

15.Dream job?

id love to be a good physicist just hanging out in the lab doing silly little experiments. (or like any queer person have a café that also sells books and plants and theres a bunch of cats and-)

i am tagging: @zaubertrankkessel @tessaaaaa @willex-molina

if u want. if not then dont<3

[nimuetheseawitch]

rules: list eight shows for your followers to get to know you better

Tagged by @marley--manson

I'm pretty sure I did something like this recently where people were using the shows' posters. Since it says "get to know you better," I'm going to assume anyone reading this can read my little description and already know I'm into those shows. I'm also going to do that because it makes it harder/more interesting for me.

Doctor Who This was the show that got me onto Tumblr (that's not entirely true - my roommate dragged me on here, kicking and screaming, just like how I have joined every social media site ever), and it's one of the first shows I was weird about as a (kind of) adult. I'm an Eccleston fan through and through. This is another show that my partner and I stalled on because of a variety of life things, so we're years and years behind.

Veronica Mars I love this show. I didn't actually watch it until I was in grad school (and then I binged an entire season without sleeping one time during a PhD-induced anxiety spiral, so), but I adored it. I have always loved the girl detective, or even just boy detective, genre (looking at you, Harriet the Spy, Sammy Keyes, and Encyclopedia Brown), and this just did that dripping in early 2000's teen tv drama. And I adore Enrico Colantoni as her dad. I also always appreciate a detective show where the cops are the bad guys.

The O.C. I am often kind of ashamed of my deep love for The O.C., and I'm trying not to be. I got the DVDs out from the library and hid in my bedroom to watch it because my family would've made fun of it (probably - I was also a teenager and just afraid of people judging me). This marks the beginning of my massive crush on bisexual characters played by Olivia Wilde. I loved every moment of this show, sometimes especially when it was being awful.

The Avengers (1965-1967) British spy-fi starring Diana Rigg playing Emma Peel, an actively publishing theoretical physicist who knows martial arts and wears catsuits. What more could you want? If anything made me queer, it was Emma Peel. And although she's partnered with John Steed, supposedly a professional spy while she's an amateur, she regularly came in kicking to save his butt. I have only ever seen Series 4 & 5 with them as the main team, so I actually have zero opinions on the rest.

Killjoys I love this show so much. I wish it had been allowed to have more than 10 episodes a season because I would've loved to see more unabashedly queer sci-fi bounty hunter side plots. I love that the main characters are platonic life partners who did crime until they ran out of money and became bounty hunters. And that there are assassins and creepy conspiracies and cyberpunk awesomeness and the show is almost more bisexual than Lost Girl.

Anne With An E I loved Anne of Green Gables as a kid, and this show was beautiful and compelling and did a really good job with most things. This was one of the first shows I did a virtual watchalong with friends in 2020 at the beginning of COVID, and those watchalongs reminded me that I had internet friends and showed me how I could shift my social life, so this show is important to me.

Pose I don't even know where to start. I love this show, and Papi and Angel are perfect and deserve the world.

Buffy/Angel Buffy and Angel were incredibly important to my development as a queer feminine-presenting person. I actually didn't watch Buffy all the way through until after I'd become obsessed with Firefly. I have lots and lots of feelings about Buffy and Angel and I have so many of the comics that were a continuation of the show, and I got really into the lore, and I'm glad it existed. I'm glad I enjoyed it, and I'm glad I went back and saw how problematic a lot of it was. And whenever I think about it, I think wistfully of Monster of the Week style shows with a bajillion episodes per season.

I hope people feel like they know me better because I feel like I just went on an emotional journey, y'all. I'm not tagging anyone because I'm tired, but if anyone wants to do this, I would love to read what other people have to say.

[nohaynat]

goodbye for now

INTRO

dear science, dear academic community,

i just came out the other end of a PhD in physics: yesterday i had the defence/examination on my topic, it is in this context that i write this “goodbye letter”. 

along this path i have a particular partner in life who has been very close to me and a key piece in my academic adventures, i will call him Carlos. so here’s the story. 

i have been solving riddles since i have memory, i have been in love with math since i encountered the subject as a kid; physics not much, for some reason classical mechanics seemed boring to me (pulleys, torques, bla...). one week before my admission exam to uni (UNAM, MX) i thought i was going to apply for philosophy. that day i was with some friends in the science faculty who started to talk about spin entanglement in electrons. i was like: “what, wait?! does physics study these stuff?!” wow. i changed my mind, decided to apply for that, and there it started. 

to fall in love completely with physics was not so straightforward... i still had to do some classical mechanics courses, fluid dynamics, and thermodynamics, which i felt the particular professors behind didn’t have a broad understanding of. when you are taught something by someone who doesn’t understand it, it is boring, because it turns to facts only. but that was all my fault, since i didn’t chose always “the best professors”: it seemed too demanding for me, and i wanted to keep a life out of university also. keeping a life out of university had a toll on my physics career, of course, but taught me very other important and meaningful things, and i could at least stay in touch with my more “artistic” nature. well, this is just to set the tone of who i am and where i come from. 

when i was about to graduate, i chose to work on my thesis with one of “the best professors”, my first mentor and true guidance in life as a physicist (i will call him Eduardo). there it was when i fell in love with physics. i was actually ready to quit, finish the bachelor, get on with other things, but while doing the bachelor thesis (on entanglement) i knew i wanted to keep on doing these things “maybe even for life!” i simply loved it. now i had to apply to enter the master. that was my first experience of strain and stress before the fact that you may “not be good enough”, “not know enough things”, “be ridiculed by your incapacity to not keep up mentally”, etc... there is where i met Carlos (and of course a group of friends that surrounded this experience, but lists are too long to mention, these couple of lines is to let them know they are in my mind). 

Carlos was one of the best students in the preparation courses for admission to the master programme. he noticed me in the classroom because i was the unconventional, not well behaved student, who brought their dog to class: all this made him completely uncomfortable. having those as first impressions of each other, to become friends was also not straightforward. i guess it was the fact that i did get into the master programme that made us realise that we had more in common than we thought at first sight. he became my number one supporter in long nights of stressing calculations... and i became a pretty good student in that programme, just as every one else was. the master period was one of the best phases in my career: we had super good lectures, super good companions, super challenging homework, and a topic chosen by ourselves to develop. i chose entanglement, of course – or to be fair, and a bit more broad, foundations of quantum mechanics: what lies behind the uncertainty principle?, are things defined before being measured?, that sort of questions, which come together in a particular way in the “entanglement” feature. i kept working with Eduardo, of course, and at that point everything fit beautifully together, i could picture myself doing this the rest of my life. i could even find a bit of time for writing, so i didn’t feel that academia was absorbing my whole being, yet.

Carlos and i decided to go abroad to continue our development as physicists. a few of applications, a lot of uncertainties, hopes, fears and all that behind, we found ourselves traveling to Spain and Germany soon enough. 

START HERE FOR A QUICK READ

four years ago, late 2018, this last phase of my career started. this is a phase i am deeply grateful for. the lessons this phase has brought to my life are invaluable and i know these lessons will be acquiring more and more meaning as life goes by. it is all a deep transformational process in many aspects, being in a different culture is of course one of the important ingredients, but one with greater impact – and maybe the onset of this letter – is encountering “how science is done in the ‘first world’ ”. of course, my experience is limited to one university in one German town, this is all i have as the complete picture for the time being... i have to make a pause here to acknowledge the greatness in heart and mind of all the people around me (peers, professors), so that it is clear that when i talk about the issues i encountered, i do not point fingers at people, but at the system.

the night after PhD defence i hit my eye on the corner of a piece of furniture, this is me the morning after. the symbolism is clear. thank you academia, within you i could explore beautiful realms of knowledge, but there are times when sanity calls for people to part ways. thank you.

i used to think that as a woman, standing up for my gender would mean to get to the “top of the hill” and to inspire many other self-identified women to do it. today i think that my duty is to leave all environments that are depriving of our nature and wholeness, to speak from the feminine within and point out the oppression that is striking in these environments. the problem of gender goes beyond allowing for parental leaves and setting quotas on the admission system for jobs; far beyond that, and if we don’t understand this, we are really not understanding anything.

statistically the people that leave academia after the PhD is very high. this is sad. great minds are going to industry, contributing just to more and more technology development, and less to human knowledge. i have nothing against technology, it is a great thing. but when it is driven by monetary interests, territorial gains, power, and domination, well... we know the story – and those are the main patrons of technology, sad, but true. 

the main response to this problem, is “well, there are not enough permanent positions”. it is both, a financial problem and one of the academic structure. within the structure there are two options: either you get a permanent professorship, or you get nothing. again, a hierarchical, highly unequal system to question, in which there are no in-betweens. basically a top-precent phenomenon. to aim for professorship means to devote your whole to it. can you imagine the stress this generates in the students for years and years on end? well, i’ve seen it, and yes, the tactic is to leave academia. 

it is a system based on competition, on which an important measure is number of publications, so one must produce to their limits. do we want to live in a world on which only “olympic athletes” of their field are given a chance to develop that field? of course, great minds have to push the edges of science, but is the push equal in several directions? are the questions being asked guided from different perspectives? do we even have time to stop and think what questions are most relevant for our times? is there balance in the system? quick no.

i mentioned the question of “how science is done in the ‘first world’ ”, here is a quick summary of my impression after these years: there is of course a richness in experimental areas that we cannot imagine having in “developing countries” – term which i think already illustrates with language a part of the problem. this experimental richness is something to be celebrated, now let’s move on to the issues. it seems evident that the problems and illnesses that come with neoliberalism strike in a special way in the ‘first world’. let things unfold and this is how academia is playing out the same process, problems, and illnesses in the ‘first world’ hallways. i am of course grateful to the country that took me in so that i could grow in more ways than i could describe here and now (again, it is not about the people and the culture, it is about the system), but seeing the problems right out front is a shaking experience. i used to be hopeful that academia wouldn’t replicate the problems that capitalism has put in place: the isolation, the stress, the fear, the inequality, the silence. it does. i used to think that academia was the place where change would start from to then extend to our society and culture. it isn’t. it is blatantly replicating the same structures, and this is sad.

a few days ago i was crying as i was ripping more and more pages of calculations, not knowing if i would be doing this ever again. it is difficult to say goodbye to something you fall in love so deeply with: that which keeps you late at night, and which is the first thing you think about in the morning. but it is worst to stay in a place that is depriving to our wholeness and our integrity as human, sentient, beings. so if the system does the work of analysing itself and transforming, i would be happy to reintegrate myself to it. i know, one is always called to change the system “from the inside”, but the beast is too big now for me to tackle, and i haven’t found enough force within the people that can change it, driven to change it. maybe in a few months i find a little island of peace in which things look brighter. maybe just going back to my culture in which human closeness is second nature would be the brighter place... who knows? for now, thank you, thank you, thank you, and goodbye.

WHY I WROTE THIS

my first purpose is to let any university student out there know that i hear you, that we all hear you, that this process is surely gratifying but can also feel dark and cold sometimes. that we are all together in this, and to always remember that there is no measure to your greatness, that your value cannot be set by a grade, a number of publications, a working pace, or the missing information in your mind this morning. 

my second purpose is to remind everyone to continue questioning the system, to speak out and speak truthfully, to attend those inner callings for warmth and closeness, and to inspire change in communities towards generating supporting environments and away from competition and cold pay checks. 

thank you for reading. bye for now.

[savrenim]

Hey mx savrenim its me again and I'm wondering: how you maintain tension in a story with characters with future vision? Especially in a story with no guaranteed future, where seers can ensure the best possible future for themselves

oooooh v v good question, once more under the cut

so there are a lot lot LOT of ways to do this that all depend on the tone that you want your story to go for, and Imma reference a few pieces of media that do this in various ways, but this is pretty much a subset of the question “how do you maintain tension in your story when your character is very overpowered”

1. Just very realistically explore that “in theory able to do things perfectly” and “in practice able to do things perfectly” are very very different things.  Another Faust by Daniel Nayeri had pretty much someone with Seer-like capabilities (namely, the ability to loop back I thiiiink as far as they wanted in time?) that they could use to make sure they always said the right thing, got the right answers on tests, etc etc, and it just.... didn’t work out for them perfectly. Because perfect knowledge didn’t fix everything. If you know how every single play is going to work idk in a baseball game, that gives you an edge, but it doesn’t actually mean you win the game unless you are good enough at baseball to hit that ball and run those bases

In that case, the more effective the Seer wants to be, the more they have to actually train the skills that they care about, so that they can carry out the actions physically that lead to their ideal future. And building physical skills is hard and takes work and practice, and anything you have to work to get better at to reach a goal is the starting point of tension. 

Also to continue the sports metaphor, having perfect knowledge of a baseball game and even being the best player in the world doesn’t guarantee you a win because you cannot play every single position, there are other people on the team who are going to be doing actions that at most can have secondhand versions of your knowledge. Trying to manage the human aspect leads to human error. So maybe there is tension because the Seer aggressively self-isolates so that Other People Will Not Fail Them and tension comes from interacting with other people they have extreme trust issues. Maybe the tension comes from them playing puppetmaster and trying to figure out which people they are willing to sacrifice for their goals, which people will fail them and which people they can and should hold onto, and from nobody really trusting them because everyone is well aware that the puppetmaster is willing to make sacrifices.

And finally -- just knowing the future doesn’t mean you can fix it. I don’t know about you, but even if I had perfect foreknowledge of the future, I would not be truly happy just personally thriving as idk rich and a famous mathematician and physicist and married to my fiance and maybe the books that I want to be published published and enough money to give to all my friends too and maybe can we have warp drives I want to go to space and inventing some solid if not immortality-tech then life-extension tech would be cool -- which, like, is everything I could personally wish for from life and more -- but in the world that we have? like, climate change SUCKS. fascism SUCKS. racism SUCKS. sexism and homophobia and poverty and class wars disguised as generational wars and all of the existing structures that reinforce all of these things SUCK. and even personally having perfect foreknowledge of the future enough to either start with or build up a bunch of political power and money, to try to change any of that would mean going against incredibly entrenched institutions that I honestly have no idea how effective one person could be at changing. Like if B*zos suddenly decided “wait let’s save the world and make a socialist utopia” do you actually think he would succeed? or even get very far? even applying every single resource he commands? or would he just.... lose a lot of his money and power trying to do that and then someone else becomes the richest person in the world who does want to maintain the system. because a lot of that power are things that do not exist, like stocks, it’s imaginary money that the moment you stop playing the game you get kicked out of the game and maybe you can make tiny changes but the game itself doesn’t stop

so baaaasically consider making your Seer a radical anarchist or at least someone who cares about tackling large-scale problems that one individual will never be able to solve, to play the “well if a very powerful individual had a single-minded focus on trying to fight these things could we at least get further than every single powerful person wanting to screw us over or just not caring?” game -- that creates tension because global problems can only be solved by global and communal actions, and one individual, no matter how perfectly they can see the future, cannot do that on their own

2. “Psychic powers don’t make you popular.” This is my obligatory “I just rewatched Mob Psycho 100 and am obsessed with it seriously consider watching it if you haven’t.” I know I keep bringing up MP100 but hear me out my favorite media is where the main character is stupidly overpowered so I don’t have to be stressed at all consuming it and MP100 maybe is the most touching but also well thought out and interestingly plotted version of that I’ve ever seen  But the basic premise of Mob Psycho 100 is that the main character, Mob, is a middle schooler with the most powerful psychic abilities in the world. The tension comes from: (1) Mob is not in total control over his powers and feels really really bad when he loses control and for example uses his powers against another person even in self-defense because that’s a Rule he made for himself that he really doesn’t want to cross ever. Which with a Seer, maybe you have a Seer that Cares Deeply About Other People’s Privacy, or who Cares Deeply About Having Real Relationships That They Do Not Manipulate, or who Cares Deeply About Their Achievements Being Their Own and so they don’t use their powers in everyday life out of moral considerations, except sometimes gods in stressful situations you just want everything to be okay so the tension of “do I fix this right now or is this crossing a line” drives your story. (2) because Mob isn’t using his powers in everyday life, while he is having these giant badass psychic battles with ghosts and evil psychics as a part-time job after school and yeah yeah you know he’s going to win, the tension and growth in the story comes from the gains that he is making in his personal life of, like, “oh he made a friend!!!!! oh he stood up for himself even though that’s really hard for him and he set a boundary!!!! oh he’s working really really hard towards his goal of being better at running!!!!! oh look he’s grown so much at episode 1 he didn’t talk to anyone his own age or have anything to do and now he’s doing things for himself!!!” Having your Seer take the ethics of not using seeing into the future to manipulate the people around them really really seriously, working very hard at tiny life things and then being a complete fucking badass that is putting down world-threatening threats as hobby that they kind of don’t view as that important in defining them as a person or defining their accomplishments or how they feel about themselves means that it doesn’t matter how overpowered they are in terms of their abilities, your audience will care and be invested in the tiny life accomplishments that they are working so hard to do on their own, and will be proud of their personal growth.

3. Blind Spots. Exactly what it sounds like, can your Seer really see everything? Perfectly? And if they do see everything do they know the exact effect that acting differently will cause? Or are they limited visions -- they only come at certain times, they only are about very specific things, the Seer cannot control when they happen, etc. The more specific and limited your visions are, the harder they have to actually work to figure out how to interpret them and best play the cards that they have, so maybe finding that perfect happy life isn’t actually all that easy. 

Alternatively, your Seer can only see the natural future, what would happen if they do not change their actions. If they change their actions, they can’t re-glimpse the new version, so it’s up to their best guess as to whether or not their plans to make things better will actually make things better. You can create a shit-ton of tension there if only because Plans Never Go Perfectly. Honestly at this point you’re just writing a slightly different version of those “MC is a Super Genius” books that instead of them making good plans because they are a Super Genius, it is good plans because they can see the future, I stand by childhood me that the first three Artemis Fowl books are great and honestly I’m pretty sure the plot wouldn’t really change too much if you added “Artemis can see what future would happen if he didn’t take any actions to interfere” and it would just be another interesting trait that was a part of his planning process.

And even if your Seer can see re-glimpse the new version, they are human. They have only a finite amount of time, and a finite amount of brain space. You don’t need to make the rules of Seer powers be that “they can see all of spacetime and all possibilities of the past and future perfectly all the time.” They can miss things by not thinking something is important and looking in a different direction. You can build up tension around they can only look into the future, not the past, they missed something, and now they don’t know what they missed and what to target to fix it. Or play the finite amount of time bit very hard: if they see the effects of deciding one particular course of action, it takes [x] time for the vision to complete, then they need to try to see the effects of one other particular course of action, and they can only effectively run a handful of simulations -- or even hundreds or thousands, but the answer is still a finite number of dear gods is nature chaotic / the butterfly effect is built into every single physics equation that there is that describes the world -- so tension comes from even if they can check that a plan is good, they still have to come up with a plan to change the future, and can only come up with so many plans in the time that they have. 

4. Existential Crisis. You made Seer powers “they can see all of spacetime and all possibilities of the past and future perfectly all the time.” idk I would find life terribly boring and have an existential crisis over that probably? of am I even human? does anything I do matter? does anyone else exist, really, since I can see and control every aspect of their lives? am I a god? how do I relate to anyone? how do I care about anything? 

In this setup, your main character would not be the Seer, it would be a person or group of people who are either trying to Save The World or Accomplish Something Important or even Accomplish Something Selfish who spend the story trying to befriend the Seer and get their help goddamnit because the moment the Seer is on their side, they win. and then the tension comes from the Seer keeps refusing but is ~slowly opening their heart~, jaded older mentor figure adopts tiny adorable hopeful child is the found family JAM and then your main character finally decides they aren’t getting the help and goes off and does the incredibly dangerous thing alone and the Seer realizes too late that oh nooo my tiny son is in danger and at just the last moment decides fuck it and leaps back into the game to try to help and save them and oh both the glorious drama and all the best tropes all of them seriously if you write this book ping me I’ll read it I’m a sucker for jaded old loner adopts Naive Hopeful Hero Who Is Going To Save The World Even If It Kills Them and jaded old loner just spends the entire time going “oh no. oh no tiny child. oh gods I’m coming out of retirement aren’t I. tiny child please. please have you considered just being chill so that I don’t have to come out of retirement” and then just. the SATISFACTION. when they come in at just the right moment and the tension leading up to it when you didn’t know if they were going to or not. it’s poetry.

This can also pretty easily be done without the Seer having godlike powers, just pretty strong powers-- have them have made their life perfect, found it empty, and fallen into a depressive fugue then use the above plot for the same effect. 

5. Make Them Your Villain. The final way of dealing with making tension and having an overpowered character is, uh..... it’s only no tension when your protagonist doesn’t need to struggle to reach their goals. if the antagonist is walking down easy street that only makes things all the more stressful because how do you beat that? and that is all of the tension in your book: figuring it out.

a subgenre of this is Seer v Seer: the best possible future for one Seer is not necessarily the best possible future for another Seer, so if you have multiple Seers, Seers clashing against other Seers that have the same powers which means their powers aren’t necessarily an advantage is a shit-ton of tension. That is.... pretty much the plot of trash novel? So I’d rather not go into detail about how I personally am doing it, but anytime people who have the same abilities fight, they’re on equal ground, you don’t know who is going to win, so boom, tension.

6. Seers are illegal/ kidnapped by the government the moment they are discovered to work for the government only/ targeted for kidnapping by all sorts of powerful groups, so your Seers need to aggressively hide their powers and the more they use them to make their life perfect, the more in danger they are; even if they can use their abilities to avoid ever being captured, they will be on the run their entire lives if they get found out.

[rosencrantzsguildenstern]

i have the full summary of a quantum leap episode that literally does not exist but does in my head. ok ok so the PLOT the big PREMISE is that this time sam’s in a leap for like 6 months. he shows up and he’s this normal guy with like a reasonably weird job like maybe he’s a reporter or a musician or something and/or he wears like those big bright colored 80s jackets around everywhere and sam’s like im going to act like this is the worst thing in the world that’s ever happened to me as i often do in leaps that are actually pretty chill. al when can i get tf out of this guy. and al’s like sorry sam.... looks like you’re going to be here for awhile. and there’s this woman we’ve seen for like 1 minute and he has to stop her son from dying.... FAR in the future! well 6 months in the future. 

so it turns out the woman (she has that curled blonde hair and everything she’s such a woman of the week) is a SINGLE MOM raising her kid alone and so sam ends up like being her boyfriend. now time passes and we watch him starting to act more and more like this guy because that’s how quantum leap would do it and it’s kind of bad. but we also see him getting like time to have his own interests again finally. we also see the woman’s son grow up not by MUCH but he like loses a tooth and stuff and he runs to tell sam about it and sams like thats great sport :D and they’re super close. we get a montage of sam getting really good at his weird job too and if he’s a musician there’s an obligatory song and dance bit. meanwhile al has this running bit where he’s like the guy in the waiting room is getting real antsy :/ and then later you’d never believe how difficult it is to deal with the guy in the waiting room like we let him out and he was just like oh my god everythings neon wtf. this is never properly addressed or explained because sam does not care and also it’s quantum leap baby 😎

eventually we see sam like in this little apartment he has with like his coat hung on the door chilling with al. they’re playing poker or something but in this weird roundabout way where sam has to hold al’s cards and every 2 seconds al is like YOU’RE LOOKING. and sams like no i’m not al.. 🙄 even though he keeps winning so like he ISN’T looking probably but he could be. anyway al’s like i guess you’re looking forward to leaping out of here huh! and sam’s like what if i don’t want to leap out of here... and it’s sad because you’re like oh sam,,, always leaping from life to life... what must it be like..... no peace... but also kind of bad because the romance between him and the woman of the week is unconvincing. al gets all catty about the romance too that’s why he’s bringing up leaping he’s been sooo jealous the entire episode. the show doesn’t tell the viewers this but like you can tell. 

so sam because he’s sam wants to tell the woman who he really is! so their love isn’t a deception! and al’s like that’s the worst idea in the world. so sam does he’s like my name is sam beckett. i’m a quantum physicist from the future. etc etc and the woman is like haha you’re so quirky wait what. you’re insane. and she BREAKS UP with him over this because he won’t let it go but he tells her this on the day her son is going to DIE! and suddenly this foundation he’s built to make sure she’ll listen to him and that her son won’t run off or whatever is SHATTERED and he can’t even go near her so it’s like oh no.... he’ll die.... and there’s DRAMA but sam solves it all because he’s sam and the kid is fine. but then that means he’s going to LEAP and he’s not like al when am i going to leap :/ like normal he like hugs this woman and kid and he’s sad and he tries to tell them something about the future but then in the middle of that al’s like ‘sam-’ and zip zap zop he’s out of there in the middle of something else and ngl it’s really fucked up because he was really attached to that life! but it’s never brought up again and he’s fine

[actual-lea]

I HAVE RETURNED with another chapter of this thing PLEASE ENJOY

AO3 | First chapter

“No, no, but that's not how it works at all.”

Desmond responds with a shrug and a laugh. “'S how it worked for me.”

“That's different, though,” Daniel says, gesturing with the bottle in his hand. “Seeing a 'flash' of something, whether it's some kind of premonition or just, like, weird deja vu, is not the same as it having already happened.”

“Then where'd the flashes come from?”

“I don't know, I'm... I'm a physicist, not a parapsychologist.” He sips his beer thoughtfully. “Maybe, some... Some alternate reality, a universe where things could have happened differently.”

“So then, I changed over to this reality.”

“No.” He points an emphatic finger. “That's my point, you didn't change anything, because that's not how time works.”

“Let's just say I beg to differ, then,” Desmond says with a shrug.

“No, listen,” Dan begins, not willing to let it go. “Time is like– it's like...” He extends a hand toward the dark waves surrounding the boat. “Imagine a creek, okay, running water. You toss a rock into that creek, what happens?”

Another shrug. “I don't know, what happens?”

“Nothing.” He punctuates the word with a hand on the seat, a bit too hard, and the laugh Desmond lets out is contagious; Dan can't help cracking a smile, but he continues anyway, “Alright? That's my point, you– you can't change anything, the water will just wash over it regardless.”

Desmond nods thoughtfully and throws back another drink of his own beer. “Well, what if you use a bigger rock?”

“Doesn't matter. Everything's still gonna wash right over.”

“Alright, bigger, then.” He spreads his arms wide to illustrate. “A boulder.”

Dan chuckles. “Well, you– you can't.”  

“But let's say, somehow, you could,” Desmond presses with a teasing grin. “What would happen then?”

“It doesn't matter, because it's not possible.” Daniel pauses to take another drink. “Any variations that we could cause would just be... They'd be negligible, at best. I mean, humans, we're... We're barely even pebbles.”

“Then what would it take? To actually change the future?”

“Are you still talking about this?”

The two of them look up as Penny approaches from the cockpit, pulling on a jacket to shield against the unseasonably cool night air.

“Care to join?” Desmond says warmly. She plops down beside him with a sigh, and he wraps an arm around her shoulders. “Charlie finally out?”

“Finally,” she confirms, stealing a drink of Desmond's beer. “Only took three bloody bedtime stories. Next time, I'll bring him out here and have him listen to you both debating the mysteries of the universe,” she adds, grinning. “Put him out like a light.”

“Oh, come on, this is fascinating stuff.” He gestures to Daniel. “Dan here was just about to explain how time works. Again.”

Dan responds with a shrug and “Would it help if I use smaller words?” Penny snorts at that, and he takes a quick sip of his drink to cover his own laugh.

Desmond chuckles. “Mighty bold talk for someone who's only time-traveled once.”

“Experience does not equal understanding,” Daniel argues, and then he grins. “I mean, obviously, or we wouldn't be having this conversation again.”

“Or maybe this is the first time we're having it, and the rest is all time fuckery.”

“Desmond.” Dan sighs and sets down his drink to gesture with both hands as he tries to get back on track. “All kidding aside, the fact is that you can't change the past, or the future. Whatever happened, happened. It's like– like a street, right?”

“I thought it was like a creek,” Desmond interrupts with a smirk.

Penny gives him a small shove. “Let him be.”

“What?” He holds up his hands in mock innocence and turns back to Dan with a smile. “Look, I am but a humble student. I only wanna know the answer to my question.”

“But there isn't an answer, that's what I'm–” Desmond’s grin doesn’t change, and Daniel sighs in defeat. “Fine, yeah, okay, let's say that you somehow did manage to modify the outcome of an event. And, again, I cannot stress enough how impossible that is, I mean, it– The sheer amount of energy that would be required for something like that, it would be...” He shakes his head. “Right. Theoretically... Yeah, you might be able to alter the flow. Slightly.” He holds up a hand and adds, before Desmond can declare victory, “But even then, the change would... It would level out, basically.”

“What d'you mean?”

“Even if you were able to take a different street somehow, you would still end up at the same destination.”

Desmond stares back at him blankly, and he sighs, frustrated with his inability to explain.

“Think of it like...”  He gestures vaguely toward the sky. “The universe, it– it wants things.”

“It can get in line.” Penny grabs Desmond's beer and throws back another quick drink before returning it to him with a mischievous smile.

“It wants things to be a certain way,” Dan continues, undeterred, “And so the events that are supposed to happen, that have happened, will always have happened, no matter what we do. The universe, it– It has a way of...” He pauses to search for the right word, “Of course-correcting, basically.”

Desmond's grin disappears. He leans forward, a strange expression on his face. “What...did you just say?”

Daniel blinks. “Which... Which part?”

“I...” He laughs, but still looks uncomfortable. “I've just got the strangest deja vu.”

------

Of all the places where Daniel thought he might spend his last few hours alive, locked in the basement of a library at the University of Michigan would never have made the list.

And yet, here he is, sweating in the stale air and the too-thick fabric of his work clothes, his fingers going numb and his head still throbbing in tiny pulses from the bump at the back of his skull.

“So that's it,” Leon says, leaning against the wall across from him. “You want me to believe that you came all this way, got a maintenance job under a fake name and scrubbed toilets for two months, just to take a peek at a bunch of old records, all on the off chance that you might be able to find some buried scraps about DHARMA?”

“That's...a bit of an oversimplification, but yeah.” He fidgets with the tail of one of the zipties. “And, I mean, it– It worked, right?” he adds with a bit of a nervous laugh, nodding to the DHARMA logo on the box beside Leon’s feet.

Leon glances down at it, then back to Dan. “Give me one good reason why I should believe you.”

He lets out a frustrated sigh. “Okay, if– If I was here to kill you, wouldn't I have a weapon of some kind?” He holds out his empty hands. “You can search me, or look through my pack, I'm– I'm unarmed.”

“Yeah, I noticed that.” Leon bends down to pick up the backpack and starts to dig through it.

Daniel rubs his eyes. The pounding in his head still hasn’t stopped. Neither has the twisting in his stomach, though he’s not sure how much of that is simply psychological.

“Why do you have this, then?”

He looks up to see Leon holding out a familiar black vest. Charlotte’s vest. “It…belonged to a friend of mine,” he explains quietly. In all honesty, he’s not sure why he kept it all this time. Maybe as a promise, a tangible reminder that he'll one day return it to her. He shakes his head; this is no time to get sentimental. “And she– She's still there, and so are a couple dozen other people, and that's– That's why I'm trying to get back, that's why I'm here.”

“You wanna go back there?”

He gives a hesitant nod. “Yeah. I thought that… Isn’t that what you’re doing here, too?”

Leon scoffs. “No way. I've had enough of that place for a lifetime.”

“You've been there before, too, then.” Daniel shifts his weight to lean against the pipe he's tied to. “How... When did you...”

Another scoff, and Leon sinks into a sitting position, shaking his head. “My mom,” he begins softly, staring at his hands. “She was a scientist. Botany, horticulture, that kind of thing. She had a great job at Oklahoma State, but one year, she did a bunch of interviews with this guy who offered her an even better one. Only thing was, we'd have to relocate. Somewhere way out west,” he makes sarcastic air quotes, “Or so they told her. All expenses were paid, though. I mean, research grants, housing, school tuition all included. Too good to be true, right?”

Daniel gives a sympathetic nod and waits for the rest of the story, resting his aching head against the wall.

“So, we moved. Packed everything up and joined this overly ambitious research organization that no one had ever heard of.” He taps a finger on the box. “DHARMA was gonna change the world. Or save the world. Something like that,” he says with a shrug. “We moved at the end of the summer, right when school was about to start, and all that really mattered to me was how short the school days were on this island. Classes were done at noon, and then we'd have the rest of the day off. Sure, we didn't have cable or MTV or anything, but there was still so much to do. I got to hang out at the beach every single day.” He sighs. “I remember thinking it was paradise. That lasted for about three months.”

“What happened?” Daniel prompts when he doesn't say anything else.

“The hostiles happened.” Leon's hands clench into fists. “I went to school one day, just like normal, only about halfway through the morning, the teacher gets this weird look in her eyes. Says we're going on a field trip. Which doesn't make any sense, 'cause we're on an island, right? But she piles all the kids into one of the DHARMA vans and sits up front with this guy that nobody recognizes, and away we go.” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before continuing. “Didn't realize what was happening, not even when they started handing out the gas masks. Wasn't until that evening, when they finally brought us back home, that we figured out the truth.” He looks up at Dan, pure rage burning behind his eyes. “They were hostiles. All along, the woman who stood in that classroom teaching math to a bunch of kids... She was one of the people plotting to kill all of our parents. Every single person that wasn't secretly one of them in disguise, died that day. Some of the younger kids didn't really understand, but I did.” He swallows hard. “I was eight.”

Dan exhales. “I'm...sorry,” he says quietly, not sure what else to say.

Leon huffs out a humorless laugh. “The best part was, they expected some of us to join them after that. I guess they thought that since they were merciful enough to not murder a bunch of children, that we'd be grateful enough to do whatever they said,” he spits. “I never found out what happened to most of the kids I knew. Supposedly, everybody that wasn't on their little recruitment list got shipped back to the mainland on a sub. Nobody ever heard from them again.” He shakes his head. “I didn't want to disappear, so I fell in with their little cult and did what they told me to. For fourteen years, I did what they told me to. I pretended to be one of them, just waiting for a chance to get the fuck out of there, and then, finally, I got sent to the mainland on an assignment. They were trying to recruit some doctor in Miami, and so, the second that I had the opportunity, I ran.” He pauses to take another deep breath and lets it out with a small shrug. “That's what I've been doing ever since, really, just trying to stay alive long enough to figure out what the hell happened to the rest of the people from the DHARMA Initiative – everyone still on the mainland when the Purge happened. Supposedly, DHARMA was headquartered here, in Ann Arbor. But whoever those people are, the hostiles, they've got good connections. I've never been able to find any existing records, any concrete evidence that DHARMA even existed in the first place.” He places a possessive hand on the box. “Until now.”

“That's why I'm here too.” The words are out of Daniel's mouth before he even realizes he's speaking aloud, and Leon fixes him with a suspicious glare. “I mean, I'm– You already knew that part, right? That's why you and I are here, in the first place, because we were both looking for information on DHARMA, and...” He lets out a nervous laugh. “I know that I probably sounded like some kind of...crazy conspiracy theorist, asking you about all this in the first place. But neither of us would have found anything on our own, and now...” He gestures toward the box, a bit awkwardly with his hands still bound. “Now we have something, so why– Why wouldn't we help each other?”

“How do I know I can trust you?” Leon says. “You haven't exactly been telling the truth, Daniel.”

He winces. “I'm sorry that I lied about my name. But...you're probably doing the same thing, right?” he guesses, and a slight shift in Leon's posture tells him that he's right. “You have to understand, that I'm– I, uh...” He hesitates and finally settles on, “There are people out there that I'm trying to avoid, too.”

Leon nods thoughtfully. “That's why you faked your death?”

Daniel blinks. “Wh... What?”

Leon's surprised expression mirrors his own. “You didn't know?” He stands and steps through the doorway into the next room, leaving Daniel alone for a few seconds before returning with a creased piece of paper in one hand. “You're dead,” he states, holding it out for Dan to see.

It's his name, alright, printed in impersonal black and white atop a Certificate of Death from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Daniel Faraday, 27 years old, dead as of December 8, 2005, informant... “What the hell?”

Informant: Eloise Hawking, mother of the deceased. Her signature fills the box neatly, not a penstroke out of place, above a handwritten address in Los Angeles that he's never seen before.

“This doesn’t…make any sense,” he breathes, around the lead weight that's settled in his chest. “Why would… I haven’t…” He tries to reach for the certificate, forgetting for a moment that he’s still ziptied to a pipe.

“This wasn’t you, then?” Leon turns it toward himself to read it with a frown. “Weird.”

“Yeah.” The word comes out like a weak laugh. Daniel shakes his head and clears his throat to regain Leon’s attention before trying again, “Listen, I’m sorry that I lied, okay? But I swear to you, I'm not a murderer. I'm a scientist. I don't want anyone to get hurt.” He swallows and shifts his weight and adds, nervously, “In...cluding me.”

Leon stares at him for a long moment. “It doesn't make sense.” Then, finally, he sighs, “And the weirdest part is, I believe you.”

Cautious hope blooms in Dan's chest. “You do?”

He nods. “You're a little too incompetent to be an assassin, I think.”

Daniel lets himself laugh at that, slumping against the wall in relief. “Thank you.”

“I'm not sure what to do now, though.” Leon crosses his arms. “I did kinda give you a concussion.”

“It– It's alright,” Dan stammers out quickly, shaking his head. “I'm not, uh, the kind of person to hold a grudge, if– if that helps,” he offers, and Leon doesn't look entirely convinced but nods anyway. “So, if– If you wouldn't mind,” he adds after a moment, holding up his hands, “Could you...cut me loose, now? So that we can, uh. Figure out where to go from here?”

Leon doesn't move. “No hard feelings?”

He shakes his head again. “None, whatsoever.”

It's the truth, for the most part, and it seems to be good enough for Leon; he steps forward to retrieve a pair of scissors from the cart.

The sound of a door opening, somewhere in the next room, makes him freeze. He turns toward the noise, his eyes wide and focused on something around the corner that Dan can't see. “What–”

A deafening crack splits through the stale air; a gunshot, Dan realizes in horror, when Leon stumbles back a single step and topples to the floor, one hand over the dark red stain spreading outward from his chest.

(next chapter)

[insomniac-dot-ink]

things I don’t know

Genre: wlw slice of life

Words: 1.4k

Summary: Two girls come back from college and reunite to stargaze and see if they still know each other. A love story of waiting and finding.

---------

The things I don't know: I don’t know how rockets function or how birds fly home for winter or how adjectives in other languages work. I don't know why we know more about our moon than our oceans. I don't know how time and space are actually the same thing. Time doesn't exist, not really, but maybe I know that when I look over.

You are laid back on the roof all long legs and loose limbs like the city made you edgeless instead of full of honking cars. A dull ache spreads through my chest and that list of “Things I Don’t Know” is longer than ever.

We sit apart, knees almost touching, and enough room for sneezing and not mush else. We don’t look at each other, not yet.

“There’s something about the stars here,” you say because we were waiting for something to say. “You know?” I know. I knew it in the way I know nothing else.

“It’s the rabbits . . . Allota feet hopping around out here. Gotta be lucky.”

“I was going to say it’s the lack of pollution.”

“Nah, we’re just God’s favorite.” I scratch my chin and try not to think about how little I know what to do with my hands. I don’t know how to fix a sink. I don’t know how to change a tire. I don’t know how to hold a baby or build a house—the list was endless.

“You still kicking a ball around?”

“Not since it kicked my ass first.” I gesture. “Ankles still wrong.”

“Aw. Grade 11, right.” You say softly and get lost somewhere in your head, you do that sometimes. We’re both looking up again.

The sky is velvet black, spread thick like jam, staring down with diamond eyes, and there we were, on the roof of a building not cleaning. We were supposed to be inspecting and helping make the place presentable for the church. It could be a day-care or meeting space or maybe just a storage shed, but first we needed to dust and mop and check the roof for leaks. Which we weren’t doing, but maybe this wasn’t why I went to church anymore.

"You still sing?" I basically grunt.

Your smile is a curved sickle, it punctures.

"Sure, in the shower every morning."

“Not out there in the world?” I snort. “Waste a water.”

“You kidding me? You’re the only who thought I could hit high notes. Pastor Dave asked me to stop doing Silent Night last Christmas.”

“Tell ‘em the high notes aren’t the point.”

“What’s the point then?” You tease. My smile returns sloppy, no edges, just dull hills to fall off of.

“All the other ones.”

You run a hand through your short hair, it’s short now, I’d never thought it could do that; I try to know you again. You are tall, and wiry and the divot above your eyebrow is fishhook-shaped. The fishhook scar looks the same, white and curved and deep, but it’s different now, unhidden by bangs.

I sit there, trying to figure it all out. We both flew away, both to college and bigger places, maybe that made our movements slower and more deliberate. Maybe breathing in the Oklahoma City air had worked its way into my joints and bones and tendons and shifted their weight. It pulled my ligaments into new orbits and other directions.

I don’t know how bodies work though, I don’t know how joints stay put or knees hold up all that weight or how bodies come together—what a frightening thought. And yet I’m still looking at you.

“How have you liked it?” I ask deliberately, or try to at least. “Really.”

“How is it really?” You tease, again.

“Yeah, Sammy, really.”

Your little grin fades. A long pause follows, thoughtful, you’re always thinking and going places I can’t follow. “I like it,” you say in that simple way. “It’s different.” I nod and ache and do all those other things without names. “I think good different. Maybe.”

I gesture to the jewel-knitted above. “But they don’t got this.”

“Oh no, God no. They don’t have this.” You shift, I feel the ghost of you there even without touching. “How about you? How is it really?” You’re never done teasing me, but luckily, I’m never done being teased.

“You know me . . . Though, I dunno, I wish, I wish some,” I swallow thickly, and let my heart squeeze in several languages I can unfortunately understand. My gaze darts over, quick and guilty, and then away again. “Stuff.”

“Yeah?” You blink at me, leaning forward. I inhale like I can’t get enough of the stuff. “Come on, Tricky.” You called me Tricky since we were 6.

“I just wish,” I whisper, eyes fogging over, “I wish I had known some stuff sooner.”

“What kind of stuff?” It’s gentle, gentle as a mended bone, and your knee touches mine.

“Lots of stuff . . . That’s all.”

You seem to frown and nod and think all at once. It’s something you did since 3rd grade before every spelling bee; and time right then is a patchwork, existing and not existing all at once. A series of tiny moments of belly-hurt laughter, tickling breath against my ear, secrets told, and hands clasped together under blankets. I don’t say it of course, I don’t say: you never left me, you never leave me, even when you’re not there. Time is a jumbled mess like that.

“And there’s a lot I still don’t know . . .” I find myself mumbling.

“Alright, what do you know now? And don’t just say stuff.” You slow-grin, it punctures, I turn to face away and try not to shrink and disappear under it.

“Well for one, my brother was right about 8am classes. It is the work of the devil.”

“I could have told you that,” you chuckle.

“Oh yeah? Never pegged you as know-it-all.” I wink and you roll your eyes. “So then what did you learn in Boston, Miss Ivy League?”

“Not much.” You run a hand through your hair again, and I can see the edge of that fishhook working into your thoughts. “Not enough.”

“Guess that’s disappointing. Lotta money to learn nothing.” I sniff.

“I think that’s what I’m paying for.” You shrug. “Plus, it’s not over yet. I just . . . there’s so much. You know?”

“Too much,” I agree softly.

The silence between us dries like paint on the wall. I can hear you considering something, turning it over and over to find the seams. You turn to me glacially, like you’re moving through cement. I could always tell when you found something after all that digging.

“I feel it though. I feel like . . . like maybe I missed out.” Our eyes meet when you say that, and maybe it feels like the first time. Had I ever been looked at before that moment? I didn’t know.

“It’s not too late.” I say it, I do. "I learned in physics . . . time doesn’t exist. So nothings too late, it can’t be.”

You chuckle and it’s sparkling and young, just like 5 and 13 and now. “I’m not sure that’s how physics works.”

“It could.” I almost pout.

“Well,” you stare down at your lap like your legs might leave. “I’d like it to work like that.”

“It really could,” I say again this time, but dangerously.

My mouth is dry and empty and I’m leaning forward like the fool. The fool doesn’t know when to stop, the fool doesn’t know when she's going to ruin everything, a fool doesn’t know a damn thing. I am the fool.

But maybe even Harvard lets in fools as well.

You follow, trailing down until our foreheads touch, sweaty and delicate. I’m at your mercy, stopping right before your big brown eyes and feeling the breath hot on my cheek. You could have killed me right then and I woulda done nothing.

I gulp though, cheeks heating up, and remembering all the things I don’t know. I kinda wish I was dead.

“I’m not sure how to. . .” I search the air. I search every part of myself.

You grin, feral and terrible and close enough to kill. You take my face between your hands. 

“You think too much.”

I stop breathing. I don’t know what to do with my hands, but maybe I don’t need to. We close the gap, desperate and opening; we come together.

Your mouth tastes like cherry jam and summer heat. I can feel you there, all gangly limbs and damp skin. I kiss like I want to know it. Your lips press warm and urgent to mine. Your hands are all familiar ridges and rough pads and your soft skin flushes splotchy as we meet and meet again.

The list of things I do not know is longer than God’s sin list and a rabbit hole with no bottom. The list of things I don’t know is too much to handle, vast as skies, but there is one thing: I know you. I know that first kiss in the way physicists understand rockets. I knew it in the way birds know true north and the moon knows the weight of the ocean.

I know it in the way you learn new languages: all taste, clumsy and earnest, trying to savor every new word.

We kiss on that roof with the stars bursting in the Oklahoma summer, because there’s just enough rabbits to make me that damn lucky. And maybe time is just a little less real.

-------------------------

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