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jokertrap-ran · 4 years

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Disney’s Twisted Wonderland: Dorm Uniform Floyd Leech SSR【What will you give me?】Chapter 3

*Spoiler free: Translations will remain under cut

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3

⊱ ────Main Street──── ⊰

Floyd: Otter said that he'd give me a blood red stone, and he did...But it's heavy and huge to boot. Exactly what am I to do with this...?

Floyd: He said that "it's thanks for helping me out in a pinch!" But this is really troublesome to lug around...

Floyd: Sea snake didn't seem too happy about it either, but eh~ That's not my problem.

Floyd: Azul like pretty stones that glimmer like this so maybe I'll give it to him instead.

Floyd: And maybe he wouldn't get mad because I didn't manage to get the rights to that drink that was being sold in the store...

Floyd: Oh, speaking of the store.

Floyd: I ended up giving the candy I bought from it to the jellyfish.

Floyd: I really want to bite down on something...

⊱ ────Mister S’s Mystery Shop──── ⊰

SLAM!

Sam: Whoa!? What, what!? Don't slam the door open like that!

Floyd: Pardon the intrusion.

Sam: Y-You...! Aren't you the reckless little demon that wanted to buy the rights to my hottest product on the shelf right now earlier in the day!?

Sam: Were you perhaps aiming for the time after I closed the shop to try stealing it from me when there's no other customer around...!?

Floyd: Gimme a candy.

Sam: Wait, you barged in here just to buy candy!? Then don't break the door down! Walk in normally like a normal person!!

Sam: Hm...? Stop right there, little demon. That thing you have there in your hand...

Floyd: What? It's a little unsettling to have you in my personal space all of a sudden like that.

Sam: That...Could that possibly be-!?

Floyd: You're too close seahorse! I'll strangle you if you don't stop it.

Sam: This is a famed legendary stone from the kingdom of sand, made from ten and thousands of years of being buried under its magical sands!

Sam: A-And it's also so unbelievingly huge...! Why do you have such a precious stone on you!?

Floyd: This stone, you mean? It was a gift.

Sam: It was gifted to you!? How in the world did you end up getting something like that as a gift?

Sam: I've always wanted to add something like that to my collection. Such a prime chance might never come again...

Sam: Please! Won't you give that stone of yours to me?

Floyd: Eh~ Don't wanna.

Floyd: I don't need a stone like this at all, but you wanting it makes me not want to hand it over even more so~ Haha.

Sam: Then how about free-flow bread for you from the shop everyday until you graduate? How's that for starters?

Floyd: No way~ I'll get bored of eating bread everyday.

Sam: No doubt...That's a pretty bad deal for a stone of that value. Very well, let's talk it out like adults!

Sam: 5 million...No, how does 10 million sound!?

Floyd: Money, huh...I don't need that either, really. Plus, I won't be using that much of it now that I'm living in Night Raven College too.

Sam: Tenacious, aren't you?

Sam: Then how about I give you what you originally wanted in exchange for it? The rights to the mystery drink! How about that!?

Floyd: Eh? Seriously? You're fine with that?

Sam: I don't mind at all if it means that I can get my hands on such a famed stone! Here, the contract that transfers the product rights with my signature on it.

Sam: With this, the mystery drink I sell in my shop's entirely yours now.

Floyd: You're surprisingly all for it now. Is this stone really worth that much?

Floyd: Well, it's not like I'm really interested in it either and I don't want Azul to get mad at me either.

Floyd: Alrightie then. The stone for the rights. Here you go~

Sam: Whoa! Don't throw it!! ...You're really one unbelievable little demon!!

⊱ ────Octavinelle Dorm- Lounge──── ⊰

Floyd: I'm back~

Azul: Welcome back, Floyd. How did the acquiring the rights go? Did it go well?

Floyd: Yeah. I got the rights to the mystery drink.

Azul: Huh? Already!? That's rather quick of you...I'm sure you haggled to get the cheapest and lowest possible price, yes?

Azul: I'm prepared to pay quite a hefty sum for it but even I have my limits, and taking the person in question into consideration... Even I'm a little concerned, to be honest.

Azul: Exactly how much did you buy it off him for?

Floyd: Hm? 100 Madols.

Azul: I see. 100 Madols...wait, 100 MADOLS!!!??

Azul: You must be joking! Did you perhaps hear him wrongly? Surely, he must mean 100 million!? No, even that's way too little...

Floyd: I'm serious, dead serious. That's all it went for.

Azul: H-He sold off the rights to something that's hot on the shelves for that small of a price? ...What's he thinking...!?

Floyd: Okay, here's the rights you asked for. And now, gimme the 100 Madols I paid for it back.

Azul: Of course, here. You've got to be kidding me...His signature's really on this contract...

Azul: With this, I can now...Heh...Hehehe!!

Jade: You're back unexpectedly early, Floyd. Good work out there.

Floyd: Oh, you're back too, huh. Weren't you busy with your "Other job"?

Jade: I've just made my way back to the dorm to make the preparations for that "Other job".

Jade: Still, to think that you managed to get something we prepared to pay several Million Madols for, for a mere 100 Madols. That's amazing.

Floyd: Oh, so you heard about it, huh. It's not that amazing at all, really. Plus that amount was for candy.

Jade: Candy? ...Whatever do you mean?

Floyd: Well...

Jade: I see. So you exchanged a precious stone that Sam had been looking for in exchange for the mystery drink's rights.

Jade: I think it's best if we never told Azul this little tidbit.

Floyd: Really? No matter how many things I exchanged, I really did in fact, just exchange a piece of candy that I originally owned for the rights in the end.

Jade: Heh. And that really goes to show that this success is only possible because you're the one doing it, if you think about it that way.

Jade: You're always doing things in a unpredictable way that takes everyone by surprise, while I take the more logical and realistic options.

Jade: It seems like I really made the right choice when I chose you to be my partner back when we were still small fry. You're really a special one.

Floyd: Huh? Why are you suddenly grinning to yourself like that? I'm also glad that you're the one I chose to live my life with.

Floyd: AHHH!!

Jade: What's wrong?

Floyd: I forgot to buy candy in the end!! That's the reason why I returned to the shop before I came back to the dorms in the first place...

Floyd: Ughh~ I'm gonna wither and die...

── ⋆⋅☆ 𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝐸𝒩𝒟☆⋅⋆ ──

#twisted wonderland #twst translations #floyd leech #Jamil Viper #Kalim Al-Asim #Kalim Al Asim #Jade Leech #azul ashengrotto #Octanivelle #translations #Disney #ツイステッドワンダーランド #ツイステ

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emachinescat · 4 years

Text

The Casket of the Armadillos (by Edgar Allan Nope)

A Psych Fan-Fiction

by @emachinescat

@febuwhump day 9 - buried alive

Summary: When Shawn confronts a grad student turned murderer, he learns a very important lesson a very hard way: Don’t piss off English nerds - especially the homicidal ones.

Characters: Shawn, Gus, Juliet, Lassiter, Henry

Words: 5,924

TW: panic attacks, buried alive, claustrophobia

Note: If you liked this classic lit-inspired Psych fic, you can always check out this one I wrote, inspired by To Kill a Mockingbird: The Finch and the Mockingbird

Keep reading here, or on AO3!

If you enjoy, please consider liking, commenting, or re-blogging, and you can follow me for more content like this! :)

I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I re-erected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat!

- Edgar Allan Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado”

Her name was Olivia Hale, she was a twenty-three-year-old grad student at UCSB, and she was working on her doctorate in American lit. She was attractive in a cute librarian sort of way - short and petite, with long, curly auburn hair she kept in a bun and oversized glasses with thick lenses, and a smattering of freckles across her slightly upturned nose. She knew a little bit about everything when it came to literature as a whole, a rather impressive amount about American literature, and absolutely everything there was to know about the life and works of one Edgar Allan Poe.

She was also batshit crazy and currently pointing a .22 pistol directly at Shawn’s head.

“Don’t move,” she growled, disengaging the safety.

Shawn did a cursory glance around the empty classroom, looking for anything at all he could use to his advantage, to distract her or attack her with or - worst case scenario - to use as a shield. But Olivia had found him snooping around on the tiny fourth floor study room that she’d been given to use by the department chair as her thesis headquarters. She’d really made herself at home here, piling books and journals and what seemed like hundreds of loose sheets of paper on every available surface.

But he was stranded in the middle of the room, with nothing close enough to use as a weapon, and so Shawn used the most powerful tool he had, one that had saved his life and many others, wooed women all over the country, and ordered more chili cheese dogs than he could count.

He started talking.

“Look, Olivia, I get it,” he said soothingly. Slowly, in the most non-threatening manner possible, he lowered his hands. Olivia gripped the pistol tighter but didn’t shoot. “I know what happened. You didn’t mean to kill him.”

Her eyes were wide and fierce, her lips pursed into a thin line. “No,” she admitted. “It was an accident. But he was going to--”

“Yeees,” drawled Shawn, slowly raising his left hand and putting it to his temple, very well aware that he was probably pushing the limit with all of this movement after she had expressly ordered, at gunpoint, for him to stay still. “I see it. Dr. Graves was feeling guilty, wasn’t he? A fifty-five-year-old professor with a fancy PhD and tenure, and a devoted wife and three kids and two grandkids, to boot. The perfect life. But oooh, it wasn’t enough for him, was it?”

Shawn immediately answered his own question, something that he had become exceptionally good at over the years since he was usually the only one who could keep up with himself. “Of course not! What’s the perfect job and family when you’ve got a smokin’ hot, super smart student in her mid-twenties who thinks you’re the most impressive man on the planet?”

She sneered, and Shawn noticed with some trepidation that the hand holding the gun trembled just the tiniest bit. When she spoke, her voice warbled with rage. “My age and appearance had nothing to do with it - and even if it did, there was nothing wrong with our relationship! We were perfect for each other, intellectual equals. We were on each other’s levels - he was my soulmate! So don’t you dare belittle what we had like that!”

Ah. So he had hit a nerve. This could now go either one of two ways, in Shawn’s extensive experience in being held hostage: Either she would get fed up and send a bullet screaming through his body, Garth Longmore style, or she would let her emotions distract her, and cause her to make a stupid mistake. Obviously, Shawn hoped for the latter.

Now Shawn had to make a choice, because he could proceed in one of two ways: Either he could back off and try from another angle, or he could further antagonize her into (hopefully) making a mistake. Naturally, Shawn went with the latter.

“Sure, sure,” he agreed airily. “Older men and younger women do it all the time. But to say there was nothing wrong with your relationship? The man was married, and you were his student. I’m not the headmaster here -”

“Dean,” she corrected sharply, and this further proved that Shawn had pegged her correctly as a know-it-all literature wunderkind who had to be right one thousand percent of the time. “This isn’t Hogwarts.”

Shawn gave a tiny shrug. “To be honest, all big schools look like Hogwarts to me.”

“Because you have the mind of a child.” The words were accusatory and patronizing, but Shawn flashed a dazzling smile.

“Thank you,” he said. Before she could respond, he continued his earlier thoughts, “Even though you were the ‘perfect couple,’ you were furious with him for even suggesting that you stop seeing one another. The affair was too risky, and he missed his wife. He wanted to tell her the truth, fix things.”

“It would have ruined everything!” Olivia hissed, and the sound of her voice sent shivers down Shawn’s spine. There was an unhinged quality to it, something raw and dangerous that he hadn’t sensed before. He fought the sudden urge to backpedal as far away from her as possible. “We were perfect together! And if he told his wife and she let it slip, I would be kicked out! All my research, all my time and work here, everything would be gone! He had no right to make that decision for me, to take away my future!”

“Maybe,” said Shawn, and it was like he was watching from outside his body, because he knew that what he was about to say was a big mistake, but he was helpless to stop the words from tumbling from his lips, “you should have thought more about your future before you pursued your married Shakespeare teacher.”

Fury etched itself into every feature of her face, turning her from a beautiful librarian to a feral monster, but her voice was slow and measured as if it was taking every ounce of self-control she possessed not to shoot him where he stood. “He taught Southern. Gothic. Masterpieces.”

Shawn tried to backtrack, to undo whatever damage had been done by his unpredictably big mouth. “But,” he pressed. “Killing him was an accident. You didn’t mean to push him down four flights of stairs.”

She considered this. “No, I didn’t mean to kill him,” she reaffirmed, and then an odd calm smoothed out the angry crevices between her eyebrows - the peace, perhaps, of having come to an important decision that she knew was absolutely right. Shawn recognized the look because he’d seen it on others’ faces before (very rarely, if ever, had he seen it upon his own). “And I don’t think I will kill you, either.”

Whatever Shawn had been expecting, this wasn’t it. Everything about this woman screamed insane and vengeful. If Shawn lived, he would turn her into the police, and she would go to jail for a very long time. She was incredibly intelligent - surely she knew this!

And then she clarified, and the world started to make sense again - though Shawn would have honestly been perfectly content in this alternate reality where the bad guy suddenly has a miraculous change of heart. “Well,” she amended, “I won’t kill you directly. I’ve never shot anyone before - I only have this little guy here because I’m a young, pretty girl on a big college campus, and I have two night classes. Besides, your death shouldn’t be so easy.”

Shawn swallowed. “Olivia, you don’t have to do this. You haven’t intentionally killed anyone yet. If you turn yourself in now and cooperate, your sentence will be a lot shorter than if you kill me - directly or not. Because make no mistake, even if you kill me, you will still get caught. The SBPD has some damn good detectives, and they’ll bring you down even if I don’t.”

She didn’t respond to him directly. Instead, her expression was flat save for the dark gleam in her eyes, and she intoned words that in and of themselves had no meaning to Shawn, but that still managed to strike a chord of fear deep inside of his soul. “‘The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.’” Shawn was utterly unnerved by this point; it was like she had been taken over by something both sinister and incredibly well-spoken.

And indeed, in many ways she had, as Shawn soon found out, she was quoting the beginning of a story by Edgar Allan Poe.

Presently, however, Shawn had no context for her strange words or sudden shift of demeanor. His skin crawled and his heart pumped with more get-up-and-go than he’d ever been able to muster in his whole body before. “Uh, Olivia…”

“Move,” she ordered.

This time, though it was contrary to his nature, Shawn did what she said without arguing. This side of the student, with stolen words sliding evilly from her mouth, was a million times scarier than the enraged Olivia who had very nearly shot him between the eyes.

She marched him out of the room and down the three flights of stairs to the main lobby of the English building. It was dark outside, nearing midnight, and Shawn kicked himself for thinking he was clever for coming to investigate this late. He’d thought she’d be at home sleeping. He should have realized that as a grad student, sleeping was the one thing she wouldn’t have time for! And now he was in very deep trouble, alone, and no one knew where he was. He should have waited until morning, until the building wasn’t deserted, should have at least called Gus and told him what he was doing. But it was a college campus, and she was a tiny little literature nerd - it should have been safe!

As she forced him down one flight of stairs, then two, then three, and finally, into a stairwell off the beaten path that had to be unlocked with a key card - which she had - she continued to encant, her voice slowly losing its flatness and growing into something twisted and sing-songy with every word.

“‘You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point, definitely, settled - but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk.’”

“Olivia--”

It was as if she hadn’t heard him as she shoved him into the basement, and now her voice stilled from a chant to a slow, measured whisper.. “‘I must not only punish but punish with impunity.’”

Shawn wasn’t sure what impunity was, but it sure as hell didn’t sound good.

Their final destination ended up being a small, partially finished storage room near the back of the basement. Dusty boxes and rusted cabinets and archaic old computer monitors lined the walls and cluttered most of the walking space. Shawn was reminded grimly of a school supply graveyard.

Olivia stopped him when they came to a brick wall that had been busted through to fix some issue with the pipes - Shawn saw the water stains on the concrete floor near the break in the wall, and there was a brand new water pipe joined to an old, yellowed one at about eye-level in the small open space between the bricks and the drywall beyond. Shawn also noticed that the new bricks had been neatly piled up near a sealed bucket that almost certainly contained mortar, right outside of the hole. Someone was in the process of walling this section back up.

“Nice wall,” Shawn joked, relieved that Olivia had finally stopped her creepy recitation and desperately trying to lighten the mood and bring things back to some sort of normal - honestly, he’d take being threatened with the gun again to the horror movie stuff he’d just witnessed. “I bet all the other walls are jealous of it.”

It was a lame joke, but her eerie dramatics had him all kinds of messed up. He expected her to tell him to shut up, or to threaten to shoot him again, or to actually shoot him, but instead she asked him a question in that same cold, calm voice as before. “Have you ever read ‘The Cask of Amontillado,’ Shawn?”

Shawn blinked. “I make it a point not to read anything that’s not a magazine from the 80s or WikiHow articles on ‘How to Escape from Dangerous Forest Animals.’”

The corner of her lips lifted in a mockery of a satisfied smile. “Good. Then you’ll get to experience it for yourself, first hand. Just wait until you get to the ending! You’re going to love it.”

Somehow, Shawn doubted that very much.

Still holding the gun on him with one hand, she reached her free hand into the cross-body bag she wore and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. Shawn groaned.

“Come on! What college student just carries handcuffs in their school bag?” Then he remembered that this particular student had until recently been having a passionate affair with her teacher. “Wait - never mind. It makes perfect sense.”

She laughed, even though what he said wasn’t even remotely funny. The sound of it was strange and discordant - light and tinkly with a threatening undertone that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Then she gestured at the hole in the wall and ordered, “In.”

Shawn had known it was coming, but had tried to shove that knowledge into the corner of his mind - something that was quite difficult to do for someone with a photographic and eidetic memory - in an effort to convince himself that even she wasn’t that cruel. He tried to appeal to her one last time: “Olivia, it’s not too late to stop this. I mean, are you really going to do this to another human being - seriously, look at this place - it’s dusty and moldy and I’m almost certain there’s no room service! If you’re going to chain me to a pipe, why not do it in a five star hotel?” When she nudged him with the gun, eyes gleaming with something dark and triumphant, he reluctantly stepped into the small space and implored, “I’ll even settle for a seedy motel off a poorly lit backroad. I’m not too picky.”

She didn’t answer him as she stood on her tiptoes and handcuffed Shawn’s wrists around the pipe, cinching them so tight that the metal dug into his skin and he doubted that even his dad’s lessons on escaping handcuffs wouldn’t be much help here. Already he could feel his fingers going numb, and his shoulders and back had started to ache from the hunched position he was forced to take due to the height of the pipe and the awkward angle of his arms.

Well, Shawn thought glumly as she smiled at her handiwork and carefully backed out of the small space, maybe all wasn’t lost. Surely someone would come down here and find him. This place was dusty, but it couldn’t be abandoned - work still needed to be done down here, after all. And he could always yell for help once he was sure Olivia was gone. She was booksmart, but maybe she wasn’t criminally minded. He might be in for an uncomfortable night, but in the morning someone would find him and he could have his vision and the cute little psychopath would go to jail for a very long time.

He waited for her to leave, but instead, she used a crowbar to pry the lid off the bucket of mortar, and the pit in Shawn’s stomach became a whole-ass trench. He should have seen this coming - his heart pounded madly against his rib cage as if trying to free itself, with or without him. He couldn’t blame it. “Olivia, please,” he said, and this time, there was no joke, his voice imploring and terrified. “You don’t have -”

Again, she cut him off. “How would you like to hear a story before you die, Shawn?” she asked in a tone so casual that she could have been asking him if he wanted to grab a taco.

“How about you tell me a story and then I don’t die?” Shawn bargained weakly.

“Mmmm… If you stay alive, my whole life will be ruined,” Olivia reasoned. “And I have worked far too hard to allow that to happen. So. You just stand there - quietly - and I’ll tell you the story of Poe’s most beloved tale of revenge. I won’t tell you word for word, of course - we don’t have time for that - but for posterity, I do have it memorized.” She sounded grotesquely proud of that fact. “It’s my favorite of his stories, after all.”

And so, as she slowly began to brick up the hole in the wall, with Shawn trapped, helpless and in a dissociative state of panic, she told him the story of two men with really stupid names that Shawn somehow managed, despite his raging fear, to file away for later as possible nicknames for Gus.

“Our story starts in Italy, during the carnival, and our narrator is a man named Montresor, who has a grudge against his once-friend, now-foe, Fortunato…”

The story was an interesting one, even to Shawn, who preferred watching over reading and especially over listening any day. And as it turned out, Olivia was a really good storyteller. If he had been in any other position, Shawn might have actually enjoyed the suspenseful tale of revenge.

But as he stooped there and was forced to listen, all he could think about was about how terrified this Fortunato guy must have been, and then he started wondering how long it had been before the man hadn’t been able to hold his bladder or… other things… anymore, and then about what had happened when he was too tired and dizzy to stand up, if the manacles on his wrists had pulled so hard against his flesh that they cut into him, and if lack of water or oxygen killed him first, all the while he knew that he wasn’t asking these questions for the sake of the fictional character. He was asking them for himself. Olivia had made it exceedingly clear - for a literature scholar, she was surprisingly un-subtle about any underlying meanings or motives - that Fortunato’s story was now to be his story.

It wasn’t until she had begun discussing with rapture the brilliance of Poe’s use of the Italian carnival as the setting of a story about murder (because of its abandonment of social order, whatever that meant) and had built up all but the last two bricks, leaving a hole around Shawn’s eye level, that came to the most horrifying realization yet. He’d been so focused on his own thoughts and fears with Olivia’s words washing over him like an acid bath that he’d barely registered that the dim light in the hole had been darkening incrementally with each new brick placed. Now he came to the bone-chilling understanding that once she placed those last two bricks, he would be completely in the dark.

He was going to die, alone, terrified, and in utter darkness with fear as his only friend. He thought in that moment that he might die of a heart attack before he could even think about dehydrating or suffocating. Honestly, it sounded like an easier way to go.

“Well,” said Olivia finally. “I can’t say that it’s been a pleasure to meet you in any way, Shawn, but I suppose I should thank you. Ever since I found out about this unfinished wall down here, I’ve had this unscratchable itch to recreate the titular scene from my favorite Poe story. You gave me the means and justification to do it!”

Shawn was so overcome by the surging sea of fear and early-onset claustrophobia that he couldn’t even muster up the gumption to make a joke about the word titular. Instead, as Olivia knelt down next to her bag, rooting around for something, he jerked madly against the handcuffs, desperately searching for any give in the metal or the pipe he was handcuffed to (or even his wrists, at this point he wasn’t picky). But the pipe was new, and it was sturdy, and so was the fitting that connected it to the old one, which itself didn’t seem too keen on budging, either.

A sick grin teased at Olivia’s parted lips. “Oh, Fortunato tried that too. But then he stopped crying and struggling and chose to die with a shred of dignity. But I highly doubt dignity is something you’re capable of.”

And then, with the finality of fitting a lid to a coffin, she slapped a piece of fluorescent pink duct tape over his mouth and a fresh wave of panic ravaged Shawn’s everything. He didn’t remember this happening in her retelling of the story! Then again, the Fortunato guy had been sealed into catacombs deep underground. Shawn was in the basement of a heavily trafficked university building. Someone would actually hear him if he called for help, so she took his voice away from him too. He couldn’t even sing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” to pass his time or distract him from the inevitable. As if it wasn’t bad enough that he would die in the dark, he would die in the quiet too - and silence was, as his incessant need for chatter plainly proved, Shawn’s worst enemy.

“Goodbye, Shawn,” Olivia said, and she added one brick, layered on the mortar, and then gave her captive one last satisfied glance before adding the last brick and leaving Shawn in total, impenetrable darkness. He would never forget that last, terrible look in her eyes before his world went black - she was no longer human; she had elevated herself to the level of the storytelling gods and she relished in the twisted power she held over the life of another human.

As her footsteps clipped away, her voice, obscenely gleeful, called out, “In pace requiescat!”

***

The next ten hours were the worst of Shawn’s life, and they consisted of five main elements all bundled together into a nightmare that would stalk him for the rest of his life.

Cold. It was the middle of January, and though it couldn’t have been less than forty-five degrees outside, the basement - especially behind the walls - was chilly, and with the musty smell and the dust and the pitch black, Shawn was reminded far too much of a grave and knew that he might as well be in one, because this was going to be his. It was the kind of cold that bit deeper than the skin and wormed its way into the very core and dug its icy fangs in and refused to let go - the chill of death, an open invitation from the dead to join them in their home beneath the ground. He shivered a lot, but he couldn’t be sure if it was the cold, or the panic. It was probably a little of both.

Dark. The darkness that surrounded him had an unreal nature that could easily trick the eyes into thinking that they were already closed. It was oppressive and thick, pressing in from all sides, inky black water dredged from the depths of the sea.

Shawn had never been a fan of the dark, but neither did he exactly fear it. That changed the second that the last brick was put into place and he found himself in a darkness so severe that were in not for the feeling of floor beneath his feet he could have been suspended in the depths of space so remote that not even stars could reach. The darkness swarmed his senses - it had a physical presence, and it didn’t lessen, never permitted Shawn’s eyes to adjust to it in the slightest. It just hung there, surrounded him, assaulted his mind with its infinite arsenal of nightmares.

After experiencing true darkness, Shawn would never sleep without a nightlight again (which unfortunately meant he couldn’t judge Gus anymore for using one, either).

Pain. At first it was just the pull of his shoulders, the ache in his back. Then, about five minutes after he’d been sealed up, he realized his wrists were screaming with agony - he must have torn them badly when he fought to get away, but the adrenaline staved off the pain until now. He vaguely wondered how deeply the cuffs had cut - it felt like the skin on his wrists had been flayed - but quickly remembered that it didn’t matter where he was going.

Then there were the hunger pangs, and they mingled with the cramps from holding his bladder longer than he ever had before, and at some point muscle spasms in his arms and chest and legs joined the choir of suffering. At one point, he shed a few tears, but they could have just as easily been from anxiety or exhaustion, which itself produced its own kind of pain - he longed to sleep, but his body refused to allow him even that comfort until the very end, right before he was rescued, as if he were being forced on pain of death to endure the pain of death right up until the very moment of his painful death.

At least he didn’t have too much trouble breathing. There must have been a crack somewhere in the wall in front of or behind him, because fresh air was entering somehow. He did, several hours into his imprisonment, begin finding it difficult to pull in a full breath, and by the time he was rescued he was giddy with light-headedness, but he didn’t know if it was from the air quality or exhaustion or panic or from being forced to breathe only through his nose for hours, but he really didn’t care.

Quiet. Even worse than the cold and the dark and the pain was the quiet. The tape over his mouth prevented him from doing the one thing that could bring him comfort in even the most difficult of situations. Talking was what Shawn did - he utilized mindless prattle to distract bad guys, to make people underestimate him, to quell fear and panic in himself and those around him, to annoy and wheedle those whose opinions meant the most to him (and who he was most afraid to be real with), and most importantly, to distract himself from all the pain and baggage that his exceptional memory had filed away for him throughout the years. Talking nonsense meant that he wasn’t thinking about or acknowledging the parts of himself that arguably needed the most attention, those bits that were scared and unsure and hurt and vulnerable.

Shawn had always detested silence, and now it had invaded so intimately that even he could not drive it out.

And all of these culminated in a constant, agonizing state of absolute, unrelenting fear.

Panic attacks are horrific things that take your natural instincts in potentially dangerous situations and turn them against you in the cruelest of ways. They suck the air out of your lungs and make your heart pound so fast and so hard that you are convinced it’s going to give out in pure fatigue and never make it to that next beat. It makes your skin crawl like there are thousands of spiders nesting there, and your chest hurts and your breath is short and stunted and you know you are dying, that the next breath will be your last, but it isn’t, and the fear just continues and sometimes you curl into a ball or rock back and forth or scratch at your skin.

Panic attacks generally last anywhere from five to twenty minutes. Shawn was stuck in a state of raw, unfiltered panic for ten hours. When the EMTs at the scene took his heart rate, it was 160, had been the entire time he’d been buried in a collegiate tomb, knowing that he was going to die.

Put simply, Shawn Spencer spent ten hours in his own personal hell.

***

It was nearly three in the afternoon when Detectives Juliet O’Hara and Carlton Lassiter, with the help of a frantic Gus and a worried Henry that tried his damndest not to show how worried he was, made the final connections in the case and tracked down the woman who had slept with and then killed her lover like a hyper-intelligent, book-loving black widow. Juliet and Gus remained on the college campus to continue investigating while Lassiter and Henry went on to the station to question Olivia. She had refused to say where the missing psychic detective was, however, and only offered one bitter phrase, spoken in another language that sounded to the questioning party like a curse being placed on their heads:

“Nemo me impune lacessit.”

It was Gus who figured it out after Lassiter related the cryptic saying over the phone.

“I know that phrase!” he exclaimed to a swell of raised eyebrows. “It’s Latin! It means no one wounds me with impunity!”

“You speak Latin?” Juliet seemed impressed.

“Not much. But I recognize that particular saying, because it’s from a story that gave me nightmares my entire sophomore year of college.” He shuddered. “It’s from the second-most terrifying Poe story.” He didn’t elaborate on what the first-most terrifying one was, largely because he didn’t want to give the others fodder to use “The Tell-Tale Heart” against him like Shawn already did. Then the full implications of the words sunk in and he gasped, “We have to find Shawn, now.” The horror in his expression sent a chill down Juliet’s spine.

“Gus - what the hell are you talking about?” Henry was no longer trying to hide the panic in his voice.

“It’s from ‘The Cask of Amontillado,’ Gus clarified, his own panic making it difficult to express himself clearly.

“Guster, this is hardly the time for you to have a glass of wine,” Lassiter barked. “Now stop talking in riddles and just spit it out!”

But Juliet had now made the connection as well and answered for Gus. “Oh my gosh - isn’t that the one where the guy is sealed into a wall and left to die?”

The dread in Gus’s eyes said it all.

“He’s got to be somewhere on campus,” Henry reasoned, and his voice shook the tiniest bit. “Lassiter and I are on our way back to you now. In the meantime, check with the school and see if there are any places that are easily accessed and under construction.”

No one said it aloud, but the possibility that her words hadn’t been a hint at all and that Shawn was somewhere else entirely hung in the air amongst them. It was funny, Juliet thought - though it wasn’t funny at all - she urgently needed Gus’s theory to be right, because otherwise they would have no leads, but at the same time, she was terrified of the implications if it were true.

Her heart felt as sick as Montresor’s when he placed the last brick as she and Gus raced to the administration building and prayed they weren’t too late.

***

When they broke through the wall, the sight that greeted them was one that would never leave them - any of them. Even Lassiter, who made it his sacred duty to remain unfazed by anything his job threw at him was visibly disturbed.

A moment of silence, a beat where time stood still and everyone was afraid to move, and then -

“Shawn!” The four rescuers surged forward as one, but Henry got there first, his trembling fingers groping for a pulse - thank God, but it was racing, dangerously fast, and in the background he heard Lassiter radioing for an ambulance.

Shawn woke up as Henry gently peeled the hideous pink duct tape (an affront to all duct tape everywhere) off of his mouth. It wasn’t a gentle waking, a flutter of eyelashes or the murmuring of a name - it was violent and erratic, fueled by terror.

Henry had had to deal with panic attacks before - mostly Gus’s when he took the boys camping together, but once or twice when Shawn was really young and he’d had a bad dream. This one was the worst that he’d ever seen - Shawn woke with a muffled yell, panting through his nose, writhing, tears streaming down his face, eyes squeezed shut against the trauma he’d been subjected to, and he threw himself against the handcuffs so fiercely that Henry feared he’d break his wrists.

Soon his wrists were freed, though, and Henry, with the help of Lassiter, helped a weakened Shawn out of the wall and into the basement and lowered him to the floor. Henry sat with him and rubbed his back and spoke quietly to him, Juliet took his hand, and Gus reassured him while Lassiter ran up the stairs to check on the ETA of the ambulance.

Twenty minutes later, Shawn had been placed onto a stretcher and carried up the stairs and out into the sunlight - sensing the warm rays, he opened his eyes only to pinch them shut again as the brightness after so many hours in the dark nearly blinded him. He had been given something to calm him down, and he would be going to the hospital to be checked over and observed overnight, and a psychiatrist would be sent in to evaluate him in the morning, and everything was moving so fast that Shawn leaned over the side of the stretcher and deposited the remnants of the last thing he’d eaten, nearly twelve hours before.

“There’s one thing I still don’t get,” he gasped as he was eased back onto the stretcher. “Where do the armadillos come into her plan?”

The EMTs exchanged a concerned look at the stretcher, probably wondering if there had been some carbon monoxide poisoning after all. Gus, however, just rolled his eyes.

“Amontillado, Shawn. It’s a kind of wine.”

“The story is called ‘The Casket of the Armadillos,’” Shawn argued stubbornly, going so far as to cross his arms over his chest, pulling at the IV in his right hand.

Gus was going to argue, to insist that he’d actually read the story (and why the heck would someone fill a casket with armadillos?), but then Gus saw the plea in Shawn’s hazel eyes, that need for jokes and silliness, and understood that his best friend was clinging onto his last shreds of control.

“You know what - I forgot,” Gus corrected, shaking his head and giving himself a light smack on the forehead for good measure. “It is ‘The Casket of Armadillos.’” He glared out at Henry, at Lassiter and Juliet and the EMTs, defying them to challenge his claim. No one did, but they all shared a similar baffled expression.

Well, they could deal with their confusion, Gus thought protectively as he watched Shawn and Henry disappear into the ambulance. Shawn had been through a night of unspeakable horror, so if it was armadillos he wanted, then it was armadillos he was going to get.

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signetxego · 4 years

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Done with the first member the Flintseol dorm! First up is the dorm leader!

“Out in the great big sky is where i wanna be! Why sit in one place when the whole world is just waiting to be seen!”

Personal Information

Name: フィンイアン　アルゲーント

Romanji: Finnian Argent

Gender: Male

Age: 18

Birthday: February 14th

Star sign: Aquarius

Height: 185cm

Eye colour: Green (natural), ice blue (artificial)

Hair colour: Blonde

Homeland: Crescent shore

Professional Status

Dorm: Flintseol

School year: 2nd

Class: 3-D

Occupation: Student, dorm leader

Club: Stargazing club

Best subject: Flying

Fun Facts

Dominant hand: Ambidextrous

Favourite food: “Specialty stew”

Least favourite food: Eggs

Dislikes: Staying in one place for too long

Hobby: Testing out his hoverboard

Talents: Cooking

Personality:

Finnian is a real strange kid. He’s very intelligent, both in understanding puzzles, and reading into people’s behaviour, but behaves like a complete idiot. He does things in his own, weird way, showing up to meetings late, arriving in class on his hoverboard, and deliberately making the wrong potions in alchemy. He likes to get a reaction out of people for his own entertainment by being as outrageous as he can make himself, and will do anything for a good bit of fun. He doesn’t really have any limits or inhibitors, and has no qualms doing things that others might hesitate to do, such as trying to poke malleus’ horns in class, to deliberately getting squeezed by floyd to see ‘how tight floyd can go before putting a dent in his robotic body’. He desires freedom above all else, never wanting to stay still in one place, and deliberately doing things just because he has the ability to do so. He’s quite unpredictable, but what is constant about him is that he craves excitement and new things, getting bored easily and wanting to move onto something new, seeking a differnt type of thrill every day. He never takes anything seriously, laughing no matter what, and it’s theorised that the reason he has so many electronic parts is because of his reckless, irresponsible behaviour. Finnian is actually very mysterious and untrusting, making up new, elaborate and vastly different stories of his life before coming to night raven college every other day, and never answering anyone’s questions seriously. He refuses to show anyone what lies underneath his foolhardy persona—that is his cunning mind and sharp wits. He believes it’s every man for themselves and has no real sense of loyalty to others, even the people he calls his friends. He likes to keep his talents to himself to give himself the advantage over others, playing the role of an irresponsible idiot perfectly, and using his bright smile to keep an emotional distance between him and others. Despite his harsh upbringing which developed this mindset, he’s quite softhearted deep down, and always wants the members of his dorm to be smiling. He’s overly friendly, enjoying the happiness of others whilst doing his best not to get attached, in case he needs to stab them in the back later on. After all, surviving as a pirate is a selfish business, a lesson he has taken to heart.

Unique magic: 「Fool’s silver」

Anything finnian touches with the tips of his fingers turns to silver. Until the spell is undone, it will remain as silver, and loses its original use, becoming ‘inanimate’. This applies to magical objects if the power of the object is weaker than finnian’s magic power. He can control anything he’s turned into silver, and shape, move and sculpt it at will. No matter how much he messes with it, it will return fully to its past state when the spell is released, unless it’s a living thing.

Trivia:

The left side of finnian’s body is completely robotic. It’s maintained and upgraded regularly by Idia, and as such Idia is the only person who Finnian properly respects and never messes around with.

Finnian is accompanied by a morph, a strange pink creature that can shapeshift into whatever it chooses. The two of them cause quite the scene on campus together.

Finnian has no parents, and grew up alone on the streets, but made a fortune through stealing and gambling when he was young, and has built himself quite the luxurious lifestyle.

His hoverboard is his pride and joy, a flying device he made himself originally from scrap metals, piloted by a single sail. Since he was a child, he’s been upgrading it and testing it in increasingly dangerous environments

Finnian prides himself on ‘never being lost’, due to his impeccable sense of direction and his talent for reading the stars. Unfortunately, he makes up his own constellations and names for the stars, and does very poorly in astronomy as a result.

Due to part of his tongue being robotic, his taste buds are uhm... weird. He’s an amazing chef and can actually cook anything very well, but often chooses to make himself things that look and taste absolutely toxic, such as his famous ‘speciality stew’ which tends to put people off due to the toad eye floating on top of it.

Finnian has been the dorm leader since his first day at school. Flintseol tradition states that every year, the dorm leader must create a puzzle, and whoever solves it can take over as leader, and make their own puzzle next year. As nobody has yet solved his puzzle, Finnian has been dorm leader for his whole time at night raven college.

He loves weird things, scary things, and exciting things. He’s got no sense of personal space, and smothers people who he thinks fit the bill for this, including most of diasomnia, savanaclaw, and octavinelle.

His real list of hobbies should be “tormenting malleus, tormenting vil, tormenting riddle, and tormenting inigo” because he specifically likes the reactions these people give him. He has no qualms with asking invasive questions, invading their personal space, and doing whatever comes to mind that might annoy them.

#twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland oc #twst #twst oc #twst fan dorm #fan dorm #flintseol #finnian argent #shiro draws #oh my god i hate this bastard cyborg so much someone please put him down #tried rlly hard to write his personality up w/out using the word 'chaotic' bc really he is just a chaotic entity #inigo is the vice dorm leader btw i'll get to drawing him next #oc profile

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fayevalcntine · 4 years

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I don’t understand what Rory sees in Logan. My best guess is that she gets swept up in his carefree attitude bc she’s never really been able to have that and is always worried about what her mom thinks, her grandparents, the town etc, and I can see that as a coping strategy in the revival when she feels like she’s failing. But I just don’t see that as lasting/becoming as serious as we are meant to think they are in season 6/7

I think you've got a good point there when it comes to what Rory likes about him. To me their relationship in season 5 seemed to exist for the sake of Rory "discovering" the "good" side of the rich world, i.e. the fun and carelessness of their parties, the lack of worry when it comes to the consequences of their actions (like Logan breaking into the cafeteria for her to get the cereal she wanted), the unpredictability of Logan himself (going to New York on a whim after he gets pissed off at his father, spending time with her one week and then not paying attention to her the next). I think that the season did a fair job at displaying the really negative side of Rory's behavioral change though, because as we've talked about her sticking with people with stronger personalities and sometimes even mimicking them in her own actions (like with how she spontaneously went off to New York to see Jess and skipped a day in school), she steals a yacht with Logan's help after she feels diminished over Mitchum's words.

This sort of thing carries into the beginning of season 6, because Rory by then has dropped out of school and has pretty much limited herself to her grandparents' world purely because she feels like she has nothing else to amount to now. But as the season goes forward, we never see Rory somehow immerse herself with enthusiasm in the whole DAR/rich parties thing (as much as r*gan shippers love pretending she did and she somehow loved it). Rory can easily do things like organizing parties and telling waiters what to do because it's basic stuff for her, but she's not doing it because she wants to choose the same life her grandmother lives as a stay-at-home rich wife; she's doing it because she thinks her original plans for her future are gone now, so there's nothing else to do for her. The whole 'persona' she embodies during that time is shattered once Jess comes back in her life and she finally gathers the courage to pick her life back where she left it off. Logan's a key player in how Rory goes through those changes at that time, because he introduced the "good" side to being rich and careless, but he also inadvertently allowed her to go too far when she committed a felony because to him, it's not a significant thing to do. Logan embodies both the "good" but also the extremely privileged sides of being rich, even when he considers himself unlucky by being pushed through one door in his life: he can commit felonies without having to worry that they'll ever leave a permanent mark on his life and his 'promising' future, he already has a secured job for him that he will immediately take over, and a highly ranking one next to his father, at that (in comparison to Rory 'climbing the latter'), he can even destroy public properties and be a kleptomaniac with rich people's valuable ornaments without ever having to worry that he'll get in trouble or pay for it. He can even be kicked out of multiple private high-schools and take time off of Yale and still come back without any issue.

It's pretty telling how their relationship is abruptly put to a halt the minute that Rory 'wakes up' from her depression over Yale and her future career, because Logan's presence isn't really necessary to her story anymore. And after that, it's either by his own insistence that they get back together or by him almost dying that they stay together in spite of the obvious issue with him not communicating with her in a healthy way at all (over the bridesmaids, not taking no for an answer from her, only victimizing himself over his decisions and never accepting it as his fault, even breaking up with her through his sister).

Given that we know what Amy's plans for season 7 are now, I don't think we were meant to see the relationship as serious as it's somehow given to us in season 7 either. And even taking into consideration season 7 as it is, I can only see Rory and Logan as a relationship meant for her years through university, just as Rory and Dean were meant to be her relationship for her years during high school. Even when they seem to have zero issues on the surface, the relationship ends, again, when Logan says it should, because Rory isn't ready to marry him right out of uni (signifying the general problem that he doesn't simply take no for an answer and doesn't ever want to compromise with her in the long run).

As for the revival, you're right, I think the best (and correct) interpretation of their affair is Rory going back to a relationship that she had during her successful years at Yale, when her future still seemed promising and unknown to her. It reminds me of Lorelai falling back into a relationship with Chris when she felt rejected by Luke, or considering picking it up again after she ended her engagement with Max.

I personally would've preferred it if their relationship had ended at the very least after the bridesmaids incident, because at this point, Logan's relationship with Rory just doesn't bring anything new or worthwhile to her development or character. And I would've preferred for Rory to simply have a season, or at least half of one, where she's single by her own choice, and she doesn't actually mind it, or finds anything wrong with it. I hate that in the only season that she was single, she was still likely hurting over Jess leaving, and felt like she had to date simply because "that's what college kids do". Even Paris having an affair with Rory's professor of all things felt like it was sometimes used as a 'reminder' for Rory that she doesn't have a boyfriend, which makes me want to heave, considering how Asher was taking advantage of a 19 yo Paris at the time.

#gilmore girls #anti rogan #anti logan huntzberger #sort of?#answered #anonymous #i also feel like the writers dragged out dean and logan for SO LONG #like we had to suffer through dean for FIVE SEASONS #NOTHING IS WORTH DEAN FOR FIVE SEASONS #i demand compensation for my time; Amy!

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tabloidtoc · 4 years

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Us, January 18

You can now buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Why Prince William forgave Prince Harry

Page 1: First Look -- the details on Jessica Alba’s look as she strolled in L.A.

Page 2: Red Carpet -- Dua Lipa

Page 4: Who Wore It Best? Sara Sampaio vs. Leomie Anderson, Scarlett Johansson vs. Camilla Luddington

Page 6: Loose Talk -- Nikki Blonsky recalling her kissing scene with Zac Efron in 2007′s Hairspray, Kelly Clarkson on being so high from the dentist that she forgot she went shopping afterwards, Katy Perry confessing to doppelganger Zooey Deschanel that she used to pretend to be her before rising to fame, Chris Pine on being the underdog when it comes to his fellow famous Chrises, Chris Pratt declaring himself the top Chris in Hollywood, Kim Cattrall on not returning to Sex and the City amid reboot rumors

Page 8: Contents

Page 10: Hot Pics -- Cyndi Lauper performing in NYC on New Year’s Eve, Jennifer Lopez performing in Times Square before the ball drop, Miley Cyrus performing during Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve

Page 11: Kate Bosworth celebrated her birthday with husband Michael Polish at a pal’s house in Beverly Hills, EJ Johnson during a stroll in Miami, Randall Emmett took a break from zooming on his Jet Ski to give pregnant fiancee Lala Kent a smooch in Miami

Page 12: Amy Schumer hit the surf in a wetsuit while vacationing in St. Barts, Leslie Jones competing on Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, Margaret Qualley kept close to beau Shia LaBeouf while out for a post-holiday hike in L.A.

Page 13: John Legend and Chrissy Teigen and their kids Luna and Miles capped off 2020 with a fun-filled tropical getaway in St. Barts

Page 14: Chelsea Handler isn’t afraid to bare all

Page 18: Stars They’re Just Like Us -- Katie Holmes’ hands were full after hitting some stores in NYC, John Legend and Chrissy Teigen went for a hike while on a tropical getaway in St. Barts, Sophia Bush grabbed food to-go from Greenblatt’s Deli in L.A.

Page 20: Party Animals -- pets steal the spotlight from their famous owners -- Selena Gomez and her dog Daisy, Salma Hayek and her owl, during a royal engagement Duchess Camilla’s dog Beth helped unveil a plaque at a shelter in Surrey, England

Page 22: For Pet’s Sake -- Wells Adams and Sarah Hyland’s dog Boo cuddled under a blanket, Jeff Bridges and his puppy Monty updating fans on his battle with lymphoma, Nick Jonas with wife Priyanka Chopra Jonas’ dog Diana bundled up in the cold weather in London

Page 23: Jenna Fischer and her sleeping cat Sonny, Kate Beckinsale and her dog Myf

Page 24: Love Lives -- Rihanna and A$AP Rocky heating up

Page 25: They may have found love but season 16 Bachelorette Tayshia Adams and fiance Zac Clark admit that watching the show back wasn’t always easy, Sharna Burgess and Brian Austin Green sparked dating rumors when they were spied together at LAX jetting off on vacation, Soleil Moon Frye and Jason Goldberg have quietly separated after 22 years of marriage

Page 26: Hot Hollywood -- Alec Baldwin’s wife Hilaria Baldwin was accused of faking her Spanish heritage and accent -- while the Boston-born yoga guru has defended herself repeatedly over the last few weeks and Hilaria insists that she spent many years in Spain and that her love for the culture runs deep in her bloodline but not everyone in the Baldwin clan is convinced and this scandal has really changed Hilaria’s position within the family and it’s caused a rift within the famous crew because some other members including Alec’s brother Billy Baldwin who called it an awkward and embarrassing situation don’t trust her now and they feel she is a liar and a phony and only obsessed with her image and fame -- Hilaria does have the support of others like her stepdaughter Ireland Baldwin and her husband Alec

Page 27: On December 28 Lori Loughlin was released from prison after serving a two-month sentence for her crimes related to the nationwide college admissions scandal but her first days back in the free world have been bittersweet because it’s hard to be home without husband Mossimo Giannulli who is expected to remain bars until April -- Lori is hoping to make a career comeback and having seen that Felicity Huffman is returning to work has given her some hope that she can too and there is interest in bringing her back to Hallmark Channel

* Keeping Up With Us -- two months after ending her seven-year engagement to Jason Sudeikis actress Olivia Wilde has moved on with Harry Styles who is starring in her upcoming flick Don’t Worry Darling -- they had chemistry almost immediately and have been secretly dating for weeks, Larry King has been hospitalized in L.A. with Covid-19, former Bachelor Peter Weber and contestant Kelley Flanagan have split after eight months of dating because their personalities just didn’t mix, Jeopardy! champ Ken Jennings has apologized after past tweets mocking the disabled community resurfaced

Page 28: A Day in My Life -- Andi Dorfman

Page 30: Cover Story -- Prince William and Prince Harry healing the rift -- to Queen Elizabeth’s delight brothers William and Harry are working on repairing their fractured bond

Page 34: Fighting Shape -- find out how Wonder Woman 1984 star Gal Gadot prepper to play a superhero

Page 35: Ready for Action -- these butt-kicking superheroines pushed themselves to new limits -- Brie Larson, Danai Gurira, Scarlett Johansson

Page 36: Bachelor Bombshells -- tears and breakups and unpredictable twists -- as new Bachelor Matt James begins his journey to find love take a look back at the most shocking finales in the show’s history -- Jason Mesnick

Page 37: Brad Womack, Arie Luyendyk Jr., Peter Weber, Colton Underwood

Page 38: Beauty -- Jennifer Lopez finally shares the secret to her enviable complexion

Page 40: TV’s winter wonderland

Page 46: Fashion Police -- when bad clothes happen to good people -- Jennifer Garner, Snoop Dogg, Gwen Stefani

Page 47: Regina King, Kylie Minogue, Ana de Armas

Page 48: 25 Things You Don’t Know About Me -- will.i.am

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rotationalsymmetry · 4 years

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/business/covid-economy-parents-kids-career-homeschooling.html?fbclid=IwAR08j8RwbP4SbSW3gY07NCYr_2-g5M61ps72nQi5CMmz1CYe0DCoO-MnJ0A So. On one level, there is a very pragmatic concern here and I don’t really want to take away from it: a lot of families are in really, really bad situations and aren’t sure what to do, and the individual solutions are not good ones. Parents need a massive financial bail-out and also it’d be kind of I guess nice to figure out a way to counter the fact that lots of women are going to have their careers and lifetime earning potential dramatically harmed by this. On another level, this is what happens when you try to make child-raising as cost-efficient as possible. (And an awful lot of what goes on with schools makes a lot more sense if you see it in terms of childcare being the primary goal, socialization* being the second goal, and actual imparting of knowledge and skills to be in third place at best.) We act as though it’s reasonable to have 15-30+ kids all the same age in a room with a single adult, rather than having mixed age groups with multiple adults, including seniors, and multiple children and teenagers of different ages. This is not normal in the sense that for most of human existence, people didn’t do things that way. Mass education is a modern phenomenon just a couple centuries old. And it doesn’t have to be this way (and it also doesn’t have to be this way for kids to get a decent education) -- things are this way so that adults can go off and work in the factory office and their kids will neither get in the way of them working nor be workers themselves. (The trend of children working in factories under appallingly unsafe conditions before the rise of mass education, was really, really bad. At the time, sending all children to school was a much better alternative to having poor kids work in factories under high-risk conditions.) Point is, his is a choice we’re making. Some different choices we could make while still having an industrialized society and a mass education system:

Have decent amounts of parental leave (for dads too) like most industrialized countries. So at least daycare wouldn’t have to start as young.

Also substantial vacation time, as vacation time can be important for parent-child bonding and creating positive memories and just general enrichment.

Normalize part time work, normalize having part time work with full benefits, replace the forty hour week with a shorter length of time. The forty hour week was seen as a reasonable length when it was normal to have one parent work and one stay home; now that it’s normal to have almost all adults working, and with dramatically increased efficiency due to automation, the default week should be much shorter.

Normalize work with flexible hours.

Raise minimum wage. By a lot. (This goes hand and hand with shortening the work week: as long as fewer hours = less pay, a lot of people are going to figure they can’t afford to work fewer hours.)

Reduce stigma against stay at home parents of all genders.

Universal health care (to make it easier to work part time jobs or to be an entrepreneur, and to make it easier to take time off from working entirely.)

Have better social services in general, and possibly a Universal Basic Income. (One way to deal with the lifetime earning hit of staying home with a young child for a couple years is to tell women to not do it (and assume men already know not to); another way is to make it less painful to be poor.)

Pay for this by taxing the rich at New Deal rates and reducing the military budget. This would be a good idea even if we did nothing with the money.

Have more adults in classrooms -- which might or might not mean more teachers. Have adults who are there for the kids’ emotional needs and not just their academic needs. Separate out the teacher role from the “classroom cop” role or ideally change school’s approach to discipline/classroom management entirely (we’d have far more teachers entering and staying in the profession if teaching didn’t require enforcing discipline; at minimum we could have public tutors who work one-on-one and in small groups with struggling (or gifted) kids be a common supplement to the primary classroom teacher, as an option for teachers who don’t want to eg supervise detentions) and allow opportunities for kids who just aren’t up for participating in class on a given day to not be in class without having to go home either. (That would probably dramatically improve behavior problems right there.) Have enough counselors that seeing your counselor isn’t a once a year experience for most kids. Sometimes these extra adults should be selected based on who the community thinks is qualified and who is from the same racial/cultural background as the students, not necessarily on education credentials, since there’s massive racial and class elements to who gets educated. And pay should not be based solely on education credentials either. Have enough adults that they can respond not only to kids who are causing problems but also look out for the wellbeing of the quiet well-behaved kids too.

Encourage ways for unrelated adults and children (and children of different ages) to interact outside of daycare/school, including structured Big Brother/Big Sister type things and less structured activities.

Many nuclear families don’t live anywhere near their extended family; I’m not sure what to do about that, but it’s not ideal for children. Close relationships with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins can be very good for children’s health and development.

Pass laws restricting unpredictable shift work, which is known to be bad for worker’s health and is undoubtably terrible for parent-child bonding as well.

Fully support kids with special needs (in the sense of, kids who really do need one-on-one adult presence at all times, or perhaps more accurately situations where other people need the child to have one-on-one attention for them to be comfortable) including outside of school. Comprehensive age-appropriate education from pre-K through college about all disabilities, including developmental disabilities and mental illness, with a focus on how non-disabled kids/adults can treat disabled people respectfully.

I feel like there should be something here about how schools tend to suspend and expel black students at higher rates, but I don’t really know what to say about it.

Encourage kids to want to grow up to be well rounded human beings who are compassionate, responsible, and ethical, over being “successful” (ie having a high-status well-paying job.) Reduce the stigma of working lower status jobs for adults, and reduce the prestige of working higher status jobs. This starts with asking kids questions other than what do they want to be when they grow up, and asking adults questions other than “what do you do?”

Kids need close personal relationships with adults, and there is a limit to how close a classroom teacher can get to a class of 15 kindergardeners or multiple classes of 30 highschoolers. But, if we had a reasonable adult:child ratio -- a ratio closer to what people would experience without institutions -- and some of the adults were their primarily to build those relationships? Kids could form meaningful bonds at school as well as at home.

But also, parents should have more time available to spend with their children. And other adults as well. “It takes a village to raise a child” and all that.

*When a group of schoolkids is on a field trip, they for the most part look at you while you’re speaking, raise their hands when they have a question, etc. Homeschool groups don’t. It’s not really that raising one’s hand is necessary behavior, but if it’s behavior that you’re expecting and you don’t get it, that creates problems. Socialization is also: learning to be punctual, learning to hold your pee, learning to accept authority, learning to tune out your personal desires when they’re incompatible with the environment you’re in, learning gender roles and classism and so on, learning to evaluate whether you got the right answer or not based on what your teacher says, learning to see sparkly stickers as a reasonable substitute for personal attention, learning to keep your feelings to yourself, etc. It’s not that socialization is bad; socialization is adapting yourself to the world that you live in. Socialization is also washing your hands after using the bathroom and complimenting people on their haircuts and (right now) wearing a fucking mask.

#swearing #us centric #discourse #education #work #capitalism #political #us politics #covid-19 #coronavirus #overwhelmed parents #overwhelmed teachers #long post #socialism #socialization

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moneyshvt · 4 years

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☆ . · . simay barlas, twenty-two, female, she / her . · . ☆ AYLA CLEARWATER lives in that huge mansion over there! no, not that one. look for THE LARGE NATURAL STONE FOUNTAIN and that’ll be it. the SPORTS PHOTOGRAPHER has offered occasional glimpses of LIGHT GREEN walls and an impressive collection of EMPTY PICTURE FRAMES in the background of social media posts, but all of that is nothing compared to seeing the opulence in person. they’ve remained CLEVER as ever since moving to tercet court one year ago, but it seems like they might’ve gotten a little more of NARCISSISTIC too. maybe that’s why they’re rumored to have such a FRIENDLY relationship with everyone else who lives on this street. ☆ . · . ooc info: ollie, they/them, 21, est . · . ☆

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘

— she was adopted when she was just under two years old from turkey, so the clearwaters have always felt like her family to her. she knew the greater part of growing up that she was adopted, it just never was an issue for her. it was a fact, but it really wasn’t an important fact. she has no desire to try to find her birth parents or family, though she has visited turkey.

— the clearwaters are a triple threat in sports : her grandfather retired mlb player and coach, her father a retired prominent defenseman in the nhl and current dartmouth men’s hockey coach, and her older brother ( 26 ) is making a splash in his third year in the nfl as a wide receiver. however, her parents made sure she and her brother had a ( fairly ) average “middle class” bringing up, though they had their fair share of money in the bank. didn’t have to struggle, really, but didn’t get everything she wanted either. had a summer job scooping ice cream for two years in high school.

— grew up in norwich, vt, real big on nature and hiking and all that jazz and lowkey misses it in the heart of la.

— when she was ten she got one of those kid’s polaroid cameras ( u know the ones where the film is only a little bigger than a postage stamp ) and she was obsessed. she worked her way up through cameras over the years, having a natural eye for it.

— one of the first games she ever shot was one of her brother’s high school football games which sounds sweet but it was actually because she was so bored out of her mind and wanted something to do. needless to say, though, that was the start of it. some might say it was kind of inevitable she gravitated toward sports somehow — she was a clearwater at heart. since then she has gained a lot of knowledge and respect for all different kinds of sports.

— for college she was torn between dartmouth and nyu. she ultimately chose nyu because it was somewhere new.

— she went to nyu for advertising and photography, shooting various nyu sports teams while she was there and throughout her years, managed to shoot a few rangers, knicks, and yankees games as well. she held two summer internships with the yankees ( on her own merits or because of her family name, she may never truly know ) and ultimately graduated from nyu a year early.

— she then spent the better part of a year after graduation road tripping as you do and ended up in california. it’s all about who you know, and in picking up a favor for a friend in cali she stumbled into the perfect opportunity. from there she landed a role on the company that handles the photography for staples center and other notable teams, most notably the kings, lakers, and dodgers ( photography company based on this irl one ).

— she moved into tercet court not long after she knew she would be in la for much of the time being. it’s definitely not her house, considering she makes just enough to live on. it’s a family home, purchased initially by her father who’d wanted to sink some money into tangible assets instead of the stock market and to have a west-coast home available for the family. hey, worked out pretty well for her.

— she has predominately been tasked with shooting the kings the past year or so, though she started with shooting dodgers games last summer and is doing so this summer as well. she’s also shot a handful of lakers’ games when a friend needs someone to cover. three of her photos so far have been used in large ads and banners in the city ( including most recently her current MONEY SHOT of the game winning goal in a come back win ) --- very cool moment for her. several others have been used by local publications and websites.

— she does a little freelance work as well ; mostly for friends or friends of friends, though she’s been considering lately trying to make her skills and business available in a more professional manner. she does do a lot of photographing for herself --- a lot of candids ; she thinks they capture the true spirit of a person moreso than when they’re posing or prepared for a photo. but not in a creepy way --- she’s been the victim of the paps enough times by association with her family to know the correct boundaries and limits.

𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐂

— lowkey loves playing games with the paps, though she’s probably the only one that finds it funny. as a photographer herself she has a good eye for where they’re hiding and will also snap photos of them in turn just for her own amusement.

— she hopes someday to be the team photographer for a team, hopefully in one of the “big four” ( nfl, nhl, nba, mlb )

— she played field hockey and lacrosse through high school.

— ayla thinks she’s better at shooting people. part of what she loves about being a sports photographer is how active and unpredictable it is to shoot a game. she’s had to learn a lot to try to predict what she can.

— very much a morning person. has never had a problem waking up in the morning. who’s jealous bc i am. goes for a run at sunrise, and has showered, gotten ready for the day, and is at a local cafe shop editing photos / making graphics and drinking an iced mocha by 8. truly couldn’t be me...

— so desperately wants to be that girl with tons of cute aesthetic plants in her apartment but tragically plants always die in her care no matter what she does. probably has gotten one of those tiny tabletop sand zen gardens to make herself feel better tho she still keeps trying with plants. so far the only ones that have lived any length of time are the air plants.

— she really wants a greyhound but is afraid to make the commitment to actually adopting one.

— her personal insta ( the non-sports one ) has a modest following. a few thousand, probs.

— she has struggled a bit with people who think her opportunities have only arisen because of her family pedigree ( which some have gone so far to tell her they’re “not her family” --- which, don’t even go there, lads... ), and that has made ayla work all that much harder to prove that she’d gotten where she has on her own merits.

— she has a rule ( and in the case of the nhl there is a rule enforced by a signed contract ) about not getting involved with anyone she shoots ; it’s considered a conflict of interest. i imagine she has a really good relationship with the players though --- probably doesn’t hurt that she is pretty. at least one of them have hired her to shoot their wedding this summer even though she is wildly under qualified.

𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘

alya is a chill and laidback person at heart. her approach to the fame attached to her due to her father and brother has been to laugh it off good-naturedly. she’s generally well liked, with a hint of sass and humor. she comes across as a bit of an air-head at times, but that’s part due to a persona she put on from a young age. she has an observant eye that drew to her photography in the first place and will often allow her to draw certain conclusions about people. she’s well versed in all the sports she shoots, something that tends to surprise a lot of people, but how is she supposed to be good at her job if she isn’t ? if she gets bothered during games she typically shuts people down with wide eyes and some obscure bit of knowledge in her cute, raspy lil voice. dareisay... elle woods, what like it’s hard ? energy ??

a few of her downfalls include her narcissism and need to be liked. she looks to look and feel pretty, by her own standards, and is a queen of the self-timer and remote self photography : has two instas because of it -- one for her sports photography and one that’s a “personal” and mostly just pictures of herself. her need to be liked is something she doesn’t even realize. she likes to be seen in a positive light.

𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄

alya stands at 5′4″ with a slim but athletic build. her hair is naturally brown, but is dyed to have blonde highlights. she does not need glasses or contacts and has no tattoos.

she’s almost always wearing the same pair of beat up timberland’s she’s owned since freshman year of college. she likes to be able to move easily ( bc homegirl absolutely cannot walk in heels at all ). despite what the tabloids like to call her unfortunate choice in footwear, she likes to look cute, often pairing them with short, flowy sundresses or skirts + crop tops. when she shoots games, however, she’s dressed rather practically in skinny jeans, a crop top, and a cardigan. her hair is often kept down and loose, or in a messy bun.

𝐎𝐎𝐂

it me. ollie again. i also play fitz ( miguel bernardeau fc ). yes the overlap between fitz and ayla is not great but i truly only know one thing that that one thing is hockey asldfalsdjf sO. if y’all seeing me rping with myself on the dash bc i think it’d be fun to bounce fitz and ayla off each other mind ur own business...

#linksintro #( it's not a whole lot diff from the first time around alsdfj )

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queen-rogah · 5 years

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Trapped in Montreux (Roger Taylor x Reader)

Summary: You got a job as a bartender in a yacht somewhere in Switzerland, and you didn't know that the yacht was rented by a famous band for the whole weekend...

Warnings: Fluffs...for this time :)

Word Count: 1.4k+ words

This fic will actually last for more parts :) This is just the intro of the series. And I'm very inspired to the video where "It's A Kind of Magic" party on a boat/yacht in Montreux. They are just so iconic.

MASTERLIST

"So we're here...in Switzerland..."

You dropped your things as you stare at the little two beds, a little kitchen, little bathroom, little living room that this flat have where you and Gerda will only stay on.

"Isn't it great? I mean, we traveled here together as best friends! We have planned this when we're still in third grade! You said Montreux is the place you want to rest your bones to!." Gerda enthusiastically says then nudged you with her elbow

"I didn't remember third grade Gerda! I just remembered that I want to go in Milan! Maybe three or four hour drive from here we'll be there, we'll be there and that is the place I want to stay, not here." You replied, putting your hands around your hips.

"But!--"

"Gerda, please. This is not what I expected. I thought we're going in Milan..."

"And I thought so too that we're going here in Montreux..." She frowns, "I like it here, gives me a good feeling."

You rolled you eyes, "Fine, we'll stay here. Take this cute flat, but if something happens very unpredictable here in Montreux. We're going to Milan right away. Clear?." You said and she quickly gave you a large hug as she squeals in happiness.

"I. LOVE. YOU. Y/N." She spoke in between kisses on your cheek as you giggle. You're nothing without Gerda, she's been your friend since you're both in first grade. Now you're here, travelling the world with her as you both promise that you'll stay in other country someday. And it happens to be here in Montreux.

"Alright, alright, let's unpack our things now missy. We'll fix this house as ours." You said, picking up your things again and started to unpack.

There's still a lot room for improvement here in Montreux.

...

"Yeah. I think we're staying here in Montreux, maybe for weeks? I really don't want to stay here..." You spoke through the payphone as you took a drag on your cigarette.

Sunny day in 1986 here in Montreux, looking over people walking around and over looking Lake Geneva by the distance. You're squinting your eye under these sunglasses to see Gerda talking to a man, he looked wealthy as he wears those decent clothes, she talks to him like they have known for years.

"And why are you still there with Gerda?." Holly; your friend back home from Florida asked.

"Because she liked it here Holly! Well, as her best friend I stick with her! I don't want to leave her here in Montreux. And we're actually finding a job around here so that we can save more money for the house rent and food to eat." You rambled, finishing your cigarette as you throw it on the ground, stomping on it.

"Wish of luck there in Montreux Y/N, hope you'll find your justice as you will finally stay in Milano." She said and ended the call with you. You still lean on the telephone booth as you watch Gerda said her goodbyes to the man she's been talking to and approaches you, with the biggest smile on her face.

"What's up buttercup?." She stood beside you, also lighting up her cigarette.

"Who's the guy you've been talking to?." You asked right away.

"I'm glad you asked." She smirks and faced you, "Because that guy happens to be my classmate back in college. And his father owns a large yacht where they need caretakers and bartenders."

"Bartenders? We know how to mix drinks back in Florida! We fucking need this job Gerda!." You shouted in joy as she laughs about it.

"Well, I asked Fionn, he's the guy earlier, that he should call his dad, tell him that he found us finding a job. And that job is truly meant for us." Gerda said and exhaled the smoke in front of your face.

"Fuck yes. You're a lifesaver Gerda. I hope he'll take us. We have made a lot of good drinks back in the local bar we worked on before. I missed mixing drinks." You said, getting the cigarette from her fingers as you took a drag.

"Me too. And the best part is that the bar happens to be on a boat. I hope you know how to swim." She smirks and you playfully pushed her.

"Fuck off, I know how to swim more than you do."

She laughed, pushing you lightly too.

...

You and Gerda went out to buy some groceries and other needs in the household. You both ended up spending money mostly on foods you like and just minor on toiletries and other needs. Living with a close friend is much, much fun than living with your parents before. You can do whatever you want right now, since you have turned 24, you know adult life will come to punch you in the face. But living with Gerda, here in a foreign country that you didn't know how to speak Swedish have been helping you to stay away from being a total adult. You feel like a little child having fun with her playmates. You just wanted life to stay out of limitations in life, no one will stop you from being you, on what you like, on what you see in your life with your best friend Gerda.

"Queen? The band?."

Gerda handed you the newspaper she saw earlier and automatically bought it. She's been a Queen fan since highschool and now she can't believe that they are on their way here in Montreux, probably will record an album or go on a vacation or something.

"They are gonna stay here for the three whole weeks Y/N! I don't want to miss the chance on meeting them! Ask them to sign my boobs! Especially to Brian..." She said and you dryly laughed, looking at her.

"You know that Brian May had a wife with kids? And then you're gonna flash your tits to him?." You sarcastically asks and she just smirks.

"Nobody's stopping me." She confidently said.

"Okay. You said it. Go and let the whole band sign your tits." You waved your hand goodbye to her as she frowns.

"Why? You're not coming with me if I want to meet them soon?." She asks, sitting beside the couch beside you. Trying to convince you coming with her in finding Queen.

"No. Not a fan, no thanks."

"You're no fun Y/N." She huffs, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

You have listened to their songs with Gerda and seems like they are really a good band, but still you're not a huge fan. You just adore the music, "Fine. I'll go with you, but you're the one that will find them and talk to them while I just wait for you."

"Come on, maybe if you will meet them personally, you'll like them!." She smiles.

"We actually got in three Queen shows back when we're teenagers. Maybe I have seen them in person." You sarcastically said, trying to say that you really don't want to go.

"Seeing the person is different from meeting the person." She pursed her lips as she smiles at you again.

You groaned and put the newspaper down on the couch, "Okay! Fine! I'm really going with you! Let's just wait for the news that they finally arrive here."

"Thank you so much Y/N! You're really the best person I've had. Good thing we live close to their recording studio." She smirks.

"They had their own recording studio here in Montreux?."

"Yeah. And maybe we'll see them there soon." She claps her hand and left the couch, skipping happily towards the bathroom, "I'm gonna take a shower."

"Don't use my vanilla shampoo! That's my favorite one!." You shouted from the living room as she responded that she won't use the shampoo.

#roger taylor imagine #roger taylor x reader #roger taylor #queen imagines #queenrogah's fic #queen fic #queen #queen band #freddie mercury #john deacon #brian may

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momtemplative · 4 years

Text

Watching My Diet.

Of Words and Images, That Is.

As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested.—Oscar Wilde, from The Picture of Dorian Gray.

When I was pregnant, I was astounded by the amount of shit-advice people felt entitled to force upon me, thanks to the visual whistle-blower of my growing belly.

I kept the book, Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, by Ina May Gaskin next to my bed like a sacred text. The second half of the book contains a collection of empowered women sharing inspiring stories of their natural birth experiences. I read at least one story every night to off-set the deflating stories that were pushed at me. (One, still clear as day in my mind over a decade later, came from a woman who had never had kids! She said, in low tones and with concern in her eyes, “It’s the most painful thing you will ever experience. You WILL NEED DRUGS.”)

I would often fall asleep with Ina May’s book on my chest, thinking maybe the positive messages would cause seep into my being, like a topical treatment.

Now, during the era of COVID19, the news is an IV drip of mounting catastrophe into all of our collective veins. And the way we receive news during these current times is 24-7, on screens, visual, relentless and without limits. (PS: as said in Time, “media images can be so intense that they can cause symptoms of acute stress or even PTSD.”)

Like many, I find myself falling into the habit of using my few-far-between windows of space to either read updates from the Post and the Times, or to check social media. While informative at best, these word-venues are, nutrient-wise, anemic crumbs not suitable for a bottom-feeder.

So why the impulse to keep going back?

According to Time Magazine, “The human brain is wired to pay attention to information that scares or unsettles us—a concept known as “negativity bias“. Meaning, our brains are predisposed to go negative, and the news we consume reflects this.”

On a personal level, my intake of news is rising by the day—sometimes seemingly out of my control. I’ll just be grabbing my phone to check the weather and suddenly I’m well into an article on the pandemic, as if in a trance.

Without clear boundaries and a bit of mindfulness, the news and media we are ingesting can be far more toxic than beneficial. The effects of constant negative-news consumption are real and complex.

And I feel the wear-and-tear in my mental state, to be sure. I’ve been taking in the news every night, just before bed, via my tiny phone screen as if that makes it less potent and more manageable. Not the case. I can easily slip into helplessness, along with tasting the vinegar of potent rage in the back of my throat, even as I’m trying to settle in for sleep.

Anxiety and stress create cortisol, which can wreak havoc throughout the physical body and beyond. My neck and shoulders feel like they are clutching with white-knuckles for some unseen disaster, pretty much all the time. Yoga and breathing provides a world of help while doing it, but the muscle memory is so deep, that the bad patterns often return within moments of back-to-life.

This is not to say the solution is to bypass the news entirely. But if we are in this for the long haul, deliberate choices need to be made, for the stability of everyone.

Last week, my dear friend, Steph, mailed a box of crafting goodies to my girls. An eclectic mix of junk-drawer extractions and art things—things that have the potential to clutter up a house. But, when assembled in a package with intention and love, feel like vintage treasures from another world. Girl scout patches, circa the early 1990’s, ribbon in original packaging from the Carter administration, an untethered bouquet of white plastic glitter flowers. And in the midst of this treasure chest: a hardcover copy of the Oscar Wilde book, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

It was a fancy, old-timey edition that I had read through and written-in during college, using the same red ink from the same red pen the whole way through. My handwriting is young—an un-mastered version of my current script. But my brain is searching and inquisitive. I’m not sure why Steph wound up with the book, but there was a time when I passed out Oscar Wilde books like a communist would pass out propaganda and I likely forced it upon her.

Back then—over twenty years ago, more than half my current age—Oscar Wilde spoke to me in a way I was not accustomed to being spoken to, and brought about feelings that literature rarely provided. I indulged in Him, collected photos, quotes, and bought multiple used copies of his books. He became an unwitting spiritual guide of sorts. I carried the story of his tragic incarceration and subsequent death with me the way a god-fearing man would hold the image of Jesus’ crucifixion close to his heart. If they sold Oscar Wilde on a necklace, I’d have bought one, for sure.

Placing my hands on the cover of that book—while my girls squealed and unpacked the rest of the boxed treasures—was not far from the feeling of placing my hands on a body to massage. Flesh—living, breathing flesh. Cracking open the book brought with it not only the slight sigh that takes place in the inner ear during a good stretch, but also a swell of emotions. I flipped through the pages, feeling saved.

The article, What You Read Matters More Than You Might Think, in Psychology Today discusses the difference between “deep and light reading.” Deep reading is defined as reading that is slow, immersive, rich in sensory detail and emotional and moral complexity. It is distinctive from light reading, which is little more than the decoding of words. The author continues by saying deep reading is great exercise for the brain and has been shown to increase empathy, as well as inspiring reflection, analysis, and personal subtext to what is being read.

A passage from The Picture of Dorian Gray—”Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there is in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?”

Another passage (how can I resist?): “In this country, it is enough for a man to have distinction and brains for every common tongue too wag against him. And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.”

How I missed that man. And what a time for him to pay a visit.

Last weekend, I was feeling particularly ill-at-ease. My speech had edges like so many sharp river rocks. Tears and sadness rotated through in unpredictable gusts.

On the particular day I refer to, a book called Ordinary Magic, Everyday Life As Spiritual Path all but did a swan dive from my bookshelf and landed at my feet. The cover-image was dated and sun-bleached. The font and spacing came directly from the early 90’s, which is when it was published. I have a vague memory of buying this book at Half-Priced Books in Columbus, just before I made my move out west, in 2002, eighteen years ago. It’s a collection of Buddhist essays that focus on sectioned-out, topics—creativity and community, for example. It did not take long to realize that the editor, John Welwood, steals the whole dang show. His intros to each chapter sparkle with the quiet wisdom of one who is not the headliner, but knows his own worthiness.

(As with Oscar Wilde, I could include countless quotable phrases, but a taste is all you need.) In his introduction to the creativity essays, Welwood said, “By being still and receptive, instead of busily trying to find solutions, we give our intelligence the time and space it needs to find an appropriate way to proceed.” I read that line and gently set the book on my lap to take pause and think to myself, Thank god.

Another account of being liberated by the right words.

The Unknowing. Yes, that is the landscape we all inhabit now. How do we work with such potent feelings of lack-of-control? A classic solution would be to distract the hell out of ourselves so the low hum of anxiety doesn’t seem as loud. Or, we could try to re-frame our reaction, teach the brain that there could be another approach.

Our lives are, in many ways, on hold as we await a vaccine to protect our collective physical health. But our mental health is not on hold. Our intellect is under non-stop media siege and our sanity begs to be nourished and protected now more than ever. An essential piece of that puzzle (the puzzle of avoiding going clinical insane, that is)—more so than what’s contained in a bottle or that can be purchased online with a credit card—may very well already live on our bookshelf.

John Welwood also said, “What is fresh and alive comes only from the unknown.” I’m pretty sure I’m going to have that phrase tattooed on my forearm in old-english script after this whole thing is over.

May 17, 2020

#momtemplative #mindfulparenting #COVIDwords #DietOfWords

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dandelionpie · 6 years

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So I’ve been Having Ideas About My Future lately. And right now this one feels like the very beginning of a soap bubble - the part where you’ve started to blow into it but it hasn’t closed around itself yet. And I want to be really cautious with it so it doesn’t just pop before it can even get into the air, so I wasn’t gonna talk about it for a while, but also.

[Click through for a very long post about Maddy’s Career Options - replies are fine but please be gentle with my baby bubble hopes]

Okay, you guys.

So I was on the phone with my mother the other day, and I was having a sort of a panic attack (you know, like you do when you’re on the phone with your mother [kidding this is not normal and should not be trivialized, etc]), and I was trying to conceal this fact from her but it was Not Working. And I was dismayed about where my life was going, my lack of definite plans for a career, etc., and she said, “You know, I was actually gonna tell you - we had a lady come visit our school the other day and she’s an art therapist.”

And...here’s the thing. Usually my mother’s career suggestions kind of go in one ear and out the other. Because my mom’s great! Really! But she isn’t me, and she doesn’t always get what my life is like. So I usually just say “hm, yeah, I’ll look into it,” and then I don’t.

But I had genuinely just forgotten that art therapy existed. I knew about art, and I knew about therapy, and I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that people were putting those two things together, but somehow I’d just sort of filed that info in the General Trivia drawer instead of the Potential Grown-Up Jobs one. And...I’m getting sort of cautiously excited about the idea.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS I HAVE HAD SINCE THAT CONVERSATION

(I Started Writing Them Down and Then They Became Legion)

Every piece of art I like has a strong psychological element. That’s the common thread, dammit. That’s why I’m so picky about song lyrics, that’s why I can’t get into a book unless it’s got some sort of strong interpersonal/intrapersonal thread for me to snag my little English major hooks in. At the end of the day, the narratives that interest me are the ones where people are constantly feeling and processing things and I have to think a lot about why they’re doing that the way they’re doing it.

Not trying to sound like I think I’m super virtuous or whatever, but I tend to see good in most people, which might be an asset in that field? I get along well with a lot of personality types that friends of mine have cited as abrasive. Like, I can find people obnoxious but still notice enough of their good qualities to enjoy their company or at least tolerate it. And that’s a strength that’s served me well on a personal level, and a little on a professional level too (getting along with people helps just about anywhere), but I never thought of it as something I could use to particular effect in an actual career track.

That said, I have NO background in psychology. I had a couple lab rats, but they didn’t really teach me any of their secrets.

On cursory examination I have decided that I Do Not Like neurology. I have a lot of friends who seem to love it and that’s great, but....look, it just freaks me the fuck out. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent so much of my adulthood (read: all of it) preoccupied with the vulnerability of my physical being to various surgery-requiring problems. But the idea of my mind (that place where I spend so very very much of my time) being subject to the physical limitations of my brain (a part of my corporeal body [which has in the past proven itself to be somewhat unpredictable]) is so fucking terrifying to me that I’d prefer to spend as little time on that as possible please and thank you.

(Aside: I know the phrase “I don’t like the Brain; I just like the Mind) is like peak dualism, but I’m sure you all know what I mean, right? It’s possible to think about and work with the mind without focusing on the physical brain that gives rise to it. I’ve been doing that on the client end of things for years.)

A lot of the art I do is actually pretty therapeutic! To me, I mean. I never did figure out how to translate the whole cancer thing into an autobio comic (I eventually realized I simply didn’t want to and it was one of the most liberating moments of my life). But I have been relying on art for years to process my trauma. Most of my creative projects and ideas for them go back to that in some way, even if it doesn’t come across to the other people who experience them.

That said, I am...not the biggest autobio comic fan. There are so many things about that genre that rub me the wrong way. I’m glad it exists, I just don’t tend to enjoy consuming or creating autobio comics. However, this might be a chance to see autobio comics through a new lens! And it also has the potential to set me apart - there are quite a few art therapists, but I’ll bet there are fewer whose background is in comics specifically.

I could have an office. I could go into private practice and have a place that I could build into a safe space for people to talk about their problems and work on them. I know it’s just a little thing (and I’m not sure yet if private practice would be feasible/right for me, at least right away), but I like the idea of making physical space for that kind of work. (And if I sometimes also used it as a studio for comics, well, I don’t think that’s illegal or anything.)

I could be relatively independent in my career. I could work for an agency (and I think I’d probably have to, at first, but I gotta look into how all that works), but I could also spend at least some of my time in private practice, or working pro bono or on a sliding scale, or doing other stuff that allows me a great deal of flexibility and control over my schedule.

I like the idea of a type of schooling that has experience built into it. Like, you have to get a certain number of internship hours before you can be certified. I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but it’s nice to see a field that’s so up-front about the fact that you need experience before you can do your job.

A lot of art therapists work with traumatized kids, and I find that prospect faintly terrifying. But also maybe it would be good to get over that, if I want to Help People and Use My Strengths to Do Good Things In the World. Those kids are gonna be traumatized either way, and if I can handle it, it’d probably be cool if I helped them.

It would be so nice to not be broke literally all the time. Even with student loans, I think this has the potential to help that happen, if I do my research and play my cards right. And I might even be able to work *gasp* less than 40 hours a week, thereby freeing up my time for other projects. Or, you know, kids. Hell, maybe I’d even be able to feed them.

Nobody would be able to make me work Saturdays.

Not sure yet whether it’d be better to get an Actual Art Therapy Degree or do a more general thing and then get a specific art therapy certification after/during that? I’m leaning towards the latter because I’d like more versatility, but I’m getting the sense that the rules for who can call themself an art therapist are slightly stricter in Oregon, so I’m gonna have to talk to the people who run the program.

What with the horse in the hospital and all that, I was thinking about a career in activism. But I’m not sure I have the temperament to be a lawyer, and I hate talking to strangers (I’ll do it if I have to, but damned if I’m gonna go door-to-door every day). But this way, I could maybe help activists balance their lives and their activism. Activists need therapists.

I could help people like me, with medical trauma. I know all about medical trauma! It has literally been a constant since I was 18! And in college and after, I hated feeling like my problems were fake and that my illness affecting my life was the result of some moral defect. Without therapy, I don’t know if I would have kept going to doctors and trying to figure everything out.

Visual art has in many ways been a great avenue leading away from self-harm, for me. The physicality of it is so much more powerful, for me, than almost anything else.

I’ve been so conflicted lately with lots of ideas about art-as-saleable-product vs. art-as-catharsis-and-narrative-control. I kind of thought my interest lay in the former but now I’m wondering if maybe it’s the latter. Like, I still love comics and storytelling and I want to make comics for people to read, but at the end of the day, I don’t want to do advertising. I don’t want to build a brand. I just want to tell stories and draw pretty pictures that make people happy. And I know that’s not what art therapists do, but in some ways it feels like the field still lines up better with my goals than commercial illustration. Does that make sense?

Lewis and Clark has a program. PSU has a program (though not an art therapy one specifically I think). There are online ones and low-residency ones as well, although honestly I think I function best in a classroom. Right now I think I’m leaning towards L&C because I’ve heard really good things about their education grad programs from a couple of people, but: gotta look further into it.

I’m liking the prospect of being a student again. I like going to lectures. I like notebooks and pencils and pens and libraries. And according to one person I talked to, as a therapist you actually have to keep taking courses throughout your career as the field changes. It’s like a condition for licensure or something (at least in some parts of the field). I’d love to be able to keep learning my entire life in such a deliberate way.

And I think I’d be better at being a student now than I was at Reed. I remember realizing waaay too late that you could just...ask your professors for help with stuff. And they could say no! But they weren’t going to, like, set me on fire. So what if I just set up a meeting with someone involved in a program and said, “Hey, look, I have no psych background and an intense interest in therapeutic work; how do I do this?” They could tell me to go away, but that’s probably about it. In a way, I think it might be nice to take another stab at academia - redeem myself.

(I have no idea what my Reed GPA is and should probably figure that out. Pretty sure I got a C in Chem and at least one other class? But maybe they won’t mind.)

My original plan had been to fund my comics habit with a freelance illustration career. Because almost nobody makes a living in comics, at least not just in comics. It happens, but very rarely does it happen with creator-owned work. A lot of indie comics artists freelance or have some other sort of art day job, and I thought that was a lifestyle I could get into.

But the Horrible Deep Dark Secret is...I don’t actually like freelancing that much, at least with my life the way it currently is. I mean, I love drawing and I love not being broke, so please keep sending people my way if they want someone to draw something (please please please I need the money). But the illustration industry is downright exhausting. It’s so hard to switch off, and it’s so much work even convincing people you deserve to get paid, let alone getting them to pay you. Mad kudos to anyone who has the time/energy to do that, but I’m not sure I do, at least at this point in my life.

But if I was planning to supplement my comics with another, art-related career anyway, what if I did this instead? What if it ended up being something I, Maddy, could enjoy and feel good about? Doing this (with my temperament) might actually a) pay better b) offer me more time and c) lend a sense of structure to my days that I definitely need and that freelancing sorely lacks.

Actually, having comics projects might even help with work-life balance in this field. I don’t know yet, but I’ve been told that a lot of therapeutic practice is establishing healthy boundaries between your work and your life, and I think it might help to have somewhere else to pour emotional energy when I’m off the clock.

Having another career wouldn’t mean I couldn’t make comics. Hell, it wouldn’t even mean I couldn’t sell comics. I could still make a website and freelance sometimes. I could still set up a Patreon. I could still publish my stuff on the web and in real life. I could still table at cons. And if things started going better than I’ve been planning for them to go, comics-wise, I wouldn’t have to keep being a therapist full-time. I’d have some flexibility, especially in private practice.

Anyway, I literally just started thinking about this a few days ago, so I have no idea if I’m gonna stay this excited about it. But...I’m enjoying looking into it. I’ve felt so much more hopeful the past few days - like my life might actually go someplace I could like. It’s a nice feeling and I would like to keep it.

I dunno. I’ve talked to some people and I’m gonna talk to some more people. Maybe set up an interview at the college in the next couple months if I can swing it. Prereqs would probably be somewhat hellacious, but that’s what I get for majoring in the humanities.

Okay cool I’m gonna go eat something and clean the kitchen.

#personal #job stuff #self-harm mention #medical trauma #in which maddy begins to consider grad shool

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directionlessbuthappy · 7 years

Text

Dawn of the Draugr: p1

In a pre-apocalyptic world, there is Elyse, a 21 year old woman who was going to community college in her small town in Northern California, working on biology and medicine courses. Doing what young adults are expected to do at her age. But her future spirals into uncertainty with a pandemic spreading across humanity. An illness which infects and shuts down the body, reanimating the brain and turning the person into something only seen in repetitive shitty movies and your nightmares. Being on her own, Elyse would have to lose her morality or sanity to survive. Maybe both. However, she may be able to keep them now that she’s found Alex Lothbrok and his brothers. Or, she may lose it even faster…

Modern AU: Alex H. Anderson x Reader

Warnings: graphic violence, language, blood, death

Note: I kept the last name Lothbrok for the brothers to distinguish characters vs reality. I doubt they are anything like the characters (based on them for visual purposes) I’m writing, so I prefer to add an element of unrealism here to reiterate this as fiction. Cheers xo

Tagged: @missrobyn81

It wasn't a normal day.

Everyone likes to think when the world ends, it'll start out totally normal, and you'll have no idea what's happening or whats coming. You won't see it until its too late. People sell it that way for drama, for TV shows and the movies, but its not real. The truth is, you do see it. The warning signs are everywhere, but without someone telling you to run, you aren't sure if you should. People are like sheep; they don't know what to do without instruction. When the epidemic spread from South America and Asia, nobody here was worried. We had central America in our path, and a whole ocean separating us from Japan. It seemed like the black plague at first; killed massive amounts of people over the last two years. But since there were minimal cases of it here in the US, nobody was worried.

For a while.

My family was split; my mom and I were alone most of my life. She married a man who already had two kids. I was an adult at that point, indifferent to the pairing but still living at home. Going to community college. Everything seemed normal despite everything we were seeing on the internet and on TV. Coverage of the epidemic was getting less and less clear as more people were panicking and packing up their things. Our whole neighborhood moved out in a week. Northern California felt safe enough, we hadn't had any sightings/cases of epidemic here. There was some in Texas, and Arizona...

One day after a phone call, my mom told me she was going with her husband to go get his kids. It was their week to visit us, and their mom wasn't comfortable driving on the roads with how crazy it was getting out there in Washington state, so my mom and her husband planned to go get them. I was in denial, in a way...not really considering how bad it was yet. it felt eerie, being home alone after that. Our little three bedroom, one story house on Sweedland Way felt like a mansion while I waited for my mom to come home. I'd stopped going to school; we'd got an email that class was out due to teacher shortages. Out, indefinitely. I remember when I got my first taste that it was all real, not some widespread panic about the cold.

I was sitting in the living room, checking through a few websites that hadn't posted in over a week. I was studying animal medicine in college (when I was still going) so I understood a lot of technical jargon when reading on the epidemic. All the articles and different notes on the contagion were unfinished; even Wikipedia was useless in explaining what it was. Most researchers first found it in South America, comparing the disease to a virus hiding behind the symptoms of bacterial infection...making it less concerning in its early stages. Researchers didn't catch on until about 6 months in, when more hospital staff were infected verses healthy. Infection was mostly caused by saliva, whether its ingested, gets in your eyes, or most commonly seen in the reports I found...you get bit. Like a rabies virus on cocaine, the disease ravages your system and fries pretty much everything...except your spinal cord and your motor function. The nervous system was preserved by the disease and regenerated itself; the body would be able to function, move, and respond to things like noise. But otherwise...

I didn't like to entertain the idea the dead could come back to life. That wasn't true, it was science fiction bullshit. Granted, I loved cheesy movies where the dead would rise, but that was all they were. Movies. If anything, these sick people were just very sick...maybe it was a new type of cancer, that was why it scared people so much.

I was wrong.

...

"See the sight lined up to the chest?"

"Yeah..."

"Shoot it."

"But I need to hit the head."

"I know Elyse. Take the shot."

I swallowed and pulled the trigger. The gun popped against my chest like a light bump, and the bullet went straight through the target's "neck." I was surprised.

"It aims high!"

"Bingo," Alex replied. "Its the only red sight we have. Jordan can't get the tilt quite right but it still works eh? Now aim at the neck."

I do so, trusting his word now more than before. I squeezed and the gun pops; the bullet hole in my target's head was clear. With a giddy squeal, I aimed to take another shot, but missed. Alex grinned from behind me, I knew this because when I turned he was already doing it.

"Nice shot."

"Shut up," I replied, faintly hurt. He chuckled and outstretched his arm for the gun. I handed it over, safety on.

"Wanna try with the handguns?"

"Actually..." I whined. Holding my arm up to show off the bruise blooming on my tricep, Alex frowned slightly. "Can we take a break?"

"Sure punkin," he shrugged. I still took the time to roll my eyes at him before sitting down on a hay bail. Our little training field wasn't too far away from the house; Jordan and Marco could still see us from the second floor's porch. We were safe, mostly. The treeline that surrounded the house on the hill made me the most nervous, especially at night. Jordan called them "fight nights" for fun, but he was good at making others feel better. I could see right through it. Just like I could see them coming through the treeline every other night.

Sometimes it was just one, sometimes a pack of them. They traveled in groups pretty often. They're always so listless, walking like they were drunk and heavy and yet they weren't slow in their pace. They'd drag their feet, and although they were responsive to sound, it didn't seem like they understood anything. From the material I've read and studied in the last couple months the disease is as unpredictable as its victims. Sometimes you'd die in a week...sometimes it only took 24 hours. But if you got bit at all, you were fucked no matter how long it takes to die.

"Jordan's still not worried about the ammo?"

Alex shrugged, taking a mag and shoving it into the cartridge of his 47. "We have enough to get us through a month of assaults. You and Marco are the only ones worried."

"We have enough for a month of assaults with automatics, Alex. Our handguns are limited. They're attracted to noise, and we can't haul ass with ten pound metal death machines on our shoulders!"

"We'll be fine. If you're really that worried, go down the hunt shop on West 10th. They'll have something," he replied coily. I scowled at him.

"That's not funny."

"Was I laughing?"

"Alex!" I snarled. He had the sense to look a little upset, sighing once he realized he'd actually upset me.

"I'm kidding Lees," he muttered. "I'll go with you tomorrow. Would that make you happy?"

"Are you being sarcastic again?" I replied warily, buttoning my flannel up and down with the same button. Alex took a few shots, turning the head of one of our dummies into swiss cheese. He put so many holes in it the head actually fell off. It made us both chuckle.

"Do you want me to go on my own?"

"No!" I squeaked instantly. Alex grinned and turned his back to me, lining up the sight of his automatic again. The kid was growing on me...

#alex hogh andersen #alex hogh imagine #alex hogh x reader #zombie apocalypse #the lothbroks #post apocalyptic #writings #modern vikings au #dawnofthedraugr #modern au

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youngwidowofbrooklyn · 6 years

Text

Open letter to a foul weather friend.

I won’t lie, after my husband died, I wondered if you’d heard. I secretly hoped you’d reach out with kind words and offer some comfort. There’s a part of my heart that will always want that from you, even though I’ve learned the hard way that your friendship has always been conditional, unpredictable and temperamental.

And even though I longed to hear from you, there was something else that I knew - have known for a long time - and that is that our friendship is over. As much as it hurt me to do it, I buried our friendship long before my son was born and my husband died. Two of the biggest life events I’ve experienced which you, by choices you made, were not there to experience with me.

I’ve learned a lot about myself, being a grown up, being a kind person and being a friend, in the last several years. I’ve learned how to forgive and how to expect less from others, so that when I receive more, it’s a delight and not a foregone conclusion. I’ve also learned to respect my own limitations and make peace with them. And I’ve come to know that your friendship is exhausting, painful and absolutely requires more of me than I have the capacity to give, now, and probably forever.

I don’t think you fully comprehend how devastated I was by our final fallout nearly six years ago. You turned your venom on me, caught me completely off guard, hurled nasty, untrue and hurtful accusations at me via text, and refused to answer my frantic calls to try to talk things out with you. I left you a voicemail. I don’t know if you listened to it. I wouldn’t be surprised it you didn’t. I remember that I was so sick that day. I barely had any voice at all, and I was sobbing, and I just wanted to understand why you were so vicious. You didn’t give me a chance. You didn’t give me the respect of hearing me. You broke my heart.

When we were kids, you were the coolest girl I know, by a mile. I know I’ve told you that many times, but I cannot overstate this fact. You were all the things that a teenage me wanted to be: beautiful, tough and fearless. You gave me my first cigarette, and made fun of me when I didn't inhale the smoke of the Marlboro Red, so I made it my mission to learn how to smoke properly. It’s a lesson I have yet to unlearn. You were the first girl I knew who shaved her legs, who had sex. You also stole from me, ridiculed me and ignored me. But even still. I wanted to be like you. I wanted you to like me.

When we met up again in college, you were the first friend I knew who had moved in with a boyfriend. You were friends with all the guys in the cool bands. You smoked pot and dropped acid and went to cool parties. I always felt like a big square when I tagged along.

You introduced me to all my favorite college bands. Your taste was always so much more refined than mine. You showed me Tarantino movies and Wes Anderson movies long before they were usurped by the hipster contingent. You had tattoos and piercings and endless swagger.

God, you were so fucking cool.

You got into fights with girls in bars, just because you didn’t like the way they looked at you. You were sexy and tough.

You moved away and then got married. Then I moved away. We’d gone in two different directions.

When your marriage was falling apart, I offered to give you a ticket to visit me in the city. You came, and immediately started an affair with my friend and downstairs neighbor. I felt exploited and discarded.

When you decided to divorce and move to the city, I was ecstatic that we’d finally be living in the same place again. I looked at apartments for you and sent you photos. When you reenrolled in college, I was proud of you. I went out and bought you a few hundred dollars worth of back to school supplies, because I knew you were low on funds, and anyway, you were my best friend and I wanted to show you that I cared.

All along I think you always resented the way I tried to give you things. I wonder if you felt like I was hanging something over your head. I wasn’t. Or at least I didn’t mean to. I just wanted you to be happy. I see now that there’s no way I could influence that.

I tried to help you get jobs. I tried to fix things for you, whenever you complained about things, I responded by jumping into action. I realize now that did nothing but irritate you.

And over the years, the fallouts kept happening. We’d go a year, two, three or more without talking. Then one of us would give in, reach out, and we’d pick up like nothing had ever gone wrong. We’d proclaim our best friendship, our kindred spiritness, and maybe we actually believed it. I know that I wanted very badly to.

I remember meeting up with you after our second or third fallout before the last. We went to your apartment, you held my feet and I cried and told you how guilty I felt for being angry with my aunt when she died. You told me that you’d been in a bad place with cocaine in the years since we’d last spoken. You also told me you’d been enjoying making out with women recently. You kissed me in my car, and when I backed away, you grabbed my face and said, “Not like that, not like that,” and then put your tongue in my mouth. I didn’t know what to say, but I was so uncomfortable that I just let you do it and then left as soon as I could.

When I moved to New York we resumed our friendship once again, long distance. We’d spend hours on the phone, commiserating over our fears and paranoias. We made plans to visit each other. We schemed and plotted and talked shit about everyone else and proclaimed our undying love for one another.

And then a mutual friend told me that you were dabbling in heroin. I couldn’t believe it at first, that you would keep something like that from me. And I was so worried for you. I wanted you to be well. I wanted you to stop finding ways to hurt yourself.

So I tried to set up a network for you, from another state. I confronted you, gently as I could, I asked you to get help, to go to meetings, to go with a mutual friend. You agreed, and, I’ll be honest, I was proud of myself for being a good friend and trying to take care of you from afar. I didn’t realize how much you resented my intervention. I didn’t understand that it was not my place to fight for you.

In truth, your addictions have only ever made you more glamorous to me. I always felt like your mousy, naive little friend. In my mind, the druggy art world that you seemed to gravitate to was so much more romantic than the one I lived in. And if you want to know the truth, if you’d ever asked me to do drugs with you, I would have. I so very much wanted to be a part of your world.

But when the final rift came, I realized some very painful truths. You have never, in the 30 years I’ve known you, shown up for me in any meaningful way. I’m not blaming you. You don’t owe me anything. But I look back on all the ups and downs I’ve had and you made very clear choices to not participate in my life. I invited you to my wedding. You said no. Even though I stood up for you in yours. You didn’t come see my shows, which is fine, really, except....I can’t shake this feeling that you never had interest in celebrating my successes with me.

So, that last fight that we had, which left me shaken and reeling for quite a while, it was the final straw. And my husband, who had been with me for at least ten years of my ups and downs with you, observed, quite astutely as I was hysterical and crying, “Babe. I know she’s your friend, but....fuck her.”

In this latest email you sent to me, you wrote, “There will never be another Tom Bateman.” And you are very right about that. But you should know that he was fed up with the way you manipulated me, he was angry that I kept falling for the same toxic cycle with you. And so, for my own well-being, and to honor my partner, my best friend, I am saying once and for all, it is over between us.

I won’t lie. Since the last contact we have had, I still dream about you. My heart wants us to make amends. I want to be cool enough to be your friend. But after all this time, I don't think it’s possible. You resent me because you think....what? I’m lucky? I’m smug? Do I rub my great fortune in your face? I don’t know....and I don’t care anymore. Whatever you think of me is not my business.

A few months after that fight, I got pregnant, which you now know. Yet another milestone you’ve missed out on. I’m sorry for you about that one, because my son is so special, so wise and kind. It’s a shame you’ll never know him. When I was younger, I’d just assumed that you would be there to know all of my family. Then I grew up, I guess.

When I received your first email after Tom died, a year or more ago, honestly, it gave me some peace to know that you had it in you to reach out, even though you did it in your usual too-cool and not-quite heartfelt way. I wrestled with responding to it for a long while. I saved it and read it and reread it. But ultimately, Tom’s words kept ringing in my mind.

In your second email you advised me that your ex-husband had died. I don’t know what you thought...that perhaps I would see a shared experience in that information? That I would rush to you to express my sympathy? I’m sorry that he died. He was my friend, once. But, no matter how saddened you were by his death, I promise you, it’s nothing like the experience I had holding onto the father of my child while he slipped away from us. Don’t you dare try to invite yourself into the realm that I exist in. You don’t belong here with me.

Tom’s death taught me a lot about what real friendship looks like. There are many people that I thought “of course, that’s my friend,” about ,who just did not show up in my darkest hour. And plenty more who I wouldn’t have expected who have made their presence profoundly known when I needed them most. I have no anger about the way these things shook out. Just clarity.

And on top of that, I know that I can no longer chase friendships. I don't have the strength or the time. I know that I am not a good friend right now. I’ve given myself permission not to be. I need more than I can give. My real friends understand that, and they are here to catch me as I continue to fall.

This morning I woke up to a third, and hopefully final, email from you. It was rambling and in places incoherent. It begs the question as to your mental state as you wrote it. I don’t know what you intended. It was, by turns, loving and defensive. It seems though after three attempts, perhaps it’s driving you a bit crazy that I haven’t responded, which would’ve been part of our usual cycle of friendship/estrangement.

I know you've read my blog. I am not going to write you personally. If you are looking for an answer from me, here it is. Is this what you wanted?

I wish you only the best. I wish you peace and health and love. But you’ve got to let go of me. I don’t have anything left for you.

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the-nwah-embassy · 7 years

Text

The Daedra as schoolmates

Azura: The ultimate mom friend, to the point of total annoyance. Always nagging you about doing homework and paying attention in school. Perfect grades, perfect attendance, and has no time for frivolities like relationships. Although she’s extraordinarily pretty and caring in a maternal way, she’s also extremely terrifying when angered. You’ve seen her rip apart lives piece by piece in a calculating and cruel manner because someone bumped her in the hallway and didn’t say “Excuse me”, and then blame their lack of manners for their suffering.

Sheogorath: The random and uncomfortably loud class clown. He spends more time laughing at his own jokes than he does anything else. While occasionally entertaining, he’s also very unpredictable. He once knocked a kid out because he said “Oh yeah, I’ve heard that one before” to one of his jokes. He was also suspended for a month for putting a cherry bomb in the principals desk, which caused a minor fire in the office and caused a school-wide evacuation. Because of his crazy antics, he doesn’t have many friends, and the friends he does have are just as nutty as he is.

Namira: The girl with a greasy mop of hair who smells like mildew and body odor. You’re not entirely sure she even owns a shower. People avoid her in the halls, but she doesn’t seem to mind because she’s too busy picking her teeth with her fingernails and smelling it. During lunch, you can usually find her swirling all her food into a disgusting slop and putting it in people’s faces, or behind the school building picking up bugs playing with them. She usually wears the same two or three outfits every day, with the exception of her gym clothes, which you know for a fact haven’t been washed all year.

Hircine: The kid who is constantly wearing camo for no apparent reason at all. Camo jackets, camo hats, he even has camo interior in his ridiculous truck. Like literally all camo, all the time, for no reason. He’s the kid who goes hunting every single weekend and brags about the giant deer antlers hung up in his living room that his dad killed a few years ago. Needless to say, he’s president of the archery club and an NRA fanatic. He’s always bringing his own lunch to school, which looks eerily similar to a pile of freshly cut meat. You’re fairly certain he has a collection of animal skulls and organs hidden away in his closet ‘for trophy purposes.’

Boethiah: The infamous two-faced backstabber. She acts sweet and kind to your face and then talks shit about you to her ‘friends’ when you walk away, and the same thing over again when they walk away. However, whenever you confront her, she somehow always convinces you that it never happened, or maybe you heard wrong, or perhaps the other people were lying. She always comes out looking innocent. And Divines forbid you date someone who she takes a liking to, because you’ll find yourself with a nasty breakup on your hands and shortly after, her on their arm. At least for a few weeks until she gets bored. Then she’ll come to you and say how sorry she is, and that she genuinely thought it was true love and how she never should have betrayed your friendship for him. And when you forgive her, and you always do, she’ll walk away smirking, planning her next bitch move.

Peryite: This kid is always sick. Seriously, it’s always something with this guy. He spends more time out of class than he does in it, which you can’t say you’re not grateful for, because he’s also disgusting. He constantly sneezes without covering his mouth, and in the direction of other people. He sniffles all the time which sounds more more like snoring, and it makes everyone gag. You’d feel bad for him, but you know he does it on purpose. He’s also weirdly obsessed with learning about plagues. At first, you thought it was because he was so sickly and might be worried about himself, but now you’re not so sure.

Mephala: The school rumor spreader. You have no idea how, but this girl knows everyone and their business, and she has no shame twisting it to her pleasure. She’s ended relationships, friendships, and even scholarships. Somehow her tangled whispers find their way all over the school halls. For whatever reason, her word is taken as law, and she’s an authority on everyone else’s business. Maybe it’s because she’s cute, or maybe it’s because her skirts are a little too short, but whatever the reason, she has a way of convincing everyone else that her word is infallible. Most people try to make themselves invisible to her, but everyone finds their way into her web of lies eventually.

Mehrunes Dagon: Mehrunes is the quarterback of the school football team, but contrary to cliche, he’s very disliked, to say the least. Even the rest of the team can’t stand him because of his anger issues. While he has experience and ambition, he’s just an absolute jerk for no reason at all. Even the coach knows there’s something up with him, but won’t take him off the team because he’s so good at what he does. He’s fairly well known as a bully and an all around asshole throughout the school. Divine’s help if the school loses a game, because when they do, he ends up smashing in lockers and breaking sinks in the locker room. Seriously, this guy needs to be locked up because he can cause some real damage, and you have a sneaking suspicion he’ll be in jail less than a week after his 18th birthday.

Meridia: Meridia is the class president and voted most likely to succeed. She’s the perfect school princess who always does what she’s supposed to, and makes sure that others do too. You know that outfit you love that is just a tiny bit out of dress code? She’s the one that comes up and says “You know, that outfit doesn’t meet the dress requirements!” a little too loudly in front of a teacher, and then smiles and flounces off. She’s constantly making pointless, boring speeches at the school assemblies and deludes herself into thinking people she doesn’t know legitimately care about her plans for after college. The teachers roll their eyes when she’s around, and even the principal is tired of this chick.

Jyggalag: This dude is OCD as hell. He arrives at school every day at exactly the same time, sharpens every single pencil he owns so they are the exact same length, and reorganizes his notes before class. Every. Single. Day. Every notebook he owns is color coded and even page numbered so that he could make an index, and his handwriting looks like a typewriter wrote it. He’s been hall monitor for like two years now even though the limit is 3 months. He also absolutely detests Sheogorath, so much so that a rumor is going around that he switched schools just to get away from him.

Vaermina: Mean. Just mean. No rhyme, no reason, just mean. She never says a word to anyone, but everyone has a horror story involving this chick. New to the school? She’ll welcome you by tripping you in the hall. Have a new crush that you think is going to ask you out? Don’t worry, she’ll help you by making sure you sit in water in the class you share with them and don’t notice it until it’s too late. Having a bad day? That’s good, cause she’s going to make it worse, and she’ll enjoy every second of it. For real, this girl is a real nightmare.

Nocturnal: The school goth girl. You’re entirely certain she doesn’t own any clothes that aren’t black, and she’s always got her headphones in listening to bands you’re fairly certain you’ve never even heard of. No one ever sees her arrive or leave the school, and no one can ever find her unless she’s attending a class. No one really even knows her name, even the teachers. She doesn’t have any friends, but she does have a weird occult following that obsesses over her. She doesn’t seem to notice or care. Strangely, things constantly seem to go missing when she’s around, but it couldn’t possibly be her because she hasn’t moved from her seat all period... Has she?

Hermaeus Mora: Ah, this guy. The know-it-all. Why does he even bother attending? He already knows everything. The teachers hate him because he’s constantly showing them up. His most used phrase is “Well, actually.” You know that kid who is constantly yelling out answers in class without being asked? Yep, that’s him. When he’s not in the library hoarding books like a dragon, you’ll find him stalking various students around the school who intrigue him, and referring to them as his “subjects.” You have a sneaking suspicion that he’s the one that has been using the lab supplies without permission and also the reason behind why the school banned animal dissection in science class.

Malacath: This dude could use some help, like a therapy session or maybe a hug. He’s rude for no reason, but only because he assumes you’ll be rude to him first. He’s constantly trying to prove how tough he is by getting into fights over, well, everything. He and his group of friends are exclusive and reclusive, angrily calling themselves ‘misfits’ unironically, and will only accept you if they think you’re as outcasted as they are. The rest of the school either shuns or ignores them, so it’s understandable. Rumor has it that disputes in the group are settled via wrestling match in the parking lot after dark.

Sanguine: The walking leather jacket. Girls fawn over this dude, and all the guys want to be like him. He comes to school late on a motorcycle smelling like cigarettes and drinks vodka out of a sprite bottle in history class. Don’t worry, he’s always down to share. He is the walking embodiment of “Screw you mom and dad, my band is definitely going to get big!” He’s sort of friends with everyone, and he can’t walk down a hallway without being a part of at least 8 or 9 separate conversations. Teachers can’t stand him, mainly because if he’s even a minute late to a class, he says ‘fuck it’ and hangs out on the bleachers until lunch, and he’s always late. His yearbook quote was “Life is too short for school, so screw it and drink it down and party it up.” He also has his own ‘bachelor pad’ and wants to move to New York and play guitar in the street after graduation.

Molag Bal: So, you know that guy that you’re absolutely terrified will shoot up the school one day? Yeah, that’s this guy. This guy is angry as all hell, and you swear he can literally smell weakness. If he ends up making it through school without ending up in jail, you’re fairly certain he’s going to become a serial killer. He just terrifies everyone. The people who have tried to get on his good side (you know, just in case) ended up making things worse, and they won’t talk about why or what happened. Chances are, he has a manifesto saved on his computer. He has this weird thing with Boethiah and you don’t know whether they dated or what, but those two really don’t like each other. Or they just really need to tension bang.

Clavicus Vile: You know, you’re not sure this guy even goes here. He’s always hanging out in the parking lot with his dog that they don’t allow in the school. He calls himself ‘the hookup’ and seems pretty cool at first. He offers to get you discount cigarettes, beer, drugs, whatever you need for cheap. However, it’s probably better not to trust him. Maybe it’s just a feeling, or maybe it’s the fact that your friend said the weed he bought from him tasted funny and gave him a panic attack, or maybe it’s because the beer he brought to a house party once tasted strangely like the swill that bars throw out after closing. Either way, you don’t trust the guy. He’s just trying way too hard to get you to trust him. He tried to offer you a cigarette the other day, but why was the tobacco white and fuzzy?

#Daedra #Elder Scrolls #THE DAEDRA #AS CLASSMAAAATES!#Sorry i got bored #tag yourself im nocturnal #sorry for the long post

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nicosroom · 4 years

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New year, same pandemic

Hello, 2021! It’s been a while, Tumblr.

Given 2020, it seems strange to set goals for the new year ahead. Yet, here we are...

This is a work in progress organized by categories for now; I’m not sure yet if I can muster a 21 for 2021 or a 52 list as I’ve done in years past.

Fitness:

Nine months of stay at home have forced us all to get creative, it seems. I started strong with this in March, when a friend invited a group to do Yoga with Adriene’s 30 Days of Yoga series, aptly called “Home” (having released it in January, I guess Adriene couldn’t have known). I was a bit nervous. The last time I’d done Adriene’s 30 Days of Yoga (January 2016), I injured my wrist and it took about 8 weeks to heal/recover; then, for me, about a year to get back on the yoga mat; and when I did, I would only go to professionally guided classes. So this March, I started slow with an every-other-day routine. l had some trouble forming a habit, though, especially on the weekends, so I shifted to a Monday through Friday commitment; this, I found much more compelling because soon enough, the yoga sessions marked the end of my (at home) workday and the start of my evening “me time.” This yoga habit is one of the better “silver linings” that I exit 2020 with.

Other fitness activities have been hit or miss all quarantine long. I’ve had a fairly strong habit of 20-30 minute daily walks and when I was still in Colorado, I tried to get on the hiking trails each week. Still, I had to lower my daily step goals from 10,000 of the past many years of using fitness trackers, to the far more realistic 5,000. With the gym closed, living in a studio apartment, walking was all I could really manage; and being the stress chef that I am, from March through June (like many), I saw the scale going up ever so slowly. When I got to Ohio, where I’ve tried teaching remotely while living with my parents, I had much more luck thanks to the wide open spaces of their farmland, an enthusiastic walking buddy in their 10-year-old Pomeranian, and both an elliptical (mom’s never realized New Year’s resolution in 2017) and a treadmill (perhaps from the early 1990s). Yet, living with my parents has seemed to wreck my diet, both because they’re such meat eaters, my stress eating (provoked by Zoom university and them), and all the fall/winter holiday foods I can’t resist). While I haven’t been gaining as I was earlier this year, my weight has hovered at 140, about 10 more than I want.

Now, I’m packing up once more and heading to a new state and my own apartment once again. I’m excited to take control of my own grocery shopping, food prep, and space again, but I’m nervous about saying goodbye to the cardio machines and the wide open spaces. It seems, just in time, a friend has introduced me to Cassey Ho’s Blogilates channel and monthly workout calendar, a trove of at home cardio and Pilates videos that are apartment friendly and largely equipment-free. I started incorporating these into my routine in early December and enter the new year four weeks ahead of the curve on habit-formation. So, here are some fitness goals for 2021:

Daily, 10-min wake up & stretch video

January 4-25, I’m tackling the Blogilates #21DayTone

After that, my workout routine will be:

Monday thru Friday, Yoga with Adriene video

Monday thru Friday, Blogilates video(es)

By Dec. 25, 2021, I want to be able to do the splits

Buy a new yoga mat: I’ve had the same one since college (12+ years!), so it’s past due, and I feel really compelled by the product placement in Adriene and Cassey’s videos. And Target just started carrying Blogilates products. But, given how much I now am using my mat these days, it feels like an investment rather than a once-in-while accessory. And actually, I might buy two. Are there recommended folding mats for that are easy to pack when traveling? I’m traveling by car most often now, so it isn’t the worst to bring mine rolled, but when we can resume plane travel...

Work/Productivity:

My research has seriously suffered during the pandemic. There are a lot of explanations: grief and depression and a daily onslaught of bad news; my contingent status in the academy and the overall trash fire of the profession’s unpredictable financial future; and being completely unsettled in my home life while working from home. I’ll feel a lot better if I can produce some writing that I like, so after I get settled in the new place, I have some goals...

First, I’ve arranged to do a book review, which is due February 1, which I hope will be the gateway to feeling like I accomplished something.

Then, I’m aiming to draft this article I’ve been wallowing with for most of 2020. My “deadline” is June 30, which I hope is both generous and realistic, given that the new semester promises more of the same at global Zoom university.

To help me achieve these goals, I’m re-instating one of my dissertation writing techniques, which is a minimum of 40 minutes of timed writing per (non-teaching) day. Many days, those 40-minute writing intervals got repeated 4-5 times; but there are just some days where 40 minutes is all I have, whether its for scheduling reasons or for bandwidth or because it’s the weekend.

Sleeping & waking:

A constant, it seems, is to work on sleep and waking habits. Actually, my sleep habits have improved drastically over the past several years. During the pandemic, I’ve maybe even been sleeping more than ever. And as such, it’s my waking habits that have suffered, given the drastic disruption of routines and the total collapse of any separation between living space and workspace. I’m used to waking up about two hours before I need to be somewhere or do something; I take long showers and like to linger over breakfast. For months now, I find myself lingering in bed for 45 minutes to an hour after my initial alarms, not usually dozing off and repeatedly snoozing them even, but browsing social media (despite there being few updates since the previous night). Subsequently, I feel rushed as I shower, dress, and take in breakfast, hoping that I’ll hit my “home office” space by 9am.

In 2021, I’m striving to…

spend 20 minutes of non-screen activity immediately before bed, whether reading, drawing, coloring, etc.

live by a one snooze limit and get out of bed within 10 minutes of the alarm

also meaning, no social media browsing in bed in the mornings

(as noted above) start each day with a 10-minute stretch routine (even the weekends)

get back to hearty breakfasts… in my rush, I’m reaching for yogurts and various packaged breakfast biscuits or cereals. When I plan ahead and actually prep overnight oatmeal or organize some kind of breakfast bowls, where I only have to add an egg or an avocado in the mornings, I feel much better and my morning work flows more smoothly.

Spending:

Four months living with my parents rent free (down from nearly $1200 a month I was spending on rent), I expected to pad my savings accounts with quite a bit of money in the fall semester, even as I was on a part time salary. But alas, I seem to have not… Like a lot of people, retail therapy has been a favorite way to cope with the pandemic… candles, new boots, a two year supply of Korean facemasks, yet another set of Pyrex, books and more books. I purchased a few things I’ve been putting off for years, including a new laptop (mine was 10 years old) and a proper desk chair (which I’ve never had). In October, I was advised to get new tires before the winter set in ($494). And, my marketplace health insurance plan (including vision and dental), $244 per month… It added up fast.

In the new year, I’ll be on full time salary and have employer benefits, lowering my out of pocket costs on insurance. And although living on my own means my living expenses will surely rise (rent, utilities, grocery, and house supplies), I hope to calm down my discretionary spending once I get the new apartment set up––admittedly, there are some furniture purchases I want to make first (a real couch, a couple bookshelves, a baker’s rack for the kitchen).

Eating/ Recipes:

2020 was such a wreck for my eating habits, even before the pandemic as I navigated my interview schedule, travel, and stress during the tenure-track job market; and the college’s block schedule (ironically, I was teaching food literature, yet I barely had time to cook or feed myself fresh foods). Then came the pandemic, where I had all the time to cook for myself… and cooking and eating seemed to be the only thing to do. So, I occupied myself planning complicated recipes, brainstorming how to use up any out-of-the-usual ingredients I would need for them. And I also noticed myself picking up new, not healthy habits, like buying non-dairy ice creams on my bi-weekly, masked up and high stress grocery forays. And on top of that, I felt compelled to support local businesses with huge takeout orders that might last me two or three days.

Spring faded into summer, summer into fall and I was settling in for the long haul at my parents’ house. They’re eating habits are generally pretty healthy (my mom has a degree in nutrition after all), but they are also truly midwestern “meal = meat” types. Probably as part of my grad school budgeting, I’ve long adapted to eating meat sparingly, preparing it at home just a few times a month or, more typically, getting it at restaurants while eating mainly vegetarian at home. I also found in my mom’s house that it is stocked with sweets and snacks like it never was when I was a kid––potato chips, cookies, chocolates, sugary drinks. Alone, I manage my inability to resist by simply not buying many of these things, but here they were all the time.

Moving into my apartment this January, it very much feels like I’m setting myself up for success in 2021, as I take control of my grocery trips once more, re-establish my meal prep habits, and dial down meat consumption/dial up veggies.

Here are some recipes I’m excited to try this year:

Oat and banana based breakfast muffins

Crock pot butter chicken

Various waffles (I got a mini waffle maker!), especially scallion waffles; leftover Thanksgiving stuffing waffles; hash brown waffles; and zucchini fritters (I tried to make these on the frying pan last year, but I think I’ll get a better crisp in the waffle maker)

Sweet potato biscuits (for a breakfast sandwich)

Various soups, including Chicken & Hominy Stew with Greens

Hasselback Potato with Cilantro-Peanut Dressing

Cookies: coffee (winter/Christmas), pumpkin (fall)

Read/Watch:

Finish The Bluest Eye (Morrison) - I’ve been stalled on p. 130 since July 2020. Help.

Laura Kang, Traffic in Asian Women

Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown

Tommy Orange, There There

The Lunchbox

History and Memory

Minari

Taxi Driver

90 Day Fiancée (for research)

#2021 #new year #New Year's Resolution #52 list #21 for 2021 #goals

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