#I spent a solid hour and a half writing this post and forgot to eat

[inolienkiki]

sit down, I'm going to talk about how expressing interests and preferences and opinions is viewed as inherently childish and therefore societally unacceptable

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First, for clarification: by interests, and preferences, and opinions, I am referring to several related concepts.

Interests include: Media! A TV show, a book, a toy line, a video game, a comic that is particularly meaningful to you. A subject or field of study that just gets you excited. A species you know loads about, or a machine that you could take apart and put back together. A holiday, a craft, a sport. Literally anything that makes you spark.

Preferences include: A way you prefer to manage your surroundings or stimuli. Maybe you don't like crowded places, or hearing something loud makes you uncomfortable. Maybe you feel comfortable only in specific clothes, whether because of their texture or just their look. Maybe you need a particular set of conditions in order to sleep. Maybe you don't want a romantic partner, maybe you find it helpful to listen to music while you work, maybe you don't like certain foods. Hell, maybe you just don't like someone. Literally anything that you can improve your life by having some control over.

Opinions include: Well, by opinions, I'm mostly talking about attention to detail, talkativeness, or anything that can be vaguely construed as idealism. For a great example of all three, there's that really long post about ageism and youthlib that you're five paragraphs deep in right now

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Yes, all these things are more likely to be encountered by neurodivergent people. Interests- particularly strong, persistent ones- can manifest as autistic special interests, ADHD hyperfixations, or the comfort media of highly sensitive people. Preferences often stem from over- or understimulation. Opinions are more likely to manifest for any number of reasons: talking through feelings helps some people understand them better; sometimes, the only way to curate your surroundings is by explaining why it's helpful; and, to put it frankly, neurodivergent people have a lot of things they need to talk about. Of course we're more likely to voice our concerns about ableism, infantilization, and the ways the world is more difficult for us. [Also... and this is me... my ADHD makes me TALK. When I'm understimulated, the way I stimulate myself is often to start rambling, or explaining something, or writing a very long Tumblr post.]

Despite this, they're much more common than they're given credit for. Interests, preferences, and opinions are something everyone experiences. My mom- who I very recently made a post about probably being neurotypical- has an unusually intense interest in the Donner Party, a thorough preference for organization, and absolutely cannot sleep when exposed to any light or noise or the smell of somebody making food. My friend, who (to be fair) cannot get a psych evaluation if he wants to keep his job, is so fascinated with planes and flying and space that he's dedicated his life to it. My dad, a bird biologist by degree who works for the Fish and Wildlife Service- as you might predict- really likes birds. So much so that his entire front yard and backyard and various locations he's volunteered at around the city are explicitly cultivated to provide habitat for native birds and other species. You don't hear people assuming that sports fans or cat people or feminists must be neurodivergent because they express natural human variation.

These interests, preferences, and opinions tend to pop up in kids... for all kinds of reasons. Children are encouraged from a young age to figure out what they're interested in. They're presented with various subjects and fields of study in school to develop tastes for, pushed and often required to read books and write essays and fiction, and highly encouraged to "entertain themselves" with TV, video games, and other media to lighten the load on their caretakers. Kids are also more likely to have preferences, or voice those preferences: they're more likely to have fears of places or situations they're not familiar with, especially if they've been led to believe they're incapable or naive; their boundaries are crossed way more often when they're exposed to things they don't like or aren't comfortable with, and have no way out; and their senses are literally more sensitive than adults'. Of course a child will be uncomfortable in a room with a loud noise playing at a frequency adults can't hear, whether due to electronic noise or purposeful "teenager repellent" speakers. Of course a child will be upset if someone says something hurtful to them, because confidence and self-assuredness are considered negative and "disrespectful" traits in children, and so aren't encouraged. Of course a kid won't like the food they're being forced to eat, because up until a certain age, children actually can't taste certain flavors. And in many cases because of these more intense preferences, kids HAVE to understand, and voice, their opinions. Any situation that might make an adult feel uncomfortable could also make a child feel uncomfortable... but that child cannot leave that situation. A kid who is hurt by a classmate, a teacher, or a family member doesn't have the option to cut that person out of their life- no matter how little that relationship is worth. A kid who is eating something chosen for them that really doesn't agree with them doesn't have the option to stop eating that thing, because in many cases it's their only opportunity to eat. A child who is overwhelmed or being made to feel ashamed at a party- whether for children or adults- cannot just walk out and drive away. When kids are in a bad situation, talking about it is the only option. Like neurodivergent people, kids' opinions are also strengthened and exacerbated by their interests and their unique, forgotten marginalization. Kids are stereotyped as "whiny" when they talk about small issues and "naive" or "idealistic" when they talk about big ones. That is, until they reach a certain age, when it becomes "hormones" and "teenage rebellion". (News flash: All emotions are caused by hormones and neurotransmitters which vary in abundance when people are exposed to stimuli. Saying teenagers are emotional "because of hormones" is like saying your dog is wet because it's raining. Yeah, that's how water works... but it's only happening in the first place because you locked your dog outdoors.)

So, what? Neurodivergent people and children have a lot in common? Big surprise, some of you are saying, but you're missing the point.

I am talking about how the things that are regularly construed as shameful, or weird, or not worthy of respect, in adults... are viewed this way because they're affiliated with children, a marginalized group. A lot of the ableism that neurodivergent adults face is misdirected ageism. And no, I'm not even faintly saying that ableism isn't real, nor am I saying that neurodivergent adults are basically children or deserve to be treated like children do. (Nobody deserves that, including children.) Just like many people who perpetuate aphobia and amatonormativity probably don't know that aroace people even exist; just like gender nonconforming people and people with gender expression that strays outside of norms are misidentified, and insulted, for some perceived "gayness"; ableism can be so uninformed it's mistargeted.

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The only other thing I want to mention here: how do neurotypical kids, with lots of interests, preferences, and opinions, lose those with time? Answer is: well, first, they don't always. My friend who really likes planes was dismissed as "overly optimistic" and "naive" by many of his friends and mentors. He's doing great in navy flight school... I think the words they were looking for are something more like "ambitious", or "determined". Turns out he's been cool this whole time. In this way, traits which are dismissed or misidentified in kids actually become VALUED in adults. My dad and his volunteering, my mom and her cleanliness, my old PI and his dedication to mentoring, etc. etc. As adults gain more influence over their surroundings, their preferences begin to be considered valid. And of course people get quieter when they aren't forced to speak out.

Yet... obviously this isn't it. I think the missing element is internalized ageism. I can only speak to this as someone who was assigned female at birth, but one way this manifests is clear enough to me: "I'm not like other girls!" This is common enough that lots of people seem to see teenage women's experiences and their individuality as immature in and of themselves. But it seems clear enough to me that, more than anything, this is a desperate demand for maturity. As a teenager, I felt incredibly pressured to shed my previously "childish" interests and preferences and change them for more societally acceptable, "adult-like" ones. I can't tell you how many times I was about to drop my lego hyperfixation, but every time I came close, they came out with something so much better. But, up until I was sixteen, I felt shame over it- and shame over my continued interest in Warrior Cats, over the kids' cartoons I still like to watch, over a fox hat that I wore to one class, one time, that I was legitimately very scared would impact everyone's perception of me- and the truth is, it probably did. Everyone seems to think this kind of thing is because of peer pressure, but the nature of that claim as a misguided assumption is so much clearer to me because I didn't go to middle or high school. I was partially homeschooled, and I partially had an incomplete patchwork education that drew from various online and in-person classes. This is fine and not actually a negative thing and genuinely was not a bad experience at all. (I'm completely, 100% serious. Educational freedom, tailoring to kids' interests, and acceleration/skipping grades is often extremely beneficial and doesn't hurt the kid. My ADHD wasn't diagnosed until recently because, as a kid, I was almost never put in a situation where it held me back.) Of course girls put on makeup and revealing dresses and get into relationships very early, because they're trying to show their maturity, and female maturity is often societally equivalent to sexual maturity and romantic entanglement. (I could talk about this all day... the intersectionality of so many different types of specific, inconsistent, and misdirected marginalization is fascinating and horrifying.) Because of this, for most women, internalized ageism seems to manifest as "I'm not like other girls, because I'm a woman, and I deserve independence and respect." For me, without the "peer pressure" (but more relevantly, without the peers) it was just the last half. It's so easy to blame kids' problems on peer pressure when 99% of kids are forced to constantly be surrounded by their peers. asjdflksjlasdhkg

I don't actually know very much about what internalized ageism is like for people who were assigned male at birth, but bravado, insecurity, and toxic masculinity seem like pretty obvious outcomes.

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Ok, lesson from this extremely long post: if someone is telling you that something about your interests, preferences, opinions, or personality is childish, you may be inclined to pull your age. Adult or kid, the "that's for babies" response is a natural defense, but kinda misses the point: the person saying that already thinks you're a baby! Correct, productive response: Do you think that's a bad thing? Why?

If you're an adult who's part of a group that is stereotyped as "childish" or "immature"- which covers a hell of a lot of marginalized groups- know when you're seeing misdirected ageism. Once you start paying attention to it, it'll help you understand kids' experiences so much better.

Don't be ashamed of yourself for acting, or feeling, like a kid. That's valid. It's not hurting anyone. And it's not even uncommon.

Definitely don't be ashamed of yourself for being a kid. You're cool. Trust in yourself, and keep speaking out.

[tammyhybrid21]

Sara Deserves Better

It's six in the morning, and I am mad!

Mad because of a small thing admittedly, but you want a sum up?

I'm mad because I hyped myself up to write a MSA/Tadeo Jones crossover oneshot that would basically be Vivi being excited to meet an actual living Mummy, with other things, but the majority... and then started thinking beyond that small scope of fun and just-- got frustrated.

Because here's the thing... I made a post about Vivi and her glasses, and then started thinking about the crew in Tadeo Jones and--

Like here's the deal, my brain... just... completely forgot Sara has glasses. I remembered Tiffany's glasses. I remembered the PHOTO with glasses-- but the first ten minutes of Sara's screen time being spent with her in glasses? NAH--

Sooo that's not actually what this post is about. Just a small annoyance with myself. So what is this post about-- well the obvious is look at the title, Sara Deserves Better.

Also, not just shipping wise... but mainly shipping wise, because GOD DAMN IT. Let Sara break free of the Love Interest box PLEASE. Because for crying out loud, it's been two movies and this is one of the most painful flaws I can see. Also-- just as an aside, I really, really want to like Sara but right now... she's stuck in that box so much she's honestly kind of... bland and boring to watch.

Also just--

In general. I want to say something that's just, my BIG gripe and the reason I come bearing this rant but...

Vivi.

VIVI is why I'm making this RANT!

And you want to know why? It's because in the approximately 16 odd minutes of the Mystery Skulls Animated vidoes we get-- SO MUCH information about who she is and what she stands for as a character. WE HAVE SO MUCH TO WORK WITH. Hell even in the brief flashback sequence, there's a lot to analyse and unpack-- she's not just reduced to-- Lewis' former girlfriend despite how easily that could have been the case. Which-- I mean, I have... a number of rants for Vivi in the works... beyond just my MBTI analysis that's already up...

BUT conversely... and maddeningly-- I can't say the same for Sara. Between the two movies if there is one character who feels kind of... empty aside overtures, or rather underdeveloped... it's Sara.

Which is a crying shame. But there's two movies of content and I still only have the vaguest idea of WHO she really is as a person. Oh I know who she is. But... I don't really know Who she is.

Like, seriously... the closest we get to some glimpses is this opening of movie 2, some scenes in movie one, and her moment with Mummy.

Which... I have other things to talk about regarding this... a more proper analysis regarding her verses Tadeo on these events... BUT THAT'S ANOTHER ANALYSIS.

Also what moments from Movie 1?

How's about priorities?

"But first tell me if ANYTHING you told me was true!"

ALSO, I have some things to say about Tadeo's response to this... but that's ALSO deserving of it's whole own analysis and it really wouldn't be fair... And aside this... well again... moments.

Which... I still don't actually have much, but these are sort of... the moments with the most character from Sara. OH, aside from when she's with Tiffany, and arguably-- when alone and kidnapped with Rackham... which, huh-- That would bring me to another point honestly... but this isn't actually my "Making your Villain Memorable" rant. ALTHOUGH-- The Rackham stuff and Tiffany will need to be addressed.

I want to talk about the moments I currently have first. Which aren't... precisely in order, but I think they're in order of the impact for me.

Which first moment is when Tad's sacrificing his father's cufflink, his greatest treasure. Giving it to Mummy, and again-- I have many words... but what's telling is Sara's reaction and how that kind of ties into the significance there. Because overall it just says-- well, it says how deeply she's affected seeing it as well-- Which isn't something you see much in these movies unfortunately.

The next moment I would like to call the "I sense bullshit radar". Considering how she finds Tad's story initially a bit flawed, also laying out the law, starting to plan. Sara has a head on her shoulders and is NO FOOL.

UNTIL SHE IS.

And I think only HALF of this final highlight moment can be blamed on the situation because heyyyy--

Let's circle around to the Rackham stuff. And... other movie 2 stuff.

Which, I know this miiiight be arbitrary or not really something that can be linked. BUT there's a difference in how she handles these moments... And hell, I would also add the opening to movie 2-- but Sara has... levelled her head A LOT more when it comes to handling potentially life threatening danger between movies. In what information she grabs(opening) and then in the above scene, what she actually lets the villain learn.

Which also, anyone else get a short circuit feeling from that?

And hell, even as much as I have issues with the whole sequence of events and a SPOILER filled rant about it...

Even here, again. Pretty chill, pretty level. At best/worst it's really stunned silence. But this scene has a number of issues and I have a rant that will go up after a fic(if I can just keep myself long enough to WRITE that fic...). And just... well--

Then the last thing is-- well Tiffany.

Also... just generally on this second screencap here, I like to just-- talk about the moment before as well-- since there's something just... Really wild in what leads to it.

Like... why does she look SO CONFUSED?! Like-- I don't know if I'm the only one who sees this, but when Rackham first shows up... she looks so confused, like how could he get there so quickly?! And then Tiffany steps out and there's that shocked expression and it gives off this sense that just-- When Tiffany stormed off Sara knew but she didn't know. Like you ever have those moments-- where you know someone's going to make a bad decisions... and yet-- you're still SHOCKED by how bad a decision they make?

Yeah, that's Sara here... and she's... been trying with Tiffany.

But still... yeah.

And what does all this ultimately add up to?

Sara still being too broad in the long of it.

BECAUSE IT TOOK ME A GOOD HOUR, OR TWO, Of ranting and discussing this with some friends for me to dig out these moments and I STILL don't have a solid, solid character for Sara. And do you know why?

Because of the one FATAL FLAW...

Forced

Romance

...And when I say forced romance, I really, really mean it. Do you know what one of my BIGGEST COMPLAINTS of movie 2 is. It's that when Sara gets mad, or feels like she should be mad, it's not allowed to hold. It's just glossed over. And then of course, complaint two is the other obvious thing. Sara feels... as if she's just there to dispense the plot and then to be kidnapped.

She spends the first two and a half quarters of the movie kidnapped, and even after only gets the barest amount of screen time. Hell she had MORE to do in movie 1, and that's probably because the plot was broader and gave them all time to shine with action, even if she still felt-- hard.

Like seriously, does-- any of these moments stand out on their own? Without a number of rewatches and forcing my focus to actually be on Sara to analyse... not really. It all blends and blurs because of one big thing that EATS up her character and forces it into that kind of bland box.

She's forced and pushed to fit the lens of the love interest. With Tad's chasing-- and how that impacts the story.

And I'd also like to complain about ANOTHER thing in this similar vein but...

In movie one there's a sequence I... haven't really brought up in this rant, along with in general how Sara is there-- because here's the thing. Aside the glimpses... she... really feels like a PROP a lot of the time. In both movies. But-- in movie 1 there are a few moments specific.

And the first is actually the train moment with Kopponen. Sara was definitely NOT going to hand the tablet over...

But of course, Tad had to SCREW UP trying to be a hero... and for the rest of the sequence it feels a lot like Sara's only purpose is to more or less be grabbed and damselled again... And even later on, it feels like Wasted Potential--

Like, she's used to motivate other characters--

Which okay... I'm not going to say that Vivi is excused from, since that's who I'm comparing her with... BUT there's a DRASTIC difference of character agency in HOW and why they are used as motivation between them.

Might not on the surface seem like much of a difference--

Especially in the immediate context that's offered here with how Lewis is using the picture in his locket and the implied additional angle to his attempted revenge against Arthur-- which, mind you-- there's a HELL of a lot more going on there... BUT-- When it comes to the ACTION... not just that moment up higher... but when there's actual ACTIVE danger...

Come Hellbent... And Shiromori...

Meanwhile with Sara the best we have across both movies... is moments. She handles herself in the opening of the sequel and-- well we actually have the climbing sequence to the final temple... which... I have-- words about as well, but the big ones right now is actually in the choice of lyrics playing over what--

But...

Sara actually only gets the "Now I'm Invincible" stuff-- or the Majority of it. There might be the more romance stuff, but for the most part-- she's pretty much being defined as "Invincible on her own" which also... yeah. It's true. The strongest moments for Sara are those moments when she's on her own, and away from the Tadeo drama... or even when she was used to motivate her Dad's actions in the first movie.

Which... actually makes me circle back to something that just... doesn't fit.

"It's been the most amazing adventure. All these days with you. I wouldn't trade that for the world. I... I love..."

WHICH LOOK

Isn't Sara supposed to be the expert on the whole of what this movie is about? King Midas' Collar and Golden Touch, this was her long term project. So why is it that in this scene she's forgotten all that she's supposedly studied and why they're even here? Like does anyone else get death confession vibes from this, which... considering Sara should know this is supposed to be reversible?!

Because forced romance plot.

I mean, I have more to say, but honestly... at this point I'm running out of ways to properly articulate my points. But in the end... what can I say about Sara now that I'm at the end of my rant? You know, beyond FREE HER FROM THE ROMANCE PLOT....

Well, actually a lot more than I expected or thought at the start... And that's because now I've been through and watched with focus on her. Although some of it still had to be informed and given to me.

Which yeah--

Sara is an expert in her own field, supposedly anyway. Which, let's be fair, that's not her fault, that's plot mandated information failures.

She's Peruvian, which, I think is established in the first movie, that's her home. And where she's grown up, but it's really not made clear in either movie. Or at the least, not as clear as it should be. PLEASE GIVE HER MORE PERUVIAN PRIDE I SWEAR--

She is clearly much, much more impressed by Tadeo when he's being humble and honest. Like just damn. Those are the traits she respects and what's to see.

Sara actually respects and listens to other people, she's patient with them and hears out what they have to say. And this... isn't just with Mummy in that scene, but also she's patient with Tiffany and-- I do have more to say on that... but again, another post.

She is definitely in this for knowledge and awareness than necessarily results. She's not chasing fame.

Honestly, she shines so, so much better when there's NO ROMANCE, and really is a strong women on her own. Doesn't need anyone.

Has chased after her father's recognition, in the same field, to having the same issue of leaving behind those she cares for... Time is limited you know.

Which yeah... okay. Sara, definitely deserves better!

[basketofverbiage]

Hold On

This is my first writing post I’ve made. I had this in my head for a while and finally got it out. I have a part two, but it’s still being edited. I am so open to feedback!

Warnings: suicide attempt; hospitals; panic attacks

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

For the past few weeks, Seokjin has known that something is wrong, but has no idea what it is. And without knowing what it is, how the hell is he supposed to fix it? His entire life seems to revolve around the need to take care of the people he loves most, and he can see that Y/n is devastatingly hurt but has no clue how to heal it. It’s like a surgeon trying to operate on a patient in a dark back alley somewhere; he can’t see what’s ruptured, can’t stop the bleeding, and he has this sneaking suspicion that he might lose his patient.

It’s been three solid weeks since he first noticed that something seems to be affecting the woman he loves. She put on a brave face and a faux smile when she knew he was paying attention. But in quiet moments when she thought he was distracted, he could see the darkness wash over her features. He’s tried everything he could think of to draw out what is wrong, comfort her, cheer her up, but nothing has worked and he’s starting to get scared.

It all began on a normal Tuesday afternoon. He was finished with his schedule fairly early in the day and came home to find her sitting in the kitchen floor with her back pressed against the cabinet below the sink, her legs drawn up into her arms and her face hidden in her kneecaps, with dark swirly curls hiding the rest of her features.

“Baby, are you okay?” he called quietly, rushing over to kneel in front of her. Her head snapped up and she smiled the fakest smile he’d ever seen from her.

“Yes, Jinnie. I’m fine. I just haven’t slept well, and just sat down after washing dishes.”

He knew she was lying to him by the darkness swirling in her eyes and the way that the smile didn’t soften the pain in her features, but he decided not to push it. She really hadn’t been sleeping well. More than one night this week he’d woken up in the twilight morning hours to her thrashing about a bit in fitful nightmares, but she’d settle down a bit when he’d pull her in and hum softly into her ear. So, he reiterated to himself that it’s okay not to push it, and that she’d open up once she was ready. He’d scooped her up off the kitchen floor into a tight hug then they’d spent the afternoon curled up in bed with mindless tv shows and drifting in and out of dreams until he started to believe she was okay. She’d laughed at his silly jokes, so Y/n is fine, right?

After that, he noticed that she began sleeping so much more. Sure, she’d had a stressful few months at work with a major project she had been assigned for a high-profile client, but she’d completed that project well and the client had been singing her praises to the heavens. In doing so, she had spent as many sleepless nights slaving away as he had spent missing her beside him in their king-sized bed. It made him wonder how she survived the long months of him being away on tour, lying so tiny in the vast wasteland of a cold, empty bed. Seokjin is not tiny by any means, and without her, he felt so small and vaguely empty in satin sheets, surrounded by so many pillows. And no matter how many extra blankets he added, the bed was so cold without her. So once the project was completed, it made perfect sense that she’d catch up on sleep, right? There is nothing to worry about, right?

Y/n had also pretty obviously stopped eating and cooking. This was driving him insane. The love of cooking and feeding other people is one of the many things that brought them together, and they took turns showing their love to each other with food. She hadn’t baked a single item in three straight weeks. While Seokjin could not bake to save his own life, Y/n baked the most amazing creations and her favorite thing to make was bread. All different varieties of breads from simple, rustic loaves to delicate fruit-filled sweetbreads, she once told him that baking bread made her feel alive. Something about the way the dough responded and how much encouragement it needed to become something from nearly nothing. In fact, in the two full years they had been together, Seokjin had not one time bought a loaf of bread from the store. He forgot that store-bought loaves were even a thing. She kept her own sourdough starter and had to bake at least one loaf a week to keep it growing healthily without it taking over, so he would come home at least one day a week to the slightly sour, yeasty twang of sourdough bread wafting about as two beautiful loaves cooled on a cooling rack. One loaf was always for them at home, and the other for his brothers. Before they shared a home, she would regularly bring her bread experiments over to the dorm and the boys would all ooh and ahh over her creations; Seokjin and Namjoon had had to nearly break up physical fights between the maknaes over who got to eat the last of the loaves on more than one occasion. But it had been two solid weeks since a loaf had been baked in their apartment and he was desperately trying to squelch the worry that was building.

Seokjin realized that he might be out of his element with this. He’d tried everything he knew to do. They’d been on three fancy dates, and he’d sent her a gorgeous bouquet to work. Seokjin bought her the earrings she’d been eyeing subtly when they were shopping for his mom’s birthday present and left them on her pillow one morning when he had to be at an interview at 4 am. He had made love to her slow and sweet on a rainy Sunday afternoon like she loved; it had always been enough to bring her back to him before as he’d remind her of why he loved her both with words and with his body. But not this time. He had told her every joke he could think of, even the worst ones that sounded like they had come off the stick of a melted popsicle. He made her coffee like she liked in the morning, tea in the afternoon, and heady glasses of red wine in the evening. He’d even gone so far as to fly her best friend in for the one weekend he’d had to be away in Japan, knowing that if he couldn’t fix it, she usually could. He had asked if she was okay at least twice a day for more than a week, then given up already when she tried to keep her work mask on all the time and lied straight to his face that she was fine. Y/n was not fine, but he didn’t know what was wrong and nothing he had tried had even made a dent in the darkness, so Seokjin did the only thing he could think of and asked for help to the smartest man he knew.

“Hey, man, you okay?” Namjoon asked when Jin barged into his studio one afternoon without even knocking. The king of manners never forgot something so simple.

“I’m okay, but Y/n is not. I’ve tried everything, and I can’t bring her out of this funk she’s in.”

For the next few minutes, Namjoon asked pointed questions about her behavior and her responses to Seokjin’s attempt at cheering her up. After he had basically verbally vomited all over Namjoon’s lap in RKive for nearly 45 minutes, Namjoon said the most obvious thing.

“Jin-hyung, she sounds depressed. Like seriously, clinically depressed. She has all the classic symptoms. Exhaustion, lack of sleep then sleeping too much, not much energy, disengaging, giving up activities she loves…”

Of course, Namjoon and his sexy brain would identify the thing he’d been seeing wreck the love of his life in practically no time at all. The only thing is that he really didn’t have many solutions other than trying to get her to see a doctor to talk about it. Y/n is stubborn and hates doctors, so convincing her to go would take some doing, but he had an idea of how to go about it. Seokjin thought about it more as he walked down the hallway leaving from Namjoon’s studio and gathered a game plan in his mind. He was done for the day after having recorded all of his parts early in the morning, and it was just now 2:30 in the afternoon. He has time to put things in motion before Y/n should be home from work at 5; if he makes a special dinner for her, then maybe he can soften her heart enough for her to hear him out when he asks her to please either let him in to help or to see a professional. Preferably both if things went well.

Seokjin left the building in a bit of a hurry and drove to the supermarket closest to the apartment. It was a small, family run market that regularly got ingredients in that were difficult to find in other places. Y/n had made friends with the owner’s daughter-in-law as they were from the same home country and had bemoaned how difficult it was to find ingredients for certain dishes, even in a city as big as Seoul. Seokjin planned to make this one soup that Y/n called Comfort Soup that she’d taught him to make; it was the food her mom had made her when she was a child anytime she was sick, hurt, or even just sad, and it brought a piece of her home to her now when she felt homesick. He also wanted to bake a crusty artisan loaf to go with it using the one recipe that Y/n had taught him that he could usually bake without an issue. In fact, Y/n called it the Idiot-Proof Loaf, so surely he wouldn’t screw that up. The best part was that while it took an hour and a half from start to finish, the dough only had to rise once, and finished its growth in the oven instead of multiple risings like most of the breads Y/n made. He rushed in and got all the things he needed, then popped into the florist shop next door for those silly purple roses she loved. His final stop was to a little bakery nearby where their second date had been, and bought chocolate covered strawberries and two beautiful slices of the strawberry cheesecake that they’d shared on that date.

When he finally arrived at their apartment building, Seokjin was relived to see that he’d only used 45 minutes of his precious time and had still had time to bake the bread as long as he did that first. He could make Comfort Soup while the dough rose. After unlocking the apartment door, he kicked off his shoes by the door, then took all his ingredients to the kitchen. He put away the strawberries and cheesecake in the ice box then looked down at his outfit. Even with an apron, he should change so that he isn’t covered in flour and dough.

He didn’t notice it at first. Oh my god, how could he not have noticed? He had walked into the closet to change without turning on the bedroom light, so how could he not have noticed the light filtering under the bathroom door? The light he had turned off before leaving this morning. Y/n had left first since she had an early meeting at the office before he had to be to the recording studio, and there is no reason that she should have already been home. He didn’t see her keys on the hook by the door when he came in or her shoes on the rack where they belonged. Seokjin turned around as he pulled the white t-shirt over his head and stood there perplexed for a few seconds staring at the brightness on the carpet before striding over to open the door and turn off the light.

“Oh my god, Y/n!”

He opened the door to see darkening blood on the white tile of the bathroom floor, and Y/n slumped over against the tub. Her wrist was bleeding in her lap and the shining razor blade was lying beside her on the tile. While the volume of blood was disconcerting, there wasn’t as much as he’d ever thought there would be in a situation like this, so Seokjin knew he might have a chance to save her until he noticed the empty bottle of pills in the sink. Then, came the panic.

Seokjin ripped the hand towel off the drying rack and tied it around her bleeding wrist tight enough to put pressure on the wound while he full-on sprinted to the kitchen for his cell phone. He’d left it lying on the kitchen island when he went to change, and he grabbed it and dialed for an ambulance while running back to her. The dispatcher gathered their address and told him that help was coming, but Seokjin could barely hear her. He was shaking Y/n gently trying to get her to respond. He could just barely hear a pulse when he pressed his ear to her chest and her breathing was so damn shallow it barely grazed his skin when he hovered his hand in front of her face. Oh, god, she’s so pale, he though to himself before hanging up and dropping his phone in the pocket of his sweatpants.

“Y/n, baby, can you hear me? Please wake up, please. I need you to wake up.” He didn’t even realize he was crying until he spoke, just begging her to open her eyes.

He barely registered the banging on the front door as help arrived. He didn’t want to leave her, but he had to, so he ran to the door and flung it open for the paramedics and just left the front door gaping open and ran back to the bathroom. Luckily, they took the hint and followed him back to where Y/n was still limp on the floor. They worked quickly and got her all strapped onto a stretcher and told him that he could ride to the hospital with her.

As an afterthought almost, Seokjin grabbed the empty bottle out of the sink and took it with them. Once they were in the ambulance and the paramedics were doing their jobs, Seokjin finally looked at the bottle and immediately felt worse. The empty bottle had his name on it. It had contained muscle relaxers from a couple of months ago when Seokjin had pulled a muscle in his back overworking himself and the doctor had given them to him to help him relax the muscles around it enough that he could sleep. There had been around 10 pills left in the bottle, and Y/n is so much smaller than him in size. Seokjin didn’t know much about medications but he did remember that they were prescribed taking size into consideration, and for the second time in the last 20 minutes, he realized that she might really die.

“Please, Y/n. Please. Oh God you have to wake up.” Seokjin choked on a sob before he could say anything else.

Seokjin felt like the minutes that had passed since he found her were moving through molasses, thick and slow to drip through the hourglass. The ambulance stopped in front of the hospital and the doors flung open into bright late afternoon sunlight, and this nightmare kept going. The paramedics unloaded the stretcher and Seokjin chased them into the emergency room. He kept following them through two sets of double doors, not hearing any words that were being spoken to him until a nurse physically grabbed him.

“Sir, you can’t go any further. We need space to help her,” she said then guided him into a tiny private waiting room. “Wait here and I’ll come back to update you as soon as I can.” She had just made it to the door when he remembered the bottle that he’d been squeezing.

“Here,” he said shakily. “I found this in the sink when I found her. I know that there were at least 10 left in there.”

The nurse thanked him and left quickly, shutting the door behind her. After several seconds of being attacked by the silence in the room, Seokjin’s legs couldn’t hold him up anymore and he just collapsed. He couldn’t stop crying but found the strength to pull out his phone and called Namjoon.

“Namjoon-ah, I was too late. Oh my god, I was too late,” Seokjin sobbed into the phone.

“Jin-hyung, where are you?”

After hearing that Seokjin was at the hospital, Namjoon told him that they’d all come to him. Seokjin had no concept of the flow of time as he remained crumpled on the floor when all six of his brothers tumbled in the door, and he lost it even more when Jimin and Taehyung both wrapped their arms around him. They held him while he sobbed and told them about what he’d found when he’d opened the bathroom door. After a while, Seokjin felt like his chest was gaping open and all of his internal organs were falling out at once, but the tears slowed down as the panic flooded back in; his chest constricted in terror and anxiety and sharp, wracking pain.

“I can’t breathe. Oh, my god, I can’t breathe,” he gasped out as he looked up and met eyes with Namjoon.

Jimin and Taehyung backed up a little to give him some space as Seokjin started hyperventilating. The edges of his vision were starting to get blurry and almost sparkled a bit as his body seemed to reject every breath he tried to take. He barely registered the sound of the door opening as Yoongi ran out to get help. Seokjin struggled to breathe and tried desperately to cling to consciousness as the panic attack really set in.

An unfamiliar feminine face was in front of him then, encouraging him to focus on the sound of her voice. She spoke softly and calmly to him, but she might as well have been speaking to him in Greek because he couldn’t understand any of her words. For that matter, he could just barely hear her over this loud whooshing sound in his ears. The tone of her voice was soft and forced him to focus on nothing else to try to understand what she was saying, and after a few minutes the whooshing noise quieted down enough to hear her properly and he began to lose some of the tightness in his chest.

“Seokjin-ssi, that’s it. Keep breathing slowly and deeply. You are safe. You are just having a panic attack right now, and that’s understandable. Just keep listening to my voice and keep breathing in…then out…now in again,” she murmured to him.

After she was sure that he was calm and wouldn’t panic again, she turned to the other men in the room and asked them to help Seokjin out of the floor. Jungkook stepped up with Namjoon and they physically lifted him up and into a chair. Seokjin couldn’t help them because his legs had been substituted with lemon jello that hadn’t fully set up yet.

Yoongi held a cup to his lips. “Drink, hyung,” he said softly.

Seokjin sipped obediently a few times until Yoongi was satisfied and sat the cup on a nearby table. Seokjin was shocked when Yoongi wrapped his arms around him. Yoongi rarely initiated physical shows of affection, but he understood this entire scenario in a deeper way than he wanted to admit and he knew exactly what Seokjin needed in this moment.

“Yoongichi, I think this is my fault,” Seokjin whispered into his ear.

“No, Jin-hyung. It is not your fault.”

“But I think it is. I must not have loved her well enough. I wasn’t home enough. The pills she took were mine. If I had gone to Namjoon-ah for help sooner…” Seokjin’s voice cracked and he couldn’t finish the thought.

“It is not your fault. Trust me. Do you not remember where I was emotionally when we met? And how close I came to trying too? Do you remember what I said to you the night you walked in and stopped me?” Yoongi countered gently.

“You said that you didn’t want to weigh us all down and that you’d rather hurt yourself than hurt us. And that everything is all your fault.”

“That’s right,” Yoongi replied with a soft smile. “And what did you say back to me?”

“That just because you feel like it’s your fault doesn’t mean that it is. That leaving us that way would hurt more than any burden you handed us. And to let me be your tether when you needed something to hold you down to the earth.”

“Yes, So, now I get a chance to say part of it back to you. Just because you think this is your fault doesn’t mean it is. You saved her, Jin-hyung. You are the reason she’s still breathing now, just like you are the reason I am still breathing now. Yes, she got a little closer to the fire than we’d like, but she can still come back to us. And when she does, Y/n is going to need a tether on the hard days, yeah?”

Seokjin couldn’t speak at that. He still felt like everything was his fault for not realizing what was happening sooner, but Yoongi was right. He had to stay strong because Y/n needed that right now, so he squeezed Yoongi a little tighter then let go before he started to cry again. Yoongi moved from kneeling in front of him to plant himself in the chair beside him. Now that his panic attack had stopped, Seokjin felt like someone had buried him under the weight of about 100 tons of brick. Everything was so heavy, and he was too tired to try to climb out. He finally looked around the room and took it in for the first time.

The waiting room was small but big enough for all of them. Namjoon was in the corner speaking quietly into the phone, presumably updating their managers on what was happening. Seokjin hadn’t thought to call anyone except Namjoon since Namjoon was the only person he’d spoken with about this. Jungkook was standing by the door with his arms crossed, almost as if he was standing guard over his brothers; his stance portrayed his worry a bit in that his first instinct when one of his hyungs was hurting was to cry with them, then protect them if he could. Hoseok was sitting on a small couch on the left side of the room smashed in between Jimin and Taehyung, both folded into Hobi for security and comfort. Hobi had both boys tucked under his arms and was trying to help them stay calm. Both Jimin and Taehyung were empaths and this scenario had them both on edge from the emotions in the room. Jimin still had tears running down his cheeks from the fear of Seokjin’s panic attack and worry for his friend. Taehyung was staring at Jin with wide eyes, seemingly trying to decide if he was okay and what he should do to help.

“I’m okay, Taehyungie,” Seokjin said softly. “I’m just scared.”

Taehyung got up and moved to sit at Seokjin’s feet and wrapped his arms around Seokjin’s legs. It was a small gesture, but somehow it helped to settle some of the remaining anxiety in the pit of Jin’s stomach, and he knew that the physical contact would help Tae relax a bit.

Time seemed to stop moving. Seokjin had no concept of how long they had been in this room. It could have been seconds, or it could have been 10 years, but not knowing what was happening with Y/n was making him crazy. Just when he thought that he couldn’t handle another minute of this stretching unnerving silence, there was a knock at the door, then the doctor stepped in.

“Kim Seokjin?” he asked.

“That’s me. How is she?” Jin stuttered out.

“She’s still alive, but in critical condition. She had lost quite a lot of blood when you found her. We had to give her three pints just to stabilize her. We also did have to pump her stomach for the pills she had taken. We wouldn’t have known about that if you hadn’t brought the bottle in. Honestly, if you had found her 5 minutes later, the outcome may have been very different. As it is, she’s still very weak and unconscious. Hopefully, she will wake up in the next few days, but we still have to wait and see.”

“Can I see her?” Seokin asked.

“Yes, but just be prepared. Her color is still really pale, and she’s hooked up to quite a few monitors. We have also inserted a ventilation tube to help her with breathing for tonight. We hope to remove it tomorrow morning, but we can take it out sooner if she wakes up before then. It’s not standard, but due to the scenario, you may want to bring someone with you,” the doctor advised then smiled softly. “I really think she will be okay, but I can’t be 100% sure.”

Seokjin looked around the room at each of his brothers, meeting eyes with Yoongi last. “Come with me?” he whispered. Yoongi nodded then stood. Taehyung unwrapped himself from around Seokjin’s legs and allowed the two men to follow the doctor out of the room.

The doctor lead them down a seemingly endless hallway before they arrived at a set of double doors. The doctor waved his name badge in front of a keypad and the doors swung open to another hallway. They walked past 4 doors before the doctor stopped and knocked on a door on the left side then let them in.

“Just let me know if you have any questions. I’ll be in to check on her in a couple of hours,” he told them before leaving and closing the door.

Seokjin watched the door close before he finally looked at Y/n lying in the bed. It was like he was standing in his worst nightmare and couldn’t wake up. She looked so small lying there, and so, so pale. There was an IV coming out of her right arm that connected to a couple of bags of fluid hanging limply from a pole beside the bed. There was a plastic mask over her mouth connected with the ventilator at the bedside, and wires that connected from cathodes on her chest to a large beeping heart monitor on the left side of the bed. At the shock of seeing Y/n like this, his knees almost buckled. He would have hit the floor if Yoongi hadn’t grabbed him. Yoongi guided him over to the chair beside the bed and helped him sit down.

“She almost looks dead, Yoongi. Oh my god…” he whimpered.

Yoongi didn’t say anything, he just grabbed Seokjin’s hand and held it tight. It had been nearly 5 years since the night Seokjin had walked in on him with a knife in his hand standing in the bathtub of their shared bathroom. Seokjin had talked him down that night and 3 more times since. Yoongi can’t help but think that while he has recovered so much, this could have been him at some point, and his chest ached. He hurt for his friend lying in the bed, and he ached for his brother who loved her so much and he was upset with himself for not being able to help either of them. He settled on being as comforting to Seokjin as he possibly could and released his hand just long enough to drag an empty chair up beside him, then grabbing his hand again.

Seokjin gently held Y/n’s hand in his right and Yoongi’s in his left. He tried to take the comfort he got from Yoongi’s hand and pour it into the gentle grip he maintained on Y/n’s hand. Tears were dripping silently down his cheeks as he watched the machine take breaths for her and listened to the beeping of the heart monitor. The heart monitor’s sound was comforting somehow as the steady beating reminded him that every beep was a beat of her heart. Seokjin just sat and stared at her motionless form in the bed, and after a while, the beeping of the heart monitor lulled him to sleep without him realizing he’d drifted off.

A loud frantic alarm went off and Seokjin jarred awake, taking a second to remember where he was and why he was there. When he jerked upright, Yoongi’s head fell off of his shoulder where it had landed and Yoongi woke up too. The heart monitor was beeping loudly and erratically now.

“Oh god, Yoongi get help. Something’s wrong.”

Yoongi ran out into the hallway, and Seokjin could vaguely recognize his voice calling for the nurses to come help. Y/n’s eyes hadn’t opened, but she looked paler than she had been and Seokjin couldn’t help but to panic.

“Y/n, no! Please wake up! You can’t leave me like this,” Jin cried, shaking her gently.

The nurses ran in just before that same alarm that shocked him awake sounded again, and they shoved Seokjin out the door and out of the way to have room to work.

“No, please! I need to be with her! Please! Y/n! Y/N! PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME. PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME!” Seokjin started screaming and crying trying to fight off the arms that were holding him back.

Yoongi spun him around to face him then and pulled him into a hug. “Hyung, you have to let them work. You have to let them help her.”

Seokjin felt like he had lost all control and he wasn’t sure he could just stand here when his entire world was behind that closed door dying. At the same time, he didn’t know what he could do to help, and he was so angry that he couldn’t just fix this. Seokjin let Yoongi lead him a few feet away from the door so they wouldn’t be blocking the way if anyone needed to come in or out. After an eternity it seemed, the nurses opened the door and called Seokjin over.

“I’m sorry for shoving you out the door. The alarm you were hearing was the heart rate monitor. Her blood pressure was dropping, and we had to give her a big shot of some medication to correct that. She has stabilized a bit and you can go back in and wait with her if you’d like.”

Seokjin just nodded and walked back in and headed back to his chair at the bedside. Yoongi grabbed his hand and squeezed it for a moment before speaking, “Hyung, I’m going to go update everyone. I know they are all worried about what’s happening. I’ll send someone else to come back with you for a bit so that they can visit Y/n too. They love her too.”

“Okay,” Seokjin whispered. “Would you send Joon-ah?”

“Of course I will.”

After Seokjin heard the door click closed, he took a closer look at Y/n. She was still so pale and looked like she was so breakable. Even through all of that, she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and he couldn’t just sit there by the bedside anymore. He needed to hold her in his arms, so he gently navigated all of the wires and tubes to climb in the bed beside her and wrap his arms around her as gently as he could. The bed was so small, but his entire body relaxed a bit when he was able to feel her beside him. Seokjin kissed her gently on the temple before speaking softly into her ear.  

“Baby, I hope you can hear me. I love you so much. I am so sorry that I didn’t realize what was happening with you sooner. I tried so hard to help in subtle ways and not to force you to open up about what was going wrong. I should have pushed even if we fought. I’d rather live with the knowledge that you are angry with me than for you to not be alive at all. Please. Please, don’t leave me.” Seokjin couldn’t stop himself from sobbing into Y/n’s hair, and he was so exhausted with worry and fear. After a few more minutes, he had cried himself back to sleep.

As Seokjin’s sleep addled brain woke back up a few hours later, he had difficulty remembering where he was, but then he opened his eyes and reality bitch-slapped him in the face. He glanced down to see Y/n still unconscious beside him. He needed to visit the restroom and something to drink. He had cried so much that his entire body felt like it was drying up from the inside out. He slowly sat up and maneuvered out of the bed so that he wouldn’t disconnect any of the vital tubes and wires connected to her and got out of the bed. When he did, he saw Namjoon slumped over asleep in the chair he’d vacated the night before and smiled a bit to himself before slipping into the connected bathroom.

Seokjin stared at himself in the mirror as he washed his hands. While he still was as handsome as he’d ever been, his eyes were swollen and a bit red from crying and sleeping in his contacts. His hair was sticking up everywhere too from sleep, and there was a big brown streak of dried blood across his white tee from where he’d found Y/n. He looked like hell. He splashed some water on his face a bit then came out of the bathroom. As much as he didn’t want to leave her, he wanted to check on the others down the hallway. After exiting the restroom, he sat down beside Namjoon and lightly shook him.

“Namjoon-ah, wake up.”

Namjoon startled awake a bit, looking around to see what was happening. “Wha…What’s going on? Did something happen?”

“No, nothing has changed. I just want to walk down the hall to check on the others and get a cup of coffee. Will you stay with her please? I don’t want her to be alone when she wakes up. I just feel like I’m going to lose my mind if I stay still in this room for another second.”

Namjoon agreed immediately, and Seokjin rose and left the room as quietly as possible. He wondered down the hallway and back to the double doors. There was a sign beside the door that notated a 4-digit code so that he could get back in without a doctor’s name badge upon his return, so he committed that to memory before heading back into the room where he’d left the others. He walked in and saw Yoongi and Hoseok curled up on the sofa, cuddled up together asleep. The maknaes were all three curled up in the floor together using cushions they had removed from the chairs around the room as pillows, but they were all touching. Jungkook was in the middle, with Taehyung draped around him. Taehyung had one arm and one leg thrown across Jungkook, and Jimin was holding his hand. Jimin was lying with his left side pushed against Jungkook’s side and his head tilted so that it touched Jungkook’s shoulder. Seokjin chuckled a bit at the sight, glad that he had these men as his family. At the sound of his laugh, Hoseok looked over at Seokjin where he was standing just inside the door. Hoseok had always been the lightest sleeper of the group, and any sound would disrupt him.

“Hyung?” Hoseok asked, “Is Y/n awake?”

“No, Seokie, she’s not. But I felt like I was going to spontaneously combust from not being able to help her, so I came out to get some coffee.”

“Oh.” Hoseok’s face fell as he learned that Y/n was still not awake. “Sejin-hyung brought you a change of clothes and a toothbrush in the middle of the night. Joonie told him about how you…about your shirt.”

Seokjin found the bag in the corner of the room, so thankful at how much like family their managers were with them. They had always looked after all 7 as if they were their own children, so when something happened to 1 member, it happed to the entire staff too. Seokjin stepped into the small bathroom connected to the waiting room to change and brush his teeth and immediately felt a bit calmer. There had been black sweatpants, a white tee shirt and an oversized blue sweater in the bag. The sweater helped immensely. It was the one that Y/n had stolen to sleep in the other day, so her scent was still woven into the fabric and it helped him to stay calm and hopeful. He stepped out into the waiting room to see that the maknaes were starting to stir a bit.

“Jin-hyung, I’m going to get coffee and breakfast for everyone. Can I bring you something?” Jimin asked.

“Just coffee, Minnie. I don’t think I can stomach the thought of food at the moment. I’m going to head back to Y/n, so just call when you get back and I’ll come out and get the coffee.”

Seokjin then headed back towards Y/n’s room in the intensive care unit. He heard Namjoon screaming for someone to come before he got back through the double doors and his heart nearly exploded in fear. What if she’s crashing again, he thought to himself as he was running down the hall. He nearly collided with Namjoon midway there. Namjoon grabbed both his arms to keep from falling backwards, before he said two words that made Seokjin’s heart flutter from relief.

“She’s awake.”

[novantinuum]

Fandom: Steven Universe

Rating: General Audiences

Words: 1K~

Summary: In another world, he doesn’t have his mother’s sword or shield to hide behind when Bismuth lands her strike. The bubble pops.

Steven falls apart.

Chapter summary: In which all Greg wants is some damn sleep.

First | Last chapter

While I’m cross posting all of these to tumblr, I’d love to have your support over on AO3 too! Plus, it’s easier to subscribe there. A win-win, I’d say. Enjoy a breather chapter.

Chapter 3: Restless

Perhaps it’s mostly due to the fact that his son is mixed species and frequently galavants on magical and oft dangerous adventures with the three alien guardians who have over time become just as much of a family to the boy as he is, but whether he blames it on the fourteen plus years of anxiety progressively gnawing away at him or his chronically poor sleep habits, it’s as clear as the ache in his spine that Greg Universe is far from being the poster child of a good night’s rest.

He’s spent the last hour or so drifting in and out of awareness. Sometimes what rouses him is the subtle ticks of a rickety car driving past on the road outside, a sound his wandering mind has long associated with the dollar signs of potential business. (Not that he’s actually dependent on the car wash to support himself and Steven anymore, but hey, old habits die hard.) In other cases it’s simply... the ocean. He’s never been much of a fan of white noise, and even though he’s lived by the shore for a solid two decades now, the rushing ebb and flow has a nasty knack of keeping him awake. Maybe he should just bite the bullet and splurge for earplugs again. Overwhelmingly though, the main reason sleep tends to be such a stranger to him is because his brain simply refuses to shut up. Snippets of awkward social interactions from the day, worries about the faint stress hidden within his son’s smiles, song lyric rejects, the grocery list he forgot to write before retiring to the cozy, well-worn mattress set up on the van’s floor— just when he thinks he’s reached the end of things to obsess over and can finally slip into the blissful embrace of REM, something else claws out of the very mud of the Earth to bully him awake once more. It’s a vicious cycle.

Greg rolls on his side, and kicks the edge of his downy comforter until it fully covers his cold toes. The nightly temperature is beginning to drop, steadily paving the way for the height of the fall season. It’s not too bad so far, but soon enough the coastal winds will pick up. Delmarva nights get cold this time of year. Steven is warm enough in his bed, isn’t he? He’s got plenty of extra blankets if he needs them? And does he still need to pay the heating bill for this month or did he already—

He chuckles to himself, realizing all the proof he needs of that lays in his meticulously kept checkbook ledger safely tucked away in the glovebox. As always, he’s fussing over nothing. Oh, the woes of parenthood. But his fatherly worries aside, there’s no denying Steven’s genuinely happy living with the Gems. Despite the occasional adrenaline pumping encounter, with Pearl, Garnet, and Amethyst’s constant protection there’s really no safer place he could be.

A faint smile lifts his cheeks as his turbulent mind settles and he begins to doze off again.

Just as he’s about to cross that final canyon into unconsciousness, something raps against the door from outside. He promptly rolls over and groans into his pillow.

“I swear if this is another one of those gulls,” he mutters, out loud but more to himself than anything.

“Greg! Yo G-man, get your butt out here!”

He purses his lips. Nope. No such luck. Looks like it’s gonna be Gem business tonight. He shifts to sit up, rolling his shoulders back with an audible pop and brushing his long hair out of his face before finally shuffling across the van’s floor to crack open the back door.

He peers blankly at the short purple Gem standing ready to knock rapid-fire outside, his body filled with such exhaustion that his eye bags probably have luggage of their own.

“Amethyst,” he begins slowly. “It’s long past midnight, and right now the only thing I give a single damn about is how cozy my mattress is, so unless the world’s literally ending again I’m—“

“Steven’s hurt,” she says rapidly, and it’s only then he’s awake enough to notice the panic jittering through her stout frame.

His heart stutters.

“Wait, what?”

At first he swears he’s going senile prematurely. Surely none of this is happening, surely this is no more but a worryingly realistic nightmare, but no. No. Everything is too real. The way the cold salt air tousles through his beard, the faint scent of fish wafting from the docks... In the end it’s the glossiness of her eyes that convinces him. He’d never make dream Amethyst cry, because she rarely does.

Her explanation spills forth in a breathless rush.

“Steven, his gem got cracked, and none of us get how but he’s like, somehow split apart, and- and everyone’s at Rose’s fountain and you gotta come with me right now!”

She’s tugging at his arm by the end, and he has no time to slip on sandals or even lock the door before she yanks him out of the van and under the mask of night. He’s already breathing heavy by the time they near the boardwalk.

“Hurry!” she urges, the moonlight shimmering off the quartz gem embedded in her chest.

“But what even happened?” he asks, voice high with hysteria, huffing to keep up with her pace. “How did he—“

“I already said, I don’t know! None of us do.”

“What do you mean you don’t—“

“Hey, it’s not our fault! She wouldn’t tell us everything,” Amethyst snaps.

“She?”

They race past Fish Stew Pizza. Greg’s stomach gurgles on automatic, (did he really forget to eat dinner again?), but he pays it no attention. Not now, not when his son is hurt, not when he needs him, not when he—

“This new Gem who popped up out of nowhere today! Bismuth. She’s apparently like one of Garnet and Pearl’s old Crystal Gem buddies, and I thought she was pretty okay for a bit, but then Steven just up and disappears, and when he comes back he’s with her and he’s split apart, and one of them is cracked, a—“

“Wait, wait, wait- hold on, you keeping saying that, that he’s split apart?”

She nods in confirmation. Greg can practically feel the age weighing on his body as his bare feet leave the boardwalk and scurry through the sand. His pace doubles, the mere thought of his son injured and (dying??) in pain thrumming in his mind like a rocker’s drumbeat.

“W-what does that even- is there blood, is he still breathing??” he cries, yanking at his hair.

Realization dawns on her face in a wide mouthed ‘o’ when met with his near-meltdown. “Oh. OH, no I didn’t mean like, ‘cut in half’ split apart, I mean that he’s literally fallen apart! There’s squishy organic Steven, and then there’s this creepy pink Steven that’s entirely projected by his gem!”

“His gem fell out of his body!?”

“Dude,” she says, motioning sharply towards the cliffside, “we ain’t got no time to discuss the nitty gritty of this, we gotta hurry!”

With that, she pushes steadily ahead of him, leaving him in the dust- er, sand.

“No time to- Amethyst,” he shouts after her, “for all I‘m aware my son could be dying ‘cause of that, I need to know!!”

Amethyst doesn’t listen, though. Her gemstone glows bright purple, and then she disappears completely into a sphere of white light that rips across the shore at the speed of a stock-car racer. Or faster, maybe— he genuinely doesn’t know. He swears he could hear a mini sonic boom.

“Wait! WAIT!” he yells, throwing his hand in the air as he pushes himself even faster. A sharp pull in his calves causes him to slow to a stop. He doubles over, heaving for breath as he rests his hands on his knees. “I’m not a young man anymore!“

A distant, disembodied voice shoots his way from somewhere on the other side of the cliff. “Just run faster, you’re only like, 40 or somethin’.”

“I can’t!” he says, his voice practically cracking. “That’s the problem!”

Notes:

A bit of a short breather chapter, here- for both you and me.

I imagine Amethyst was holding back her panic last chapter, because she didn't want to further upset Steven. It's only now- apart from him- that she allows herself to finally break down a little.

Greg is so, so fun to write. I think it should worry me that I relate so much to this poor anxiety man.

[purplesurveys]

581

Where did you get the pants you are wearing from? They’re my sister’s; I borrowed them for the semester because these shorts are conducive for my PE classes, but since we already finished the class last week I should probs give it back to her soon. Do you find smoking unattractive? I used to, but now I can’t really say that I hate it. Have your parents ever searched your personal belongings? They did, back in Grade 6. They took away two of my very private diaries and ever since then I never wrote down my thoughts in a notebook. I never did get the two back. Could you go for the rest of your life without drinking alcohol? I thought I could, then my friends made me try a margarita a month after I turned 18 hahaha. Is there someone you'll never forget? There are loads of people I haven’t and will never forget; this is a very broad question.

Do you miss someone right now? Yes. Last time you were on the phone? Just to use it? Maybe some four minutes ago. But the last time I was on a call – if that’s what you meant – was last night. Do you get distracted easily? Yeup. Earlier I was doing a reading, picked up my phone for a short break, then never realized I was on my phone for the next two hours. Have your parents ever caught you drinking? They never ‘caught’ me; whenever I do drink I let them know/ask permission. I respect them enough to do that because I know how alcohol had nearly ruined our family in the past. Do you think flirting is cheating? Uhhhhhhh yes. Do you hate the last girl, other than family, you had a conversation with? I could never hate Gab. Who was the last person you sat next to in a car with? It was my brother.  Is your room messy or clean? Fairly clean. I had a general cleaning of my room not too long ago. Do you drink tea? Not the hot or herbal kind. I only have iced tea occasionally. Wish you could be somewhere else right now? Sort of? Kind of? Idk it’s either way. I’m content that I’m home but I wouldn’t mind being out drinking right now too. What are you listening to right now? I can only hear the electric fan’s white noise. I don’t feel like listening to music. Where did you get your last bruise from? I don’t remember my most recent bruise but it probably has something to do with PE and me hitting the mat/floor way too hard. Are you looking forward to anything? The weekend. When is the last time you wanted to punch someone in their face? The fact that I stared at this question for a good minute must mean I haven’t thought this in a while lmao. That’s gotta be a good thing! Whose house where you last at? Other than mine, Gab’s. When someone says 'we need to talk', what do you think: If I know that that person doesn’t have a problem/potential problem with me, I just assume it’s something light. The only time this was said to me and it turned out to be something bad was my mom gathering us to say that our grandpa died, so I don’t really have a bad experience in general with that sentence. Tell me what's on your mind? I would have been able to sleep in tomorrow if I didn’t accept a 10 AM commitment and now I’m hating myself loads. It’s exhausting to accept an executive position sometimes. Will you be in bed before 11 tonight? I doubt it; it’s already 9:55 and I just started on this survey. Do you have a good relationship with your parents? It’s fine, but it’s not super solid or anything. They don’t know anything about me other than what I post on Facebook. How much money did you spend today? I spent P45 on an egg and cheese sandwich just to get through my hunger this morning, and my orders from online shopping came so I dropped P1,120 on that hahaha. In other words, I’m slowly GOING BROKE Can you see a cat from where you're sitting? Nope. I can see a dog, though. Who was your last text from? My professor for a history class. I’m the beadle in this class, so he texts me reminders from time to time. What was the last bad thing that happened to your phone? It’s fairly new so it hasn’t acted up ever. The only bad thing that happens to it is me dropping it D: What's been upsetting you lately? I am so fucking burned out from this semester and just wish it’s over already. Is there anyone getting on your nerves at the moment? Nope, everyone’s safe. Is there a member of the opposite sex on your mind? Nopes.

Last place you fell asleep other than a bed? The living room couch, I think. Does it take a lot to make you cry? Not at all. I’m an easy target. Do you have a dog? Yes, the goodest and bestest. Do you like to wear pants? No, I hate jeans and wish I had more shorts than jeans. How many people do you trust fully? I trust everybody I know, is the thing. I feel like my loved ones and friends deserve that. But I can cut off ties with them very easily if they abuse that trust. When you're bored in class, what do you usually do? I use my phone but make sure I’m hidden behind my laptop. If that’s too risky, I’ll doodle whatever lyrics on my notebook (if I’m writing). Otherwise I’d just check my social media on my laptop. What’s your favorite color out of these five? Green, Yellow, Blue, Pink: Pink. What was the first thing you said when you woke up today? “...Already?” I set my alarms this morning for 4 AM, 4:30 AM, and 5:30 AM. I woke up at the 4 AM alarm, went back to sleep, and the next alarm that woke me was the 5:30 one. I must have turned off the 4:30 one too but I was probably half-sleepy and groggy AS FUCK because I don’t remember turning that one off at all. Do you get 8 hours of sleep everyday? Yeah. I kinda have to because the way I run during the day depends on the amount of sleep I get. Ever like someone older than you? I haven’t. What's your favorite amusement park? I don’t really have any. Universal Studios in Singapore was great fun though. Are you cold at this very moment? A little bit. I’ve since turned on the AC and also have an electric fan directed at me, so I’m quite chilly. Do you prefer people who talk a lot or are quiet? Depends on my mood..sometimes I’m talkative, and sometimes I just want to be on my laptop and be undisturbed. Is there someone in your life you wish you never met? Other than incompetent groupmates from past projects who temporarily made my life a living hell, not really. How many hours of sleep do you need to function? 7 to 10. Nothing more, nothing less. What do you think Avril Lavigne is doing at the moment? This question is so creepy. What's one fear are you most paranoid about? Not getting a nice enough job that doesn’t pay enough. Have you ran into an old friend recently? A couple of weeks ago I bumped into Mils; I was headed to my car and she was headed to class. It was super brief; we just said hi and she complimented my water bottle (which I have since lost lmao). Have you ever had a song stuck in your head for more than a day? Most likely. Could you go a whole year without cursing? I doubt it. Would you rather give up the computer or the TV? TV! I gave that up like, 6 years ago lol. That’s no problem for me now. Have you ever liked someone who had a girl/boyfriend? No, I haven’t. As of this minute, what is going through your mind? I want to play Mario Kart Tour again but I have to finish this survey first. Does anyone know your password besides you? Gab and my sister. Would you ever take someone back if they cheated on you? I dunno, I’ve never been in that situation. Have you ever ridden a horse? Yes. Are you a patient person? I’m patient with people more; I don’t like the other aspects of waiting, like traffic or waiting in line for something. Could you go a day without eating? I could, but it would suck and it would hurt and I’d probably pass out. Honestly, are things going the way you planned? More than, I guess. I mean I didn’t plan on making it to 21, so I guess everything I do from here on out is more than what I had planned. Are you a forgiving person? No. I prefer holding grudges. When you shut off your alarm clock, do you tend to fall back asleep? HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH YES What is something you disliked about today? My anthropology professor instructed us to watch a film over the weekend. Completely forgot about it of course, and crammed my viewing the night before even though I was already tired. Today, I walked into the room to find out we were gonna watch the exact same movie as a class anyway; meaning I could have rested up last night lolololololol but guess not When's the last time you had a headache? A week ago, I think. Is there anything that you are craving right now? A burger from Pound :( And samgyupsal, ughhhhhhhh. What was the first thing you thought of this morning? How I fucking hate my Wednesday schedule. What part of your body hurts right now? I’m good at the moment. Eyes are starting to feel heavy though. Is there anyone you would like to just appear at your front door right now? Not really. Gab’s working tonight and I wouldn’t want her to drop everything just to surprise me at home. What is something that you realized today? I really dislike my course. I had a very productive afternoon today and started work on each of my final requirements for all my classes this semester – I met progress with every single major requirement, except for those of my journ electives, about which I could really not care less. Is there someone on your mind that shouldn't be? No. Do you remember who your first crush was? Yeah, my 5th grade science teacher. I remember feeling ashamed to disclose it on these surveys back when I was new to this, but it’s been like ten years and I’ve gotten old as fuck and I can just spit it out now lmao. Ever walked into the guy's bathroom? I don’t think so. Have you ever cried from being so mad? Sure. What's a word that starts with the third letter of your first name? Binoculars. Do you have a bad temper? I can, most especially on my period. How many wives or husbands do you want? Wow, just one please. What's the closest pink object to you? My keyboard cover. Do you consider yourself lucky? No. Whats on your bedroom floor right now? A single sock that I’m too lazy to pick up for now, and my dog. Do you trust anyone? I trust lots of people. What's your favorite color gummy bear? Maybe red? I like strawberry/cherry flavored gummies. What's the last movie you saw in the theater? Portrait of a Lady on Fire. If you could push one person off of a mountain, who would it be? Duterte. Wish you could be somewhere else right now? Meh, yes and no. What color is your iPod? I don’t use it anymore, but my Nano is blue. What should you be doing right now? Sleeping maybe? Or at least settling in. Do you like roller coasters? Nope. One famous guy you would marry in an instance? Does it have to be a guy? I got nothing.

[braindamageforbeginners]

A New Doctor

Cycle 9, Day 10

So, I now have at least a half-dozen physicians on my case. If you believe the BMJ stat that “medical misadvenure” (which is a broad category that includes, but is not limited to, doctor error, nursing error, pharmacy screw-ups, misdiagnosis, accidental overdose/drug interactions, opportunistic infections - the list goes on) is the third-leading cause of death in America (according to the same study, heart disease is #1 and cancer is #2). So, for those for those of you setting odds on my life expectancy (and, frankly, I’d be disappointed if you didn’t), it’s been an odd, extended game of “Clue,” except I’m Mr. Body, to see if disease, side-effects, or my possibly-insane physicians will get to me first. I hate to say it, but I think I’ve finally figured the odds-on favorite in this one: my GP.

This isn’t a plea for help, or even a serious medical development on my part, it’s a warning for you, the readership, as insurance enrollment comes around. First of all, if you can’t pay, hospitals or physicians can throw you out on the street (this is something able-bodied people are so disbelieving of that took a poor black woman freezing to death on-camera in Baltimore). They are only required to treat you if you in an emergency situation, thanks to some federal laws called “EMTALA.”If you have a disease that drives you to the emergency room, the prognosis gets worse. People tend believe that just because it’s the healthcare industry, the health insurance industry isn’t a corrosive force that has a vested interest in denying care and killing you. Which is odd to me; you don’t get this anywhere else (or I haven’t experienced this sort of self-delusional attitude); you don’t see people defending McDonald’s or Nabisco or RJ Reynolds or Exxon as having their best interests at heart (and, to my friends who think they’re bullet-proof because of their health insurance, read the fine print, very, very carefully; you don’t want to get a nasty shock as you’re being rolled into the OR). So, thanks to my parent’s generosity/desire not to see me die, I rolled in last year with a very expensive PPO (there are a lot of acronyms to keep track of, but PPOs allow the patient to see anyone in a preferred provider network, which tend to be large and give the patient lots of choices, so you can directly get a referral to a neurologist if you hit your head). Unfortunately, because I have pre-existing conditions (and to my bullet-proof friends, read through the list of pre-existing conditions that’ll disqualify you, your jaw will drop)(also, it’s telling that Congressmen and Senators have the option to buy into a separate, federal employee health insurance option that’s not available to us serfs)(it’s also telling that the ACA required Congresscritters, for the first time ever, to tough it out and find health insurance like their constituents)(which is why I assume all the GOP higher-ups had melt-downs over the ACA - a slight removal of privilege to help sick constituents isn’t a part of Congressional ethos, let alone job description), my premiums went from “expensive” to “leasing a sports car” within a few months. I’m extraordinarily grateful to them for providing that financial backing, because it allowed me to continue getting treatment during the crucial 6-10 week GBM post-diagnosis period that might turn this from “Guaranteed doom” to “far too close for comfort.” So, this did give me some time to do my homework (in writing about this, I’m realizing I really should consider applying to law school, because I’ll know more about medical and insurance law and ethics than some lawyers before this is up)(Hell, I probably know more than some of them right now). Anyway, I found that all the specialists I see for cancer, do take medicaid (even the specialized pharmacy I use at the cancer center). Which is good for me, especially since being on disability in California is an automatic qualification for Medicaid. Now for the bad news; although all the specialists there take medicaid, the GPs don’t. AND the specialists only take medicaid if it’s done through an HMO carrier that the state sub-contracts with.

Great Kraken’s Balls.

There are a number of documentaries and documents (including an “Adam Ruins Everything” segment) on why HMO’s are unnecessary and lethally incompetent (like many other aspects of a for-profit medical system), but here’s the most basic deal: They act as a gate-keeper for the entire medical-industrial system. You can get your care at any of a dozen pre-approved hospitals, and nowhere else. Now, if an HMO or their doctors can’t treat you (or refuse to treat you - which is still the case for a lot of GBM patients), they are required to send you to a specialist who can. The economic incentive is to give less care, and keep all the patients in the system for as long as possible.

I suspect that delaying tactic is why heart disease and cancer are considered so deadly - you can’t sit long on either of those.

So, based on the financial folks at the cancer center, I picked one, and promptly forgot about it; because I’m already in the system there (the receptionists and pharmacy staff recognize me on sight)(which is comforting, until you realize it’s a cancer center, and then the panic briefly cuts in until you remember you’ve gone eight months without regowth or metastastis). I only remembered it when I got a call from the medicaid HMO telling me I should schedule an appointment with one of their physicians. This isn’t a big deal, I just need them to sign-off on any further black magic-based treatments with the Warlocks or Radiation Oncologist.

Now, before I go further, let’s talk about the people who go into medicine. Like anything in healthcare, we tend to give assume that an entire industry is moral, and just; when people go in for a variety reasons (as recently as 20 years ago, the vast majority of medical students said it was for money), and it’s worth noting that cuts across a vast majority of demographics and motives. And, for better or worse, that cuts across vast swathes of competence - for far too many folks, it’s a job - a rewarding job, but just a job. My father recently inquired about board exams and recertification as a way of guaranteeing some basic level of competence from everyone. He’s right, but the key word there is “basic.” Again, “basic” is fine for first aid and most major medical issues; it’s unacceptable if you have a disease with a 90% fiver-year mortality rate.

I bring this up because I think I chronicled my first appointment with my insurance-appointed GP five or six weeks ago and seemed perfectly satisfactory to my ongoing addiction to experimental chemotherapy. I’m certain it was within that time frame, because I had schedule a six-week follow-up. Which, sadly lands on my “week off” chemo. So, yesterday, after infusion #2 for this cycle (for those of you wondering what I’m doing to stay busy during infusions these days, well, rewriting Christmas carols for cancer patients)(”On the first day of chemo, the nurses gave to me, zofran in an IV”). I also convinced dear old Dad to take me out to lunch, because, again, when the Marizomib side effects hit, you do not fee like eating. This was in the neighborhood of the latest addition to my collection of medical people, so I thought I’d reschedule then. And was told by the receptionist to wait for everyone behind me to check in lest they be late for appointments. That would be fine, but it seems a fundamental misunderstanding of how queus work. And, any time post five-ish hours on infusion day, even though zofran might keep me from puking, it does give me an odd, oily, queasy sensation. I think I deserve some sort of gold star for not puking on this woman right away (again, if you have unconventional problems, feel free to start with an unconventional approach)(my next writing project will be titled, “Life Lessons from Necromancers”). I eventually - using the traditional method of looking down the reception counter, noticed someone not otherwise occupied, and manage to get an appointment more amenable to my schedule. For a physical.

Again, I’d love to use some four-letter words here, but even Finnish fails to meet the requirement. Now, it should be noted that, even though I’m well-aware that I’m physically Adonis-like; I am in chemo and recovering from radiation treatment, Radiation Oncologist implied a few months ago that, even though my scan was clean and looked good for someone with brain cancer, anyone unfamiliar with my case would probably freak out about them. Same thing with my abnormal, uh, “lab sample” I wrote about recently - the nurses agreed, a single abnormal test is hardly unexpected toward the end of chemo, especially since I’m now on a diet consisting mostly of protein, fiber, cafeine, and dangerous, experimental substances. However, I’d prefer not to have to point all that out to a new medical person who has the power to yank the plug on me (sadly, my original GP will be on vacation that week. (I’ll also be on Temodar, so there’s a solid chance my brains will be thoroughly scrambled and incapable of comprehension).

ANYWAY… WEIGHT: 198 lb CONCENTRATION: Pretty good, APPETITE: Normal (but this is 24 hours post-infusion. ACTIVITY LEVEL: Not great; the fatigue side effect definitely caught up with me and chewed me up last night. SLEEP QUALITY: Okay. although I’ve noticed that I definitely thrash around on chemo days. COORDINATION/DEXTERITY: Lousy. Thank Gods I don’t need the walker, and I don’t even think I need my magic ankle support, but my left leg is definitely unreliable today. MEMORY: Not bad, although I did forget my sheets were in the wash earlier today (although I recall stripping the bed and tossing them into the washer). PHYSICAL: Tired and kind of wobbly, but still a lot better than this time a year ago.. EMOTIONAL: Okay. It might just be that I spent yesterday next to my zofran-and-CDB salt-lick, but I’m starting to think I might make it through all this somewhat intact. Hang on. Am I really starting to believe my own bullshit? SIDE EFFECTS: Tired, somewhat sore (either chemo or increasing the difficulty of that stupid elliptical), and in the wrong time-zone, but, other than that, not much.  CURRENTLY READING (For Donna): Gonzo Girl, and The Explorer’s Guild (A Passage to Tshamballah)

[hokkaidodo-blog]

there’s snow business like hoe business

In my life so far, there have been many things that I have started to do. Many things that have interested me greatly and captured my intrigue and thus,  I have made it my mission to accomplish said things. This process usually includes equal parts of both impulse buying tat from the Internet that I am convinced will be beneficial to me in some way for my new hobby and also developing slightly obsessive behaviours with regards to the aforementioned new hobby and putting every second of my spare time into it. This undoubtedly all occurs before the dawning realisations that I was, in fact, unfortunately born with the attention span of a goldfish and that either 1) I’m bored shitless of my new hobby and can’t believe I was ever interested in it in the first place,  or 2) I have a huge tantrum because I’ve started something new and difficult for 10 minutes a week but somehow I’m not automatically a pro at it immediately. The third step is the abandonment of my new hobby never to be seen, mentioned or eluded to in any way, shape or form for the rest of my fickle existence. My current list of personal pathetic pursuits includes – but is by no means limited to – the following things:

Learning German. Ask me what I ate for breakfast and as long as it’s cereal or an apple, I can tell you in German.

Dance aerobics classes. Lol.

Intricate adult colouring books. My eyes go fuzzy after colouring one leaf and my friends think I’m mad when I turn around and “hey guys, look at this cool art-nouveau squirrel I just spent three hours colouring in 47 shades of brown.”

Going to the gym. Cried for two weeks solid when I pulled a toe muscle and then was appalled and disgusted when I didn’t wake up the next day after one mild workout with a toned tummy and arms like Popeye.

Eating healthier. People who say they prefer a green smoothie over a share-bag of pretzels and a pot of cheese and chive dip are fake. Steer clear and do not trust.

THIS BLOG. Somehow, it’s been two months since I last posted my last post which ALSO started out similarly by saying something along the lines of “omg lol how has is been so long since I’ve written?!” lol.

Anyway, this time I present to you another smattering of pictures and verbal diarrhoea (is this still verbal?) digital diarrhoea and stories and stuff and a bunch of I-don’t-even-know-what from the past two months.

To start with, the season here turned faster than my stomach when sometimes I would get home from a terribly draining and emotionally tiring day at school of playing with poster paint and lentils in GSCE Art BTEC and ask Mum what we’re having for dinner, to which she’d reply with the dreaded: “mackerel salad”.  One day I was still in my T-shirt and jumper, walking to campus wading through piles of golden foliage and then suddenly two days later and I’m skating to school on sheet ice covered in bruises from spectacular tumbles and a good three feet of snow on either side of me. A lot of my friends in sunny Spain or France or even Tokyo say to me (whilst surprising smug giggles) “how’s Sapporo, Ross? Enjoying the snow?” to which I adamantly reply, “It’s not that cold!” and then rummage for a third pair of socks and my thermal undies. It’s beautiful though and I don’t regret a thing!

Snow business like hoe business, amirite

As for Christmas, – and no I am not a Scrooge – I am not feeling at all Christmassy this year. People still work and have classes on the 25th - which is gross for me - but there are still decorations and huge light displays up until midnight on Christmas Day, when as soon as it is over every trace of the festive season is torn down and everybody gets ready to welcome in the New Year.

“can you take a picture of us, we’re a couple”

This being said, I will definitely miss getting plastered with my Grandma on Christmas eve by glugging a bottle Amaretto and then waiting for her to request that the entire family sings “O Come Let Us Adore Him” in five part harmony whilst accompanied by Grandpa on the stylophone; sitting around in my pajamas on Christmas morning, laughing for thirty minutes because the puppy gets present opening priority and then Mum gets the black bin-sack out because he’s covered the living room in wrapping paper confetti and glitter; and then also eating Iceland out of their entire supply of frozen duck spring rolls, mini pizzas and garlic mushroom bites on Boxing Day, before complaining about how full you are yet still continuing to inhale a quarter pound of the leftover turkey, half a block of cranberry Wensleydale (with pickles), some coleslaw, a pile of bubble and squeak and some Mingles whilst the same annual festive episode of Top of the Pops lulls you gently to sleep with Fairytale of New York and Slade.

OTARU

I didn’t realise how much I missed the ocean until I hadn’t seen it for a couple of months and the sea was longer than a 15 minute drive from my house. Luckily, the seaside town of Otaru is just a train ride away from Sapporo and it felt so good for my soul to be back by the water. (Hippie child alert.)

Otaru is a picturesque little town famous for glassblowing and its beautiful canal which is lit up with candles every year for it’s winter festival. Ironically (yet gruesomely hilarious to me), after visiting the aquarium which is apparently super famous, and admiring all of the fab fishies and strange creatures, we went to a seafood restaurant and had some of the best sushi and sashimi that I have eaten so far. In other news: the demolition of a seven-tier soft-serve ice cream that left me questioning my lactose tolerance; the discovery of yet more face-cut out standees that left us all with a questioning outlook on Japan; and a two-storey shop stocked full of music box pieces. Who knew the demand for that was so high?

“Hey guys, can one of you Google whether or not you can die from eating too much ice cream because I don’t feel all that hunky dory right now”

A bear in his pants holding tissues! Japan!

Yes! It’s meant to be a penis! Awesome!

Why is it that when it comes to telling people about what you’ve been up to that your brain just turns to porridge and you can’t help but reply with the bog-standard “Oh the usual; you know, not much”.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

So, three months in (eek) and what are my thoughts on Japan? Well…

1)      Japanese people (in general) seem to be very organised and structured. Take for example, the rush hour on the underground. In London it wouldn’t be unusual to have an unwashed armpit of a local hipster thrust under your nose on your morning commute whilst a lady next to you gossips loudly on the phone to her girls about the chlamydia disaster that happened with Tony last night. This may or may not be accompanied by the gentle pitter-patter sound of some 90s trance music seeping out from underneath some headphones somewhere; twelve people standing on your foot; a distinctive scent wafting from the gentleman opposite you who forgot to eat breakfast so decided to delight everyone with his loud munching of a Lamb & Mint from The Traditional Cornish Pasty Company; and occasionally the fleeting anxiety that comes with frantically patting yourself down and hoping that you haven’t dropped your wallet.

The Japanese subways are deathly quiet, however. Sometimes it’s peaceful in the morning, and sometimes it’s unnerving. You’re awkwardly scared to breathe in case it tickles someone’s neck and you’re all in a line facing the same way and you daren’t get in the way of the station attendant with the big wooden shield who squeezes you in so the doors can close. There’s no crazy rush or crowd on platforms, just two neat lines and an unsettling calmness for someone who is used to (and who quite enjoys) mild chaos and hecticness.  

 2)      Went to the Asahi Beer factory; the most lit class field trip ever. With free beer. 10/10 would recommend.

3)      Japanese staff in restaurants, ticket offices, libraries etc absolutely will NOT speak Japanese with a non-Japanese person. It’s incredibly frustrating. As someone who’s main focus here is to improve my language skills, it is tough to do so when you struggle to get natives to treat you like anybody else. Whether some Japanese people just assume that there is categorically no way that a non-Asian person could become conversational in Japanese, I have no idea. For example, you will order in a restaurant in near-perfect Japanese to which you are just started at blankly. The waitress turns to my Japanese friend who repeats word-for-word and accent-for-accent exactly what I just said, and everything is fine. This usually continues for a few minutes and each time leaves me questioning my intelligence, my language competency and my foreigner-ness, and also just what do I need to do to try and win over the Japanese? (Video link)

I think that’s it for now. I’m sure I had more thoughts so I’ll try and write them here more often when I remember them (part 2 of me saying that). Nothing much is happening in the next few weeks, it’s that kind of winter jaded-ness that happens every year. BUT – everything is beautiful, I’m still smiling and I’m still in Japan and very lucky to be alive. I’m looking forward to January where things will kick-start again, and I can start travelling and exploring some more. Just got to finish 2017 with as much love as possible and give it a good end.

BONUS PICS: Some pretty skies at the Hokkaido Historical Village and me riding a humpback whale at the museum. You’re welcome.

Every single typewriter stamp from an old Japanese printer press.

I'm putting on my shades to cover up my eyes, I'm jumping in my ride, I'm heading out tonight ;)

[lorelylantana]

Chapter 5: Miscommunication

The next morning a tray was brought up for the three of us to eat, just as Galen had promised. I ate as he checked my leg again.

“I don’t see any problems but I want you to come back in a couple of days just to be sure. Sylphia will be here in ten minutes for your orientation.” Galen finished and rewrapped my wound before returning to his office at the back of the room. Sylphia swept into the room as I set the tray aside.

“Good morning Allie, I hope you slept well. I’m here to show you around if you’re up for it.”

Five minutes later we were walking deeper into the palace, Sylphia explaining and pointing out some things that were of particular interest or importance.

“These walls are made of solid blackstone, which is one of the hardest substances in this world. The first King and Queen ordered the entire palace to be built entirely using this material. They felt that it was important for this structure to stand for strength as well as luxury. You might have noticed last night that almost all of the outside windows are made of colored glass. This tradition started to honor the great battles fought and those who have shaped our nation’s history. Because of this, one common nickname for the castle is ‘The Stained Glass Palace’,

Although the official name is Eagle Bastion, both for its location on top of a mountain but also because eagles tend to make their homes on our battlements during times of peace. The eagle has long been a symbol for whomever sits on the throne as King or Queen, but Spade’s crest consists of a shield held in a dragon’s claws which is a crest you can see above various doorways or arches.” While she spoke, I gazed around the various breezeways and corridors with admiration. Each part of the castle was exquisitely crafted. It was all I could do to pay attention to Sylphia as she continued.

“Now we are entering the North Wing of the castle, which is where you and your fellow Hatchlings will be staying in the duration of your training. In Spade, training lasts over the course of four years, and each year is housed in a different wing. Each year a wing is vacated by the graduating trainees and then is prepared to house the next year of initiates. Because of this system, you will stay in the North Wing your entire stay here. Unless, winds forbidding, you fail and get held back a year. Each day you will have five classes; Magic Theory and Practice, History of Ivaline, Armed Combat, Basic Weaponry Creation and Care, and Unarmed Combat. Each class lasts an hour and a half.” My eyes widened at that, and she chuckled. “Don’t worry, there is little to no homework and I think you’ll find these classes are a bit more engaging than those you are used to.” We entered another hallway off to the side, and found this one lined with different colored doors.

“These are the girl’s dormitories. Each doorway is enchanted so a member of the opposite sex can’t enter.” She turned and gave me a pointed look. “There are also guards on patrol after curfew, so keep that in mind if you have any midnight excursions planned.”  She turned me to a blue door emblazoned with a dragon lily.

“This is your room. There is a set of clothes on the bed, so why don’t you go change real quick before we go meet the others? It would be a welcome change, I must say. I’ll wait out here.” She suggested, and I stepped inside, ignoring the well intended quip.

Through the door was a spacious room containing a four poster bed with a blue comforter and black sheets. The wall opposite of me was lined with shelves and a window seat lined with light, breezy drapes and a vast multitude of cushions. On the bed there was a set of black pants made of a smooth, light material with a matching purple shirt made of the same material. The new clothes felt wonderful after what I had been wearing for three days straight. I also noticed what appeared to be a dyed black leather pad with a strap. After toying with it a bit I realized it was a shoulder pad for Kyrie to sit without tearing into my shoulder. Without the cloak I was wearing before her talons would have poked through my shirt and straight into my collarbone. While it was a small detail to the outfit it was greatly appreciated as I strapped it onto my left shoulder. As soon as it was secure Kyrie took her usual perch by my head.

“Not bad, huh Kyrie?” I said, pleased with how comfortable my new ensemble was.

“I wouldn’t know, I don’t wear clothes. But I must admit this does seem to be an improvement.”

I set my bag down and pulled Belladonna down to bumble about while I brushed the mass of tangles out of my hair and pulled it into a ponytail. When I turned back to the vanity that had been set against the wall to straighten it I stumbled back in surprise. Before, where my eyes were a dark brown they were now a bright violet that popped against my black hair. After a few minutes of staring at my own reflection, I remembered Sylphia waiting outside. I scooped Belladonna over my shoulder and walked out, Kyrie on the padded shoulder.

Once outside I asked Sylphia if there was somewhere I could put Belladonna for the remainder of orientation. She was just a pup and I knew it was only a matter of time before nature took its course. She smiled and lead me up a spiral staircase opening up to a small rooftop garden. I was shocked by the sudden cold that hit me when the door opened. I shivered, but Sylphia seemed unbothered.

“These gardens are for the students to spend a bit of their downtime. It’s watched over by gardeners when unoccupied so Belladonna will be watched and cared for during your classes.” She informed, and I set her down on the grass where she started to run around, delighted by the open area. I followed Sylphia into what seemed like a glass dome, eager to get out of the cold.

In reality the dome was a ceiling to a room down below, and as we descended a flight of steps I could see it was a large circular room filled with soft armchairs and couches. There was a fire pit in the middle of the room, and smaller fireplaces dotted the wall. The chairs closest to the center were occupied with teenagers my age. Across the fire pit I could see Atalanta and Daedalus waving me over. Sylphia saw what they were doing and smiled.

“Why don’t you go join them? Everything else you need to know you can ask them. Besides, the transition will be easier with friends at your side.” I walked over there grinning, glad of the company and of the warmth the fire presented.

A few moments of chatting later, hot chocolate was brought by some of the maids in the castle. We thanked the man who brought ours. The chocolate was smooth and spiced with a hint of cinnamon. It was perfect to go with the cold morning. For the first time in months, I was content.

That thought was jarring. How could I be content when my parents must be worried sick?

“Do you contact your parents? Mine must be hysterical! I can’t believe I just forgot about them! I’m a terrible person,” I almost shrieked, guilt ripping at my insides. Atalanta put her hand on my shoulder to calm me down.

“Don’t worry, you’ve been through a lot, it’s understandable that your parents were pushed to the back of your mind when you were alone in the wilderness. Well,” she amended, eying Kyrie where she sat on my shoulder, “mostly alone.”

“Regarding contacting them,” interjected Daedalus. “I wouldn’t be too worried, there is a postal system that delivers letters to and from them between worlds. They collect letters every Sunday, so if you write it tonight they’ll pick it up in the morning.”

“But I come from a stale world,” I protested, “If I can’t go back home how is a letter supposed to make it through?” Atalanta furrowed her brow.

“That is a problem. Maybe they’ll send someone to the Tower to find your world’s gateway.” Atalanta suggested.

“The what?”

“The Tower of Ivaline, it’s this massive spire in the center of the world. It lies within neutral territory

“Speaking of family members,” Daedalus continued, “How is that wolf of yours?” We spent the rest of the day up in the gardens playing with Belladonna. My cloak was still ripped in some places, but it was warm enough to keep the freezing wind chill at bay. With it I could take my mind off the cold and finally take in the view the rooftop gardens provided. Eagle Bastion was well named. Spending time up here, with the wind through my hair, I felt like I could just step into the sky and soar through the clouds.

That night I sat by the window with a pen and paper, writing to my parents.

Dear Mom and Dad,

I’m sorry I up and disappeared without warning. In all honesty I hadn’t planned it myself, it was just something that happened to me. I want you to know I’m safe.

I wrote about how I ended up in Ivaline and the Forest of Trials, about how everything in this world was different. About Daedalus and Atalanta and my new room at the castle. By the time I was finished, I guessed it was past midnight.

I know you want me to be safe and happy. I’m sorry but I truly want to stay here. I have friends and a place to stay, and I’m really excited about class next week. The palace is beautiful and I love my room and Kyrie and Belladonna. I’ll see if I can come visit you soon.

Love,

Allie S.

I sealed the letter in an envelope and wrote my address on the back and my name on the front. Kyrie came to rest beside me.

“I could carry the letter to your parents for you.” She offered, and I looked at her, surprised.

“You can travel between worlds?”

“A few creatures can. Have you heard of a psychopomp?”

I had, it was a creature or spirit rumored to usher souls to the afterlife, though I don’t know what that had to do with this situation, I motioned for her to continue.

“The truth is not many of us can actually guide souls, what we can do is travel between worlds and sometimes pull people along with us. What most likely happened in reality is that a raven carried someone into Ivaline or vice versa. The post has a lot to deal with and it could take a while for your parents to receive and respond to your letter. I could take it and be back tomorrow with their response.” She finished, and waited for my reply. I was anxious to hear from my parents, so I took her up on her offer. Moments later I opened the window, letting in a frigid gust of mountain air in the process, and Kyrie flew off into the night. I watched her dark figure fade into the sky, and closed the window. I put a cloth over the ball of glowing sand that lit up the room and drifted off to sleep.

“Wake up Allie! We have stuff to do today! No more lazing about the castle for you!” Atalanta’s voice was shrill as she shattered whatever hope I had about falling back asleep. I opened my eyes to see her staring me down. My cloak, which was sent to be mended last night, was under her arm. Vaguely, I noticed Belladonna stir from her place on the windowsill. I sat up groggily as Atalanta busied herself with pulling out one article of clothing after another before finally throwing an outfit in my unsuspecting arms.

“I got permission to skip out on practice to show you the finer points of Spade life today, and I plan to give you the full runthrough before tonight’s game. I can’t do that while you’re in bed so move it.” With that, she spun and walked out so I could get dressed before heading off to who knows where. I hastily pulled on what she tossed at me. It turned out to be a knee length purple dress that went over a black undershirt and leggings. The shirt underneath had long sleeves with fur cuffs to keep my arms warm where the dress’ sleeves cut off at my elbow. I pulled on fur lined boots and was out the door. I sat at my vanity, which I was pleased to find was stocked with cosmetics. I gave myself a light layer and a smokey eye bef i re stepping outside.Atalanta leaning against the wall by my door. We walked down the corridors until we made it to the dining hall for breakfast.

The dining hall in the North wing was spacious and bright, the east wall covered with floor to ceiling windows to let in the morning light. At the end of the hall was a row of tables filled with different types of food to form a breakfast buffet. I selected a variety of fruit and a cream cheese covered bagel as my meal while Atalanta was very generous with the bacon and sausage. I began to question her about what she said this morning as we sat down. Our table was in a secluded corner by a window depicting a naval battle between a lone sailor and a serpent the size of a bull. I could faintly feel the cold seeping through the blue tinted glass as I turned to Atalanta.

“So what did you mean by skipping practice?” I inquired.

“Oh, I’m glad you brought that up, because that’s the main thing I was supposed to teach you. Everyone in Spade is required to participate in one or more of five organizations; the Guild of Craftsmen, the Flock of Songbirds, the Dancers, Muses of Literature, and the League of Athletes. The Guilds deal with any type of physical art, like paintings and carvings. The Flock is the main source of music around here, recorded or otherwise. Dancers are self explanatory. The Muses deal with anything to do with communication, languages, alphabets, you name it, they know it. The League is for anyone who loves team sports.” She explained.

“What if you don’t join an Art?”

“Aside from the social ostracism? Certain privileges get revoked. One of the main one is that you’re not allowed to go to the Festival of Colors, if you want something, you have to work for it.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s one of our holidays. In the spring, just before summer starts, all of the Arts come together to hold a festival. The Guild and the Muses sell their wares in stalls, the Dancers perform with the Flock, and the League holds games for passersby to play. It’s one of the biggest tourist draws of the year.” I listened, fascinated, wondering which one I would join.

“What are you?”

“A Songbird, Daedalus is in the League, and today I’m bringing you to visit the bases of each one here in the castle. I think we should be done visiting them by noon, so we can have lunch for you to decide which one you want to join and spend the rest of the afternoon with them.” Atalanta finished, looking excited for me, and that excitement rubbed off on me and soon I was hurrying after her.

We stopped by the Guild first, since they were stationed in the North Wing and it took us only two minutes to reach their doors. Even the entryway was a work of art, made of metal and the stained glass the castle was so famous for. Instead of the subdued blues and purples the rest of the palace windows seemed to favor, the door housed a rainbow of bright and vibrant colors. The glass depicted a forest of deep greens and browns that rose up to meet high mountains painted orange by the sunset, with pink clouds coming to rest over them. I was struck by the intricate detail that was invested into the door, and on closer inspection I found that even the silver door seemed to be made of vines painstakingly woven together to make the immaculate portal before me.

After giving me a few moments to admire the door, she gently pushed me through into the room beyond. The Guild spanned across several levels, those on the bottom working with metal and glass, in the middle wood, and on the top were the painters and other forms of delicate art. I could see the light of dozens of forges from here where metalworkers and glassmakers pounded and warped their materials to their will. After talking to a few artists, I decided I wanted to move on. Though I greatly admired their work, I didn’t feel a passion for creation these people obviously did.

Next were the Muses in the East Wing, they resided in a grand library built of mahogany paneled walls and soaring windows to let in natural light. There were crackling fires in front of plush armchairs and couches. On one couch I saw a boy and girl sitting together. The girl had her legs tucked in with her knees against the armrest with the boys head in her lap. Both were reading different books but occasionally the girl would lean down and show the boy something she found in her book, or vice versa. They would laugh or nod at whatever they were shown, then went back to their peaceful reading. The sight made me smile, and I thought this might be the place for me.

Not wanting to discount the others, however, I followed Atalanta through a tunnel that eventually opened out into a massive coliseum. In the arena there were trees and rock set up to make the center seem like a real forest. There also seemed to be a series of obstacles set within the foliage.

“It’s for tonight’s Capture the Flag game.” Atalanta said before I could ask.

“All this for Capture the Flag?” I responded, bewildered, and she snorted.

“People here live for the game. It’s the Spade national sport. Tonight is the start of the season. Daedalus is on the team, so we can watch him together, right now they’re just practicing though.”

We left them to their preparation and made our way to the West wing.

“This is my personal favorite, Flock headquarters is right down this hall.” She declared, and I didn’t need to take her word for it, because even though we were a ways down the corridor, I could still hear voices and their instrumental accompaniment float towards us. It was a choir, I found out as we stepped through the doors into a bright cylindrical room. There were no windows along the walls but the ceiling was a glass dome much like the North common room. I could see the walls lined with doors that must have lead to practice rooms for those with louder instruments. A few people in the choir were standing around, taking a break, when one girl started to hum a song. The boy next to her joined in, and soon everyone in the room was singing the same song, filling the room with noise. I turned and saw Atalanta lending her own voice to the sound, until the song ended and she turned to me.

“I would like to spend more time here, but we’re running a little behind and we have to bring you to the Dancers soon if we want to have lunch together.” A few people waved at her as she ushered me out the door, and as we were walking down yet another hallway, something occurred to me.

“Why are the Dancers practicing separate? Why aren’t they all together?” I asked, she thought for a moment before answering.

“I imagine it’s in part because of space issues. Unlike the Flock or Guild, the Dancers need space to move around and fully extend their bodies to perform the dance that they want. Some of their performances involve quite a bit of running and jumping around. The other part is probably because men and women have differently built bodies, so their dancing focuses on different skills. That’s a big part of what dancing is really, it’s flaunting the body’s natural capabilities. Because of this, while they often work together, men’s dancing focuses on strength and force while women focus on flexibility and grace.” She finished her thought as we approached the room. It made sense as I contemplated her answer, it reminded me of a time a few years back when I was watching the Olympics with my mom. I asked her why the women had the different events in gymnastics, her answer was similar to the one Atalanta gave. Thinking about my mother made me feel hollow with homesickness.

This time instead of a door, there was only an archway, letting the music be heard easily throughout the hall. It sounded upbeat, filled with violins and guitars, every so often accentuated by drums. When we peered inside, my breath caught.

There on the massive dance floor, were eleven dancers, all in different colored dresses. They were twirling and stepping completely to the music. One girl, in the center covered in a red dress, moved with her eyes closed. She spun fiercely, never for a moment still. She swung her leg upward in front of her face and brought it sweeping down. As I watched, I felt something in me grow restless, as if by watching these girls beckoned it to join them. The girl leapt through the air and landed in a crouch. The music seemed to fill me, to drag me forward as I took a step. In every place we visited today, I’ve never felt so inexplicably drawn towards them like I was now.

I loved it. I desperately wanted to join them, to spin and wave to the music side by side with these girls. These girls who were so graceful and powerful, and I could be one of them.

“Looks like this place calls to you a bit.” Atalanta spoke softly, but still snapping me out of my daze.

“You should go talk to them. The girl in the red is Fey, she’s the one to speak to if you want to join.”

Just a few minutes later, I was a member of the Eagle Bastion branch of Dancers.

--

I collapsed on the bed, exhausted. After lunch I went to practice with the dancers, it was hectic to say the least. First I had to be fitted for my practice clothes, and then choose the color for them. It turns out that each section of the Dancers consists of no more than twelve people, and traditionally each dancer wore their own color. I was assigned a deep blue, and after that it was nothing but motion. They began by having me stretch muscles I didn’t know existed, and had me do a set of basic dance moves to memorize. They gave me a little leeway on account of my almost healed leg, but not much. This went on until the bell sounded for dinner. Turns out that Fey was an upperclassmen, who lived in the South Wing with the other second years, or Fledglings. She told me to meet with her everyday after class so she could catch me up on all of the dances that we were to perform at the Festival of Colors.

“People come far and wide to see our Dancers, and since we are representing Eagle Bastion we have to be at our best.”

After that I dragged myself to the dining hall to fill my belly before heading out to watch the game. But just as I was about to put out the light I heard a scratching at the window. I turned to see an outline of a bird against the glass, holding something in its talons. As I opened the window I found it was Kyrie, bearing a package the size of my hand accompanied by a black box.

“It took me a while to find where you live, and to deliver the letter to your parents, but I managed. They seemed relieved when they read the letter, so I think they believed you. Granted, there is little else that can explain a missive sealed with wax.”

I tore the envelope, eager to what my parents thought of my situation.

Dear Allie,

We are glad to know that you are safe, and alive. Your father and I were very concerned about you. When we found your letter we didn’t know what to think. We came to the conclusion that despite you not being with us, we know you’re a strong girl and can make your own decisions.

I was relieved to hear that you’re making friends, I knew you were having trouble back at the high school.

We are proud of you.

Love,

Layla and Timothy S.

I sighed and felt a burden lift from my shoulders before I went into the package.

Inside was a chinese dragon made out of copper, with eyes, claws, horns and tail tip made out of bits of ruby. I gazed at it a moment, enraptured by its beauty. It was around the width of my thumb and coiled around itself. When I went to pick it up it came to life, unfurling its body to two feet long when my finger came into contact with it. Before I could react it launched itself onto my forearm and climbed its way up my shoulder and to my throat. I felt it come to a stop as soon as it curled around my neck. It rested with its head just under the hollow of my throat and its tail curling an inch under it.

I looked to Kyrie.

“Well that was unsettling.” I rasped, still shocked by the sudden movement.

“The package isn’t from your parents, a boy saw me as I was about to leave and told me to give it to you. I wonder what its purpose is, and why someone from your world wanted to give it to you.” She wondered, just as amazed as I was. I tugged at it, and found it wouldn’t come off, increasing my anxiety. I found a note at the bottom of the box

Dear Allie Sage,

Although we haven’t had the pleasure of meeting personally I would like to take the opportunity to establish cordial relationship between us in the hopes that in the future we can be close allies. As a show of good faith the dragon now hanging around your neck is a finely crafted amulet, one of the best. With it you needn’t worry about being caught off guard again. Don’t worry you can easily take it off again by running a finger along its bottom jaw.

All the best,

The Pendragon Family

--

The place was packed, but there was a section of seats reserved especially for palace students, so I had no trouble finding a place to sit. Atalanta found me, and explained the rules.

The object of the game was to have at least four of the fifteen players on your team reach the flag. Only practice weapons were used, and once a player was injured, they withdrew from the match. If a player was hit three times in combat with another player, they were captured and sent to the other teams prison. Only one person at a time could escape prison accompanied by an outside teammate. Once the flag was reached, the player was safe unless they moved of their own accord.

Every player was allowed to use their companions, but they were not allowed to interfere with other players, and they were only allowed one animal escort per person.

The flags themselves were put in the same spot every game, but the terrain surrounding it was altered each game to the team captain’s discretion. Granted, the trees planted in the arena stayed in place, but trenches could be dug and barriers erected. Traps were allowed, but if they caused injury, the team responsible had to bench a player.

The game itself began ten minutes after I sat down, Belladonna in my lap and Kyrie on my shoulder. Atalanta pointed out Daedalus, he wore the blue and purple that marked him as a member of the Lailoria Lions, the capital’s minor league team. They were competing against the red and gold Montanaia Wolves, an out of town team traveling from the mountains east of Eagle Bastion.

“He's still a Hatchling, so he can't be directly engaged in combat, but he can be tagged out. Mostly, though, he does reconnaissance. Just watch.” She explained, then the starting gong sounded.

All fifteen players surged into motion from their starting point around their home flag. Five from our team set up a defense while six went into enemy territory. One of the athletes from our team had a panther harnessed to be ridden, and they sped across the field. One of the Wolves had a similar tactic, only they rode an elephant in an attempt to bulldoze across the field. I would have worked, but the Lions had anticipated this and arranged their territory so they were blocked by various obstacles. Our player made it to the flag, and she whooped triumphantly. Daedalus, who had nestled himself in a tree on the edge of the field, whistled one piercing note.

“He’s signaling our successes and losses to the Captain, who makes decisions based on his reports.” Atalanta provided at my look of confusion. Not a moment later, he let out low, trembling call in response to one of our players got sent to the prison with his dog.

The Wolves got a player to our flag, as he had used his hawk companion to spot the clearest route and making a run for it. He was quickly followed by another Wolf. She didn’t have a companion, but she was proficient enough in combat to make up for it.

“They’re beating us.” Atalanta grumbled, and my brow furrowed.

Their lead didn’t last long though, as our captain let out three blaring whistles shortly after. Daedalus leapt down from his perch in the trees and charged towards the Wolves’ prison. The other team had pushed most of their forces into the Lion’s side of the field, counting on the fact that most of our team would be too occupied to make a shot  at their flag, and left Daedalus with a clear path. Once he freed his teammate, they both ran towards the Wolves’ crimson banner unhindered, and grasped the flagpole at the same time.

A bell rung thrice, signaling the end of the game. All over the field, the glow sand that had been illuminating the stadium turned from white to blue and purple, announcing the Lions’ victory. I grinned, no matter where you were, watching your home team win was always satisfying.

--

I woke in the middle of the night. I don’t know what woke me up, but after a few moments I realized I wasn’t going to go back to sleep any time soon. I decided to walk through the palace to help calm me. I stepped out the door and made my way to the garden.  I stood by the railing, feeling the winds whip at my nightclothes. Looking out at the horizon I wanted to go higher, feel the chill of the clear air in my lungs. I went back to the stairwell that lead to the dorms but instead of climbing back down I stepped up to the top to a gothic archway. I walked into what seemed to be an abandoned watch tower. I went to the railing and gazed out over the surrounding mountains. The view was breathtaking. The North Wing was pointed toward the ocean, and from here I saw the sandy beaches that separated the mountains from the water. Unlike the beaches back home, the sand glowed brightly against the dark night, and I guessed that’s what lit all of the rooms in the castle.

“It seems we have a visitor.” A deep voice came from behind me, and I whipped around, thinking it was one of the guards. Instead, my eyes rested on an eagle’s nest.

Apparently the tower was less abandoned then I had originally assumed.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know there was anyone up here.” I moved to leave, but he stopped me with an outstretched wing.

“Don’t be, I enjoy visitors from time to time, it’s been years since I’ve talked to a student. My name is Hawthorne, what brings you up here?”

“My name is Allie, and I couldn’t sleep, and I’m a bit surprised I can talk to you as well, I was under the impression that I can only speak to ravens.” I confessed and I heard a chuckle.

“Many humans with a significant amount of magic power can speak to more than one species, and I sense a great ability sleeping within you, if you don’t mind me saying so.” We talked for a few minutes and I asked him about the dragon around my neck. After speculating as to what it could be I started to yawn, and I heard another low laugh.

“Little Hatchlings should be in bed, but feel free to visit anytime you like. Although I’m usually out hunting during the day, my mate, Ash, will be here. She’s going out for a midnight flight while I watch over the eggs.”

“Why isn’t she in the valley?” I asked, confused, and he seemed surprised as he answered.

“This place is named Eagle Bastion for a reason, this is our refuge. We have watched over the Spade queens and kings for centuries. As for your dragon, I would ask a Muse to help you with it, they usually have a better sense about these things than I do. Now off to dreams with you little Hatchling, or you’ll regret it tomorrow.” I smiled and waved as I descended the stairs. When my hand grabbed the handle to the dorm hall, the dragon around my neck suddenly curled tighter, and through red-tinged vision I saw beyond the door to see a guard patrolling through the hall. With my heart in my throat, I waited until she moved on and the dragon loosened once again before slipping back into my room. It took a few minutes for my pulse to settle once in bed, but after that I quickly descended into sleep.

--

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[cosmosogler]

hawaii part 3

hmm yes it does appear that i left writing the journal off until 11:30. that was a mistake. i got distracted. it’s easier to not think about things than to think about things. it’s... easier to think about other things too.

reading my post yesterday in order to get my bearings i realized how much i dislike the way i “sound.” no wonder everyone treats me like a man baby.

the public beach was fine. i didn’t want to stand around at the hotel and play pokemon all day so i went to a beach with bigger waves with my brother, austin, thomas, dad, and uncle mike. the neighbors came too, later. everyone except me and uncle mike was out in the waves so i just sat in the shade in the soft dirt-sand and talked to mike about cook’s pines, which we had spotted at the very north end of the island. you could see out that far from this part of the beach. we also talked about pigeons since there were a lot of them. we talked a little bit about eve and how, when pounds want to get their animals adopted, they describe the animal using the most exotic breed in the mix. wiley is a “finnish spitz mix.” (look them up they’re super cute actually.) eve is a “greyhound mix,” even though mike said she acts way more like a black lab. he said they’re always skittish like she is. 

i couldn’t really argue with that. it is more exciting to say you have a half-greyhound than a half-black lab. and eve never shuts up when mike is around. she just howls and howls and runs away and howls from the other room even a little while after he’s gone. she’s done that since she was 3. i thought she would get used to him after a year or two, but i guess once she realized he was also her vet she kept a grudge. 

wiley likes him though.

i eventually stumbled out into the waves knee-deep to laugh at the boys and their boogie boards. i probably stood out in the sun for just a little too long. i had been upset that i’d forgotten the sun hat gramma bought for me... i dunno it’s just nice to stand with your feet in the ocean even if you’re not swimming. 

i didn’t stay out for too long though. i mostly had gotten up because my legs were falling asleep sitting in the dirt, and also because i had sat down less than a foot away from an anthill and dropped my shoes on top of it. i went back in the shade and talked to sierra a little bit and played some pokemon.

i don’t remember what we did for dinner after that. it’s kind of frustrating to go to dinners with my family. gramma and sharon heavily favor restaurants we are familiar with over restaurants that are good/are easier for 25% of us to eat at. ryan has the fatal peanut oil allergy, i’m vegetarian, my sister’s got a lot of dietary restrictions and is generally picky, austin’s not allowed to touch nuts since his brother’s so allergic. gramma can’t eat red meat but we go to steak houses all the time. thomas won’t eat anything but hot dogs and sometimes pizza.

the next day was the last day on maui. my sister, claudia, uncle dave, and i broke off from the group to go to the aquarium. i didn’t realize that my family wasn’t joining everyone else for lunch so i didn’t think to say goodbye to anyone when we left the hotel. that kind of sucked. the aquarium was nice though. i sent a lot of pictures with one-liners and snarky comments to asher. i also took a ton of videos, which i forgot to show him when we hung out today.

after that (and some shopping) my sister and i had to wait in the shopping center after dave took claudia back to the hotel. we waited for like 40 minutes for our family to pick us up. we had some ice cream. the car ride over to ihop sucked. it was just the worst. my parents would yell at each other, and then demand unreasonable things from my sister (who had siri open), and then when my sister would get irritated she would get yelled at for raising her voice. my mom and dad acted like she was SO unreasonable for being frustrated with them. “i’m just such-and-such,” they would say, like “just” doing something excuses you from being a dick. “i’m just sayin.”

i hate “i’m just sayin.” it’s dad’s trump card for when he wants to “win” an argument. because if you get mad when someone is “just sayin” words, because “just” saying is so different from “actually” saying, then you are unreasonable and you lose!!!

at ihop i was too sick to eat and my sister was too sick to eat. then about halfway through the meal my brother cried out and put his hands over his eye. i was worried he had gotten hot sauce in it (i noticed the bottle next to his elbow) and suggested washing it out in the bathroom. he and dad didn’t come back for a long time. after we finished eating we dug out my sister’s eye drops and mom basically shot his eye with a jet of saline. also a guy who may or may not have been a tourist was there. he gave me conflicting stories over the span of our conversation. i wanted to focus on my brother but there wasn’t really anything i could do and the guy was very interested in talking to my family.

so then we went to the airport, and i played pokemon while waiting for the plane, which was about 40 minutes late. then we got on the plane and i watched the sun go down and listened to less than a full elo album before we landed on oahu. when we collected our bags and got the rental car my brother complained that his eye still felt like someone was jamming a needle into it and it had been seven hours.

so mom decided it was a good idea to give him one of her oxycodone pills. 

i have some feelings about this. mostly confusion, because i don’t understand why mother would have those pills in the first place. she’s always so harsh when she judges dad’s mom because she’s “addicted to pain killers” and “stole grandpa’s medication before he died” and “complains to the doctor too much so he’ll keep refilling her prescriptions.”

but you know what? 

mom stole my pain killers, my vicodin, when i had my wisdom teeth out. i had to go like five days with just tylenol when my jaw still wasn’t healed enough for me to even eat solids. when i talked to dad about it one time, years ago now i think, he seemed to imply that that was just something she does. 

i’ve met people who are addicted to oxycodone. it’s not a fun time. where the hell is mom getting such a powerful drug? who the hell is giving it to her? she has migraines. but i looked it up just now and oxy is a TERRIBLE  choice for treating migraines. and also it’s super addictive. 

and also i’m a stickler for rules i guess and i was super irritated that mom broke the rules and gave a prescribed medicine to someone who it had not been prescribed to. a powerful one! and she said this might mean she couldn’t take him to the emergency room!

at 11 after we had gotten settled into our new hotel room mom and dad took him to the emergency room anyway. i hope she got in trouble. my brother was super stoned. on the way to the hotel he was asking me stuff like what my major was and where i was going to school. he also made sammie-level bad jokes and laughed at them.

mom complained that we shouldn’t have pushed her to give him one. even though no one had told her to... even my brother was like “i don’t care just do something” at the time. 

so that night i didn’t fall asleep until 1, after my brother got back from the er. he had debris stuck in his eye and it had scratched his cornea. 

i had a dream that the monster didn’t want to kill me. it was after some equipment i had. a while into the dream i realized that not only could i teleport myself (sometimes i can do that), i could send other things away too. actually it was easier to Send Things Away than to teleport myself, which required a lot of brute-forcing my imagination into believing i had taken a huge step forward, sometimes up a wall or through one, instead of just a normal walking step.

it’s literally the best way i’ve dealt with a monster in my dreams basically ever. anyone around me it wanted to hurt, maybe as punishment? send them away. after the machine i had? send it away. “sorry dude, better luck next time.”

there was a lot more to it but it’s hard to explain in words that make sense when put in a sentence together. i wish i dreamed less in fluid images or impressions and more in solid ones.

well, even the solid images don’t always make a lot of sense... they make sense to me, in a weird way, but i can’t figure out how to make it make sense for everyone else. and drawing them is like looking into an infinite fractal. i can never put as much detail on the paper as i saw in my head and then it looks bland and strange and not what i wanted to communicate.

the next day i woke up at like 10:30, which is the latest i ever woke up during the trip. i even turned my alarm off. i felt sick all day. my family left to get lunch and i just stayed in the room because it hurt. in the evening we went to my mom’s cousin’s anniversary house gathering party. this is the cousin my mom doesn’t even like very much, due to gay. 

i didn’t have much food. i mostly talked to my mom’s other cousin and her family, and caught up with some people i didn’t know. the meal was jewish chinese hawaiian. i liked the pasta salad.

by 9 i was too exhausted to talk to anyone any more. i found myself blinking even more owlishly at the host’s collection of mugs painted with the faces of what appeared to be american presidents. there were like 40 of them. i had laughed when i saw them the first time and said “it’s good to have a hobby.” i guess as i got more tired i wanted to say more, but had less to say. so i just looked at them a lot.

i don’t know what i did with all that time. i don’t know what i spent my evening doing. my family was watching a different movie on each tv in the hotel room. we had the two-room setup again, but my brother and i had separate beds this time. it was frustrating because my feet and ankles would get caught in the blanket tucked under the bed. it was too hard to kick the blankets loose so i felt pressed down and restricted and that made it really hard to fall asleep. i have enough trouble getting my arms and legs into comfortable positions while i’m up and about during the day. i spend all night fidgeting and adjusting my weight and yanking my pajama pants around trying to get them to sit right. this happens every night. i’m uncomfortable all the time. my legs just won’t sit right and it feels like if i just kicked or flexed them i could maybe jimmy them into better positions but it never happens. so when i sit i kick my feet around all the time. and when i sit with my hands or arms against a surface i knead at it trying to get my hands! into! the Correct! position!!!

the correct position probably doesn’t exist. i’ve never gotten there before. all i can do is try to loosen up my muscles a little bit so i stop feeling so strained and uncomfortable.

the last full day i spent laying around mostly. i went and looked at the baby seal and took pictures and sent them to asher. i found anny and sarah on the beach but my legs fell asleep while i was sitting under the umbrella with them so i got up and left. i was also getting sunburnt again. i found mom at the hotel restaurant so i got lunch with her even though i didn’t want to. i got a fancy drink with dragonfruit and mango and stuff. i told mom i wasn’t hungry at all but she talked me into a sandwich that was way too big for me to reasonably eat and also like 20 dollars. i barely managed half of it. i gave the other half to dad when he showed up.

then we went to the actual anniversary party at a fancy restaurant. i was too tired to interact with anyone so i sat with my brother and sister and tried to track down a glass of water. my brother ended up with three, mostly as a joke on my part.

this is the story as i understand it. my aunts have been together for 20 years. marriage was legalized between 3 and 4 years ago, and they got officially married a few weeks after the law passed. we were here to celebrate their “anniversary,” though it may have just been the best time of year for everyone to travel. there were a lot of cute and touching speeches. i always enjoy uncle len’s terrible, terrible poetry. it’s actually better than mine at least.

hmm, well, maybe they’re about the same quality now that i’m thinking about it.

the food was very interesting. i was told the chef said he would have something “interesting” for me since i think i was the only vegetarian. i got some kind of briny rice with like a creamy green sauce. it was topped with asparagus and some little tomato cubes. and also really spongy looking mushrooms. and a cracker made out of cheese. i think it was asiago.

it was ok. i was tolerating it pretty well until i picked up a big mushroom stump and tried to eat that. the effect was immediate. i near gagged on how spongy and salty it was. it tasted like the ocean. the last time i accidentally swallowed ocean (a few days previously) i had thrown up immediately. as had my brother. we’re cool like that.

after that i wasn’t interested in eating any more. i had some of the dessert but didn’t really enjoy it that much. i think if i was feeling better i would have liked it more.

don’t tell no one, but we had assigned seats. when i got over to the table with my brother and sister i saw that i was assigned next to dad. i swapped my name card with my second cousin’s so i could sit next to my brother instead.

there were three performing sisters supplying the party with music. they were pretty good! when they came over to our table and asked for requests i said “please god anything but over the rainbow” and they laughed. they played some songs that their mother wrote. but at the end they made us all hold hands and sway together and sing aloha oe. i was bummed about that, mostly because i didn’t want to be standing, partly because i didn’t know the words, and partly because i really didn’t want to hold hands with anyone.

i had a lot of trouble falling asleep at a reasonable hour that night. i had more dreams, and i was thinking about them the next day, but i don’t remember what they were any more. the ride to the airport was stressful. i was crammed in the back with all the suitcases and every time we made a sharp turn i’d get squashed or knocked in the face by the suitcase’s wheels. i ended up getting something like chocolate chalk on my fingers trying to buckle my seat belt and i was upset about that the whole ride.

i texted with asher for a while. i don’t think he was doing so hot but he heard me out which was nice of him. i was looking at a billboard while we were stopped at a gas station and i texted “it’s kind of surprising how little matters in life when you think about it.”

i’d been thinking about that for over a week at that point. so few things actually matter. i was trying to make a list and i could only really think of one thing. being able to see the sky matters.

i also said it was really a relief to look at something and say “screw it, i don’t care about this any more, i’m going to stop putting any effort into it.” because, like, it saves so much energy to not put effort into things you don’t care about! why waste your time on crap that doesn’t matter? 

i mean, sure, if you care about something, be tenacious as hell. but if it doesn’t matter? why am i still trying? why not try at something that does matter?

what i’m getting at here is that i don’t care about being friendly with dad any more. he never apologized or mentioned it or did anything. he barely looks at me. if being embarrassed or being the authority or whatever is more important to him than i am, then screw it! i don’t care! i don’t HAVE to care.

so that’s the hawaii lesson. you don’t have to care. you can choose to care, but you don’t have to.

on the flight back i did nothing but fish for bottle caps for basically six hours. i got up to use the restroom and i did doze for about 20 minutes at the start of the flight. 

it wasn’t really just fishing for bottle caps. i never just fish. that’s boring. i was listening to music and fishing for bottle caps on the side to keep my hands busy. i was barely even paying attention. i spent a lot of time thinking about random stuff. like animorphs, or doing a mental review of one of the comics i’m reading, or wondering about recent developments in another. i also spent actually more time than i should have wondering what the guy next to me was thinking. i mean i was playing what was clearly pokemon, but all i was doing was running back and forth and fishing up pokemon that i ran away from. 

i got nine bottle caps.

we landed around 10:30. baggage claim was normal amounts of crowded and stressful. dad missed the terminal’s curb when he drove over to pick us up and had to spent 10 minutes going all the way back around the airport to try again. it was over 100 degrees even though it was the middle of the night. the car was crammed the whole hour back. we decided to stop at carl’s jr for dinner at 11:30 and i got really sick from the grease. we got home at 12. i putzed around on the internet until 1:30, and then i took a really long time getting ready for bed because i felt disgusting and i wanted to wash off more than usual, and then i couldn’t fall asleep because my brother was screaming at the computer and stuff.

in the morning i went downstairs to go to my doctor’s appointment after sleeping for 5 and a half to 6 hours. after waiting for 10 minutes for dad to get ready to leave, i finally asked when we were heading out because i had no idea where this office was or how to get there. he leaned in real close to me and growled “i NEVER said i would take you ANYWHERE.”

the end!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[hrk297]

Jack Harlow Concert Recap

I’ve been pretty uninspired and overwhelmed the past few weeks and my constant input has definitely been affected because of it. I actually typed out a whole music review including albums by Anderson .Paak, Jaden Smith, and Lido but it unfortunately it got deleted before saving it as a draft/posting it. I tried to rewrite it but it sounded less passionate and more like I was trying to regurgitate what I had written originally- so I scraped it. 

I figured to catch me up on my weekly input I’d write a little review/recap of the last 2 concerts I attended which happen to align with the missing weeks of input. 

August, 2018: My best friend picked me up one day in August and played the song PICKYOURPHONEUP by Jack Harlow. I didn’t think much of it until it played again. And then again. I asked her “so, we’re just gonna keep listening to the same song huh?” because typically when this happens it just means she forgot to put her phone on shuffle. She remained unwavering as she said, “yeah”, in response before adding: “I love this song”. She played another song off his Loose album after that fourth play of PICKYOURPHONEUP and I immediately realized this kid was special. I got home and listened to almost nothing but his projects for the next 3 weeks. 3 weeks is a long time to listen to an artist without getting sick of their sound, at least for me. 

October 20, 2018: A couple weeks into October, Harlow posted a picture on instagram featuring his Loose Tour dates. I screenshotted it and sent it to my best friend and we spent the next 20 minutes deciding if I should go to Boston or if she should come to New York based on what days worked for us. Ultimately, we ended up getting tickets for his NY show on the 21st of November. The next month was filled with anticipation as we’d constantly share his posts with each other and talk endlessly about our personal desired set lists. I even ended up tweeting at him telling him we’d dress up as stewardesses as a reference to his lyric, “I got a crush on a stewardess, her outfit got something to do with it.” Now, my best friend and i have been to many concerts together, typically for more well established artists who have stronger fanbases so I think part of what was so thrilling about seeing him was that it meant we were catching a star before the hype. 

November 20, 2018: I had a Computer science exam at 12:30pm that I absolutely failed. I think I walked out of the room with a solid 14/100. Michelle (my best friend) had a 12 hour long period of interviews for her professional years. She hops on the 8pm bus from Boston to New York and arrives home around 2am as I fall asleep while decompressing from my headache of an exam. I know we are both still super excited for the day ahead of us despite the overwhelming days we just had.  

November 21, 2018: My alarm goes off at 9:30am. I consider hitting snooze and falling back asleep like i do every day of the week but I cant, this morning i actually have the drive to get up. I havent seen Michelle or been to a concert/show in over a month. So I get up, realize I dont know what to wear and facetime her. The next 40 minutes is spent cracking jokes about what we’re going to say to make him fall in love with us. We plan to leave our suburban town at 12:30 in hopes of being at the venue by 2pm. Doors open at 6:30pm. We’re a bit dramatic. We reach the venue and are the only ones in sight for the show, we realize its way too cold to stand outside for 4 more hours so we go to starbucks, insomnia cookies, marshalls (3 times, it was warm), and a couple other random stores before finally deciding to head back to the venue around 4:30. around 5, we see his sprinter van and a few members of his team are moving boxes of merch into the venue. We patiently wait, speaking softly while asking each other if we think he’s also in the van. Finally, after what feels like a half hour, we see a tall white boy with curly hair walk out of the van. We expect him to at the very least stop and greet us, but he walks straight into the venue, offering a weak, “sup y’all” with a hint of his Kentucky accent. We wait for the door to shut before looking at each other in shock. That was not the energy we expected out of an up and coming rapper. Its evident we’re both a bit discouraged and as we linger in the dissatisfying encounter, we see him and his best friend walking out again, not offering a single word this time. The next fans to join the line arrived around 5:30pm, they were a couple who immediately started a conversation with us despite their slightly standoffish demeanor. They tell us that they saw him live over the summer at a festival and after his set and they got the chance to speak to him. They said he was super sweet which restored some faith within us again. Maybe the Kentucky boy just really cant stand the cold and wanted to rush into the venue. 30 minutes prior to doors, Harlow and his friend come back, this time he has a girl under his arm who is not his girlfriend, the line which has accumulated has a moment of silence as they walk in. Once the clock finally hits 6:30, it begins to snow a little and the line passes comments about how annoyed we are that we arent being let in yet. His younger brother and a couple of his friends show up outside the venue and are immediately let in by his best friend. At this point, the overall experience is at a 6/10, max. Between the cold weather and energy we received from Harlow, the only redeeming things are the fact that I’m with my best friend and the company of the couple who joined us on line. 

6:42pm: the doors to the Mercury Lounge open and we scan our tickets. We make our way to the dead center of “barricade” and wait while we defrost. We weren’t anticipating enjoying the opening acts as we couldn’t find their music on any streaming site prior to the show, and granted the first act was a bit messy as he constantly began inviting his friends on stage, goofing around more than they were really performing but nonetheless the energy was exciting. The second act was truly enjoyable and I’m sure I’ll be looking out for his releases on spotify. I checked my phone for the time and realized it was almost show time. The music started for his song SUNDOWN as he shimmied on stage with his signature intro. We knew every word. Behind him, his best friend was recording the whole thing on a camcorder, mouthing along the lyrics. Despite not having much to say inbetween songs, let alone allotting time to even say anything between songs, Harlow’s performance was exactly what we thought it would be. Aside from the random “louisviller” as she called herself, who kept asking me questions about my height during his set while sprinkling in the fact that she knows Jack from Kentucky, his stage presence and connection with the crowd brought the experience up to an 8/10. He sang some of his OG songs and painted his face with a smile as he listened to the crowd sing along to even his lesser known stuff. A sense of pride clearly overtaking him- and rightfully so. Although the encounter with him earlier left a bitter taste in my mouth, hearing his lyrics about struggle and work ethic live reminded me why i admire him, and why i was so quick to become a fan. Once the show was over and he came back out for another round of SUNDOWN as the encore, we made our way to the merch table where I complained about how much I hated the design of the hoodie and refused to give in and buy a matching one with Michelle. The show ended around 9:30pm and we got back to our hometown around 11pm before taking a drive to our favorite place to eat. There we ate and discussed our experiences, comparing opinions on his performance and admitting that we were both still in love with him despite our rough first encounter. A perfect end to an eventful day. 

[eleanorblogs]

Summer! And beyond…

I’m not sure how to keep re-starting these posts. Would it be cheesy to say that I’ve missed you? I’ve missed writing freely and blurting my mind out for anyone who would like to read. And it makes me sometimes feel like I need to give my readers an apology. (I’m sorry!)

It seems that I leave for a few months...and then I’m back...and then I go again. It’s becoming a pretty recurrent cycle and I never intended it to be this way. I’ve started a Creative Writing course now at my first-choice university, so I’m writing all the time. But I’ve never forgot about this blog. This is a hugely positive part of my life and I always will come back to it.

What I’ve realised over these past few months, even these past few years, is that the world can be so daunting sometimes. The world is hard. You probably don’t need me to tell you that. And I don’t mean hard as in how the earth beneath us is rock solid, but hard as in how you cope with events going on in the world. Within only a few weeks, most of my friends left for university, all travelling to a variety of places around the UK. I believe I was the last to venture off, and I moved an hour away from my home not knowing anyone on my course.

In the summer I forgot all about how truly emotionally and physically challenging the world can be. Now I’m back in education for the fourth time in my life I’ve realised once again...it’s fucking hard. I’ve been in university over a month now. I’m just four weeks away from finishing my first semester and I’ve spent half of my time here trying to settle in. The facts for this are: I’ve never moved away from home before, I haven’t travelled alone before, I have left all of my college and high school friends in hope to meet new people...and the real biggie is that I have started a degree, in which three years’ time I am determined to persevere into the work field of my dreams.

The four months of the summer was beautiful, wonderful and carefree. If I had a choice, I would go back there a million times and forever. But my biggest dream is only to be achieved through working my hardest at university. I’m ecstatic I’ve got this opportunity here and I would never have turned it down. As much as I miss home, I am happy here. With all honesty, I have been lucky enough to travel back to my parents and loved ones four times over the past month and a half, and I must admit it's helped me hugely when curing homesickness, but eventually travelling back to university can be the worst!

Living on a village campus has its perks though. I always feel safe when travelling back from the city as I’m dropped off inside the campus, and I am a literal fifteen-minute walk from the furthest place away from my flat. It’s not possible to ever stop missing the lifestyle of having pets running around and filling you with joy though. I don’t think I’ll ever stop missing that. (That was another perk of summer - not only been around friends and family, but always having time for my dog and cat...I miss them both all the time.) Even my boyfriend’s pets, I wish I could bring them all here with me.

Although university was the perfect choice for me, if anybody else would want the university experience I would advise: appreciate your summer while you’ve got it! Appreciate your friends...your carers...your cat and your dog (or your lizard, same goes!) and please note that this will be a drastic change to your life. But if you’re doubting yourself, remember that you are capable, that the homesickness won’t last as long as you think...and there is always time for a trip back home. You will meet amazing people at university just like I have. And maybe, you never know, your university experience may just be as amazing as your summers. I’m still waiting to confirm that.

Till next time…

Ellie

PS. If you’re drinking alcohol at university please be careful, drink lots of water, protect your friends, eat toast to settle the stomach and have a great night. ALSO, watch your drinks. Not everyone in the world is your friend.

Oh, try and smile at everyone you see. Everyone needs a friend at university as it can get very lonely sometimes. Don’t worry about looking creepy, most people don’t see it that way. A quick smile brightens someone’s day every time.

 Lots of love.

[onlinemarketingcamp-blog]

10 WordPress Blogging Tips Newbies Desperately Need to Know

These WordPress blogging tips for beginners will help you format your posts properly, create good blog post titles, formulate a social media strategy for your blog, choose a good blog theme, optimize your site, and so much more!

Lauren and I (Alex), at that moment, sat in the exact same seats that many of you are in now…

Bouncing from website to website on the interwebs, looking for anything we could find about WordPress blogging tips and how to make money blogging.  Desperate to find some good and credible information we felt like we could really trust.

What happened during our search?

Not much.   Every website we found either seemed too vague or like the author didn’t have any actual experience with starting a blog.

We discovered that good information was hard to find, and we had to rely on a tremendous amount of trial and error in the beginning.

And despite our constant fumbling over ourselves at every turn, we still built our successful wellness blog Avocadu.com to making $103,467.98 it’s first year.

We’ve now gone on to making $20,000 – $30,000+ a month blogging (depending on the month) just from Avocadu.

And it was from fumbling all over ourselves that we learned some important WordPress blogging tips we think you REALLY need to know.

So don’t make the same blogging mistakes we did, and use these WordPress blogging tips as a fast way to transform your blog and engage your audience better.

There’s no such thing as a perfect anything when it comes to blogging. There is no blogging test you can pass or achieve a 100/100 on. It just doesn’t work like school or college (nor does 99% of real life).

Lauren and I got hung up on trying to perfect our blog at every corner…

The perfect about me page Blog name Blogging niche Header image Opt-in Sales page Etc. Tragically, we spent HOURS working on perfecting everything without knowing the harsh reality of how blogging really works…

Real talk, sista:

If you post regular helpful blog posts and are able to get people to read and enjoy them, you have won like 85% of the battle.

It really has nothing to do with how perfect your blog looks or how amazing your sales page is.

As a beginner, that is your job.  Write consistently, and get loyal readers.  It’s waaaayyyyyy more important than having the perfect about me page.

You’re basically a legend if you can get anyone to read and comment consistently on your posts, truth be told.

So focus on that.

Nothing you make will ever be perfect.

You’ve got to leave behind the perfectionist mentality and focus more on doing and putting yourself out there. More on content creation and less on sparkle.

Facts tell and stories sell. Lauren and I were both born as facts and figures people.  She’s a former Certified Public Accountant, and I aced the math portion of the ACT without a calculator (I forgot it).

We understand the numbers and facts.

Telling someone the 15 reasons to stop eating sugar and citing a bunch of studies about why sugar is bad for you is easy for us.

It makes sense!  We’re like “See people! Look at the evidence! Sugar is bad!!”

Our people responded: **Yawn**

We just didn’t get it.

It was only much later into blogging that we found out that the key to captivating your audience lies in the stories that you tell and weaving in your experiences with the message.

spongebob story time So in our second blog, Create and Go, that is what we focus on.  You’ll notice that the introduction in most of our posts weaves in our story and how blogging changed our lives.

And Create and Go has really been blowing up lately! 😛

It’s the stories and the experiences that people talk most about.  We have learned that before we sit down and write any post that we need to clarify what story we’re trying to tell first.  

Your blog posts shouldn’t look like this. Do you want to know what’s really hard to read? A long paragraph like this. One that is huge and the text is long and the sentences are run on and on and on. Even if you start out with a compelling first sentence, eventually people are going to get tired. It’s just too much of a task to take on to read this entire thing. It feels like it’s going to be a huge undertaking to read, and frankly “ain’t nobody got time for that!” So please, unless you are a writer for the NY Times or moonlight as Steven King’s Son, do not write blog posts like this. Break them up into only a couple sentence chunks at a time. Underline stuff. Bold Stuff. And start sentences with “and” just to piss the grammar Nazis off. It’s ok. This isn’t English Comprehension, and I’m not your teacher. There are no rewards for structure and grammatical finesse in the game of becoming a successful blogger. Yes, grammar matters. You don’t want your audience to think you’re stupid, but don’t worry about perfection. The only one who is rewarded is the one that effectively communicates their message with their audience. So make things fun and enjoyable to read, and you will be rewarded!

Headlines are the most important part of what you write. If people read your headlines and don’t click on them, you don’t have any readers. If you don’t have any readers, your blog can’t make any money. And if you’re not making any money, you have a hobby and not a successful blog. Crazy but true story:

There are people being paid MASSIVE salaries at companies like Buzzfeed, Upworthy, NY Times, and others – just to come up with compelling headlines.

That’s their job.  Every media outlet with any success has realized the importance of great headlines and are paying accordingly.

As a newbie WordPress blogger, here are a couple tools you can use to analyze your headlines:

Co-Schedule Headline Analyzer co schedule headline analyzer wordpress blogging tipsSave One of the best beginner-friendly tools you can use.  Just put in your name and a little information about yourself to get started plugging in your headlines.

Co-Schedule then analyzes the headlines and rates them based on a few categories.  For reference, this post got a score of 66.

Advanced Marketing Institute Headline Analyzer This tool I prefer over all others, but it is more advanced.  They analyze your headline based on the emotional values and triggers in the actual headline itself.

30%-50% is a good score for most professional headline writers. Anything at 60%+ is something only the most gifted wordsmiths will accomplish.

I’ve only achieved about a 60% with one headline before: 101 Fun and Popular Blog Topics That Actually Make Money

For reference, the headline in this article got a 44%, but if you are just starting out, a 15%-30% is great!

Keep social media SIMPLE (for now). Internet Marketing Gurus: “Be everywhere!”

Us: “Naw dawg.”

I’d rather be right where I need to be.

Avocadu.com started with us trying to do everything. Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.

It ended up being a huge cluster eff of mediocrity, and that mediocrity didn’t stop until we switched all our focus and energy over to mastering Pinterest.

Over time, with all our research and hard work invested into ONE platform, our account began to grow fast and our blog along with it. We became so good at Pinterest, people couldn’t help follow us.

Only after we got good at Pinterest did we decide Youtube would be our next big thing. We actually created a completely separate channel from Avocadu called The Health Nerd.  

The Health Nerd YouTube ChannelSave

This Youtube channel reached over 100,000 subscribers within its first year because we used the crazy amounts of Pinterest traffic we were getting to leverage it and give it a fast start.

That fast push really helped, and we are doing the EXACT same thing with our Create and Go Pinterest Account.

We are using it to leverage the foundations for our Create and Go Youtube Channel.   And it’s WORKING! We have reached over 4,000 subscribers in the last few months.

I’m not saying you have to do Youtube and Pinterest or only Pinterest. What I am saying is that getting good at social media and leveraging it has really worked for us.  

There is a reason for that.  One day, it will be HUGE with a massive loyal following, but only after we build a big Youtube base to support it.

Social media works far better when you initially focus on just 1-2 platforms, and then you use the success to leverage other accounts and endeavors.

Get a solid theme. Getting a good WordPress theme is the difference between driving across USA in a used red pickup vs a yellow Ferrari.

Yes, the used pickup (also lacking AC) will save you a few bucks and eventually get you there, but it will take much longer. You’ll have all sorts of random malfunctions and headaches to deal with along the way.

Your canary yellow Ferrari will get you there in a third of the time with half the headaches.

Lauren and I hunted for a theme for a LONG time before we found one we liked.

Avada Twenty Sixteen Twenty Seventeen Thrive Themes BeTheme Best Enfold Genesis Divi We’ve tried them all…

Without a doubt, the best place to start a blog for beginners is with Divi Theme.

Original Article Source: https://createandgo.co/wordpress-blogging-tips/

[the-scot-blog1]

Today, my social media accounts are filled with memories.

Collages, text posts, pictures; all full of bittersweet tokens from former classmates as we said our final goodbyes to our school years. There were tears, embraces, and an emotional serenade from our Head Teacher. I never thought I would be swaying with my phone torch flying in the air to a balding man’s rendition of Oasis’ ‘Don’t look back in anger’.

For me, it was one of the most challenging days of my life.

The year group had turned out in full, clad in spandex and red capes to tie in with the superhero theme of the day. A super send-off, if you will.

I saw this as an opportunity to execute a pun that I had waited six years to make. For the entirety of my school life, I had been hit with an onslaught of nicknames: Smelly Ellie, Elfnr, Smeleanor, Duffenshmirtz (that was a particularly odd one, I have to admit). But the name I loved most, or rather the one that I could tolerate more than being compared to pungent stenches or evil cartoon masterminds, was Duffman.

And so that is exactly who I portrayed as my superhero alter-ego. A beer-drinking, hip-thrusting, muscley cartoon character with a proclivity for shades and the colour blue – in all honesty, it sounds a lot like regular ol’ me.

Anyway.

Thinking back to that day, I was in a strange place. I was wearing shiny Doc Martens – a gift from my then-boyfriend who was never too far away from my side the entire day. I was surrounded by a group of friends who I had known for around three years, and surrounded by a year group that I had gone through almost all my life with. But underneath the laughter, high-pitched signing and really awful dancing, I was sad.

I had firmed my choice for university but was suddenly in mid-crisis about my excitement to go. I was feeling a nervousness about the future that I had never felt before – I had always been completely sure about what I wanted to do with my life, but now my ambition was faltering, and I had no idea why.

So when we raced down the corridors to reach the crowds gathered in anticipation of the final countdown, I didn’t mind that I almost missed it. I didn’t mind that I was too out of breath to shout the final numbers along with the rest of the school. But I did mind the crippling sensation that gripped my stomach when I exited the revolving doors for the final time, and the watery smile when I said goodbye to the friends I would more than likely see in days to come.

Although it was our final day, we still had exams to sit in the coming month. But they were over just as quickly as they began, and I found myself drifting from people I once called my best friends. I was falling out of love in the most horrible way, and distancing myself from a boy I had spent three years with.

Graduation came, and amongst the shakiness I felt walking up on stage to shake hands with the Head Teacher and accept the shield for leadership, it was a weirdly triumphant day.

Prom was next, and with it came some sloppy steak pie and blistered feet. It was the last full day I spent in a proper relationship.

School was officially over after that, and I had hardly even recovered from my teeny hangover before I was plunged head first into the adult world.

So I did what any normal person would do – I packed my bags and ditched Scotland for a month of travelling in Australia. It was terrific; I met up with my brother who I hadn’t seen in around a year and we spent a month laying on beaches, touring the Gold Coast and passing out after nights spent giggling at bars and trying (and failing) to talk about the meaning of life.

Sydney. June 2016

Sydney. June 2016

Although I returned without a tan, I came back to Scotland as an entirely new person. I had finally felt what it was like to be independent – with nothing to tie me down to any specific place, I came out of my shell in Australia, spontaneously planning day trips and not caring what time I would come home. And so I knew what I had to do the minute my plane touched down.

It was the next day, and I had tears streaming down my face when I closed his front door behind me. After three years, it was time to call my relationship quits. My time spent abroad had taught me not to let anything – or anyone – hold me back. I wanted to completely reinvent myself – I had an entirely clear slate, and I wanted to begin writing my story alone.

I decided it was best to distance myself from my friends, who I was now sharing with the guy I had just left. It seemed to be the best move – I had friends in other circles, but it seemed as though his options were limited to our immediate friend group.

I lost a great friend in that same week, stemming from a drunken mistake and a showing of true colours come morning. But I found that I didn’t have anybody to talk to about how low I felt.

Conflict had arisen between myself and former friends, and although some made me feel welcome, it was time to move on. Bitchiness began on both sides, with Twitter being used as a catalyst to express feelings rather than confrontation and talking in person. But soon the time for reconciliation had passed – we had reached the point of next to no return, and I found myself well and truly alone.

I began working behind the counter in the nearby McDonald’s, where I met some pretty great people. There was the guy who always asked why I read on my breaks and the girl who said my butt didn’t look as big in my trousers as hers did. I still don’t know whether that was a compliment or not. I worked there for two months, earning a semi-decent wage and using it to fund my obsession with food and books.

I gained a whole load of weight in those two months, what with the free meals on my McDonald’s shifts and the murderous hours spent sitting in my bedroom doing absolutely nothing. I felt myself slowly slipping into a depressive state, with a sense of sadness I hadn’t felt since my earlier years at school. But the worst of it was I couldn’t open up to anybody about it.

I was hung-over as hell when I applied for a job at a Scottish television firm. It was a spontaneous decision – a decision that took around six hours to complete.

I’m not ashamed to say that I completely forgot about my application after it was sent. I had only found out about my dream job on its deadline, and I had accepted the fact that I was probably already at the bottom of the pile, ready to be chucked into the bin when another applicant was chosen in my stead.

I focused all my energy onto university; I was starting in less than two weeks time and had only bought half of the syllabus and didn’t nearly have enough books or sticky notes. I was browsing for the third text on my list when I got the call inviting me for an interview at the job I had almost forgotten about.

It was as if I was woken up from a month-long sleep. My stomach was filled with an excitement and anticipation that I hadn’t felt since my godson was born. Nothing had gone right in my life for several months and yet there I was, sitting on my blue spinny chair with the biggest grin on my face.

The interview came and went three days after the phone call. I had spent three hours deciding on an outfit from a choice of a few black tees and black skinny jeans before I realised I needed more clothes. My depressive state had affected the way I dressed, acted, felt – I hadn’t taken more than five minutes of my time to work on my hair in months.

  After the interview, there was another waiting spell. There were other applicants to be interviewed, they had said. My lack of confidence came back in full force, and my elation was soon replaced with resignation at not being good enough to act on my dreams.

But this was not to last. The day my phone broke was the day that HR was trying to call me to confirm my acceptance of the position. When they eventually got hold of me, I cried. I cried for a solid day, and it was as though each tear that fell was taking with it every depressing thought, every ounce of anxiety and every bit of self-hatred I had for myself.

So here I am now.

I’m sitting on my lunch break in the middle of April, sipping on a kale, apple and lime smoothie and laughing when I remember how I used to be.

Since September, I’ve worked in my dream position for over eight months. I’ve made friends with people I had only ever seen on television or who I only knew from the tiny Twitter icons on my computer screen. I am eating healthier, and have managed to lose a drastic amount of weight from constantly walking and doing the occasional gym session. My skin has cleared, and I cut my hair in a way that everybody always said would never suit me, but I’ve never been more in love.

I’m more expressive, and I’ve taken to initiating conversation instead of shying away from even the slightest hint of social interaction. I laugh louder and no longer cover my mouth to hide my wonky teeth and tiny lips.

I reconciled with my best friend, who I hadn’t spoken to for around half a year after a particularly nasty falling out the year before.

I paid for my entire family to go to Disneyland and I didn’t have one ounce of buyer’s regret. We spent a fantastic week there, even though I forgot to bring a pair of shoes.

I was there for my family when we found out my brother has cancer, and I managed to put a family feud behind me to help support them.

I haven’t been in a relationship for almost a year now, and I’ve never felt more committed in my life. I’ve thrown myself into work, photography and writing, and I can’t help but feel completely and utterly proud of myself.

Ever since I left school, it’s been quite a journey. But after the heartache, loneliness and depression, I came out in a new form; a form I had only ever dreamed of achieving. And I can’t wait to look back like this again next year, and see where on Earth I’ve ended up.

I left school a year ago today. What’s happened? was originally published on Ellan

[fieldworkterm2017]

Summative Post

We’re back.  Campus is buzzing and busy again.  It doesn’t feel like I never left.  Campus sans-students is somewhat of a different universe than Bennington during a semester.  There will definitely be times I miss the cold, quiet emptiness.  It was peaceful, and I felt like I had both the world and in other ways my day more to myself.  

But there’s nothing wrong with a campus full of friends and peers again.  

My FWT this year was two-fold, with 105 hours devoted to these two positions:

1:  

Wrote, refined and delivered a one-hour workshop on consent and communication.

I began in the Fall, asking the intended audience essentially “Do you want this?”  Upon hearing yes, I gave myself two weeks to write the thing, spent the following three refining the writing, building out slides and sending it around to call out what I missed.  I rehearsed, made last-minute improvisations when tech needs fell through and gave the darn thing.  I now have a written start, a beginning model to ground later work.  

What’s difficult now is that I feel the work requires more people.  It would feel stronger and more appropriate coming from a small group of 3-5, rather than just myself.  In fact I feel this by now with all my sexual health work.  The logical next step is the begin developing that team, but that’s not so easy.  Particularly not when many of my closest co-workers have long graduated and BeWell long dissolved.  Mostly, it’s another initiative on top of what I thought I’d be doing already so it’s just unfortunate.  But I’ve known this for a while.  There is no reason for me to be doing sexual health work by myself.  It’s not a reflection of my ability or uniqueness, rather my failure to recognize and engage the other people who share my interests. So we’ll see what happens.  

This project was only half of my FWT, however.  I haven’t written much about the other bit so here’s that:

2:

I gave myself the first two weeks and the last week to write the workshop, and in between I was helping Bill Scully write a speech.  Bill managed to measurably improve riverine habitat as a consequence of re-developing a small-scale hydro dam.  In March he goes to Boston to speak on how he did it, and how ongoing and persistent resistance from environmental groups is beginning to amount to a climate-denier stance.  

For the middle month of FWT and continuing still, I took a general assistant type of role. I organized his writing into the outline we’re using now, built a presentation, took care of logistics and tech needs with hosts and did research to ground comments on climate change.  As I did this, we met regularly to work through what he wanted to talk about and refine our talking points.  

I went through the classic FWT surprise of my boss routinely asking me what I thought was best, and me having good answers.  It’s been good, forcing me to elevate my concept of self a bit, while also noticing all the ways I had been at that point already and not known it.  

In addition to these, I spent another winter cooking, exploring and enjoying the quiet snowy nights. I successfully made a practice of cooking a week’s worth of food on Sunday or Monday evening, saving a significant amount of time, energy and money.  In particular this meant fourteen solid days of eating a delicious and vegetable-heavy lightly-fried rice.  I will be doing that again.  

Almost forgot:  on Saturday I return to the world of D&D, where I am currently at 1 hp and my friend just lost a leg.  

Byebye,

Liam