#I really need to work on not-willfully-abandoning my projects

[sorcerous-caress]

My writing used to be really descriptive and environmental, but I've abandoned that for more a narrative heavy storytelling where a narrator is your window for the world.

And honestly idk, the narrative comes naturally to me, and the descriptive has to be actively put in, I have to train myself to write it each time and squeeze my brain.

It also gets dull with time. there are only so many ways and times I could describe the sun shining in the morning before it gets redundant. but the same can be said for how much I love narrating longing and end up resusing the same phrases.

So far I only describe what I think is important to the environmental telling, unless it has a purpose then I leave it up to the reader to imagine what colour the couch was or what sheets the bed had.

But I didn't realise that readers' default response is just... to keep it blank. if I don't tell them there are curtians then they'll never imagine it, If I don't spell the way the food smelled then they'll never find it delicious, if I don't describe the ways the tree swayed then they'll never get a meter of how windy it is.

I never got criticism or hate comments for it, the opposite, I got compliments on my descriptive works saying how much they could imagine the world clearly, praising how well I've painted it. And those compliments motivate me to try more and put in more effort than a wall of criticism ever could.

I guess I need to hit a balance. "a beautiful webbing" was one of my works where I hit that perfect spot of balance between narration and environmental telling, but also that fic was a special case, a project I held immense passion for and it seems exhausting to have to do that to each fic especially with how i need to post at least once every three days.

ik quality over quantity and all but let's be realistic, this is fanfiction and not every story is a one I want to be top tier quality. not everyone wants to read an S tier fic, sometimes the B and C tier are absolutely preferable and easier on the mind. like a snack, there are many of them and they get to the poin faster.

I hate people who claim they're hard to please in fanfiction and only read completed works with 20+ chapters and 60k words. Who demand perfection for free and are proud of it whilst being willfully ignorant of how each type of fic shines differently. Not everyone wants to tell a story the same way, one shots are not less superior than multie chaptered works.

Your preference isn't superior to everyone else's, that one shot you glossed over could've been the most in character thing every written in the history of the fandom. Could've told a complex story through a couple lines. I've always admired people who can say so much in so little, who can summerise long paragraphs in multiple words.

It could also just be an average normal one shot, and that's fine and okay and is absolutely someone's preference. A lot of people like comfort snacks to enjoy.

Anyway the point is. I will try to get more descriptive, i try to avoid watching writing guides or reading about writing tips and tricks. The advice they give is really generic and I find that it boxes you in this regressive view of how writing should be. No matter how good the advice is, If it gets too overwhelming and it feels like you're doing nothing right then please take a step back and ignore everything everyone else has ever said.

Art is you, it's expression and communication. You want to feel it so you make it, you want to tell it so you share it. That's all, that's the end.

Be it erotica, crack fics, alternative universe or whatever. No one in this world can make it like you, it's fully personalised to your own mind and no one in this life could tell that story but you.

Oh I also have a clear lack of dialogue, I feel like it's one of the trickiest things to write because how easily it could break characters. How I have to keep spreadsheets analysing the way each character speaks.

Which, there are no spreadsheets, btw. I keep it in my mind.

Take Minthara for example, she is direct, forward and orders things. She never says "I think" or "maybe" she never asks either, she demands.

She wouldn't say "I hope we don't lose" instead she'd phrase it as "We will emerge victorious."

She likes using complex or flourishy words but never like Gale or Wyll, their type of flourish is entirely different and means to honey the words, whilst Minthara's mean to make the sentence more regal, aristocratic rather than noble. She uses them deliberately to show off statues while Gale uses them to show off intelligence, and Wyll does it for charm and theatrical poetry.

She doesn't take shortcuts either. She doesn't say "don't." Instead she separates it to "Do not." And forces you to listen to her long phrases, a small form of power play where she never makes herself or words smaller, she always uses them fully as they are.

And I have to do this for each character, you see how exhausting this easily can be. How every character also speaks as if they're from a different time. Karlach speaks more modernly but it's never like the common people talk in bg3, so she just...has access to modern dialogue and phrases for some reason?

Astarion never speaks like he is 200 years old either, not like an elf either. Halsin speaks like an elf, Cazador speaks like an elf, but not Astarion for some reason, and I have to keep that in mind.

Wyll is the easiest to write because his way of speech flows so well with my own writing, they compliment each other. Unlike how jarring Karlach dialogue in one of my fics.

Shadowheart is a character who uses filler words a lot, stalling or just uncertainty? She uses "I think, Maybe, is that so, I don't know but, I guess." Inbetween her sentences.

Maybe it's bc of the gaps in her memory? But it works in her favourite because I just need to remove the filler words whenever I want her to appear serious or whenever I want to flush out an important moment, it brings attention subtly to how reassured she is of her self.

Lae'zel speaks her heart in a way, she vocalises her observations to others and they take it as either criticism or praise when it's most likely that she meant neither and is just observing. Honestly to make it simpler, Lae'zel speaks autisticly which I relate to a lot, and which is why so many misunderstandings happen around her character when people assume she is mean or making fun of them when in reality she is indifferent and saying her thoughts loud and clear as they are.

People don't usually do that, they don't express their feelings as directly as Lae'zel. They hint it at, subtly or they play it down or exaggerate it. Lae'zel does neither, she speaks directly from the source and every word is deliberately chose and is exactly what she meant it.

But people aren't used to that, taking words at face value. And because they're used to people exaggerating or down playing their words, they assume Lae'zel is doing the same and filter her words through the same social protocol which ends up making her look too horny or too mean when she is neither. They needlessly attach meanings to her words that weren't there and complain about the results that they themselves made up when she already delivered the final results herself.

Astarion speaks like a 13-year-old who just learned what irony and sarcasm are. But put it through a modern dracula adaptation Snapchat filter, and you get the final results. He thinks he comes off as smooth, and sometimes he does, but it mostly falls flat and he comes off as johhny bravo.

His looks are what's important here, since they more than make up for his failure in words. Much like most of Edward Cullens lines were absolutely wild but because a sexy vampire was saying it then suddenly it becomes palatable.

But Astarion has his moments in relatablity. He is by far the most relatable character in dialogue. He says what we all wanted to say, but we didn't just to save face. He makes the crude jokes, he makes the sex innuendos andpenis dagger lame puns.

He also screams at the word and calls out. He also curses back at the gods who dammned him. He embraces his rage and resentment and expresses it without any shame. He lets the smooth facade fall and claws at the other performers on the stage of life as his own masks start to crack down. The only thing Astarion has ever been fully honest about is his own wrath, it's the single unpolished spot on his perfect surface, the single crack in his procline mask.

And there is something about how a one can't describe Astarion without resorting to poetry, how it writes itself at certain points because just like the sea, he is as beautiful as he is ruthless, as tender as the crashing waves against the jagged rocks, as fleeting as the dissipating sea foam receading back from the shore.

He can never be broken much like the fluid water can never snap. And it's this burning flame behind his failed flirting that pulls you in, the sparks of his passion that slip through that make his lame lines actually work, that make him so enticing.

[streetsiblings]

Y’know how sometimes you’re a day late to finish a project and you go “ope looks like it’s Too Late to Finish”

And then you willfully forget about it for two months?

[heartsofminds]

Masterlist

A/N: Hello, and welcome to my official masterlist! This is extraordinarily overdue and I will try and keep the masterlist as up-to-date as possible. For now, enjoy all my work and future projects in one place! I’m so excited to share my writing with you all. 

Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw

and the songbirds are singing like they know the score - part i.

"If Bradley squints his eyes, he can still make out the little five-year-old that he once knew who thought that he put the stars in the sky and cried when she found out that Jake’s real name wasn’t Hangman." or Quincy Bradshaw is growing up and no one knows what to do about it; especially Bradley.

at every table, i’ll save you a seat - part i. 

“Well, apparently Baby Goose’s been losing his mind ‘round the base about how this really smart and sweet girl invited him to a wedding and won’t text him about it.” or you invite Bradley to a wedding but your big fat crush on him won’t let you actually. . .invite him. 

at least i let the light in - part i.

"The collage of versions of Bradley she had gotten to know and love so well over the years of their friendship blind her with sorrow and sadness. She truly knows him in a way that no one else ever will, and while part of her takes pride in that, another part of her wishes there was someone else to help share the load because she’s tired. " or Bradley has a huge problem and Natasha is always right even when she doesn't want to be - the sequel to 'cause no one breaks my heart like you

Blooming - part i. part ii. part iii. 

“Little spring chicken you are!” he smiles, “You’re too young for me to take you out.”  or  She’s in love with Bradley Bradshaw and he thinks she’s too young. 

‘cause no one breaks my heart like you

“Last times always make him uneasy. He thinks that he should be used to it by now from his track record of being abandoned (willfully or “out of their control” situations alike). None of this should hurt him as deeply anymore.” or Bradley Bradshaw is terrified of commitment and he decides to stop being selfish (even though it’s hard to see).

my life is changing every day, in every possible way

“She’s a cranberry,” he exaggerates his pronunciation of the word for extra emphasis, “Has Ocean Spray become a relic around here?” or It's Halloween, Bradley has a precocious eleven-month-old daughter, and he might be in love with her impromptu babysitter.

Carmen "The Bear" Berzatto

if you could see my thoughts, you would see our faces

“I do a lot of things you don’t do. Doesn’t mean you should be knockin’ yourself out to try ‘em.” or Carmy takes an impromptu smoke break and you're begging him for a drag.

i'm calling just to hear you scream - part i.

"She’s tried to be positive. She’s tried to be kind. She’s trying to be the peacekeeper, but all of that falls out the window when her brother is bitching out everything that fucking blinks and breathes and Richie has slung a sledgehammer into the wrong wall that needed to be knocked down." or Natalie gets fed the fuck up and hires a hospitality attorney before everything else turns to shit. 

Jake “Hangman” Seresin 

Pink Stripes 

Jake rolls his eyes. “I need to come over.”

“Is that how you talk to your hook-ups? Cause if so, I’m still not seeing the appeal.” or Jake Seresin’s upbringing shapes him into the best Navy pilot there is and also the best dad ever.

[rahleeyah]

sometimes i wish EO wasn't endgame, and honestly i love them but continue to be so on the fence about it all

the funny part is, i have no long-term resentful bone in my body, i can be mean and vicious and a bit vengefull but i could never be done with the love of my life, even after some of the shit we've gone through, some of the things i have felt and been made to feel, some of the things i have heard, some that hurt so badly but that i needed to hear

so i should understand olivia, i should understand how it is to feel unable to give up, to let go, to be done with someone, i should know that one look or move would be all it takes for my anger to subside, i also know that my rage burns bright and short and that i immediatly feel bad about it after because i don't want that to define me, to be how people and the person i love most remembers and knows me

but i feel vengeful for olivia, i feel like i need to protect her at all costs, and sometimes i am unwilling to believe that the one who hurt her the most is also the one who can make her the happiest, for some reasons that thought makes my heart ache, it makes me not believe in justice and i wish that elliot would just understand what it is she has been feeling her whole life, about people leaving, about her feeling she's not enough or, actually, too much

i can relate to olivia, i know how she feels because i feel it too, being too much and not enough at the same time is a burden to live with and i think, somehow, elliot tries to understand but he doesn't know and he will never know and sometimes, sometimes i just wish he could actually get into her head and her heart to finally, finally understand completely what is feels like

but the worse part is, the ones who actually don't understand are the ones the best equiped to heal you, because they try so much to get it that they do the work, they listen, they try and i know elliot can be that person, the one who completes her, who gets her in another beautiful way, who sees who she is, the real her, olivia

but sometimes i also want her to not be olivia all the time and to be selfish and to just say to hell with it and just take what she wants instead and not give it, give it, give it

so yeah, i wish they would end up together, but i also wish they wouldn't, i guess i will be happy and frustrated either way

Something I think is important to remember, when we talk about how Elliot leaving hurt Olivia, is that Elliot is also a person and Olivia knows this.

I don't think I agree with your thesis; is Elliot's departure the thing that hurt her most? No, I think Lewis did the most damage, emotionally as well as physically, bc he took away her control and her understanding of herself. Elliot's departure hurt but she wasn't in therapy over it. Sheila's betrayal hurt worse, I would argue. Bc Olivia didn't trust her but she wanted a family so goddamn bad she let her in anyway, and very nearly lost her son in the process, and blamed herself for it.

The thing is. What Elliot did, leaving, wasn't about hurting Olivia, and she knows this. He wasn't being cruel to her. He made a decision and one of the consequences of that decision is that she was hurt, but there are also positive outcomes with that decision. His family - the family both he and Liv have always put first - will be taken care of. He won't lose his pension, his reputation. He leaves his job on his own terms. Liv won't be dragged thru the mud alongside him.

Also!!! Remember!!! The part where he killed a teenager!!!! He is grappling with an actual serious trauma. And Liv knows this. Liv knows he wasn't trying to hurt her. He wasn't even being particularly selfish, imo; it's not like he wanted to go. Oh he could have answered the phone; ok well Liv knows where he lives and she's turned up uninvited to talk sense into him before. Why didn't she?

A) bc they're not real but b) I think she understands, on some level, why he had to go, and that she has to let him.

His marriage is not just an inconvenience to him. As far as he is concerned it is never going away; he loves his wife, he loves his kids, he believes in his god and the vows he has made, and he wants to be the man who stays. With that in mind it is kinder of him to leave Olivia than to continue to keep her in his orbit, bound to him and yet not ever his. He can't have her, and letting her go hurts her but it gives her the chance to maybe find happiness elsewhere.

You've pointed out that he does understand, better than pretty much anyone, exactly how Olivia feels, exactly how much she needed him, how she struggles with abandonment and feeling like no one wants her, bc she has told him more about herself, given more of herself to him than she has to anyone else and also he walked beside her for so long. They know each other. She knows his secrets and he knows her. So what makes him a threat? That he is the one who loves her most, and therefore is the one who can hurt her most?

The people we love most by default have the ability to hurt us more than anyone else, not because they choose to (yes, they know which buttons to press and which words cut the deepest but willfully inflicting pain for the sake of it is not love) but because they are so bound up in us. Their choices affect us more deeply than the choices of people we care less about. When you build a life with someone, every move they make has the ability to shake you bc you have the same foundation. It doesn't make them cruel. We have to learn to bend together.

The only way to protect Olivia from this pain is for her to never share her life with anyone else. If she doesn't depend on anyone she won't be hurt. If there's anyone who matters, tho, there is a risk of pain. That's life.

I hear you wanting to protect her and I fully get that but I don't see Elliot as a threat. Yes, his leaving hurt her. Yes, he could hurt her again. Anyone could. Anyone she loved, no matter who he was, could hurt her, bc she loves him and he could leave.

Their journey isn't over yet, either. We don't know how their coming together is gonna look. We don't know what kinda work they're gonna put in, what kinda conversations they're gonna have. So we don't know what this looks like.

And also. Fiction gives us a safe place to explore dynamics we maybe wouldn't want in real life and that's ok. Wanting them to be together in fiction doesn't erase your moral judgment, or your knowledge that you'd want better for yourself in a relationship.

So. Idk what to tell you, really. Your feelings are your own and you may just stay conflicted and that's ok!!! We all bring our own baggage to the table and sometimes we can't help but project our own feelings onto the characters, and sometimes that means we're gonna react differently to stuff than other people do. That's just human. I'm sorry if you feel you're struggling with this, but I hope that eventually you find some peace.

[iwillgetridofyourangerforyou]

This is going to be a long, rambling, extremely rough, and uncommonly personal post for this blog. (Don’t read if you’re sensitive to discussions about self harm, drugs, suicide, or those types of things. This isn’t a fun post.)

Gofancyninjawold wrote a post, https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/gofancyninjaworld/618272942189625344 , recently discussing Genos’ stubborn unwillingness to die and in it they asked these two poignant rhetorical questions:

“At what point is Genos prepared to accept that maybe, he just isn’t prepared to die?  And that that intense desire to survive has a role in the fact that he’s still alive? Ah, we just have to wait and see how many more breakages it takes.”

The truth is, these questions aren’t meant to be answered by conjecture, and if they are to be answered at all they will likely only be answered by ONE. I cannot guess what he is wanting to say or explore on these topics. With that said, I believe that storytelling is a powerful medium that reflects, shapes, and echoes reality. Sometimes storytelling can be a guide, or a friend, to walk through periods of our lives with. I enjoy discussing stories because of their unique relationship to the truth, where they can seem to be closer to a certain expression of truth despite their distance from ‘reality’. I think the questions Ninja was asking stemmed from this comment I made in a previous post:

“He’s almost unconsciously extremely survivalistic while consciously relatively self-destructive which puts him in conflict with himself.”

I believe that analysis is available for the taking, like fruit on a tree I can’t say I made it just because I picked it, but I’ll let you in on why I was able to see this in Genos. To put it bluntly, I see his conflict (or possibility I simply project this conflict), because I had to face that conflict in myself in a really ugly way. I have, until fairly recently, made my entire life about meeting external expectations and standards, becoming something for someone(s). If I believe in something even a little I would pour my entire life force into it, often with little actual effect, until I was too spent to continue. Then I’d crash and rebuild myself around another external goal, or a slightly modified version of the first goal. I honestly believed that sacrificing my identity for another person or for a cause would fulfill me. What was really happening was I was becoming more and more disconnected from who I wanted to be, what I wanted for myself. I was becoming increasingly depressed, frustrated, angry, tired, and the feeling of being trapped was looming over me constantly. Nothing I did worked as well as I hoped and I began to tell myself that the people in my life I cared about would be better off without me, that I was a burden, and they would be sad for a minute but then would be able to live much more happy and fulfilled lives. 

I don’t know what it will take for Genos to recognize that he wants to live but I do know what it took for me to realize that I wanted to survive. I’d been willfully careless and self-destructive on my little ego trips for years but I didn’t know how desperate I was to live until I turned against myself directly. When I couldn’t even manage that I had nothing else to blame for my failure. I stood face to face with the part of me that had been “holding me back” for years, my more instinctual self. The part of myself that was furious with me for abandoning it, ignoring it, suppressing it, and otherwise treating it like shit for years. It wasn’t a pleasant reunion but it was a necessary one. 

I hope Genos can find a way to recognize and respect his own need to survive without facing something so drastic. At least at this point he still has hope and a hope for getting stronger seems to keep him moving forward.

[mysticsparklewings]

Roses in Your Eyes

Oh look, a not-Inktober thing! So after my first dive into The Realm of Gouache, I really wanted to play with the medium a little more and try doing some different things with it. More accurately, I wanted to try using the gouache more opaquely, since last time I took a more transparent/watercolor approach. Full disclosure, I actually had the sketch for this done before the gouache set even arrived to me. My original plan was to do the rose part of the "glasses" in the watercolor style from my In Bloom Le Plumes piece, maybe the leaves too, and then do the hair and possibly the skin in the more opaque gouache style. That was the plan so that I could try to get the most out of both sides to what gouache can do. But after I got the gouache and swatched it out, I wanted to try something a little more experimental before I jumped into this drawing so that I'd have a better handle on what I was actually working with. So that's where the first gouache painting came in. So it was after that when I made the decision to commit a little more closely to using gouache in it's more opaque form. The concept for the drawing is something of a play on the phrase "looking through rose-colored glasses," (or whatever the full version of that phrase is, you know what I mean). The original expression, as I'm sure we all know, means seeing something as being better than it actually is, usually because of personal bias. This idea takes it to a bit of an extreme; the glasses aren't just tinted in a rose color, they're straight-up roses. Instead of just viewing something as better than it actually is, the person is willfully ignoring or otherwise blinded to seeing things as they really are entirely. And possibly hurting themselves in the process, if the roses have thorns. (I didn't draw any but they could be there, unseen.) A couple of other notes on the drawing design before I move on: I went with buns in the hair since I usually draw loose/down hair and wanted to mix it up a bit, and to "close off" the drawing I added the leaves at the base of her neck, which also kind of double as a shirt-collar in terms of appearance, which I thought was neat. The leaves and the bit of vine across the nose, as may be obvious, are supposed to represent the frame and bridge of glasses. I transferred the lines from the sketch to piece of Strathmore mixed media paper since I didn't think I'd be using enough water or watercolor techniques to warrant breaking out some 100% cotton paper, but I wanted something thick enough to handle paint, and I thought the smooth-ish texture would suit the gouache based on what experimenting I'd already done. The roses for the eyes had no lines, and admittedly I probably could've gotten away with even fewer lines than the ones I did transfer since the gouache is opaque. I actually had a fair number of hairlines drawn in that got totally covered up since that was way easier than trying to carefully work around them. Anyway. For all the gouache parts, I started with a darker base color, since it's usually recommended that you work from dark to light in gouache, and then I'd go back in with 2-3 lighter colors on top to add shading/depth. The main issues I ran into were when the gouache color wasn't totally opaque, such as the rose base color (which is actually called "Rose," believe it or not) which gives me mixed feelings because on the one hand, it can look kind of interesting in giving you less structured, more unpredictable shading based on how you layer it, but also...well, it's not as opaque, so you have work with it slightly differently compared to the more opaque colors. The other issue was that I really struggled to have enough paint on my brush, particularly when doing tiny details, to get the full opacity and smooth color that I wanted, without leaving a glop of paint where it didn't need to be. Especially in areas like the hair that had a lot of fine tapering lines. I'm not sure how much of the problem is me and how my is or isn't my brushes or what, but this is something I occasionally have issues within acrylic painting too, but it felt way more prevalent here. I did manage to fix some areas that got away from me by layering darker colors back on top of the lighter ones, but then you also have areas like one of the loose hair strands around her chin that got away from me and I had to make noticeably longer than it originally was in order to fix it. (You can probably guess which one it was without me having to point it out for you.) I also had an "issue" in that it was seemingly very easy to mix up way too much of custom color, but that's more of a me problem than a problem with the paint. (And admittedly the above aren't necessarily paint-specific problems either.) Speaking of which, I'm still not sure if my "Titanium White" and "White" got mixed up or not, but since I suspect they did, I used the one I felt like looks more like the mixing white to do so. (Although admittedly I probably could've tried some mixing tests with both to see if I noticed a difference there whatever, perhaps some other time.) And I specifically avoided using black, since I thought it would be too harsh in mixes. For the hair, I just used one of the pre-mixed browns for my darkest and then used lighter colors and made my own lighter mixes to go over it. For the leaves, I actually mixed some of the Prussian Blue into one of the greens to make it darker. I think I may have benefitted from going a little lighter on how much of the blue went in, though. The roses were actually one of the more fun parts since they didn't have to be so precise or specific to make the look work. I started with a base of the Rose/hot pink color, mixed a lighter pink to make sections that probably should've been a little less light in color and slightly larger in shape, and then a slightly lighter pink than should have been lighter to layer on top of the already lighter pink parts. Partly because of some the issues I mentioned earlier and partly because I was just kinda going for whatever with only a minimal plan, I did have to go back and forth with the lights and darks in some areas on these, and I still don't think they look quite alike enough, even though I never intended to make them perfectly symmetrical. I also decided to not totally abandon gouache's watercolor properties with the background, since at this point I was thinking I didn't want to leave it plain white, but I also didn't want to do anything too complicated or intense that might take away from the rest of the art and the concept behind it. So I watered down some of the pink I used for the roses' base color and just kinda went over the background to my heart's content until I was happy with what the textures were doing since I knew it was unrealistic to expect to be able to get the background totally smooth trying to work around the rest of the drawing. Now, originally I was planning on painting in the skin with the gouache, however, I made the grave mistake of not thinking about it until after I'd pretty much finished with all the other painted parts, and I really did not feel like trying to paint around everything. And, honestly, I really did like the contrast of the white skin against the other colors. I did acknowledge that I could have mixed a gray from the gouache and shaded the white skin with that, but it felt like too much of a risk and still like too much of a hassle, so I conceited that I could bring other mediums into this since I'd already done my gouache-exclusive test piece. I grabbed a couple of very, very light gray Copic markers and added some very careful, very subtle shading to the skin. And you guys haven't seen the first time I used this mixed-media paper just yet (it's coming down the pipeline, I promise!), but for the second time I'm kind of in love with how it handles alcohol markers and I really need to try a more marker-heavy illustration on it sometime.   After all that though, it was still missing a couple of things. I ended up breaking out my white uni-ball Signo gel pen to line around the girl just so she really would pop off the background, opting for it instead of the white gouache because, again, that seemed like too much of a chore to try and do. And my white Sakura gelly roll tends to be a little more transparent compared to the Signo, and I really wanted the stronger, stark white look. Then after some thinking, I added the rose lines in the background using a pink and a green Sakura gelly rolls and the stencil I've toyed with using on other projects before. And overall it, it has its faults (especially if you look at it too closely), but I really like how the whole thing turned out. It has almost a surreal vibe to it that I think drives home the initial concept really nicely, and just, in general, it's very sweet colors but has a more eerie feel to it. (At least when I look at it, anyway.) It also very vaguely gives me Luna-Lovegood vibes, so of course, I like it for that alone. I'm not sure what I'm going to make with the gouache next, as so far it seems its planning requires a slightly different thought process than I'm used to, but I have some ideas and all this has succeeded in doing is making me want to use the gouache more.  This definitely isn't the last we'll be seeing of it, that's for sure! ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

[buffster]

Becoming Part 2 (BTVS 2.22)

This is part of my ongoing Buffy Project, where I write notes/meta for every episode in an attempt to better understand the characters and themes of the show. You can find the full list here. Gifs are not mine.

Becoming Part 2 continues right after the last episode as Buffy escapes the police. She’s now a wanted fugitive. Despite this she immediately heads to the hospital to check on her friends. Xander’s arm is broken, Willow is in a coma, and Giles is missing.

Angelus took Giles because he believes he’s smart enough to tell him how to open the tomb. Giles is able to withstand all the torture Angelus throws at him like the good Watcher he is, but when Drusilla makes him hallucinate Jenny he breaks. He isn’t able to be the cold and distant man anymore. I do think the psychological impact of Angelus’ torture changed his views on Angel. 

Buffy goes to Giles’ house, though deep down she must know he would have gone to the hospital if he was able. She meets Whistler.

Buffy: If you have information worth hearing than I am grateful for it. If you want to make jokes than I will pull out your ribcage and wear it as a hat. 

Whistler: You know, it wasn’t supposed to go down like this. Nobody saw you coming. I figured this for Angel’s big day, but I thought he was here to stop Acathla, not bring him forth. But you two made with the smoochies and now he’s a creep again. 

Buffy: You don’t have anything useful to tell me, do you? What are you, some immortal demon sent down to even the score between good and evil?

Whistler: Wow, good guess.

Buffy: Well why don’t you try getting off your immortal ass and fighting evil once in awhile? Cause I’m tired of doing this by myself. 

Whistler: In the end, you’re always by yourself. You’re all you’ve got--that’s the point.

There was some serious Spuffy chemistry this episode. They’re just so much fun together! Spike offers to help her kill Angelus in exchange for his leaving town safely with Dru. 

Buffy: The whole world could be sucked into hell and you want my help because your girlfriend’s a big ho?

This aspect of Spike’s character never really changes. He’s always fighting for someone at the personal level. It’s hard for him to take on the world for the impersonal idea of Innocent People. He fights for Dru, then for Buffy, eventually because he’s pissed off about Fred’s death...

Buffy and Spike go to her house and run into her mom. The police have interviewed Joyce and she couldn’t even remember where Buffy was supposed to be. At first Buffy pretends she’s in a band with Spike (she plays the drums and he sings) but a vampire arrives and ruins her cover. I loved Spike and Buffy’s teamwork in the moment. Buffy confesses she’s a vampire slayer. 

This was a serious case of bad timing for Buffy and Joyce. It’s understandable that Joyce isn’t okay with Buffy just dropping something like that on her. Of course she’s confused, of course she has questions. But Buffy just doesn’t have time at this current moment, and so we get their falling out. Joyce blames Buffy not having a strong father figure in a quick, final stage of denial. She says “I just don’t accept that” when Buffy continues to say she is the slayer. That’s what Joyce has been doing all season; refusing to accept reality. But it’s time. Underlying tensions pop up as Buffy impatiently dismisses her mother and tells her to have another drink. There’s far too much going on right now for Joyce to understand, and besides that I think Buffy is a little frustrated with her mother’s continued denial being prioritized over her daughter’s well being. I am as well. 

Buffy: Open your eyes, Mom! What do you think has been going on for the past two years? The fights, the weird occurrences--how many times have you washed blood out of my clothes and you still haven’t figured it out?

Joyce: Well it stops now.

Buffy: It doesn’t stop. It never stops. Do you think I chose to be like this? Do you have any idea how lonely it is? How dangerous? I would love to be upstairs watching TV or gossiping about boys or god--even studying! But I have to save the world. Again. 

Joyce accuses her of needing help. Buffy shoves her off and Joyce tells her not to come back if she leaves. To be honest, I think this was 100% an empty threat. Joyce has no idea how to control/help/deal with Buffy, and she was simply hoping an extreme threat would help her gain some control in a world she clearly didn’t have any in. And we should also keep in mind Joyce had no knowledge that Buffy was going off to kill her former lover. She still thinks Angel is a simple stalker. But abandoning Buffy this way was still a terrible choice, and willfully ignoring her daughter’s problems was even worse.

Back at the hospital, Xander is pleading for Willow to wake up. He says he loves her and she wakes up, but says, “Oz?” He looks a little let down but relieved she’s awake. Willow decides she wants to try the curse again and tells Xander she has “resolve face” and he knows what that means. 

I was correct when I theorized that Principal Snyder was ordered to try and get Buffy expelled by the Mayor. He calls him after gleefully telling her. Buffy says he didn’t get one single date in high school, to which he responds: “Your point being...?”

Buffy heads to the mansion, where Xander meets her. He hesitates before telling her “Willow said...kick his ass.” As I mentioned in Becoming Part One, I think his hatred for Angel and vampires is blinding him. But the thing that really bugs is that I feel like this really hurt Buffy and Willow’s friendship. Willow was always the one that understood and she casually says, “Kick his ass”? And it’s clear the moment stood out to Buffy because she mentions it in season seven. They enter the mansion and Xander escapes with Giles. Spike enjoys beating Angelus for a moment before he is tackled by Dru. After he causes her to pass out, they escape. It’s just Buffy and Angelus. 

Okay. We have got to talk about how obvious it was they were using stunt doubles in the fight scene. That was horrible. Willow has a moment that is echoed in season six when she seems to be possessed by something and starts chanting in latin. She later says she felt something move through her and feels sure it worked. Angelus nearly kills Buffy, but she comes to realize that at the end of the day she has herself and that’s enough. She is ready to deliver the killing blow when Angel’s soul is restored.

I would be so suspicious at this point. But the tears in his eyes make a convincing argument. I’m not a huge Buffy/Angel shipper, but I was moved by this moment. Their hug was really sweet and then there’s the look in her eyes when she realizes she has to kill him anyway. And the guilt when he stares at her, confused as to why she would impale him. It would be one thing to kill Angelus. She was ready for that. But to kill Angel, an innocent, was something entirely different. I really hate Xander for not considering what it would be like to have to kill the person you loved. 

Buffy packs up a few things and leaves Sunnydale.

Character Notes:

Cordelia Chase: Cordelia is ashamed of herself for running out on everyone. She stays at the hospital to help however she can.

Sheila Rosenberg: Willow’s parents are both out of town when she’s hurt.

Xander Harris: He “forgets” to call Oz. Make of that what you will. He also mentions he calls Willow every night to talk about their day. Buffy says that he has showed her the mansion Angelus is holed up in before, so perhaps an early hint to his love of architecture/construction?

Angelus and Spike: Angelus says he likes having Spike watch his back like old times, meaning their current antagonism is just about Drusilla (and probably the fact that Darla isn’t around for Angelus’ fun).

[makeitlookliketheydidit-blog]

three

GT: OK. So you’ve raised quite a bit there that I would like to follow up on, so bear with me, these avenues will have to be pursued in a convoluted, interweaving manner over subsequent posts. For now, I want to just pick up on the snares thing, but first I’ll answer that question at the end there, about “process” in mastering. I can answer very succinctly on that: there is none. I’ve always relied on the moment of “capture” like a photographer does, channeling Lee Friedlander’s untutored impulsiveness. I asked Vicki Bennett the same question some while back and she said pretty much the same thing: allowing the quality and character of the raw sources (roar sauces?) to “be” the production in its finalized manifestation. It’s something you hear so rarely in, say, Hip Hop, i.e. the straight-up loop without any supplementary drum hits. Off the top of my head the only example I can think of is ‘My Definition (Of a Boombastic Jazz Style)” (!) by Dream Warriors. Yet that’s how Hip Hop was done in its original form: one DJ looping two copies of the same vinyl on a pair of decks.

So, yeah. Snares. I like how you’re tugging at that strand because it promises to unravel a whole range of perspectives on its (the snare’s) place. The ‘in the studio with Slayer’ videos I need to watch – Paul Bostaph will be the drummer you’re on about, my brain has that data riveted in… As far as I know the only other drummer they had that wasn’t Lombardo was some guy called Ron Detti… American Rock band names, always a mosaic of unfamiliar (to British ears) concoctions (and that they’re strange sounding to British ears is not just because I come from the UK but because America’s predominant language is English, thus their context becomes anomalous): Ron Detti, Tom Scholz, Brad Delp, Geoff Porcaro, Tom Araya, Don Van Vliet, Madonna Ciccone, Joanne Germanotta…

OK, so I allowed a tangential observation on names to spin away into a momentary diversion apparently irrelevant, but to me the accent of snares as the coding through which certain musical identities, in their historic moments, is like the American accentuation of a multifaceted difference to the imperial template of colonizers. I need to watch those videos, then; as ever I’m aware of your facility with the wider range of sources and media through which insight can suggest in the age online dissemination; when Paul Bostaph says that thing about snares, his observation must surely, at least in part, be informed by the dramatic transition in sound and presentation between Hell Awaits and Reign in Blood. The hyperrealism of the latter always reminds me of Rudy Van Gelder’s 1960s Blue Note recordings whose attention to naturalistic detail (or rather the microphone and mixing trickery with which he invents a convincing illusion of an impossible “real thing”) seemed on the one hand to “finally” bring to record buyers a true-to-life Hard Bop experience, while on the other achieved an illusory ‘invisibility’ on the part of the engineer/producer. Funny, because just this evening I was reading about Slint’s Spiderland being an album on which the producer is invisible - in Jack Chuter’s text on Post Rock, Storm, Static, Sleep (Function Books, 2015) - and he uses the word ‘photorealism’ there (when relating the band’s choice of producer, Brian Paulson, ‘who shared Slint’s desire to make the recording as straightforward and photorealistic as possible’) even though I think what Spiderland sought to achieve was a kind of naturalistic candor, an embroidered nakedness, rather than photorealism, a discipline I associate with the likes of Chuck Close whose work manifests a perversely painstaking level of artifice to achieve an apparent naturalism which is actually anything but. Spiderland strips away studio craft (or would seem to) in order to reveal the sintonic intimacy of musical reverie.

That naturalism becomes a kind of fulcrum-barometer around the crafting of snares. Bostaph’s observation is interestingly astute. The first vinyl aesthetic I was drawn to when I started crate digging for samples was of that luxury-studio era that follows in the wake of Dark Side of the Moon, ca. ’ 73-76, even though I’d say the snares on that album are atypically naturalistic for the period. If I cursorily forage the memory bank, it’s probably 10cc that would surface most readily. A song like ‘Art For Art’s Sake’ has a snare that conveys a tacet confidence in the world of things cloaked in a veneer of trust in economics whose vision stubbornly seeks to gaze past the oil crisis in the same way that Roger Moore’s 007 does in Bond movies of that time. And actually, in the synthesized accumulation of impressions congealed in my mind, the snare sound of that time, in its chrome-dry naugahyde-leatherette warmth, is somehow synonymous with Roger Moore, his beef-nourished, obesity-flirting squareness woven through with that fatuously British disregard for the cause and effect of multiple oppressions. It took me a long time to gravitate towards the willfully cold modernist projections of those ’80s reverb-gate snares referred to in the first post. Perhaps partly because, having been an adolescent musician/fan during that period, I actually hated them then, I think I associated them with the fantastical-unrealistic projections of Reagan-Thatcher economic policy, the foundation of neo-liberalism.

Yet recently, the whole matter of assembling a kit according to the beat-maker’s orthodoxy of kick-hat-snare-ride (or whatever it is) has become a preoccupation for the first time, really, in my life. This is because I’ve actually done very little DAW sequencing, apart from the Virginia Pipe post-breakbeat stuff which sourced someone else’s sampled drum hits anyway. Yeah You has gotten plenty of mileage out of the Korg Monotribe, but its sync-able cousin, the Volca Sample, became an obvious way to expand the range of sounds with its CV tempo alignability with the Monotribe allowing you to work beyond the primitive selection of its bass-snare-hat configuration. The Volca Sample is basically a drum machine which you can fill with your own sounds. For some reason (lack of imagination, the fear of unfamiliarity?) I decided to make my first assembly of 100 sounds (which is what the template is) exclusively out of conventional percussion hits. It’s like when I won the top 7 singles on Radio 1’s Record Race in 1981, the BBC were meant to send me the actual 7-inches but instead sent me a record token to cover the equivalent cost; I could’ve bought any record, but out of some misplaced sense of duty I just went out and bought those singles that had been the top 7 a few weeks earlier when I was playing the game as a contestant on the Peter Powell show, even though I probably barely liked any of them. So here I went through a bunch of vinyls, including some of those Boogie/Electro-Soul LPs I talked about before, doing something I’d never before done, isolating individual drum hits and editing them to fit onto the Korg’s sample grid. I felt pleased with myself once I’d achieved m first 100-hit assembly. But once I started using them in gigs, I found myself irritated by the obviousness of their sound, their demeanor, within the complex weavings of an improvised beat/groove. I realised that what my internalized mental groove plotting was arching for was a percussive element within the arrangement that contradicted the flow and challenged the ear, not in a confrontational way, but in a manner that could sustain questionability, suspicion and doubt (in the mind of the audience as much as in mine).

One thing I realised was that the very process and habit of taking one’s actual sounds from previously released (and then abandoned) records opened up a sense of affordance with sound that couldn’t have been possible without first nurturing a mentality that exercises that affordance. Then I thought, ‘Stealing yields freedom,’ and wondered how far I could extend that principle, either/both in art or in regular routine: I guess both things are true.

[nyklifsondiviiportfolio-blog]

Division II Retrospective

Nyk Lifson 

Hampshire College 2017

Taking Invertebrate Zoology was a great class. We spent a week studying cephalopods and then I got to dissect two sepia officinalis, common cuttlefish. This was a fantastic learning experience where my interest in my own personal gender exploration is realized in marine life. Dwarf male cuttlefish in many species participate in mating rituals where they flash “female” patterns to appear female to pass by large male cuttlefish to deliver their sperm packets to impressed females. Queering of gender happens more often in invertebrates, which is something that binary science does not teach. In school systems we still label parts of plants as having female and male reproductive organs which makes no sense. There are not even two genders within humans, intersex people exist. But, we are taught that this is unnatural? Slipper-shell snails of New England are hermaphroditic and often both reproduce and send off sperm. This is a very common endemic mollusc, yet these are not common facts that are taught? Instead charismatic megafauna is what conservation focuses on. But, what about transgender organisms?

Homosexuality and the blurring of gender lines are extremely common even within mammals. I was able to continue looking into these studies. I feel like this is important work, not that anyone is going to trust studies anyways because radicals will not even believe in climate change. But I am not studying why people stay willfully ignorant, I am lucky enough to be studying parrotfish with supermales and land snails that change their organs to reproduce whenever a mate crosses their path. Humans are the ones lacking in evolution, stuck in a binary. That is why my Div II is still called getting weird underwater. I leave division two needing two more class requirements and a project to complete The Five College Marine and Coastal Science Certificate.

I did not study enough film in these past two years, and that is one of my bigger regrets. I had tried to get into the claymation class being offered this past spring, but messed up my scheduling. I am imperfect. I am not the most organized person. I also am not the best when it comes to due dates. I work on these skills every day, but can only achieve so much when working a job, playing rugby, being a signer, and a full time student. I took Video 1 with Lucretia Knapp, it was a Queer film class where I learned to make a rotoscope. I filmed in interesting abandoned locations and made a music video for my non-binary friend and invited other trans* friends to come into the woods and make art with me. I got to break some bottles, splatters some queers with blood, and had a great time. The editing process went not as well as I planned due to an unforeseen concussion I got playing rugby my 1st spring semester of Div II. I finished my classes that semester and then went abroad over the summer, so everything worked out. Both videos I made in this class I will have links to in my portfolio.

The more important skills I learned in my time at Hampshire are that I am a survivalist. I can and will flourish. I am capable to continuing on. I have to do more work than others to grow and I try hard every day. I will not let my past or who others think I am stop me from living. I will not let people, places, or unknown languages be barriers to my discovery and thirst for knowledge.  

One important part of my growth was that I realized I am an alcoholic. This really stunted me at Hampshire. Many professors told me to take a semester off. I know myself. If I went on medical leave I would not have come back. I would not finish school for years. I wonder what would have happened if I had transferred or left, but I did not. I stuck with my education. I want a degree because no matter what happens to me in this world, no one can take my education from me. I am privileged to have family who can pay for part of my schooling and to have access to a liberal arts college like hampshire. Many of my friends in Kentucky went to state schools and then fell through the cracks. I am grateful to Hampshire. That being said I became the jaded older student I knew I would be. Hampshire is still an institution, so it is inherently racist/sexist/ableist/homophobic/and transphobic. That can be seen in my mostly white professors and being misgendered in evaluations. That is felt on campus. This is all relevant because I withdrew from classes each semester because I had too high of expectations for someone in recovery. I always want to learn more than my workload can truly handle.   

Around 4am the night before my Prose Poetry final portfolio was due I realized how little I have done in the last two years. This was startling. It washed over me. But now in the light of day I see that is not true. I can argue why this should not matter due to being a Hampshire student. I have had a job this year while working, being in recovery, taking classes at three colleges, and living in a trump era. It is difficult to write job applications when all I really am interested in academically is queer fish and dragons. Oddly enough, I just want to be a firefighter or first responder, which is not what I am taking classes for.; I want to someday have enough money to house multiple foster kids. I will most likely not have a legal gender in my home state. And my average life span to beat is 26. I know this is supposed to be about my academics, but I don’t want to go to graduate school.

After reading A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway and Embracing true monstrosity, I gave my character, Iphis wings to fly. I wrote in a dragon myth after learning about Queer dragon-based creation stories from Ancient Ghana. I have inspected my everyday colonialism. Sitting in a mostly white class in Massachusetts. Every cryptid is dragged through the dirt. Looking at geographical mountain ranges and local reptiles in the area. Dragons are a powerful myth in mosts cultures around the world. Dragons live among humans. Some humans are dragons. We are constantly trying to build from trauma and hurt others. I took took risks and did research for my upcoming DIV III. I am planning on taking an oceanography class next summer. I also am taking two marine science classes next year. I have to live in the science world to have a say in it. But I have a proposal for my research project. I want to draw a coloring book of queer sea creatures. Ones that science talks circles around to make sense of a gender that does not matter. I could title it “Nemo was a lie” but I won’t. Clownfish always have one that is the largest that can lay eggs. They change systems for this rule. The rest are at a certain age changing to what binary-biased-science deems, female.

A degree is one of the few things in life no one can take away from me once I obtain. I could lose a house, car, children, pets, the clothes off my back, but never the knowledge I cultivate. My life may be taken away but never my schooling. I owe it to those who are not fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to go to a liberal arts school, or college in general. That is the argument I have used to stop myself from dropping out. The animosity I have experienced from students and administrators on this campus has made me want to leave on a multitude of occasions. I live off campus and no matter how many times I am offered to drop out I march on towards an oval diploma. Because learning never ends. Neither does my passion.  

I took many classes in preperation for Division III and have been seeking literature for reference in my free time. I have continued to study androgyny in fiction and how race intersects with feminine and masculine imagery.

In my Prose poetry class I did my presentation on Audre Lorde; a black lesbian, poet, and activist. I read speeches and her compilations of poems late at night in the Mount Holyoke Library. My other presentation was on Yusef Komuntakaa and two of his works. He mainly deals with the vietnam war and experiencing cross-generational diaspora.

In Professor Susan Loza’s class I learned about marginalized monstrosity. I read Octavia Butler, Ursula Leguin, and this fantastic article called Punks Bulldaggers and Queers. I wrote about the consumption of bodies and queer people of color. Constructed bodies through diaspora and trauma. I think this needs to be a requirement. Being open minded and respectful of historical oppression that is the elephant in the room in everyday life.  

In Dragon Myths--Global Symbols of of Power at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I gave a presentation on Both South African cryptids and Eastern European myths. In addition I researched in my free time each week background information at every myth would read. I strengthened my research skills by looking through an anthropological lense. We asked questions about how the victors of colonization might have changed these stories? How do local religions and systems of power influence oral story-keeping? How can typography and endemic species influence these mythological creatures? How do bias’ come into play? How could translations have changed from the primary source?

Learning for learning’s sake is rewarding but hard to explain why my education isn’t a waste of time. I have hated school passionately since I was in middle school. I went to both private and public learning institutions and both seemed full of bull shit. But maybe that is just life? It is not that I do not want to gain knowledge, but the way that normalized education systems go about it makes me want to rip my hair out. That is why I am so grateful to Hampshire. I have been able to follow my interests with very little push-back and a whole lot of understanding. I am not planning on going to graduate school and I sure as hell did not think I would make it this far at any institutional learning facility. The fact I am finishing my third year of college alive, with my head held high, is a goddamn miracle. I was thinking of how to change my Division two contract to seem professional and like I know what I am doing. But, in the last three years the glimmer of truth has show through to the surface; no one at this damn school knows what is going on. So, instead of lying through my teeth, here is a full account of what I have fought tooth and nail to learn.

Invertebrate Zoology with Stan Rachootin was incredible. I missed plenty of class due to it being at 8:35am at Mount Holyoke twice a week and then 9am on Fridays, but I only missed one lab. We studied molluscs for two weeks and one those consisted of cephalopods. Considering in depth interest in cuttlefish, I was overjoyed. I dove into my studies and made it out with an A- in the class. I got to dissect not one, but two sepia officinalis and a multitude of other inverts including a lugworm and a scallop. Stan lent me reading materials on cephalopods including an anatomical guide for sepias. I gained insight into sequential hermaphroditism and how common it is among marine invertebrates and fish. This has sparked a personal study of mine compiling a list of queer marine organisms. There are so many clear instances in science where the gender binary is a hindrance upon data collection. I hope to unpack and then rearrange that data in my own research on creatures such as parrotfish and moray eels.  

I was in over my head in my Conservation Biology class at Amherst College. I made that decision, though. I wanted to be in a 300 level class where I was the only 2nd year compared to the seniors and juniors. My writing was not that great. I was battling my addictions and myself that semester. I missed a presentation and turned in a paper with horribly done citations. I did give two well thought out and researched presentations, one in a group and one by myself. My teacher was not quite impressed with how I presented my work. My final research project was on cuttlefish conservation. No shock there. That class required a post a week on our readings and to read many wordy articles to be discussed in class. I held my own in a room with more experienced Amherst students. Most importantly we all learned how to look for bias and statistical flaws in scientific articles. Which, in turn, helped me in my research.

I am studying video, yes I am including this even though I only took one film class.  I still am passionate about film. I have been doing projects on the side and tried to take multiple classes but either they clashed with my schedule or I was unable to get into them. Independently I have made vlog pieces and an animation. I continue to study film outside of class. In Myth’s of America I did a final project based on Emily Dickinson. I went out into the woods in the pioneer valley for my own work and then experimented with found footage. This piece was a discovery in collaborative work and got me through the grieving process over my past self and my grandfather passing away that semester.

I took a Queer Film class with Lucretia Napp. It was a positive experience. I learned how to make a rotoscope animation, which was very exciting. Then I made a music video for my friend with all non-binary representation in the footage. There was a lot of fake blood and a lot of queers, which is the epitome of a fun film shoot. I was recovering from a concussion I received while playing rugby, so my editing was not my best work. But, I overall am happy with the way it turned out and Cass Hoke, the musician and a dear friend, loved the outcome. In addition, I was exposed to a lot of queer documentary and short film work that I had never seen before. Those influences benefitted my end project.

Creative writing, the book that is a little bird trapped in the cage of my soul and has been begging to fly out. I just needed the key, and that key was Nell Arnold. Being in a room with her I felt like a fraud. I am no artist, and as you can see I have no understanding of grammar rules. Yet, I found myself lucky enough to be one of the 16 people chosen to be in her group. I got to explore characters that I would be friends with. But mostly, I got to listen to Nell. I had never been in a room with someone who made me feel like a better writer by sharing the same oxygen. Her diction is on point and she is ever-so-eloquent. I worked my butt off in that room, editing peer work and trying to not be afraid to write from perspectives that I struggled imagining.

Both of my classes with Thom Haxo were for my mental health. He is the same flavor crazy that I am, so we got along smashingly. I found a niche where I produced upcycled artwork based on my creative writing. I was able to create performance pieces where I would read out loud and interact with the art physically while bringing viewers into the story. This helped me with figuring out my process in designing characters. I am not in school for my art because that is more of a coping skill than something I want to study, but I plan on having illustrations as a final part of my DIV III. Thom’s class boosted me in my confidence with my work and to not be afraid to go with what feels right.  

In Susanna Loza’s class I kickstarted my research for my division three. I read Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway, Wild Seed by Octavia Butler, and The Left Hand of Darkness, and many other valuable works. My final paper looks into depictions of androgyny in science fiction and fantasy. The saddening part was how little representation I found in both research and actual literature I could read. I was hindered by emotional setbacks, rendering me unable to fulfill the amount of time I needed for research and actually writing my paper. I am not pleased with my end work, but I am so glad I was able to spend time in a theory class looking into what I am most interested in. This was a valuable class that opened my awareness and I worked more on my multicultural perspective. Cyborgs are androgynous, aliens can be, scifi full of asexually reproducing being is trans*.

Why did I withdraw from so many classes? First you must know what add drop looks like for me. I start out being enrolled in as many classes as possible, show up to the first class for all of them, and then withdraw from the ones I do not need/like/or can not make it to. After that I often will stay in a larger class load than I can handle because I am optimistic in my goals at the beginning of the semester. I am paying enough money that I try to get my money’s worth from school. This goes south about midway and I will realize that I have either not gone to a class or am unable to keep up with the demands. I withdrew from RAD because it is a gendered self defense program that is partially taught by a cisgendered male. I never went to a single class because of those two reasons. I withdrew from Oceanography because my seasonal depression made it difficult to get out of bed at the ungodly hour of 7am to catch a bus in the morning. I am disappointed in myself because I needed to take Oceanography to for credit in the Five College Marine and Coastal Science Certificate I am working towards, but hopefully I will take the needed class over the summer.

I regret not being a Teacher’s Assistant for Pat, because she is doing great work at Hampshire. Lemelson is a cis-male dominated space that tries to be inclusive, but like most shops, falls short. She is being payed not enough to do so much. I took glass blowing from her and realized that my hands are amazing tools. Pat has been fighting the patriarchy in shops for years by teaching and creating like a badass. I had wish I had had enough spoons to TA that class, but I really needed to take care of myself. The bond we could have explored is a loss I still am saddened by. This is one of my bigger disappointments.  

I am proud of myself for:

Being a Signer of the QCA

Asking for help (writing center/talking to teachers)

Taking classes at all five colleges

(mostly) Navigating the PVTA

I realized that my goals from DIV II were actually just me knowing what I wanted to do during my DIV III. The road to my final projects was confusing and a journey, but I do feel like I cam out the other end with skills for my future. These past two years I have acquired so much self-wisdom, but that is hard to put into an academic context, even though it happened within an academic bubble. So what did I do? I wrote, read, and remained undead. I dreamed and hung out with starfish. I am my biggest critic. But, I have accomplished so much in spite of all of my pitfalls. I am prepared to write a book and make a coloring book my last year. I gained some maturity and learned some valuable life lessons. I figured out my work ethic and found my voice.