#am i going to miss some great people and the research community of my field? of course but also it was all just completely unsustainable

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

Also I quit my job of what would in about a month or two have been 10 years, and perhaps now I will get to actually be a human being again.

[mr-entj]

i am an intj and 18, it's my second year in uni and my major is overall promising (engineering with focus on nano, 3d and powder technologies (not going in depth with this one)). after graduating i'll be able to work in various fields, from medicine to metallurgy. anyways, the problem is that the way most my subject are being taught is unbelievably boring (not good for my adhd) plus i missed out on some of them (high math and physics mostly) due to stress and overall depressed mood (war in my country + no friends + really tough family situation abuse etc). now, even though i missed out, i know that lots of people did the same and still graduated and now have high paying jobs, and therefore i can too, but i am really anxious about not understanding some of new material due to lacunas in my knowledge. i plan to catch up on some of it during summer but i am pretty sure that till june all my determination will evaporate, and i will continue resenting my choice of major (originally wanted to choose linguistics but didn't work out). another thing is that i don't want to be doing one thing my whole life, i want to be well versed in multiple unrelated fields (from writing and acting and art to history social studies linguistics and architecture). my question is, how to find that spark/motivation again? how to combine all the things i am interested in so i learn a bit of each and when should i do that, now or later in life? i suppose if i graduate and get a good job i can go back to learning again in free time. i also want to get out of this house as soon as possible, so i need to either really put efforts into successfully graduating or start looking for part time jobs to save up money (i doubt i will be able to do both at once). one idea i had for part time is to start an etsy shop as i have original ideas and means to execute them (but there is a risk of failing which i am perhaps more afraid of than i should be).

may you please give me an advice on my situation? sorry if this ask is too messy and thank you for reading it

For starters, I'd rethink your MBTI type. I'm confident you're not an INTJ and I wouldn't use any INTJ descriptions to guide your thought process. Based on your writing style, I'd look closer at descriptions of INTPs and INFPs.

Next, there's a framework I use to break down problems and solve them. It can be applied to basically everything in life. For your situation, it looks something like this:

Step 1: Define. What are the goals you want to achieve? Do you want to move out? Do you want to graduate college? Do you want to study something that interests you? What are the end goals? What does your ideal life look like in a few years at the point where you can breathe easily?

Step 2: Prioritize. Of the goals you've defined, which are most important? Example: #1 priority is to graduate college, #2 priority is to be financially independent and move out, #3 is to study something that interests you.

Step 3: Plan. For priority #1, what are all the things you need to do to graduate college? Are there faster ways to graduate and get a great paying job? Do research on which classes to take, community college credits, etc. Attach timelines to them.

Step 4: Execute. Do it. Self-explanatory. What did you learn from carrying out your plan? What worked and didn't work? Are there any new and exciting insights you know now that you didn't know before?

Step 5: Measure. Are you happy? Did achieving your goals bring you the life you wanted? If not, go back to step 1 and restart the process. Iterate until you get it right.

Unless your family is rich, I'd argue that college isn't for learning, college is a financial commitment in exchange for skills training, credential gathering, and network building to get a job with a positive return on investment (ROI). If you want to learn-- go to a library. You can learn without college. Go on YouTube, go on Google, go on ChatGPT, etc. and learn for free.

Know your priorities and execute based on the most important ones.

[agentofscifi]

Success is the Best Kind of Revenge Ch. 3

Heels click onto the floor of my office as Chloe pushes open my doors. My hands were currently holding up the train of a dress hung on Juleka. Alix follows after Chloe, tinkering with some kind of camera in her hand. Over the years, as we all graduated from University and done pretty well for ourselves.  

Juleka ended up changing her major in school after three semesters. Instead of going into performing arts for instruments, she went and got a composition degree. Juleka wrote music for a variety of artists and was one of the most sought-after songwriters. When she wasn’t doing all of that, she was modeling for my company. Juleka did a variety of photoshoots for several companies, mine included throughout her University Years. After I opened up my first few stores, we signed a formal contract. She’d been working for me for almost a decade. She split her time between Paris and Nashville in America. 

Alix decides to focus on a degree in art history. She worked at an Auction House company in Paris, moving between the various countries of Europe to authenticate pieces of art and then handle their sales. She was rather successful at her work, earning many bonuses for rather extremely successful sales. Alix’s unique style and comfortable professionalism made her easily approachable to buyings. She was rather blunt, and it did her well in her job. On her off-hours, Alix did some minor modeling and promoting much of my athletic pieces. Alix’s popularity grew as she competed in several X-Games in and after university. She won several titles in skateboarding, BMX freestyling, rollerskating, and snowboarding before retiring after a slip-up when snowboarding. She shattered her kneecap, broke a leg, her collarbone, and dislocated her arm in two places. She still did BMX biking, skateboarding, rollerblading, and snowboarding, just not in a professional capacity. That being said, little kids still asked for her autographs all the time.  

Chloe graduated from the London Business School with Honors and then proceeded to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York to get a Graduate Degree in Global Fashion Management. She modeled some of my designs, worked connections, handled all my brand’s social media accounts, and finalized contracts. Now, she had several people working underneath her, to handle the day-to-day operations. Either way, Chloe handled all of the Brand’s business dealings and flourishes.  

As for me, I attend the London College of Fashion. I got a Bachelor’s Degree in Fashion Design and Development with honors. After those years, I went to Milan to attend Istituto Marangoni International for a Master’s Degree in Luxury Accessories Design & Management. After that, I relocated back to Paris. My first boutique opened up quickly after that along with a small factory with a loan from a bank. I ended up having to open a second factory within three months due to demands. More boutiques opened up worldwide as the Brand became a household name.  

“Hello Chloe, how is everything?”  

“We got invitations to a reunion for Lycée. Alya sent them, as she was the class representative when we all graduated. Personally, I think she wants to get her hands on you or Juleka for an interview. You know her journalism career is in the gutter.”  

Alix snorts. “And who’s fault is that?” 

Chloe rolls her eyes. “Her’s. The idiot ruined her blog when she was a teenager and she never changed. She still does idiotic and frankly dangerous things to get a scoop. Sure, she does some basic research now, but the girl’s been detained several times for endangering people and disrupting the peace. No University would touch her, and no place will hire her.”  

Alix looks up from the camera. “So, you didn’t inform everyone in the fashion journalism world about her history, knowing it would spread to all major news and journalism networks.  

Chloe raises an eyebrow. “Look, this company’s image is important. I was not going to let Miss Blogger ruin it for 15 minutes of fame. She dug her own grave.”  

I sigh. “This is great and all, but are you all going?”  

There’s a snort right behind me. “Not on any of our lives. We will not be sinking that low.”  

“Chloe!” Juleka’s face is red and slightly scandalized.  

“What? Why would we go to this reunion? To see how everyone is doing? It’s rather simple. Alya’s a tabloid writer. Nino is a barely successful DJ who works at a music store to help pay his bills. Max is an IT guy at a company. That fake research paper haunts him to this day. Kim works at a gym. The drugs screwed his athletic chances over and he never planned for anything beyond going to the Olympics. Nathaniel works at an art store and does nighttime classes. He’s unsuccessfully worked with 7 different writers for his comics after leaving Marc.   

Now, Myléne and Ivan are happy, at least. Myléne works as a secretary and Ivan as a grocery store manager. Both are part-time so one of them can stay home with their kids at a time. They have millions of photos of their family on their Instagram accounts. Neither one can do much with charities. The fraud they committed was spread around the charity communities fast.  

Rose, Adrien, and Sabrina are the only ones who did what they wanted to do. Rose had a few years of fame with her music before getting married and settling down as a youth music teacher. Adrien moved to America and works for a University. However, I know for a fact that he will not be returning to Paris for anything less than a funeral or a wedding. As for Sabrina, after some therapy, ended up as a Detective in Marseille.”  

“Didn’t you pay for her therapy?” I tie off my last stitch and let the train fall to the platform.  

Chloe purses her lips. “I owed her that much. I screwed her childhood up, majorly.”  

“Did you stalk everyone to find out all of this?” Alix has a mischievous look.  

Another eye roll from Chloe. “I didn’t need to. In this day and age, all you need to do is type their name into the internet and all of their social media pops up.”  

I hum. “What about Lila?”  

“She’s still in prison. Tried another appeal a little while ago, to no avail. Her long list of offenses and the “assisting a terrorist” change isn’t something any judge would want to touch, even with a 10 ft pole.”  

Juleka simply shrugs. “Back to the point at hand. I’m not going to this reunion. Rose is the only one I wanted to keep in contact with, and she’s not going. It’s her five-year anniversary with her husband. She’s going to Spain that week.”  

Alix shugs. “I’m not going either. Kim has tried to contact me so many times to help him get back into the sports world. I am not giving him another chance. Besides, there’s this huge auction going on in Russia for that week. I am not missing that for a few hours with our childhood classmates.”  

I look at Chloe. She raises a perfect eyebrow. “Not a chance and you are not going either. Heavens forbid Alya posts something on that new blog of hers.”  

I set my needle and thread down on a work table and gesture to Juleka to get changed. “I’m not going if none of you are. Besides, there’s this fashion show in Milan that weekend. It’s for freshly graduated designers to show off their talents to possible employers. I was planning to go to find some who would specialize in Fashion Contour. I’ve been doing quite a bit of work in that field and want to get a fresh pair of eyes that will eventually take over that area of our brand. I was also hoping to look for someone to start a Make-up department. One of your people mentioned the idea at a meeting.”  

Chloe nods and starts to type into her phone. “I’ll tell my assistant to look through the applications we have to see if anyone fulfills the requirements for that job. Just find that new department head.”  

I give Chloe a nod as Juleka hands me the dress from before. A custom-made wedding dress for a woman who happened to be Juleka’s exact size. One of the many I had made of the years since I’d started my fashion business.   

Some part of me wanted to thank Lila. If I was honest with myself, I wouldn’t be where I was if she hadn’t arrived at my class and taken everyone’s loyalty. They weren’t bad people, but thanks to Ms. Bustier, they were a drain on my energy and abilities. Now, however, I was one of the most well-known and successful fashion designers with over two dozen people for me in Design. I could not be happier. 

Ch. 1 ~~~~~ Ch. 2

[xiaomoxu]

Lucien’s Mind Quest: Craving

SPOILER ALERT!!

A date from CN server which hasn’t been released on EN server yet. Might contains some spoiler.

🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 🍁 

Exclusive Radio

Xu Mo: A Ming, be more concise when submitting reports in the future. Your ability to refine key points needs to be strengthened.

A Ming: Yes, I understand.

Xu Mo: I'm not in the institute next week and will go to another place.

Xu Mo: If you have anything, you can talk to me over the phone.

Xu Mo: Do you have any other questions?

A Ming: Professor, isn't it... from the media who wanted to interview you again?

A Ming: Recently, there have been more reporters outside the Institute, and they all want to interview you about the Kolavo Prize.

A Ming: Even I feel a little troubled

A Ming: Fortunately, you have chosen this period of time for vacation, which is indeed a good thing.

Xu Mo: Not because of this reason.

Xu Mo: I just think that some time ago, I always seemed to be busy with work. Now is the time to give myself a vacation.

A Ming: Do you just want to take a vacation?

Xu Mo: Do you need other reasons?

A Ming: No, no, I just feel a little surprised.

A Ming: After all, from last year until now, professor has almost never been out of the institute except for normal vacations.

A Ming: I feel like you're all focused on work...

Xu Mo: Maybe it is a bit too immersive.

Xu Mo: So this holiday, I want to spend more time with people around me.

A Ming: Oh, I understand why the professor went to another place for vacation.

A Ming: Don't worry! I will never disturb you! Happy vacation, professor!

Xu Mo: You are now very good at refining the point.

A Ming: Hehe...

Xu Mo: Well, it's a date.

🍁

MIND'S QUEST

The traditional style hotel room is warm and dry.

I changed into a yukata, sat on the tatami, took a deep breath, nervously opened the news that popped up on the phone one-

"The announcement of the Kolavo Prize list has been postponed. Can the genius scientist Xu Mo set the record for the youngest winner?"

The bold and enlarged headlines are very eye-catching.

Postponed? I froze for a moment, and hurriedly clicked on the details to quickly browse.

"... Today, the authoritative awards in the scientific community, the winners of the Kolavo Life Science Award, are about to be announced, which has attracted great attention at home and abroad."

"The innovative work done by the scientist Professor Xu Mo in the field of brain science has therefore become the most popular candidate for the award."

"However, according to relevant sources, the selection criteria for

this year's awards have changed compared with previous years, and it is not ruled out that there will be more powerful competitors."

"The Kolavo Prize official also announced just now. Because of the big differences within the jury, the winner list will be postponed to the afternoon..."

I slid the screen, frowning tighter and tighter. Because I was so focused, I didn't even notice that someone was coming towards me.

??: Why are you still watching these news?

Xu Mo said that he put the blanket in his hand on my lap, and his eyes scanned my phone screen.

Xu Mo: A certain someone invited and told me to take vacation and relax....

Xu Mo: But from the way here to now, you have always stared at your phone from time to time.

He paused, with a little dissatisfaction and grievance in his tone.

Xu Mo: Is Professor Xu in this news more attractive to you than Professor Xu in front of you?

I was stunned for a moment and hurriedly turned off the news interface.

MC: Of course not! I just saw this news and clicked in.

MC: And... I mainly watch the weather forecast.

My eyes wide open, try to make your words more convincing.

MC: You see, the snow is so heavy today, the hotel owner also suggested that we can go to the outdoor hot spring again tomorrow.

MC: However, according to the weather forecast, the snow will decrease later. So maybe there is still a chance!

Xu Mo pondered for a moment, laughed faintly, and nodded.

Xu Mo: Well, it seems I misunderstood. It turns out that you have fully considered it

MC: Of course. It is rare that we all have vacation, but I am looking forward to this trip.

This is indeed the truth.

Lately, Xu Mo and I were so busy that we sometimes didn't even have time to have a meal together.

So this time I chose a hot spring hotel specially, just want to stay in the room with him and spend this time peacefully.

I raised my head, took Xu Mo's hand, and shook it lightly.

MC: You have been busy with scientific research some time ago, and you didn't have much time to rest.

MC: Leave the travel arrangements to me this time, you just need to relax and enjoy.

Xu Mo: Alright.

Xu Mo curled his lips slightly. The thin sunlight from outside the house fell on him, coating him with a soft light.

Xu Mo: Then... I'll leave it to you?

MC: Hm! Leave it to me.

I glanced at the time on my phone, my heart moved, and then I gathered my mind and raised my head and said to Xu Mo.

MC: Now that the luggage has been put away, go and change your clothes!

Xu Mo nodded and walked towards the door. I took the opportunity to secretly pick up the phone, intending to continue reading the news that I just turned off.

Xu Mo: By the way, there is one more thing.

MC: Wh- What?

Unexpectedly, Xu Mo suddenly turned around, and I quickly hid the phone behind me with a guilty conscience.

Xu Mo's eyes flicked back and forth between the phone and me. He seemed to have something to say, but he just chuckled.

Xu Mo: Nothing, just want to tell you...

Xu Mo: This trip with you, I also look forward to it very much.

While Xu Mo was changing clothes, I quietly walked outside the door. As I planned, a waiter came here on time with a rectangular wooden box.

Waiter: Miss MC, the lady boss asked me to give you this. Please keep it.

Waiter: As for the other item you ordered, because it needs to be made right now, the snow is too big for the driver to drive down the mountain to get it. Please forgive me.

MC: It’s okay, you've work hard, so please tell my thanks to the boss.

I took the wooden box in her hand and returned to the room, with a burst of complicated emotions in my heart.

This is a gift I prepared before I set off. Originally, I had calculated the time and planned to give Xu Mo a surprise when the results of the Kolavo Prize came out.

But I did not expect that due to changes in the selection criteria, the announcement of the award list was delayed, which disrupted my original plan.

I looked at the wooden box in my hand, and a result I had rarely imagined before popped up in my head, just in case...

The heart sank little by little. It seems that it is still unknown whether this celebration can be conveyed to him...

Xu Mo: What are you thinking?

I followed the sound and felt a little startled.

Xu Mo was wearing a dark yukata with a large collarbone exposed under the loose collar.

He relaxed, leaning against the door frame, and he looked a little more casual and relax.

His eyes fell on the wooden box in my hand, showing some curiosity.

Xu Mo: What is this?

MC: Well, this is...

Just as I was thinking about how to explain to him, a ringtone interrupted our conversation.

Xu Mo: ....Yes?

Xu Mo: ....Hello?

Xu Mo's tone was light, but his expression was a little more serious. The news that I just saw on my phone flashed in my mind, I couldn't help feeling a burst of tension in my heart.

Xu Mo: I'm sorry, I'm on vacation, I'm afraid I don't have time for this.

Xu Mo: Next time you have the opportunity to cooperate again.

After he said this lightly, he hung up the phone. I was caught off guard by the crisp and clean action.

Perhaps seeing me looking at him in confusion, Xu Mo said first without waiting for me to speak.

Xu Mo: It's the call from Huanqiu Weekly.

I opened my eyes slightly.

Huanqiu Weekly is an established weekly magazine in China. It mainly reports on international issues and major events. All have great influence within the scope.

MC: Do they want to cooperate with you?

Xu Mo: Well, they want to give me an interview.

MC: Really?! Isn't that great!

Hearing news that I was not worried about, I couldn't help but let go, and placed the wooden box on the closet next to it.

MC: Such an influential weekly magazine, if you accept their invitation, you can let more people know about your research results.

Xu Mo was stunned for a moment, and the corners of his lips curled upwards.

Xu Mo: Why do you want more people to know?

MC: Because...maybe for many people, your scientific research results are just a bunch of technical terms that seem very obscure.

MC: But I know, a lot of your hard work has been condensed behind it.

MC: Even with the aura of a "genius scientist" above your head, your effort and persistence are no less than anyone else.

As I spoke, the moments that I had experienced with him flashed in my mind.

He will put the experimental reports that have spent months of energy into the shredder one by one just because of a certain data error;

Because I finally got the desired result, I was so happy that I could not hide it, and even some childishly suggested that I wanted to go to a movie with him to celebrate.

I smiled at Xu Mo and said to him in a joking tone.

MC: So, I want to be rewarded for your efforts. This is probably my selfish intention.

Xu Mo looked at me quietly, and a certain soft emotion melted in his eyes bit by bit. After a while, he suddenly chuckled helplessly.

Xu Mo: Silly.

He stretched out his hand and took me into his arms.

Xu Mo: I declined the invitation.

MC: Huh? Why?

Xu Mo did not answer, but chuckled lightly.

Xu Mo: Do you want to know what my selfishness is?

Xu Mo: Although you always tease me about my time and energy as if I can't use it up, in fact they are also limited.

Xu Mo: I have to stay and spend them on the person who are most important to me.

He paused, rubbing the top of my hair with his chin.

Xu Mo: This is our vacation, of course I just want to share it with you.

My heart seemed to be hit by something. Feeling his familiar body temperature, I only feel that the slightest warmth suddenly enters my heart.

I couldn't help but put my hand around Xu Mo's back, eagerly trying to get closer to him and let this moment stay longer.

MC: Yes, me too.

Looking across the wooden box on the cabinet, I closed my eyes and gradually made a decision in my heart.

  🍁

MC: Xu Mo, the belt of your yukata seems a little loose

I saw that Xu Mo had a loose belt around his waist, so I subconsciously reached out to help him tidy it.

MC: This seems doesn’t work...

MC: Let me tie a knot for you again!

After speaking, I undid Xu Mo's belt again, planning to tie it again.

Xu Mo: It seems that you are already very skilled.

Xu Mo's voice with a smile rang in my ears.

I raised my head and met his gaze. Only then did I realize how close we are now.

MC: W-well, when the waiter helped me wear it, I learned a little bit from her.

MC: Moreover, the way that girls wear yukata is more complicated than the boys.

MC: So it's not very difficult to tie your belt.

I lowered my head, trying to hide my blushing cheeks.

Xu Mo: It turned out to be so.

Xu Mo nodded, then opened his arms and let me put his cloth.

Although I tried my best to concentrate on the movements in my hands, the sniffles on my neck still made me a little distracted.

The delicate atmosphere filled us, I pursed my lips, and when I was about to say something, Xu Mo spoke first.

Xu Mo: I didn't notice just now that there are still a few lines written on the hanging paintings here.

MC: Eh?

I looked up and followed his gaze to the wall behind me, where there were traditional paintings one by one.

The red leaves all over the sky fell on the clear spring water, like flames burning in clusters, smeared with warmth and warmth.

I didn't pay much attention when I entered the room before, but now I look closer and realize that there are still words written on it.

Just when I was about to identify it carefully, Xu Mo had already read it out softly.

Xu Mo: " The long-lasting God is acting on behalf you, and I never heard of it"

(“悠悠神代事,黯黯不曾闻” Yōuyōu shéndài shì, àn àn bùcéng wén)

Xu Mo: " The maple dyed the Long Tian River, gurgling and flowing deep"

(“枫染龙田川,潺潺流水深 ” fēng rǎn lóng tiánchuān, chánchán liúshuǐ shēn)

Notes: I put the original sentence of the poem, afraid that there’s mistranslation since I’m not familiar with it.

MC: I seem to have read these sentences before...

MC: It seems to come from a very famous love song?

I turned my face and looked at Xu Mo with a questioning look. He nodded lightly.

Xu Mo: Well, it is indeed a very emotional sentence.

Xu Mo: I think it is probably because Valentine's Day is approaching. In order to set off the atmosphere, the proprietress of the hotel arranged such a hanging picture in the room.

Xu Mo: And look at the writing above, it should have been added not long ago.

Hearing Xu Mo's explanation, I looked at the hanging painting again.

MC: I didn’t expect the proprietress of this hotel to be so careful, I thought it was just a landscape painting.

MC: It turns out that there is such a “careful” chance hidden.

I tried to felt the emotions contained in the lines. This painting, which was originally used for decoration, seems to have a deeper meaning because of this poem.

Just as my attention was all attracted by the hanging paintings, Xu Mo's voice suddenly rang in my ears.

Xu Mo: Although the painting is really beautiful

Xu Mo: But, have you forgotten something?

His gaze fell on the belt in my hand, and I followed along and realized that I was still finishing Xu Mo's yukata.

His yukata was hanging loosely on his body at this time, and it was even more exposed. The low neckline is wider, and the skin is exposed.

The heat on my face couldn't help but rise a little more.

MC: .. I will continue!

After finally suppressing the fast heartbeat and refastening Xu Mo's belt, I couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief.

I raised my hand to help him straighten the low neckline, but found that this yukata was actually designed like this.

MC: Is this, this neckline originally opened so wide?

Hearing my visibly smaller voice, Xu Mo first glanced at his clothes, then a clear smile spread across his mouth.

Xu Mo: Well, that's it when I put it on.

Xu Mo: Moreover, as far as I know, the men's yukatas offered by this store are all of this style.

MC: Strange, I saw that the model wears on the official website before...

MC: Is this also what "Valentine's Day Special Offer"?

In order to cover up my inner fluctuations, I deliberately said in a ridiculous tone, and Xu Mo also chuckled cooperatively.

Xu Mo: Well, it is possible.

He blinked, as if thinking of something, then bent down and leaned in my ear and said softly.

Xu Mo: I guess..

Xu Mo: This is probably, a little bit “careful”.

🍁

On the tatami, Xu Mo and I are sitting opposite each other.

He took the sake out of the wooden box, opened the cork, and slowly poured it into a special vessel.

Xu Mo: No wonder today I saw you and the hotel owner whispered a few secretly...

Xu Mo: Why do you suddenly want to give me a gift?

My heart moved slightly, but on the surface, I still took the stubbornly.

MC: It's not a sudden intention, this is part of the arrangement of this vacation.

MC: Take it as a reward for Professor Xu who worked hard this year!

Wanting to get around this topic as soon as possible, I pointed to the Sake bottle and looked at him invitingly.

MC: I heard that this brand of sake is well-known locally.

MC: I was worried that it was too popular, but I asked the proprietress to order it from the Sake store half a month in advance!

A smile filled Xu Mo's narrow eyes.

Xu Mo: In order to live up to your intentions, I have to taste it.

After speaking, he picked up the Sake glass and took a sip.

MC: How?

Xu Mo: It has a slight sweet taste and is delicious.

MC: That's good! A drink in the snow can warm your body.

Suddenly, my mind flashed through the scenes of Xu Mo drinking before and couldn't help but add.

And its degree is not high. You can rest assured that you won't get drunk if you drink in moderation.

Xu Mo raised his eyebrows.

Xu Mo: It seems that I have been underestimated.

He seemed to inadvertently pour some more Sake into the glass, and then drank the whole glass leisurely.

Xu Mo: I have been tried sake before, but I was not drunk.

MC: I remember I heard you mentioned it on the phone.

Hearing him mention it again, a sense of curiosity arose in my heart.

In my impression, Xu Mo almost never drinks alcohol, but prefers tea.

MC: Why did you suddenly want to drink?

Xu Mo: Well... let me think about it.

Xu Mo put down his Sake glass, propped his head with one hand, and looked up at the red leaves in the courtyard behind me.

Xu Mo: It was when I was studying. In order to celebrate the project with the classmates.

MC: Huh?

Xu Mo: Feeling surprised?

Xu Mo's eyes overlapped with me for a moment, and then he continued.

Xu Mo: At that time, I cooperated with my classmates on a very challenging scientific research project. After about a year and a half of research, I finally got the ideal result.

Perhaps thinking of the scene at that time, Xu Mo sighed softly.

Xu Mo: They were so happy that they had to take me to the tavern to celebrate...

Xu Mo said helplessly, but the corners of his mouth curled up unconsciously.

I rarely seem to see him celebrating his achievements, and the temporarily suppressed thought in my heart is revivedㅡ

I also want to accompany him to celebrate and witness the moment when his efforts bear fruit.

Chaotic emotions spread across my chest: anticipation, tension, and a little anxiety...

Xu Mo: Wandering again.

Xu Mo tapped my forehead. I recovered, and smiled apologetically at Xu Mo.

He narrowed his eyes slightly, and after looking at me for a while, he suddenly spoke.

Xu Mo: I suddenly remembered that they also taught me a game at that time.

MC: What game?

Xu Mo: I will show it to you.

I watched with interest as Xu Mo picked up an empty cup and put it upside down on the table.

Xu Mo: The game is very simple. We take turns to pat this cup or choose to take it away.

Xu Mo: If the cup is taken away, the other person will make a fist and knock on the table. Knock on the cup or shoot on the table is a loss.

MC: This game seems to test the reaction ability...

Seeing me as if I don’t understand, Xu Mo smiled.

Xu Mo: Well, but it is not difficult. You should have learned it after we played a game.

Xu Mo: Want to try it?

MC: Yes!

I eagerly nodded my head. Xu Mo's eyes turned, and a meaningful smile appeared on his lips.

MC: ....

MC: This unscientific!

I took another sip of Sake in frustration. Facts have proved that the so-called "not difficult" of this game may only be aimed at Xu Mo.

In addition to testing his reaction ability, during the game, he always seems to know what I am going to do next, and foresee every movement of me in advance...

MC: You are almost like "mind reading"...

Faced my complaint, Xu Mo just smiled slightly

Xu Mo: Maybe it's just because I know you too well.

Xu Mo: So sometimes, your every move seems not to hard to guess .

He didn't seem to realize how blushing his words were, so I had to mutter quietly.

MC: This is too unfair...

Xu Mo: Well, you also try to focus all your attention on me, how about it?

MC: Huh?

Xu Mo dragged his face with his hands, tilted his head and looked at me.

Xu Mo: Perhaps this strategy will be more effective.

The heartbeat speeded up uncontrollably, and for a while, I couldn't tell whether he was teasing me or was serious.

But facing the current one-sided game situation, for the slight possibility of a comeback, I decided to try.

The new round soon began. I followed Xu Mo's words and stared at him intensively, hoping to see a trace of flaws in him.

And Xu Mo's mouth always had a slight smile, as if he was in a good mood.

It was my turn to take the cup. I noticed that Xu Mo's brows suddenly wrinkled. With a movement in my heart, I decided to change my tactics and took the cup away.

MC: ...!!

Xu Mo: I lost.

Xu Mo looked at our folded hands on the cup and sighed slightly

Xu Mo: It seems that I was too careless...

Xu Mo: This strategy should not be told to you lightly.

His voice showed faint grievances and regrets, and then he took the Sake and drank it in one go.

MC: Is it really so works?

I was a little dazed by the sudden victory.

Although I'm not sure if there is a reason for luck, I just raised my lips and jumped for joy when I finally caught this flawless person.

Next, the entire game seemed to be exceptionally smooth to me. I didn't expect that one day I could win Xu Mo so many times, and the smile on my face got bigger and bigger.

Until Xu Mo was fined another glass of Sake, looking at his reddish ears and the corners of his mouth, I suddenly noticed something.

I put away my smile and walked up to him, acting as if I was asking my sins.

MC: I almost fell for some big liar again!

Xu Mo's eyes moved slightly, and then he stretched out his hand towards me.

Xu Mo: What's wrong?

He looked at me and blinked a bit innocently.

Xu Mo: Why are you so angry? Did I do something wrong?

I laughed angrily by the way he knew it, and couldn't help squeezing his hand.

MC: Are you letting me win again?

Xu Mo did not answer immediately, but gently hooked my finger, and then wrapped it into his palm.

Xu Mo: Who said I let you?

Xu Mo: I am willing to lose to you.

He stretched out his hand, scraped the tip of my nose, and a smile burst out from the corner of his mouth.

Xu Mo: Finally I can see you smile without burden.

MC: Huh?

Xu Mo: From morning on, you look worried.

Xu Mo: Although I plan to not ask too much before you tell me. But I thought about it, it’s not easy to keep you in my heart

Xu Mo: I guess the thing that bothers you should have something to do with me, right

He thought a little bit.

Xu Mo: Was it the news you saw this morning?

Seeing Xu Mo's determined expression and thinking about his behavior just now, I suddenly understood something in my heart.

MC: So you proposed to play games with me, also to relax me?

MC: I can't hide anything from you

Xu Mo chuckled lightly, wrapped my hand into his palm, and deliberately asked in a joking tone.

Xu Mo: Tell me about it, how did the "Professor Xu" on the news bother you?

I was amused by him. Seeing that what was hidden in my heart had been exposed, I simply decided to confess.

MC: Actually... This bottle of sake was originally a gift to celebrate your prize. But I did not expect that the award list would be postponed.

MC: Although I still want to celebrate with you, but if the result is not good, I worry about you will be disappointed.

MC: So it has not been said.

After saying this, I took a long breath and felt that it was a lot easier.

MC: But now I also think that compared to these, we should cherish our time together more.

In order to show my determination, I picked up the phone on the table and turned it off without hesitation.

MC: Now I can't get distracted!

Xu Mo's eyes flickered, and then he turned off the phone just like me. He put his arms around my waist and raised his head slightly.

Xu Mo: Then we can say that, from now on, don't let anyone bothering us.

Xu Mo: Nobody can.

Seeing him add another sentence seriously, I couldn't help laughing.

MC: However, it is indeed my fault that I was always distracted before. Next, we can make up for this time.

Xu Mo: Hm? How do you plan to make up?

I looked outside and raised my eyebrows at him.

MC: Didn't you notice? The snow outside is getting smaller.

Xu Mo was a little puzzled, but he reacted quickly, and the corners of his lips curled up in a beautiful arc.

Outside the house, the original heavy snow in the sky turned into fragments of snowflakesㅡ

It fell lightly in the hot spring that was continuously rising, and melted silently.

After eating, Xu Mo and I were walking on the stone road in the courtyard. We could hear the gurgling water in our ears.

MC: It seems that the weather forecast is right, the snow is really much smaller.

Xu Mo: Hmm, but are you drunk? Actually, we can come later.

MC: Don't worry, I am fully awake.

MC: And I checked it online before, and two hours after a meal is the best time to soak in the hot spring!

Xu Mo just wanted to say something, but suddenly stopped. He stared at the hot spring pool in front of him, and his eyes flashed with surprise.

I followed his gaze to the open-air hot spring in front, and my eyes widened.

MC: This is...

I was surprised to find that there is no barrier between this private hot spring surrounded by stones.

  🍁

MC: Strange, I clearly remember that the pictures I saw on the website before were separated by wooden boards.

I looked at the hot spring pool, my ears were getting hot. Thinking of two people in the same hot spring, I can't help but feel a subtle sense of tension.

Just when I was about to say something to break the awkward atmosphere, Xu Mo's voice suddenly sounded.

Xu Mo: .. I'd better go back to the room first.

Xu Mo: I'll come back when you finish.

MC: Hm?

I subconsciously raised my head. Xu Mo still had a gentle expression, but his eyes did not look at me.

Is it...

Am I the not only one who is nervous?

Looking at the steaming hot spring, I involuntarily swallowed my saliva, emboldening myself in my heart.

MC: Now that you have changed your clothes... let's go together.

In the hot spring pool, Xu Mo was sitting opposite me, the water just covered our chests

Xu Mo: Does the water feel hot?

I looked up, my eyes swam disobediently from his bare chest to the collarbone, Adam's apple and thin lips, and then I didn't dare to go up again.

MC: No, just right.

I shook my head, suppressed the excessively fast heartbeat, and sat down a little bit, submerged my shoulders in the warm water, and couldn't help but sigh.

The snowflakes fell on the face one by one, bringing icy coldness sense of touch, but the body and mind are steaming hot, and finally melts in the heat.

Xu Mo flicked his hand across the hot spring, and there was a sporadic sound of water. He closed his eyes, raised his head and leaned against the rock wall.

Xu Mo: I suddenly remembered that the last time we took a hot spring, it was the same as today with snow in the sky.

MC: Well, I remember too.

There was a movement in my heart, and I couldn't help but remember the time when I wished Xu Mo's birthday a warm feeling came from the bottom of my heart.

MC: It seems that many of my good memories about the snowy days are spent with you.

Xu Mo slowly opened his eyes, and there was also a layer of chlorinated water vapor on his eyes, and the curvature of the corners of his lips seemed clear and moving.

Xu Mo: For me, it's not just the snow.

The gurgling water and his voice merged together, and fell into my ears through the mist.

Under Xu Mo's gentle gaze, it seems that the distant memories in my mind are being warmed up little by little.

Perhaps he had been watching for too long, and my throat was a little dry. My gaze fell to the side of the tray floating on the water, which was filled with wagashi and hot tea.

Wagashi are traditional Japanese confections that are often served with green tea, especially the types made of mochi, anko and fruits.

I picked up the teacup and took a drink. Obviously it's not alcohol, but it makes me feel a little drunk.

I patted my slightly hot face, trying to stretch my body, but my foot inadvertently touched Xu Mo's leg.

Xu Mo: ....

MC: .....

The breath and heartbeat went wild in an instant. In the pool water, it seems that every part of the body has become more sensitive.

I subconsciously looked at Xu Mo, his eyes flickered, and then faintly looked away, and picked up another teacup on the tray.

Xu Mo: The tea smell is very strong.

MC: Hm..

MC: This opportunities are rare. Why don't we "replace Sake with tea" and clink a glass?

As soon as I finished speaking, I bit my tongue viciously for the proposal I blurted out.

Xu Mo's hand holding the teacup seemed to shake. He looked at my red cheeks curiously and chuckled uncontrollably.

Xu Mo: Well, it's a good proposal, but...

Xu Mo: Clinking glasses is usually for celebration. What are we going to celebrate now?

I was asked all of a sudden. While thinking, an idea flashes over my mind.

MC: To celebrate...

Xu Mo: If you say anything like "Celebrate your winning in advance", I will be a little disappointed.

MC: Ha..

This person definitely has mind-reading skills!

I looked at Xu Mo's smiling eyes through the white mist, and my lips curled up.

The fine snow slowly fell, and the water in the pool was clear, but not as bright as his eyes. I suddenly felt everything in front of me, something unreal like a dream.

Such a good person is now opposite me, right in front of my eyes, drinking a tea with me and sharing the same snowy color.

Until I saw Xu Mo's eyes clearly reflecting my figure. I suddenly felt that this moment has already surpassed everything.

So I said almost subconsciously.

MC: Then celebrate the moment we have.

Under the misty surface of xenon hydrogen, the skin we touched lightly rubbed inadvertently.

The clear touch brought up bursts of electric current, causing ripples in my heart. I no longer stagger my eyes as before, but quietly stare at Xu Mo in front of me.

His Adam's apple slid, and a white warm mist made his dark eyes sparkle with water.

I suddenly had an illusion, as if Xu Mo could look straight into my heart through the hazy mist.

After a while, he chuckled lightly.

Xu Mo: Is it just for now?

MC: What?

Xu Mo didn't answer, but suddenly got up and leaned toward me. The chest that had been submerged was also exposed at this time.

The warm and slightly hot from hot springs steamed his skin a little red, and the water rippled and then fell again.

I touched the ground with my feet a little nervously, but a little unstable due to the buoyancy of the water, Xu Mo held my waist with one hand in time.

I raised my head and slowly looked at the line of Xu Mo's jaw, my fingertips sinking into the tight muscles behind his shoulders.

His hand slid across my back, tightening me up a little bit, and I unconsciously put my hand on his shoulder and against his chest.

MC: Xu Mo..

The light lines of the water wave healed our chest and back. Xu Mo lowered his head, his lips were close to my ears, his voice was stained with a low voice.

Xu Mo: What I want to say is, not just celebrating this moment. But...

Xu Mo: For every moment we have.

There seemed to be a touch of nothing on the earlobe, as if clusters of flames were lit from there.

The tea cups collided with a crisp sound.

Xu Mo took a sip of tea, pinched my chin and pressed it down

Seeing his face getting closer and closer, I can no longer care about the others, I can only instinctively close my eyes

Feel the numb touch on the lips, and the sweet tea fragrance reverberating in the mouth.

🍁

With a splash of water, Xu Mo got up and walked out of the hot spring pool.

Xu Mo: During the meal, our clothes were left out and dampened by the snow. I will go back to the room to get the clothes we changed in the morning.

MC: Wait, I'll go with you.

After I finished speaking, I stood up, Xu Mo stood there, his eyes stopped slightly when he looked at me.

I followed his eyes and looked down, the wet towels were tight clings to my body, clearly outlines the lines, dripping continuously.

A cold wind blew, and I seemed to have noticed something, so I hurriedly sat back.

MC: So cold...

Xu Mo laughed lightly, then nodded.

Xu Mo: Well, it will be a little cold if you just walk back.

Xu Mo: So, wait for me here, okay?

I touched my slightly hot cheek, smiled and nodded at him.

MC: Alright  

When Xu Mo returned with the clothes, I was eating the wagashi on the tray. He couldn't help but smile when he saw me.

Xu Mo: Are you hungry?

MC: A little. You see, these fruits are so delicate.

I pushed the tray towards him, Xu Mo squatted down and looked carefully.

Xu Mo: Well, indeed.

Xu Mo: I once heard a very skilled master say that wagashi can express anything, whether it is natural or human.

MC: Really?

Hearing his words, I put my arm on the rock beside the pool and curiously observed the wagashi in the plate.

MC: This is a special wagashi for Valentine's Day. I don't know if there is anything special.

Xu Mo: I think there should be.

Xu Mo also leaned down slightly and observed with me.

Xu Mo: Maybe we can guess by using our imagination?

He smiled and twisted one of the wagashi.

It looks relatively ordinary among the different shapes of fruits. The round shape is like a small steamed bun, but on the top. Covered with a circle of yellow marks.

Xu Mo: The surface of this fruit should be deliberately roasted to brown

After watching it for a while, Xu Mo handed it to me.

Xu Mo: Did you think of something?

MC: Hmm.. the yellow circle.

MC: Like a full moon?

I raised my eyes to look at Xu Mo, and he curled his mouth slightly, motioning me to continue.

As if being woken up, I looked at this seemingly inconspicuous wagashi, and seemed to understand the intention of the person who made it.

MC: The moon is a very important image in love and can be used to express many kinds of emotions...

MC: So it seems that this fruit really fits the theme of Valentine's Day.

Xu Mo: Have a taste?

Looking at Xu Mo's eyebrows, my heart moved slightly, so I leaned over and bit the fruit in his hand.

The sweetness melted in my mouth, and I was pleasantly surprised to see the red fillings of the wagashi under the white skin.

MC: It's red bean paste...

There seemed to be a trace of surprise in Xu Mo's eyes. After a while, he nodded thoughtfully.

Xu Mo: Specially choose red as the filling...

Xu Mo: Probably because the person who created it wanted to express the sincere emotions between lovers.

MC: It turns out that wagashi can really express people's feelings...

Seeing such an emotional Japanese fruit, a burst of soft emotions creeping in my heart, I subconsciously asked Xu Mo.

MC: You have a bite too?

As soon as I finished speaking, I suddenly remembered something, so I immediately changed my words.

MC: But you don’t like sweets so much, so it’s mine!

I stretched out my hand to take the wagashi from his hand, but Xu Mo suddenly pulled his hand

MC: Uh?

Seeing my puzzlement, he chuckled lightly.

Xu Mo: I really don't like sweets very much.

Xu Mo: However, I still want to taste such beautiful food.

MC: But...

Before I finished speaking, I saw Xu Mo's face enlarged before my eyes.

He put his hand behind my head and leaned down. In the blink of an eye, there was a warmth on the lips.

The scorching breath fell on the face, itching and numb, dispelling the coolness in the air.

The thick snow on the edge of the pool turned into melted water droplets and fell into the water, arousing small splashes.

After a long while, Xu Mo released his hand behind my head, with a slight smile on his mouth.

Xu Mo: Well, it's sweeter than expected.

🍁

After soaking in the hot springs, Xu Mo and I walked slowly back to the room. As soon as we opened the door, we stopped in unison.

A fancy "citation cake" was placed in the center of the table.

Under the two big letters "Certificate" written with red chocolate, there are also dark chocolates with a row of small letters one by one.

"Best Scientist Award".

Xu Mo raised his eyebrows and glanced at me leisurely. I coughed slightly awkwardly.

MC: Ahem. If I said that the waiter sent the wrong room, would you believe it?

At this time, the door was pushed open again, and the waiter put two knives and forks on the side of the tray.

Waiter: Miss MC, you are back, is the hot spring still comfortable?

Waiter: This is the special cake you ordered. Because the snow was a little smaller, the driver was asked to go down the mountain to retrieve it. Please enjoy.

The waiter cast a "won't disturb you" look, then bowed and walked out. After a short silence, I heard a chuckle.

MC: Well. This is actually another gift I originally prepared to celebrate your winning.

MC: I always feel that at this time of celebration, we still have to eat cakes to have more atmosphere.

MC: Although the appearance is a bit exaggerate, the taste should be good.

Xu Mo chuckled and nodded.

Xu Mo: Well, I believe this cake must be delicious. and.….

Xu Mo: I am also sure that you really care about this.

He paused for a while, then took out his mobile phone leisurely and turned it on.

Xu Mo: Since you want to know so much, let's watch it together.

MC: What?

Xu Mo: Don’t you really want to know the results of the awards? I remember the news you saw in the morning saying that the announcement should be postponed to the afternoon.

Xu Mo: The time should be right now.

MC: But...

Seeing his calm movements, my eyes widened, but I looked more nervous than him.

Xu Mo: If you don't let you know now, you will keep thinking about it.

As soon as his voice fell, with a few minutes of reminder sound, countless messages flooded into Xu Mo's phone.

Looking at his cell phone that kept vibrating, my heartbeat speeded up. Xu Mo seemed to be a little surprised by it.

Xu Mo: A Ming, sent fifteen text messages and made six calls.

He frowned slightly.

Xu Mo: It seems that I told him to be good at "focusing" things, but he doesn't take it seriously.

MC: ....

MC: I also question the way you "focusing" at this time!

Xu Mo tapped the screen twice until everything was calm again, but there was no expression on his face.

MC: How?

I looked at him with anticipation and ambition.

After a moment of silence, Xu Mo suddenly leaned over to me, buried his head in the socket of my neck, and let out a light sigh.

Xu Mo: ....

My heart jumped suddenly.

MC: No, it doesn't matter...

I just feel my brain is blank, and my words become stumbling.

MC: It may be because the selection criteria have changed this year. They have to take other factors into consideration.

MC: And this is their loss! You are so powerful, they will definitely regret it in the future!

Xu Mo: Is it?

MC: Yes!

I replied categorically, as I was about to continue speaking, but suddenly caught a murmur of laughter, and then I was surprised that something was wrong.

MC: .. Why are you lying again!

I straightened up from Xu Mo's arms at once, but he grabbed my wrist with a smile, and pulled it into his embrace again.

Xu Mo: Where am I lying.

Xu Mo: It seems unfair to say that.

Xu Mo: I didn't seem to say what the result was.

Seeing the successful smile in his eyes, I bit my lip unwillingly. After thinking for a while, I had an idea, pretending to be angrily and got into the blanket beside me.

Although the news of Xu Mo's award made the corners of my mouth almost fly into the sky, I still constricted my smile and adjusted my tone of voice.

MC: I'm so nervous, but you still want to tease me!

MC: Originally, apart from Sake and cake, I also prepared a third gift for you. Now I have to consider it!

The low laughter in the ear was suddenly paused.

I secretly laughed and counted down silently in my heart, 3, 2, 1 until the last number fell, I really felt a pair of hands hugging me from behind.

Xu Mo: Sorry, because you looked so cute just now, I couldn't help but want to tease you.

Xu Mo: So, can you tell me what the gift is now?

Xu Mo waited for a while, but when he saw that I still didn't answer, he suddenly coughed.

Xu Mo: (cough)

Xu Mo: It seems to have been outside for too long and some have caught a cold

I listened to Xu Mo's deliberate coughing. I was startled first, and then laughed uncontrollably. I didn't expect him to think of such a childish way.

Hear my laugh, Xu Mo also laughed.

The arms around my waist tightened a bit, and when he spoke again, his tone became more serious.

Xu Mo: MC.

Xu Mo: Actually, I don't value this award that much.

My heart beats, this is the first time I heard him say that

Xu Mo: Because all the things I wanted to obtain were obtained the moment the research results were published, or even earlier.

Xu Mo: Any praise from the outside world, to me, is nothing but brocade icing on.

His voice paused, as if thinking of something, and then he smiled softly.

Xu Mo: However, everything you did for me today, I am very happy

Xu Mo: Whether it is a gift to me or your sincere words to me, I really feel how important I am in your heart.

Xu Mo rubbed my forehead with his chin across the blanket

Xu Mo: I feel happy, nervous, or even sad from the bottom of my heart

Xu Mo: Probably there is only you silly girl.

The soft words fell in my heart, and there was a drop of water.

Xu Mo: I think the reason why I always can't help teasing you, maybe it's just because I want to see you more and show off because of me.

Xu Mo: In a certain way, I can also be regarded as a special "collector".

Xu Mo: No matter what kind of meal it is, I want to have it.

Xu Mo: With that said, can you forgive me?

The delicate tenderness was sewn on him slightly, I still did not answer, but responded to him with action.

I lifted the blanket and kissed Xu Mo's face with his surprised eyes.

I ran my fingers across his fine hair and stopped on his face. Then I pulled him tightly and tightly toward me.

Heavy breathing sounded in the room, as if confused, I kissed his cheek closely and pressed against his auricle.

MC: I am not angry, you are a fool..

I followed his ear bones all the way down, and after hearing a short gasp, I turned to a thin rub.

I don't know how long it took. When I met Xu Mo's eyes awkwardly, I later realized that I was extremely ashamed of my bold actions, and subconsciously shrank back.

But Xu Mo did not allow me to retreat. He put his hands on my waist together a few inches, pressed them to my forehead, and looked at me deeply with his eyes.

Xu Mo: Is this the third gift?

The thin, hot breath entangled, I panted lightly and shook my head.

MC: ....It is a promise.

I calmed down my breath and slowly said the words that had been brewing in my heart for a long time.

MC: I want to wait for the results to come out, whether you win or not, I will tell youㅡ

MC: In the future, I will stay with you and spend every memorable moment with you.

MC: Remember the flower with crystals you gave me?

MC: I think the same as you, every moment we walked together is very precious to me

MC: Although I can't make such a romantic gift like you, I can only express it in ordinary sounds.

MC: But this is my truest thought.

The evening wind slowly passed by, and behind Xu Mo, the sky full of red leaves fell. I felt in a daze that we at this moment are closer than ever.

Xu Mo lowered his eyes, looked straight at me for a moment, and laughed a little.

Xu Mo: MC's ability to talk about love is really getting better.

My cheeks suddenly became red when I met the narrow gaze in his eyes.

MC: I'm just talking to my heart!

Xu Mo: Yes, I know.

Xu Mo: I don't think what you said is ordinary. On the contrary, it means a lot to me.

Xu Mo: However, although I received such a beautiful promise, I thought about it for a while-

Xu Mo: When you say this, aren't you also sorting me out?

MC: !... I

Seeing that I was speechless for a while, Xu Mo smiled, his eyes moved down, and landed on my slightly opened lips. The emotion in the deep eyes is unclear.

Xu Mo: Sometimes actions are more explicit than words.

He raised his hand and squatted down my lips with his fingers,

Xu Mo: The sincerity contained in the promise, maybe in another way... can make me feel more directly.

He whispered, and suddenly raised his eyes to look at me, dark light circling in his eyes.

Xu Mo: Are you willing to?

The heat surged to my cheeks, and my mind was chaotic. In the next second, Xu Mo clasped my wrist tightly and pressed me on the tatami.

MC: Wh-

The soft tip of the tongue pried my teeth away inch by inch, and grinds together delicately and long. It seems to wear out all the heat and lingering.

While my consciousness was cloudy, I tasted the faint fragrance of tea that still remained in his mouth, but it was like a very high alcohol wine, which made me feel drunk.

His head raised passively. Xu Mo squinted his eyes slightly, and gradually reduced his strength by pressing my hand.

His fingers rubbed the skin on the side of my wrist gently and slowly, letting my body gradually relax

The surrounding temperature rose sharply, and I instinctively caught his neck and responded to his tossing and turning.

Just when I felt a little dizzy, Xu Mo let go of me, a familiar chuckle sounded in my ears.

Seeing that I was a little weak, Xu Mo held my waist and let me sit on him.

I rested on his strong abs with one hand, and grasped his messy clothes with the other weakly.

MC: Xu Mo....

I lowered my head and saw what seemed to be suppressed in his gloomy eyes, so I subconsciously leaned down and pecked his chin.

Xu Mo: ....

The light and shadow in Xu Mo's eyes flickered, his eyes darkened.

Before I could react, his hand that was touching my hair suddenly pulled me towards him and kissed me again.

Unlike before, this kiss was overwhelmingly aggressive.

The tingling sensation of the intertwined lips and teeth ran through my body like an electric current, and the blood seemed to boil.

With warmth in Xu Mo's palm, he shook all the way down my spine.

His senses and thoughts were all occupied by him, and in a trance, I felt the kiss gradually slip and strengthen.

There was a slight tingling pain from my collarbone, and I couldn't help but exhale softly, and there was a warm and humid touch.

A layer of fine sweat oozes out on the tightly adhering skin, giving it an intimate and sticky feeling. I inserted my hand into Xu Mo's sweat-drenched hair and looked down at him.

He closed his eyes, his concentrated face was stained with the color of red leaves.

His sight seemed to be burned to the point of nowhere to rest.

Perhaps because of my tension, Xu Mo's lips bend slightly. He lifted his palm up to cover my eyes.

Xu Mo: Close your eyes .

Extremely strong, but with extreme gentleness.

I slowly closed my eyes and surrendered myself to him. The last image remaining on the retina is Xu Mo deep eyes.

And a brilliant red.

🍁 🍁 🍁 END  🍁 🍁 🍁

I’m sorry if there’s some mistranslation. Kindly tell me if you found some :) thank you for read it~ ^^

[scuttling]

Newbie

Fandom: Criminal Minds Pairing: Aaron Hotchner/Latina OFC Sophie Cortes Word Count: 3,786 Tags: SFW, Pre-relationship, Self-confidence issues, Canon-typical violence Summary: On Sophie’s first day at the BAU, she gets nervous. On Sophie’s second day at the BAU, they get a case. Collection: Sophie Cortes timeline, 0-6 Months at the BAU (See Masterlist for reading order) Link to A03 or read below! On Sophie’s first day at the BAU, she’s a little bit nervous—change your outfit three times, run your Keurig with no cup underneath, hair up? hair down? hair up? nervous—so she takes a deep, steadying breath before pushing open the glass double doors that lead to the bullpen.

She took cues about attire from other people she saw the day of her interview, so today she is wearing a simple black and white dress with pumps and gold jewelry, and she feels she fits in, but she gets more than a few curious looks when she enters.

Her instructions are to report to Agent Hotchner’s office first thing, but she is stopped on her way there by a tall, handsome, impeccably dressed man with a frankly gorgeous smile. He’s Black, with a shaved head and a great voice, and suddenly she doesn’t mind the interference.

“Hi, I’m Derek Morgan. You’re Sophia Cortes, right? Hotch mentioned you were starting today.” She smiles warmly.

“Yes, pleasure to meet you. You can call me Sophie,” she says, reaching out a hand for a shake. “Agent Hotchner told me you’re from Chicago, and so am I. Please say you aren’t a White Sox fan.” His smile becomes even brighter, if possible. She might be halfway in love with him already.

“God, no. If you want to watch good baseball, it’s the Cubs all the way.” She laughs lightly, happy to have a little rapport with a new colleague so soon.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“I’m glad there’s a little more color in the office now,” he jokes, and she understands where he’s coming from completely. It’s bad enough to be the only woman in the room, sometimes, but when she’s also the only person of color, she feels… inadequate, somehow. Like she has to work twice as hard to be seen, even though she literally stands out among her peers.

A blonde woman with a fair complexion and pretty, almost doll-like facial features steps up behind him, and he looks over, introduces her.

“Sophie Cortes, this is Jennifer Jareau, our Communications Director.”

“Everyone calls me JJ,” she says with a smile and a handshake.

“Nice to meet you. If you’re the Communications Director, you’ve got the toughest job in the unit, then.” JJ looks surprised, then nods her head.

“Absolutely, but don’t tell them that. They’d never believe you,” she says with a playful shove of Derek’s shoulder. “Don’t let being a profiler go to your head like this guy.”

“Who, me? I’m as down to earth as the next devastatingly handsome guy.”

“Yeah, right,” a voice says from her right, and Sophie turns to see a woman approaching them with pale skin and dark hair, bangs, a kind smile. “We love you and all, but you’re a little cocky.”

“Is it being cocky when I’m that good, though?” he asks with a wink, and Sophie already feels more at ease just hearing them talk with each other. She can get acclimated to anything when the environment is right. “This is my partner, Emily Prentiss. Prentiss, this is Sophie Cortes. The new newbie.” She sets down her bag, heads over to shake hands.

“Nice to meet you, Sophie. Love the dress.” Sophie thanks her for the compliment. “I appreciate you taking the newbie title from me; fair warning, you’ll probably be here for five years before they stop calling you that.”

“Ah, I’ve been called worse, I’ll take it.” She glances around their workspace, looks up to Derek. “Is my partner here? Dr. Reid, right?”

“Oh, he texted, said his train is running late,” JJ explains. “He’s really excited to meet you, though, so don’t mind if he’s a little… overwhelming, when he does get here.”

“You’ll fall in love with the kid, everyone does,” Derek explains, and it makes her heart feel warm. This is definitely a team she wants to be a part of. “But he can be intense.”

“I appreciate the heads up.” Before she can say any more, Agent Hotchner descends the stairs, heads toward them.

“Good morning. I can see the team has taken the liberty of introducing themselves.”

“Hello again, Agent Hotchner.” Sophie shakes his hand, and he smiles softly.

“Hotch, please. You can put your things in that desk and I’ll give you a tour, if you’d like.”

“Sure, sounds great.” The team shares a brief look, but she doesn’t know them well enough to comment, just stows her belongings and follows the unit chief. “The team was very welcoming. They seem really tight knit,” she comments as they leave the bullpen, and he looks at her, nods.

“When you spend as much time together as we do, traveling as we do, it’s inevitable. Was it not that way in Intelligence?”

“You couldn’t get those people to sit down to dinner together, let alone tease one another. They’d probably bite each other’s heads off.” They worked well together, but in private the environment could be pretty toxic. She knows Unit Chief Roberts wouldn’t have put up with it if the team didn’t get such good results.

“I can see how this environment might seem a little strange, then,” he says, opening the door for her. They take the elevator.

“Strange, but good. It reminds me of when I was a cop, and I’ve missed that kind of camaraderie.”

“Well I’m glad you felt welcomed. We really are happy to have you.” They approach a closed door which he raps on lightly; the woman who answers has a bright smile and an even brighter outfit, lime green and navy blue, with matching accessories, including green glasses. She makes Sophie feel very… plain.

“Oh, hi!” the woman says, and her grin gets bigger. “Wow, you’re beautiful.” Sophie laughs, a little taken aback, and Hotch sighs lightly like he’s used to the odd behavior. It’s all very endearing.

“This is Penelope Garcia, our technical analyst. Garcia, this is Sophia Cortes, our new profiler.” She reaches out a hand.

“It’s nice to meet you. You can call me Sophie, or Cortes, whichever you prefer. And you’re beautiful, too. I love your style.”

“Thank you; I can tell we’re going to be fast friends. You’ll have me on speed dial,” she says, walking to her desk and jotting something down on a pink Post-It. “If you need something researched, narrowed down, blown up, compared, etc, I’m your girl.” She hands her the note—her direct line—and smiles. “I’m sure you have much more to see, but don’t be a stranger!”

Something tells Sophie she won’t be.

He shows her all around the office—copiers, the breakroom, supply closets, restrooms—and they end up in the briefing room, the last two to walk in.

“You remember Gideon,” Hotch says, and the man nods a greeting. Still as personable as ever, she thinks. “And this is your partner, Dr. Spencer Reid.” She’s not surprised by his age—she read some articles about him once she had his name, knows they call him ‘boy genius’ quite literally—but she is a little thrown by his nervous smile, his dark eyes, his untidy flop of brown hair. Derek wasn’t kidding when he called him kid; he looks like he belongs at an after school chess club meeting, or something.

He’s adorable. Like a puppy. She immediately wants to keep him. She smiles wide.

“Sophia Cortes, but you can call me Sophie, if you like.” He stands, and they shake hands. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’ve heard all about you.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too. I hear you’re from Chicago. Did you know Chicago is home to 2,716,450 residents living in over 100 neighborhoods?” She smiles wider.

“Yeah, with 600 parks, 500 playgrounds, 29 beaches, and 26 miles of open lakefront. It’s beautiful. Have you been?”

“We worked a case there, once. I didn’t get to see any parks or beaches.” He makes a frowning kind of face and she laughs softly, takes the seat Hotch offers her.

“Well you’re young, there’s time.”

“Now that we’re all caught up on introductions, we can get started,” Hotch states, and Sophie’s first morning meeting begins.

It’s a little boring, as far as first days go, but she doesn’t mind. She has access to her computer, gets it set up the way she wants, finds out from the team where all the best places are nearby for coffee or drinks or lunch. She meets with the section chief for introductions, goes over some policies with Hotch—who, she was right, is definitely funnier and more thoughtful than he must let on. He probably feels like he has to act a certain way, because he’s the boss, but she likes pulling the human out of him, makes it a personal mission going forward to make him smile.

He’s too handsome not to smile. On Sophie’s second day at the BAU, they get a case.

“I usually like to let new profilers get acclimated to the team before going into the field,” Hotch tells her as they board the plane, “but it didn’t make sense to keep you in Quantico. Are you sure you’re up for it?”

“Of course. That’s why I’m here, I want to help.” She stows her bag overhead. “I’ll observe, give my input when I have it, follow everyone’s lead.”

“Sounds good. You know you can come to any of us if you have questions.”

“I know. Thank you.”

They do a deeper debrief on the plane—three women have been murdered, all in their mid 30’s, athletic and blonde, last seen dropping their children off at school—and Sophie is tasked with going to the most recent crime scene with Hotch and Prentiss.

“What can you tell about him so far?” Hotch asks her while the detective on the case speaks with Prentiss about some details of the scene. She glances around the room, takes it all in.

“Well, there’s blood everywhere. Serious overkill each time. He either knew the victims, or has a deep-seated hatred for a woman they remind him of; my money is on is the latter.” She looks through the kitchen, at the bloody footprints that lead to the back door. “Tracked blood all through the house, left the back door open. He’s disorganized. He may have seen them at the school and planned to follow them home, but he didn’t do any pre-surveillance on them. Something about these women triggers him and he acts within the hour.”

“Would you call it a crime of passion, then?” She looks over, curious, then realizes he’s testing her.

“No. A crime of passion indicates some level of culpability by the victim. Provocation. These women are just in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong face.” He nods, satisfied with her answer.

“So how do we think he’s finding the victims?”

“He could have a child under his care who goes to that school, or he could live near the school, work there. He could work the night shift somewhere else and pass the school on his way home. I think it’s too early to narrow that down.”

“Any idea what weapon he used?”

“We would have to really examine the cast off to be certain, but my guess would be… a hammer, or some other small, blunt tool. This wasn’t done by a baseball bat or a shovel or something larger. We can also get an estimated height and weight of the unsub if we chart the area void of blood here,” she adds, pointing to a bare spot on the wall with blood droplets above and around it. “I’m guessing we’ll send the photos to Garcia for analysis.”

“That’s right. I agree with your assessment,” he begins, but she senses hesitation.

“But?” He looks over at her, thoughtful.

“We’re missing something.”

“We are, or I am?” she asks for clarification, and he smiles just slightly.

“We are.” She takes that as a good sign, walks another loop around the room for something they would have overlooked, and she brightens when she thinks she’s discovered it.

“Her purse is still here, cash, credit cards. Her jewelry was still on her body when she was found. But does it look to you like something’s missing from the entryway table?” She points to it, and it’s very ordinary: a calendar, a bowl for change, hooks for keys, a couple of photographs—with a notable blank space in the middle. “Maybe a photo?”

“We should ask the husband if he knows what was there. Good work,” he tells her, and he heads off in the direction of the husband; she follows close behind.

Back at the precinct, the team fills each other in on what they’ve learned.

“So our unsub killed each of these women with a ball-peen hammer, striking 8-10 times. Blood spatter analysis puts him at about 5’11”, 6’0” tall, around 275 pounds. The photo taken from the third victim’s house was of the victim and her 7-year-old son Josh; similar photos were taken from the other two homes—photos of mother and son.” Prentiss tacks copies of the three missing photos to the board.

“Sounds like maybe the woman they remind him of is his mother,” Reid states.

“That’s what we’re going with. We’re still not sure how he finds his victims, though,” Prentiss mentions, and Sophie takes a breath, hesitates.

“Do you have something?” Morgan asks and she shrugs, unsure.

“Maybe? One of the theories we threw out there was that he works overnight and drives past the school on his way home from work, when the kids are being dropped off. If he killed them with a ball-peen hammer, maybe we should look for machine shops in the area with overnight shifts? Those are typically used in metalworking, not construction.” She feels like all eyes are on her, and it makes her nervous. “That could be completely irrelevant, it’s just a thought.”

“It’s a good thought; I’ll have Garcia pull us a list, we can split up and pass around the description, see if our guy is a metal worker. Good call, newbie.” Morgan leaves to take the call, and JJ leans over with a smile.

“Don’t second guess yourself. You’re doing great so far. Theories are important, even if they’re wrong.” Sophie returns the expression, nods.

“Thanks. I’ve just gotta get used to the collaborative environment; haven’t been in one of those in a while.”

“You’d never know it. You’re fitting right in.” She takes it as a compliment, is happy to be of some use to the investigation and not just getting in the way.

The rest of the day is pretty quiet; they test out a few other possible theories, deliver the profile to the late shift, plan to hit the school early in the morning to look for potential suspects and to pass around the description to see if anyone meets it who works there, or lives nearby.

She goes to the school with Reid and JJ, speaks to teachers, janitorial staff, but none of them know a man like the one they’re looking for. She meets up with the others, who were speaking to parents, after about an hour of questioning, but they also come up blank.

“We’ve still got your machine shop theory,” Reid says as they drive back to the precinct. “The others should be done with those soon, so there’s still a chance we can find this guy today.” JJ’s phone rings, and she answers on the car bluetooth.

“JJ, there’s been another attack,” Prentiss says. “1419 5th Street—you guys are closer. Can you head over?”

“We’re on the way,” JJ answers, turning right, and Reid looks thoughtful.

“An attack? She’s not dead?”

“No. Not yet, at least. She’s being rushed to the hospital; her husband was home, caught the attacker in the middle of it all.”

“Did he get a good look at the unsub?” JJ asks.

“He’s with a sketch artist now. Hotch wants you to circulate the sketch ASAP; we think we may have a hit at one of the metal shops, if you can send it to me, too.”

“You got it.” She ends the call, looks at Sophie through the rearview mirror. “Drinks are on you tonight, newbie,” she says playfully, and Sophie can’t help but laugh. She had been so intimidated by the thought of joining the BAU, and she’s glad to see she’s useful, can actually help make a difference. It’s a feeling she won’t forget for a while.

Later that night, when they plan to try to catch the unsub before he leaves for work, she deflates, a little.

Hotch, Morgan, Prentiss, and Reid are going to breach the unsub’s house while JJ covers the front door and Sophie covers the back. She had assumed she would get to be part of the team going in, with her tactical background, and immediately thinks the worst, that they’re happy to have her brain, but that her body is a hindrance. Too short, too weak… it’s how she’s been treated her whole life, and she hates to think that she’s being dismissed here so soon for the same reasons. She tries not to let it show, but she dwells on it, a little, lets it get her down even though she knows she shouldn’t.

She snaps out of it when there’s movement on the back porch, a hulking, shadowy figure in the darkness.

“I’ve got him coming out of the back,” she whispers into her comms, and she draws her gun and points it at the unsub. “Stop, FBI!” The guy turns to face her—he fits the sketch to a tee, a real mountain of a man as the blood spatter analysis suggested—takes one good look, and goes running in the other direction.

Alright, so, he’s clearly not impressed. She can work with that.

“He’s running, I’m in pursuit.” She holsters her weapon and her boots pound the grass as she books it his way. The good thing about being so much smaller than him is that she’s much faster, catches up to him fairly easily, and again, she shouts for him to stop, which, of course, he doesn’t.

Her first thought is that she’s got to get this guy on the ground no matter what—this isn’t a shoplifter or something, he’s wanted for murdering three women and attempting to murder a fourth, so a little force is okay if necessary, and judging by his build, it’s going to be necessary.

Her second thought is, if I can’t catch him, I don’t deserve to be here. And that’s the one that makes the decision for her.

She leaps onto his back, grabs fistfuls of his shirt, and shakes him forward, backward, forward again, trying to throw off his balance. When he starts to wobble, she slides down his back, hooking a leg around one of his and driving her knee into the bend of his; he goes down, face first, and she reaches behind her for her cuffs, slaps them on his wrists before he has a chance to turn or stand. “Jason Farber, you’re under arrest for three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.”

“Attempted murder?” he asks, turning his face so he can speak more easily. He seems pretty calm for a runner, maybe just resigned to his fate, and she leans over so she can see him better. He’s breathing fine, uninjured, and just looks pissed. “You mean that overbearing bitch isn’t dead?”

“Yep, sorry to be the one to tell you, Jason, but she’s alive and kicking.” She continues to read him his rights, and is just pulling him to his feet when Morgan and Hotch skid to a stop behind her; if they look surprised… who is she kidding? They look surprised as fuck.

“Damn, Cortes. This guy’s like three of you,” Morgan marvels as she walks him back toward the cars so he can be tossed into the back of a black and white. “Did you make him an offer he couldn’t refuse?” She scoffs at that, and even the unsub snorts in amusement.

“She tackled me. Wasn’t counting on that.”

“I don’t think anybody was,” she admits, getting him into a cop car and shutting the door. She joins the rest of the team, gets a high-five from JJ.

“Hey, score one for the ladies. We never get to do any tackling.”

“She did better than I would have,” Reid admits without shame, and she laughs.

“It’s all in the legs. I lift chains at the gym.” He gives her a look like he’s got no idea what she’s talking about, which almost makes her laugh again. “You do pull-ups, but with chains around your legs.” She demonstrates, squatting and gesturing to her legs like she’s wrapping something around them.

“Okay, you’re the real deal, newbie,” Morgan says when she stands up fully. “Remind me not to run from you unless I want a face full of dirt.” The group breaks apart after that, but Hotch lingers, gives her a meaningful look when she makes eye contact.

“I bet that felt good.” She leans against the side of the SUV, feels a deep conversation coming on.

“It did. I’m stronger than I look, and sometimes it’s fun to be underestimated, but other times it gets really annoying.”

“I can imagine,” he says, nodding, and he mimics her posture. “I just want to make sure you know you don’t have anything to prove. I hired you for a reason.”

“I know. But I don’t like being a one-trick pony, and I’m definitely not waiting around for one of you guys when an unsub is on the move.”

“And I wouldn't expect you to. As for the ‘one-trick pony’ thing, that’s not how I see you at all. You’re extremely well-rounded, and that’s why I wanted you.” His eyes are kind, but penetrating, and she dips her head, nods.

“And that’s why I don’t want to disappoint you.”

“After what you’ve shown me the last two days, I don’t think that’s possible, but I want you to know you can come to me when something’s bothering you. That’s why I’m here.”

“I know. I won’t forget it,” she assures, and he stands fully, cocks an eyebrow in her direction.

“I heard drinks are on you tonight,” he says with a straight face, and she laughs lightly.

“I guess we better get going before they run up the tab, then.”

They walk in companionable silence back to the SUV.

[wangxianficrecs]

Hi Mojo, I also wanted to share my thoughts on this concrit and commenting discussion, particularly the etiquette of asking permission before identifying racism part. I think there are two conversations here: the concrit and comment etiquette on fics, and POC being able to speak up without having to adhere to etiquette. Of course you can stop reading this message if you would like to as I’m mindful of your argument that you should ask permission first. But if you could read this (not even publish!) then that would be appreciated.

I am a Chinese diaspora. As a Chinese diaspora your comments affected me rather more than I expected them to. I’m being really careful about my own tone right now - because I’m worried that if I come across as angry or even remotely impolite, that my message might get dismissed by a reader thinking I’m just angry and reactive. I’m coming from a personal perspective on this, but I can’t not make it personal as this is something that affects me, and my friends and family, as people.

With your message to be kind in all interactions with authors, all that runs through my mind is the implication that as a POC person, is is MY job to be kind and understanding and polite, and it MY job to willingly teach another person of how their actions and words have impacted me. That if I am angry or offended and speak in a less than nice tone, that somehow this is a petty tit-for-tat move on my part? Of course in an ideal situation we should not react emotionally - but I can’t be expected to stay unemotional in the face of micro aggression and racism, even if it was not meant to be malicious. I’m sure your intention wasn’t this but then the idea that WE must then kindly educate the racist party (accidentally or otherwise) is a huge emotional and mental burden that we can’t be expected to partake in every time.

I know I cannot say ‘us’ in this situation, but this isn’t an issue that only affects an individual. I KNOW I am only one person. I know I may not be the ‘mouthpiece’, as you said, for everyone who is Chinese diaspora. But I can say for certain that I share the same lived experiences of at least some who will agree with me. I’m challenging the idea that an individual can’t be somewhat reflective of a population - otherwise it would be ridiculous to suggest that all people of a similar background must agree on everything and have a spokesperson.

I’m also sure you didn’t mean to or I could be wrong, but I get the sense that you are considering this issue predominately from the perspective of a non-POC (non-Chinese, in this case) author and how we should try not to upset them. It feels that we must consider that the author is coming from a place of no bad intentions or malice and must therefore speak to them in that way - but that is a very idealistic process that POCs and marginalised people can’t always rely on. Ignorance - especially wilful - can be just as harmful and hurtful as direct aggression.

Luckily my experiences in this fandom has demonstrated that authors who are non-Chinese or POC almost always start their fics with an apology and a reassurance that they are receptive to corrections of any cultural inaccuracies they may have. And I think that this is the crux of the etiquette issue that we shouldn’t offer unsolicited criticism without first asking permission. These authors have acknowledged their different background and own potential shortcomings and are open to criticism in this aspect. In these more common cases, there is of course no need to ask for permission - the author has already anticipated conversation around this.

The etiquette issue is when an author has not prefaced their work with this sort of disclaimer - and I am aware it may be unfair to expect this of all fic writers. That’s where this issue of etiquette comes up. The author hasn’t appeared to welcome comments on cultural insensitivity - so I have to think about if I now need to ask nicely for permission to speak. As a reader, specially as a Chinese diaspora, if cultural insensitivity or discrepancies appear without the disclaimer of ‘please let me know if there are any inaccuracies’ then the implication may be that the author simply didn’t care or bother about offending anyone. If they do, then I know it’s just a mistake and that they haven’t been dismissive or uncaring. Without it, the authors intentions become much more ambiguous.

Even worse is when an author blatantly says they’ve made mistakes or haven’t researched and don’t care for feedback. My culture and heritage isn’t a playground for you, and I don’t think fic writers should be exempt from being respectful for the sake of a quick fic.

Like I said earlier, this is not a hypothetical exercise for POC. We’re faced with microaggressions constantly in our real lives, so our patience for this sort of situation runs a bit thin and it is difficult not to react with emotion. I also dislike the idea that I need to ask permission to speak about something that impacts me so profoundly.

A message to prefaces a written piece of work saying that the author is not of that ethnicity or culture and that they welcome comments to fix it always helps. Then the lines of communication aren’t blurred and the onus doesn’t fall on the marginalised or POC to become a teacher.

Mojo, this is actually the second draft of a message to you. I have spent over an hour and a half of my time crafting this message - trying to get the tone right, trying not to come across angry or impolite, trying to say everything I want to say. Your replies to the blogger in the replies of one of the last anons was what really sparked this huge essay- I came away from reading them really effected, and not knowing why I was upset by it. I think you really missed the point that they were trying to say - that obviously, unsolicited criticism can be hurtful and unnecessary, but valid criticism of hurtful practices should not be shut down. Instead, you explained (and I know interpreting tone through text is difficult but I could not read it in a non-patronising way) that in short, if I am mean because they’ve been (allegedly accidentally) mean first then I shouldn’t expect them to listen to any of my concerns or understand why I was upset. Because I was mean back. For me, this felt like a dismissal of something that is profoundly more complex - that it wasn’t a conversation about etiquette anymore, but somehow became one about silencing marginalised people and coddling fragile white egos.

Mojo, I’ve followed you for ages and love all the content and hard work you put out and am infinitely and considerably grateful for your achievements. You are truly a wonderful person with such great ideas and intentions. The fandom would suffer greatly without your dedication. It’s just that on this occasion I think you may have missed the mark a little and had to say something. Others may not agree with me, I know, but I hope you have at least read this.

Lots of love, from a follower

Let me start by saying that I’m very sorry you felt you had to moderate your tone so much in order to be heard.  I really do strive to make my blog a welcoming environment for everybody, and I regret that you’ve felt excluded:  that was never my intention. I am always interested in everyone's point of view.

You've got some really great and specific points here that I think will be helpful to all authors in this fandom -- like ways to introduce your fic and/or be respectful as well as small things that come across as offensive.

The conversation this morning veered way off track from bookmarks to racism, and like I said then, I am not qualified to talk about that. I do not have your history or your experiences: all I can do is listen and empathize and learn. Which I try to do!

What I am qualified to discuss is how writers might respond to comments: I've had lots of experience with that! So my point is: if you approach an author with anger, they are very likely to close themselves off to you. I'm not attaching a value judgement to that, to say that they are right or wrong to do so... it's just a statement based on my observations over many years.

I can imagine how easily a lifetime of tiny (and large) insults and slights would build up and spill over in anger, frustration and resentment. That's very human. Please don't think that I am belittling or denying your experience or your right to feel this way, because I am not.

I respect you. I respect your experience. I respect your right to be angry and to talk about it. Period. I really, really do. I think it's important for your voice to be heard: this is how you feel valid as a person with your feelings, and it's how other people learn!

So let's go back to reading a fic where you find portions (or all) of it racist or insensitive or culturally tone deaf. What is your goal? I ask this just as a student of psychology (and also a parent). Do you want to educate them, or to shame them? Again, I'm not attaching a value judgement to either response. The way you introduce your topic will affect how the author will react. It's not about 'white fragility'... there's no way for you to know who penned that story, just as there is no way for the author to know anything about you when you comment. This is just about humans and how they interact with each other.

This is tough. This is thorny. THIS IS NOT A SIMPLE MATTER. There are always, always going to exceptions, gray areas and straw men: you (and any reader) should always use your judgement. Are you saying this to someone who is hateful and bigoted and cruel with it? Or are you saying it to a 12-year-old girl from corn fields in Nebraska? Are you unsure?

So this isn't about silencing your voice, not at all. It's about judging who you're speaking to and whether or not they'll hear you.

I absolutely do not think that unsolicited or angry fic comments (or bookmarks) are a productive forum for educating people... if that is your goal. And it may not be, which is fine. As you pointed out, the burden of educating people should not rest solely on you, it shouldn't be your responsibility.

I will say again that a place like this, right here - this very letter which I am answering and publishing - IS a great way to educate people. Use it freely, speak loudly, say your piece and share your experiences. Arrgh, I really hope that doesn't come across as condescending. I'm being utterly sincere. I am nearly 50. I've seen a lot of change happening. This is how it happens.

I do not want to silence your voice - or anyone's voice! I want to hear everyone's opinions and thoughts because that ultimately makes me a more well-rounded and considerate person and the world a better place.

I do however, passionately believe that positive change can be affected best through positive interaction. It's not a rule everyone is required to follow, not at all. But is the one that I speak of, and the one that I try to adhere to.

I could never speak for any minority, to say what you should or shouldn't do - as individuals or as a group. But I can speak from the experiences and feelings of a fic author. That's it, that's the limit of my ability. And you may do with that whatever you feel is right.

Let me wrap this up by saying that I really appreciated this letter and Nonny - you were very brave to throw this out into the forum, thank you! You had some extremely useful and important points that I am very happy to share. I am sorry my comments hurt you, and I hope that you feel a little better now.

Having said all this, I would really not like to start a huge discussion on racism in the fandom. I am the wrong person to conduct that conversation: I don't know enough about it, nor do i have the proper experiences or point of view.

With that, I must go, and I'll see you all tomorrow!

[ka-writes]

——————

Notes: I was at camp. Sorry for posting late... in return I gift a long chapter!

——————

In Case you missed it:

Chapter 1:

Chapter 2:

——————

Inspired by:

Humans are Space Velociraptors

By:FreshRoses_InMyGarden_NeedTheRain

Some kids come from storks, others come from crashed spaceships

By: mmmajora

Home Again, Home Again

By: teeth_eater

All works can be found on Ao3

——————

Warning: Characters being trapped, mentions of IVs, Cussing, yelling, characters being restrained, nightmares, mentions of murder, a guy being arrested.

——————

“Humans are [add text here]”

Chapter 3: A Wild Crow Father has Appeared

Phil wasn’t expecting to be returning to Planet A112 so soon but Wilbur had sent a distress signal and that was the Dream Team Craft’s next stop.

The planet itself stood as a port market place. There were many of these planets around the galaxy, but it was probably the more popular ones for criminal ships and such. Poachers and Scientists alike came here to get supplies to take the biggest beasts in the galaxy, Humans.

Phil never understood the appeal, but both of his sons had gained that sort of adventurous aspect that he had lost so many celestial years ago. He assumed the only reason people ever chased the creatures was to fill their pride.

That was the exact reason Techno had joined the poacher ship three years ago. He only returned when it had crashed three months ago. To this day he has yet to reveal what horrors had gone on the ship.

Wilbur had another reason to go after the infamous creatures. His crave for knowledge was eating him up as was for most scientists. He joined the Dream Team Craft only six months ago and was already heading back to the SBI Craft.

Techno was pacing around the marketplace studying different weapons and supplies. Phil had been standing off to the side, leaning on one of the building walls. Every once and a while he would check his communicator to see where Wilbur was. Thankfully he had turned on his location so Phil could easily watch as he made his way through the maze-like market.

“Is he getting close?” Techno asked running low on patience.

“He’ll be here in two minutes or so.” Phil bit his lip, “You can head back to the ship, I don’t mind waiting for him.”

“I am not leaving you. Prime knows what Wilbur brought back this time.” Techno replied. Wilbur always had a knack for bringing back things he found interesting. This wasn’t the first time he had left the SBI Craft. This would be the 37th since he turned 14. Now he was 24 and the Craft had been designed to handle whatever he brought back. There was a holding room fit for literally any species, a mechanics room full of technology he gained an interest in. A garden and a gardener which was also retrieved by Wilbur. And of course Wilbur’s pride and joy, the laboratory.

“If you want mate..” Phil said, shaking his head.

Not even two minutes later he saw Wilbur coming from the middle of the crowd. He was carrying what looked like a hurt child.

“Well this should be interesting.” Techno mumbled as he spotted Wilbur.

Once the phantom saw them he strode over and they made their way over to him.

“What do you have this time mate?” Phil asked, curiosity filling him to the brim with questions.

“Someone I can’t explain till we get to the ship.” Wilbur states with a tone he had never heard from his son.

After a second of standing awkwardly they had come to a silent agreement to head to the ship.

It took less than five minutes. Wilbur was half sprinting to the lab before Techno’s assistant had even registered that Wilbur was back. Phil gave a quick greeting to the gardener and assistant before following Wilbur to the medical part of the lab. He almost fainted when he saw what was laying on the medical bed.

“I know it looks bad, but I couldn’t help myself.” Wilbur said apologetically, “I know you’re gonna want answers but I really don’t have a lot of time before serious damage is done to him. I’ll explain after I fix him up.” He glanced up with a face full of sincerity.

Phil sighed pushing aside any fatigue and collecting his thoughts. “How can I help?” He states without an ounce of shown-fear in his voice.

Wilbur took a moment before answering. Prime the silence was loud. “Keep everyone out of the lab, and set up another room.. that would be great.” Wilbur said. The worry in his voice was apparent, but Phil said nothing of it. Instead he started on the tasks that came with being the captain of the craft.

——————

He woke up to LED lights blinding him. Tommy blinked a bit before sitting up.

He was sitting on what appeared to be a hospital bed. An IV was attached to his wrist and there were strange alien restraints attached to his legs but not to his wrists. That would be a mistake if he knew how to take the sticky black cuffs off. Which he didn’t. Plus he was too weak to attempt.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and looked around. The bed was pushed into the back corner directly across from a window. There was no glass or plastic covering the window, only a shiny force-field looking thing. The window also was the length of the wall. To the right of the window was a little slot and shelf, clearly used to deliver food. To the left of the window was a place for a door. The only thing was there was no visible door, just more of the light blue painted wall. To the left of the space was a bunch of shelves with a bunch of weird toys, games, books, and puzzles. Across from that was a card table and two comfortable chairs. At the end of the bed was a bench looking thing in which the lid lifted up.

All in all the room was clearly used to keep people occupied while keeping a close eye on them. The inhabitants of the ship had prepared it so it could withstand most things. The furniture in the room had been nailed to the floor. The chairs could move either closer or farther from the table with whoever was sitting down using a strange contraption. None of the toys on the lower shelf could be eaten and all games and puzzles were on higher shelves. The books were also all hard covered. There were even plastic bookmarks in a small container next to the shelves. The window was clearly impossible to get through and looked like it would absorb whatever you threw at it. The food shelf had three mechanisms that wouldn’t be easy to get through. There were no vents or places to hide. It was very apparent they had done this sort of thing before.

The last thing Tommy looked for was a light switch. By some sort of luck he spotted it. It was a weird sort of dial thing that was right by the IV stand. It was currently at 100 and he then dialed it down to 35. It was dim enough to sleep but bright enough to see everything clearly. Not even five minutes later he fell into a deep sleep.

——————

“YOU BROUGHT A HUMAN?!” Tubbo yelled, fluttering his wings furiously, making him hover ever so slightly.

Ranboo swiftly put his hand on Tubbo’s shoulder pushing him back onto the ground. The enderian shifted anxiously making Techno ponder if he was also gripping Tubbo to keep himself grounded. Phil stood near Will expectantly. Wilbur shifted from foot to foot and rubbed his arm, yet kept his head up to look at everyone. Techno was leaning against his security desk, side eyeing the now asleep human.

“I knew you were stupid, I just didn’t know you were this stupid.” Techno stated without a hint of remorse. Wilbur scoffed before attempting to collect himself.

“I couldn’t just leave him there! It was a mission built for researching humans. Meaning they would be doing nasty experiments for prime knows how long!” Wilbur snapped, with a seriousness Techno hadn’t seen since Wilbur brought back the other children on the ship, “He is a kid. Not an adult that had nowhere to go and was doing prime awful things. He is a kid with no family, no home, and barely making it through the day. I read through his file and he has gone through awful shit. I wasn’t gonna let him die in misery too. If you don’t want him on the ship, then I will get myself my own ship.” Wilbur threatened with a tone not to be questioned. Techno took a moment to think through Will’s response before coming up with an answer.

“He can stay. As long as you keep him in line and take care of his rations. He is not to leave his room until we make sure he can do no damage. If anyone wants to visit him, you are either outside the window or I am present. No excuses.” Techno finished satisfied with his answer. Phil may have been the legal captain of the ship, but when it came to rules Techno was always the one to make them.

Phil nodded in agreement. The two children nodded aggressively, both of which clearly had no intention of going near the human’s holding cell. After a minute Wilbur nodded.

“Fine. If those are the rules I will comply.” Wilbur said, “I need to adjust some things, I will assume Techno will be coming with me?” He asked reluctantly.

“Yes.” Techno bluntly said.

“So be it.” Wilbur snapped. Techno just brushed it off as they headed towards the lab cells.

——————

Tommy was running through the forest on the edge of town.

It was his favorite trail and the only one his parents let him go on alone. Which cost a long series of promises and supplies he had to go with.

Usually he would be running on the trail for fun but this time it was a sprint home. He didn’t know what was wrong but he knew something was wrong. Especially when he saw the blue and red lights light up the evening sky.

“I didn’t do anything you bastards!!” His dad yelled over the sirens. They had him in cuffs repeating the Miranda rights to him as they pushed him into the back seat.

“What’s going on?” All Tommy could manage his throat was tight and he was struggling to hold back angry tears. He caught one of the officers' attention. She smiled softly.

“He got caught doing something bad to his wife.” She said sadly.

“What did he do?!” Tommy cried even louder this time tears slipped down his face. At this point the officer got more serious.

“I am not obligated to say.” She bit her lip before continuing, “Why don’t you go back to your parents?” She replied softly. This was the first time Tommy got angry, not annoyed or that childish angry. The kind of anger that makes you wanna burn the world down. It was a quick flash but enough to make him snap.

“You took my dad…. What did he do to my mom?” Tommy answered coldly. His answer clearly shook the officer.

“Aw kid, I- .. I am sorry.. he killed her.” Tommy already knew the answer. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. He heard someone scream from far away. Maybe it was him, maybe someone else. They pushed him through a series of questions all of which he could barely answer. His mind was somewhere else. He couldn’t calm down. Everything was too much.

He woke up in a cold sweat. Tears were running down his face. His breath was rapid and uneven. He hadn’t had a dream like that for a couple of months, granted he barely slept. After a few shaky breaths he calmed himself enough to grasp where he was. He wiped the tears just in time for the spot where the door was to open.

In stepped Wilbur along with a really tall alien. The tall alien stood in front of the door as Wilbur rushed to Tommy’s bed. Tommy lost control of his breathing, barely calming down.

Wilbur grabbed his hands to which Tommy snapped his head towards the alien. “I want you to breathe with me okay?” Wilbur said softly. He moved Tommy’s hand to his chest and started taking deep breaths. After a minute Tommy managed to even his breath to Wilbur’s pattern. “Good, good. I am gonna take off your IV since you don’t need it anymore. After that I can get you some food and water, then we can talk alright?” Wilbur said, keeping his tone soft and slow. Tommy rubbed his eyes and nodded.

Wilbur took his arm, there was a small pinch then the IV was off. Wilbur quickly left and came back after about two minutes. Within those two minutes Tommy got a better look at the other alien.

The alien had light pink ruff skin with neat pink hair tightly braided. They were wearing a puffy cream shirt that was tucked into dark brown pants, which were tucked into black boots that went up to their knees. Their knees bent backwards and the boots were shaped weirdly, like they were built for hooves. They had hooves where their hands would be, that somehow had thumbs. They also had tusks poking out of their mouth. Along with blood red eyes that had white pupils. Their ears poked out of their hair and were both torn and pierced with gold earrings. They also had a gold chain necklace with a stone that resembled an Emerald. They also wore a black belt with a gold clip. Attached to the belt was an alien sword leaning against their right hip, on the other side was what resembled a gun.

Tommy swallowed down food that was threatening to come up. He waited patiently for Wilbur to come back, trying his hardest not to stare at the other alien.

“My name is Techno. He/him. Same with Wilbur and most of the crew. The only one who has other pronouns is Ranboo who goes by he/they.” Techno, stated bluntly. Tommy collected himself before responding.

“I am Tommy Innit, er- he/him.” Tommy finished with a shaky voice.

Luckily the awkward tension didn’t last long as Wilbur practically sprinted through the door, shoving Techno out of the way. He pulled a tray that was neatly folded out of the wall and put a glass of water and some food on a plate.

“Some parskey with hatatoes. It tastes good I promise.” Wilbur explained. He then went to grab something he left outside and sat at the card table. He put two plates down and Techno joined him. The door closed after that. There was no button or anything, it just closed. Tommy was a little baffled by it but looked towards the food put in front of him.

It was a white meat, similar to chicken, with a brown version of mashed potatoes. He looked over to the other two who were talking in a different language while eating the same food. With that Tommy decided it was okay to eat. Just like what it reminded him of, it tasted like chicken and mash potatoes with small differences. Like the meat was dryer and more salty and the potatoes were a little sour. Either way it was still good. He then drank the water. There was no odd taste this time so he assumed it wasn’t drugged.

Once he finished he attempted to listen in but was only met with a series of strange sounds. He gave up and pushed the tray away. Almost too quickly he fell into a deep sleep. He didn’t even notice when the visitors took their stuff and left.

——————

Ranboo poked at his food glancing up every once and awhile. The two crew members had returned from the human’s room and decided to finish their food with the rest of the crew. Everyone sat in a tense silence.

“So,” Phil clapped his feathered hands and turned towards Wilbur. “What do we know about the kid?” He asked.

“His name is Tommy Innit, pronouns he/him. He is 14 and was living on the run for six months. No family according to him and he’s allergic to nuts.” Wilbur answered.

“From what I can tell he isn’t super dangerous, just fearful. He already trusts Wilbur, somehow. Though I think it is due to Wilbur saving his life. It will be harder for the rest of us to gain his trust.” Techno added. Ranboo swiftly wrote the responses down, making sure to keep major notes.

The rest of dinner was uneventful and everyone awkwardly washed dishes and went to bed. Assumingly to sleep. Everyone except Ranboo that is. He couldn’t wash dishes due to his biology and he didn’t really sleep. Every time he tried the void would wake him up or he would go into a half-conscious state that the crew deemed as enderwalking.

So for what felt like the hundredth time they stayed awake laying in bed. This time however their mind was racing with thoughts. Traveling through situations that used to seem impossible before the human boarded the ship. Still curiosity was eating their insides.

With a half made up mind Ranboo shot up in bed. They stalked over to where the human was being held and peered into the window.

Almost instantly the human sat up. After yawning and getting into a position he was comfortable in he just stared at Ranboo making them incredibly uncomfortable.

“Who are you?” The human asked, Ranboo couldn’t remember his name.

“Oh! Uh, I am Ranboo.. I am kinda like an assistant, I-I guess.” Ranboo said, fidgeting with his fingers.

“Ah cool. I am the biggest man! Tommy Innit. You should be grateful to be in my presence.” The human practically flowed with confidence making Ranboo question if all humans were like this. He shook off the questions and turned back to the human who was now playing with the light monitor.

“So… what was your planet like?” Tommy asked, startling Ranboo a bit. “I-I mean you don’t have to answer of course.. just wondering..” the human stuttered. They took a moment to go through their thoughts, narrowing down what they could.

“I guess it was peaceful.. in a way.. no one really fell out of line. It was unified, creating a peaceful haven. It wasn’t like people couldn’t fall out of line it’s just they didn’t want to. M-most of them were content with the way they were… but if there was something wrong they would absolutely take any measure to destroy it.” Ranboo finished bitterly, trying to shake off his old hurt of how they treated him. “W-what about your planet?” Ranboo asked.

“Ah.. Earth is interesting to say the least… We don’t all follow the same rules. And there is a lot of falling out of line… But I guess that’s what gave it a certain charm and a certain aspect that made it brutal.” Tommy finished his serious tone melting in an instant, “But that’s there not here! I wanna know what everything is like.” He said looking at Ranboo with curiosity.

That’s how Ranboo created a bond with the strange blond creature. They bounced from topic to topic mainly ending with one of them going into a deep explanation of one thing or another. They talked until both of them ended up passing out sitting next to the window.

——————

Chapter 3- End

Words- 3,212

——————

Techno- “Don’t go near the human without my presence.”

Ranboo- ._.

Ranboo- Ima do it... >:p

——————

(That was a bad one but oh well..)

——————

End Notes: I got carried away a bit... I have a few more filler chapters before we start actually getting into the plot.. also after this should I start a super hero AU?

Ignore minor mistakes... I did reread through it this time so there shouldn’t be too many...

As always likes are nice but reblogs are better! Please share this with people of you enjoyed, I hope you did!

Go get some water, sleep, eat food, and stay safe!! Love y’all <3

——————

Chapter 4:

[paragonrobits]

A friend asked me to give a stab at a Tierlist Maker for Video Games Not Yet In the Video Game Hall of Fame Tier List Maker, so here's my list for it!

This is based primarily on what I considered to be overall value to gaming history as a whole, with games with greater influence or impact ranking higher than those that had less impact on those to follow, or on culture. All the entries are those that have been nominated to the Hall of Fame, but not actually inducted as of this post's writing. Games that I personally like are generally rated higher, though mostly because I'm more familiar with them and thus can judge their impact from a personal POV.

(Tier List explainations, below!)

SHOULD BE IN ALREADY

Final Fantasy: I mean seriously. How is this one not already in yet?? It is not, as my research suggests, the first true RPG; that likely goes to games like Ultima. It is certainly an incredibly influential one; FF is a name closely associated with JRPGs in general, and its diverse class system is one of the strongest things to do with it, as noted by challenges like beating the game with a party of Black Belts. FF is THE name of RPGs in general and I'm startled it hasn't made it in, though I suppose that's owing to more notable entries (Hard as that is to imagine). It doesn't hurt that the majority of my favorite FF titles are those most similar to this one, such as FF6 and FF9, in terms of approaching the general world setting and class systems. Most significantly is that this game popularized RPGs and made them accessible, in ways that previous games such as Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest did not; the field of gaming would be VERY different without it; RPGs became VERY popular, to the extent of RPG elements being almost universal among other games in the modern day. (I am also pleased and amused to see 8-Bit Theater mentioned on the actual Wikipedia page. Now THAT'S notability!)

Sid Meir's Civilization: HEY NOW HALL OF FAME JUDGES, DON'T YOU BE MOCKING CIV, ALRIGHT. CIV IS FUCKING AWESOME. Okay, jokes aside, I'm genuinely astonished as the Civ series is considered the first true main game of the 4x series, and it shows; the entire genre centers around expansion, resource usage and diplomacying or conquering your enemies, and considering the impact of this game and its sheer popularity, to the extent of the meme of the game getting people to play for Just One More Turn, I'm a bit disappointed that it's not already in the hall of fame. I also note that I am personally more familiar with the spin off Alpha Centauri, a sci fi variant, which is still one of my all time favorite games.

Half-Life: Given this game's popularity, to the point of its release alone consigning the likes of Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines to cult classic status and its engine spawning a whole THING with GMod and the usage of physics mechanics in FPS games, one thing of note is its use of scripted sequences; at the time, an unknown in most games of the time. There may be something to be said for how the entire game is spent as Gordon Freeman, behind his eyes, possibly engendering a lack of separation between self and character that would be later emphasized in games like Bioshock. It's influence on games cannot be denied, with publications using it as a bookend between eras of gaming. One consistent element of what seems to make this game so distinctive is its approach to storytelling, without simply imitating film techniques which don't always work well with gameplay.

Candy Crush: This is an example of something I don't personally play myself, or even like very much, but I'd be remiss to dismiss it out of hand. There's no denial that phone games are one of, if not THE biggest market of games in the here in now; if now in scale, certainly in quantity. You might call it the TF2 Hat Economy theory; people aren't spending BIG bucks, but they are spending a LOT of little bucks all the time. It proves that highly accessible games that are generally free to play, with optional purchases, are a legitimate means of game business, and this certainly revolutionized how games were seen by the money-makers.

Super Smash Bros Melee: I loved this game as a kid, but truth be told i have a bit of a love-hate relationship; i REALLY dislike the competitive community that has fixated hard on this game, so any thoughts on it will have a slight element of pause beforehand. Even so, I can't forget the thrilled delight I felt watching the trailer for this game in supermarkets for the first time as a kid. at a time when getting any new games at all was a HUGE deal in my family. So, there is a lot of feeling behind this one! Ultimately, I have to concede that while i have complicated feelings about this game, its worth noting that the vast majority of things that made Smash iconic, and influenced the competitive scene AND the games inspired by Smash AND shaped the course of the series going forwards, largely owe themselves to Melee in particular. 64 was far more slow paced, while Melee began the trend towards much more fast paced action (and while I doubt it's SPECIFIC to melee as a whole, it may have been a trend for the genre from then). Melee is STILL widely played, especially on the competitive scene, and this sort of longevity always bears evidence of notability.

Goldeneye 007: I have to admit that despite being a kid in the 90s, despite someone who put most of their time into gaming, and despite being someone whose favorite system at the time was the Nintendo 64, I mostly missed out on the trend of history by honestly not being that much into this game. I have to say that I DID play it, however; I just never managed to get past the first level or so. I have strong memories of triyng and failing to sneak around a snowy lair of some description; it wouldn't be until the mid-2000s, playing Deus Ex Human Revolution, that I got the hang of stealth. All the same, personal indifference really doesn't matter much because HOLY SHIT THIS GAME HAS SOME STAYING POWER. IT HAS INFLUENCE, FRIENDORITOS. Perhaps chiefly, at the time it was made, consoles were not considered viable platforms for first person shooters; Goldeneye revised that notion, and created a whole revolution in multiplayer and shooter games. We would later see the ultimate consequence of this in games like Halo, which further revolutionized the whole genre. Ironically, the stealth attributes I was so bad at were part of what made the game so unique! It's one of those games that may not have aged well, by modern standards, but its import to gaming as a whole goes a long, long way.

Guitar Hero: I expect this one might be a bit hard to justify, but on its own, this game is INCREDIBLY innovative, though its not entirely the first of its kind, having mechanics based on earlier games. The very first entry has a respectable library of 30 songs, which is impressive considered at the time it was made, its not likely people expected it to get as far as it did; bear in mind that the massive libraries of later games were the result of years of this game series being a massive steamroller of a franchise! At the time, this one was an unknown. It has an interesting history as being a successor of sorts to an arcade exclusive, and inspiring a genre of imitators and spiritual successors on its own; of great note is the sheer impact this game had. With so many of those successors, the increased value of liscened soundtracks, and the way the game's concept became so influential, its astounding this one isn't already on the hall of fame. (It's also very fun, but fun alone doesn't make for memorability, sad to say.)

DESERVES IT AT SOME POINT

Myst - an iconic and incredibly atmospheric puzzle game, I'm genuinely surprised that I haven't heard talk about this one in some respect; it bears note as a rare game with absolutely no conflict whatsoever. I actually rank this one on par with the 7th Guest in terms of atmospheric games, though their tones could not be more different. So why do I think this game deserves it at some point? It was an incredibly immersive and beautiful game, lacking in genuine danger or threat, encouraging the player to explore and tackle the puzzles of the game. This sort of open-ended lack of peril makes it an interesting precursor towards certain flavors of sandbox games around now. It's worth noting that it was a tremendous achievement, given technical limitations of things such as the CD-Rom it was stored on, maintaining a consistent experience, as well as tying narrative reasons into those very constraints. It has been compared to an art film; if so, it certainly is the sort that invited imitators and proved to be a great technical achievement.

Portal: PORTAL! What can I honestly say that hasn't already been said by other people? The amazing integration of a physics engine into innovative puzzle solving, combined with a slow burn sort of minimalist plot reveal concerning the AI proving itself to be a kind of reverse HAL 9000? This game got a HUGE number of memes back in the day, and I expect anyone reading this can probably reference a few. The cake thing, certainly, and its relevance to matters of deception. There is much discussion over the game's utility in academic circles, which is certainly quite notable, and for my part, I'm interested by the point that at first the game gives you a lot of hints towards what you're supposed to do, gradually making it less obvious for the player you're on your own entirely, using your experience with the game to get past the puzzles from there, and its excellent game design. Ultimately though, I place this below Half Life in hall of fame urgency, because while I probably like this one more, it doesn't have the same impact on other games, per say. (That's a lot of awards for it, though. Wowza.)

Resident Evil: Is it fair to call this one the major survival horror game of its era? No, because it's apparently the FIRST, or at least the first to be called such. It's certainly up there with shaping the genre as a whole, both its immediate predecessors and modern games. The flavor of a survival horror can even be judged about whether its close to Resident Evil's style of defending yourself with limited resources vs controlled helplessness. It's also worth pointing out that I quite like the restricted, cramped setting of the mansion, rather than an expansive city; Biohazard was a real return to form, even if its something I mostly watched through funny lets plays because OH NO ITS TOO SCARY I CANT WATCH.

Asteroids: It's called the first major hit of the golden age of the arcade. I'm forced to say... yeah, it absolutely deserves it. The actual implementation and hardware of the game makes for interesting reading, and so its innovative nature ought to be noted: it lacked a soundchip at all, making use of handmade circuits wired to the board. It's reception was great, beating out Space Invaders and needing larger boxes just to hold all the money people spent on it. It also invented the notion of tracking initials on the top ten score, which has implications for arcade challenges.

Ms. Pac Man: This one consistently ranks HIGH in gaming records of its time, though there is admittedly some confusion to whether it or Donkey Kong was a better seller. Interestingly it appears to shape most of the gameplay mechanics people remember most for Pac-Man, such as the improved AI of the ghosts. It's more highly regarded than the original game, and on a personal note, I remember being a kid and seeing this arcade machine at ALL the laundry places my family usually wound up going to.

Frogger: It's placing on this list is not solely because CUTE FROG. The accessibility and wide appeal of the game bears a great deal of consideration, the flexibility of its formula, and just how many dang times it's been ported in one form or another. (And also, cute frog.) It also gets points for the creator being inspired for the game when he saw a frog trying to cross a road, hampered by the vehicles in the way, and he got out of his car and carried the frog across the street. The game is also evident of broad appeal, and some money-makers resisting it, goes back a long way; it was apparently dismissed as a kid's game by some, which just goes to show that some problems are older than quite a lot of gamers alive today.

Uncharted 2: this is one of those games where I cannot honestly say I have personal experience to draw from. Of the playstation's big games, I remember the Jak and Daxter series; I remember Kingdom Hearts, and I remember Ratchet and Clank, and I remember Infamous, but the Uncharted series remains

something of a 'I don't go here?' obscurity in my personal playbook. It does look memorable and charming from what I've seen, and one consistent element I've seen in comments about it is the cinematic nature of the game; it feels very much like a fun heist movie, based on what I have seen of it, and the notable thing is how the game FEELS cinematic.. in a literal way. As in, it combined elements of cinematography with game design, and that's no mean feat: what works for movies are unlikely to translate well to the interactive side, and it shows how that can be done for other games. The extensive praise does the game a LOT of credit!

WORTH NOMINATION AT LEAST

Angry Birds: As noted before, I'm not the biggest fan of most phone games, given that i prefer a more passive experience than most provide. As such, Angry Birds isn't something I've played as of this writing, but I have to appreciate the straightforward and simple gameplay; it reminds me a bit of the Burrito Bison game series, which I HAVE played, and I'm going to go out on a limb and assume it's because Angry Birds is probably the innovation that coined that particular style of gameplay. It's an example of what made phone games profitable and worth the time of developers to work at them; its easy for casual players to get into, and there's a fun sort of impact involved. Given the popularity of phone games, this one has a LOT of influence in getting that rolling, similar to candy crush, if not as much.

FIFA International Soccer: Simulation games are a tricky business; it can be really difficult to get them right, and this game provides an example of it being done in a way that a lot of people REALLY loved, set up an entire game series, and revived the 3DO system after a very bad year. Of note, apparently it was commented that it was more of a simulator than a console game, and this is rather funny considering how simulator is its own genre nowadays! Such do things change. It seems to have been a revolutionary game and simulation; setting the shape for modern sport games of its type, and tending more towards realism (accounting for acceptable breaks in reality) than was typical of the time. This one's position is thus picked for its impact as a whole; while it may not necessarily be a household name now, the series continues on, and is popular enough that even after 20 years, it's still been going.

Elite: I nominate this game in this position for being a startlingly early entry into what we would now consider open-ended games, even with an element of exploration and trading; if one stretches definitions a bit, a precursor towards gameplay of the like scene in 4X players who strive to avoid conflict, if possible. Its technical breakthroughs are some very interesting reading and make for good game history; a vast and complex game (not just by the standards of the era, either), and opening the door for persistent world games such as World of Warcraft.

Wii Sports: A significant game, and much as how other titles mentioned above were famed for gateway entries into gaming for an unfamiliar audience, or those that would want o play on a more casual basis. It seems notable to me for being most suited as a family game, or a more casual experience of multiplayer than usually associated with games like this; this has greatly influenced Nintendo's design philosophy, and one can see elements of this all the way through the Wii U onwards. It's essentially a fliparound from Mario Party; less competitiveness, but definitely meant as a group thing. Controversy is evident, because like with Mario Party, injuries did result from it.

Call of Duty: I place this one here because, while it DOES hold a very significant role in gaming history, with countless imitators, spiritual successors, being a game-changer in ways that its modern reputation might surprise you with, ultimately it is less so than other games such as Goldeneye, Halo or Half-Life. It's development in AI pathfinding and tactics is incredibly noteworthy from a mechanical perpsective, and the sheer level of awards it won is notable. In the end this game's popularity and continuing influence means that it shouldn't be overlooked.

Metroid: You can't spell 'Metroidvania' without this game! A relatively open ended exploration-based game with further options opening as new tools were found give it an interesting vibe, and the oppressive atmosphere distinctive to the game says great things about its sound and level designs. It wasn't the first open world game, or explorer, or even the first to open new aereas based on equipment, but it had ALL of these elements in a very memorable package. (Samus Aran as a female protagonist is something I'm a bit reluctant to give it credit for, as her identity was obfuscated for most of the game, and only revealed in a fanservicey way in a secret ending. All the same, credit where it is due, I suppose!) It's music seems to endure as a mood setter, too!

Pole Position: Perhaps not the FIRST racing game, but still considered one of the most important from the golden age of gaming, and the one to codify many of the firm rules of the game series. It's three dimensional gameplay is incredibly innovative for its time, and having played it and games like it in the past, I'm struck by how smooth the whole thing feels. No wonder it was popular! It is notable for having been designed specifically as a 3d Experience, meant to execute techniques like real drivers might attempt, which makes it a different sort of beast in that it tried to do more realistic actions; in some ways, a precursor to modern trends of realism in many games, for ill or best. Ultimately I think this one is worth a nomination because of its influence towards racing games (a popular and long lived genre, to say the least) as a whole.

OUTSIDE CHANCE

Nurburgring 1: On the one hand, I feel a bit guilty putting this one so low; it is recognized as likely being the earliest racing game in history, and given that I just finished noting Pole Position's influence, it feels a bit mean to rate this one as relatively insignificant all the same. However, in terms of notability, I never even heard of this one, and it was tricky finding information about it. Accordingly, that may say something about its influence, though this position DOES make it noteworthy as the first of its kind, albeit with Pole Position refining and introducing elements that shaped the genre.

Dance Dance Revolution: It feels a bit strange, putting this one fairly low. This thing was a MONSTER back in the day; entire arcades were built around the dancing control peripherals it required, rhythm based games or mechanics specifically invoked it by name, and it was an absolute cultural touchstone for years and years. So, why place it low? Partly, its because I can't just shove EVERYTHING into the 'deserves a nomination' folder; I do think it's fairly reasonable for this one to at some point get a nomination in the future, though ultimately there's games more noteworthy on the whole. It's specific rhythm qualities continue outside of its genre, and are quite influential to gaming as a whole, though unfortunately the series seems to have lost something in notability over time; popularity is a factor, but so is the impact on other games.

NBA 2K and NBA Jam: I put these two together because they touch on similar touchstones for me, and they really did popularize basketball games back in the day. Jam in particular seems to be invoking the Big Head mode that were a big thing in games at the time, at least going from the screenshot. They were very popular and highly beloved games back in the day, though I don't know if they have much influence on later games. I note that interestingly, they take opposite approaches; 2k focuses on AI and realistic experiences, while Jam was deliberately less realistic and more actiony in its over the top gameplay.

Nokia Snake: This one really impresses me for the sheer number of releases, in various forms, it's had! Interestingly, there seems to be little consensus on the name of this game; most just call it Snake or something on that theme. I went with Nokia Snake because... mostly, it sounds funny, and that's how its done on the list. This one is fairly low, but I Have to give it credit for having hundreds of releases!

Farmville: My mom liked Facebook games, a lot. And I am certain this one was one of her main ones! I rate it fairly low, and no doubt her spirit is yelling imprecations at me across the void of time, space, and abandoned socks; all the same, this one is ranked low because of the sheer number of displeasure aimed this one's way. (And to be fair, she complained about it. A LOT.) It is thus notable for unusually negative reasons; an example of exploitation, pressuring players to pester their friends to play it in an equivalent to electronic chain mail, and microtranscations.

Tron: I'm inclined to give any game that takes place in a computer land and uses programming or mechanical terminology a free pass! Interestingly, this has some association with the Snake game, as they have similar gameplay and Snake games are sometimes called Light Cylce games, after this one. It has an interesting history; the graphical system was chosen largely because it was believed it was more likely to be achieved before the deadline.

NO BUSINESS IN THE HALL OF FAME

Mattel Football: I do feel a little mean putting anything in this category; firstly because I don't want to make actual fans of something sad, and secondly because I believe you can probably find notability anywhere you look, if you are inclined. And here is the chief difficulty with this one: I could not find any real information in this one. It has no Wikipedia page, a google search only led to undescriptive links of SALES for the game, but not any information on the game itself. Notability is my main resource for sorting these entries, and honestly? If google has nothing on you, that's a pretty poor sign. Sorry, Mattel Football, but you look like a poor man's Game And Watch. You're no Portal, Myst or Pole Position.

[skruffie]

Regarding underpayment of creative work

(This is okay to reblog. It’s also long so I tried to break it up into a few specific points, and I will link a video in the comments as well. Under the cut.)

I am a digital illustrator who has done personal commissions, a tiny bit of freelance work, and has also purchased commissions from other artists. I’m hoping with this post that this can be a tip guide for other artists, especially maybe those who have little or no experience with professional work, to help in the future when projects open up that they are interested in being involved in.

There’s some talk in the Thomas Sanders fandom right now regarding the severe underpayment of the animators that worked on the latest Storytime Madlibs video and from what I see a lot of the animators were really excited to be involved because it was an opportunity to work with someone that they really admire and also as a means of exposure for the work that they do. These are great things to want. It’s been explained now that the animators were paid roughly $1.20 per second of animation when the industry standard can range from, what--starting at $30+ per second? (I’m not an animator so I’m probably a bit off on that number). That’s gruesome.

For the content creators:

I’ve seen explanations that it’s because they hired on a lot of animators. If you are a content creator for a production company and want to bring on new talent, you have to have it in your budget to pay them the industry standard, their personal rates, their hourly rate, however it is organized. If it’s not in your budget, then you cannot afford to do it. It’s as simple as that. It is a skill you are hiring someone for that you don’t have, and it is work. It goes beyond a simple fan project, and there are many other ways to get fans more involved in the community: contests, raffles, themed art challenge events, holidays, and openly asking for volunteers. 

If you are the artist, keep reading.

You have to get upfront about money. Even when art is your passion in life, as soon as money gets involved then it becomes a business transaction and the language of finance is a bit weird. One of the freelance works that I did last year was a cover for a resource guide that was going to print and in the call for artists they specified it was going to be a paid gig. Somewhere soon after that, probably when they chose me for one of the covers, they told me upfront what the payment was going to be. For this example, it was a flat $350 payment for a full color illustration, with payment given within 30 days of the invoice. 

1. Make an invoice and set the payment parameters: some request payment up front, or you can set a window of time the client has to pay you, usually 30 or 45 days? Whatever you’re comfortable with.

2. If they want to know what your rates are: there is a really helpful video I saw (I’ll link in the comments) that advises that you set your price based off of the client. It is not on the time it takes you, but what the client can pay. The example given in the video is that anyone can come up with the Nike logo but how the logo is used is what changes the price dramatically. There would be a flat rate for the logo itself, and the rest to take into account would be the strategy for using the logo, what kinds of materials it’ll be printed on, etc etc. In a different example for one of the commissions I’ve done, I did an illustration for a friend that was later used as a book cover for her e-novel. She emailed me back saying “I think this means I pay you a licensing fee” and after a bit of research we came up with a fair price and a contract for what that would entail. I don’t honestly remember what the original price of the commission was, but the licensing fee brought it up another $125. Factors to consider how to figure out pricing: the quality of the work they expect, the turnaround, your other pending commissions or projects, schedule conflicts, your own bills and financial obligations, it goes on.

3. Taking on projects: If the client you’re working with is making you uncomfortable or trying to push for something way lower than what you’re expecting, consider if you can drop from the project altogether. I’m hesitant to say “don’t do it ever” because financial circumstances are going to vary from person to person, and comfort level with what you will or won’t work on will also vary. If you are in a place where you would be able to get by without the payment for that project and the client is being awful, do not work with them. Refund any payment they may have already made. If it’s really that important to them, they can find someone else to work with. Clients may want a time frame for when their request will be finished and try to be upfront about when you might be able to complete it. Get everything in writing. I cannot stress this enough. Log everything, keep conversations and invoices, emails, literally have a paper trail so nobody can come back and screw you over. 

4. Contracts: read them. They’re often dense and confusing, but they will outline a lot of important information about the project and how the client will intend to use your work. Sometimes they’ll have points like “you retain the rights to your work but we retain the right to modify, copy, use etc” which sounds scary but is actually the license to be able to even display it on websites or in videos. If you have questions about anything outlined in the contract, ask them or see if you can google for what it means. See if they’re open to negotiating certain points before you sign. 

5. The project may or may not be your entryway into professionalism: This is a hard one that even at my age I’m bummed about. What the project can give you is a lot of valuable experience and an entry way into the business side of art careers but it might not be the project that gets your name out into the world. Art is an incredibly competitive field and right now all of us also are constantly fighting battles against algorithms and ever-restrictive terms of service on websites just to be seen. Keep drawing. Keep writing. Keep animating. Art is a lifelong project. You gotta keep going and exploring and expanding your skills. Remember what you love about art the most. Bad clients come and go but your love for the art can help sustain you. It’s okay if you need to take a break from the hustle and recharge. 

I’m probably missing a few things but that’s kind of a good start. 

The heart of why I’m writing this post is that a lot of people have been hurt emotionally and financially by what’s happened with the Storytime Madlibs video. I’m not involved with the project or with the TS team or anything--I’m just a certified grown adult with a bit of experience in the business side of art, and I hope that what I’ve learned so far are bits of knowledge that other people can use too. It hurts to see that other people have been hurt by all of this, because knowledge on art business really isn’t talked about much at all and it is damn difficult to learn on your own. 

[riversofmars]

Answers at last! Well, I saw answers... :D

Chapter 7: So We Meet Again

The Library, 52nd Century

“Sorry, am I interrupting something?“ A male figure appeared in their midst. Dark hair and beard, stout frame, he took a twirl, looking around, delighted at the surprise and shock on everyone’s faces.

“It’s can’t be…“ River mumbled, trying to catch up with what was happening. How did he get in here? He was not part of the memory.

“It’s been a while, Professor Song.“ He turned to face her with a wide grin, baring his teeth.

“He’s not the Doctor, is he?“ Anita spoke slowly. She had learned enough about Time Lords during their extensive research to understand about regeneration and River had shown her pictures of all her husband’s faces. That man was not one of them and even on first impressions, he seemed in no way similar to the man she herself had met. He certainly didn’t look at River like someone would look at their wife, he looked at her like she was prey.

“The Doctor? Oh, don’t be ridiculous.“ He nearly burst out laughing as if it was the funniest thing he had heard all day. “Been there, done that, just wasn’t my cup of tea.“ His voice turned to a snarl, it seemed to change ever so slightly; he shushed himself.

“No, this is another Time Lord.“ River said, balling her hands to fists, trying to maintain her composure.

“Of course you get it, you’re clever like that.“ He mused, tilting his head. “I’m difficult to forget, didn’t we have he best of times.“ He interrupted himself, his voiced higher and more excitable. He smirked with a mad sort of glee in his eyes. “No, no, shut up, it’s my turn now!“ His voice turned normal as he snapped angrily. Anita and CAL exchanged confused and worried glances, fearing they might be dealing with a mad man. River, however, already knew for a fact that they were:

“You’re the Eleven.“ She circled around the room slowly, coming to stand protectively in front of CAL and Anita. She didn’t know whether he was really here or just a projection, but she couldn’t take the risk. She had to keep them safe. They had no idea who they were dealing with.

“The Thirteen, actually, but who’s counting.“ He retorted graciously and took a little bow.

“Must be getting pretty crowded in that head of yours.“ River hummed and in response, another personality emerged:

“Long time no see, Ms. Song.“ His face contorted into a grin.

“Hello again, Nine.“ River remained calm. She knew it was the best way to deal with them.

“I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure.“ His voice turned higher, almost feminine.

“Twelve?“ River could only guess, as it was the regeneration of his she hadn’t met before.

“Shut up, the lot of you.“ The Thirteen regained control of his personalities. “Sorry, this is not how I was going to introduce myself, best foot forward and all that, but they’re just so excited to see you again. The Six, in particular, is very eager but we’ll save that for later.“ He smiled apologetically.  

“What are you doing here? How did you get in?“ River decided to ignore the games and cut right to the chase. She glanced to CAL, hoping she was paying attention. If they found out how he got in, they surely would be able to get rid of him as well. She would have to regain control of the computer.

“Seven hacked the system, child’s play really; and now I can see why.“ He smirked at CAL who took a fearful step back and Anita put a protective arm around her. “I’m not really here, of course, just a projection, but I liked the personal touch. Better than talking to a screen, you know?“ River felt a little better for knowing he wasn’t actually part of the artificial world of the Library core but hacking the system was just as bad. Who knew what else he was planning on doing?

“So you’re responsible for this?“ Anita concluded gesturing around to the woman and child that had stopped moving. She hadn’t really followed who exactly he was but it was was blatantly obvious that this scary vision was his doing.

“It’s from the Matrix.“ River stated and the Thirteen grinned:

“Indeed. I didn’t really have the means to play it. I needed a bigger computer, something able to convert it. And I needed someone who’d be able to interpret it.“

“So you used the Library, a computer big enough to handle Matrix data.“ River was beginning to understand. They weren’t her memories that had bled into the artificial reality. It was data the Thirteen had fed into the system. In turn it had helped her unlock her own memories of what she’d seen in the Matrix. “What is that memory? What’s the story behind it.“ She asked, drawing his attention back as he seemed momentarily distracted. Not by his other personalities, for once, but seemingly by something outside.

“A missing puzzle piece.“ He answered briefly and gave a dismissive wave with his hand. “Now we best get going.“

“What?“ Anita asked confused while River remained silent, her mind racing. What was he planning? She knew better than to underestimate the renegade Time Lord.

“The shadows will be back in a moment.“ He explained in an off-hand sort of way. “Get your coat, Professor Song. Oh wait, you haven’t got a body to put it on.“ He laughed, then disappeared.

“River…“ CAL reached out for River’s hand but she grasped into thin air, River was gone as well.

——

Glasgow, 2021

“So this is where you went once the Daleks were gone?“ Ryan asked Jack as they started walking further into the underground building.

“Had to go say hi to Gwen here and she filled me in on what’s been going on. I’ve been out in the universe too long it seems. Time to look after the home front.“ Jack explained with a determined nod and Kate smiled:

“We’re glad to have you, Captain.“

“How many people have you got here.“ Graham looked around, marvelling at the size of the place. It could have housed a hundred easily and there was an erie quality to it with how quiet and seemingly empty it was.

“Not as many as you’d hope. Friends of the Doctor’s it’s quite an exclusive club, but it’s not quantity, it’s quality.“ Kate answered leading the way.

“So how do you know the Doctor?“ Ryan asked Gwen who was walking alongside him.

“Only met him briefly, during one Dalek invasion or another. Honestly, it all blends together.“ She chuckled.

“Ms. Cooper is one of Torchwood’s finest.“ Kate interjected and Gwen sighed:

“And only remaining member…“

“Hey!“ Jack took offence and elbowed her.

“You don’t count, you’re off doing other stuff all the time.“ Gwen slapped his shoulder affectionately and carried on to explain: “I have been trying to rebuild the Torchwood Three hub as well, seeing as it’s closer to home, but it’s slow progress.“

“Torchwood, like UNIT, is like an agency, is it? To ward of aliens?“ Graham asked, trying to wrap his head around it.

“In a nutshell, yes.“ Kate nodded as she lead them down some stairs. “If you come through here, I will introduce you to the rest of the team.“ The steps opened up into a large room. “I know it’s late but they have been waiting up for you.“ They reached a big communal living and working area. There were several tables, desks, computers and such and amongst it all: four people.

“Mr. O’Brien, Mr. Sinclair, let me introduce Dr. Martha Jones and Mr. Mickey Smith, two of UNIT’s finest field agents and former travelling companions of the Doctor’s.“ Kate gesture towards a couple who were lounging on a sofa, currently devouring a Chinese take away with great enthusiasm.

“Nice to finally meet you.“ Martha smiled at them warmly and Mickey, his mouth full of food, couldn’t speak and just gave a wave with his chopsticks. They got up to shake hands as the group approached.

“Likewise, I guess.“ Graham managed an awkward smile as well. During their travels with the Doctor, they had never really stopped to think how many more people had taken trips in the TARDIS before them. It was strange to think that there were other people out there who would understand what it was like, experiencing the vastness of the universe like they had.

“And these are the Osgoods, the scientific hearts and minds of UNIT.“ Kate carried on and gestured to two women, apparently twins, who were sharing a work station. They simultaneously looked up and smiled in greeting.

“I’m Ryan, this is my granddad Graham.“ Ryan introduced them. “We don’t usually do, like, formal…“ He looked around the room awkwardly. This was a lot more official than he was used to. “Like if you don’t mind, first names are fine.“ Graham nodded in agreement.

“Petronella.“ One to the Osgoods smiled.

“Petronella.“ The other Osgood smiled.

“So… you two have the same name? How do we keep you apart?“ Graham asked, confused, wondering what their parents had possibly been thinking.

“You don’t.“ Kate answered in amusement. “That’s the whole point.“

“Right.“ Ryan decided it was best to just accept that. They had just been recruited into a secret organisation to fight of extraterrestrial threats and entered what looked like a very fancy underground bunker… identical twins with the same names really wasn’t top of the weird-list right now.

“Care for some Chinese?“ Mickey offered. They had ordered way too much as usual.

“Don’t mind if we do.“ Graham grinned since they hadn’t had time to eat before setting of on the long drive. He had been eyeing it up, hoping that was where the evening would be going.

“Ma’am, if we might have a word…“ One for the Osgoods demanded Kate’s attention as everyone else settled down to eat.

“What is it?“ The UNIT chief asked and walked around the desk to be able to look at their computer screens.

“We have found another two bodies.“ The other Osgood answered, pointing something out on the computer and Kate frowned:

“Same MO?“ She asked, leaning closer.

“We fine-tuned the algorithm, running through police data bases and found two matches.“ Osgood confirmed.

“Where?“

“Greater London.“ The other Osgood answered. “Pulled out of a lake. It was fortunate that a couple was walking nearby and spotted movement by the water. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been found for weeks probably.“

“Captain?“ Kate looked up to Jack who was currently recounting to Gwen, Martha and Mickey how he had met Ryan and Graham. “Two for pick up.“ She announced.

“On it, will be back in a flash.“ He gave a dazzling and apologetic smile to the others and came to join Kate and the Osgoods. “Just tell me which morgue they’re in and you’ll have them on your slab momentarily.“ He looked at the screen and skimmed the report.

“So… not just people disappearing from time, murders too?“ Graham asked, listening in.

“This is not your garden variety homicide, I’m afraid, Mr. O’Brian.“ Kate retorted thoughtfully. “You’ll see when the Captain returns with the bodies.“

Jack gave a nod and engaged his Vortex Manipulator.

——

Orbit around the Library, 52nd Century

“Here we go.“ Jenny slipped her hand into her wife’s. She had a bad feeling about this but it couldn’t be helped. They had come out of hyper speed a few minutes ago and had fallen into orbit around the Library.

“A whole planet full of books?“ Yaz couldn’t help but marvel at the sheer size of it. The idea of having every book ever written together in one place was overwhelming and beautiful.

“And shadows that can kill…“ Dorium couldn’t help but point out. The idea that a world so beautiful was forever lost made Yaz’s heart feel heavy. What a waste.

“Right, here’s what we’re going to do: your UV grenades, Strax: our best bet would be to send one down ahead of us.“ Vastra looked to her butler who grinned with excitement as he proudly presented the grenades. “We arm ourselves to the teeth with torches and such. We won’t have to stay long. Just contact the Professor, ask our questions, fill her in, and be on our way.“ Vastra gave her wife’s hand a reassuring squeeze and looked around the room into determined faces. “Strax, Jenny and I will go.“

“I want to come, too!“ Yaz insisted immediately, she thought herself just as capable as any of them and she didn’t want to be left behind.

“That’s not part of the plan.“ Vastra shook her head.

“I have been in tight spots with the Doctor as well, I can handle myself.“ Yaz retorted, frustrated.

“I don’t doubt that but someone needs to teleport us back. Mr. Maldovar sadly won’t be able to.“ Vastra pointed out. She had no doubts about Yaz’s ability to hold her own but they needed someone to stay behind. She refused to be split up from her wife and Strax was best placed to handle the weapons equipment. It was the logical solution. “We all have a job to do and we need you to keep us safe from up here.“ She carried on to explain.

“Fine.“ Yaz huffed after brief consideration. “Doesn’t mean I like it though.“ She could see her point but she still felt like she was being sidelined.

“We will be back in no time.“ Vastra assured her.

“Right, let’s get this over with… before I change my mind.“ Jenny sighed feeling anxious. She ran her hand along the hilt of her sword despite knowing it would be useless against shadows.

“Oh, well that’s a surprise.“ Dorium pipped up, drawing everyone’s attention.

“What is it?“ Vastra frowned, confused.

“There is an incoming transmission! Someone in that Library is trying to reach out.“ Dorium explained quickly. He closed his eyes, trying to focus with the help of the communications chip connected to him.

“How do they even know we’re here?“ Vastra asked, worried. That didn’t feel right.  

“Beats going amongst the shadows, doesn’t it.“ Jenny pointed out and Strax huffed in disappointment:

“I have been looking forward to this for hours…“

“Put it on screen.“ Vastra ignored his complaint and turned to the large screen at the front of the ship. Yaz turned Dorium’s box around so he could see as well.

“River! River! Where are you!“ A small girl appeared on the screen, looking distraught. She couldn’t be older than ten years old, taking everyone by surprise. “Who are you?“ She demanded to know before any of them could get over their shock. Her eyes jumped between all of them. Her message clearly hadn’t been meant for them.

“I’m Madame Vastra, these are Jenny Flint, Strax, Yasmin Kahn and Dorium Maldovar. We mean you no harm.“ Vastra raised her hands appeasingly, trying to reassure her. What was a little girl doing in the Library? And why was she looking for River Song? “You were calling for River, I can only presume you mean Professor Song, we’re here to talk to her.“ Vastra carried on, hoping to explain and gain her trust. She seemed scared.

“You’re too late.“ The girl sobbed, getting more upset.

“What?“ Yaz asked, with a frown. They all exchanged confused glances.

“She just left, I was trying to reach her but it drains the power, so much energy…“ The screen flickered. There was a blip in the transmission, it wasn’t stable.

“Hang on, hang on, you’re in the computer?“ Vastra asked to clarify.

“I am the computer.“ The girl answered, taking a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She was not as little as she looked. “I’m CAL.“

“And Professor Song, she’s not with you anymore?“ Jenny deduced and her heart sank. This was the one eventuality they had not been prepared for.  

“She was taken.“ CAL confirmed, nodding, wiping her tears away.

“By whom?“ Vastra gripped the back of the pilot’s chair and dug her claws into the fabric. Wherever they turned, it seemed as though they were one step behind.

“A Time Lord.“ CAL answered, after brief consideration, seemingly deciding to trust them.

“What did he look like? Did he give a name?“ Yaz asked quickly.

“He called himself the Thirteen.“ The girl said quickly, as the transmission stalled again. “I’m sorry, I can’t maintain this much longer. Why are you looking for River?“

“We’re friends of the Doctor’s. There are some terrible things going on out in the universe and we need to talk to her.“ Vastra rushed to explain.

“Please find her, he… “

The connection broke and for a moment, there was stunned silence.

“How is that possible?“ Yaz turned to the others, slowly finding her voice again. “You can’t just, like, download a consciousness onto a USB stick or something…“

“Don’t underestimate Time Lord technology…“ Vastra mused, mulling over what they had learned. This was far worse than facing the Vashta Nerada. They had fallen another step behind in a race in which the goal posts seemed to keep moving.

“We need to find her.“ Jenny said, shaking her head to herself. If only they had been a little earlier, they could have prevented this.

“Who’s the Thirteen?“ Yaz looked around the room, hoping for an explanation. Was this another of the Doctor’s enemies she didn’t know about?

“Doesn’t mean anything to me either, I was hopeful you might have come across them?“ Vastra retorted with a frown as they exchanged confused glances. They had each assumed the other would have the answers but the alias was familiar to any of them.

“Oh no…“ Dorium mumbled, drawing everyone’s attention.

“Can you shed some light on this, Mr. Maldovar?“ Vastra asked, turning his box around to face them again.

“I’ve heard of a Time Lord that goes my numerical designations… The Nine, the Ten, the Eleven… depending on which regeneration he is on…“ He answered slowly. The reluctance in his voice gave them all pause.

“Stands to reason this is a new regeneration then?“ Yaz nodded, relieved that they weren’t completely in the dark after all.

“Why change the name though with every regeneration? Must be quite… disorienting, mustn’t it?“ Jenny asked.

“He is a very unique case…“ Dorium hummed thoughtfully.

“How so?“ Vastra could already tell she wouldn’t like the answer but she asked anyway.

“From what I have heard, he suffers from a strange affliction… called regenerative dissonance. While the Doctor and other Time Lords retain a sense of self and just change their appearance, he becomes a new person every time and when he regenerates, the other selfs are still present.“ Dorium revealed. He had never actually met them but he had heard enough stories to make sure he never would.

“Like a schizophrenic?“ Yaz asked, unsettled. That didn't sound like the kind of person they wanted to be dealing with.

“Anything else you can tell us, Mr. Maldovar?“ Vastra asked and Dorium gave a wary smile:

“He is a thief, a killer and utterly mad.“

——

The TARDIS

“Do you always leave the door open like that? Anyone could wander in.“ The Doctor found the Master leaning against the console as she reached the control room. Dark hair and beard, stout frame, he hadn’t regenerated, just looked a little worse for wear.

“Master…“ Her voice was barely above a whisper. All sorts of emotions boiled up in her: Disbelief at finding him alive. Worry for having him inside her TARDIS. Hate for all the things he had put her through.

“Hello, Doctor.“ He smirked pushing off the console to step closer. “Nice of you to finally show up.“

“How are you not dead?“ It was the most prominent question on the Doctor’s mind.

“Dying is for other people, dear.“ The Master laughed at how ridiculous that notion was.

“How did you survive the death particle?“ She pressed through gritted teeth as they started circling each other slowly. She was assessing her option for subduing him.

“Did you really think the Cyberium would let its host die?“ The Master’s grin was patronising, as if the answer had been obvious.

“Is it still inside you?“ The Doctor hadn’t even thought about the Cybermen AI that resided inside the Master. She had assumed it dealt with, just like the Master themselves but she should have known they wouldn’t be that easily destroyed.

“Nah… Fizzled out.“ He gave a dismissive wave with his hand. “The effort of creating a force field to protect me was a bit much… Plus, I expelled it and electrocuted it until it stopped moving. I was getting fed up of sharing my memory space.“ He snickered and the Doctor couldn't help but feel a little relieved; one thing she didn’t have to deal with at least.

“You’ve been here this entire time?“ She questioned.

“Where was I gonna go? I destroyed everything! No TARDISes, no space ships left… I did start fixing up a TARDIS but turns out your death particle wiped out the organic components in there as well. I’d have to grow a new one but where to start when every living thing has been destroyed!“ He started rambling in a maniacal sort of way, snapping with increasing anger.

“How long has it been?“ The Doctor asked, hoping he had at least suffered in the meantime. She wasn’t proud of it but after everything he had done to her, she felt he deserved it.

“Oh… a few years, blink of an eye. Ten, twenty? Not sure. Anyway, nice of you to turn up.“ He smirked and his eyes flickered to her reaching for something on the console. “Oh no, you don’t!“ He snapped and pointed the Doctor’s own sonic at her. That’s when she remembered leaving her coat; what a stupid thing to do. And to leave the door unlocked… “So why are you here, Doctor?“ He asked as she raised her hands appeasingly.

“To see if you’re still alive.“ She answered slowly.

“Well I am. What difference does it make to you?“ He snarled.

“And you haven’t left Gallifrey?“ She carried on, hoping to at least get her answers.

“I already told you, are you going soft in the head?“ He snapped.

The Doctor remained silent, unsure how to respond. Should she believe him? Did he have reason to lie? But why would he be back here if he had managed to escape in the meantime?

“And what’s this, Doctor?“ The Master demanded her attention again and held out another item he had found in the pocket of her coat: the green prayer leaf.

“Give that back.“ The Doctor exclaimed, quick to anger. She tried to snatch it off him but he pulled away, putting the sonic between them again.

“Oh, is it personal by any chance?“ He hummed, delighted.

“Give it here.“ The Doctor’s voice turned low and threatening. In her mind, she ran through the possibilities of what the Master could do with her sonic in here. There was so much sensitive technology, a blast at the wrong thing and they could either be thrown into the vortex or explode.

“A prayer leaf from the Gamma Forests if I’m not mistaken… traditional gift for a child… tell me, Doctor, are congratulations in order?“ The Master was quick on his feet as always.

“That’s none of your business.“ The Doctor bit back.

“I take that as a yes. But where is the little devil? And where is the wife?“ He asked feigning surprise. “I presume it is the Professor’s child, isn’t it? Not a little bastard born out of wedlock?“

“Hand that over.“ The Doctor demanded again, holding her hand out.

“No, I think I’ll keep it for the time being. Return it to the little one myself… Like Maleficent taking a gift to little Aurora. Why don’t we go see them.“ He suggested circling around towards the console but the Doctor didn’t move away, instead she stepped right up to him. “Come on, Doctor, I know how much you like your Disney movies. That was funny.“

“Where is he?“ She demanded to know, ignoring his giggling.

“Who?“ The Master frowned.

“My son!“ The Doctor practically yelled, losing her temper at last.

“Ohhh so he is missing? Let me guess, someone took him while you weren’t looking?“ The Master grinned and the Doctor couldn’t tell whether he was pretending not to know anything or if he really didn’t. “Was he getting ice cream across the street and a stranger snatching him away?“

“Don’t play dumb with me, Dorium saw you, you have something to do with this!“ The Doctor wasn’t thinking now. Anger and pain were overshadowing her rational thoughts.

“Dorium? Doesn’t ring a bell…“ The Master shrugged, unimpressed.

“You told him about the Timeless Child, that’s how this whole thing started!“ The Doctor yelled and gave him a shove.

“The Timeless Child? Why would I tell anyone about that dirty secret? Give you all that power? Elevate you? I don’t think so, that secret died with the Time Lords and it’ll die with you.“ The Master spat, suddenly furious as well. They were done doing their dance and playing games.

“You and me are the only people who know about it and I sure as hell haven’t told anyone!“ The Doctor snarled stepping into his personal space again. She wasn’t scared of him anymore. He had no power over her.

“Why would I tell anyone?“ The Master seemed genuinely disbelieving of her accusations. “I killed everyone that could possibly have known about it. And I’m gonna kill you, too.“ He jabbed his finger at her.

“You just try.“ The Doctor pressed through gritted teeth. “Where is my son?!“ She shoved him again and he stumbled backward.

“I haven’t got the faintest idea.“ The Master laughed and the Doctor could tell he was speaking the truth. It threw her for a moment, until a more horrifying idea occurred to her: What if she was just enabling this whole series of events to start? What if she was the reason the Master managed to get off Gallifrey? What if this was how he found out about her child, about Dorium, about the whole thing?

So, just to clarify, the Thirteen (well their previous regenerations), plays a huge part in the Eighth Doctor's audios but you really don't have to know them to (hopefully) follow this story. I fully intend to write it like he's a new character and weave all the information necessary into the plot as everyone else, the Paternoster Gang in particular, learn about him. Originally, I intended to just use Time Lord OCs but as I thought about it, I realised how pointless that would be seeing as there are so many interesting Time Lords in the extended canon. So, if anything is difficult to follow, please let me know! <3

[rawliverandcigarettes]

Mass Effect Retribution, a review

Mass Effect Retribution is the third book in the official Mass Effect trilogy by author Drew Karpyshyn, who happens to also be Lead Writer for Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2.

I didn’t expect to pick it up, because to be very honest I didn’t expect to like it. 9 years ago I borrowed Mass Effect Revelations, and I still recall the experience as underwhelming. But this fateful fall of 2020 I had money (yay) and I saw the novel on the shelf of a swedish nerd store. I guess guilt motivated me to give the author another try: guilt, because I’ve been writing a Mass Effect fanfiction for an ungodly amount of years and I’ve been deathly afraid of lore that might contradict my decisions ever since I started -but I knew this book covered elements that are core to plot elements of my story, and I was willing to let my anxiety to the door and see what was up.

Disclaimer: I didn’t reread Mass Effect Revelation before plunging into this read, and entirely skipped Ascension. So anything in relation to character introduction and continuity will have to be skipped.

Back-cover pitch (the official, unbiased, long one)

Humanity has reached the stars, joining the vast galactic community of alien species. But beyond the fringes of explored space lurk the Reapers, a race of sentient starships bent on “harvesting” the galaxy’s organic species for their own dark purpose. The Illusive Man, leader of the pro-human black ops group Cerberus, is one of the few who know the truth about the Reapers. To ensure humanity’s survival, he launches a desperate plan to uncover the enemy’s strengths—and weaknesses—by studying someone implanted with modified Reaper technology. He knows the perfect subject for his horrific experiments: former Cerberus operative Paul Grayson, who wrested his daughter from the cabal’s control with the help of Ascension project director Kahlee Sanders. But when Kahlee learns that Grayson is missing, she turns to the only person she can trust: Alliance war hero Captain David Anderson. Together they set out to find the secret Cerberus facility where Grayson is being held. But they aren’t the only ones after him. And time is running out. As the experiments continue, the sinister Reaper technology twists Grayson’s mind. The insidious whispers grow ever stronger in his head, threatening to take over his very identity and unleash the Reapers on an unsuspecting galaxy. This novel is based on a Mature-rated video game.

Global opinion (TL;DR)

I came in hoping to be positively surprised and learn a thing or two about Reapers, about Cerberus and about Aria T’loak. I wasn’t, and I didn’t learn much. What I did learn was how cool ideas can get wasted by the very nature of game novelization, as the defects are not singular to this novel but quite widespread in this genre, and how annoyed I can get at an overuse of dialogue tags. The pacing is good and the narrative structure alright: everything else poked me in the wrong spots and rubbed how the series have always handled violence on my face with cruder examples. If I was on Good Reads, I’d probably give it something like 2 stars, for the pacing, some of the ideas, and my general sympathy for the IP novel struggle.

The indepth review continue past this point, just know there will be spoilers for the series, the Omega DLC which is often relevant, and the book itself!

What I enjoyed

Drew Karpyshyn is competent in narrative structure, and that does a lot for the pacing. Things rarely drag, and we get from one event to the next seamlessly. I’m not surprised this is one of the book’s qualities, as it comes from the craft of a game writer: pacing and efficiency are mandatory skills in this field. I would have preferred a clearer breaking point perhaps, but otherwise it’s a nice little ride that doesn’t ask a lot of effort from you (I was never tempted to DNF the book because it was so easy to read).

This book is packed with intringuing ideas -from venturing in the mind of the Illusive Man to assist, from the point of view of the victim, to Grayson’s biological transformation and assimilation into the Reaper hivemind, we get plenty to be excited for. I was personally intrigued about Liselle, Aria T’loak’s secret daughter, and eager to get a glimpse at the mind of the Queen Herself -also about how her collaboration with Cerberus came to be. Too bad none of these ideas go anywhere nor are being dealt with in an interesting way!!! But the concepts themselves were very good, so props for setting up interesting premices.

Pain is generally well described. It gets the job done.

I liked Sanak, the batarian that works as a second to Aria. He’s not very well characterized and everyone thinks he’s dumb (rise up for our national himbo), even though he reads almost smarter than her on multiple occasions, but I was happy whenever he was on the page, so yay for Sanak. But it might just be me having a bias for batarians.

Cool to have Kai Leng as a point of view character. I wasn’t enthralled by what was done with it, as he remains incredibly basic and as basically hateable and ungrounded than in Mass Effect 3 (I think he’s very underwhelming as a villain and he should have been built up in Mass Effect 2 to be effective). But there were some neat moments, such as the description of the Afterlife by Grayson who considers it as tugging at his base instincts, compared to Leng’s description of it where everything is deemed disgusting. The execution is not the best, but the concept was fun.

Pre-Reaperification Paul Grayson wasn’t the worst point of view to follow. I wasn’t super involved in his journey and didn’t care when he died one way or the other, but I empathized with his problems and hoped he would find a way out of the cycle of violence. The setup of his character arc was interesting, it’s just sad that any resolution -even negative- was dropped to focus on Reapers and his relationship with Kahlee Sanders, as I think the latter was the least interesting part.

The cover is cool and intringuing. Very soapy. It’s my favorite out of all the official novels, as it owns the cheesier aspect of the series, has nice contrasts and immediately asks questions. Very 90s/2000s. It’s great.

You may notice every thing I enjoyed was coated in complaints, because it’s a reflection of my frustration at this book for setting up interesting ideas and then completely missing the mark in their execution. So without further due, let’s talk about what I think the book didn’t do right.

1. Dumb complaints that don’t matter much

After reading the entire book, I am still a bit confused at to why Tim (the Illusive Man’s acronym is TIM in fandom, but I find immense joy in reffering to him as just Tim) wants his experimentation to be carried out on Grayson specifically, especially when getting to him is harder than pretty much anyone else (also wouldn’t pushing the very first experiments on alien captives make more sense given it’s Cerberus we’re talking about?). It seem to be done out of petty revenge, which is fine, but it still feels like quite the overlook to mess with a competent fighter, enhance him, and then expect things to stay under control (which Tim kind of doesn’t expect to, and that’s even weirder -why waste your components on something you plan to terminate almost immediately). At the same time, the pettiness is the only characterization we get out of Tim so good I guess? But if so, I wished it would have been accentuated to seem even more deliberate (and not have Tim regret to see it in himself, which flattens him and doesn’t inform the way he views the world and himself -but we’ll get to that).

I really disliked the way space travel is characterized. And that might be entirely just me, and perhaps it doesn’t contradict the rest of the lore, but space travel is so fast. People pop up left and right in a matter of hours. At some point we even get a mention of someone being able to jump 3 different Mass Relays and then arrive somewhere in 4 hours. I thought you first had to discharge your ship around a stellar object before being able to engage in the next jump (and that imply finding said object, which would have to take more than an hour). It’s not that big of a deal, but it completely crammed this giant world to a single boulevard for me and my hard-science-loving tastes. Not a big deal, but not a fan at all of this choice.

You wouldn’t believe how often people find themselves in a fight naked or in their underwear. It happens at least 3 times (and everyone naked survives -except one, we’ll get to her later).

Why did I need to know about this fifteen year’s old boner for his older teacher. Surely there were other ways to have his crush come across without this detail, or then have it be an actual point of tension in their relationship and not just a “teehee” moment. Weird choice imo.

I’m not a fan of the Talons. I don’t find them interesting or compelling. There is nothing about them that informs us on the world they live in. The fact they’re turian-ruled don’t tell us anything about turian culture that, say, the Blue Suns don’t tell us already. It’s a generic gang that is powerful because it is. I think they’re very boring, in this book and in the Omega DLC alike (a liiittle less in the DLC because of Nyreen, barely). Not a real criticism, I just don’t care for them at all.

I might just be very ace, but I didn’t find Anderson and Kahlee Sanders to have much chemistry. Same for Kahlee and Grayson (yes we do have some sort of love-triangle-but-not-really, but it’s not very important and it didn’t bother me much). Their relationships were all underwhelming to me, and I’ll explain why in part 4.

The red sand highs are barely described, and very safely -probably not from a place of intimate knowledge with drugs nor from intense research. Addiction is a delicate topic, and I feel like it could have been dealt with better, or not be included at all.

There are more of these, but I don’t want to turn this into a list of minor complaints for things that are more a matter of taste than craft quality or thematic relevance. So let’s move on.

2. Who cares about aliens in a Mass Effect novel

Now we’re getting into actual problems, and this one is kind of endemic to the Mass Effect novels (I thought the same when I read Revelation 9 years ago, though maybe less so as Saren in a PoV character -but I might have forgotten so there’s that). The aliens are described and characterized in the most uncurious, uninspired manner. Krogans are intimidating brutes. Turians are rigid. Asaris are sexy. Elcors are boring. Batarians are thugs (there is something to be said with how Aria’s second in command is literally the same batarian respawned with a different name in Mass Effect 2, this book, then the Omega DLC). Salarians are weak nerds. (if you allow me this little parenthesis because of course I have to complain about salarian characterization: the only salarian that speaks in the book talks in a cheap ripoff of Mordin’s speech pattern, which sucks because it’s specific to Mordin and not salarians as a whole, and is there to be afraid of a threat as a joke. This is SUCH a trope in the original trilogy -especially past Mass Effect 1 when they kind of give up on salarians except for a few chosen ones-, that salarians’ fear is not to be taken seriously and the only salarians who are to be considered don’t express fear at all -see Mordin and Kirrahe. It happens at least once per game, often more. This is one of the reasons why the genophage subplot is allowed to be so morally simple in ME3 and remove salarians from the equation. I get why they did that, but it’s still somewhat of a copeout. On this front, I have to give props to Andromeda for actually engaging with violence on salarians in a serious manner. It’s a refreshing change) I didn’t learn a single thing about any of these species, how they work, what they care about in the course of these 79750 words. I also didn’t learn much about their relationships to other species, including humans. I’ll mention xenophobia in more details later, but this entire aspect of the story takes a huge hit because of this lack of investment of who these species are.

I’ve always find Mass Effect, despite its sprawling universe full of vivid ideas and unique perspectives, to be strangely enamoured with humans, and it has never been so apparent than here. Only humans get to have layers, deserving of empathy and actual engagement. Only their pain is real and important. Only their death deserve mourning (we’ll come back to that). I’d speculate this comes from the same place that was terrified to have Liara as a love interest in ME1 in case she alienated the audience, and then later was surprised when half the fanbase was more interested in banging the dinosaur-bird than their fellow humans: Mass Effect often seem afraid of losing us and breaking our capacity for self-projection. It’s a very weird concern, in my opinion, that reveals the most immature, uncertain and soapy parts of the franchise. Here it’s punched to eleven, and I find it disappointing. It also have a surprising effect on the narrative: again, we’ll come back to that.

3. The squandered potential of Liselle and Aria

Okay. This one hurts. Let’s talk about Liselle: she’s introduced in the story as a teammate to Grayson, who at the time works as a merc for Aria T’loak on Omega, and also sleeps with him on the regular. She likes hitting the Afterlife’s dancefloor: she’s very admired there, as she’s described as extremely attractive. One night after receiving a call from Grayson, she rejoins him in his apartment. They have sex, then Kai Leng and other Cerberus agents barge in to capture Grayson -a fight break out (the first in a long tradition of naked/underwear fights), and both of them are stunned with tranquilizers. Grayson is to be taken to the Illusive Man. Kai Leng decides to slit Liselle’s throat as she lays unconscious to cover their tracks. When Aria T’loak and her team find her naked on a bed, throat gaping and covered in blood, Liselle is revealed, through her internal monologue, to be Aria’s secret daughter -that she kept secret for both of their safety. So Liselle is a sexpot who dies immediately in a very brutal and disempowered manner. This is a sad way to handle Aria T’loak’s daughter I think, but I assume it was done to give a strong motivation to the mother, who thinks Grayson did it. And also, it’s a cool setup to explore her psyche: how does she feel about business catching up with her in such a personal manner, how does she feel about the fact she couldn’t protect her own offspring despite all her power, what’s her relationship with loss and death, how does she slip when under high emotional stress, how does she deal with such a vulnerable position of having to cope without being able to show any sign of weakness... But the book does nothing with that. The most interesting we get is her complete absence of outward reaction when she sees her daughter as the centerpiece of a crime scene. Otherwise we have mentions that she’s not used to lose relatives, vague discomfort when someone mentions Liselle might have been raped, and vague discomfort at her body in display for everyone to gawk at. It’s not exactly revelatory behavior, and the missed potential is borderline criminal. It also doesn’t even justify itself as a strong motivation, as Aria vaguely tries to find Grayson again and then gives up until we give her intel on a silver platter. Then it almost feels as if she forgot her motivation for killing Grayson, and is as motivated by money than she is by her daughter’s murder (and that could be interesting too, but it’s not done in a deliberate way and therefore it seems more like a lack of characterization than anything else).

Now, to Aria. Because this book made me realize something I strongly dislike: the framing might constantly posture her as intelligent, but Aria T’loak is... kind of dumb, actually? In this book alone she’s misled, misinformed or tricked three different times. We’re constantly ensured she’s an amazing people reader but never once do we see this ability work in her favor -everyone fools her all the time. She doesn’t learn from her mistakes and jump from Cerberus trap to Cerberus trap, and her loosing Omega to them later is laughably stupid after the bullshit Tim put her through in this book alone. I’m not joking when I say the book has to pull out an entire paragraph on how it’s easier to lie to smart people to justify her complete dumbassery during her first negotiation with Tim. She doesn’t seem to know anything about how people work that could justify her power. She’s not politically savvy. She’s not good at manipulation. She’s just already established and very, very good at kicking ass. And I wouldn’t mind if Aria was just a brutish thug who maintains her power through violence and nothing else, that could also be interesting to have an asari act that way. But the narrative will not bow to the reality they have created for her, and keep pretending her flaw is in extreme pride only. This makes me think of the treatment of Sansa Stark in the latest seasons of Game of Thrones -the story and everyone in it is persuaded she’s a political mastermind, and in the exact same way I would adore for it to be true, but it’s just... not. It’s even worse for Aria, because Sansa does have victories by virtue of everyone being magically dumber than her whenever convenient. Aria just fails, again and again, and nobody seem to ever acknowledge it. Sadly her writing here completely justifies her writing in the Omega DLC and the comics, which I completely loathe; but turns out Aria isn’t smart or savvy, not even in posture or as a façade. She’s just violent, entitled, easily fooled, and throws public tantrums when things don’t go her way. And again, I guess that would be fine if only the narrative would recognize what she is. Me, I will gently ignore most of this (in her presentation at least, because I think it’s interesting to have something pitiful when you dig a little) and try to write her with a bit more elevation. But this was a very disappointing realization to have.

4. The squandered potential of Grayson and the Reapers

The waste of a subplot with Aria and Liselle might have hurt me more in a personal way, but what went down between Grayson and the Reapers hurts the entire series in a startling manner. And it’s so infuriating because the potential was there. Every setpiece was available to create something truly unique and disturbing by simply following the series’ own established lore. But this is not what happens. See, when The Illusive Man, our dearest Tim, captures Grayson for a betrayal that happened last book (something about his biotic autistic daughter -what’s the deal with autistic biotics being traumatized by Cerberus btw), he decides to use him as the key part of an experiment to understand how Reapers operate. So he forcefully implants the guy with Reaper technology (what they do exactly is unclear) to study his change into a husk and be prepared when Reapers come for humanity -it’s also compared to what happened with Saren when he “agreed” to be augmented by Sovereign. From there on, Grayson slowly turns into a husk. Doesn’t it sound fascinating, to be stuck in the mind of someone losing themselves to unknowable monsters? If you agree with me then I’m sorry because the execution is certainly... not that. The way the author chooses to describe the event is to use the trope of mind control used in media like Get Out: Grayson taking the backseat of his own mind and body. And I haaaaate it. I hate it so much. I don’t hate the trope itself (it can be interesting in other media, like Get Out!), but I loathe that it’s used here in a way that totally contradicts both the lore and basic biology. Grayson doesn’t find himself manipulated. He doesn’t find himself justifying increasingly jarring actions the way Saren has. He just... loses control of himself, disagreeing with what’s being done with him but not able to change much about it. He also can fight back and regain control sometimes -but his thoughts are almost untainted by Reaper influence. The technology is supposed to literally replace and reorganize the cells of his body; is this implying that body and mind are separated, that there maybe exists a soul that transcends indoctrination? I don’t know but I hate it. This also implies that every victim of the Reaper is secretely aware of what they’re doing and pained and disagreeing with their own actions. And I’m sorry but if it’s true, I think this sucks ass and removes one of the creepiest ideas of the Mass Effect universe -that identity can and will be lost, and that Reapers do not care about devouring individuality and reshaping it to the whims of their inexorable march. Keeping a clear stream of consciousness in the victim’s body makes it feel like a curse and not like a disease. None of the victims are truly gone that way, and it removes so much of the tragic powerlessness of organics in their fight against the machines. Imagine if Saren watched himself be a meanie and being like “nooo” from within until he had a chance to kill himself in a near-victorious battle, compared to him being completely persuaded he’s acting for the good of organic life until, for a split second, he comes to realize he doesn’t make any sense and is loosing his mind like someone with dementia would, and needs to grasp to this instant to make the last possible thing he could do to save others and his own mind from domination. I feel so little things for Saren in the former case, and so much for the latter. But it might just be me: I’m deeply touched by the exploration of how environment and things like medication can change someone’s behavior, it’s such a painfully human subject while forceful mind control is... just kind of cheap.

SPEAKING OF THE REAPERS. Did you know “The Reapers” as an entity is an actual character in this book? Because it is. And “The Reapers” is not a good character. During the introduction of Grayson and explaining his troubles, we get presented with the mean little voice in his head. It’s his thoughts in italics, nothing crazy, in fact it’s a little bit of a copeout from actually implementing his insecurities into the prose. But I gave the author the benefit of the doubt, as I knew Grayson would be indoctrinated later, and I fully expected the little voice to slowly start twisting into what the Reapers suggested to him. This doesn’t happen, or at least not in that slowburn sort of way. Instead the little voice is dropped almost immediately, and the Reapers are described, as a presence. And as the infection progresses, what Grayson do become what the Reapers do. The Reapers have emotions, it turns out. They’re disgusted at organic discharges. They’re pleased when Grayson accomplish what they want, and it’s told as such. They foment little plans to get their puppet to point A to point B, and we are privy to their calculations. And I’m sorry but the best way to ruin your lovecraftian concept is to try and explain its motivations and how it thinks. Because by definition the unknown is scarier, smarter, and colder than whatever a human author could come up with. I couldn’t take the Reapers’ dumb infiltration plans seriously, and now I think they are dumb all the time, and I didn’t want to!! The only cases in which the Reapers influence Grayson, we are told in very explicit details how so. For example, they won’t let Grayson commit suicide by flooding his brain with hope and determination when he tries, or they will change the words he types when he tries to send a message to Kahlee Sanders. And we are told exactly what they do every time. There was a glorious occasion to flex as a writer by diving deep into an unreliable narrator and write incredibly creepy prose, but I guess we could have been confused, and apparently that’s not allowed. And all of this is handled that poorly becauuuuuse...

5. Subtext is dead and Drew killed it

Now we need to talk about the prose. The style of the author is... let’s be generous and call it functional. It’s about clarity. The writing is so involved in its quest for clarity that it basically ruins the book, and most of the previous issues are direct consequences of the prose and adjacent decisions.The direct prose issues are puzzling, as they are known as rookie technical flaws and not something I would expect from the series’ Lead Writer for Mass Effect 1 and 2, but in this book we find problems such as:

The reliance on adverbs. Example: "Breathing heavily from the exertion, he stood up slowly”. I have nothing about a well-placed adverb that gives a verb a revelatory twist, but these could be replaced by stronger verbs, or cut altogether.

Filtering. Example: “Anderson knew that the fact they were getting no response was a bad sign”. This example is particularly egregious, but characters know things, feel things, realize things (boy do they realize things)... And this pulls us away from their internal world instead of making us live what they live, expliciting what should be implicit. For example, consider the alternative: “They were getting no reponse, which was a bad sign in Anderson’s experience.” We don’t really need the “in Anderson’s experience” either, but that already brings us significantly closer to his world, his lived experience as a soldier.

The goddamn dialogue tags. This one is the worst offender of the bunch. Nobody is allowed to talk without a dialogue tag in this book, and wow do people imply, admit, inform, remark and every other verb under the sun. Consider this example, which made me lose my mind a little: “What are you talking about? Kahlee wanted to know.” I couldn’t find it again, but I’m fairly certain I read a “What is it?” Anderson wanted to know. as well. Not only is it very distracting, it’s also yet another way to remove reader interpretation from the equation (also sometimes there will be a paragraph break inside a monologue -not even a long one-, and that doesn’t seem to be justified by anything? It’s not as big of a problem than the aversion to subtext, but it still confused me more than once)

Another writing choice that hurts the book in disproportionate ways is the reliance on point of view switches. In Retribution, we get the point of view of: Tim, Paul Grayson, Kai Leng, Kahlee Sanders, David Anderson, Aria T’loak, and Nick (a biotic teenager, the one with the boner). Maybe Sanak had a very small section too, but I couldn’t find it again so don’t take my word for it. That’s too many point of views for a plot-heavy 80k book in my opinion, but even besides that: the point of view switch several times in one single chapter. This is done in the most harmful way possible for tension: characters involved in the same scene take turns on the page explaining their perspective about the events, in a way that leaves the reader entirely aware of every stake to every character and every information that would be relevant in a scene. Take for example the first negotiation between Aria and Tim. The second Aria needs to ponder what her best move could possibly be, we get thrown back into Tim’s perspective explaining the exact ways in which he’s trying to deceive her -removing our agency to be either convinced or fooled alongside her. This results in a book that goes out of his way to keep us from engaging with its ideas and do any mental work on our own. Everything is laid out, bare and as overexplained as humanly possible. The format is also very repetitive: characters talk or do an action, and then we spend a paragraph explaining the exact mental reasoning for why they did what they did. There is nothing to interpret. No subtext at all whatsoever; and this contributes in casting a harsh light on the Mass Effect universe, cheapening it and overtly expliciting some of its worst ideas instead of leaving them politely blurred and for us to dress up in our minds. There is only one theme that remains subtextual in my opinion. And it’s not a pretty one.

6. Violence

So here’s the thing when you adapt a third person shooter into a novel: you created a violent world and now you will have to deal with death en-masse too (get it get it I’m so sorry). But while in videogames you can get away with thoughtless murder because it’s a gameplay mechanic and you’re not expected to philosophize on every splatter of blood, novels are all about internalization. Violent murder is by definition more uncomfortable in books, because we’re out of gamer conventions and now every death is actual when in games we just spawned more guys because we wanted that level to be a bit harder and on a subconscious level we know this and it makes it somewhat okay. I felt, in this book, a strange disconnect between the horrendous violence and the fact we’re expected to care about it like we would in a game: not much, or as a spectacle. Like in a game, we are expected to root for the safety of named characters the story indicated us we should be invested in. And because we’re in a book, this doesn’t feel like the objective truth of the universe spelled at us through user interface and quest logs, but the subjective worldview of the characters we’re following. And that makes them.... somewhat disturbing to follow.

I haven’t touched on Anderson and Kahlee Sanders much yet, but now I guess I have too, as they are the worst offenders of what is mentioned above. Kahlee cares about Grayson. She only cares about Grayson -and her students like the forementioned Nick, but mostly Grayson. Grayson is out there murdering people like it’s nobody’s business, but still, keeping Grayson alive is more important that people dying like flies around him. This is vaguely touched on, but not with the gravitas that I think was warranted. Also, Anderson goes with it. Because he cares about Kahlee. Anderson organizes a major political scandal between humans and turians because of Kahlee, because of Grayson. He convinces turians to risk a lot to bring Cerberus down, and I guess that could be understandable, but it’s mostly manipulation for the sake of Grayson’s survival: and a lot of turians die as a result. But not only turians: I was not comfortable with how casually the course of action to deal a huge blow to Cerberus and try to bring the organization down was to launch assault on stations and cover-ups for their organization. Not mass arrests: military assault. They came to arrest high operatives, maybe, but the grunts were okay to slaughter. This universe has a problem with systemic violence by the supposedly good guys in charge -and it’s always held up as the righteous and efficient way compared to these UGH boring politicians and these treaties and peace and such (amirite Anderson). And as the cadavers pile up, it starts to make our loveable protagonists... kind of self-centered assholes. Also: I think we might want to touch on who these cadavers tend to be, and get to my biggest point of discomfort with this novel.

Xenophobia is hard to write well, and I super sympathize with the attempts made and their inherent difficulty. This novel tries to evoke this theme in multiple ways: by virtue of having Cerberus’ heart and blade as point of view characters, we get a window into Tim and Kai Leng’s bigotry against aliens, and how this belief informs their actions. I wasn’t ever sold in their bigotry as it was shown to us. Tim evokes his scorn for whatever aliens do and how it’s inferior to humanity’s resilience -but it’s surface-level, not informed by deep and specific entranched beliefs on aliens motives and bodies, and how they are a threat on humanity according to them. The history of Mass Effect is rich with conflict and baggage between species, yet every expression of hatred is relegated to a vague “eww aliens” that doesn’t feed off systemically enforced beliefs but personal feelings of mistrust and disgust. I’ll take this example of Kai Leng, and his supposedly revulsion at the Afterlife as a peak example of alien decadence: he sees an asari in skimpy clothing, and deems her “whorish”. And this feels... off. Not because I don’t think Kai Leng would consider asaris whorish, but because this is supposed to represent Cerberus’ core beliefs: yet both him and Tim go on and on about how their goal is to uplift humanity, how no human is an enemy. But if that’s the case, then what makes Kai Leng call an Afterlife asari whorish and mean it in a way that’s meaningfully different from how he would consider a human sex worker in similar dispositions? Not that I don’t buy that Cerberus would have a very specific idea of what humans need to be to be considered worth preserving as good little ur-fascists, but this internal bias is never expressed in any way, and it makes the whole act feel hollow. Cerberus is not the only offender, though. Every time an alien expresses bias against humans in a way we’re meant to recognize as xenophobic, it reads the same way: as personal dislike and suspicion. As bullying. Which is such a small part of what bigotry encompasses. It’s so unspecific and divorced from their common history that it just never truly works in my opinion. You know what I thought worked, though? The golden trio of non-Cerberus human characters, and their attitude towards aliens. Grayson’s slight fetishism and suspicion of his attraction to Liselle, how bestial (in a cool, sexy way) he perceives the Afterlife to be. The way Anderson and Kahlee use turians for their own ends and do not spare a single thought towards those who died directly trying to protect them or Grayson immediately after the fact (they are more interested in Kahlee’s broken fingers and in kissing each other). How they feel disgust watching turians looting Cerberus soldiers, not because it’s disrespectful in general and the deaths are a inherent tragedy but because they are turians and the dead are humans. But it's not even really on them: the narration itself is engrossed by the suffering of humans, but aliens are relegated to setpieces in gore spectacles. Not even Grayson truly cares about the aliens the Reapers make him kill. Nobody does. Not even the aliens among each other: see, once again, Aria and Liselle, or Aria and Sanak. Nobody cares. At the very end of the story, Anderson comes to Kahlee and asks if she gives him permission to have Grayson’s body studied, the same way Cerberus planned to. It’s source of discomfort, but Kahlee gives in as it’s important, and probably what Grayson would have wanted, maybe? So yeah. In the end the only subtextual theme to find here (probably as an accident) is how the Alliance’s good guys are not that different from Cerberus it turns out. And I’m not sure how I feel about that.

7. Lore-approved books, or the art of shrinking an expanding universe

I’d like to open the conversation on a bigger topic: the very practice of game novelization, or IP-books. Because as much as I think Drew Karpyshyn’s final draft should not have ended up reading that amateur given the credits to his name, I really want to acknowledge the realities of this industry, and why the whole endeavor was perhaps doomed from the start regardless of Karpyshyn’s talent or wishes as an author.

The most jarring thing about this reading experience is as follows: I spent almost 80k words exploring this universe with new characters and side characters, all of them supposedly cool and interesting, and I learned nothing. I learned nothing new about the world, nothing new about the characters. Now that it’s over, I’m left wondering how I could chew on so much and gain so little. Maybe it’s just me, but more likely it’s by design. Not on poor Drew. Now that I did IP work myself, I have developed an acute sympathy for anyone who has to deal with the maddening contradictions of this type of business. Let me explain.

IP-adjacent media (in the West at least) sure has for goal to expand the universe: but expand as in bloat, not as in deepen. The target for this book is nerds like me, who liked the games and want more of this thing we liked. But then we’re confronted by two major competitors: the actual original media (in ME’s case, the games) whose this product is a marketing tool for, and fandom. IP books are not allowed to compete with the main media: the good ideas are for the main media, and any meaningful development has to be made in the main media (see: what happened with Kai Leng, or how everyone including me complains about the worldbuilding to the Disney Star Swars trilogy being hidden in the novelization). And when it comes to authorship (as in: taking an actual risk with the media and give it a personal spin), then we risk introducing ideas that complicate the main media even though a ridiculously small percent of the public will be attached to it, or ideas that fans despise. Of course we can’t have the latter. And once the fandom is huge enough, digging into anything the fans have strong headcanons for already risks creating a lot of emotions once some of these are made canon and some are disregarded. As much as I joke about how in Mass Effect you can learn about any gun in excrutiating details but we still don’t know if asaris have a concept for marriage... would we really want to know how/if asaris marry, or aren’t we glad we get to be creative and put our own spin on things? The dance between fandom and canon is a delicate one that can and will go wrong. And IP books are generally not worth the drama for the stakeholders.

Add this to insane deadlines, numerous parties all involved in some way and the usual struggles of book writing, and we get a situation where creating anything of value is pretty much a herculean task.

But then I ask... why do IP books *have* to be considered canon? I know this is part of the appeal, and that removing the “licenced” part only leaves us with published fanfiction, but... yeah. Yeah. I think it could be a fascinating model. Can you imagine having your IP and hiring X amount of distinctive authors to give it their own spin, not as definitive additions to the world but as creative endeavours and authorial deepdives? It would allow for these novels to be comparative and companion to the main media instead of being weird appendages that can never compare, and the structure would allow for these stories to be polished and edited to a higher level than most fanfictions. Of course I’m biased because I have a deep belief in the power of fanfiction as commentary and conversational piece. But I would really love to see companies’ approach to creative risk and canon to change. We might get Disney stuff until we die now, so the least we can ask for is for this content to be a little weird, personal and human.

That’s it. That’s the whole review. Thank you for reading, it was very long and weirdly passionate, have a nice dayyyyy.

[lesbianfeminists]

How Women Suffering from Endometriosis Disclose about their Disorder at Work

“Feminist approaches to organizational communication theorizing enabled investigation of issues impacting women and minority groups (Buzzanell, 1994). Across domains, research has examined the relationship between labor participation and women’s health, including childbearing, mental and physical health (Glynn et al., 2009; Grice et al., 2007; Repetti et al., 1989). However, minimal attention has been paid to the relationship between employment and women’s reproductive health (Chau et al., 2014), especially as it pertains to stigmatized topics, such as endometriosis.

Disclosure of endometriosis

Extant research examining women’s disclosure of endometriosis has mainly focused on family, friends, and healthcare providers, finding that women suffering from endometriosis downplay their symptoms and are reluctant to share. First, women tend to downplay the severity of their symptoms due to fear of negative appraisal. For example, Grogan et al. (2018) found women hid or downplayed their symptoms out of fear of being labeled a “hypochondriac.” Furthermore, Young et al. (2014) identified that women’s reluctance to disclose and discuss their symptoms resulted from dismissive responses from friends, family, and healthcare providers (Young et al., 2014). Second, women are also hesitant to disclose due to “menstruation etiquette” (Laws, 1991) – or the practice of strategically concealing menstruation from others. For instance, Seear (2009) found disclosure of symptoms was characterized as a “discrediting attribute,” one whose presence contributes to stigmatization of an individual (Goffman, 1963).

While limited, some research has examined disclosure of endometriosis in the workplace specifically. As with friends, family, and healthcare providers, women are hesitant to disclose their endometriosis symptoms to their employers and colleagues due to (a) the gender-specific nature of the disorder, (b) fear of being pressured into discontinuing work, and (c) fear of being seen as using their symptoms as an excuse to “get out of things.” For one, women find it difficult to discuss their symptoms with males due to preconceived notions about the taboo of discussing reproductive matters around men (Young et al., 2014). Yet additionally, although many of these women view their disorder as inherently private, gastrointestinal maladies make functioning at work difficult and mark conversation topics that generally seem difficult to discuss (Grogan et al., 2018). Indeed, Soliman et al. (2018) found women coping with endometriosis symptoms lost between one and five hours of weekly productivity due to either presenteeism (i.e., working without productivity) or absenteeism (i.e., missing work). In an attempt to address productivity loss, oftentimes, women spend their leisure time recovering from endometriosis symptoms in order to perform functionally during working hours (Grogan et al., 2018). Furthermore, many organizations do not provide accommodations for employees, and as a result these women are forced to exit the labor market (Gilmour et al., 2008).

...

While gender did not always necessitate differing approaches to disclosure, the majority of participants expressed feeling more comfortable discussing the disorder with female conversational partners. Yet, participants considered their female conversational partners as either relatable or dismissive. Some female conversational partners were viewed as relatable because they had some “basic understanding” of menstruation-related struggles. As Vicky (30-year-old who is currently in-between employment positions) put it, “I am obviously going to feel more comfortable being open and honest with a female as she can relate more to what we go through.” Whereas other female colleagues were perceived to be dismissive of the severity of endometriosis symptoms due to “survivorship bias,” or the logical error in which people tend to focus on things that passed some selection process and overlook those things that didn’t (Jorion & Goetzmann, 1999), in this case overlooking the severity of endometriosis symptoms because their own experience with menstruation had not been as severe. For instance, Star (a 32-year-old with a master’s degree and currently employed in a managerial role) stated, “I feel like females think they know what you’re talking about because they think that their pain is the same as endo pain. They also tend to think you’re being dramatic about the pain and issues caused by it.”

In contrast, participants considered most of their male conversational partners as either familiar or avoidant, which created great discomfort in disclosing endometriosis to them. Sunrain (a 32-year-old currently working full time as a manager) explained, “My boss is male, and I feel mortified. Like it would tar his view of me.” Other participants tried to talk about endometriosis at work but perceived their male colleagues and supervisors to be avoidant toward the conversations. As Bee (a 28-year-old working in a non-managerial role) put it, “… the male colleagues tend to know less about it and exhibit discomfort when I disclose it, so I avoid talking about it with them.” In these cases, participants reported disclosing vaguely and less frequently. At the same time, there were a few participants who reported that some male colleagues and supervisors were sympathetic and understanding, but that this was due to their being already familiar with endometriosis as a disorder. Liz (a 31-year-old manager) explained, “[Disclosing] was hard because my manager is a male, but his wife had similar issues, so he is understanding.”

Hierarchy

In addition to gender, the position in the corporate hierarchy of the conversational partner impacted women’s disclosure. First, participants reported that disclosing endometriosis to supervisors was more difficult than disclosing to colleagues. Anxiety due to fears of losing opportunities to advance, being seen as incompetent and in some cases, being terminated led employees with endometriosis to approach disclosing to supervisors with more trepidation. For many respondents, disclosure was undesirable but necessary. For example, Mississippi (a 31-year-old working in a non-managerial role) said, “I am extremely uncomfortable discussing it with my supervisors. I don’t want to be seen as a hypochondriac or appear to be trying to get out of duties or get sympathy.” They continued, “My supervisors are also male, and I worry about how sympathetic they would be to women’s health issues.” While choosing to disclose to supervisors resulted from need, disclosing to colleagues was guided by relationship closeness. As one participant put it, “If it’s a close colleague that’s more like a friend, I talk about it more freely. With supervisors, I generally try to explain why I will be needing to miss work in a more professional manner.

...

Participants who worked in male-dominated industries (e.g., construction, finance, engineering) felt it was a significant risk to disclose. They feared that their male employers and colleagues would not understand or care to hear about “female issues” and ultimately view them as weak or incompetent. Grace (a 25-year-old PhD working in a non-managerial role) explained, “Men take this less seriously, and I feel I’m more likely to be perceived as overdramatic and weak by a male than a female.”

Moreover, some participants expressed having difficulty remaining competitive with male colleagues due to the disorder. For instance, one participant, Ariel (a 25-year-old employed in a non-managerial role) shared,

As a female in an already male-dominated field (IT analytics), endometriosis causes a strain on my relationships with coworkers daily. Because they already do not see me as an equal to the males in my field, when I am missing work or leaving meetings early because I am having period pain, I am then having to work even harder to prove my knowledge and worth in the workplace.

Finally, the culture of a workplace, particularly workplaces with negative cultural attributes, also impacted women’s disclosure. Participants explained how their workplaces looked down on taking personal time off, sick leave, and even working from home, which made it even more challenging to disclose their disorder. As one participant, Mississippi (a 31-year-old employed in a non-managerial role), put it, “the expectation to be superwoman” made it difficult to open up about the way this chronic illness hampers her experiences at work. Another participant, Aholla (a 35-year-old who is currently self-employed) explained a situation in which her supervisor did not take her situation seriously. “My producer brushed it off by saying women of color have fibroids all the time and work through it. My fibroids were just one part of my issues,” she explained. Yet another participant, Alexa (a 21-year-old employed in a non-managerial capacity) listed “bad attitude(s) toward employees who take time off or leave early” as an added impediment to disclosing. Another impediment was lack of privacy for disclosing endometriosis in the workplace. Participants shared that many of their workplaces had open-floor offices, which made it difficult to discuss a private matter. When asked what things made disclosing endometriosis at work challenging, a participant named Syd (a 32-year-old employed in a non-managerial role) said, “An open office plan. If I’m talking about a sensitive symptom there’s really nowhere I can discuss it privately.” Last, in some cases, participants reported a lack of HR policies for dealing with the disorder. Kris (a 43-year-old participant who herself works in a managerial role) explained that “Male coworkers and an HR director who feels no one should ever share about themselves,” made disclosing her endometriosis challenging. Liz, 2 (a 32-year-old manager) echoed these sentiments by explaining her workplace had “no clear policy to request accommodations (such as work from home or flexible schedule). No privacy – HR staff regularly gossip about what they’re told.”

[adrienne-fh]

From the desk of...

Day 1- Introduce yourself! What’s some basic info you’d like to share about yourself? Also! What are you studying? (If you’re in college, what’s your major? which semester are you in?)

I am adrienne-fh. I am a non-traditional adult student attempting to complete my first Bachelor's Degree. I am a student at Oregon State University on hiatus. I studied Psychology and Statistics. I hope to resume soon.

I enjoy singing, reading, writing, twitch streaming. Starcraft, Hearthstone, World of Warcraft - RPGs, RTS, and fighting games are fun. I also enjoy Chess. I wear monochromatic outfits with an eye for textures. I’m a curly girl. All-natural everything but wear wigs as my hair grows back from a buzz cut.

I am an ordained minister through Universal Life Church. It is much more than being a wedding officiant! I offer a host of ministerial services including ceremonies for baptism, the dying, and funerals.

I am a person with chronic illness: Fibromyalgia and PTSD. This causes a range of difficulties, the hardest to deal with being pain and exhaustion. I’m a walking pin cushion with a pillow.

Day 2- If you’ve chosen a major, why did you decide on it? If you’re in any other grade, what field/major interests you the most?

I am interested in human behavior and high performers and the dark triad. I love to understand how our mind works. Because I am interested in psychometrics and informatics, I am developing my skill in statistics and programming.

I enjoy human-computer interaction and Natural Language Processing. AI and its impact on what it means to be a working adult are intriguing. Children are at an advantage, learning more skills sooner. All this, combined with wanting to be a part of the new wave of IoT and AI, starts with understanding who we are to appreciate who we are becoming. The impact on our decision-making and empathy is stunning.

I am a Mental Health Peer Supporter seeking provisional certification. I am also seeking ways to improve my pastoral counseling services. Psychology is key in many endeavors, even writing complex characters!

Day 3- Have you done a challenge before? If so, how was it? If not, what are you expecting to get out of this experience?

Yes! 100 Days of Productivity. I forget to post sometimes. I would like to develop consistency and use my blog to keep me accountable. Because I’m not so broken up about not always completing what I set out to do, I focus more on the joy of sharing my story with others and the connections I could make.

Day 4- For my researching fellows, what are you researching? If you’re not currently researching, what is the topic within your field that you’re most passionate about?

Mainly, the effectiveness of Online Mental Health Communities. How to make Online Health Communities work better. How we interact with Online Mental Health Communities and how they affect the way we feel and behave. How can Fountain House use its Virtual Club House to improve life satisfaction amongst members? 

I also research trends in AI, Beauty, and Goal Achievement.

Day 5- Tag 3 studyblrs that you like seeing on your dashboard.

@a-medstudents-journey 

@theologei

@a-study-in-dante

Day 6- Quickly! tag urself!

five pm. warm smiles. classy. aesthetic Instagram feed. anklets. soft music. yoga. face masks. @adrienne-fh

Day 7-  Some of your music faves right now (let’s say up to 5)

ABBA, Madonna, Vienna Teng, Ashnikko, Billie Ellish

Day 8- International Women’s Day! What’s your take on feminism?

It is obviously not much of a choice to be respectful to anyone, no matter gender or preference. We can complain about the conversations we are having or do more to have them. We have to treat each other better - humans in general.

Day 9- Write something that you’d like to tell yourself.

You can do it! You are doing it! It is getting better! Focus. Get rid of all the junk! You deserve the love and life you keep giving to everyone else.

Day 10- Tag someone whose aesthetic you love seeing on your feed.

@justanotherstudyblrinthecrowd

Day 11- What’s something that you’ve always wanted to do but haven’t got the chance to do so?

Stand in front of the Louvre. Visit the Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família. Fall in deep mutual kind and compassionate love with lots of romance and care. Publish a print book - short stories, essays, novels, novellas, and of course poetry. I have a lot to share!

Day 12- Are you more into plants or flowers? What’s your fave type?

I really love succulents. The best of both. I really really love moss!

Day 13- Tell us the most eye-opening book you’ve read.

Oh. That’s really hard. I think of The Da Vinci Code and The Human Stain. Any book by Jonathan Safran Foer, particularly Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.

Day 14-  What are some of the reasons you love yourself/should love yourself?

I am a divine child of light that believes in the cosmos lining up and giving all of us a big wink with a smile. I’m silly and playful. I’m dead serious smart, psychic, and a crazy protector of love and personal freedom. I fight away evil with nurturing and honesty. I’m a bit crazy and zany. I’m bizarre. I’m pretty much free-spirited and open with an edge.

Day 15- Tag someone who you think would get along just right with you.

@manuxstudies​

Day 16- What’s your go-to coffee/tea/beverage order?

Venti Flat White with sugar in the raw or Keto-Friendly Stevia Drops. Both are delicious. 

Day 17- Share with us your feel-good playlist.

Deep Focus

Brain Food

The Show Must Go On (Curated)

Day 18- Tag someone whose blog you constantly check.

@bakinginthewoods​

Day 19- Tell us about your online experience (is it sometimes overwhelming? Do you feel like it's a great way to get in touch with people? What’s something that you love seeing on here?)

Tumblr is soothing. Other online communities, not so much. I have gotten bullied, cyberattacked, stolen from, and had trouble with employment because of online hijinks based on Gossip and “Mean-Girling”. People who are stressed out and have a reputation to uphold lash out at people who are viewed as a threat (for whatever reason). We, as netizens, know that the whole “Bro Culture” thing can be toxic. I experienced gossip on steroids that resulted in financial loss, illness, and loss of employment. Hard to prove. However, finding and creating healthy spaces online that encourage creativity and sharing is possible. Some of my favorite supportive communities are Github, Quora, and Deviant Art. If you know of any, share a link in my comments. 

Day 20- What are three things that inspire you?

Music. I love deep lyrics and heavy percussion and bass. My journal entries. I love reading what I'm actually thinking (same with Vlogs). People-watching. You learn a lot about what matters watching our interactions silently.

Day 21- Share a quote that speaks to you.

“He who fears he will suffer already suffers because he fears.”

— Michel De Montaigne.

Day 22- What’s your comfort food/ comfort routine for sad days?

Peanut Butter and Jelly with a tall glass of cow milk.

Day 23- What’s some random miscellaneous piece of information that you just happen to know?

Kirk Hammett of Metallica met his wife while a film, jazz, and Asian studies student at SFU in CA.

Day 24- Share with us your favorite word (it can be in any language).

Pus. It's the Swedish word for Kiss. Bra, also Swedish, means good.

Day 25- Tag someone who has great text posts

@adrienne-fh

Day 26- What has been your best zoomester experience so far?

I can’t say which. This is pretty nice.

Day 27- If you’re about to graduate, what’s something that you’ll miss from school? If you aren’t about to graduate, tell us something you really love about school.

I enjoy reading and understanding difficult concepts. What a joy after a few hours of reading to finally understand!

Day 28- Spill the tea about the things that you’ve done during the zoomester (Online shopping, courses taken, any hobby)

I’ve doodled. I’ve zoned out. I’ve watched Twitch.

Day 29- Quick! Name your own aesthetic! or alternatively, what’s an aesthetic you’d like to try out?

Romanti-goth, Vamp, Cyber Punk (kinda). Pinup.

Day 30- What’s the best advice someone has given you?

Fake it till you make it. Show up and never give up. Burn your boats!

Day 31-  Send three people some uplifting messages!

@ava-embers Write more sexy stuff doll face.

@studyingwhilepsychotic smooches to my soul sister. Rage on wild child.

@twitchb-tch Shut up! You are too cute. You guys rock!

[cecilspeaks]

170 - To the Family and Friends

Love the winner, hate the win. Welcome to Night Vale.

I start today with sad news. I must inform you of the passing of Intern Victor. To the friends and family of Intern Victor, we extend our condolences. Oh, that reminds me. Our intern program has a new open spot available. Hours are flexible, as is time itself. You must be fluent in at least three languages, although one of those can be your own dream language, and another can be a future language that doesn’t yet exist. This is an entry level position. All applicants must have 30 years experience in the field of community radio, and have been the managing director of at least 2 radio stations, or equivalent unregistered stations broadcasting coded messages to our brave spies in the field. This is a non-paying position, but we do give you 4 credits to the institutions of your choice. Please apply in person by groveling before the Station Management door and crying: “Choose me! Choose me!” as their tendrils draw you slowly toward them. I look forward to meeting whoever is hired. Always so fun when we get a new intern.

And now for a look at the day’s news. The Night Vale Medical Association has ordered a review of the management of Night Vale Asylum, after a number of irregularities have cropped up involving a transdimensional missing plane and a pilot who could control people’s thoughts. “Honestly, we had a lot of cases like that back in the 60’s,” said Lonnie Chapman, chairman of the Medical Association. “Mental institutions used to be cruel places, where the fragile rift between dimensions was regularly breached and telekinetic powers were exploited. And people were treated as less than people, for the simple crime of having an illness that could not be found in the blood or the bile.” Lonnie settled back into the sagging comfort of his old arm chair, sighed and rubbed his forehead. “We endeavour to help, not to other,” he whispered. “It should be common sense, this kindness. Why is kindness not common sense?” He said this last so quietly that no one heard him. Dust motes circled tirelessly in the afternoon sun through the window. The Night Vale Medical Association is looking to shut down the outdated asylum and replace it with a brand new state of the art treatment center, located near Grove Park. More on this story as the story has more to it.

I guess I should get into a little more detail about how Intern Victor died, since some of you might be curious. You know, I think the story starts back in my very first days as host of this radio station. After the previous host, Leonard Burton, after – umm… ehhhh.. Once I took over as host of this radio station, Victor was one of my first interns. Eager and earnest and always helpful. He was first in the station in the morning and last one out at night. His research was impeccable. 

“That’s not true,” he would say every time I said something that wasn’t true. “That’s not true either,” he would say. He would say stuff like that a lot. He was very diligent. It kind of felt like we were starting this great adventure in radio broadcasting together. I thought that some day after I… after… ehhhhh.. ummm… once I was no longer host of this radio station, perhaps Victor would be the one to take over. “Some day, Victor,” I would murmur in the quietest hours of the night shift, “Some day maybe you will be where I am now.” “Maybe, Cecil,” he would say back into the intercom from the producer’s booth, “But for now, please stop murmuring that into the mic. We’re live right now. Then one day he told me he was leaving. That he appreciated all the time he had spent as an intern, that he had learned a lot, but that he felt his place in the world was not with radio after all. [sputters] “Not with radio?!” I sputtered. I simply did not understand the concept. “If there is not community radio, then what is there? What is there besides that? Will someone tell me what else there is?” “Thank you for our time together,” he said gently, and then he left. It would be the last time I saw him for many years.

And now a word from our sponsors. Today’s sponsor is White Claw’s new line of non-alcoholic alcoholic Seltzer beverages. Listen, everyone loves a good carbonated beverage. On a hot day, out at the beach, or not at the beach, the two places it is possible to be. It’s great to just pop one of those bad boys open and really let that water with bubbles rip on your gullet. But not everyone likes to drink alcohol, for a variety of reasons that are never ever your business. Just don’t ask or bring it up. It’s so easy to not do that. That’s why White Claw is proud to announce the newest version of our alcoholic Seltzer beverage, now without alcohol! It’s everything you loved about Seltzer water, but for the first time, you don’t have to get intoxicated. Flavors include blackberry, wild nettle, wet stone, and one we’re just calling “Tumbleweed Crush”. Even we aren’t completely clear on what that one tastes like, but hey, it’s water and it’ll make you burp without making you drunk. White Claw’s new line of non-alcoholic alcoholic Seltzer beverages. Available wherever you buy your alcoholic Seltzer beverages. This has been a word from our sponsors.

I didn’t finish with the story of how Intern Victor died, I guess. Ummm, let me quickly wrap that up. So, a few years after he left, he came back again. He was older than me now with salt and pepper hair and a stiffness to his walk. When he had left, he had been several years younger than me, but time changes us all, I suppose. “Cecil! I didn’t know if you’d still be here,” he said. I bristled at this, hearing a perceived implication that I should have gone on to something larger, that by staying put I had allowed him to be pull ahead of me in some intangible way. So I responded with manic friendliness to compensate. “Still here!” I shouted. “Great to see ya, buddy wo-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-how! What have you been up to?” He told me that he had left Night Vale, gotten an apartment just outside of somewhere called Fresno, that it was difficult at first, and that he felt lonely much of the time. But that he had slowly made friends, so many friends, and had found a job that became a career that became part of his life. He worked with teenagers who were going through a tough time, seeing them through to better times. He was very well liked for what he did, and he was very good at it. “But I’ve decided to retire,” he said. “I’m getting up in the years, you know? But wow, you don’t look like you’ve aged a day.” “I haven’t,” I said. He was so much older than me then. I wondered where the years had gone and what I might have accomplished, if I had aged as well. He had retired to Night Vale to be with his family and friends and the people who knew and loved him best, and relax into the soft years of his latter life. So that… wait. Well, that’s not how he died, but I have to get to this next report. I’ll finish it in a second.

And now traffic. There was a song once sung by sailors of an island in the west, where the sun would shine forever and not a minute less. They say that on that island a sailor could find their rest, finally let slip shut their eyelids on that island in the west. But I’ve been searching, and been searching all my life, as though some cruel test, and have never found my way to that island in the west. There was a song once sung by sailors and I believed it, I confess. A foul lie I still believe in, my sweet island in the west. This has been traffic.

Intern Victor lived in Night Vale for many years more. He was active in charities and volunteer groups, continuing to offer counseling to students at the local high school. He lived in the Hefty Sycamore Trailer Park, watering a garden of flowers that he kept in pots around his trailer. It seemed that Victor was even more busy in retirement than he had been in his long career. Returning to his community seemed to invigorate him. He helped Carlos with experiments at the labs, donning goggles and lab coats and writing down numbers with hearts around them, all of that science stuff. Carlos said he was surprisingly good at it for someone without training. He worked with Dana at City Hall, creating the No More Pit initiative, which strove to keep one teen a year from entering that pit on Clement Street and disappearing forever. Now, the initiative was unsuccessful and the pit continues to devour but they, it was the attempt that matters. He acted as a volunteer lifeguard at the Waterfront Recreation Area, at which he saved a record five people in one day from drowning! A truly astounding record when you consider that there is no water at the Waterfront Recreation Area, Night Vale having an entirely arid climate.

Yes, Intern Victor was accomplished and well liked. He would have made a fine host at this radio station some day, but he never showed much interest, which is a pity. Because after I… After, well… Who will take up that mantle? Not Victor, not anymore. Well, I guess I still haven’t told the story of how he died.

Uh, let me do that just After the weather. 

[A List for Spring” by Joseph Fink https://josephfink.bandcamp.com/]

Victor was in bed. The curatin over the window shifted slightly in the breeze, so the sun flickered in the room, shadow and bright, like a message from the world outside that he would never live to understand. His breath felt like a finite quantity, slowly drawn out of his chest. He knew that the last of it was coming soon. He wanted to use the drags of his breath for words that would sum up his life, but he couldn’t think of any. He could only think of “I am tired”. He could only think of “Thank you for being here.” He could only think of “I wish I had more time”, although eh didn’t know what he would have done with that time if he had any. 

Around his bed were the people who had known him throughout his life. There was his sister Carly, and his brother Herman, and his aunt Ronnie, ancient and brittle but apparently destined to outlive him. There was his friend from college, Norm, whose hands shook as he looked into Victor’s eyes. There was former mayor Dana and her brother, leaning into each other in sorrow, keeping each other upright as a family creature of grief. There was Carlos in an understated lab coat, frowning. There was nothing more scientific than death, and yet Carlos hated the fact of it. And he wrestled with the contradiction within himself. Some natural processes feel unnatural, no matter how many times they occur to us, they are a surprise that our whole life spends telegraphing.

In the corner was Rosario, one of the teenagers Victor had worked with back in Fresno, who had eventually moved to Night Vale after getting lost in the shelves of a strange antique shop and waking up in the vacant lot out back of the Ralphs. She was middle-aged now, her face glistened with tears. “Everything I am is because of you,” she said. Victor snorted. “Don’t blame me,” he said with one of those last precious breaths. And she grinned despite herself. “You were the first person that cared about who I was,” she said. “I’ll never forget you.” “Already I’m in past tense,” he said, but he grabbed her hand and clasped it in a fervent silent thank you. Because she was testament that he had been useful, and there was nothing more important in a human life than to be useful to other people.

I was there too, and I stepped forward. “You were the best intern I ever had,” I said. “I know,” he said, and he winked.

It can be… strange when we first meet someone when they are young and just started out, and are in the entry positions in the career they want, to realize they have the potential for an entire life. Victor ended up a great man. A man with deep roots in the community. A man who went from 10 years younger than me to several decades older than me. And I… well, I still think of him as an intern, and I suppose I always will, but his potential was realized upon the lives of everyone in that room, and many other lives still.

A strong breeze came through the window and the flickering of light increased, as though that incoherent messenger was getting more frantic to be understood. Victor knew that his finite breaths had reached their last few. And he did not use them to say anything at all. He smiled, and met each of our eyes, and then… And then after…

To the family and friends of Intern Victor. To the family. To our families, blood or chosen. They are the net on which we can fall again and again. To the friends, to our friends. The people who make life worth living. Who help us when we need help. Who we help when we need to help.

Intern Victor was a good intern. He was a good person. He is gone. We are here. Let’s make ourselves useful. To all families. To all friends.

Stay tuned next for a tall glass of water greedily, drunk by a person who did not realize they were thirsty until the liquid hit their lips.

Good night, Night Vale, Good night.

Today’s proverb: Earth is technically a sandwich, where the upper bread is stars and the lower bread is stars and the filling is rock and lava and a few incidental humans.

[tmnt-brave-new-world]

Good evening gentlemen, and welcome. My name is Blossom. I hope y'all, and your Mun, are well, and hope this hasn't been asked of the others, If you have a spare time in your day, how do you enjoy passing it? And if you don't mind my asking one more question...Leo, I heard you've studied and enjoy music, art. Do you have a preferred medium in either? Thank you kindly.

Good evening Ms. Blossom,

 its a pleasure to meet you. Myself and Raph have already answered this, however Mikey and Donnie have not been asked this of yet.

Donnie flicked his eyes from his older brother back to the small brunette before giving a small nod of his head. “Right. I’m afraid my down time is limited. Even with our extended life spans, there never seems to be enough time for all of the projects I have planned. I do however make it a point to pull myself away from work so that I rest properly, eat three times a day and groom myself as needed. I have also learned that stopping when I’m starting to feel fatigued is necessary if I plan to continue in a productive fashion.”

“I enjoy gardening, and studying the different needed variables within the contained ecosystems in which I create. There is something to be said about being able to take the time and learn such a rudimentary art. It also reminds me of the days in the resistance when the time needed to grow nutritional food was almost no existent. I take great pride in what I create, and the resistant strains of certain species of fruit and vegetable I have managed to create with my knowledge of genetics and field observations. I also enjoy dabbling in each of my brothers hobbies. they would be loathe to admit it, but they become so excited over their favorite topics and the knowledge they can share. Its nice to see that sense of peace on each of their collective faces.”

“Another area of interest is archeology, from collecting fossils to ancient jewelry, a tie to the past has always been of significant interest. I believe my bothers enjoy playing in the dirt when I go to a dig site, or harvest a crop as a type of trade off for time spent with each of them.”

“Raph and I work on different mechanics and converting both classic cars and the newest toy into something that works better than originally planned, or is better suited for one of use to use. I’ve had to make a special booster seat insert for when someone drives them as a result however.”

“I have attended many a gala and charity event with Leo, He has a sizable art, and artifacts collections that can be observed in many rooms of the house. Albeit he does have me research each event to make sure the big ticket items aren’t stolen or haven’t been reported as missing since the fall of Earth.” 

“Mikey is always looking for someone to attend the opening of new restaurants or to assess some type of new technique related to a style of art he’s suddenly become interested in. I’ll allow his to explain in further detail, however.”

Mikey shot her a big grin before he started in, “I guess I’m next?” 

“Man I don’t think I really have a job so its always down time for me!” The turtle laughed good naturedly. I enjoy bringing people happiness and the best way I have found to do that is with my ability to create. I love being able to have the freedom to create in a wide array of formats. I can use multiple techniques to paint in a multitude of styles. I can sculpt. I can weave. I am actually certified to create and Tattoo. I can blow glass sculptures and pieces. I can carve objects from wood, stone or just about any other medium reasonably well. I can cook, and have actually been featured on a few cooking shows and competitions. I can also sew, which has lead me to creating and collaborating with a lot of other artist.”

 “Time in the resistance let we with a jack of all trades kind of mentality. If its something I think I might be able to learn or understand, I go all in and learn it. I actually learned how to perform professional level autobody work for Raph and Donnie, for when they wanted to be able to do customizations on cars but neither could explain to a body shop what exactly it was they wanted. I even spent several months in the mountains of Tibet and Morocco learning about the different techniques related to ancient dyes and leather tanning techniques.”

“I tend to take contracts and commissions from people when I feel like it. Its awesome because a lot of the time I never know what exactly someone is going to ask for and because of my skills I can combine things in ways that no one has ever thought about before!”

“One of my favorite things to do with my down time though is that I actually teach several classes online and through zoom regarding basic techniques such as cooking, cleaning, sewing, and basic adulting. I found it really shocking how many kids and adults didn’t have these skills after we took back Earth and that their lives seemed to suffer for it. So I did what I do best and I started youtube videos on how to do it and then started offering free classes that are coordinated with local community centers and libraries to help those who need it but may not be able to try it due to lack of resources. I of course send all the needed supplies to the sites that sponsor these classes, so that they aren’t anything for offering to help!”

“For the second part of your question Miss Blossom,” Leo gave an unusually shy smile, “I’m no where near as talented as my brother, but I enjoy painting still life and landscapes. I can use acrylics, oils and watercolor with varying degrees of success. There is something cathartic about slowly transforming a canvas or trying new techniques. As for Music I can play the piano and a few classic songs to completion. I have attempted to learn the violin and the guitar but am no where near sufficient for anyone to hear, except for Mikey who acts as my instructor most evenings.”

[jimmigmalingan]

Her Name Is Not “baby”, It’s JANET.

It’s not “Miss Jackson if you’re nasty” either, although just as iconic.

What better way to celebrate Women’s Month than to get to know a great embodiment of a strong and powerful woman. In fact, so strong and so powerful that my instinctive reaction when I first saw the invite to her journalism class was “Oh no.”

That was the G-Rated version of it actually. Nevertheless, same message. 

I barely even knew who she was or what her teaching style was going to be like. Her G-suite display picture just exuded “Oh no” energy. I mean that as a compliment.

I went straight to my friend from elementary school who shifted to Communication a year earlier than I did. I said “Do you have any tea on her?” The first thing he told me was that she had very high standards.

I like that, actually.

Back when I was in high school, which seems like very long time despite only having been a whopping three years, those were the types of teachers that I would consider my favorite ones. Ma’am Rachel from my English class, and Ma’am Elma from my Research and Biology class. Both of which actually went on to be school heads in different schools after we graduated.

I’m just here thinking to myself “God, I would’ve been excelling at her class if it isn’t for this stupid pandemic.” I clearly am not. We will get to that soon.

When we had the chance to organize an interview as a class, it invigorated me a tad bit. This is the closest I can get to having human interaction in an academic sense, but it was also my chance to have an idea or two of who ‘Janet Tibaldo’ was. Is she going to be the bane of my existence for the next four or so years or is she going to be alongside the people who I consider to be my “heroes”?

To my surprise, she’s very, well... human.

From what I’ve gathered in both of the interviews, our class’ and the other, she is a woman of strength. She is a passionate educator, a dedicated mother, and most of all, a woman of faith and devotion. In both of the interviews, she often emphasizes the importance of the “vertical relationship” in her life, and how it can have a positive effect in one’s horizontal relationships.

I do appreciate those remarks from her quite a bit, despite me having a rockier and more complex relationship with God as a queer person. I never considered myself an atheist. I do believe in God, and I believe that I am loved by God, despite knowing that people out there will try to convince me otherwise.

How could he possibly hate me when I pray to him too and he answers them just the same? It makes absolutely no sense to me.

When she said that you can fix your horizontal relationships once your vertical relationship is stable, it did strike a cord just as much as it struck a verve in me. I am trying to. It took me a while, but nevertheless I’m glad that I am here.

She often described herself as “strict”, both as a parent and an educator. It often surprises me how much bombardment my friend from elementary experiences from her subjects. The way he describes it to me sounds a bit like torture. I always took his words about her with a grain of salt. I will probably never believe him until I experience it first hand. He did say I was lucky that I shifted during online classes because she is a bit more lenient, otherwise I would’ve been dead meat.

If she was the monster that she’s painted out to be, I do understand why. It’s not like I don’t have a maternal figure or two in my life with eerily similar approaches. Like I said, she is a bit more human than what one would expect. She talked about her sleepless nights to dedicate herself onto her work, how she takes it upon herself when things go wrong, and how she said she hopes for a better and more empathetic world when I asked about her hopes for the future. To me she sounds like a person who stands her ground and knows exactly what she wants, even if it gets the best of her at times.

With that, she shared a peek of her younger days, how she spent her childhood during the Martial Law era, how newscasters on TV sparked her interest in the field of Communication, how in her college days they made do with the resources they had back then, emphasizing how lucky we are to have the technology we have now, how she was an activist back in the day. It painted a picture in my mind. Ahhh. No wonder.

There has always been ‘fire’ inside of her. A fire that lead her to be an educator today, despite having left the path of being a media practitioner.

I did think about it a couple of times. If being a visual artist doesn’t work out for me, maybe I’ll just teach. To me, it looks fun. She did say that she never thought in a million years that she would end up becoming a teacher because she thought it looked boring. According to her, lot of her family members ended up becoming teachers and she never wanted to be one of them. Maybe there’s some ugly parts of it that I don’t get to see, but it seems like a much more stable career path than visual arts, especially in a country like this.

Just from the interviews alone, you can tell that she has so much wisdom to offer in this field. That makes me all the more excited to meet her in person. If anything, there’s your proof right there that God is out there writing poetic justice for people. Maybe it was God’s way of saying “I have something better in mind for you, you just have to trust me.”

Another standout from the interviews was when she told all of us as a piece of advice that we should grab opportunities as they come. Oftentimes, the biggest regrets you have in life aren’t the things you did but the things you didn’t do. I have to admit, the main reason why this music video is taking too long to make is because of self doubt and insecurity. She’s right. I should toughen up a bit, shouldn’t I? Not only that, but there’s a lot of competitions that I found interesting in the facebook group that I just allowed to pass me by. I don’t want to blame my years in Architecture for it, because it did cause me some good. It’s just that I knew what I was running away from after years of feeling like I will never amount to anything. 

I knew that. If anything I was way bolder when I left high school, only for Architecture to beat me down. It does take someone like her to remind me of who I was then.

When I was going through my depressive episode late last year, ultimately leading me to shift to Communication, I found myself seeking refuge in the music of Janet Jackson. As a matter of fact, I shared her music to the same friend I mentioned earlier, and now he’s a fan too. We’d often joke about which Janet we were talking about in the conversation.

On one hand, we have Janet the popstar, who despite being blacklisted by Bush’s racist and misogynistic America, kept on going. She kept performing and making music for as recent as 2018, and now she’s inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. On the other, we have Janet the teacher, who keeps holding on to her faith despite all of the trials and challenges that came her way all these years.

What’s it about Janets being fiery passionate women anyway?

That actually leads me to my next point of interest.

What moved me the most about both of the interviews was her openness about her struggles with mental health, and how she refers students to seek help as well back when classes were physical. I don’t think conversations like these were possible back in the day, especially when I was a child. Apparently I didn’t have ADHD I was just an idiot, and people like me get punished for their idiocy. That was my upbringing, and it’s so refreshing to know that kids nowadays are lucky to have a ‘zeitgeist’ like this.

I was brought up for the longest time in the idea that if you show any signs of vulnerability, you are weak. It took some time for me to ‘rewire’ my brain and undo all of that...

because that is blatantly false.

If anything, for me, it further solidified how strong she was. It takes so much strength to admit that you’re human. It takes so much courage to tell yourself that you probably need help because you struggle in this aspect of your life. It is so easy to pretend that you can take everything like a champ and you don’t need anyone to help you.

The easy route was to say “I’m fine” or “I’m doing good” when asked a simple question “How are you?”, the hard route is to ask yourself that same question “How am I?” and be honest and introspective about it.

She did just that. She took the hard route.

She said she was having trouble sleeping and that she had to consult a mental heath expert for that recently, and that this pandemic made it particularly hard for her to juggle work and home matters.

I don’t think she will ever understand how a simple statement like that inspires someone like me, because what I got from that was ‘if somebody as strong and as passionate as her bleeds the same way that I do, I too can be strong like her.’

I just booked my appointment to my therapist yesterday. I haven’t seen her in quite some time now. It’s nice to know that I’m not alone in this, despite going there for feeling alone. Ironic, isn’t it? I feel like I’m running out of friends, and it’s starting to feel like paralysis, really.

After the interview ended, and I finished watching the interview from the other block, I couldn’t grasp the idea of this woman being taken as a monster, because the only words I could think of in association to her thus far is ‘uplifting’ and ‘inspiring’, in the same way that Ma’am Rachel was one of the people who inspired me to be a a cartoonist and Ma’am Elma inspired me to be a competitive dancer.

I had to give up three years worth of friendships to start back from scratch and to be here. I was actually so unsure if it was even worth the sacrifice, but Ma’am Janet Tibaldo, out of all people, showed me something to look forward to in this field. Based on what I’ve gathered from her, I’m up for a good time.