#I knew I'd find my thesis statement by the end

[windandwater]

still thinking about this. a while ago I went through a bunch of old papers and homework from when I was a kid, including all my old journals and stories. if you’re a writer and you’ve never gone through your childhood stories, I can’t recommend it enough, it’s both hilarious and adorable.

I used to avidly read fairy tales, folklore, and mythology as a kid (what baby queer didn’t pick up Greek, Roman, or Egyptian mythology at some point? tag yourself) and there’s a certain period of my writing where I’m just writing my own folktales. some of them are more creative than others; some are just rewrites or takes on common stories.

in one of them that’s the latter type, three sisters leave their shitty dad and go on an adventure where they happen to meet three brothers who are perfect for them and they all get married, the end. and my teacher wrote in the margins “why do they all have to get married?”

and I know that she was trying to get me to think outside the patriarchy and subvert conventions and become a better writer.

but as an adult I also read that and want to fire back “it’s the genre!” because as an adult I read that story and was like, holy shit, this 8 - 10 year old kid has managed to write a perfectly crafted folktale that follows genre conventions down to the letter.

of course there’s stuff in there that today we would find problematic. of course there is!

I’ve written entire essays as an adult about how folktales and fairy tales reveal the values of the time they were written in. nowadays if I were to write those essays there would be an entire preface about how there is no “original version” of a folktale; these stories by definition are transformative through time. they are meant to be retold. they started as oral tradition and even now that we have writing I would argue that they are intended to be retold throughout time, always changing to reflect the changing cultures they’re told in and the people they’re told by.

so what my teacher was really saying was, write according to your culture’s values.

it’s a whole genre of its own, now, to rewrite fairy tales in our modern values. she was trying to teach me to write in that genre, and I was writing straight folklore, exactly what I was reading. I think at that point I may or may not have already been reading novels like that but what’s interesting ultimately to me here is the difference between what we as writers write, and what people think we should be writing.

look, I’m not ragging on my teacher for taking a minute to push a kid to subvert genre rules and the patriarchy and question what makes a happy ending truly happy.

but ultimately--what was I trying to do? probably just complete a goddamn assignment to turn in. write in a convention I was very familiar with--which I did very very well.

if the ending didn’t sell, why not? because that’s not an ending modern readers understand as automatically “happy” anymore. but would another ending wrapped up just as neatly in a bow be any less trite? if I said they all went off to find careers would that be less abrasive? if you think about that, that’s just as bad--is work all we’re good for? why is finding work any better than ostensibly finding love?

then do I expand the whole thing into a much longer story with fleshed out characters and backstory where we get to know each of them as individuals and we understand what would truly make them fulfilled and happy so that when I give them each their own personalized ending we can understand that it’s truly happy and fulfilling? lady, I’m ten (nine? eleven?) and this assignment has a page limit. I don’t know how to do that yet.

what I learned is the narrative symmetry: three sisters, three brothers. genre rules. assignment followed. I give myself zero notes and my teacher can suck it.

but also sometimes it’s just not that deep. sure, as an adult, I would want to clarify some stuff and make sure these women had agency and personality and choice in my story--after all, these are the values of my culture, and myself.

and also when you’re a writer, christ, everyone’s agenda is not your agenda.

write in my culture’s values? why? what if my culture’s values are shit, too? what if I want to challenge my culture’s values? what if the old culture’s values have a point? what if both of them are crap and I just want to do what the fuck ever without it being, like I said, that deep?

because sometimes you’re just writing a fun little genre story and if it doesn’t work out perfectly to make everyone happy that doesn’t necessarily mean you did a bad job--sometimes you were just writing what you wanted to write. and while, yes, you should probably not write something actively offensive or where everyone gets married because that’s just how it has to go--while you should probably make that ending believable and sell that ending--sometimes that’s the genre and it’s fucking okay to write what you want to write.

[raavenb2619]

Does coming out lead to too much focus on labels?

(I don't really have a main thesis I'm trying to convince anyone of, I just had a thought and wondered what other people thought.)

When I had recently figured out I was ace/aro/nonbinary, I really cared about finding the right labels for me. And the aspec community in particular has so many unique perspectives and labels that you can apply to yourself. What kinds of attraction do you feel, how do you label your orientations and attractions, what model do you use to think about attraction, how do you think about relationships, how do you feel about sex/romance/relationships, etc. It was super eye opening to learn about lots of different terms, and different ways of thinking about things, and things I'd never even thought about or thought I even could think about, and I ended up applying lots of labels to myself.

But, it's been many years since then, and over time I've grown less interested in applying specific labels to myself. I'm still queer/ace/aro/trans/nonbinary/polyam, but I don't really use other labels. (And depending on the situation, I might end up omitting labels when vagaries work fine.) That's not to say that I don't have affinity with other labels, whether that's "I'm similar to what this label describes" or "this label provides an interesting perspective that I like", I just...don't use other labels to define my identity. If I'm comfortable enough talking about something that I could use a label for, I'll just describe my experiences directly, instead of saying "I'm [blank]".

And, I wonder if that shift from specificity to vagary has to do with coming out. For a young aroace like me, part of why coming out was so nerve-racking was that I felt like I had to prove that my identity was real, and having specific labels I could point to and say "look, this is real, I'm not making this up, other people are like this too" was super helpful. But, it's been many years since I've come out, and I'm more confident and know who I am, and that insecurity that I fought back with fistfuls of labels and well-rehearsed explanations is gone. (With the potential exception of QPR-related discussions, which feel kind of like coming out again; I might make a post about that some time if people are interested.)

Every time I've ever come out, or seen someone come out in real life or in media, it's always been "I'm [blank]", but I've never seen someone come out as "I'm not cis/straight". It's always a declaration that you are a specific thing, never a statement that you aren't something someone thought you were. I remember really wanting to make sure I knew exactly what I was and didn't come out as one thing and then change my labels later, because it would mean I'd have to come out again and it would be embarrassing that I got things wrong and maybe people would start to doubt me and not believe me when I said I was something in the future. But, people don't have to be a fixed, immutable set of labels forever; I'm comfortable with using vague labels for myself and letting myself be vague and nebulous and fluid without frantically trying to label every single part of myself. (And, in fact, I did technically get my labels slightly wrong the very first time I came out, and everything turned out okay in the end.)

So, maybe coming out puts an undue pressure on finding specific labels and making sure they're exactly right; maybe coming out should also be able to be "I'm not cis/straight". What do people think?

(This is not to say that specific labels are bad, because they can often be very helpful! Specific labels were helpful for me when I used them, and their existence can spark conversations and lead to new perspectives and learning. Even as I'm finding vagueness and nebulousness to be better for me right now than specific detailed labels, other people can be finding that specific detailed labels give them a sense of belonging and community and identity. But, I still wonder if coming out placed an undue burden on younger me to find all the right labels when vagueness could have worked just as well.)

[troglobite]

re: my lrb abt autistic processing (copied & pasted from my rambling abt it in the tags of the reblogs, then i didn't wish to be Perceived so i bailed and am posting abt it here instead)

i'm also now thinking abt something v interesting

okay so part of the reason i pursued an english degree was bc i think this process make literature analysis intuitive to me? i'm guessing

in hs we were being taught how to write higher level analytical essays, and all of the steps and assignments to learning it and parsing out the different pieces of planning and writing the essay were actively detrimental to my ability to do so

i was like STOP MAKING ME GO THROUGH A BOOK AND PULL OUT QUOTES AT RANDOM STOP MAKING ME WRITE MULTIPLE DIFFERENT THESIS STATEMENTS STOP IT!!!

bc i could finish reading a thing, be given a direction for a prompt, and then go okay here's my thesis statement and entire essay concept

and to the traditional teaching and order of operations that was Wrong, bc How Do You Have a Thesis Without Evidence? but i DID have evidence, i just had to go back and find it now that i'd coalesced it into an argument

i did the processing of details and evidence WHILE READING. it made no sense to me that you would finish reading something and NOT have an observation or argument to make abt its mechanics and purpose.

luckily my teacher was really neurodivergent-friendly, even if neither of us knew that's what it was at the time, and he went yeah no problem you can skip these assignments or do them differently. you can already do this just keep practicing i don't wanna mess w your process.

so that was v nice, highlight of my young education. is this bragging? i'm not gonna put this in the tags i'm making a separate post.

okay copied & pasted section over

but the reason this feels like bottom-up autistic processing is--

none of the other kids would have a Clear Idea abt what the book was already abt. the way it was often taught was more open-ended in our classes that year bc the point was to encourage us to read critically ourselves and learn to develop this skill. and so to them, they go into a book and are lost in the forest bc they can't see/understand the trees. they get to the end and are like What Just Happened. then they have to go back and start looking at all the trees again, now that they have a rough idea of the size and shape of the forest, and maybe the type of forest it is (rain, temperate, conifer, etc.)

so i'm not a genius master at this, but i feel like the only "big" concept i need is Story, or Book, or whatever. and then i walk in and immediately start encountering and identifying trees.

by the time i walk out the other side, i've already collected all of that information as part of my journey. so as soon as i look back, i have all the information to make sense of the Larger Context of the forest, and i go "oh i see. so THAT'S why this thing/pattern happened."

that's what feels bottom-up to me

i was honestly worried and gaslighting myself like "no that's definitely top-down" but it's not. if it was, i would need to what kind of book or story beforehand, etc., and have that to guide me. but i think that's counterintuitive, personally. i think it can become obvious what someone thinks, really, when reading their writing (given that they are/were in a temporal and geographical context close enough to your own to have reference points). then getting extra information abt that later is further helpful.

anyway there's my little bit of reflection for the day.

which unfortunately isn't terribly helpful w my ongoing crisis of identity at the moment bc it doesn't answer many questions, but it does sort of offer empirical evidence that that is something i'm good at, that my brain likes to do.

and also i want to own up to the fact that sometimes i finish reading something and i go "idk wtf to make of that. goddamn."

and that could be bc it was poorly written or was trying to say a lot. it could be bc it didn't mesh w my brain. it could be bc i need the act of writing abt the piece of writing to understand it (the way i have to talk out loud to understand my feelings abt something). it could be many things. but point being: i'm not trying to brag that i'm some magnificent genius, and i'm not trying to say this particular thing should be Easy for all autistic ppl. the way my brain works w words and stories is such that the bottom-up processing applies here and works well, but it's not the case for everyone.

i wish i hadn't spent the last minute or two typing that up bc i guarantee no one reads this and less self-deprecatingly, i'm tired of feeling like i have to anticipate a negative reaction to something and i'm tired of being responsible for someone misreading this and taking it as an insult if they weren't good at this same thing or assuming this makes either me or them not autistic bc we're not the same on this point

i just need the baseline understanding to be that NOTHING IS UNIVERSAL and ppl talking abt their own experiences is JUST THAT AND NOTHING MORE. it is also an invitation for ppl to relate. but y'know. anyway.

how and why am i managing the feelings of hypothetical ppl who probably won't even read this? i'm v tired.

[the-english-student-studyblr]

Writing a dissertation

These are mostly tips for an English/humanities undergraduate dissertation, but some of it may be applicable to any long term project.

Proposal:

The first thing you will be asked to do (and will probably already have done if your uni is anything like mine) is to come up with a dissertation proposal. This basically lays out what you're going to research, what sources you're going to start your research with, why it interests you etc. It's sort of like a very very rough draft of what your thesis statement will be. The most important thing to consider when writing a proposal is your personal interest in the topic. If you pick something because you think the department will like it, then you're going to get burnt out super quickly and hate your work. If you pick something you're really passionate about, the work will be, well not easy necessarily, but less like pulling teeth.

Another thing to consider is how adaptable the topic is. You might find that, as you're researching, your original proposal morphs into something entirely different, and having a proposal that is open to that kind of evolution is ideal. My original proposal was about how literature effects our perception of history, which narrowed down to unchecked allegories and portrayals of the British empire in children's lit and how they continue to influence children in the modern day. Two very different topics, but that's what happens with research.

Research:

START YOUR RESEARCH EARLY.

That's my biggest tip for you. The earlier you start it the better. If you have primary sources (if you do lit, basically) try and finish them before your dissertation term starts, or make sure you know them very well. One of the advantages of using children's books is that I already knew the stories well, because I'd grown up with them, but if it's a book you love then reading it in the holidays shouldn't be a problem.

Once that's done, you can start your research. If you have highly influential theory texts to read (Said, Freud, Foucault, etc.) that make up the backbone of the research in your field, read that first. At least then you'll have a starting point for the rest of your research. After that, do a search in you uni library system, or websites like jstor and proquest that most unis have access to. Take notes on this research as you go along, important quotes, key arguments, facts and figures, anything that might be useful. I'll do another post about research and how I do it, because I think that would be helpful but it's too long for this.

Supervisors:

Your supervisor is your best friend. Use them. I was super intimidated by my supervisor because she'd edited the most recent copy of one of the primary texts I was using, but once I actually knew what I was doing, she was so helpful, and so enthusiastic. It was really nice to have someone there who was knowledgable, but also genuinely interested in what I was researching. Your supervisor is normally assigned to you based on your proposal, but some departments make you find one yourself. In any case, they're extremely knowledgable in your chosen field, and therefore know all the research sources you will ever need. Every time I had a meeting with my supervisor, I ended up with at least 3 more books to read. It was terrifying but also amazing, because I would not have found half of them on my own.

Some unis will tell you there's a limit on how many meetings you can have with your supervisor (ours said 5 for the whole term), but I would advise asking your supervisor directly about this, because mine didn't care and would've let me meet with her every week if I'd asked. Even if you can't have loads of meetings, they'll normally reply to any emails you send (and believe me, I sent so many emails, especially closer to the deadline).

These are just a few tips for the start of your dissertation journey. Part 2 will be research, because that's big enough for its own post I think.

[roswelldetails]

RNM 2x05 - I'll Stand By You

So just a little note from me, the person behind the season 2 detailing.  I am trying really really hard to keep emotion out of these posts...which is really really hard for me because I'm an inherently emotional person. I'm a glass case of emotion, ready to shatter at any given moment. (#dramatic)  But I want to be true to the intent of this blog and keep my feelings, biases, and, you know, shipping out of this blog.

It was really really hard to do with this episode. Because I straight up ugly cried for like, 45 of the 60 minutes. 😂

So I guess, the point is, I'm proud of myself and sticking to the details here. My regular blog is where I'm doing the emotional flip out thing! 😂

EPISODE SUMMARY:

ACCEPTING REALITY — The discovery of some complications with Max’s (Nathan Dean) pod forces Liz (Jeanine Mason), Michael (Michael Vlamis) and Isobel (Lily Cowles) to confront the possibility that they may not be able to save him. Elsewhere, Maria (Heather Hemmens) and Alex (Tyler Blackburn) make amends. Kimberly McCullough directed the episode written by Alanna Bennett & Jason Gavin (#205). Original airdate 4/13/2020. 

DETAILS:

Max/Isobel/Michael reunite at age 11 according to what Michael tells Alex in 1x10.  So that would make the opening of this episode set in 2002ish.

Michael tells Max and Isobel, "I remember you. I don't know you."

"After nobody adopted me for a year they just stuck me with the name of that trucker who found us."

"I didn't ask you for anything."

This is like the thesis statement of Michael's whole history with Max in the flashbacks.

"Don't pay more than you collect, kid. Passing credit back and forth is a good way to get stuck with somebody forever."

Rosa's art. 

What I can see says: "...what they all told me, but I didn't listen" and "Stand the shelter".

Rosa on her dreams

"I have not had any freaky dreams in weeks. Okay, Max is probably off haunting Isobel now that they're strong enough for their psychic twincest weirdness."

"How long has that been happening?"

"Um, I don't know. It's an old boom box."

"Rosa, have electrical appliances been malfunctioning around you?"

"I really thought it was just a side effect of the handprint."

"If being in the pod introduced a new protein into your system it could have altered your DNA too. You could be developing abilities."

"Liz, look. The handprint is changing.  It's smaller."

"It's fading."

"Tell me this is a good thing."

"I don't think so."

Michael and Liz theorizing on why the pod shorted out:

"The pod's got a charge. It's like a battery powering the preservation process. This one's gone dead."

"Did the generator blow the electromagnetic threshold?"

"I think a surge came from the pod itself. But that pod has lasted almost a century. It shouldn't glitch out."

"Okay, well, then, this one did."

"All right, stop. It doesn't matter why the pod is broken. It just is. So how long does Max have?"

"My theory is that being tethered to Rosa through the mark is what kept Max from going brain-dead, and in turn the stasis process is what kept the mark from fading. So he could be gone by tonight."

"Okay, well, we have three more pods. So let's just put him into another pod."

"No. He's just gonna do it again. I haven't told you everything. I didn't want to scare you. I didn't want to be the one that took the hope away."

"Talk now, Rosa. Right now."

"I was seeing Max in my nightmares months before I told you about it, and he was begging me to stop you. He said that he was in a lot of pain in there."

"That's Noah's pod. Noah told us it was broken. It wasn't keeping him in stasis. He could feel time passing. None of us thought of that."

"We've been doing everything we can to make Max stronger. He pulled his own plug."

Note...as far as we know Isobel was the only one who knew about Noah's pod being broken.  In 1x12 it was before Liz arrived at the house that he told them about the broken pod, so only Max and Isobel heard that part of the story.

Alex on his training. "NSA intelligence cryptology training".

Monitor screen in the secret lab:

Noah's heart is still too weak to transplant. Kyle says it needs at least eight more weeks

"I wrote a paper for a bioethics class on patients in vegetative states who feel pain. Sometimes it's all they feel."

As a non sciencey person, I was wondering if bioethics class was a real thing. Tonight I saw an interview on the news with a UC Berkeley bioethics professor on COVID. So yes, it's a thing.

Alex on Michael that summer post-Rosa's death:

Starting fights with jocks

Broke into the drugstore

Not going to UNM

Hasn't hung out with Max all summer

Got busted for stealing hubcaps (Kyle's hubcaps, we learn later) 

Became a walking bar fight

Was in jail when Alex left to enlist

Michael on Max in 2008:

"It's more than that. And it's less than that. We were friends when we were kids, but now Max reminds me of a bunch of stuff that I'd rather forget. The only thing that we have in common anymore is Isobel."

Max's yearbook had a pencil stuck in the page with Liz and Max's photo in it. (The one we first saw in 1x03).

"Biology Club. Max hated science. He was in that club for four years just to watch your sister chew on the end of her pencil."

Max's mindscape:

First just desert, clouds, and then lightning strikes (destructive energy?)

Liz's antennae -- they disappear from Isobel's hands

Rosa describes it as broken

Crashdown special is Max's favorite "Little Green Man milkshake".

The Crashdown counter is kind of merged with biology lab equipment. 

The juke box is there

The Crashdown booths

Jeep

Neon Crashdown sign

One of those claw drop game machines (from the Crashdown) but it's filled with baked good displays.

The yearbook

Later, everything else is gone except the one Crashdown booth, the Jeep, and the neon sign.

The distorted music they follow to find Max is the Cactus Groove song in the music list...just, messed around with. See @angsty-nerd's post here:

"I'm the hothead. You are the hero. It's always been that way."

"You stole the hubcaps off Kyle Valenti's graduation present. Both his parents are cops. Do you want to end up in jail tonight?". 

👀 Tonight, specifically. 

Michael seemed excited about the job at Foster's Ranch until he found out that Max set it up for him.  Max found out about it from his dad (only like the 2nd or 3rd mention of his dad in the series so far).

"When I got back in town I asked Max why you and your brilliant mind hadn't changed the world yet. He said you didn't care about the world enough to bother changing it. He believed you could."

Max and Isobel in the mindscape:

"You're okay. I could feel something was wrong with you.  Everything felt…"

"Cold. I know."

"You can't be here. It's finally ending.  I can feel it. But I don't know what happens if you're in my head when I die."

"So it's true? You want this?"

"I could feel my connection to the outside world getting stronger, so I snapped. I couldn't take it anymore. I released a surge. You have to let me go, Iz."

"I can't take it anymore."

"Okay."

"I am so sorry."

"I just want to memorize this."

"Okay. Okay.  I need you to tell Liz something."

"You can tell her yourself.  She and Kyle are prepping for surgery.  They're going to use the faulty heart. She just wants to talk to you before you die."

"No. No."

"You won't be suffering. They're just gonna bring you back and then let you go."

"No you have to stop this.  You cannot bring me back under any circumstances."

"Max? What is really going on?"

"I am dangerous.  Whatever Liz is bringing back is not me. It's just some broken shell."

Maria on her mom's computer 

"Her nurse said that for the two weeks before she went missing, when she wasn't trying to escape, she was talking to someone online."

The 21st birthday flashback

Isobel gets Michael to help move Max after getting drunk on tequila.  He passed out in front of the tattoo parlor. It's the same tattoo parlor Michael goes to at the end of the episode.

Max's weird drunken statement.

"The thing is, there has to be there. Okay? There's always three. Until the very end.  I'll show you...What it means is you should be here…'cause it's all broken without three. So we'll figure it out.  You'll find your way back."

👀 Until the very end. Interesting.

On Max becoming a deputy:

"You know he did the whole police academy thing because of you, right? He thinks you're gonna get into the kind of trouble you can't get out of if you don't know someone."

Back in the mindscape:

"I figured it all out. She, there's an energy to suffering, there's an energy to death, and when I heal people, I absorb that energy. So when I resurrected Rosa, I took in ten years of emptiness. So if you resurrect me, you will be bringing back an infection. Don't want… I don't want to come back as a monster. I don't want to hurt anyone that I care about."

"That's what this is about? We've been hurting, Max. We don't work without you."

"You will! You will. You are stronger now than when I died. All of you are. You, Michael, Liz, you will survive this. The three of you. No, you need to stop them, Iz. Now."

"Okay. I love you."

"You too." Isobel disappears.

Max is using pretty similar wording to his drunken rambles in the 21st birthday flashback

We don't see that Max is chained down until this next exchange with Rosa. Isobel didn't see that detail as far as we know.  Didn't hear the chains clanking when they stood and hugged. Only after Isobel left.

"I'm sorry this is happening."

"Isobel is lying. She is buying time.  You know she'll never let me go. But you can feel the darkness too, right? That's why you don't like being in my head. Because you know it's real."

"I didn't want that to be true, but yes."

"I know my sister and I know your sister and they'll never give up. So you have to be the one to stop this surgery, okay? Or I will destroy everything that we love. You have to stop them to save them. Now go.  Please, Rosa. Go."

Isobel explaining to Liz

"When he saved Rosa he absorbed all of that dark energy. He's gonna have to expel it."

"And he's afraid he's gonna kill someone when he does."

"Yeah. So we just need someone stronger than Max to take that hit...if he thinks he needs to protect us he obviously doesn't know how capable we are. Bring him back, Liz. I'll handle the rest."

"I get it now. It's gotta be the three of us."

"He would never pull his plug to end his own suffering. Unless he thought he was saving us from something. And I'm a little sick of his heroic martyr crap."

In case you missed it, Michael did not know that.  At the beginning of the hospital sequence Isobel is telling Liz what she learned in Max's mindscape and says that she hasn't been able to get ahold of Michael.  Michael figured it out on his own. He finally "got it".

The pacemaker:

Isobel with Max at the end… everything is gone except the Jeep. And Bright Eyes playing (the song he and Liz danced to on their first date back in 2008). And then his eyes close and Bright Eyes fades away.

“First thing I remember is the three of us. We woke up terrified and lost. But together. And then all of the sudden I was alone. I got real good at being alone. I had given up on people entirely. And then you found me again. Hell of hero move. You showed up just in time. When you are a kid who nobody loves, kindness is a currency. Friendship doesn’t means jack. Family just lies, and hurts, and leaves. I’ve only ever known love to be temporary. So yeah, I push people away. Every time someone threatens to care about me I test their love until they have to leave. Connection is conditional. Everybody eventually gives up on the guy who refuses to be rescued. But you were the only one who I couldn’t run off. You never believed me when I tried to be something I wasn’t. So this thing in your chest, it might give your heart a pretty solid kick every once in a while. Consider it payback. It’s my hero move, Max. If you wake up, you consider us even, okay? If you wake up, we can be a family.”

Good visual parallels during Michael's speech. Alex and Kyle drinking together during the "and then you found me again". Maria walking up on "the guy who refuses to be rescued"

Max is in the coma for three weeks.  Wakes up at the secret lab (instead of his house, which is where he was previously.  I'm guessing it was a planned wake up because he's no longer plugged into all of the IVs and whatnot.

"I begged you to understand."

"Max, it's gonna be fine."

"No… I told you to let me go. I can feel it inside me."

"It's...it's symmetry, okay? It's just energy for energy.  We can deal with that. Fight it, Max. This isn't you."

"I don't want to hurt you. I need to get out. I need to get away from you, from everyone."

"I can't let you do that."

Max shoves Isobel and runs. When he shoves her there's a slight ringing like the sound they use when the aliens use their powers.  Isobel follows and stops him with her powers.

"I made a promise that if you came back and you weren't Max, and you were actually going to hurt people that I would kill you. I figure, hey, you got to play God. Make life and death decisions all on your own. Well it's my turn now."

MUSIC:

1. Letters To Cleo "Here and Now"

2. Lady Antebellum "Love Don't Live Here"

3. Cactus Groove "Fallin"

4. James Talley "Big Thunder"

8. Ross Copperman "Stars Are On Your Side"

5. Lindsey Ray "Keep You Safe"

6. Tommee Profitt feat. Sam Tinnesz "With you Til The End"

7. Bright Eyes "First Day Of My Life"

The Cactus Groove song is the first song this season that I haven’t been able to find on Spotify… let me know if any of y’all had any luck with it!

[lowkeyorloki]

hiii its BC anon i re read chapter 34 last night but i was like half dead from writing 2 reports and a grant proposal and i got worried i'd forget all my theories so i typed "loki is fucked up" into my notes app and then like immediately passed out i woke up this morning and was like oh thank god i wrote that vital information down lmao ANYWAY yep they are breaking up i have never been more sure i want to stick to my y/n is gonna do it but idk that chapter made me rethink?? im not sure i still think she's more likely too especially with the line "if it was something we couldn't solve and something I didn't deserve... I would leave." SO I THINK SHES GONNA THINK SHE HAS TO LEAVE bUT Loki was talking about how she should be enjoying her time in college and not burdened with parenthood so maybe he's gonna do it? maybe it will be mutual after all. Idk but they are DEFINITELY breaking up and i am not emotionally ready good thing i have a week before the chapter drops i have to prepare. also this chapter reads v differently and is much more sad now that we know whats coming ESPECIALLY when loki is like "you wouldnt hurt me" like oh no oh loki sweetie im so sorry its gonna get rough for you. anyway i see you throwing in vital plot information and then immediately distracting us with omg where's narvi and i totally fell for it and forgot the relationship stuff lol. i wish i was capable of sending you asks of an appropriate length but anyway i hope youre have a relaxing weekend and get a break from schoolwork!!!

BC anon you are literally the sweetest 😭 also writing "Loki is fucked up" in your notes and finding that in the morning is so fucking funny LMAOOOO but bestie it's totally okay if you can't re read the fic or send messages to make sure you get your work done!! I took a grant writing class last year and for our final project we had to write a mock grant request and that was NOT easy, so I can only imagine how hard it is to actually do. anyway that aside we r in sync because i also had a very intense workload yesterday and on top of that we did a bulgarian bag workout at my self defense class last night and i was OUT the second i got back to my dorm. I hope you're feeling well rested, and congrats on getting all your work done :D

I think that I need "oh no oh loki sweetie im so sorry its gonna get rough for you." on a tee shirt right now. In fact, I need it expeditiously. Maybe that's the asis fandom's signifier - like if you meet a Loki fan and want to know if they read fic that's a code to see if they do ajanmnvanVn (<- ugly keysmash don't look at me)

Also this is some top notch analysis and I think that you got your thesis statement (breakup, largely by y/n) your supporting evidence (the quotes you just gave me) and your counterargument (possibly mutual breakup). And u know the loveliest thing about papers is that is doesn't matter if you're right or not, just that you can appropriately defend your position. Even if your theory ends up being wrong (which I can neither confirm or deny... for only the next six days tho hehehe) you, so this ask in particular gets an A+ in my book and also a gold star sticker :)))

And BC anon you got me... anytime after the reader reached out to Nat trying to talk again, I tried to balance any relationship/plot stuff with SOMETHING else to a) compensate + balance out the absolute pain I knew this third act would be putting y'all away and b) make re reading the fic, if any of you choose to do so, more fun hehe. I didn't want their angst to come out of nowhere but I also wanted to imply it in a way that people wouldn't really pick up on in a first read. What can I say, the holy trinity of Vee aka lowkeyorlok is angst / cliff hangers / redirection 😈

PLEASE NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR THE LENGTH OF YOUR ASK I love them all and this one is no exception! Thank you so so so much for sending me even though you had such a busy day :') I hope you're getting a (well-deserved!!!) break too