#also what if i tried to put work into my long form/essay blog again

[killbaned]

apologies for Being All Over and OffTM rn my brain is still kinda firing rn despite me being tired going into my last day of work, it’s like tired but adhd in full swing.

have thoughts, no have ability to make thought coherent.

[mallowstep]

cloudtail’s daughter: ivypool

i wrote this up a while ago, and i’m just queuing it for completions sake. it may or may not be accurate.

ivypool. it’s time. it’s time. i’ve been waiting for a long time.

i wrote about dovewing like. well okay it was only like two weeks ago for me. but it was a very long time ago in my brain. i’m pretty sure when i wrote the dovewing essay, i still hadn’t figured out a lot of relatively basic things? or like, i’ve just made a lot of changes? yeaaah. also, this is my last official warrior cats essay that i’m writing for this blog. so. yeah. uh. yeah. i’m excited for this. because this is, well, i have good good thoughts about ivypool. i don’t really like her like dovewing and jayfeather, but she’s up there with jayfeather and like, squirrelflight? for quality characters. she’s one of the best characters. possibly the best character. so. yeah. it’s time. let’s begin.

section one: ivykit

oh yeah baby. going back to basics. let us examine the life of warrior, via ivykit. ivykit is born. she has one littermate. dovekit. ivykit and dovekit vibe, aight? like yeah, sure, ivykit spends a lot of time playing with blossomkit and bumblekit, but like, less than in my other aus. ivykit is…well at first, she does not feel underloved. i mean, she’s on equal footing with dovekit for like, the first moon or two of their life, when they’re still all stumpy legged and stumbling, with fluffy coats and eyes that don’t work right.

and yeah, things are fine. i mean, sure, jayfeather is concerned about dovekit, but ivykit doesn’t care. dovekit is her sister. that’s what matters. of course, as they get older, this starts to crack. subtly, at first. ivykit feels like she needs to protect dovekit. she doesn’t know why or from what, or even when she started thinking this, but ivykit just knows that she has to be there for dovekit. that she’s going to be the person who doesn’t complain when dovekit doesn’t hear, etc., and that’s just her job.

and the cracks grow larger. cloudtail and brightheart are concerned for dovekit. ivykit can’t keep going she’s my sister, she’s just like that and so she does yeah she does start to grow jealous. and there’s this awkward rift and they can’t make it work, except that ivykit and dovekit are still sisters. (oh man oh man is dovewing’s silence gonna fuck ivypool up.)

but ivykit doesn’t really grow resentful until BB&B are apprenticed. because now she’s, well, alone. i mean yes, she still has dovekit, but dovekit is working with their parents, and her old friends are busy, and what’s a girl to do?

and then she starts to feel lonely. and this, while not when hawkfrost contacts her, is the weakness he will exploit. i’m not doing a mapleshade/crookedkit situation. wrong vibe. hawkfrost and ivypool should end as equals. but otherwise, that’s pretty much her kithood.

section two: ivypaw

alright, so we’ve heard this story 5 times by now. but that’s ok, that’s okay. ivypaw is given to lionblaze. this is chill, this is chill, this is some good vibery. you know? oh lord i’m meming again hold on someone needs to factory reset me.

right so ivypaw is assigned to lionblaze because he’s supposed to be encouraging and brave and loyal. and you know, ivypaw is fine with that. it’s fine. this is fine. she doesn’t mind. he’s chill. this is really cool lionblaze is a really good warrior ivypaw is internally screaming because she’s very happy but she wants to seem cool so she’s trying to keep it together.

yeah, she’s very hype. she’s like, mildly concerned for dovepaw, but dovepaw gets cinderheart and everything is fine and they’re going to be apprentices together and then. dovepaw catches a few mice.

and whoa, does this make ivypaw jealous.

because this means that dovepaw’s training with brightheart and cloudtail wasn’t making them equals, it was making dovepaw better. (this is wrong, obviously, but it’s how ivypaw feels, and that’s kind of the most important part.)

so ivypaw just sulks and about a moon or two in, i’d need to check notes for the specifics (yes, this au has finally gotten large enough i can’t hold the entire thing in my head), but a moon or two in, she gets contacted by hawkfrost. and i’ve actually already drafted their first meeting, so i can include some quotes. i know it’s unorthodox, but it’s one of my favorite scenes i’ve written. plus, it’s definitely not final form yet. so i don’t feel bad about including it.

Ivypaw didn’t know where she was. Her dreams were usually across the Thunderclan territory.

Now, a strange tom stood in front of her. He had no scent, but he looked like a warrior. But he sat still, saying nothing.

She could smell a mouse in the field, and she instinctively dropped into a crouch.

At least I can make a catch in my dreams.

But as she was preparing to strike, her back brushed the stem of a poppy, and the mouse squeaked, running off.

Ivypaw flopped to the ground.

“It’s not your fault,” the tom said, his voice low and gravelly.

Ivypaw’s ears flicked towards him instinctively, and she turned her head.

“You haven’t been taught how to crouch properly in this kind of field,” he said. “It’s a shame, but I’m sure your mentor is getting around to it.”

Ivypaw growled. “Sure, whenever he actually decides to pay attention to me.”

The tom didn’t say anything, only gazed kindly at Ivypaw. Feeling self concious, she stood up, and tried to lick the dust off her pelt.

“Do you want me to show you what you should have done?”

“Sure,” Ivypaw said.

The tom crept forward slowly, his back flat. He pounced, without giving a single sign he was about to move. “Did you see that?” he asked, calm. Ivypaw nodded. “Good. Now, you try.”

Ivypaw tried to copy his form. “Do you live here?” she asked, trying to make sure she was in the correct form. He didn’t say anything, just flicked his tail.

“Hold yourself a little looser,” he said, “but go on, give it a try.”

She leaped, but her belly brushed the ground, and she skid to a halt far closer than she meant to.

“That’s alright,” the tom said. “Here, aim for this.”

He hooked a ball of moss with one claw, putting it a fair distance in front of her. Ivypaw shook her head slightly, trying to think about what she needed to do.

She pounced, this time, moving cleanly, but when her spine flattened, her balence was thrown off.

“You’ve almost got it,” he said. “Watch again, then you try.”

He demonstrated the pounce again, and Ivypaw tried to pay attention to how he landed. He realigned the ball of moss. “Now you.”

She thought carefully about what she needed to do, then leaped. She moved through the air cleanly, and landed with the ball between her paws without even a whisper from the grass.

“Very good,” the tom said. “You must be quite the hunter.”

Ivypaw didn’t say anything.

“Oh, you must know you are. That’s an advanced move, and you picked it up in no time.”

Ivypaw felt flush. “Is it that obvious?”

The tom’s eyes were piercing. “No,” he said. “But I had a hunch.” Ivypaw had the sense he was waiting for something.

“My sister struggles with hunting,” she admitted. “We’ve been spending a lot of time with her.”

“It hardly seems fair,” the tom said, “that your training should suffer.”

Ivypaw didn’t know what to say.

“Let me show you one more thing,” he said. “Call it, evening the scales.”

The tom moved so Ivypaw could see his whole body technique. “A stalking technique,” he said, “one I doubt you’ve seen before.”

He drew his whiskers back and stuck his chin out, holding very low and flat to the ground. The tom weaved through the grass and snapped at the stem of a violet, impossibly quickly.

“That was so fast!” Ivypaw said, despite herself.

The tom licked his chest. “Comes with practice. Give it a try.��

She copied his technique, grabbing a flower stem, although she couldn’t move nearly as quickly.

“Very good,” he said. “You’ll get the speed with time. It’s a good technique for fish.”

Ivypaw tilted her head, quizzical.

“Or mice,” he ammended. “Anything fast.”

Ivypaw began to feel something pulling her.

“I think I have to go,” she said.

“So be it,” he said.

“What’s your name?” she asked him.

“Hawkfrost.”

“I’m Ivypaw,” she said. The pull was growing more urgent. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“Because,” he said, calmly, “I think you deserve to succeed.”

and there you are. like i said, i don’t think it’s going to stay in this form. so i wanted to share it. it turns out the canon version of this scene is just. good. i don’t like a few key things about it, but for the most part, it’s good, so trying to redo it is hard.

anyway, so. ivypaw isn’t exactly kind about her feelings. she’s angry at lionblaze and at dovepaw. and dovepaw knows this and dovepaw feels exceptionally inadequate. so, dovepaw starts sneaking out.

section three: ivypaw II, ivypaw alone

so dove/holly/cinder leave to deal with beavers, and ivypaw is…salty. as i’ve made somewhat clear, i’m not 100% sure where this falls on the timeline: it could overlap with the hawkfrost incident. but. yeah.

lionblaze is very distracted, and she picks up on that hard. and hawkfrost is getting into her head, and she’s tired all the time, but she feels good.

ivypaw is…ivypaw is complicated. she wants to be good so badly it’s blinding, and somewhere i have notes on why she doesn’t figure out the hawkfrost deal sooner, but there’s a reason, but she wants so badly. she wants recognition, she wants to be good, she wants to serve her clan, she wants to protect dovepaw. and it’s all building to an almost unhealthy level, but like, what is she supposed to do? no one is paying attention to her because of dovepaw.

[peaches-of-1]

Peachtober | Day 17: Lotus

I didn’t realize this wasn’t in queue, so sorry for this being a few days late!

Hey, guys! Some of you may not know I have a side blog called @iris-idol where I do a sort of self insert kind of thing about my life as an idol. The first part is done at this point and here is a sneak peak of something I haven’t posted it yet.

September 11th, 11:59am

I was so ready for Namjoon’s birthday since he was able to come home from service to celebrate it. I sent him “Happy Birthday, oppa!” at midnight as I planned to do with all of my other members when it was their birthday. We had performed together not too long ago. He had only joined the Army last month. I remember crying so hard when him and the other members of the hyung line left together.

For now, Maknae line had formed a subunit and TXT was having a comeback soon. I was also really excited to finally have an offday just so that we could celebrate with Namjoon for a few hours. Since the show was done, the members that would become Dei5 were in the beginning stages of our trainee lives.

It wasn’t too much right now, just coming up with our concepts to make sure we have clear goals to work towards and stuff like that. Of course we had our deities to research nonstop and there was a ten page essay we had to turn in, written in Korean, to make sure we were making good strides towards understanding what persona we were going to put forward.

For me, that was Iris, goddess of the rainbow and fellow messenger alongside Hermes. A lot of my clothing would be rainbow themed, but also my color was pink. That meant I kept going towards super cute and unicorn imagery. I wanted to do something really aegyo and kawaii but also mix it with hard rock. My Trinket aka symbol was a rainbow rose so there were a lot of duality aspects I could do.

We were going to be a rock-rap group from what BigHit officials told us. I was excited to learn hardcore about rock culture because I had lived it mostly during middle school and high school. It was obvious why I was chosen for the show if they were going for a rock inspired group since I took a lot of vocal inspiration from Adam Lambert and Evanescence. 

Alice would be Lyssa, goddess of madness, and her color was black. She had a secondary aka accent color which was silver. She was half Korean and half Aussie, so her blonde hair and blue eyes were completely natural much to people’s surprise. She had been super shocked to be chosen for this group since the final vote was up to the Korean people. Alice was queer. She didn’t put a label on her sexuality and rarely ever specified what she meant other than saying love is love and she wasn’t going to let society get in the way of her heart. Her trinket was a black lace blindfold.

Jun aka Lan Caihe was like our big brother/sister so far. We were pretty sure he was going to be the leader because both Jun and her deity were genderfluid. Jun went by any and all pronouns and liked to dress more closely to a femine aesthetic. Back home, she did drag and made a lot of friends that way. He was the oldest...I think. Anyways, Lan Caihe’s color was green and her symbol was a bamboo flute.

Oppa was Hyojoon, a cutie that was shorter than me and his deity was Igong Hallakgungi and we mostly just called him Halla. By “we” I meant most of the non-Koreans who were on the show because long words are hard. His color was blue. His was the deity of life and death since his deity watched over said garden. Meaning his trinket was also a watering can. Since the show was over, he no longer had to stand out so much. He let his white hair fade and his roots were coming in.

Our youngest was Tristan. He went by Tristan and liked that better than his birth name, so I didn’t think about his actual name. He was a sweet guy and adored me so much. I adored him right back. I called him my little brother, and I meant it. The way he called me Noona was different from how he called Jun or Alice. Like I was his actual big sister. Although we both had other siblings, we treated each other like we had wished our siblings treated us. Basically, I babied him quite a bit. He enjoyed that because he was the oldest of three sisters.

He was kind of like my soul mate. My best friend. My brother.

He then asked me how my training had been and I told it was good. I have honestly just gotten back about a week or so ago. I spent the last month hanging out back home and collecting the rest of my things that I wanted to bring to Korea since I’d be living here from now on.

There was a knock on my door, probably my manager coming to take my phone and tell us lights out. We weren’t allowed to have our phones until after we debuted and after we made a certain amount of revenue.

September 12, 9:21pm

Namjoon oppa had wanted a casual costume party, but I was not a casual person. So I took a shower before showing up to the boys’ dorm in a starry dress. We had planned to make him the center of our galaxy for the night meaning everyone was wearing something with stars or planets or moons on them. Although the trainees from Deify weren’t very close to a lot of the other members of BigHit Entertainment, we had been invited.

Jimin was already redfaced and giggly when I arrived. I bowed and spoke politely to Yoongi who had been a judge on the show as well as everyone else. I wasn’t allowed to drink because we would have meetings and such all day tomorrow. It was mostly just eating and watching videos on the TV.

“It’s nice to see you again, Farai.” Namjoon said my birth name. “You look well.”

“Thank you. You look great too, all healthy. How has your training been, or are you done with that now?”

He handed me a slice of cake, “It’s done with, but I have big news to share with everyone. I guess you can find out first.”

“How come I get to know first?” I asked.

Namjoon shrugged, “You’re good at keeping secrets, and I trust you. Also, you might be able to give me some advice.”

“What do you mean by advice?”

“I’m going to be sent to America for most of my service. They said somewhere in the South, and since you’re from that area, I was hoping you could give me some tips about how to act.” He said, leaning on the counter by the fridge.

“Ah,” I replied. “I see, well. I think you will do a good job because one things I was going to tell you is to be respectful and to call people older than you either ‘Sir’ or ‘Ma’am’. However, you already do that. Hmm,”

I took a moment to think and noticed he was nervously playing with the hem of his new jacket gifted to him by Jungkook.

“Oh, I think this will be a good tip. Two things are really a big deal when it comes to business and older American people. One is eye contact. It shows that you are listening to them and paying attention. Second is a firm handshake. I do not know how you will be treated there, but do your best not to be shy.” I giggled. “Strong but silent is good, though.”

I went on and tried to show him what a firm handshake would be like, his hand lingering in mine as I did my best to explain in English and choppy Korean.

“Iris!” Taehyung turned the corner into the kitchen. “I’m so glad you’re here. I want to show you something.”

So he motioned me over and Namjoon let me join the younger member. Tae had wanted to show me some music and lyrics he wrote for me and was really hoping I could consider adding it to my album. I was taken by surprise. What was I supposed to say?

“Ah, I um. I will try. I will talk to the music producers and see if they will consider it. We are not working on music at this moment, but it sounds really nice. You have grown so much as an artist, Taehyung.” I smiled at him wearing a star spangled beret.

Then we went back to the party for a bit. Trainees couldn’t stay for too long because the grind was just beginning and we were learning Korean. I felt so out of place but also star struck because there were so many idols there. Namjoon was the only one in orangey clothing, so he was easy to find in the crowd.

One of his non idol friends was hitting on me. I was being nice, doing the whole Southern Hospitality thing, but I was not interested in the slightest. He spoke to me in broken English and did his best to hold a conversation with me, so I hung around. Until..

“Will you twerk for me?” He asked.

I bit the inside of my lip and tilted my head, “Um, what?”

“Twerk, you know...with your booty. Like girls in video.” He replied.

“Hahahaha~” Namjoon said, slapping his friend on the back. “Don’t be stupid, Han-hyung. That is really rude.”

The man blinked, “Is it? Really? Is that not just what black girls do?”

“Hahahahahaha~~no. No it’s not. I am so sorry, Farai.”

“I am going to play with Yeontan.” I replied and left them to that.

Tristan hugged me, “Noona~ You look sad.”

“It’s nothing. Just an idiot.” I responded.

“I love you, Noona. You are amazing and strong. Whatever happened, you just add it to reasons why you have to change Korea’s ideas of what someone like you does.” He said, rubbing my back.

“Thanks, my lovely deongsaeng”

Yoongi also wanted to talk to me about my future and songwriting and stuff. He had been a judge on the show, so things were still kind of tense between us. Yoongi had been nice, but I didn’t feel right calling him Oppa just yet. He reminded me that I was going to make the biggest splash as a BigHit artist but also to just focus on being a trainee for now. I would have all my life to deal with the stress of being a foreigner, of being plus size, of having my natural hair, of being dark skinned in Korea. For now, I just had to show that I was an idol first and foremost.

“I promise I will not let you or BigHit down.” I said.

He smiled, “Good.”

Jungkook’s voice called my name next and he said that he wanted me to help with his gift for Namjoon. Right now, it was hard to say no to anyone older than me, especially someone I looked up to. Still, if it made me too uncomfortable, I would have to reject his offer.

“I want to give him birthday kisses. It’s become a tradition now, and I know you have to go soon. I was thinking that we could each kiss one of his cheeks, if that’s ok with you.” The BTS maknae spoke to me in English since he was fluent in it and I was not that fluent in Korean just yet.

“Wouldn’t that be too easy to turn into a scandal of some sort?” I asked.

He waved away my concern, “Don’t worry about what the fans will do. You already have had several dating scandals. Anyways, this is for fun, and I know Namjoon will like it. Don’t you want to see him all blushy and shy?”

I bit my lip and put on a playfully stubborn face, “Maybe…”

Jungkook smiled and we went over to to behind where the birthday boy was sitting. The star eyed maknae counted to three and then both of us leaned down to place a small peck on either of his cheeks.

“Happy birthday, hyung!” Jungkook said.

Namjoon hid his face in his hands, but I could tell he was smiling. Then he looked up at me.

“Et tu, Farai?”

I pointed to his own member, “It was Kookie’s idea.” and giggled, only the color of my skin hiding how I was blushing too.

Alice traced her fingers through mine, “Come on lovebird, we have to go. Work starts early tomorrow.”

I nodded and we told everyone goodnight and farewell.

October 21, 10:33am

I was so ready for Halloween. It was fun trying to come up with ideas of what to do and of course it got turned into a sort of mini promo. When it came down to it, we were basically going to disappear for two years while we trained for Dei5 and wanted to make one final noise before we poofed.

So, we released a short Halloween song and were going to be doing busking in order to promote it. It was a remixed version of “Spooky Scary Skeletons” and all twelve of us who had been on the show were learning a dance for it. We had been working on it for two weeks now, just the dance part. The song was done in about a week. Halloween was in 10 days! Ah, I was living for this.

I knew that what we were doing was simply the tip of the k-pop idol iceberg, but I was just so happy to be busy and doing what I loved. It was frustrating at times since this was all short notice, but I liked it. Today, we worked on gathering costumes for our busking performances. We tried to choose stuff from the same show or franchise, but Imani now understood my distaste towards morph suits. So superheroes were out of the question.

Then we got the idea while playing video games with Sooja and Matthew just a few days ago. Mario characters. Everyone said I had to be Princess Peach, but I wanted to be Peachette. So that’s how we all evolved into all the “-ette” versions of the characters we had chosen. Well, most of us.

I was Peachette, Tristan was Bullet Billette, Alice was Bowsette, Hyojoon was just a regular Boo, and Jun was Yoshette. James was Piranha Plantette, Sooja was Boosette, Matthew had decided to go for Walette while Dongmin decided to be Wariette. Nawoo would be Toad, Gina went for Daisy, and Imani was Rosalina.

We were mostly looking for skirts and dresses. For Dongmin and I who were the two bigger members of the group, literally, we did some online shopping from our phones while everyone else did their things. I was able to get a really long blonde wig to fit my head from a place that Jun told me her drag queen friends always went to.

Jun said he would help me style it to fit Peachette’s hair. I was so thankful for him because I’d be struggling without her.

As my little group of Alice, James, and Nawoo went to the party section to see if the fabric pens were there, my eye caught the cutest arrangement of Halloween gift bags. I looked back at my manager and gave Kyung the best puppy dog eyes I could manage aven pouting a bit. I had talked about doing a project like this before, but he said he didn’t want to spend money on it.

He rolled his eyes and grabbed three packs of 20. He then left us to grab some of the huge bags of candy. I wanted to do something for the people who would be watching us perform. And for Halloween, that’d be candy. The only rule was that I had to make the bags myself. Yeah, that was extra work for myself, but I would always do it for Halloween and Valentine’s Day. The only reason I wouldn’t do it for Christmas is because that was festival season, the most stressful and busy time of the year. I didn’t want to get in the way.

October 31, 3:03am

I had finally finished all of the bags and tied them up. It went faster because of Tristan and Alice helping me, but still. They had extra practice to do to help their dancing skills. Alice was a fantastic dancer, but she didn’t have a great sense of rhythm. I put the last dozen in a wagon that Hyojoon oppa had let me borrow for this since it looked haunted.

Now, I had to go to bed for about seven hours before having to wake up and get ready so that we could be shoved off to perform in Hongdae and Itaewon. They were closer to our dorms than Busan and Ilsan and Daegu.

October 31, 12:30pm

Dei5 had a short meeting where we found out that our official logo would be a lotus, a symbol of rebirth and renewal. It would have five petals for each of us. We would go for a regular sort of symbol, smooth and simple, the lines were not too thick or too thin. It gave us the chance to alter it and remodel it for each comeback. Honestly, it would just be five gold petal outlines with a white center.

It was all that we could talk about with our other members.

I was getting a call from Taehyung during a quick lunch break before we continued dancing. We were at some traditional Korean place and eating bimibap, kimbap, and cold noodles.

“Hello?” I said after swallowing.

“You can’t call her. She can’t know about this.” It sounded like Jimin’s voice in the background.

Taehyung responded, “It’s not like we have many options.”

“If she was invited, you’ll see her there. Do you want to get in trouble with the Mentors?” Jungkook asked, worry and fear in his voice along with concern.

“No, Noona would get mad.” the current middle child said.

“So put down the phone.” Jimin said.

And the line went dead. I stared at my phone confused. What was that all about? Gina asked what the phone call was about and who it was from. I told her it was from Tae but it must have been a butt dial. Whatever, I had noodles to slurp up.

October 31, 7:22pm

Now in full costume, I was ready to dance with the others. I can’t believe it’s been over a month since since Namjon went back to serve. He had a lot of American fans, so he was seen through fan cams. Same went for Hobi, Jin, and Yoongi who mostly did office work. Well, Jin was part of Army Band and Hobi was in another performance Army thing.

“Hey, is it just me, or are there less people out on Halloween than during the day?” Imani asked.

I admitted, “I’ve noticed that too.”

“Do you guys not know?” Sooja asked, extremely puzzled. “Ah, I guess since you’re not usually in Korea during this time of year, and you haven’t been out much because of training, but um. There is a yearly masquerade party that idols go to. Some normies or trainees get invited too, but that is the only way you can go. By invite.”

Tristan added, “Yeah. I honestly thought we would have gotten invited, but I guess they want to train us first.”

Then they went into talking about what kind of rumors surrounded it. How people could go missing if they talked about it or how the person they talked to would disappear. It was very hush hush, like the bedazzled elephant in the room. Everyone who was anyone knew about it and got invited, but no one could really talk about it. Overall, it was a masquerade ball. Oh, I’ve always wanted to go to one of those!

There had been a livestream earlier when we were performing, made people who watched guess who each idol was. It was like a very intense but also fun fandom test. How well did you really know what your faves looked like?

We finally got into Itaewon for the third time today and there were people waiting for us. Like it had been happening all day, but it was still strange to see so many people who wanted to see us. Kyung had surprised me by setting up a total of 200 other goodie bags for fans who came out to watch. Him and the others were dressed in capes.

Our last stop was at N Seoul Tower. My skirt was actually shorter than the original dress just because I didn’t want to have to carry it around and lift it up as I danced. It was a pink lolita dress and Sooja actually had the Toadette/Bowsette crown. She helped make more for all of us.

We would do a Six song set and finish with our Halloween song. I was in three of them with the other members who would make up Dei5. Alice and I did our “No” by CLC cover and we did our easier group choreo afterwards.

Then it was time for “Spooky Scary Skeletons”. The twelve of us got into formation.

“Mortals, Deities, and everything in between~” I spoke.

Matthew added, “We only have one thing to say.”

“Happy Halloween!”

We had cut up the lyrics and such to the famed Halloween song and added two different rap sections for it to help showcase the rappers. I was having such a good time when the first dance break came in and we marched in sync and then posed. It was mostly dance heavy, so it was mostly just remembering what order to do them in. Muscle memory was my best friend in this case.

From the corner of my eyes, I saw the cape wearing staff handing out my little baggies. They were filled with chocolate, non chocolate, and a few trinkets like Vampire Teeth and the like. Also, 100 of the ones that I did not make had special codes in them to get a preorder when our CDs came out. They would have to use them wisely and try not to lose them.

Everyone was given glowsticks too, so we lit up the area more than the tower behind us. Then we all went to the front.

“Boo!”

Stay still for 10 second and then we all held hands and bowed, “Thank you! Happy Halloween! Thank you for all of your support!” and then it was done.

October 31, 10:00pm

I couldn’t help but fall asleep the moment I got home. Yes, it was bad to sleep in makeup and yes I would probably get in trouble for it when I woke up tomorrow because trainees had certain things to follow and wiping off our makeup and doing skincare was one of them. So I’d pay for it later. Right now, it was time to sleep.

I couldn’t help but dream about what it would be like if Namjoon and I danced together at the masquerade ball. The theme would be fire and ice, no jewel tones, no, space. Definitely space and so I could wear a more dramatic version of the outfit I wore to his birthday. However, I would need to be more careful. I was a girl. I was a foreigner and Gods Dammit, I will be an idol.

[stephhannes]

if you love something, give it away

it all boils down to one quotable phrase: if you love something, give it away

i’ve been writing about nathan since i was 13, and this has been the hardest piece i’ve tried to write. as soon as nathan died, i knew that i wanted to have something special to publish on our anniversary. originally, that was a book of essays- i made a little headway on that, but grief made it hard to actually accomplish anything of substance. it took a lot just to try to get out one blog post a month. but now that i think about an entire book of essays- i think maybe that wouldn’t have been the right move.

here’s the thing: nathan and i have had a long and dramatic history, and when we started actually dating, i put a lot of our past stories in a vault. i threw out journals, i deleted old blog posts, i got rid of a lot of the bad stuff because it was unhealthy to hold onto it, to carry it into our relationship. we (obviously) both grew up a lot since we met when we were 11. thinking about all of the years of chasing each other and being terrible to each other was so detrimental to my mental health, and after (a decent amount of) therapy and just growing up in general, i got over it. there’s enough drama just in the month leading up to us getting together, that there’s really no need to focus on all of the drama from high school.

i’ve spent a lot of time thinking about if we would have ended up together if we had met in a different timeline. we were incredibly similar in the sense that our morals and general beliefs aligned, but the way that we interacted with the world and processed events and saw things were so incredibly different. our relationship was a dream, but was it so great because we were genuinely inherently compatible? or were we so compatible because we had grown up together?

but maybe that’s just how it works.

we stuck to each other because in abilene, we were the same. we were both too smart for our own good, we were both kind of arrogant about that fact. we were the only people who were like that so of course we gravitated toward each other. but if we had met in austin, or in new york somewhere down the line when we weren’t kids- would we have ended up together?

on the other hand, even though we initially were brought together by circumstance, we still spent time apart. i left abilene for college, we both dated other people, we both went through our respective garbage human undergrad phases- and we still came back to each other after all of that.

that was always the beauty of our relationship. we always came home. we always came back to each other.

i said goodbye to him so many times. junior year of high school, we kissed for the first time and we both read the situation completely differently. after that first kiss he was like “i’ve always wanted to do that,” and i was like “yeah, i know.” not trying to be dismissive, i was just so in shock and didn’t know how to use words. i left that day thinking “oh holy shit we’re finally going to be together, dope!” and he read it as “oh she’s definitely not interested.” we never discussed it, he just started dating someone else a couple of weeks later, and that was when i told myself i was never going to talk to him again. at that point, i’d spent a couple of years on the backburner in his life. it was this weird place because we were so insanely close- we were absolutely in love with each other, but he was always in another relationship. that was my last straw. i didn’t make a big deal out of it, i just quietly cut him out of my life. and surprisingly, i was thriving.

and then at the end of junior year, something terrible happened in his life. and i remember having a small moral dilemma of “i know that he needs me but also i told myself i’d never talk to him again and that’s actually been going pretty well for me,” but me, being the good friend that i am, took one for the team and texted him. “hey, i know we haven’t been the best of friends lately, but i love you and i’m here for you if you need anything.” to which he replied, “oh my god. you’re the one person i’ve wanted to talk to today. it’s my fault things have been bad between us. i’m so sorry.”

we saw each other a few times after that, but he dropped out of high school and went to college a year early after that event so for the most part- we lost touch.

my sophomore year of college, back in 2015, we reconnected. i texted him out of the blue after telling one of my friends all about our history and feeling inspired, was like “hey i miss you” and that weekend he came to austin to see me. and that weekend was so special. leading up to that point, we actually really hadn’t spent much time alone together. in high school i think we saw each other outside of class approximately three times, i visited his dorm once when he was in college, but other than that this was really our first time spending quality time together. i lived right near campus, which was a hell that weekend, because it was round-up, which meant the drunk frat stars were out in full force, but i showed him around campus, took him to my favorite thai place (where he ordered something that was so spicy it had the word ‘cry’ in the name) and fell asleep next to him for the first time. it was perfect.

and then after that weekend we didn’t talk again for eight months.

i saw him again when i was in abilene for thanksgiving. this was the first time i’d seen him since my dad died and i remember going to his apartment, drinking a bottle of moscato and just sobbing like a weirdo for 30 minutes at one point.

january 2016 was the first time i spent the night at his apartment, and then as patterns have shown, we didn’t talk for a few months after that.

spring break 2016 was when we became inseparable again. we were constantly texting, especially when he came to new york to commit to columbia. we were functionally in a relationship but without the actual commitment, which is the thing that i wanted. i was still trying to keep my distance emotionally at this point, partially because i knew that he was about to move and partially because by now, i’d found out that he had a girlfriend and i wasn’t about to play the “i’m in love with stephanie but i’m also going to have a girlfriend and put stephanie on the backburner sometimes” game again. i couldn’t do it.

and then i caught feelings and things got a lot more complicated.

by this point, nathan had already been like “blah blah blah i’m so in love with you” “blah blah blah you make me really happy” and for awhile i was just like “ok that’s cool my dude, but i’m not getting involved again” until i caved and was like “yeah shit, i’m in love with you again too.” i remember about a week before that convo, i was sitting in his room literally watching him fill out the columbia couples’ housing form for him and someone that was not me. i was falling right back into our same bullshit. in the middle of april 2016, he came to see me again, for the second time, in austin. he was sick that weekend so we mostly hung out around the house. and that weekend was great because i loved spending time with him, but i was also in the middle of a huge existential crisis. i knew that i deserved better than someone that saw me as second best. i deserved all of someone’s attention. as soon as he left, i texted him and said something that started the worst fight we’ve ever gotten into: “i’m sorry. i can’t do this anymore. we can’t keep doing this.” he texted me pretty shortly after that to ask what i meant, “like what about it? every time i get more than ten feet away from you you decide you don’t want me anymore.”

i elaborated to say, “i deserve more than someone i get to see once every few months. every time you leave it’s just another reminder that you’re not really mine and it’s not fair. i love you so god damn much and it’s so hard to have this weird quasi relationship.”

and at this point, i could tell he was hurt, he responded with, “you should have just told me to go home the second i showed up. you better be fucking sure this is what you want.” i wanted to backtrack and take back what i had said, but i knew that i had to keep my feet planted on this decision.

however, i did eventually say, “at least it finally felt like you chose me for once.”

and he responded with something that sounded nice in the moment, “of course i did, it’s more than that, i’ve always been at a point of destroying everything for you. every step i take with you makes it harder to leave. i did pick you, i love you. i picked you even though i knew it had to end and it would make things harder.”

but that wasn’t the point i was trying to make. technically, what he said was true, in that moment, he chose me, but he wasn’t ultimately choosing me, so i said, “you say that, but it’s not really true. i have always been and will probably continue to always be a second choice. that’s not really picking me.”

this is his response i think about the most, “i can’t do this. at least not until i’ve had time to think before i say anything. you better know that i care about you because i would never let anybody else make me feel like this. i don’t know if i want to cry or throw up. honest to god, you fucking broke me today. i wanted to be yours and you’ll never see it as more than being some side piece. if i wanted to be in abilene, i would have been there. i wanted to be in austin so i could be yours.”

finally, i left off with, “can you really blame me for feeling that way though? it’s not unjustified. i love you so fucking much and that’s why this is all so hard for me to deal with. i really did feel like you were finally mine. but at the end of the day, you have someone else that’s not me. i don’t have anyone else, and every time you leave, i never know if you’ll come back to me or not.”

after that, we took some time to cool off and didn’t talk for a few days. it felt terrible. i felt constantly nauseous. it was the week before finals and i couldn’t focus on anything. i remember sitting in a private study room in the library and sobbing while trying to write essays. that weekend, i drove to abilene because i knew that we needed to resolve this in person. we had vaguely resolved the issue over text over the course of that week, but things still didn’t feel great. we had talked about trying to be friends when he moved to nyc, but i knew that wasn’t realistic. i was planning on moving to LA and at one point he asked me if my job would ever bring me to new york, and if it did then could we hang out when i was in town. and yes, it would have, but that’s not what i want. i didn’t want to see him once every few years. i wanted to see him every day. it was all or nothing.

that week was the first time that i came face to face with the concept of losing nathan in a permanent way. if we didn’t resolve this, we would have never spoken again. i was in shock when nathan died, but i honestly don’t think anything compares to the absolute pain i was in that week.

at this point, i knew a few things to be true. 1) nathan was about to move to new york. 2) i didn’t want to lose him. 3) we were definitely very much in love with each other.

so i went to abilene and left that weekend giving him an ultimatum. “if you still want to be with me in a year, i swear to god i’ll fly to new york the second i graduate.” and when i gave that ultimatum, i expected this to happen: i expected him to move to new york with his girlfriend, forget that i exist, we both move on. but i think we both knew that that’s never what would happen. to my surprise, immediately after that, he broke up with his girlfriend. that was april 28th, 2016.

on april 30th, my roommate and i went to 6th street for my birthday and i got totally obliterated. i don’t remember much from that night other than a) i ended up trying to walk home from 6th street, got lost and ended up on I-35 and then was like “ok maybe i should call a car” and b) that every single time a dude tried to hit on me i played the “i have a boyfriend” card in the most obnoxious way. the second they tried to ask me about my life i would just be like “OK SO I’M MOVING TO NEW YORK AFTER I GRADUATE because my BOYFRIEND is getting his masters from COLUMBIA.…” i also remember at one point my roommate and i were talking to a pair of friends, and the guy i was talking to was getting a little bold and said, “ok so are we all going to go back to y’alls apartment?” and i was having none of it and responded, “well, us three (me, my friend, and the guy she was into) are going back, i don’t know where you’re gonna go…” anyways, shortly after that my roommate and i got into some weird drunk fight in the middle of 6th and went our separate ways to go home (which makes no sense because we live in the same home but whatever, i digress) when i made it home at like 3am, i immediately called nathan and told him about everything that had happened that night. then i passed out. the next morning i looked through my phone and saw we had talked for like 3 hours so of course i texted him and was like “uhhhh what did we talk about for three hours” and he was like “mostly you complained but also you kept calling me your boyfriend” and i was like oh dope.

and that’s how we officially ended up together.

things were a lot easier when we were together. it felt like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders because i didn’t have to worry about how things were going to end up between us.  

i remember texting one of my friends after we had gotten together to tell her i was moving to new york in a year and she was like “uhhh are you sure you wanna move in with someone so soon? especially because y’all are going to be long distance for most of that time?” and i was just like “yeah definitely, i’ve never been more sure of anything before.” there was never a question of “is this the right choice?” it was the only choice. it was the only choice that i wanted.

we waited until may 6th to tell people we were together. mostly because we wanted it to be just ours for a little bit, but also because i was going to be in abilene that day for his undergrad graduation and we wanted to be together when we did it.

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because nothing can truly ever be easy for us, we spent the first nine months of our relationship long distance. we got through it by daydreaming about what living together would be like, and how much we wanted to just be able to fall asleep together and like….our wedding… and stuff. when he left for new york, we both cried. it was tough. but it was going to be fine because we knew it would be the last time that we would have to say goodbye, finally.

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and technically, that was the last time that he had to say goodbye. which is probably for the best. nathan had this deep fear of losing me, so much so that he would have these nightmares of me dying where he’d wake up so incredibly upset. in the early stages of our relationship, he was so in shock that we were together, mostly because for once he wasn’t in a relationship with a garbage monster and he couldn’t fathom a stable, healthy relationship. for a little bit, he was convinced that everything was too good to be true and would inevitably end terribly. after a few months and a lot of reassurance, this stopped being an issue. nathan was dependent on me in a way that i wasn’t necessarily on him and this fact always made him so nervous. i’ve always been too independent, in a way that’s absolutely hindered my life and for the first time in nathan’s life he had someone that he could actually be vulnerable around and lean on.

i’ve talked about this before, but when we got together, i started actually taking care of myself. i started to look both ways before i crossed the street, i got more careful and mindful. and i think the reason that i did this is because it was impossible for me to imagine leaving him. the other day i was watching “after life” on netflix, and there’s this one quote that stuck with me- “i’d rather live missing him than for him to live missing me. that’s how much i love him.” every once and awhile i find myself in a train of thought, “how would nathan be adjusting if he was in my position,” and i think i know the answer to that. the answer is, not well. yes, my life is inconceivably worse since losing him, but i’ve also spent the last 24 years coping with tough shit on my own, i have the tools to move on. i’m not quite sure he would have fared as well, and thinking about him trying to do it makes my heart hurt so much. it’s a burden i’m willing to bear because i’d rather it be me than him.

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re-adjusting since nathan’s died has been so hard. a couple of weeks before he died, we were driving to get cheesesteaks and on that drive, we talked about our 15 year plan. we were on the same page. we’d stay in philly for three years, (but maybe move further out into the suburbs after a year), and then consider relocating to a different office. we wanted to move around as much as possible. we would get married in the winter of 2019, the wedding would be in texas- we’d figured out who would be our groomsmen and bridesmaids. we’d get a cat first and then maybe get a dog if our schedules allowed it. we would pay off his student debt.

it was weird allowing myself to plan a future. that’s something i’ve never done before. i’ve truly been winging my life for the last 24 years.

having to rewrite that future has been hard. but i’ve been doing it. i’ve been moving forward because i have to- and there are some days where i am so hesitant to do it. there are some days where all i want to do is relive my favorite days, and i let myself have those days. there are some days where i am so desperate to feel close to him again. i read old texts, i sleep in one of his shirts that smells like him. there are some days where i’m so afraid of losing memories, of losing what we had. but it doesn’t consume my life any more in the way that it used to.

the other day i read something where a girl was talking about how she refused to move on after her husband died- her friends would describe her as “being in love with a ghost,” and as soon as i heard that, i knew that’s not who i wanted to become. that was the saddest thing i’d heard. i still love nathan, i always will, but i’m not in love with him anymore.

getting engaged means planning a life together, but the last year has been about learning how to build back my own life. i’ve had to ask myself, “what do i want?” rather than, “what do we want?” i never realized how we really did become a unit- i still find myself using “we” instead of “i” when i talk about things. i never imagined my life without nathan in it, that was always unfathomable to me, but now i’ve started to adjust to it.

there are times when i’ll ask myself “well, what would nathan want me to do in this situation?” and then i have to remind myself that it doesn’t matter what he would do, he’s dead. this is my life. on a less harsh note, i do still hold onto all of the work we did trying to make me a better functioning person. one of my biggest problems is that i love to worry about things that i can’t change, so much so that it was really taking over my life. now when i find myself getting too worked up, i take a deep breath and ask myself “is there anything i can do to fix this? do i need to be this worried about this situation?” and if the answer is no, i let it go. i used to get so anxious right before bed, which may have been one of nathan’s least favorite things about me. i would hold onto everything bothering me, and then right before it was time to go to sleep i’d start trying to unpack it, and every time nathan would catch me as i started to spiral and force me to go to sleep instead of staying up all night freaking out. when i’m doing well, i try to enforce a strict bedtime. at 9pm i close my laptop, read for two hours, try to not think about things, fall asleep by midnight. the problem is, i’m very rarely doing well enough to keep up with that. but i try, and that’s all i can do.

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part of moving forward is having to remind myself of the things that i used to believe in. y’know, before i got blinded by being in love. a month after nathan died, i wrote this on my blog:

How do I navigate a new relationship with someone when I know that they will never know me as well as Nathan did? I can spend all day talking about who I was in high school, I can explain with detail every moment of my collegiate years, but no one will truly know who I was during those times because they weren’t there. Eventually, I’ll stand on two feet again, but how far can those feet carry me when the concrete underneath them is fractured beyond belief? Eventually, someone will walk beside me, but is it fair to them when I know that there will never be anyone that can compare to Nathan? There are like 8 billion people in the world and I would swipe left on every single one of them because they’re not Nathan. I was in relationships before Nathan, and they all ended for more or less that same reason, I was always waiting for something better, I was always waiting for Nathan to come around. I don’t see this problem getting any easier to navigate, especially now that we had been together for a few years.

but now, with a little more distance, and a little more clarity, i’m able to go back to my critical roots. like i talked about earlier, we were a product of our circumstances. so at some point in the future, i’ll inevitably find another circumstance. there’s this tim minchin song that’s like “and look, i’m not undervaluing what we’ve got when i say that given the role chaos inevitably plays in the inherently flawed notion of fate, it’s obtuse to deduce that i’ve found my soulmate at the age of seventeen / it’s just mathematically unlikely that at a university in perth i happen to stumble upon the one girl on earth specifically designed for me.” and that’s very similar to how i feel. what nathan and i had was dope, and loving him is my favorite thing i’ve ever done, but also it’s just statistically improbable that our relationship was the end all, be all. i definitely felt like that for awhile, and there are absolutely days where i’m like “oh i can’t believe i’ve lost the best thing that will ever happen to me,” but logically, i know things will work out. i think the issue is that i’m a taurus. i’m stubborn and i’m a creature of comfort. loving nathan was easy because we’d been doing it for twelve years. our relationship was familiar because we’d been confiding in each other since we were in middle school. for awhile, i think i got too wrapped up in the notion that “i can never find someone that knows me like he did,” but i forgot that at the beginning, we knew nothing about each other. there was a square one, i just forgot what it was like because it was so long ago.

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there was a period of time when i was having an emotional crisis because i got trapped in this mindset of “moving forward for me means moving on. everyone else gets to keep him in their life, that’s normal. but i’m expected to move on, have a new partner, leave him behind.” but then i realized, that’s absolutely not true. it’s possible to balance a new relationship while also not completely severing ties from the past. i realized this because i’ve been in this position before, but on the other side of things. add it to the list of things nathan and i have in common: we both have a dead partner. the loss that he had suffered back in high school wasn’t something that he ever let go of. it was something that was deeply ingrained in who he was, and was subsequently something that was always built into the patchwork of our relationship. the things that were important to him in our relationship were colored by his past trauma and i learned how to adapt to that- i learned how to take care of the things that he emotionally needed more help with. i let him feel the things he felt and i never made him feel bad for those emotions, even when sometimes those feelings hurt me.

so when it comes to me moving on, i still don’t exactly know how my trauma is going to manifest- but what i do know is that i have high standards for how i expect my partner to take care of me. i know that it takes a lot of sacrifices and a lot of compromise and a lot of effort to be with someone that’s suffered a loss like this- but i also know that i’m not willing to compromise on someone that can’t do that.  

may 4th was always a bad day for him, and i knew that. in 2016, we were both in the middle of finals when that day rolled around. when he woke up on the 3rd, he had a terrible day. in the afternoon, i asked him how his day had been and he told me how upset he was. i told him to call me that night, we stayed on the phone until 5am, until he finally fell asleep. when he woke up on the 4th, he was feeling a lot better. later that day, he told me that me staying on the phone with him so he could calm down and go to sleep was the kindest thing anyone’s ever done for him. to me, it seemed obvious. of course i would do that. it’s such a low-effort thing that i knew would mean a lot.

my version of that was the way that nathan would put up with my terrible sleeping. when i was in college, i briefly dated someone who could not hang with the way that i wake up all the time in the middle of the night. it got to a point where he asked me to either just go home or sleep on the couch if i was spending the night because i kept waking him up and he was tired of it. after that, i was always super insecure about my sleeping patterns. when nathan and i were first dating, i would profusely apologize for being so annoying at night, but he never complained about it. he just got used to it and eventually would tell me that he was totally cool with me accidentally waking him up in the middle of the night because it gave him more time to cuddle with me at night. i’d usually fall asleep as the big spoon, and then we would separate once i was asleep. then i’d wake up at some point in the middle of the night, and so would he, and he’d turn over, put his arm around me, tell me that everything was okay, and then we’d go back to sleep. the tiniest gestures always meant so much to me. i think that’s one of the things that i’ll miss the most. his attention to detail was impeccable. he was never a grand gesture type of person, and that was okay, because superficially i think everyone wants those large gestures, but realistically, it’s the smaller things that mean more. like the time before he left for christmas vacation and he texted me to tell me that he’d bought chicken and left it in the freezer so i wouldn’t have to worry about grocery shopping because he knew that i was about to have to work a bunch of 12 hour days over the holidays. or the time that i had mentioned a candle that i really like very vaguely in passing, and then two years later he gave me that same candle for my birthday. or when he’d wake me up from my depression naps at an appropriate time so i’d still be able to sleep at night.

nathan’s memory was terrible when it came to remembering anything that happened prior to the year 2013, but sometimes he surprised me. like one day, he randomly texted me to ask “hey, you were wearing a pink shirt that first time we kissed, right?” to which i responded “it was coral but yeah” and he was like “shut up. those are the same thing” i actually couldn’t believe that he remembered that tiny detail. i felt the same way when he made a playlist for me right before we started dating. it was a mix of songs that reminded him of me, but there were two in particular that i was shocked to see. when we were in high school, on one of the three times we hung out outside of school there was one time that i remember his parents driving us back home after doing whatever it was that we were doing. we were sharing his headphones, listening to his ipod. in the duration of the drive- two songs played. of course i remembered which two played because i’m a psycho that remembers the tiniest things but when i saw those songs surface on the playlist, i couldn’t believe it. he really was good at remembering the smallest things.

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for awhile, i felt plagued by the fact that because of this situation, a lot of things immediately became clearer to me- i know that in the future i will be a better partner to someone that’s not nathan- and that concept is sometimes upsetting to me. after nathan died, i told myself that i wouldn’t keep falling into my old habits. i would fix my issues immediately. when you get engaged, you think that you have forever with someone, and i leaned too hard into that fact. i was trying to get better about the things that i was bad about, but i was doing it at this glacial pace. partially because i thought i had the time, and also because i knew nathan had the patience to put up with it. i was terrible at communication. i would play this game where i acted like everything was fine until nathan would realize that everything was not fine and then he’d have to sit and poke at me until i shared that i was feeling some sort of human emotion. in my head, i knew exactly what i wanted from him at all times, but for some reason i had this block where i wouldn’t just ask for it. he wasn’t a mindreader, but i treated him like he was, and even though it was infinitely frustrating, he would do it. the only thing nathan ever wanted to do was make my life better, and i refused to let him do it. part of me didn’t want to seem inconveniencing or like a burden- but i know that he would have been happier if i had let him help, and i know that my life would have been better if i had let him help. the week before he died, i finally reached out in a real way and i think he was so taken aback that he didn’t know how to react. it was the most progress i’d made. if i could go back in time, the only thing i would have changed is myself- i would have just forced myself to ask for help more often.

i’m still terrible at expressing emotions, talking about how i feel, in an interpersonal situation. writing about my feelings feels like a cop-out and that’s why it’s so easy for me to sit and be honest in a blog post. when you talk to someone one-on-one, they immediately react, they try to help, the focus is all on me. that makes me uncomfortable. sitting and throwing 6,000 words into the void is easy- there’s no face i have to watch react to me when i say i want to walk into traffic half of the time.

but i’ve been trying to not make everyone read my mind.

it’s hard realizing that nathan would have given me anything i wanted- if i had just asked for it. but now, moving forward i have to make myself comfortable with asking for what i want. i have to focus on taking what i need and not apologizing for it or being afraid.

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it’s almost been nine months since nathan died, which means this is the longest we’ve gone without seeing each other. april 30th would have been our three year anniversary and there’s nothing i wish that i could have had more than just spending the day with him.

when we first got together, nathan said to me, “i wish that we could have already been together for a few years but i still wouldn’t change how anything worked out.” i wish that we could have had 20 more years, but instead we had two and a half really incredible years and i wouldn’t trade that for anything. i was always so touched when he prioritized me over other things in his life. my plan was to always stand off to the side while he did what he wanted to do. when he was applying to phd programs, i knew that meant we probably wouldn’t see each other much for like five years, but i was willing to do that because all i ever wanted to do was support him and make sure he was able to accomplish what he wanted to accomplish. i always spent so much time compromising on my own happiness to ensure his- because i felt like he deserved it more than i did. i’d always known academia to be the most important thing in his life, yet he constantly kept me in mind- making sure i’d be ok with living in any of the places he was applying to. and yeah, i guess that’s what you’re supposed to do but it still meant so much to me. i think it was surprising to me because i knew that this was kind of uncharacteristic for him, he loves to avoid people. any opportunity he got to be alone, he would take. i remember once, he told me that the reason he started going to the gym so much was so he could avoid his girlfriend at that time. (this is the ONLY reason that i would work out with him when he asked me to go to the gym with him, because i knew he used to use that as an avoidance thing).

when he decided to not pursue a phd, i remember how relieved he was, which was surprising to me. but he came to this point where he was just like “look, i just want to be able to spend as much time as i can with you.” when we lived in philly, he worked from 7-3 instead of 9-5 just because it shaved a good chunk of time off of his commute home, and it also meant we were able to spend more time together when he got off of work. i am so thankful for the time we got together. for the second half of our year in new york, he only had class two days a week so we got to hang out all the time. some of my favorite memories from new york involve me getting home from work at 11, us going to the halal cart and then drinking and just talking until we went to bed at like 6am.

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when we first got together, i felt like i was dating way out of my league. nathan’s a genius, who’s good at literally everything he does- sports, music, the whole thing. i’m a goblin with an english degree. and then one day, nathan told me that he felt like i was out his league. which was shocking to me because i’m like community theatre and he’s like broadway (if we’re sticking with a sports theme though, i guess it’s like little league and the MLB or whatever). i always thought he said it just to be nice, but after time i realized that he genuinely meant it. he��d always verbally reassure me that he thought i was one of the funniest, smartest, kindest people he knows, but i found that hard to believe because he knows a lot of brilliant people. i realized he genuinely meant it because of the way he’d ask for my opinion on things. or when he’d ask me to proofread his papers. or on the off-chance when i’d let him read something i’d written and he’d be like “oh, you have a great voice.” he’s someone that only asks for help or advice from trusted sources. if he couldn’t find an answer himself, he was great at finding the most reputable person to ask, so it was always flattering when he considered me to be the most reputable source.

i think another thing that always took me aback was when i’d meet someone from his life and they’d be like “oh i’ve heard so much about you!” or when people would mention these incredibly kind things he’d say about me when i wasn’t in the room. it’s because i knew that he wasn’t someone who shared a lot with others, so knowing that he chose to genuinely share how he felt about me with other people meant a lot.

anyone that knows nathan knows that he loves to argue. he mostly loves it because he knows that he’s right and will just talk circles around anyone- but i never gave him the opportunity to talk circles around me. he was a great bullshitter, but i could always see right through it, which meant one of his greatest arguing tactics was null and void. i eventually learned that there were things i was knowledgeable about that he knew nothing about, and i definitely would try to skew debates toward those things because i loved to watch him squirm. i think he loved the challenge, and that’s why we had so much fun debating. he was so accustomed to being right that i reveled in when he was wrong. i also reveled in the opportunities i had to teach him things- for some reason, he had no common sense, so i’d spend time explaining things like “how to send mail,” and “why you can’t use dish soap to wash clothes.” sometimes he would be genuinely surprised when he’d learn how much i knew about certain topics, or when he’d make a reference and i knew exactly what he was talking about.

perhaps the most satisfying and/or frustrating example of a time when i was right but he refused to accept it was when we were planning our wedding. when we were having the first discussion about it after getting engaged, i brought up the fact that i didn’t necessarily care about having an actual wedding. neither of us are religious and there’s not any traditions that i’m particularly drawn to- in all honesty, a lot of wedding traditions kinda gross me out. also, i really hate being the center of attention and that’s the definition of a wedding. the only part that was vaguely important to me was our vows- but once again, i hate being the center of attention so my plan was to write a long letter that i would give to him before the wedding, and then have a less extensive speech to give in front of everyone. so when it came to what my ideal wedding looked like, i suggested we just elope. my issue wasn’t with having people there, i was totally down to invite our close family to a casual courthouse situation wherever we were living for the actual getting married part. and then a few months down the line having a reception in texas to celebrate with all of our friends and family. like, realistically we couldn’t afford a wedding, and it also wasn’t something incredibly important to me. but he refused to listen to my suggestion. people always talk about a bridezilla, but i was totally chill when it came to wedding planning- he was the one with all the opinions. he was like “no, we have to have a real wedding. i can name like 200 people off the top of my head that we’d have to invite.” so i was like….okay dude i’ll see what i can do. i started putting together spreadsheets with venues and prices and dates and every time i presented the data to him he’d be like “we can’t afford that!!!! what is this??? also i hate the hill country and we have to have the wedding in abilene” and i was just like YEAH I TOLD YOU. it’s almost like i knew what i was talking about the entire time. i suggested trying to pare down the guestlist but he was dead set on having every person he’d ever met in his life there so i tried to accommodate that. eventually i was so frustrated with him shooting down all of my options that we were at a stand-still for wedding planning. and then one day, in the lamp aisle of target he turned to me and said, “you know, i’ve been talking to some of my friends about wedding stuff and a lot of them are saying they wish they’d just eloped instead of doing a full wedding. would you maybe want to do that? we could just use the money we would have spent on a wedding for a honeymoon” WOW THANK YOU for just regurgitating my original idea, i’ll let you pretend that you came up with this if it means we’ve come to an agreement.  

we were both so surprised that we never really actually fought. but we very rarely had conflicts, and when we did we were really good at navigating it. i can only remember one time once we had started dating where i was genuinely upset with him and it was the only time where i really lost my temper in an argument- mostly because he was absolutely in the wrong but refused to admit it. but even then, by the next morning, he apologized and we had resolved the issue. other than that, the closest we got to fighting was the time that i was on the phone with my mom and was yelling at her because she was stressing me out so much and then the next day our neighbor stopped nathan in the hall to ask if he was okay because he “heard you and your girl arguing” and nathan was just like “oh no we’re good, she was just on the phone with her mom” loving him was definitely a choice sometimes, but even when it was tough, it was always worth it.

all of this is to say that being with him made me a better person. the way that he believed in me made it more possible for me to believe in me. the way he prioritized me made me feel like i deserved to be a priority. the way that he challenged me made me less afraid to speak my mind and more willing to stand my ground. we left things in a really good place, and that’s been one of the greatest gifts to me. it’s hard having to leave a relationship at its peak, but it’s also comforting having no regrets.

+++

i see him everywhere, in the weirdest places. sometimes when i look at myself in the mirror, i think of him. when i went to work i would do my makeup one of three ways: no makeup on a bad day, filled in eyebrows and mascara on most days, and full glam on important days, and without fail, he’d always stop to tell me that i looked nice on the days when i’d do the eyebrows and mascara. it’s a very specific way that i would look, and when i see myself looking like that, i think of how much he loved when i looked like that. every time i see cilantro, or pickles, or spearmint gum all i can think of is how much he hated those things. when i see a cute gif of an animal, i think of the little sound he’d always make right before he turned his computer screen to show me whatever cute animal he’d seen on the internet. when i’m in my bedroom and i laugh too loudly at something, i think about all the times when he’d be working in the living room and i would laugh from another room and he would text me to tell me that i have a cute laugh. when i go to the grocery store, or the liquor store i remember the dumb way he’d refer to both of those places (the chicken store, the vodka store). when i see froot loops, i think of eating breakfast in his abilene apartment when he was in the middle of moving out.  or like, sometimes when i’m particularly sweaty, i think about how he used to describe me as having a “moist personality” right before he died, i bought a pajama set from walmart that i was obsessed with and his reaction was “oh, so this is the new outfit i’m going to see you wear for eight days straight” and  now every time i wear the pajama shirt as a real shirt in public, that’s all i can think about.

+++

it’s hard to accept that things are over, but i know that i served my purpose. we accomplished so much in those two years. i watched nathan grow into himself and regain a lot of the confidence he had lost since high school. i watched him go from being a high-school drop out to getting his masters from columbia. i watched him get excited about his future. i’ve been so invested in his happiness for the last thirteen years, and seeing him find that happiness has meant so much to me. at the end of the day, i think the point of marriage is to have someone there when you die, and being able to be there for him when he died was an honor and a privilege. here’s what i learned from our relationship: i know that i am the luckiest person in the world to have been chosen by him. being with nathan has made me a better person. because of everything we’ve been through, i know that i have all of the tools- the confidence, the stability, the coping mechanisms- to move forward. even though i lost nathan, i gained a sense of community with everyone from his life that’s now become a bigger part of mine and that’s pretty dope. 

[jacobdicki95-blog]

Pokemon Games’ Online World

Whenever I come to talk about my thesis, I begin worldwide in this way:"I really do a thesis on Pokémon". This does not miss entertain my interlocutor. It has to be said that a priori, it's not. Those of my generation normally feel nostalgic. Others, elderly, consider Pokémon GO, using diverse attitudes. For my own part, if I played Pokémon a lot in my childhood, my interest for the franchise was renewed by nostalgia due to the emulators, and that I became again what you can predict a lover of Pokémon. But my academic curiosity about franchising started at the start of my Master 1, even once I chose to compose a memoir on"ROM hacking" in a community of Pokémon lovers. A brief record of this Pokémon franchise . Even the Pokemon franchise had been born in 1996 at Japan as a video game published by Nintendo on the Gameboy console. The Pokémon Green / Red matches (Blue and Red at the rest of earth, one to two years after, in a slightly redesigned variant ) have laid the basis of a franchise which has appeared on a lot of media: cartoon, playing cards and graphics... airplanes. To fly into skies including Team Rocket. In the event the franchise has its own ups and downs especially concerning game sales, revenue are usually in thousands of millions around the world, at least to the games of this"primary series", which is to say say people who follow the version of the very first games. Indeed, despite having a constant renewal of their franchise and video games over the years (which will be one of the things of my thesis), the recipe remains the same: a 11-year-old boy goes on an adventure in a universe populated by animals known as pokémons (yes, I compose pokémons to discuss the creatures, it's my blog and Nintendo has no energy here, well, maybe not on that). He captures it into form a group and meet his Pokédex, a sort of digital encyclopedia, so participating in a quest for scientific crowdsourcing to get a professor who exploits his job (after all, it is he who gave him his first pokemon). But above all, he leaves them fight badges and take the battle ofPokémon League, that is composed of defeating an elite to turn into a Pokémon Master. And during his adventure, he is forced to thwart an evil organization's plans. The leaders of the several malicious organizations modeled to imitate the best way to maneuver the"Team Skull" caricature of"thugs" present in the hottest games. Regarding the recent history of Pokémon, even the less skillful have heard about the occurrence of summer 2016, I do not speak of the song Lean , but obviously Pokémon GO. This match will not necessarily occupy a significant position in my thesis, however, has demonstrated that the craze for the franchise is still present (and perhaps a small cleavage). Pokemon and the hunt. When I first decided to work on Pokémon at the end of the summer of 2016, one of the first things that I did was go to Google Scholar to"buy" academic posts that talk about doing it. Imagine my surprise when I found the very initial links were about a receptor involved in the maturation of certain cancers (Nintendo also put pressure on investigators to change the title, they didn't had to appreciate their brand is related to cancer). Then my disappointment when I realized there was virtually no guide or book about Pokemon. Finally though, some posts on Pokémon GOwithin the business of public healthlaw, and , at the time, it had been mostly proto-articles of 2 pages. Additional research has made me discover the occurrence of one academic publication about Pokémon edited by Joseph Tobin, who, visionary, announced in 2004 the fall of Pokémon (I do not care, but kidding aside, I highly recommend it, it is in references at the conclusion of the essay ). Oh, and an article too, if we place people on Pokémon GO aside . How can it be, the very best franchise in the entire world doesn't interest the academic world whatsoever? Needless to say, this isn't a valid cultural function, but cultural studies, particularly the fan studies which followed, together with authors like Henri Jenkins about front lines, are interested in much more popular cultural objects, have tried with more or less success to legitimize them. An individual can get a persuasive excuse in my view in the report of a communication by Vincianne Zabban, Samuel Coavoux and Manuel Boutet, that, starting from the observation that"game studies" (in social sciences) are in reality virtually"WoW research (studies on World of Warcraft), proposes that the very minimal range of games analyzed is mainly due to two factors. The investigators also study the games that interest themto start with, and for that reason the games they played, and the"path dependence", which is to say within this context the greater ease of analyzing the object / subject already well researched by research instead of advance kindly, which divides the position of WoW. One more factor is the fact that, by its own MMORPG status, WoW is a privileged thing to the social sciences. I believe this justification can be expanded to"enthusiast studies", particularly considering that, initially, they were the work of passionate people who wished to defend the legitimacy of their own object. Also, if I'm now studyingPokémon is partly because I grew up with it and I am a fan of this. So maybe if Pokémonwas studied very little up to now, it is because the (ex) Pokémon fans were mainly still analyzing. This could be evidenced by the recent thesis of Fanny Barnabé of this University of Liège, which deals quite extensively with activities and productions of Pokémon lovers (available at the close of the guide, and that I strongly advise you, it's extremely nice to read). Pokémon lovers on the internet. It's just to the productions and the activity of the fans and the broader public (a distinction that I will develop after ) of all Pokémon online that I particularly want to be interested. Because I have the belief it is central in its diffusion and in this franchise's creation. When I was somewhat detached myself from the internet world Pokémon being interested in clinics Pokémon in drama , on a handheld, mainly in adolescents to begin, the part of the net and especially the lovers productions is becoming central again. Pokémon is everywhere. Not in the feeling that we might have heard it throughout the Pokémon GO hype . But in the sense that we can locate Pokémon everywhere, and that as long as we're involved in some social networks very youthful, references are rather common. Anthology.

article source :

pokemon detective pikachu full movie

[lord-arlen]

Thoughts inspired by looking at the archives of this blog, which basically turned into a lengthy account of the last 3 years of my life.

Why did I originally stop using this blog? I originally stopped using this blog not long after starting my studies in Edinburgh when I was in a really bad condition mentally. I had intended Edinburgh to be a new start where I would try to be a different person and it just completely failed; I didn’t have the willpower. So the first few months I was beating myself up over having failed to do any activities or talk to anybody. I got really depressed and I felt like I had to stop posting here, because I was worried that contemplating the situation too much was exacerbating it, and I was worried that I would spread too much of a negative mood to my readers.

But not long after I made this blog private a magical thing happened. I was on a pretty small Master’s course, and everybody on it was talking to each other via a group chat and going out together and stuff like that---except me, because I hadn’t spoken to anybody and didn’t know any of this was going on. But since the course was that small, it was impossible for them not to notice this. So they took pity on me, I guess---I think it was actually mostly the initiative of one person, a Greek called Olga. She started kind of aggressively socializing with me in class, asking me questions and so on, and soon enough I was in their group chat and being invited to outings to pubs and films and so on. There also ended up being a fair amount of group project work on the course, so I got to know a lot of them that way. Although I was a very quiet member of the group normally, I could actually make significant contributions to discussions when I was working together with them on a group project. All sorts of things happened! We all watched Arrival together! I went to somebody’s house to talk to them about research! I celebrated Chinese New Year with people! I went to a sushi party! At one point I was even going semi-regularly to the common room to have lunch with these people and just chat with them relaxedly---this is the kind of Holy Grail of social life that I’ve never previously or since attained. One of my regrets is that I never went with them with them to an academic conference in (IIRC) the Netherlands---I’m not very confident about travelling because I’ve basically never travelled anywhere far from home before, but that would have been an ideal opportunity to get that experience.

So I was pretty happy from like November 2016 to May 2017. And I think some of the highest-quality output on my WordPress blog and main Tumblr account comes from that time.

It wasn’t to last, however. In the end, I still didn’t manage to make any proper connections with people. I never initiated conversations with anybody, because I didn’t know what to talk to them about. I never really got any idea of what they were like as a person, what they would like or wouldn’t like to talk about, because I’m bad at paying attention to such things. My presence in that social group was only really maintained by the common social context of the Master’s course bringing us together. So by the time teaching ended and I started working on my dissertation, all the social events dried up as everybody had to get to work. I was still in their group chat, and some people asked me for help proofreading their essays or with writing code for their projects, so I did have some contact still, but it was all slowing down and I realized it wasn’t going to last.

The dissertation was an interesting experience. It was probably the most significant thing I’ve ever achieved. I had been worried about whether I would be able to come up with something to do it on, given that I’m not particularly creative and more comfortable with learning what’s already known than doing original research. But one of my lecturers had been talking about an approach to doing linguistics research that I had never come across before: having people learn artificial “mini-languages” in an experimental setting and seeing what sort of errors they made, in the hope that this would tell us about the language transmission process in general. It was pretty easy to generate a novel experiment in this vein formulaically: just pick a Greenbergian universal of the form “A implies B”, design the artificial language training data to exhibit A but be ambiguous about whether it has B, see if the experiment subjects generalize to B or ¬B when their knowledge of the mini-language is tested subsequent to training. So I picked Universal 38 and my dissertation was the resulting experiment.

Designing and carrying out the experiment was quite fun. There was a bit of an issue where I took a while designing the experiment and my supervisor got worried. But eventually I was done, and when I was done it had been designed carefully. I put out an ad offering to pay £5 to all of my subjects (all funded by a grant from the department) and I got my desired 40 subjects quite quickly. Setting up the experiment, contacting all 40 of these people, scheduling a place to meet them, instructing them on what to do, all of these were things I never thought I’d have the executive function to pull off, and yet I did them all with actual ease. The effort of doing all this basically distracted me from the emerging collapse of my social life.

Then I got to the stage of actually writing the dissertation. And that was pretty tough. One issue was that my parents wanted me to go on holiday with them to Greece, because by this time it was July. I had a kind of emotional conversation with them where I had to refuse, because I knew I was pressed for time and taking a week off from writing would probably result in failure. They didn’t really accept this and kept saying things like, “but if you work hard enough, you can finish the dissertation in time and still go on holiday with us”, and I had to convince them I wasn’t capable of working that hard. After repeatedly keeping my stance firm they finally relented. (This is a fairly significant milestone in my mind because my parents still kind of have the mindset where I’m their child and they determine what activities I’m doing, and I’m generally bad at saying “no” to them.)

But writing the dissertation was a fairly lonely and stressful endeavour, and by the time I finished, I had kind of lost all faith in my experiment. I doubted whether an artificial “mini-language” could really tell us anything about a real natural language. I also realized I had no real understanding of statistical inference, and so I couldn’t really talk about what my results meant. I did a very basic statistical analysis on the data, which may not have been the appropriate one for the data, and got a nearly-but-not-quite significant p-value. My results and conclusion sections ended up being very short.

It was this disillusionment that led to me deciding to not bother to apply for a PhD and just try to get a job. I knew it would be difficult, because I had no idea what sort of job to do, or how to effectively decide what sort of job to do. But I figured it was what I had to do. And in the end I’d probably get it done, I thought. Even though I was disillusioned with what I had done, 2017 gave me a lot more confidence in my ability to do things.

In September my accommodation contract ended and I was living with my parents again. I had one idea for what job to do that had come to me at that point (via a suggestion from my mother, not from my own searching): to get a job as a copy editor at a fairly well-known UK secondary educational textbook company. That seemed like a reasonably interesting thing to do and the company seemed like a nice place to work it. They had a pretty gruelling application process. I did get invited to an on-site interview + round of tests at an “Assessment Centre” in December. Although this happened in September, I basically avoided job searching until this interview happened months later, because I was kind of riding all my hopes on this one job and because searching for jobs was hard.

Their Assessment Centre experience was actually quite fun. Apart from the job interview, my first ever, where I was extremely awkward, as one would expect from my personality. But the tests were fun, and they seemed easy enough. There were also several people doing the tests with me who I talked to a bit throughout the day. There was an extremely posh guy called Rupert who was writing a sci-fi novel and making a conlang for it---he’s the only other person I’ve ever met IRL who does conlanging. There was a girl who I talked to about birds (I had gotten into birdwatching [solitarily] in mid-2017 at Edinburgh once social events with my course mates became less frequent.) But I didn’t get any of these people’s emails or phone numbers or Facebook accounts or anything, so nothing lasting came of that.

In the end, that job went to one of the other people. So then I had to continue my job search. My graduation from Edinburgh happened around this time, at the end of December. I ended up feeling pretty sad throughout the ceremony because I felt like the good part of my life was ending. My parents tried to get pictures of me smiling, which was really annoying at the time. In the end they didn’t get any. Obviously I think it’s a pity now that there are no photos of me smiling at my graduation from Edinburgh, but it was necessary with my feelings at the time.

Although I’ve just realized that there is a photo of me smiling at my graduation... just not one my parents took. Obviously I saw my coursemates again at graduation. But I really didn’t know how to deal with this, given that it would probably be the last time I ever saw them again. I don’t know how to handle saying goodbye to people. So naturally I handled it in the worst possible way by trying to avoid them. I chatted a bit to the people I was sitting next to during the ceremony, but then afterwards when we all went outside, and everybody gathered together to do some more chatting, I just slunk off back to my parents. But before I could get to them, I heard somebody calling my name, and it turned out that one of them---a Bulgarian girl called Zlati---wanted to take a picture of me, to remember me by. I was quite touched by this and so at that point, I did smile. OK, it wasn’t really a genuine smile, I was too depressed for that, but I did make my best effort to smile. Here is the picture (she sent it to me on Facebook afterwards):

She works in Oxford now, or at least that’s where she went immediately after Edinburgh. She told me that if I’m ever in Oxford I should let her know. I haven’t spoken to her ever since. I would like to, but I don’t know how to. (The same goes for all of my Edinburgh coursemates, of course.) If I did go to Oxford I probably would be able to contact her because she explicitly permitted that, but until that happens I probably won’t do it. Maybe I could go to Oxford once I have my own place and am more confident about travelling. Hopefully she would still be happy to meet me now that over a year has passed.

In any case---although I would definitely like to meet my Edinburgh friends again, ultimately I am not going to have my social needs met until I have friends where I live, who I can meet on a regular basis.

Anyway, that was 2017. And then in 2018, I just... kind of faffed around for the first half of the year. I couldn’t make any decisions. It was just very exhausting to think about what I should do. I could do programing, but it wasn’t something that really appealed to me very much. I did contemplate becoming a teacher, because trying to convey information to people is something I do enjoy very much... but teaching involves a lot more than that, and it is probably something that would be pretty tough on somebody with as poor social skills as me. So while I did contact some recruiters about teaching jobs I ended up chickening out on following up on any of the opportunities they brought up. By February I was thinking I should definitely consider doing a PhD as well. But the application process for a PhD is a lot more demanding, and it’s more difficult to find information on how it should be done. If I had still been in Edinburgh I could have asked my coursemates for help, maybe, but at home it seemed impossible. The biggest obstacles are the need to pick a supervisor, and the need to have a research proposal (if I’m looking to do a PhD in linguistics in the UK, at least). I still would like to do a PhD more than anything else but I can’t make any progress towards it until I have some idea what I would do my PhD about.

In March my parents made me sign up for a free course offered by the local council for jobseekers. That actually had the effect of me not doing any jobseeking while the course was running, because as long as I was attending the course I felt like I was Doing Something. The classes for the course were not particularly bothersome because they were only from 10am to 3pm, and they didn’t require much work---all we were doing was getting told basic information about how to write CVs, how to use Microsoft Excel, etc. I did talk to the other course attendees, one of whom happened to actually be someone I knew from high school. So that was a reasonably fun experience. But it was just procrastination really.

After that course I had to just suck it up and get a programming job. I couldn’t think of anything else; although I wasn’t really into programming, I had been in the past and had acquired basic fluency with coding that way. Since programmers are in high demand, and employers are also used to them being socially awkward types who don’t do well in behavioural interviews, I figured I’d be able to get a job without too much trouble.

And that’s what happened. I applied for a few jobs, got a few interviews, and said yes to the first company that gave me an offer. And that’s how we got to the current situation. What I didn’t really realize at the time was how unpleasant the experience of having a job I’m not enthusiastic about would be. I obviously wasn’t looking forward too it, but I figured it would just be a bit dull and I’d be able to deal with it and maybe think in a relaxed way about how to achieve greater ambitions over several years. Instead it turns out that it’s actively, significantly unpleasant and leaves me in a state of sort of perpetual panic.

So I am pretty depressed again, just like I was when I stopped this blog. But not depressed in a hopeless way. I mean, things could get better, and I am trying to make them better. Right now, the most important change I think I can make is moving out of my parent’s house. One thing that’s apparent from this review of the last 3 years is that although I managed to Do Things at Edinburgh to some extent, I pretty much lost that ability once I moved back in with my parents. I guess this is the place where I spent two decades growing up as a more or less completely passive person, so naturally it’s hard to maintain agency here. Maybe moving will help, maybe it won’t. If it doesn’t help, I have more options, like trying to get a new job or doing serious dedicated work towards coming up with a PhD research proposal or trying to find fulfilment from hobbies or something. I will never be out of options; there are always new things to try; there is always hope. The good part of my life may be over but we won’t know for certain until the day that I die, which is hopefully a long way away.

[noticelifewriting]

A Reflection on Creating a Commonplace Book

A commonplace book is a way for a reader to catalog the interesting, perplexing, moving, and useful words, phrases, passages, and thoughts they come across while reading. Commonplace books act as memory holders as well as memory aids. The purpose of a commonplace book is to retain useful information that a writer could possibly incorporate into his own work. For our class, we were not concerned with collecting items for later use. Instead, our goal was to read the assigned texts for the course and curate a commonplace book filled with what resonated with us. We wanted to interact with the text and the authors and use what we found to explore our own thoughts and ruminations. At the beginning of the semester, our class goal for the commonplace book was not as clear to me as it is now. However, the process of constructing my own commonplace book allowed me to negotiate with the complex ideas, themes, and histories we were reading while also furthering my education of what memoirs are as I discussed them, and, in a way, created my own form of life writing.

The first challenge I had while making my commonplace book started at the very beginning of the process and the problem was how should I create the actual “book.” There were so many different avenues I could take that the options became overwhelming. I have kept many journals and composition books before that I filled with ruminations, quotes, poems, and drawings, so, I thought that I could organize my entries in a notebook. As soon as I tried to make the first entry in the notebook, I knew immediately that it wouldn’t work. I felt uninspired and I could not envision how the notebook would turn out in a way that I would be proud of. I abandoned that I idea and began looking for new ways to curate my project.

Last semester, I took the digital portfolio course in which I learned how to build a website and I spent a lot of time learning how to use Wordpress. All students at Agnes Scott College are required to make a digital portfolio in the form of a self-designed website. While working on the portfolio, I learned that I could make a subdomain, which is basically a website within a website. After the notebook idea failed, I thought that I could create a subdomain for my commonplace book. I visited the library guide on how to create a subdomain. With that knowledge, I created the subdomain, which I named Noticing Life Writing based on the course and Professor Stamant’s famous quote “notice what you notice.” However, not too long into the process I began to feel discouraged. It had taken me months of work last semester (and over my four years at Agnes) to build my website. Having to start over from scratch was so daunting that I did not know how to proceed. Consequently, I again searched for a way to house my entries. This led me to create a Tumblr. With Tumblr, you do not have to build an entire website. All I had to do was write a post and pick an image.  After creating a few posts, Tumblr seemed like the best fit and I was finally happy with the format of my commonplace book. Nevertheless, the journey did not end there.

After I had made around twelve posts on my Tumblr, I started thinking about the website again. I never deleted the subdomain I had created and I now had something that I could actually put on the website. I revisited the subdomain, and as a test, I copied and pasted a few of the posts I had made on Tumblr. When I saw the posts on the website I felt reinvigorated. I began looking at themes, and, when I found one that I liked, I felt inspired to keep going. I played around with the theme some more and I started working on the pages. The first page I had was the posts page, which did not require actual building. I moved on to creating an About the Blog page where I explained who I am and what the blog was for. The hardest page to create was the page where I listed the books I had read. I wanted to find a layout that allowed me to display the covers of the book while also linking the viewer to the posts that were made about a certain book. It took me days of sifting through add ons and widgets before I finally found one that worked. After I got the books page finished, the only thing left to do was finish the posts and simply make a page for the reflection.

The posts were both extremely difficult and incredibly enlightening to make. When I first started the posts, they were only analytically focused. However, after the third post, I was like a crash test dummy in the way I slammed into a wall. I couldn’t come up with anything else to say. I made a meeting with the professor to talk about the problem I was having. When I was told that the assignment was not supposed to be difficult and that I should be writing my thoughts, I was able to find new inspiration. Instead of trying to write a thesis-driven essay for each post, I wrote from a more introspective place. I began constructing my posts around personal connections I had to the text, and I realized that I could still be analytical while allowing myself to write what I wanted to write. When I freed myself from the restraints I placed on myself, I was able to write posts more easily.

The entire process of creating a commonplace book allowed me to learn more about myself and write down thoughts I have had for years concerning racism, family dynamics, human mortality, memory, etc.  Each post brought me closer to myself and to the authors as I felt bonded through similar experiences. I felt most connected to bell hooks who comes from a similar background as I do. She discussed her childhood growing up as a black girl and I related to almost everything she wrote. The ability to connect with the authors, as I did with hooks, and my inner self allowed me to create posts that were like my own life writing, giving me an even deeper appreciation for the memoirs we were reading in class. Through this project, I learned how important it is for writers and readers to always be interacting with and challenging the text. It is so easy for a person to forget or to let important words, phrases, passages, perspectives, and messages they read escape their conscious if they are not engaging and negotiating with the text. With my commonplace book, I have stored thoughts and ideas and experiences that have shaped me and will continue to shape me as a person.

[woildismyerster]

Heyyyy if you have time for requests rn is there any way you could do any newsie x reader who is super insecure? Thank you so much and love ur blog :)

I feel like I need to give Davey more love.  That sweet boy would never let you feel bad about yourself.  Also, you were one of the first Newsie blogs I followed, , I love you, and my knees are weak right now.

You collapsed face first onto Davey’s bed.  

“College essays again?”  His words were muffled by the pillows you were trying to melt into, but the words made you groan.

“Yes.  I should just give up.  Become a rice farmer.”

You could hear the smile in his voice.  “You’ll do great.  I’ll help you edit them, if you want.”

You didn’t think it was enough.  All of the essays wanted to hear about times that you had been brave, or kind, or compassionate, or something of the kind.  You didn’t feel like you were any of those things, or really anything at all.  You didn’t feel particularly good at anything, which would have been preferable, but you didn’t feel bad at anything either.  At least sucking would be something.  Instead you were nothing; a total nobody who would never be remembered for anything.

“I have nothing good to say in an essay,” you said.  You turned onto your side to look at Davey, who sat in his desk chair.  He slid onto the floor to lean against the bed frame.

“Sure you do,” he said.  “You have plenty to say, all the time.”

“Nothing that anybody wants to hear.”

Davey frowned at you.  The two of you had become friends by necessity; it was easier to tolerate a group project if you knew that the other person would try.  If you worked together, neither of you felt used by somebody else.  It didn’t take long to realize that working together was more fun when there was ice cream or pizza, or when you took breaks to go on walks or watch movies.  Being friends made working together better, so it was logical to grow closer.

Davey liked logic, and if logic had drawn him to you, who were you to fight it?

“I like hearing what you have to say,” he said.

“You have to say that,” you said with a crooked smile.  “You’re my best friend.”

“Right,” he said matter-of-factly.  “I would never have chosen you as a best friend if I didn’t want to spend time with you.  You must be worth being friends with, if I chose you.”

You hummed, not really agreeing.  You had been thrown together.  Plenty of high schoolers formed relationships, anticipating severing them once college came.

You did not want to sever your relationship with Davey.  You wanted to go to college with him, where you could study late into the night.  You could join clubs filled with like-minded people.  Maybe, in a new place where roles could change, your relationship would change a little too.  Maybe you would start borrowing his sweaters when you got cold.  You would go to the movies or a restaurant, and when somebody said that the two of you made a great couple, Davey wouldn’t flush and avoid your eyes for hours afterwards.

Any of those things happening hinged on these essays.  These essays that you had nothing to say for, because nothing about you warranted getting accepted into a college as good as Davey deserved.  And if you couldn’t even get into a good college, how could you expect to be good enough for Davey?

Davey saw the look on your face.  He liked to think that he knew all of your faces, from the slow blink that you gave when somebody was appallingly stupid to the sugary smile you gave to teachers who had to be won over.  When he looked at your face now, it was as clear as day that you didn’t believe him.

“Y/N,” he said gently.  “I’m serious.  You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.  Can you imagine how terrible my life would be if I was still partners with Race in history?”  His attempt at a joke did make you smile, but he continued.  “There are a million reasons for a college to accept you, and it won’t be hard to put them in an essay.  You’ve already got the right stuff, and I’ll help you make it into a killer essay.”

“Davey, being a good friend is not the same as being college-bound.”  You ran your hand over his comforter.  He watched it move.

“It totally is,” he argued.  “You just have to say it right.”

“There isn’t anything to say,” you said.  You were almost getting tired of this conversation.  You were clearly at a stalemate, and though Davey could come up with convincing debates, you thought that you knew yourself better than anybody else could.

“You’re great at plenty of stuff!”  Davey seldom raised his voice, but he was nearly shouting now.  You wanted to reach over to smooth the furrow in his brow, but that wouldn’t help at all.  It would just muddy the waters.  The waters were murky enough already, with the two of you hanging out more and more and you laying on his bed.  “You’re interesting, you’re funny, you’re a good kisser -”

“How would you know that I’m a good kisser?”  Davey had never kissed you, and you had never talked to him about kissing, so he had no reason to know so.

He turned bright pink, and looked away.  “Well, I mean - What I’m trying to say is -”

He frowned at you again, lips set in a thin line.  He opened his mouth to continue, sighed, and leaned in to press his lips against yours.  His lips were much softer than they looked, and you could feel him take in a deep breath.  Whether he was trying to smell you or breathe you in, you couldn’t be sure.  He had a hand on your waist to keep his balance, and you felt like you were on fire everywhere he touched.  You would gladly burn alive if it felt like this.

“There,” he said when he pulled away.  “You are a phenomenal kisser, and I know that from experience.”  His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes were bright.

“Thanks,” you croaked, feeling like that was a totally inadequate response.  “That was really - I really -”

“Yeah,” he said with a crooked smile.  “Yeah, it was.  If you write one of your essays, we can do it again.”  He leapt to his feet to grab his laptop, unable to keep his smile from growing.  He looked like a giddy teenage boy - not the earnest near-man that he always tried to be.

Davey thought you were great.  Davey, who would surely change the world some day.  Davey, who didn’t just take the moral high ground; he was the moral high ground.  Davey liked you.  That couldn’t count for everything, but it had to count for something.

[willjohnstone-blog1]

Blog 8: media literacy analysis reflection

One writing strategy that has really been helpful in writing these papers is the outline provided in the assignment.  I have gone back and checked this outline during my writing and then again when I am editing. That has been really helpful.  I actually missed an entire section in the media literacy paper that was assigned which I caught in the editing process when I compared my section headings to the outline.  The struggle I still have is where to start.  It is hard to get started, even when you have an idea.  For this assignment, I had no idea how I would get 7-10 pages from a paper discussing three advertisements and that felt overwhelming and made it harder to get started.  This genre was hard because so many ads use similar marketing strategies. Another aspect of this genre that can be tricky is that it is not always clear what the marketing strategy is, for example, in the Lexus ad showing the outside of the car, when you first read it and look at it, it is not immediately clear how they are trying to market the car and grab attention. Because of this, it is often tricky to connect ideas and to find patterns throughout multiple ads.

I think the peer review process adds value because when you are reviewing someone else’s paper you can then look at your own writing more critically and make improvements.  I also think it helped to strengthen my essay because it gave me areas where I could improve. It is always good to have another view of something because it could help you identify something you could adjust that makes your point easier to make. Whenever I am working with peers it always improves my work. In my peer review form, I tried to give constructive criticism which I think goes a long way with big things such as connecting themes and showing how the author could improve their argument. I think that the biggest thing that I gained from the peer editing was the request to improve my transitional sentences. Knowing my paper would be peer-reviewed, I put extra effort into the little things such as spelling, grammar, punctuation, and formatting early on so that I have the easiest transition from the first draft to the final version.

[tessatechaitea]

Cerebus #2 (1978)

Is this the one where Cerebus becomes so obsessed with feeding coins into this devil thing to receive slips of paper with his future on them that he becomes unable to make any decisions at all?

Deni's essay on the inside cover of Issue #2 mostly just points out that comic books are weird and dumb and the fans are huge nerds. She ends it saying, "Comics is a crazy business, but you know something? I wouldn't want to be anyplace else. That is if I had a choice." Six years later, her choice was to get the fuck out of her marriage with Dave Sim. Although she still published comics at her new company Renegade Press. I'm not sure what she did after she closed up shop on that sometime around 1989, I think. Maybe she realized she did have a choice and somehow got the fuck away from comic books. I am not frantically trying to find her phone number on the Internet right now asking her how she did it. I'm too busy re-reading all of my old comic books, most of which I didn't even like the first time. Dave Sim's essay about Cerebus #2 printed in the Swords of Cerebus compilation is a bloodcurdling breath of honesty. Unless I meant refreshing? Is refreshing or bloodcurdling the description used to entice people to buy gum?

You should probably figure out how to enlarge this on whatever crutch of a device you're reading this on so that you can read it because it's entertaining.

As a reader, you instinctively realize that most artists hate drawing the boring stuff in the background. Those that fill the scene in with lots of nice little details are probably a joy to work with but they're also probably insane when you realize the deadlines they're under and they can't help drawing a fiddly little tea service on an antique hutch next to a couple of exotic potted plants. You know, things that will probably need to be drawn repeatedly across several panels from different angles! But what I hadn't really thought about was how the writer part of Dave Sim was initially so lazy about writing humorous stories and dialogue. When I think of Cerebus, it's the funny moments and hilarious character interactions which I think of first. Or maybe second. The first thing I think of is Sandman Roach sucking himself off with his weird Sandman mask. I guess the main thing I learned from Sim's introduction is that I'm not going to be reading a funny issue now. Not that the first issue was terribly funny. It was much like Sim writes in this one, really. The comedy comes across in the first few pages as the readers yuck it up over a tough aardvark chopping off hands and threatening bartenders (the bartender's line where he changes up his "I won't serve you. You're a...guest! And I serve guests at their table" was probably the best line of the first issue). The rest is so solidly Conan invading a wizard's tower that you're not expecting any jokes. Although Sim tries to lighten the mood by making the wizard a bit of a bumbling, aging middle-management type who just seems tired of having his work space invaded by thieves. The narrator opens this issue describing some of Cerebus's travels since the end of the last issue. In that blurb, we get the first hints of the geography of Estarcion.

At some point, we'll get a map. But it won't matter much since most of issues 26-110 or so take place in the city-state of Iest (hell, maybe 90% of Cerebus takes place in Iest up until Guys).

Do we ever find out any more about the Blood Wars? I don't think so. Remember, a lot of the early issues are setting a sword and sorcery mood. Sim will revisit some of the characters and places in these first 25 issues but only sparingly and usually in new contexts, thus making the overall story seem more layered and fully fleshed out than it initially was.

The first issue set the mood with Cerebus bouncing around on the back of a horse as he pulled into town; this one sets a slightly different tone.

Notice how Cerebus has two swords in this picture? I think Dave remembers that at some point in the future and comments (either through The Judge or through Sim's guest appearance itself) on how Cerebus losing one messes up his future or something. It's also possible I'm remembering that wrong! But I'm pretty sure we get a short history of Cerebus's accessories and their import (his helmet, the necklace, his swords). Cerebus is captured by the Boreleans who decide to sell him to a freak show in Gurann. I don't know where Gurann is. I also don't know where Borelea is. Or Tansubal. Or Estarcion. In response to the Chieftain's plans, Cerebus curses him in Paranian. I also don't know where Parania is. Cerebus's curse is "Comne ye tama stet fegria!" It translates roughly to "You can shove the freak show up your asshole." What I'm saying is that we all now sort of know the Paranian word for asshole. It's probably "fegria." Doing a Google search of the word "fegria" and "cerebus" resulted in a blog from 2017 which planned to do a critical review of every issue of Cerebus. It made it three issues. But in glancing over the blog, I noticed a quote that was footnoted as being by Tim Kreider in an essay from The Comic Journal #301. I fucking love Tim Kreider and now I need to get my hands on that issue. Anybody have a copy they want to send me?! Before Dave Sim gets to the part of the story without any jokes, he makes this classic joke when Cerebus battles to prove himself worthy of joining the Boreleans.

Ha ha! Look at how funny the little aardvark guy looks!

Two issues in and we already see how Dave is using the fantasy setting to satire real life. Previously, he showed how easily the powerful, entrenched wizard was defeated because he was just a blowhard hiding behind illusions which made him seem more powerful than he really was. Here, we see a couple of guys quickly reworking sacred traditions on the fly to cater to their current needs. Maybe they're just jokes but they tell the story of who this young Dave Sim probably was: an atheist with a mistrust of authority, status quo, and almost certainly mainstream comic book publishers. Just wait until that young Dave Sim suddenly isn't atheist any more and has decided he's the authority of everything! Boy do those issues suck dog turds that were turded out of dogs who sucked on dog turds. I'm specifically thinking about the Latter Days explication of Genesis as a story about a lying female god's power struggle with the real, upright male God. At least I think that's what was happening. I might have slept through 85% of time I was reading it. Cerebus wins the knife fight with an unorthodox yet apparently known well enough to be dreaded Earth Pig move.

So dreaded that I don't think Cerebus ever uses it again. Granted, his snout gets much shorter and less effective as the series goes on.

I'm sorry I scanned that panel because the really good joke comes immediately on the next page where the Chieftain is all, "You're from the South so you probably have a moral code against killing an unarmed combatant which means sacred tradition will..." at which point he's interrupted by Cerebus stabbing Klog in the face. Cerebus's moral and ethical code are pretty animalistic. Probably because he's an animal? Although you can't argue with some of his wisdom when he becomes Pope. I mean, "One less mouth to feed is one less mouth to feed," is some thoughtful shit, especially after you've just thrown a baby fifty yards. Cerebus spends two days marching with the Boreleans before the army is overrun by an army of ensorcelled men. Cerebus understands magic enough to completely mistrust it so instead of fighting, he slides down a snowy cliff to escape. That was the part of the story where Dave Sim's writing persona was all, "I can't be funny any more. Let's put Cerebus in a hole where he has to deal with something serious." So now it's basically a new story. If I remember the Conan books I read when I was younger, the narrative structure isn't too far off from those. The books just seemed like a bunch of scenes that didn't really have any plot thread connecting them. Probably because they were just a bunch of short stories from pulp magazines shoved together in book form. What? You expect me to actually do research on a memory from my past instead of just speculating?! How not lazy do you think I am?! As Cerebus wanders the dark caves under the ice, he remembers an old legend about The Eye of Terim guarded by the Demon Khem lying underground in Borelea. Could this be the place?! Could he be walking into deadly danger? Or extravagant riches?! Did Dave Sim forget that Tarim was spelled with an "a" which birthed Terim later because he wouldn't admit to a mistake? Did this duality of Tarim and Terim cause him to believe the religions of The People of the Book were infected with the same duality? And when did he decide the split was down gender lines?! That last question was a rhetorical question but also one that can be answered: he made that decision when he was interviewing mothers and daughters for his story "Mothers & Daughters." At that time, he realized women he didn't want to fuck were vapid and uninteresting. His conclusion was that this was an issue with women and not an issue of self. I guess his reasoning was "I don't want to fuck men but I find them interesting therefore women must not be interesting!" Don't worry! According to Dave, that's not a sexist conclusion. It's a completely rational one because he's a man and he came to it.

Cerebus climbing down a pillar of faces, descending deep into the Earth. Later, he'll do the exact opposite. I don't mean to suggest it means anything! It's just a nice callforward!

This is only the second issue and Dave is already using the comic medium for all its worth. The pillar remains static so he's able to split the image into panels which then allocate separate time intervals. You can tell he's a long time fan of comics. We learn that the Eye of Terim is the "most precious of the five spheres of the Gods." So now we know there are five spheres of the Gods. What are they for? Where are they? Will Cerebus pursue more of them? Or will he just be told about them later when he goes into outer space? Probably that last one. Cerebus does utter an oath to Tarim so Dave probably finally remembered how he originally spelled it but only after inking the previous pages. Remember the essay from last issue that you didn't read? He described his process of fully completing each page before moving on to the next one. So now he's got a problem! The better solution would probably be to fix the previous errors. But that's a solution that takes more work. An easier solution is to suddenly decide that there are two confusing Gods with pretty much the same name only they're pronounced differently. How are they pronounced? I don't fucking know. Comic books aren't audio! Look, I'm a cynical dick! It's entirely possible that Dave Sim had already decided that Terim was the name of God in the North and Tarim was the name of God in the South and that was what caused so much strife. I could give Dave the benefit of the doubt on this. I suppose I will although it's less fun to believe Dave knew what he was doing than to pretend he's made tons of stupid mistakes.

It turns out the Eye of Terim was actually a succubus trying to trap prey.

Maybe Dave Sim is a genius who, from Issue #2, was already working toward his "Mothers & Daughters" themes and his Tangent essay! Here we see a woman lying in wait to steal Cerebus's soul and tempt him from his righteous path of reason! I'd say this is technically the first female character in Cerebus and it's kind of ideologically on point with the rest of the series! Also, we learn aardvarks don't have souls. I think that's the really important bit. I can't leave this bit yet! Look at how the encounter is worded: "For the first time in centuries a prey has broken the succubus' spell -- has seen it in its original form." It's as if Dave is saying, "See? I'm the first guy to have noticed that these hot women aren't just hot women! They're traps! I mean Cerebus was the first to see it!" And as the succubus becomes unable to destroy Cerebus's mind and reason and rationality, it becomes desperate. It becomes emotional! It screams and rants and raves! Wow. I didn't think I'd have to deal with Dave Sim's philosophy about the Marxist/feminist/homosexual axis for at least another hundred and fifty issues! Maybe I should just pretend I'm reading too deeply into what's basically a Dungeons & Dragons encounter. Cerebus tumbles in the dark and awakens lying in the snow next to the Eye of Terim, now just a plain iron sphere. He notices he's amid the dead of the battle and realizes the ensorcelled men were victims of the succubus who have now been freed. I guess the succubus died when it tried to suck the soul of a soulless creature*. *Necromancer's Compendium. Page 63. Maybe this story was how Dave Sim eventually saw his magnum opus: he was Cerebus trying to free the minds of all the other men who were ensorcelled by women! You might not agree with his message but if he had it since Issue #2 and continued on to Issue #300, you can probably maybe say at least one small, positive word about his sticktoitiveness. That's a hard word to spell. I'm going to write and draw three hundred issues of a comic book about how difficult it was to spell that and then the trauma of knowing it was spelled right but Spellcheck insisting that it's not. I'm reading the bi-weekly version of Issue #2 so along with the Aardvark Comment letters page is this note from Dave:

So even when he was an atheist, he had the guilt of a religious person.

In one of Dave Sim's fake letters, he brings up how the plot of Issue #1 was quite similar to Robert E. Howard's Conan story, "Tower of the Elephant." So Dave Sim uses a fake name to call himself out on borrowing bits of a previous story? He also answers the accusation by saying, "Yeah, I read it a long time ago so I guess some of that stuff stuck in my head." I guess this is something Dave and I have in common: we often have lengthy conversations with pretend people about our flaws. Dave also asks himself why Cerebus always swears by Clovis. Apparently that was the pen name of his wife Deni's brother. Mystery solved! Hopefully in a future letter, Dave will explain why he has Terim and Tarim! Cerebus #2 Rating: B. Another solid B in that the art is still that of a somewhat better than amateur artist and the writing is consistent enough to be memorable in places and not Ann Nocenti confusing in all the others. Grade B praise indeed! My main feeling when rereading the early Cerebus stories from the first 25 issues is that I'm eagerly anticipating "High Society" and the introduction of The Regency Elf. I also look forward to the day Gerhard arrives and the backgrounds become gorgeous works of almost certainly intense labor.

[mymarvelobsessions]

Now or Never

Now or Never

masterlist

word count: 2.5k+

summary: Bucky x reader College AU. You and Bucky have been dating for a while, but things aren’t going so great. You love Bucky and want to make the relationship work, but does he?

warnings: light angst, fluff

a/n: This is my entry for @jurassicbarnes writing challenge! Happy Blog-Birthday💕 Based on the song Now or Never by Halsey. Btw this is my first fic ever! Also english isn’t my mother tongue, sorry for (m)any typos! Also, why am I doing this to myself? ~ “I love you.”, you say, exhaling softly and closing your eyes. You wait to hear if he says it back. He doesn’t.

Long after you have fallen asleep Bucky wraps his arm around your waist and pulls you close. “I love you, too.”, he whispers. But you can’t hear him.

Two days later:

You’re in your apartment, which you share with your best friend Natasha, working on your assignment. Or that’s what you should be doing. But really you are just waiting for Bucky to call you back. Which he hasn’t so far. You are used to it though. An hour truly isn’t much. For his standards that is.

It’s been two days since you have last seen Bucky and you made plans two have dinner tonight.

After another hour it happens. Your phone finally rings. As you hear the beginning tunes of ‘Viva la Vida’ your head immediatly perks up and a smile makes it’s way onto your lips. Nat sighs and shoots you a pityful glance.

But when you look down at your cell, it’s not Bucky calling. It’s Steve, his best friend.

You already know what is coming. Bucky has done this a thousand times, using Steve to cancel his plans with you. You really don’t know why Steve still puts up with this. But then  again, so do you.

“Heey Steve.” You pick up the phone, your mood audible in your voice. On the other end you hear Steve sigh.

“I am sorry, Y/N. I really am.”, he says.

“You don’t need to be.” You swallow hard. You meant it. It’s not Steve’s fault.

“It’s just-”, Steve starts to explain, but you cut him off. “No need to make up excuses. I get it.”

“I don’t think you do.” You laugh. Now it is your fault, or what?

“Look, today is not a good day for Bucky.”

“And he can’t tell me that himself?”, you snap.

“Like I said, not a good day.”, Steve explains.   “I GET IT.”, you yell. You immediatly feel sorry for screaming at Steve like that. He definitely did not deserve it.

“Sorry.” You take a deep breath. “Just…, tell Bucky…” You swallow. “Tell him it’s fine. And-” Hesitantly you finish. “Tell him I am here if he needs me.”

“I will.”  ~ “Bucky, you need to stop avoiding Y/N. She doesn’t deserve it.”, Steve says, his eyes piercing through Bucky.

“I am not avoiding her.”, Bucky growels, his stare just as intense as Steve’s.

Steve snorts. “You’re not? Then why did I just call your girlfriend to tell her that you don’t have time for her?”

Sighing Bucky breaks his stare. “You know it’s not like that.”

Steve gets up from to couch to grab another beer from the fridge. “I know that, but does she?” He opens the fridge door, to realize that there is no beer left. Using slightly too much force he shuts the door and turns around to face Bucky again, leaning against the fridge. “You cannot keep pulling shit like this and expect her to stay.”

Bucky inhales deeply. “I am not sure I want her to stay.” ~ “You should break up with him.”, Nat says, as soon as you end the call.

“What?!” You just stare at her. She can’t honestly mean that. She knows how you feel about Bucky and how much he means to you.

“I know you love him, but you need to brace yourself for the possibility that he doesn’t feel the same way about you anymore.” She carefully meets your gaze.

But you are not ready for this. So you go back to working on your assignment that you couldn’t care about less. ~ What Natasha said doesn’t leave your thoughts the rest of the day. Even now, lying in your bed that’s awfully empty without Bucky there.

For a while you just stare at the white ceiling.

Maybe he doesn’t feel the same way about you anymore. You close your eyes, but you can’t stop the tears from falling. A sob escapes from your lips. You quickly cover your mouth with one hand, not wanting Nat to hear you cry.

You really don’t want her to be right, but can’t stop yourself from think ‘what if she is?’. Were two years all you would get with Bucky? There was a time where you actually thought he was the one. And you still do.

But being with someone does not fully commit to you, hell, who does not even make time to see you, is not the way to live.

How foolish of you to think that you could have it all. An apartment close to your dream college with your best friend, the perfect guy and a great relationship with him.

And Bucky was the perfect guy. Handsome with gorgeos blue eyes that you could stare at for hours, if he would actually spend time with you. The right amount smart and funny, you could joke with him just as well as you could have a serious conversation. If he would actually talk to you. He was just… a little damaged. Which was probably why he was ignoring you right now.

It wouldn’t be fair for you to leave him now, just because he was going through a hard time. After all he had been there for you. And that’s what you want. You want to be there for him. But he doesn’t let you. ~ All of a sudden you are pulled out of sleep, your face and pillow drenched in water.

Confused you look around for the reason you awoke and find Nat standing next to your bed with an empty glass in her hand. She freaking poured cold water on you.

Nat smiles apologetically and shrugs. “Get your ass out of bed. Now. We’re late.” And with that she leaves.

Groaning you hoist yourself out of bed. You roll your head to stretch your neck and lightly massage your shoulders.

You hadn’t slept well and now your whole body ached. ‘Good.’, you think. At least now your body matches your soul.

You don’t want to go to class today. You don’t feel well. ‘Not a good day.’, you think and laugh at yourself. But opposed to Bucky you really want to talk to him or just be close to him. A light sob comes out. You take a deep breath. No time to cry. ~ After a quick shower and a cup of coffee you already feel a little better. Well enough to tackle a day of college.

You still needed to speak to Professor Coulson about that assignment. Since you hadn’t gotten anything done yesterday, you doubt it would be finished by tomorrow. But maybe you could convince him to give you more time.

When you arrive you and Nat part ways and head to your lectures. You round the corner and find yourself face to face with non other than Bucky Barnes.

Though you had been wanting to see him for the past few days, now that you are standing in front of him you don’t know what to say.

You immediatly start to blush and turn around. You shouldn’t be embarassed. But you are. So you start walking back only to realize that you are late and you have to get to class. Even if that means having to face Bucky.

Apruptly you halt your steps. Inhaling deeply you gather the courage to turn around.

He is still there. Just standing there, staring at you. Why doesn’t he say something. He just looks at you with those blue eyes, the pain and sorrow visible in his gaze.

He does not look well.  His skin pale as ever, dark blue bags under his truly beautiful eyes. Neither one of you moves. You want to. You want to run away. Turn around and never look back. You want to run into his arms. Wrap your arms around him and never let go.

“Aghm.” A cough pulls you out of your mind.

You both break your stare to find Steve, who just emmerged from the men’s bathroom, leaning awkwardly against the door, looking like wants to be anywhere but here.

“Sorry to interrupt your staring contest, but we are all late to Professor Coulson’s class.” ~ The short walk to the lecture hall was… uncomfortable, to say the least. Neither of you says a word. You wouldn’t know what to say or talk about anyway.

Now you are sitting in the second row, gaze fixed on Bucky’s brown hair in front of you.  You can’t help but wonder if it is still as soft as always. You find yourself reaching out to touch it and quickly pull back your hand.

First you are late and now you cannot concentrate on what the Professor is saying. Great way to show Coulson you deserve more time.

“Now remember that essay we talked about is due ‘til tomorrow.” With that Professor Coulson dismisses the class.

You throw your notebook and pen into your bag, straighten out your skirt and make your way to the front.

“Y/N.” You hadn’t heard his voice in too long.

But you continue walking until you reach Professor Coulson’s desk.

“I wanted to- ahm- ask if- ahm- it would be possible to… maybe possibly hand in the essay the day after tomorrow?”, you stuttered, hands sweaty. Great, you couldn’t even form a coherent sentence.

“Are alright, Y/N?” Brows furrowed your professor watches you intently.

“It’s fine.” You brush a stray hair strand out of your face, twirling it as you do so. “I mean I am fine.” You swallow, masking up a smile that is so obviously fake you don’t even know why you tried. Dropping the smile, you knead your hands together, slightly cracking your knuckles.

“You have until Wednesday.”, Professor Coulon says, a small smile on his lips. “I hope you get better.” Leaning forward slightly he whispers: “I think James is waiting for you.”

You look over your shoulder and see Bucky, James,  leaning casually against the front row table, hands in the pockets of his jeans, gaze focused on the floor as if he was looking for for something. Right in that moment he looks up and his gaze meets yours. His lips curve up just the tiniest bit.

“Thank you, Professor.”, you say, before turning fully.

You start to walk towards Bucky, aware of every single stept you make. It feels like you have forgotten how to walk properly.

Bucky’s gaze never leaves you and that is part of the problem. The 5m from Coulson’s desk to the front row feel like 5km.

Too soon you reach Bucky and look up at him, now standing in his full height, hands leaving his pockets to hang awkwardly at his side.

His right hand slowly begins to lift and you lift yours to meet his in a very odd handshake.

“I was going for a hug, but I guess this is fine as well.”, he mumbles, gaze dropping to the floor again.

A nervous giggle escapes your lips. You let go of his hand, which you hadn’t noticed you were still holding, and wrap your arms around his waist, before you can think twice about it.

It feels so familiar. And good. It feels so good.

You rest your head on Bucky’s chest. You can hear his heart beating. Fast and hard.

He puts one hand on the back of your head, the other on the small of your back and pulls you impossibly closer.

“I missed you.”, he whispers, mouth grazing your ear.

Don’t you dare say something. Don’t you dare ruin this moment. But then you have never been the type to keep your mouth shut.

“You don’t have to.” You say quietly, head still pressed against his chest. “I am here. And will always be.”

Carefully you look up at his face, not sure if you whether you want to see his reaction.

His teeth are clenched together, lips pressed into a fine line, jawline more visible than usual.

When he sees that you are looking at him, his lips form into a tight lipped smile. “I know baby, I know.” He presses his lips to your forehead in a soft kiss.

You move your hands from his waist to the sides of his face and raise to the tips of your toes to place a kiss on Bucky’s lips.

All of a sudden you hear the door shut. “Oh, you are still here.”, Coulson says, scratching his head. “Sorry to interrupt, but the next class starts in 5 minutes.” He walks over to his desk and sets his bag and a fresh, still steaming cup of coffee on it. “You might want to go somewhere… more private.”

Startled the two of you break apart. Keeping your head down you rush out of the room, mumbling “Sorry.” as you do. Bucky is right behind you, following your every step. ~ “Soo…” You come to a stop in front of a bank on campus. You sit down and pat the spot next to you, motioning Bucky to sit down, too. “Are we gonna talk about what happened?”

“What do you mean?”

You laugh. “Oh come on!” You stare at him, probably not looking as scary or threatening as you think.

“Don’t pretend you haven’t been avoiding me for the past two days!” Your voice comes out louder than intended. You cover your face with your hands, elbows resting on your knees. “I know you are going through a hard time, but… you could have at least texted.” The last part sounds more like a sob than anything else. At this point you are trying very hard to hold back the tears.

Bucky tears your hands away from your face. He grips your cheeks, forcing you to look at him. “I- I shouldn’t have done that.” He lets go of your face and looks down at his shoes.

Not being able to stop yourself, you brush his hair away from his face and behind his ear.

“It’s fine.” You try to reassure him. And maybe yourself. “Really, it’s fine. I am used to it.” At that you just have to laugh. You are actually used to your boyfriend ignoring you.

Said boyfriend’s head snaps in your direction. Wiggling closer, he puts his hand your thigh.

“You shouldn’t be. I shouldn’t-” He looks down at his hand that’s now drawing small circles. “I shouldn’t treat you like this.” His gaze wanders before settling down on yours.

“I am finally in my right mind. I love you, Y/N, and I need you. I have to stop pushing you away.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I was just so afraid. Still kinda am. It’s been so long since I- since I felt this way for someone.” He smiles. Not a small or tight lipped smile, but a genuine one.

A tear falls from your left eye. And that’s enough to break the damm. All the tears you had been holding back stream down your face and soon you’re leaning against Bucky’s shoulder, sobbing uncontrolably.

“Why are you crying?”, he asks, rubbing your shoulder soothingly. “I just told you I love you.” You can basically hear the giant smile on his face.

“Exactly!” ~ As Steve opens the front door to his and Bucky’s apartment he can already hear you giggling. Smiling he steps inside.

You are lying on the couch, head in Bucky’s lap, his hands gently stroking your hair.

“What are you watching?”, Steve asks as he examines the TV.

“Captain America.”, Bucky says, not looking up.

Giggling you point at the TV. “He looks so much like you, Steve!” ~ FIN ❤

a/n: Can u tell I never learned where to put commas. All any of my english teachers ever said was: u don’t have to put as many commas as in German ‘cause there are literally like 10000 comma rules in German. Also I hope someone actually reads this hahaha if you read this pls let me know what you think kay?

[semi-imaginary-place]

three houses blogging 7

So I’m playing maddening again and I forgot to grab the knowledge gem in the sothis paralogue. rip

Remember when i made claude a brawler? Well now im paying for it in hunting by daybreak where he cant use fists on a wyvrn.  Problem was i didnt have any bow abilites so his avo dropped like 30 points.

My “canon” recruits

VW: Shamir, Cyril, Felix, Sylvain, Linhardt, Dorothea, Petra, Hanneman, Flayn, Setheth

CF: Manuela, Hanneman, Sylvain, Felix, Mercedes, Marianne, Lysithea

AM: Ferdinand, Caspar, Bernadetta, Catherine, Gilbert, Lorenz

SS: idk all of them?

A quick comparison of the cavalier units Ferdinand, Sylvain, and Lorenz. All three are from some of the most powerful families in their countries if not the continent. They’re all kinda entitled bastards and they all start off still stuck in the mindset of nobility. You can really see this in part 1 Lorenz and Ferdinand where they’re obnoxious about their “noble obligations”. 

With Sylvain its more that he resents the crest-nobility systems but has resigned himself to suffer under it, he doesn’t think he can escape and thus takes out his frustration on women and himself. With the women he pursues, Sylvain sets himself up for failure. First is that he sets up for himself a reputation of unreliability partly as a rebellion against the expectations his family has set for him. His family expects him to be the perfect noble and thus Sylvain downplays his competency whether that be his intelligence or martial prowess. He pretends to be the vapid noble with nothing in his head. Next, Sylvain advertises himself first with his family name and crest and second with his body, thus attracting people who want him for these superficial characteristics. He then can accuse them of only wanting him for these things, shutting down any possibility of there being anything more and driving people away. The cheating also acts as a means to drive people away. He then can take that as evidence that people only want him for his family, crest, etc. Its a self fulfilling prophecy of self destruction and emotional self harm. Sylvain has essentially shut down his ability to form new relationships. (i need to write that sylvain essay)

By comparison Lorenz also disrespects women (by refusing to take a “no”) but why he does so is vastly different. Lorenz never fully questions and turns away from the nobility system the way Ferdinand and Sylvain can. His rebellion is against the selfishness of his father because Lorenz under all the noble bullshit is actually a decent guy. Count Gloucester cares only about House Gloucester, its reputation and prosperity. To the ends of House Gloucester he is willing to assassinate rivals and kill any merchant that brings that rival prosperity, and take any side such as the Empire’s to ensure Gloucester’s survival. Lorenz disagrees thinks those in power must consider everyone, not just their own benefit. Lorenz is the game’s strongest supporter of the Alliance as a governing system. He genuinely values a non-monarchy. Lorenz puts what he believes are his noble duties above his own preferences. For example praying because that its what a noble should do instead of because he’s religious or actually believes in the Goddess. This extends to his attempts at dating. At the start of the game, Lorenz’s perspective is that it is his duty to ensure the prosperity of his house and this include a strong crest bloodline and someone in the role of “wife” that will benefit House Gloucester. Stuck in this mindset he totally disregards the women he’s pursuing. He grows out of this with help from his supports.

Ferdiand has one of the stronger character arcs in the game (but nothing will top Marianne) where he starts off incredibly naive and ignorant about anything outside the life of a Fodlan noble, hits existential crisis will Edelgard’s war, and rebuilds himself from there. Throughout the entirety of the game he actively tries to broaden his horizons and improve himself. Ferdinand’s relentless optimism really is admirable. As in Petra’s support shows, he starts off assuming Fodlan weapons and armor are the best (its Fodlan exceptionalism) because the books he read only talked about Fodland weaponry and spoke from a Fodlan perspective. Ferdinand believes in destiny, in purpose as shown in his Marianne supports. He’s written this narrative for himself as the esteemed scion on Aegir destined for greatness, where he will surpass Edelgard as her rival, and reform Adrestia and the nobility. But discrepancies keep cropping up, he can’t beat Edelgard in combat, Edelgard start a revolution while at the Academy and ascends as emperor, his noble title and assets are taken and his family disgraced. Ferdinand turns his frustration and loss inwards and uses it as fuel to shape a new path for himself.

the chad ignatz vs. the virgin lorenz

A supports that shouldn’t exist:

Claude and Ingrid. this feels like a B support that just keeps dragging on

Linhardt and Annette. a lot of linhardt’s supports take a sudden romantic turn in the A support. am i the only one that finds it weird?

They should have another support:

Hilda and Annette ! support. They are SO cute together. imagine them doing each other’s makeup!

Sylvain and Dimtiri A support

Sylvain and Ignatz B support. i just want more Sylvain ok

Byleth and Jeralt. no dad support? heresy

Balthus and Manuela. they can be disasters together

Balthus and Holst. I just want  holst

Raphael and all the blue lions (Felix, Sylvain, Dedue, Ashe, Merdeces, Annette)

all the church people will all the other church people

So a lot of people see AM as Dimitri’s journey on recovering from trauma and while that’s not a terrible interpretation-- I think a narrative about living through trauma and the slow decades long healing would be excellent --azure moon botches the execution and I'd argue that's not the authorial intent here. (a rare case where I like fandom interpretation better than what is canon). but hold on i need to back up.  So Japan's had these cycles of xenophobia and... fanaticism??? with foreign culture and at several points absorbed a lot of chinese culture. One greatly influential work was the Romance of the Three Kingdoms which cemented in the japanese consciousness the narrative that... hmmm how to say it.... unification is how things should be... that unification is what makes a good ending. Some people pointed out parallels beforehand, but the an interview with the developers confirmed that 3H was heavily inspired by Legend of the Galactic Heroes. I don't exactly expect a nuanced and sensitive discussion of mental health from any jrpg i play (or any game really) and that mostly applies to 3H as well, sylvain's self destructive tendencies are glorified as loyalty in his byleth s support. Bernadetta's trauma is used to up her moe factor (to great success given how high up she is on the popularity polls), i tallied the number of abusive families each of the students some time ago and the sheer number of female students with tragic or abusive backgrounds makes me suspect it was done for drama.  Azure moon was never quite meant to be a story about the the real life effects of actual trauma, which is why its so wonderful that so many people could create their own interpretations of azure moon that reflected their experiences. What it was meant to be was a story of the rightful king reclaiming his throne to the backdrop of how the past can weigh you down and affect the present. Its related to the concept of mandate of heaven in that when the rightful ruler is absent (no dimitri), the country is in shambles, people are starving, war rages, everyone suffers, etc. but with the ascension of the rightful king everything flourishes, the people are happy, faerghus has a bright future etc. If you look at it rationally a lot of what the blue lions suffered under is systematic. Faerghus is basically a death cult glorifying dying in battle and sacrifice such that children are trained to fight as soon as they can walk (ingrid and felix byleth supports), children are used as soldiers (dimitri and felix), martial training rules their lives above all else (dimitri-annette supports), religious fervor fueling all this etc. But in Azure Moon, non of theses systems (nobility, crest, chivalry, church, etc.) are critiqued or dismantled and it leaves the cast of the blue lions hanging. If anything, under a new charismatic archbishop (byleth) some of them might strengthen, and the only empowerment of the people comes from the top down (dimitri allowing greater participation in government) rather than the people raising themselves up. On another note, despite many cutscenes in part one about dimitri finding out how sketchy Arundel and and Patricia are, nothing is done with that in part 2 and there is no resolution to the Agarthan problem. But back to what I was saying Dimtiri’s life is controlled by the death’s of his family and Glen, Felix puts it best in that Dimtiri strings tombstones around his neck. So the aftermath of Rodrigue’s death and Byleth’s pep talk act as the turning point for AM. Dimtiri stops rejecting the throne and is welcomed as king to a joyful crowd, he is instantly forgiven by everyone (despite wandering around as a murdering beast for the last 5 years, not doing anything to help faerhgus, and torturing people), because of course he is, via the mandate of heaven now the the proper king is on the throne everything goes right. And I hate that narrative. The game frames dimitri accepting his role as king as incredibly positive from the cheering crowd to the support of all the other characters. AM tries to tie a political position to an emotional narrative and i don’t like it. (I also just don’t like dimitri on a personal level, he’s meh, and combined with this is why AM is my least favorite route).

My favorite supports: Claude+Shamir B, Linhard+Lysithea A, Sylvain+Felix A+, Hubert+Hanneman B, all of Petra+Claude.

long long ago .  humanity was ruled over by god kings, the nabateas/children of the goddess/dragons who saw it as their divine right and duty to rule, protect, and watch over humanity. But some of the humans wanted self rule, they saw the nabateans as tyrants imposing their will over another species, and they wanted freedom. "Humans should be able to decide their own path" they cried. The progenitor goddess Sothis had fallen into a long slumber after her efforts and her children ruled in the belief that she would one day return to rule them and they they were simply holding the spot for her. It is unknown if sothis was actually dead at this point or in a regenerative coma. Nemesis was either hired as a mercenary/thief to steal Sothis's remains, or the location was purposefully leaked to him. After stealing the Goddesses' body, the humans crafted her body into the sword of the creator and her heart became its crest stone.  Nemesis then led the invasion of Nabatea and killed the nabateans using a weapon made of their goddess and progenitor's body. The bodies of the nabateans were made into more weapons and given to the 10 elites as weapons in the war against the remaining nabateans and their human allies. Nemesis was then raised as a figurehead of the war, a symbol of the Liberation of humanity from grasp of the dragons. Humanity saw him as their savior king and the 10 elites as heroes liberating them from the dragons. Seiros founded the Church, raised an opposing army and the War of Heroes begins. Seiros eventually defeated the human resistance army and its remnants fled underground becoming the Agarthans. Church became a governing body in Fodlan as the remaining Nabateans again awaited the day Sothis would return to rule them (and one failed attempt at resurrecting her). The Agarthans attempted to preserve what technology they had left and continued to develop Heroes Relic technology eventually creating artificial heroes relics such as Aymr.  It is unlikely that Nemesis was ever the brains behind the operation, just another cog in the machine. The Nemesis you fight in game is either a zombie preserved in a cryostasis pod for millennia or a clone. it is unclear.  The nabateans had seen themselves as as benevolent rulers, like parents fostering children. (you can see where this gets patronizing). So some of them like rhea saw humanity's rebellion as a betrayal

Edelgard is probably the best character in the game even if on a personal level, I don't like her too much. By which i mean she's the character that adds the most to the game from her character writing to her role in the story.  Edelgard is straightforward and stubborn. She has her opinion and not only will she not change it, she'll dig her heels in and double down on it.  She's committed... but that bites both ways. Allowing her to accomplish much, but keeping her from changing her course in the face of new information and circumstances. Inflexible.  yeah edelgard likes to be in control. its the if you want something done right you've got to do it yourself mentality. She believes herself to be the right person for the job and because of the stubbornness i mentioned earlier will not back down no matter what even if that means massive loses and her death. on non CF routes Edelgard provides an excellent counterpoint to byleth and the church, its really well done

both caspar and ferdinand would get into a bar fight. nnnnnn ferdinand tries to be a prim proper noble but he's a hotblooded shounen hero at heart. like how he chase linhardt all around the campus. i don't think ferdinand could see a fight and not think hey i should stop this and end up getting involved. like caspar he's got a strong sense of what's "right" or "what should be done" which is why he hits existential crisis in the war. Ferdinand (kinda like edelgard really) had written himself this narrative of his life, that he was edelgard's rival, that he would ascend to Prime minister and do it better than anyone before him, that he would correct the misdeeds of his father and bring glory to the aegir name, that HE not edelgard would be the one who brought Adrestia into a shinning new future. And edelgard (not out of spite or anything, it was nothing personal) brought that ll crashing down. And ferdinand doesn't know what to do with himself, what is up and what is down, what it just and right and what isn't.

i like how each route does its own thing. GD/VW is a mystery about what is really happening. BE/CF is a political thriller and has a kinda sinister tone. BL/AM is more character driven about the personal costs. a good example of this is the mutiny in the mists chapter. for gd, it introduces the mystery of heroes relics, in be it introduces the injustice of the church, bl: it sucks to be ashe. Silver Snow gives us Byleth's seach for identity set to the backdrop of the morality of the church. this is one thing i don't like about blue lions. white clouds sets up how arundel is very sketchy and the flame emperor is working with an evil third party, but then azure moon completely drops that. Compare this to golden deer part one introducing the mysteries of the relic weapons, the connections between relics, demonic beasts, crests, the children of the goddess, and church and in verdant wind that pays off as you go into depth about those things. meet up to 5 children of the goddess and the creators of the relic weapons. CF also continues what it started in white clouds by killing the head of the church. cf and ss are mirrors of each other so you need both to understand rhea and edelgard.

also interesting note remember how after jeralt dies each lord has a couple unique scenes? the advice each of them gives you is the same thing they repeated to themself to get through their trauma. Claude dealt with trauma by never letting his enemies know they had hurt them, don't give them that power over you mentality. Put on a smile and face the day, you must. Edelgard dealt with trauma by hardening herself and focusing all her energy into a goal, pick yourself up and be productive, moping around does nothing and helps no one, do something about it. Dimitri I remember the least well, one half of it was a just point me in the direction of your enemies and i will help you rip them to shreds, and i don't remember the other half. I do remember he tries to goad byleth into taking vengeance, which made me very uncomfortable the other thing i remember is that they all kinda had a point, but none of it might have been what byleth needed to hear. How they react to Jeralt’s death is another point of foiling for Claude and Edelgard, both try to do something productive, while Dimitri commiserates and grieves with you.

honestly i think raphael had some of the best advice for grief. i mean... if all you can bring yourself to do is the small stuff then take things one step at a time, take care of your body. exercise really does help your mental health. its like i keep yelling at people, raphael is probably the most emotionally mature of the students, he's grounded. If i had to choose someone to mentor dimitri, I'd choose raphael. which is why I am so disappointed in their support. Raphael is such a good boy, endlessly compassionate and wanting the best for everyone, the heart of a golden retriever.  and the devs are a bunch of cowards who won't let me s support him with male byleth. like so many characters are pretty means to him at various points and he doesn't take it personally, just takes it and tries to help them through whatever they're going through. a good boy

on a side note intsys disproportionately gives shitty tragic backstories to their female characters and it feels icky. i went and counted the number of terrible things female characters have been through compared to the male cast (i have that list... somewhere...)... and a way higher percent of female characters were tortured/kidnapped/forced into marriages/abused/etc. compared to the percent of male character with tragic backstories

jeritza ... .... certainly is a character. a shame that i like his character design but that I don't like him. he and hubert are in a single elimination tournament to determine who gets to walk away with the title of Edgiest FE3H Character. "death knight" or shinigami kishi   and wears black spikey armor and says shit like "this dance of damnation!". he's a decent unit, but a bit underwhelming compared to when he's an enemy. i suppose it would be game breaking if he had that dodge and crit as a player unit... and he's a not a bad unit... i found him to be quite good really... but it just cna't compare

an excellent character. One of the things I like about her as a character is that her character archetype is quite rare and its refreshing to see it done well. Right? so in jrpgs over the years a lot of tropes and archetypes have accumulated. And Edelgard adds so much to the story as the main antagonist for most routes, as a foil to byleth and rhea. a counterpoint to the church. Its real good. and then you get to join her for one route??? Love it. As a person, i can appreciate how raw she is as a person. As with all the lords her character development is excellent. When you meet her at the beginning its all serious business all the time. She takes everything seriously and she's trying very hard to be taken seriously. No chill what so ever in part 1. But by part 2 she's just tired. edelgard is very human. flawed. and whether her actions were "right" is up to a lot of debate, but she cares a lot (i personally think its was wrong to start a continent wide war). i think a lot of people in the West have forgotten how utterly horrific wars are. and yes she's pig headedly stubborn. the break not bend type

I really like bernadetta and caspars supports. Dorothea aggressively trying to befriend petra is great. and I did not expect ferdinand and hubert's supports to go like that but they're also really good. I think the ferdinand/hubert supports are another one that has multiple versions (b? a?) depending on when you get it in the game

I'm one of the few who likes the split route structure haha. it has its drawbacks yeah like how splitting up content means a good chunk of people will only play one route and judge the whole game based on that one route (and get angry on the internet about it  ). But i really liked being able to follow the different factions around (fe3h still need a rewrite, but i love the concept). the complex multifaceted ways the same event can affect different people. You need to play cf and one other route at least to get a basic understanding of whats going on in three houese

interesting thing is that the battle dialogue is also route locked. Like I went dialogue hunting last route in vw and got nothing. attacked dimtiri and sylvain with felix and ingrid and got nothing. Attacked edelgard with petra and ferdinand and got nothing on both maps annette and mercedes also got nothing. while i know in other routes all of them do get dialogue

What you get out of rhea in the last chapter of vw is likely accurate to the best of rhea's knowledge. Rhea knows she's dying here and likely dies soon after the game ends and nemesis is coming so she has little reason to lie. that doesn't mean what she says is true just that she has little reason to lie The church acts to maintain power and influence and shelter the nabateans who head the church by obscuring information on them. Contrast this with edelgard who got the truth of the church from her father but viewed it using the lens of the agarthans. The agarthans saw rhea and the nabateans as tyrants oppressing humanity and their views influenced edelgard. They aren’t wrong…. But there’s more to it than that (seteth’s supports)

so for some of the npcs, the ages from the datamine are more age of appearance or what age a stranger would think they'd be at first glance.this is why Sothis is listed as 9, jeralt as 45, seteth as 26, rhea as 28, and cornelia as 30 eventhough all these characters are older than that

Why Dont Ashe And Yuri Have A Support Chain. They Even Both Love Cooking And Set Up Inns In Some Of Their Endings!!!! AND LET HAPI AND CLAUDE GO STARGAZING TOGETHER

[garden-of-succulents]

I've taken some time to think over and process recent criticisms that people have made of me. Thank you to everyone for being patient while I took this time to reflect--I think that a brief review of my behaviour in the past has shown that I often respond poorly and clumsily in the heat of the moment, and these conversations benefit when I give them the thought and effort they deserve.

I am responding to people whose direct responses to me, or public commentary, seemed to indicate they wanted some sort of response from me. I hope I've addressed everyone; please let me know if I've missed anyone. I have also, as was requested, cleared out my OMGCP-related blocklist.

Briefly, about that: I have, in the past, blocked people for two main reasons. The first is that they're producing fannish content (fic, art, or meta) that triggers my anxiety, which my body reacts very poorly to; the other is that I have disagreed with them about something, but know that they are significantly younger/less privileged than I am, and blocking is one of the tools I use to make sure I don't impulsively strike up an unfair argument about something unimportant.

I would like to apologize for the distress and insult my blocking users caused them; it was not intended. I have been investigating ways to curate my online experience to what I can manage with mental health that varies from day to day, with less of a negative effect on other people and maintains their ability to draw my attention to important conversations.

Although I believe listening to criticism is important, especially on topics where I am privileged or ignorant, this is something I have to balance with my mental and physical health; I have to carefully budget time and energy to engage with it when I am capable of thinking clearly and deeply. Sometimes I'm able to seek out and read criticism, but sometimes I'm not. I miss conversations or misunderstand peoples' points. I know this is frustrating to people who do not have the luxury of ignoring or escaping these issues in their daily lives, and I'm sorry.

On a practical note, I am taking pains to make sure that people can contact me through my des-zimbits account, but I should make clear that unfortunately, I cannot accept anon messages and I am very unpredictable about seeing things written on blogs I do not follow; my friends are not in the habit of telling me about criticism made by third parties. There have been times that I only found out long after the fact that someone has put enormous amounts of time and energy into critiquing my behaviour on their blog, and become upset that I have not responded or changed. In those circumstances, I never saw the original posts in the first place. I don't have a complete solution for this, but I encourage people to tag me or message me a post they think I should see; if you don't want to deal with me thereafter, just say, "Don't reply."

I am making this apology not in hope that anyone will change their opinion of me or forgive me. I know that people of colour in this fandom are frustrated by white fans' inability to listen and respond in a way that makes things better, and I know that my own behaviour has contributed to that. My sincere desire here is to make it plain that I am willing to listen and try, and perhaps even make other fans feel that they can directly approach me with their frustrations and concerns.

I am beyond grateful to the fans of colour who have expended energy and time educating me, criticizing me, talking to me, and helping me. Your willingness to be open about your feelings and experiences, and to speak truth to power, have been unspeakably helpful in helping me see my blind spots, and understand the effect my behaviour has on other people. I know that it takes a lot of energy and courage it takes to speak about such a painful and infuriating subject. I want to thank the people who, despite my resistance at times, continue to engage me in these issues. Your feedback is valuable and appreciated.

@dexydex and @georgiapeche, re: this post

You’re right, I haven’t been responding correctly to your criticism. I’ve taken it too personally instead of taking a step back to consider your perspectives in a more nuanced and empathetic way. Thank you for all of the emotional labor you’ve expended up until this point trying to get through to me. I’m sorry that I’ve made it your responsibility to teach me what I’m doing wrong rather than go out and learn for myself. I’ve been complacent in the ways I’ve interacted with my own privilege. I’m sorry that my apologies have fallen flat time and time again. I’m sorry I haven’t done enough yet to unlearn my implicit racism. This is something I will increase my efforts to address and correct in the future. It is not your job to forgive me. It is not your job to absolve me of any ill will.

phillipsheabutter, re: this post

You're right; Kent's behaviour in canon is cruel and abusive, which Nursey's isn't. My response to them is very backwards the usual responses. I am especially sorry that my answer about him didn't address the word "hate", so I flatly said that I "hated" him, which is a strong and unwarranted negative assessment to make of his behaviour. This was especially wrong of me because the behaviour I was criticizing is a response many Black readers identify with, to the experience of having their emotional responses intensely policed and invalidated. It is a testament of my ignorance and prejudice that I felt this perspective was something I could choose to discard when thinking about him.

As to how I struggle to have empathy for one behaviour but not the other, I can't offer any excuse for my racism, but I can briefly explain: I’ve tried to articulate in the past that Kent’s narrative strongly evokes people and relationships that have been incredibly formative for me, and that I have dedicated years of personal searching and academic study to understanding Kent's kind of extreme behaviour and maintaining relationships with people who display it. My relationship to invalidating behaviour is still too raw and painful to talk about in detail, but in short, it was something I had powerfully negative experiences with when I was young, and as an adult I have found it deeply distressing when it was directed at me; I have embraced a career based around validating emotions. I hadn't yet truly realized the extent to which it is used as a coping mechanism by African Americans--the majority of Black people I have known have been first- or second-generation Canadians hailing from Africa or the Carribean, who have had expressed different cultural and racial experiences to me, and I haven't consumed enough American media to truly understand where Nursey is coming from. I struggle to relate to him as much as I do to characters like Ransom whose cultural experiences and coping mechanisms are more familiar to me.

In equating Nursey to generic white hipsters I encountered this behaviour from, I was erasing his Blackness in favor of pointing to an implied socioeconomic privilege that in no way makes up for or safeguards him from the experiences of being a Black man living in the United States. That wasn’t just wrong of me, it was careless and racist.

There’s a lot to his character that I’ve yet to explore and it was wrong of me to say I hate him when I haven’t done enough work to understand who he is or where he comes from. I'm going to work more to expand my knowledge and find deeper empathy for him.

@oluranurse, re: this post

You’re right, I keep making the same mistakes over again. I can understand how frustrating it feels when a larger blog says repeatedly that they will be different, and better, but the results are disappointing at best. I can only hope that by taking the time to listen, really listen, to your feedback, that someday I won’t have to apologize for my mistakes (because they will few and far apart).

I realize that as someone who doesn't have Borderline Personality Disorder, it is potentially problematic that I am so invested in its fictional depiction, especially given the extreme stigma against the disorder by members of my own profession. As I've explained before, however, it's a condition I've had significant personal experience with, and writing about mental health issues helps me build the skills that may let me someday write coherently about my own C-PTSD. What's more, I am not pulling these conditions out of nowhere or treating them lightly; I'm a licensed mental health professional, and I take a great deal of care to root my mental health headcanons in close analysis of the source material. The diagnoses I suggest for characters are by no means the ultimate truth about them and alternate perceptions of them are wholly plausible

I would like to talk more about your classification of BPD as "a mental illness that fandom likes to give to characters that have 'bad attitudes'," but on a separate occasion where that discussion doesn’t detract from the real conversation we’re having here.

In reference to the disagreement I had with brenbits, I still believe that the way they engaged me could have been more direct, and less heated, from the start. But I respect that other users confront issues they find problematic differently.

In reference to my post about dealing with criticism, I understand that the tone implied something much different than what I intended. I was attempting to be a resource for content creators who feel discouraged by discourse and offer show them how to respond to said criticism in a thoughtful and nuanced way. I realize how ironic that may sound considering some of my past responses. I know that in that post it sounds like I will apologize and defend every microaggression and racist comment that comes my way. That was never the case, but I’m sorry I did such a poor job of articulating that. Times that I have provided this service include helping writers find essays written by members of minorities about common difficulties or pitfalls in depictions of their experiences, or in helping them personally connect with someone who has the cultural competency to assess a situation, and is willing to expend the emotional labour of providing an author with a critique.

With regard to the time that I answered the question, "Are genderbends transphobic?" I shouldn't have answered, given that I am cis. I will make an effort in the future not to summarize trans peoples' opinions, and step back to amplify the voices of trans people who have already made their thoughts accessible.

I feel that the fandom should do more to support content creators and to talk through (especially with younger creators) what they could be doing better in terms of representation. I do understand, however, that doesn’t mean members of the fandom should have to stand for racist and stereotypical content and/or be grateful that it even exists.

You’re right, I’ve been complacent and racist in how I treat POC characters. I need to take a step back, consume more media and academic material related to the experiences of these characters. I need to immerse myself in the positive representations and transformative works this fandom already has for these characters. I need to make these already available transformative works more visible by interacting with them on my blog in ways that are supportive and enriching. I need do more to change my racist thoughts and tendencies because this is a comic made by a WOC that seeks to better minority representation and inclusion in the sports world. I need to be more present in how my behavior affects the experiences of others in this fandom.

I also concede that I do not understand the inherent danger that POC and trans people endure daily. I cannot take your concerns for granted just because I don’t understand them at first. It’s my personal responsibility to seek out information and understanding. I’m also sorry that I have focused more on my personal reaction to criticism rather than on the concerns raised about my behavior. I have many privileges in this fandom, I need to do a better job of utilizing them properly.

@eriquebittle, re: this post

You’re right, my apology focused too much on my feelings and not how my actions have hurt others. I was attempting to start a conversation I wasn’t ready to engage in properly. My apology was lackluster and nothing new at best. As I’m addressing in other posts, I am working on active change. From now on, I'll give the performative white guilt a rest and focus on listening and changing my behaviour.

@senor-lapin, re: this post

I meant what I said about doing my best. However, my apology was neither warranted in the way I handled it nor effective at articulating how I’m taking steps to fix my racist thoughts and actions. As I’ve addressed previously, I have removed the blocks I placed on other members of OMGCP fandom and will work in the future not to exclude them from the discussion. I will listen, research, and reflect for as long as I need to in order to understand my critics. That is the least I owe them.

@duanlarissa, re: this post

I was ineffective in trying to articulate or consider an intersectionality between neurodivergence and racial identity. The way I addressed Nursey and Dex’s relationship was very simplistic and downright racist. There’s a lot of nuance to their relationship that I haven’t begun to explore and shouldn’t have commented on. Nursey has every right to negotiate Dex’s behavior in a way that keeps him both mentally and physically safe.

@onethousandroaches, re: this post

It isn’t worse. You’re right.

In trying to dissect different aspects of his personality, I was not only minimizing his experiences and struggles, but othering and essentializing him. It was racist. I was racist. I need to consider and accept every part of his identity. I need to take a hard look at what I haven’t liked about him in the past, accept that I’ve been narrow minded and prejudiced, and unlearn those tendencies. I need to set a better example of how white fans should support characters of colour (especially Black characters in a fandom created by a Black woman). I need to use the privilege I have (as a white person, as a popular blog) to support this character and the people who enjoy him. All of him.

[coughdontfeelwellcough]

A Doctor In Need

I’m sorry I’m so slow at uploading these! This is the last repost from my other blog and I’ll get to posting new stories really soon! 

This one was inspired by my love of Scrubs, I have a thing about Doctors in need... Anyway I hope you enjoy!

A patient was lying in a hospital bed, breathing shallow with an oxygen mask over their face and their eyes closed. A Doctor was stood over them, checking the vitals as the heart monitor beeped in the background.

“Dr. Kelly, you’re still here?”

It was a nurse, no doubt coming to check the chart the Doctor held in his hand.

“I know my shift ended but I just wanted to make sure she was okay,” he said.

The nurse gave him a small smile and took the chart from his hands. She could tell he was still a young Doctor, not only because of his boyish features but due to how much he cared, often Doctor’s who’d been there too long stopped seeing patients as people but as just problems to be solved.

“Go home, there’s nothing else that can be done tonight,” she said.

She could see from his face he was tired, no doubt at the end of a double shift, he needed rest and maybe a hot drink.

“Okay, just… Just make sure she’s comfortable,” he said.

“Of course Doctor.”

“Thank you Nurse Reid.” He smiled and took one last look at his patient.

She was only young, barely done being a girl and yet she was lying on a hospital bed, the life slowly draining out of her. He’d done his best to save her, he knew that but it didn’t stop the guilt from weighing him down. He was tired, no exhausted, his eyes fighting to stay open as he begged for a dreamless sleep, there was also an itch in his throat that no amount of tea had been able to releve. He didn’t even feel like changing out of his scrubs, he just collected his things and walked through the hospital doors. After a day full of heartache and stress there was one thing he needed, the one thing that could put him back together and that was his fiancee.

 She was waiting for his return, music playing idly in the background, a book on her lap. He was late but she wasn’t worried, she knew he often worked longer than was asked of him, he’d do anything to help. When she heard the sound of the door opening she put down her book and watched as he walked in, still dressed in blue and looking utterly drained.

“Hey,” she said.

He didn’t reply, just sighed and leant against the doorframe like it was the only thing keeping him upright.

“Are you okay? You look pale.”

She goes over to him, her hand on his cheek as he regained some of his strength.

“You’re not warm,” she said.

“Mostly tired, though I think I may be coming down with something,” he said and if to give evidence he gave a cough into his arm.

“Go, sit down, I’ll make you some tea,” she said, running her fingers through his hair.

“Thank you,” he whispered, his voice taking on a raspier tone.

He collapsed onto the sofa, the softness heaven to his aching muscles, he couldn’t remember the last time he even had time to sit down. He coughed again and sighed, he hoped it was nothing more than a tickle that would be gone by morning.

“Leo, Leo, did you hear me?”

He looked up and saw his fiancee looking at him, his own name hadn’t registered in his mind. Sometimes he could go through a whole day without hearing it, it was always Dr. Kelly, never Leo.

“Sorry, what did you say?”

“Would you like lemon in your tea? Your throat sounds sore.”

“Please,” he replied.

She smiled and disappeared from his sight, a moment later and she was back, two steaming mugs in hand.

“Long day huh?” she asked, sitting down beside him, bending her legs beneath her in a way he always thought looked terribly uncomfortable.  

“You could say that.” He took a sip from his tea and let the sweetness numb the scratching in his throat.

“A young woman came in, she was in a hit and run, a neighbour found her and called an ambulance. She was very badly injured, I did everything I could but it’s out of my hands now, I just can’t help feeling like… Like I should be able to saver her, I’m a Doctor that’s what I do, I make people better, why not her?”

His voice cracked and her hand was on his shoulder, comforting him as he slumped beside her, his head resting against her as she ran her fingers through his hair, something that always helped relax him.  

“You did your best, that’s what counts and if, if she doesn’t make it you can know that you made her as comfortable as possible and that maybe it was just her time.”

He knew she was just trying to make him feel better and he loved that about her, he really did but he didn’t want to believe it, as a Doctor he couldn’t. Everyone might have their time but it was up to him to make sure it didn’t come too early. He didn’t to say it though, he was too tired and there was a throbbing behind his eyes.

He stayed leaning against her as he finished his tea, her fingers making lazy patterns on his bare arm. He could have so easily fallen asleep there but as he closed his eyes he coughed, just a little bit, his hand covering his mouth.

“Come on, let’s get you to bed, you’ll only get worse otherwise.”

A few moments later and he was snuggled up in bed with her beside him, curled up and warm and safe from the world.

“Jen?”

She hummed to let him know she was listening.

“I love you.”

She kissed his forehead and tried not to frown at the slight warmth she found there.

“I love you too.”

 By the time the alarm went off there was no denying that the Doctor was unwell, he’d started coughing during the night and when he woke his nose was running and there was a feverish chill to his skin. His alarm was still blearing and he only just found the energy to turn to off, Jen was not longer beside him but then she’d always been an early riser. She could often be found watching the sun rise, already changing the world before most people had had their first pots of coffee. He pulled himself out of bed, setting off a wave of shivers as the cool air hit him, he grabbed a sweatshirt from the end of the bed. She was in the kitchen when he found her, staring out of the window out into the city below, the sun was barely awake and was casting large shadows across the buildings.

“Good morning,” he greeted, his voice rough like he’d been gargling gravel in his sleep.

“How’re you feeling?” she asked, turning to face him.

He shrugged and cleared his throat. “I’m alright.”

She raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms only for him to start coughing, it didn’t last long but enough to irritate his already sore throat and make his chest ache.

“Alright huh?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” he replied, running a hand under his leaking nose.

She didn’t push it and just asked if he wanted some tea, he was a Doctor after all, she knew he could look after himself. The kettle had just boiled so she turned back to make the tea, even if she couldn’t convince him to rest she knew he could do with something to sooth his throat. He was sat at the small kitchen table, a tissue pressed to his dripping nose, he sniffed and looked up when he heard her approach.

“Thank you,” he rasped.

She tried not to wince at the sound of his voice.

“So,” he said, taking a sip and coughing a little as it passed his throat. “What are you working on today?”

She leant back in her chair, her eyes casting over the window and the sky above.

“I might finish the piece I started yesterday or something to do with clouds, I love the patterns they make, especially at this time of year.”

He just looked at her in wonder as she went on to explain in detail the painting she’d been working on, he felt so lucky to be marrying an artist. She truly saw the beauty in everything, even him on his very worst days and it was one of the countless reasons he loved her. She finished her tea and stood up, red hair still a mess from sleeping like a halo of curls around her head.

“I’m going for shower, finish your tea,” she said, her hand passing over his shoulder as she went. He might have been the Doctor but she was the mother of the two of them, he couldn’t help his mind wondering to one day starting a family with her and a smile appeared at the corner of his lips.

He did indeed finish his tea, though it felt soothing on his throat it did nothing to help the irritation in his nose, he sniffed but that only made it worse and he had to cover his mouth as he sneezed.

“Hitxh, hitxssh, hitxsshhh.”

Though not an encouraging symptom at least his nose had stopped itching for the moment. He stood up, ignoring the slight wobble to his knees and went back into the bedroom. Though the idea of clawing back into bed was a strong one, he had other things to do.

 Jen returned to the bedroom with a towel wrapped around her body and her hair dripping down her shoulders, a cloud of steam following behind her like a great cloud of mist. To her surprise she found Leo sat on the edge of their bed, dressed in his sweats and favourite oversized hoodie, a tissue pressed to his ever reddening nose.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He didn’t answer, tissue still pressed to his nose.

“Hitssho, hitxhh, hitsshoo.”

“Bless you.”

“Thanks,” he sniffed. “I was going to call work and then get started on some paperwork, I’m so behind.”

What they never tell in Med School is about all the forms you have to fill in and essays you have to write why working shifts. If he wasn’t with a patient he was writing about the causes of laryngitis.

“Can’t it wait? You look in need of a nap and maybe some cold medicine,” she said.

“No, I’ll be fine.”

The truth was he needed something to keep him busy, his mind kept going back to the girl from the night before. She was dying and all alone.

“Okay, well I’ll be in my studio if you need me.”

He nodded and stood up, trying to ignore the feeling of dizziness as he headed for the kitchen, where his papers were spread out over the table from the last time he’d worked on them.

 Jen sighed as he stumbled out the door, she knew he’d be okay but she did wish he’d take a little time for himself. It was just one of his traits, he didn’t know when to stop, always looking out for other people rather than himself. She’d changed into her painting clothes, some old overalls that were so splattered with paint it was impossible to discern what the original colour might have been. Her ‘studio’ as she called it was actually just the spare bedroom, it was cramped box room that held all her painting supplies and where she tried to let her imagination run free. It was her favourite part of their small apartment not because it was the only place that was hers but because of the view. The window looked out on the city below, far up from the highest floor she was level with the clouds and the stars, the world below populated by ants and toys cars. It was pictacular clear day, only a few clouds floating across an otherwise blue sky, the pink of sunrise disappearing a little more each passing minute. It was the kind of sky Jen loved to paint but she couldn’t get her mind to focus which was probably something to do with the noises she kept hearing from the next room, every so often there’d be a cough or sneeze. He was sounding worse and worse but still continued to work, though she wondered how much work was actually getting done.

After a few hours of listening to him grow ever more miserable she’d had enough, she’d barely gotten any of her painting done and he sounded in need of a rest. She left her studio determined to get him to take a break even if it was only a short one. Well they always do say that Doctor’s are terrible patients, why should a trainie Doctor be any different?

As she entered the kitchen she didn’t see him, just a large pile of textbooks, papers and tissues. For a moment she thought he might have actually gone to bed until he sneezed and the papers shook revealing him hunched over one of the books.   

“Hitsshhccchhoooo, hhiissstttcchoooooo, hiissssshhhoooooo.”

“Bless you.”

“Thank you.”

His voice had gotten worse in the time since they’d last spoke, there was definite strain and hoarseness that sounded painful.

“You sound awful, why don’t you go bed?” she asked.

“Need to finish thi… Hisshhhoooo, hittshhoooo.”

“Bless.”

She went over to him and placed her hand against his forehead, his shivered under her touch and pulled away.

“You’re burning up sweetheart. You know as well as anyone that you need rest and maybe some tea.”

He sighed and descended into a coughing fit, she rubbed his back as he tried not to bring up pieces of his lungs.

“Tea would nice,” he said once he could breathe.

“Go to bed, I’ll bring you some.”

He nodded and stood up, he wobbled having to grab onto the table for support.

“Are you going make it?” she teased, trying to hide the level of concern from her voice.

“I’m okay.”

She watched, her arms crossed as he stumbled his way toward their room, coughing as he went. He was a stubborn bastard but at least he was her stubborn bastard.

 The Doctor collapsed onto the bed, cocooning himself in the layers of blankets. In truth he really did feel awful, head pounding, body aching and exhausted. He’d lost count of the times he’d found himself falling asleep and now with his head on the pillow it was all but impossible to keep his eyes open.

 He was in the hospital, standing in a patient's room. At first he didn’t know who she was but it didn’t last long, she was the dying girl. The one he couldn’t save and he hadn’t even known her name. She was still breathing, her chest slowly rising and falling in rhyme to the beeping machines. He wished he could save her, she was so young but no matter how hard he’d tried she’d continued to slip away.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s you fault.”

She never moved, her lips still closed but yet it was her voice.

“You did this to me.”

“I never… I tried to help you.”

“You failed, I’m going to die and it’s all your fault!”

She was screaming, ripping through his head like she was everywhere at once.

“You were suppose to make me better, you promised… You promised I’d be okay!”

“I...I…”

He had promised her, he’d taken her hand when she’d come in from the ambulance and told her she was going to be fine, that he’d make sure of it but that was before he knew… Before he knew how bad it was, how hurt she was.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“It’s not good enough! I want to live!”

“I can’t… There’s nothing I can do… I’m sorry.”

“It’s your fault, it’s all your fault, your fault.”

She continued to scream, her voice echoing in his ears.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I really, really sorry.”

“Leo.”

Another voice, someone calling out to him over the screaming.

“Leo, wake up honey.”

Jen?

“Leo…”

 He woke up coughing and spluttering as he sat up, his chest heaving and tears in his eyes. He felt a hand on his back, steadying him until he was able to breathe again.

“You okay honey?” Jen asked, her hand still running gently across his back.

“I... I... I killed her,” he croaked before descending into sobs.

“Oh sweetie…”

She pulled him into a hug, he continued to cry on her chest as she held him. A quick check of his forehead proved he was still burning up, he’d fallen asleep before she’d been able to give him anything and thought it best he slept.

“It… it’s my fault… My… fault..”

His voice was shaking and she held him tighter, she knew he must have had some kind of nightmare but she was unsure what she could do but hold him and wait for him to calm down a little.

When his next round of sobs set off his coughing and reached for a glass of water and placed carefully in his shaking hands.

“Drink, it’s okay.”

He took a few sips until he was finally able to breathe, the sobs coming to an end.

“I’m sorry,” he said, wiping his eyes on his sleeve.

“You had a nightmare, it’s okay,” she said.

“It’s truth though, it is my fault.”

His breathing started shaking again and she put an arm around his shoulders.

“What was? I don’t understand, you’ve never killed anyone.”

“I didn’t save her, I didn’t save her when I should have been able to. I let her die.”

She held him tightly for a moment, her hand running through his hair at the back of his neck.

“Is this about the girl from the last night? The one you couldn’t save, because couldn’t and didn’t are very different things.”

“Are they? I promised her she’d be okay and… And…”

He started coughing again, nearly making himself sick in the process.

“Shh, you’re making yourself worse and of course there’s a difference! I know you did everything possible to save that girl, you did everything in your power as a Doctor and as you said yourself it was out of your hands. You promised her she’d be okay and she was because you made sure that at the end she was comfortable and that she left this world without pain. What more can any of us hope for?”

Leo looked into Jen’s eyes and felt himself relax, like always she knew the truth, even when he couldn’t see it himself.

“Jen, I’m sorry.”

She gave a soft smile and kissed his temple.

“It’s okay, I’m pretty sure that fever is making you crazier than normal. How about we get some medicine in you?”

“Sure and maybe I could have that tea now..”

She laughed and kissed him again. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Some time later and they were so snuggled in bed together, two mugs of steaming tea at their sides. Jen laid with a book open in one hand and Leo’s head resting against her shoulder.

“How are you feeling now?” she asked.

“Better, I’m sorry for everything earlier, I guess it all kind of get the best of me.”

“You can stop apologizing now, it’s fine,” she said, turning from her book to look at the red rimmed eyes of her fiance.

“I honestly don’t know what I’d do without you,” he smiled.

“Well you’d need someone else to take care of you for a start,” she teased.

“Hey, I thought I did the care taking in this relationship remember? I am the Doctor.”

“Trainie Doctor, and I like taking care of you, God knows you can’t do it yourself.”

They both laughed, his more of a wheeze than a laugh. The Medicine hadn’t quite cured him yet but she was glad to see a little more life in his eyes.

“Just.. Thank you, for everything,” he said.

“It was my pleasure Doctor.”

He smiled and placed his head against her chest, listening to the beating of her heart as he closed his eyes.  

[c-e-d-dreamer]

Hey idk if you are still looking for prompts because I scrolled pretty far back, but if so, how about "that's the dumbest shit I've ever heard let's do it" or ”it’s a long story that involves a lot of blood, a couple squirrels, and one hell of a headache” for any of the foxes? Thanks, I love love love your writing and I've really enjoyed looking through your blog!

I’m always accepting prompts! And thank you so much for the lovely compliments! I hope you enjoy! This is basically a shitpost in fic form. It’s a crack fic. I’m not even sorry. Also you probably need to suspend a lot of disbelief for this; just roll with it

“That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard; let’s do it”

—

Neil is still trying to get the hang of his new phone. Nickyhad insisted that he upgrade to this century and had practically dragged Neilto the mall to purchase an iPhone. The rest of the Foxes were more than happyabout the change, some money even exchanging hands, but there’s so much goingon with his phone now. Before, all Neil had to worry about were text messagesand phone calls, but now there’s a bunch of apps that Nicky keeps trying toteach him. He thinks he’s starting to get a handle on Snapchat thanks to thedaily snaps from Allison. At the very least, he’s no longer confused by the waythey disappear after opening them. And Instagram seems easy enough, so Neiltries to keep track of that so he can see Renee’s posts from around the world.

Neil can admit that the ESPN app is great. It’s set up tosend him notifications for Exy news and score updates. It’s that app that iscurrently dinging at Neil as he makes his way across campus. The trade deadlineis coming up for the National Exy League, and Neil’s been trying to keep up andfollow the changes. After Neil reads the latest update, the striker tries tosee the current NCAA standings, but his new phone isn’t cooperating. He bats atthe screen a few times, but when it finally switches over to NCAA Exy, it’s thenews page. Neil lets out a frustrated noise and is about to just give up when aheadline catches his eye.

Neil scrolls through and reads the article the whole wayback to Fox Tower. He still has his phone out and the page open as he unlocksthe door to his dorm. The room is full of people, but Neil has learnt to beunsurprised by that. Nicky and Aaron are in the beanbags, a video game of somesort blaring on the television. Kevin is sprawled out on the couch with hislaptop in his lap while Andrew is perched on his desk by the window.

“Hey, Neil,” Nicky greets, not taking his eyes off the gamehe’s playing. “How was class?”

“Did you guys know someone tried to steal the University ofTexas’ mascot last night? Not the costume; the actual longhorn.”

“How unoriginal,” Nicky says. “That’s like the oldest prankin the book. I mean everyone’s—”

Nicky cuts off as he finally draws his eyes away and meetsNeil’s, his face contorting into a mix of guilt and regret. The backliner openshis mouth again, but whatever rambling remedy was on the tip of his tongue, he swallowsit down and snaps his lips shut. When no one else in the room has anything toadd, Neil resigns himself to his desk. He can feel Andrew’s eyes boring intohis cheek, but the striker focuses on outlining his upcoming essay until practice.

The news story gets forgotten, blurred away by drills andbickering freshmen and a scrimmage. But it’s still nestled a place in the backof Neil’s mind, niggling in the periphery of his thoughts persistently. By thetime he’s changing out after practice, it’s made its way back to the forefront.

He thinks about the article, about Nicky’s cut off words, ashe and Andrew sit up on the roof, the nighttime humid and inky around them. Hismind is a whirlwind of thoughts tangled up with the billows of smoke wisping inthe evening breeze. He almost doesn’t notice the distinctive smell of nicotineor the way his cigarette has burned down to the filter. He doesn’t realize he’szoned out on the twinkling lights of the campus until the cool, feather lighttouch across the back of his hand pulls him back.

When Neil looks to his right, Andrew is already watchingback. He raises an eyebrow in question at the striker’s silence, and Neil stubsout his cigarette.

“Do you think I’m missing out?” Neil asks. “Having not donea prank before?”

Andrew doesn’t say anything in response. He watches Neil fora few more moments before he stubs out his own cigarette. He beckons his headtowards the roof door, and Neil tries not to read too much into it as the tworetreat down to their dorm.

The next morning before heading to the gym for workouts,Andrew drags Neil and Kevin next door. The goalkeeper picks the lock with anease Neil feels he shouldn’t be surprised by at this point. The three burstinto the room where Aaron and Nicky are tucked into the kitchenette withsteaming mugs cradled in their hands. Neither bats an eye at the intrusion.

“We’re stealing a mascot tonight,” Andrew says to the room.

“What?!” Kevin squeaks out from just inside the doorway.

“That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard,” Nicky says,setting down his mug. “Let’s do it.”

“What.”

“Oh, come on, Kevin, it’ll be fun!” Nicky reasons. “I betyou’ve never pulled a prank either. And it’ll be like a senior prank for you.It works out perfectly!”

“While that’s all well and good,” Aaron pipes up. “Where areyou going to steal this mascot from? Most schools don’t have real animalmascots these days. We certainly don’t have a fox running around.”

“University of Texas has a real animal mascot,” Neil says.

“You want us to travel all the way to the University ofTexas?” Aaron asks, tone deadpan.

“There has to be somewhere closer,” Nicky offers, fiddlingwith his phone for a moment. “University of North Carolina! That’s not too farto drive.”

“There’s no way we’re fitting a ram in my car,” Andrew says.

“Matt has a truck,” Neil suggests.  

It’s at that moment that Matt walks out of the bathroom,toothbrush hanging between his teeth and phone pressed to his ear. Hisexpression startles when he notices all pairs of eyes on him.

“Hey, Matt,” Neil says. “Can we borrow your truck tonight?”

“We’re driving up to UNC tonight to steal their mascot,”Nicky jumps in to explain. “You in?”

Neil thinks it must be a sign that Matt’s been living withNicky and Aaron too long because the backliner just shrugs in acceptance.

“I’m going to have to call you back, Dan,” Matt says intohis phone. “We’re kidnapping Rameses.”

- - -

Researching during lunch reveals that UNC has a small farmon their campus. It acts as a training center for students studying veterinarysciences, but it also doubles as Rameses’ home. It seems easy enough to get to,and the farm being tucked away from the dorms means students shouldn’t bemilling about.

It should be easy.

Their first complication arrives before they even get oncampus. After dinner, everyone changes into black clothes and piles into Matt’struck, and then they’re heading up north along the interstate. It’s a bit of ahike through North Carolina, but luckily, the sun has long since set by thetime they’re nearing the campus. Matt directs the truck towards the entrance thatwill bring them closest to the farm, but security stops them to check forschool ID’s.

Despite Matt’s sweet talking and Nicky’s attemptedexplanation that they’re attending an on-campus party, the security guardremains unimpressed and stubborn, turning them away. Matt ends up parking thetruck outside a row of off-campus houses, and the group sneaks onto the campus.

UNC is bigger than PSU, and as Neil looks around at thedifferent buildings looming over him, it’s a bit disorientating, and yet there’sno mistaking that thrum of excitement. They keep mostly to the shadows and keeptheir heads down, trying not to draw attention to themselves. As collegestudents themselves, they at least blend in a little.  

After a few wrong turns down campus roads, they find thefarm. They hop over the fence and make their way up the dirt path to the barn. Neilmakes quick work of picking the lock and they all slip inside. The poignantsmell of manure and livestock hits them like a tsunami wave, and Neil puts ahand over his mouth to try and stifle it. Similar reactions ripple through thegroup. Nicky, Matt, and Aaron pull out their phones to provide light as theymove further into the barn. Neil peers into the first cubby on his left only tocome face to face with a horse.

“Aw this one has a cute little pig in it,” Nicky says fromfurther down. “We should take this too.”

“Focus, Nicky,” Kevin snaps.

Neil has to stifle a laugh at Nicky’s muttered response ashe continues to look for the ram. The next cubby he checks has a donkeysleeping inside, though.

“Hey!” Matt exclaims. “I found him!”

Everyone joins Matt and crowds around the cubby. Rameses hasbacked into the far corner. He stares at them all for a few moments beforeletting out a bleat. Matt, Nicky, and Kevin begin a murmured argument aboutwhat to do next when Andrew opens the door to the cubby and steps inside, arope in his hand that he ties around Rameses to lead the ram out. Once they getRameses out of the barn, they move as a slow huddle down the road in an attemptto hide their deed. Andrew ends up handing the rope over to Aaron so he canlead the group when it becomes apparent no one else can remember the way backto Matt’s truck.

A security guard is making rounds around the campus, so theyhave to duck between the shadows of two buildings while they wait for him topass. It’s at this moment that Rameses becomes fed up with his captors. A swiftkick to Aaron’s shins leaves the backliner recoiling in pain and dropping therope. Rameses takes the opportunity to escape, darting out from their hidingspot. Matt and Neil are quick to chase after the ram, but running into thelight of the streetlamps reveals that the security guard isn’t as far away asthey anticipated and the bleating has drawn his attention.

“Hey!” the security guard shouts, already running in theirdirection. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Oh shit,” Neil says under his breath.

“Time to go,” Andrew says, grabbing a fistful of the back ofNeil’s shirt and tugging.

“Wait! What about Rameses?” Matt asks, gesturing towards theparking lot the ram is tearing through.  

“Leave him!” Nicky shouts, taking hold of Matt’s wrist andyanking him away.

They can hear the security guard getting closer, his poundingfootsteps and his shouts of needing backup. No one needs to be told twice. Theysqueeze out the other side of the buildings and break into sprints, scatteringin different directions.

Neil can feel the adrenaline thrumming in his veins. Itleaves his ears ringing and his heart pounding in his chest as his feet smackagainst the ground. Andrew veers off to the right in front of him, and Neilfollows. The shortcut takes them through the brush, and branches cut at Neil’sarms and ankles. It does nothing to quiet the thrill bubbling in his chest.

Matt’s truck comes into view, Aaron and Kevin alreadywaiting in the bed. Nicky and Matt come tearing in from the other side, yankingthe doors of the cab open to clamber inside.

“Do you think the ram is alright?” Matt asks, out of breath.

“That’s not important right now, Matthew! Drive!” Nickyshouts.

Andrew practically bodily throws Neil into the truck bedbefore jumping in himself. Matt kicks the truck into gear and peels away fromthe curb, tires screeching in his wake. As Matt speeds off, Neil can’t help thegiddy laughter that bubbles out of him, taking him over until there are tearsin his eyes.

“Well that was fun.”

“Junkie.”

// Send me prompts!!! //