#darn monkey brain

[realcleverscience]

2:30 am and my brain gotta be like, "ok, but what actually IS space-time???"

[anxiescape]

Celestial Bodies AU: A Battle Between Two Monkeys

*contains major spoilers for Celestial Bodies*

(Also, warning, this is a bit of a long read.)

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I wrote this out to answer a question for @mage-of-words, so I hope this answers it! (The tag isn’t working and I don’t know why 😭)

So, do you guys remember how in JTTW, Wukong and Macaque had that huge fight during the journey, which ended in Macaque’s death? Of course you do.

But did you know that that same battle happens in Celestial Bodies? And that it still results in Macaque’s death?

“But why?” I can hear you asking in despair. “They’re so sweet with each other. They love each other. Wukong legiterally takes on the Jade Emperor for him! Why would they fight? And why would Wukong kill Macaque?”

Well, let’s start at the... not the beginning, per se, but at a significant point in the story, shortly before Wukong was thrown into the Trigram Furnace.

During a talk between Wukong and the Jade Emperor, the Emperor claims that Macaque betrayed Wukong, and told the Celestial Realm all about Wukong’s plans and such during the battle. This isn’t true (the Jade Emperor be bluffin’ here), and Wukong doesn’t want to believe him, but... how else could he have lost?

(Because you’re an overconfident, cocky idiot, Wukong. That’s how you lost. But anyway.)

During his 49 days in the furnace, and his 500 years under the Five-Phases Mountain, Wukong has a long time to think about things. About Macaque, and their relationship, but one thing that keeps coming to his mind is what the Jade Emperor told him about Macaque’s supposed betrayal. This continues to be on his mind, even during the journey.

Now, let’s swap to Macaque’s POV. He has been in a magic-induced sleep since his capture by the Celestial Realm. Pretty fun, right?

Well, the Jade Emperor and Lao Tzu have been at work. Obviously, Macaque was pretty darn useful to them, what with his super-hearing and natural intelligence and all. He was a pretty good fighter, too. Obviously, they want him back. But they’re not going to risk waking him, because then that gives him the chance to escape.

So Lao Tzu has been at work. He has been experimenting—making clones of our celestial moon monkey boi. It took at least a couple hundred years before he succeeded in making one that was actually stable and could survive outside of his laboratory, but he isn’t able to make a spirit to put into them—to give them life.

Now this gets into, like, sci-fi territory, just a little bit. Do y’all know that one episode of Doctor Who, where Amy Pond was replaced by a flesh duplicate? (Uhh... Doctor Who spoilers, by the way. 👀) She was piloting the duplicate from a weird tube/containment pod thing that she was trapped in, and she never even knew that it wasn’t her real body, or that anything was amiss, until she was released from the connection with it.

A very similar thing happens here with Macaque. Using some pretty intense magic seals and spells, Macaque’s mind is connected to the first proper clone. From there, Lao Tzu tries to brainwash him, for lack of a better term. And the “good” thing about these clones is that they are significantly weaker than a celestial monkey. So anytime Macaque tries to break free and escape in one of the clones, he is restrained, and the connection is broken until they are ready to try again. If they fail to restrain the clone and he flees, it is destroyed.

This continues for many, many years—decades, if not centuries—until Macaque’s brain is so messed up that he stops trying to run. Then the real brainwashing can begin. They tell Macaque that Sun Wukong has been captured, and is being held captive by a group of demons and their human master. They tell Macaque that they will allow him to go after Wukong, and if he can free him, then the two monkeys can go live happily ever after—they don’t care about the war anymore.

Obviously, this sounds too good to be true. But Macaque is desperate at this point, and his brain is really confused with all sorts of “false memories” that are left over from the previous “de-comissioned” clones. This poor monkey has suffered through quite a bit of gaslighting, as well. So he eagerly agrees to this plan, and is sent off in search of the scripture pilgrims.

“Woah, woah, wait,” you’re probably thinking. “Why would the Celestial Realm send Macaque after the pilgrims? Don’t they want the scriptures retrieved and all that? Aren’t they on Tripitaka’s side? Kinda?”

Well, yes. But as mentioned before, the Macaque clones are weaker than actual celestial monkeys. They are much easier to kill. So, Lao Tzu and the Jade Emperor’s plan is for Macaque’s clone and Wukong to fight, and for Wukong to kill the clone. Then Wukong will think that Macaque is dead, and he won’t bother to look for him anymore anyway, because obviously he would hate Macaque for attacking his pilgrim brothers, right? And then they can leave Macaque’s sleeping form to rot in its prison cell, forgotten, never to wake and cause trouble for them ever again.

Well, not exactly. Wukong fights the clone, and kills it out of a mixture of rage, exhaustion, and many other overwhelming feelings, and he is distraught. He can’t believe what he has done to the one that he truly loved. And he breaks down.

But luckily, the Buddha is here, and he’s pretty frickin’ cool. He could tell immediately that the clone was not the actual Six-Eared Macaque, and he lets Wukong know this. Mr. All-Knowing here lets Wukong know that Macaque is still in the Celestial Realm, being kept captive under powerful spells and hidden away in Lao Tzu’s tower. This sounds too good to be true, but Wukong is willing to believe it—it’s better than believing that he killed Macaque.

So the journey continues, and eventually comes to an end. And now it’s time for a monkey rescue. Wukong and his awesome pilgrim brothers head back to the Celestial Realm to get Macaque back, and I’m not gonna spoil any of that fun 😈, but it does result in Wukong rescuing Macaque and waking him from his so-called “eternal slumber.”

This is the first time Macaque has “woken up” since his “death” by Wukong’s hands, and the first time he has actually woken up since he was placed under the sleep spell. Macaque tells Wukong about this awful dream that he had where they fought, and Wukong killed him. Wukong is silent.

Macaque’s voice shook as he looked Wukong in the eyes, and fearfully whispered: “It... it wasn’t a dream. Was it?”

Yeah, these monkeys have a lot that they need to work through. But that’s okay. Now they have each other, and all the time in the world to work things out. Together.

The end. 💕

~~~~

Sorry for that info-dump, but I hope you guys enjoy it anyway! Let me know what you think!

Also, you guys can thank Amalgamorph for this wonderful clone-Macaque idea, because I was originally just going to have Macaque straight up die. It was going to be really sad. 😭

[ace-of-zaun]

The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time: pt. 2

Silco x f!reader - SFW

CW: swears, injury, non-consensual medicinal drug use, some angst

6.2k words

Summary: After your less-than-ideal first meeting with the kingpin, you find yourself waking up once more in unfamiliar territory. Luckily for you, that means you have another opportunity to get to know the one person you should not be this attracted to.

PART 1 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7 | PART 8

A/N: this idea was originally meant to be a one-shot, but just like when Dorothy and Toto met the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz… I got a little bit carried away. Hope you enjoy!! -elsie x

Also, there’s a cheeky little reference to ch11 of @x-amount-verbs work A Helping Hand in this one. If you’re not already obsessed with it like I am, please go read it!! I also highly recommend their wonderful one-shot Show A Little Skin, too (NSFW) (I hope you don’t me tagging you x)

-

Waking up after passing out felt like falling in love; gradually and then… still pretty darn slow to be honest. I mean, you had just experienced a head trauma and you’d be damned if it didn’t feel like someone had jam packed it full of cotton wool. It felt like an eternity had passed before you could even begin to open your eyes, but once you were there, it only took a few blinks until your vision cleared up from its blurry state. Thank Janna for that.

Strangely enough, the first thing you remembered from your rather eventful Tuesday evening was the feeling of Silco brushing his fingers against yours when you were tied up back-to-back, and again when he’d held you just before you collapsed onto him. You sighed softly at the memory before your brain clicked into gear and you realised just what that meant. Silco. You’d met the King of the Undercity last night. Mr Danger himself. Oh, shit.

Like pieces of a puzzle being slotted back into place, your mind sorted through your memories of the whole experience and you found yourself cringing at everything you’d said and done. Calling him rude and snarky, trying to comfort him when you thought he was hurting, taking over the whole situation by pretending to be his employee when he could have easily handled it by himself. But then you remembered how gently he’d held you and how soft his expression had been when he looked down at you, and you felt all cosy again. And then, of course, you entered self-sabotage mode and recalled the final thing you’d said to him before you’d blacked out. You’d told him you thought his hands were lovely.

…Fuuuuuuck.

Trying to draw shutters down over your embarrassing memories, as if it would make it so they had never happened, you turned your attention to the world around you, instead of the one in your head. Naturally, you expected to be lying in your apartment, since that was the only place you ever found yourself waking up in, but alas, you were not in your apartment. Instead, you were in a small, bland room, with little to no decoration. Your head hurt too much to move it and look at any place other than the patch of ceiling above you, so you continued to do just that. Yes, it concerned you that you had absolutely no clue where you were, but you didn’t have enough energy yet to fully panic about it. Besides, you weren’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Well, at least I’m not in a gutter,” you spoke aloud, in an (oh so alluringly) scratchy voice, thanks to your parched throat.

“Why would you be in a gutter?”

This routine of you waking up, speaking your first ridiculous thought, and then being terrorised by a previously unknown presence was beginning to feel unnervingly familiar to you. It only felt right to react in the exact same way you had done when you’d met Silco. You screamed. Only this time it sounded more like the noise a strangled cat would make, due to your dry throat.

Despite the pain it caused, your head snapped up to the source of the intruder and you were baffled by the sight of a young, blue-haired girl sat cross-legged atop the dresser. Her stare was eerily similar to, but not quite as intense as, the man who’d gazed down at you last night when you were curled up against the warehouse floor. Furrowing your brow and consequently deepening your headache, you hoped to Janna that you hadn’t accidentally adopted a child while you were blacked out. You wouldn’t put it past yourself.

“Who am I? Where are you?” you babble accusingly at her.

There was a brief pause as you realised the jumbled nature of your words and she looked at you with wide, amused eyes.

“Wait, no, that’s not right. I meant, who are you? Where am I?” you try again.

The young girl giggles playfully at your confusion and you stare back at her suspiciously. Pulling yourself to sit up so your back is against the headboard, you try to get a better look at the room you’ve found yourself in and the young girl who seems to be haunting it. She couldn’t be much older than 12, you noted, wincing as your aching body screamed at you for moving from your previous position.

“You’re funny.”

“You haven’t answered my questions,” you inform her gently. The last thing you wanted after the whole ordeal you’d just been through was to make a poor child cry.

“I don’t think I’m allowed to tell you. Silco said I have to let you rest but he didn’t say I couldn’t look at you or talk to you,” she told you brusquely, as if you were thinking of snitching on her for finding a loophole in his instruction.

Wait. This little girl knew Silco? Now that you were properly awake, your brain ignored the fact she’d just told you that Silco wanted you to rest and instead decided to panic about the fact you were somehow still involved with the kingpin. As the blood drained from your face, it was that very same feeling of panic that prompted you to speak to her again in a low, worried tone.

“Am I a prisoner?”

“I don’t think so, the door was unlocked when I came in. Plus, prisoners usually live in the basement and we’re not in the basement, so…”

You skipped over registering just what that comment meant in favour of asking a question you were sure you already knew the answer to.

“Is he going to kill me?”

She rolled her eyes at that.

“Nah, he’d have already killed you by now if he wanted you dead.”

Oh. Well. That’s good, then…Right?

“Will you draw with me?” she interrupted your disorganised ruminations, her legs now dangling over the side of the drawers as she looked at you expectantly.

You were taken aback by the question. To be honest, you were taken aback by every aspect of your reality at that point, but this was not the time to argue semantics with yourself. You were so bewildered and tired and stressed by the whole situation that you really couldn’t see any other option.

“Uh, yeah, sure.”

The girl lets out an excited squeal as she drops off the furniture with a heavy thud, mumbles something about waiting there, and races out the door before you could even yell to ask if she was okay. Left alone in sudden silence, you place your aching head in your hands and sigh deeply. Okay. You need to figure out what the hell is happening.

You knew that wherever you were, it had something to do with Silco. It didn’t take long for you to recall the order he’d given to the woman who’d come to your rescue during last night’s debacle. We’ll take her back to the Drop.

The Drop? It was common knowledge that Silco ran his base of operations out of The Last Drop, a bar you’d never even dared step foot in before due to its reputation for serving some rather unseemly patrons. No, it had never sounded very appealing to your tastes. You felt much more at home using your powers of persuasion on unsuspecting shoppers at the market than being surrounded by intoxicated shimmer-heads.

Was that where you were then? The Last Drop? You couldn’t hear any music or other sounds that might indicate you were in a bar. Looking around the sparse bedroom, your mind struggled to accept the idea that anyone could be living at the most infamous bar in the Lanes, let alone housing children, and the one you’d just met seemed very comfortable dashing about the place as if she owned it. Turning your head to the side, you spot a cup of water sitting on the bedside cabinet and take a large swig of it, until you have the sense to think you should probably double check it definitely was water you were drinking. Too late now, considering you’d chugged down most of it in that one gulp.

Before you could even begin to panic about what could have possibly been in the drink now sitting in your stomach, the girl returned and shut the door behind her with a click. She grins at you, holding a wad of paper in one hand and a handful of crayons in the other. For a brief moment, you think she’s going to climb onto the bed and shove some paper into your face, but instead she stops in the middle of the floor and plonks herself down rather unceremoniously.

It takes a few moments of you staring at her, dumbfounded, before she meets your gaze and lifts one eyebrow expectantly. Well, what are you waiting for? You wondered where she learned how to command such authority with just a single expression, and even considered asking her to teach you. It seemed like a handy trick to have when your job involved copious amounts of persuasion and cajoling. It hadn’t escaped your mind that you probably should be at work right now and your boss would no likely be wondering where you were, but your brain was too addled to really care. Besides, you were far too busy trying to appease your new friend.  

You pushed the blanket off your body (finding yourself in the same clothes you were wearing when you were kidnapped) and slowly manoeuvred yourself down so you were sitting on the floor, your back against the side of the bed. It took all your effort not to wince at the pain that shot through your aching body as you did, but you managed it. Luckily, the young girl didn’t notice your discomfort, far too preoccupied with scribbling furiously on the paper in front of her.  

You slowly reached for the nearest crayon and began doodling, hoping it would somehow help you make sense of whatever the heck your life had turned into.

“What’s your name?” she asks, thoughtfully.

You tell her and watch her repeat it to herself slowly, like she’s memorising it.

“What about you? What’s your name?”

“I can’t tell you. I don’t want Silco to be mad with me.”

You frown at that.

“Why would he be mad?” you inquire softly.

“Because I’m not meant to reveal information to people I don’t know very well.”

It sounded like a quote, likely one she’d heard many times, as if it had been drilled into her. You take another look at the crayons sprawled across the floor and suddenly remember Silco telling you he had a daughter, just before you’d decided to caress his lovely hands. You’re certain you’ll never be able to recall that little mishap without your face flushing in embarrassment each time.

“Is Silco your dad?”

“Uh… kinda… I guess,” she mumbles, not looking up from her drawing. Her little brow furrows and the scribbling motion she’s making becomes much more focused as she presses down hard onto the paper, enough to make an imprint of the floorboards on the page.

She doesn’t speak again and you decide not to tell her that Silco had referred to her as his daughter when you’d inquired about the crayons on his coat. Whatever had happened to her, you didn’t feel like it was your place to pry. Most people you knew wouldn’t have cared one iota about the wellbeing of a little girl, not when it was so difficult to take care of your own wellbeing as a resident of Zaun. But, you weren’t most people. And just like you did for her father, you felt a sudden urge to make her feel better.

You pointed to one of her doodles and smiled at her warmly.

“Hey, this is brilliant. You’re a great artist!”

“You really think so?”

“Absolutely. If you ask me, it belongs in an art gallery. In fact, I’d buy it myself and put it up on my wall at home.”

She giggles and the sound makes your chest feel like it’s been lit up.

“How much do you think it’s worth?” she asks.

“Oh, at least one million hexes.”

“Alright then,” she looks at you dead in the eye, with the most serious expression you have ever seen.

Your face drops in horror. What? Shirley she couldn’t be serious. Oh no. You’ve done it again, haven’t you? You and your big mouth. You clearly don’t have a million hexes. If you did, there’s no way you’d be living in a dusty, old apartment, slaving away at a market stall six days a week just to afford rent and a decent-ish meal twice a day.

You begin to stutter out a measly excuse, trying to find the best way to let this poor girl down gently, when you notice her mouth pull into a wide grin. She’s joking.

“Geez, don’t do that!” you admonish her, chucking a crayon her way but purposefully avoiding hitting her.

“You shoulda seen your face! As if you have a million hexes!” she howls, clutching her stomach as she laughs at you falling for her trick. It should annoy you, but instead it instantly makes you feel better after unintentionally upsetting her earlier.

You both go back to colouring, you with an expression of mock annoyance and her with a grin that never fades back to neutrality, always haunted with the ghost of a smile. She begins to ask you questions and you answer them all honestly. I mean, at this point, what have you got to lose? You’d already survived a kidnapping and facing the most terrifying man in all of Zaun, surely no harm could come from opening up to a sweet, young girl.

She asks where you live, what you do for a living, what your favourite colour is, what your favourite game to play is, if you know how to re-wire a smoke bomb. Wait, what was that last one? You brush past it quickly, bringing her attention once again to one of her colourful doodles.

And truthfully, you were having such a lovely time colouring with your new friend, you’d almost completely forgotten the trauma you’d experienced the night before, just as the door opened to reveal a strikingly familiar face. Except this time it wasn’t as blurry in your vision and seemed much more steely and unreadable as he took in the sight in front of him. You take a sharp inhale of air and instantly stop drawing, staring blankly at Silco like a deer in the headlights.

All of a sudden, your chest aches with a mixture of emotions. You’re scared of what might happen to you next, embarrassed at your actions from the night before, confused at your relief from being able to see him again, attracted by the sight of him out of his coat with rolled up shirt-sleeves… all in all, you’re a mess. Noticing the way he looked between you and the girl, it dawned on you that not once had you stopped to consider the potential consequences of fraternising with Silco’s daughter. A person you didn’t realise had existed before today and probably for good reason, given the numerous possibilities for blackmail if anyone were to understand that Silco cared for her.

Silco quickly glances at you before crossing the room to kneel down next to the girl opposite you.

“Jinx, I told you she needed to rest,” he says to her, in that soft tone you’d heard for a only brief moment whilst tied to the chair.

Ah, so her name was Jinx.

“I didn’t tell her anything, I promise!” she protests innocently, staring up at him with wide eyes.

“I’m sure you didn’t, pumpkin, but she’s not supposed to be out of bed yet, she was injured yesterday.”

Jinx tells him your name and some of the details you’d told her during your one-sided game of twenty questions and he looks up at you for a moment, meeting your wide eyes with a searching gaze. You don’t have the chance to figure out what that means before his attention is drawn back to Jinx, who is pointing to one of your doodles on the page.

“She’s nice but she’s terrible at drawing,” she openly tells him as if you weren’t in the room, “Look at that one, I don’t even know what that’s meant to be!”

You’re not really offended. You knew deep down in your heart that art had never been your strong suit, but it didn’t stop you from scoffing in mock offense at the girl’s blunt assessment of your work.

“Well, cheers, I didn’t realise I was trying to impress a pair of art critics,” you drawl, allowing your words to drip with heavy sarcasm.

Both sets of eyes snap up to your face and instantly soften at your shit-eating grin. And then it happens. Something you’d never expected to hear in a million years. Silco laughs. It’s more of a huff than a proper expression of joy, but the amusement laced in the little noise can’t be denied. You’d made Silco laugh.

Jinx’s laughter is much louder and brighter and it fills the room like a thousand fireflies lighting up all at the same time. It’s a sound you’ve missed, you note with no small amount of melancholy. At the arrival of that particularly sombre thought, you barely register Silco standing and helping Jinx gather up the paper and crayons, before telling her to go and wash her hands for lunch. She moves to the doorway reluctantly and stops, turning to face you.

You can’t help but smile warmly at her, which she happily rewards with her own heartfelt grin before dashing off down the hallway. There’s no time to reflect on how much you already liked the girl because your attention is drawn to the looming presence above you, looking down at you with rapt interest. Silco. You gape back up at him.

He repeats your name in a questioning tone and it’s clear he’s asking you to clarify that Jinx had told it to him correctly.

“Yes, sir” you answer meekly.

It’s not until the words leave your mouth that you realise just how awkward of a position you’re currently in. You’re practically kneeling at his feet. ...Oops. Silco must realise it too because the corner of his mouth twitches and he inhales sharply before taking a step back. In turn, you scramble to get up and seat yourself once again on the bed, your back resting against the headboard.

You take the opportunity to fully admire him now that you’re alone together. He looks infinitely more composed than he did in the warehouse, with not a single hair out of place. His outfit appears to be almost exactly the same in style, just minus the coat. A deep burgundy shirt hidden under an intricately designed vest and a cream tie to contrast the darker colours of his outfit. It’s a well thought-out look. One that oozes affluence and power. And it’s this very observation that halts you in your tracks. Oh no. You should not be finding a literal crime lord this attractive.

But you do, gods you do. It’s all you can do but scramble to push the shameful thoughts into a tiny little box in your brain, mentally lobbing the key into a labyrinth to make sure it couldn’t be found again. So, it wasn’t just the concussion that had planted those thoughts in your head when he was holding you. Honestly… Trust you to have a crush on the most unavailable man in the Undercity.

“Despite your apparent ease in impersonating one of my employees, you don’t have to call me sir,” he informs you, his voice returning to its smooth timbre. It’s noticeably different to the soft quality it had held when he was talking to Jinx and you feel a flicker of disappointment at that revelation.

Then you feel your heart stop as you register his words. A tiny (foolish) part of you had hoped he would somehow forget to bring up everything you’d said and done in response to finding yourself in a situation that seemingly promised your death. You can’t help but default to rambling again as your blood ran cold.

“Listen, I’m really sorry about all of that, you know, the whole snapping at you and pretending that I worked for you and speaking for you and complimenting your hands and, you know, just being an absolute eejit in general and-”

“How are you feeling?” he cuts you off.

It’s enough to throw you even more off-kilter, which you honestly didn’t think was possible, but alas, here you were. Since it couldn’t have been the concussion this time around, it must have been the water you’d drank from the bedside table, you decide.

“Like I want to do a belly flop into the River Pilt” you respond automatically.

His brow tightens a miniscule amount and he blinks once.

Shit. Wrong answer.

“Uh, I mean, I’ve still got a bit of a headache and I’m quite tired. How long have I been asleep?” you try to recover, hoping he’ll miraculously forget your odd confession.

“About 30 hours, give or take.”

What.

You watch as he pulls a chair from the corner of the room closer to your bed and sits down, one leg crossed over the other with his hands folded in his lap. Part of you is surprised he wants to sit in a wooden chair after being unwillingly tied to one for so long. You’re certain you don’t ever want to sit in one again, but you reason with yourself that it may be an impractical mindset to take, given society’s penchant for the little wooden bastards.  

“You did wake up momentarily during your medical treatment, but I suspect your body was too tired to acknowledge it.”

“What kind of treatment?”

“A healing solution my doctor developed a number of years ago. It appears to have eased the marks from your bindings,” he gestures to your wrists and you suddenly notice there are no marks there at all.

“Oh.”

A quick glance down at your ankles reveals no signs of injury there either. You didn’t know what to say. You have no idea what kind of medicine could just erase that kind of discolouration almost overnight. There should have at least been some bruises or burns there, given how tightly the ropes had been around them.

“Well, thanks for getting me a doctor and for letting me sleep here, I really do appreciate it. I should, um, probably get out of your hair, shouldn’t I? You must be a very busy man,” you mumble as you shuffle your body forward into the middle of the bed, swinging your legs over the side.

“I do require you to remain here.”

Oh. So, you are a prisoner. You should have known better than to take Jinx’s word for it. You peer openly at him, now facing each other head on, as you perch halfway off the bed. The antithesis to the position you’d been in when you’d first met.

“One of the fools who kidnapped you managed to escape and has no doubt returned to his employer and informed him of the situation. Since he will now be able to identify you, it would be best if you completed the rest of your recovery here.”

One of the goons escaped? You didn’t dare ask what had happened to the other one, although you think you can guess. Silco must be able to read your hesitance because his tone softens slightly, as does his facial expression.

“I assure you, once Hendrick and his pathetic little gang have been eliminated, you will be free to leave.”

“Good. I’m already sick of staying in a room that looks like it was designed by the Mother Superior of a convent.”

Oh, fuck. Why did you say that?? After he so graciously allowed you to live AND got you medical attention and let you stay somewhere safe. He’s going to change his mind and kill you now. You just know it. You’d taken such a risk to save yourself from being killed and less than 48 hours later, you’d ruined it by (once again) insulting the literal Eye of Zaun.

To your surprise, he just laughs. You flinch at the unexpected sound.

“I apologise if the décor does not meet your standards.”

“Uh, that’s okay,” you tell him quietly, your face flushed with humiliation.

“I must confess, I did my research on you while you were out. I was surprised to learn that you’re a civilian. Where did you learn to talk your way out of situations like that?”

“I’m just used to convincing customers to buy stuff from the market stall I work at.”

He nods thoughtfully.

“I was impressed by your ability to persuade them to untie us, given your complete lack of experience in this world of mine,” he gestures vaguely around him, evidently unwilling to say the words ‘criminal empire’ outright.

“Why didn’t you say anything to them? I mean, you’re pretty well-known for your ability to negotiate.”

“I could barely get a word in edgeways. Besides, I knew my right-hand would find me, sooner or later,” Silco replies in a cocky manner.

Now that you’re less afraid he’s going to kill you for your insolence (after repeated offences with no consequences as of yet), you begin to settle comfortably into your preferred means of communication.

“Ah, so your tactic was to just wait there like a damsel in distress? Smart.”

He snorts and you revel in your astonishing ability to make the kingpin laugh. But there’s an observation you feel compelled to make, so you skip the opportunity to hear the sound again in favour of asking something serious. Something that’s been niggling at you throughout the whole conversation.

“Honestly, I expected you to leave me at the warehouse,” you tell him, your face dropping from its amused expression to one of sincerity, “I don’t understand what I did to deserve such kindness from you.”

“You risked your life to protect me, it’s only pertinent that I return the favour,” Silco answers without any hint of sarcasm or condescension.

You don’t know what to say to that and you can’t read his expression when he looks you in the eye. By the way his own eyes flicker between yours, you think he might be hiding something, but you’re not sure you want to find out. He inhales and exhales deeply, breaking the moment you were sharing.

“Sevika, my right-hand, will bring you some food up momentarily. Tell her if you require any more painkillers.”

With that, he stands and carefully places the chair back in the corner. You’re just able to mumble out a quiet breath of thanks as he crosses the room, opens the door, and stops in the doorway. His fingers grasp the door handle and his eyes meet yours, searching your gaze again as if he’s trying to figure something out. Silco nods once and gently closes the door, leaving you alone in your convent cell.

There’s no other way to say it. You’re utterly confused. Not only had he made sure you saw a doctor after your injuries, he’d gone as far as to give you a room to stay in, and even brought you under his protection, ensuring your safety from any potential gang threats. The only question on your mind was: why?

You flip through your options going forward. You could just leave. You doubt he’d put up much of a fuss if you just found the exit to the building and made your way back home. But a part of you just doesn’t want to. And for some reason, that terrifies you. How had you gone from fearing the King of the Lanes, like any other resident of Zaun who had some sense, to actively wanting to stay within his grasp?

You lie down sideways across the bed, your feet still dangling off the edge, and ponder this new dilemma you’d found yourself in, that was somehow more unsettling than the last.  

-

You stay at The Last Drop for two more nights. In that time, your life seems to have altered so suddenly, that ‘past you’ would have cackled with laughter at the mere suggestion you would effectively be living with the Eye of Zaun. Not only are you brought food, Sevika also brings you a change of clothes and shows you where the shared bathroom is. And despite your stay being a very short one, you begin to slip into a little routine that you can’t help but enjoy.

During the daytime, you find yourself dragged down to the empty bar by Jinx, who directs you in playing games with her, watching her take apart little machines she’s put together, and scribbling some more doodles, despite how brutally she’d criticised your first ones. You’ve even begun to put up some of the artwork she makes you in the little room you’ve been allowed to stay in, with tape you’re almost certain Jinx has stolen from Silco’s office. You hope he doesn’t mind.

At one point, Silco catches you both pretending to have a pirate-themed sword fight with two umbrellas you’d found abandoned in a store cupboard. You spot him up on the balcony smirking down at you both, as you try to dodge her attacks, and the temporary distraction earns you a whack on the stomach from Jinx, who promptly forces you to walk the plank.  

On your second evening, Jinx demands that you join her and Silco for dinner, and you’re surprised when Silco agrees, inviting you up to his office for the most luxurious meal you’ve ever had. He still wears his carefully cultivated mask, but you can tell it’s starting to crack with each little interaction the two of you share. Truth be told, you begin to treasure the moments of smooth banter between you both, the way you’re able to trade quips in rapid succession, the shared laughter as Jinx attempts to steal both of your desserts. You feel like you’re floating in outer space by the time you go to bed that evening.

By the third morning, you’re summoned to Silco’s office again. After being bid entry, you find yourself rooted on the spot by the door, your nerves starting to get the better of you as you’re unsure of the purpose of this meeting. Seated behind his desk, he politely tells you to sit down and you can’t help the affronted glare you give the wooden chair placed in front of his desk, as if by staring at it so intensely, you might be able to make it catch fire. Little bastard. Silco notices and waves his hand in the direction of the sofa, and you sit, but not before you spot the slight lift of his lips in response to your, quite frankly, ridiculous new vendetta.

“Hendrick is dead.”

“Oh, right,” you reply awkwardly, “did you kill him?”

“Yes.”

“Nice.”

Silco frowns. You hope he doesn’t think you’re being sarcastic this time. You’re not. You just don’t really know how to respond to a guy telling you he just killed someone, in all honesty. It should disgust you, make you want to run screaming from him. But it doesn’t. And that might be the most concerning part of this dangerous little dance you’ve become embroiled in.

“What about the other goon who kidnapped us?”

“Also dead. And the rest of the gang appear to have disbanded following the removal of their leader, so you don’t have to worry about one of them hunting you down.”

“Thank you. I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” you tell him sincerely. He nods and the action causes a sinking feeling in your stomach. Truthfully, you’re missing the playful banter that’s usually present in your conversations with the man. There’s something about the drowning tone this discussion is taking that makes you feel like your forced vacation is coming to an end. You desperately don’t want it to.

“Since there is nothing keeping you here now, it is safe for you to leave.”

Now, that’s not strictly true. You could think of a few things that could keep you here. Your mind skips through those very reasons like you’re playing hopscotch across stepping stones in a brook. It wasn’t all just about his looks or his poise. Since you’d been given the tiniest window into the true nature of the man behind all the scary titles, you’d begun to admire how he acted behind closed doors. The way he treated Jinx with more reverence and love than you’d seen in a long time. The way he’d made sure you were taken care of, despite having no real obligation to do so. The undeniable way you both seemed to click, in a manner you never had with another person.

But you couldn’t say all that out loud because really, you’d only just met the man. Instead, you nod sadly, hoping he couldn’t identify the sheer amount of disappointment that drags through you like a sinking stone.

“I appreciate you spending time with Jinx; she will certainly miss you,” Silco says in a way that places a deeper emphasis on those last words, as if it has a double meaning that he’s not quite willing to admit.

“I’ll miss her too, she’s a great kid. Whereabouts is she? I want to say bye to her before I go.”

“I’m afraid she’s out with Sevika.”

What? What does he mean she’s gone out? He must have killed Hendrick last night and so he must have known he was going to inform you of the news this morning. So why would he send Jinx away? You have a strange, horrible feeling that he’d done it on purpose, but for the life of you, you can’t figure out why. It didn’t make sense to deny you a goodbye to your new friend but you choose not to say anything to him. It’s not your place to dictate how he parents.

As you turn to face him, you’re stunned by how perplexed Silco looks as he openly studies your face. What the hell is going on in his pretty little head of his? There’s an elongated silence as you stare at each other, neither one backing down from this challenge you’ve found yourself in. You think he’s going to say something as his lips part, but he doesn’t, instead somehow looking even more conflicted than he already was. You concede the battle and speak first.

“Oh, right, you’ll have to tell her I said goodbye then. Well I guess I’d better be off. I should probably go and see if I still have a job.”

You stand from the sofa and cross over to the door, missing the way Silco’s eyes follow you every inch of the way. Maybe you’ve already become too accustomed to their mannerisms because you find yourself lingering in the doorway, fingers lightly grasping the doorhandle in a direct mirror to the way both father and daughter had done a few days before. You find the troubled look on his face to be so heart-breaking, it makes your stomach twist and you’re sure by this point it must have tied itself in a knot. You decide to break the tension the only way you know how. Some good, old fashioned torment.

“Don’t get kidnapped again anytime soon, I’ll be too busy begging for my job back to come running to your rescue, princess.”

He smirks.

“I’ll cancel the plans I’d made for next Tuesday then.”

Good. The ice is unbroken after its temporary freeze-over. All is well again.  

As you’re walking away through the corridors of The Last Drop, you wonder if you’ll be able to see him again soon. But you can’t think of any legitimate reason to, bar from the fact that you just want to. You briefly consider if a career change might bring you closer to the kingpin. You could become a bartender? But you can barely walk from your sink to your kitchen table without dropping a glass, so that wouldn’t work. You could train to become a deadly assassin that he trusts with the most dangerous of missions? …Nah.

None of your fanciful plans to keep the man within arm’s reach seem to fit. Maybe you’re just The Wrong Person for him, you deliberate, with no small amount of disappointment. But gods, you wish you were the right one.

Your final thought on the matter as you make your way through the Lanes and back to your apartment is that maybe he’d be kind enough to just let you visit once in a while. If not to work for him, maybe just to visit Jinx and keep her company. Regardless of how you manage to wriggle your way back into his world, you hope deep down in your heart that this isn’t the last time you cross paths with the King of the Undercity.

PART 3

-

A/N: Cut to Silco playing Crush by Tessa Violet alone in his office after reader has left. Sorry if this one was a bit rambly. Also, the ending was more bittersweet than I’d originally planned but don’t worry bc there will be a part 3, so the angst won’t last forever! Okay, hope you enjoy the rest of your day/night!!

Tag list: @htmlbitxh

[krispyweiss]

Book Review: “Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon” by Joel Selvin

Tortured by his own brain and barely functioning, Jim Gordon still found comfort in music and by 1983 was playing in dingy clubs with a band called the Blue Monkeys.

The gigs were Gordon’s only normalcy in his world of deepening mental illness.

This moment before things fell apart serves as author Joel Selvin’s introduction to the drummer, who had once been the go-to session man in Los Angeles and was a former member of Derek & the Dominos and Traffic.

“Everybody knows how this story ends,” Selvin writes in the first chapter of “Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon.” It ends, of course, with the drummer murdering his mother, Osa Gordon, in 1983 after a career that established Jim Gordon as one of the most revered drummers in rock ‘n’ roll history.

Gordon’s tale is that of a gut-wrenching struggle with mental illness and stuff-of-dreams musical triumphs that veteran music journalist Selvin tells from an omniscient point of view, in the way Bob Woodward writes his political tomes, with citation saved for the notes and bibliography of the 302-page book.

With cooperation from surviving family members and former colleagues like Jim Keltner, Eric Clapton, Mike Post and others, Selvin paints a sympathetic picture of the Wrecking Crew drummer who struggled against the voices in his head as he recorded and toured with the Everly Brothers, the Beach Boys, Gordon Lightfoot, Joan Baez, George Harrison, Frank Zappa and others between stints in the aforementioned bands with Clapton and Steve Winwood. But while Gordon tamped down his emerging schizophrenia enough to engage in musical success, he also decked his then-girlfriend Rita Coolidge while the pair were on the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour, committed other troubling acts of violence against women and engaged in behavior, such as speaking to people who were not present during recording sessions, that concerned his friends and family even as it left them at a loss of what to do.

Gordon’s career slowly dissolved as the 1970s turned to the 1980s and his grasp of reality grew more and more tenuous. Hospital stays and stints in rehab were unsuccessful at muting the voices that ultimately directed Gordon to kill his mother.

When they did, he listened. Gordon went to Osa Gordon’s house and murdered her with a hammer and butcher knife before heading out for a night of drinking. Police arrested a distraught Gordon, who confessed, the next morning.

He was sentenced to life in prison. Selvin ends the story in 1993 when Gordon and his fellow inmates are watching Clapton pick up a Grammy for his unplugged version of “Layla,” which Gordon was credited with co-writing.

“I’ll be darned,” Gordon said.

A more-complete book would’ve at least touched on the intervening 30 years, Gordon’s life behind bars and his 2023 death at 77. That said, “Demons & Drums” is the most-complete book on Gordon the world is likely to get and is worth the read. For despite its mildly sycophantic tone, and Gordon’s oft-horrendous behavior, Selvin has served up not only Gordon’s story but a fascinating history of the evolution of drumming and the 1970s music scene.

Grade card: “Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon” by Joel Selvin - B+

4/3/24

[invisibleraven]

“I don’t care that you’re hanging up lights, get off the roof!” for Peterpatterlina?

Julie awakes from her nap when she hears thumping from above her. And given this house doesn’t have an attic that’s accessible, it only leaves one place that the noise could be coming from.

She stomps down the stairs and outside-well as much as one can stomp in monster slippers- and looks up.

There on the roof are her boyfriends. Reggie seems to be positioning a tableau of reindeer while Luke is on his stomach attaching a string of lights to the gutters.

Julie crises her arms and glares up at them. “What on earth are you two doing?”

"Hey Julie!" Reggie calls with a jaunty wave, then windmills his arms a little before clutching at the Rudolph to stay upright, offering her a sheepish smile.

"Hi boss, figured we'd get the lights up before that nasty storm we're supposed to get pulls in," Luke offers, scowling when he loses his grip on the lights, swiping frantically to get them back and securing them with a clip.

“I don’t care that you’re hanging up lights, get off the roof!” Julie shouts. "One of you is bound to fall and break your necks!"

"But we're almost done!" Reggie protests.

"NOW," Julie glowers.

Both boys grumble, but the work is pretty much done, so they scramble down, Luke riding the drainpipe and Julie just shakes her head. At least Reggie uses the tree next to the house to monkey his way down.

They both stop in front of her, still all smiles, and Julie's expression softens. "You know I love you both right?" They nod. "Then next time... please just use the ladder."

"We have a ladder?" Luke asks.

Julie scowls at him. "You know we do because you complained about having to store it in the garage when we got it." Then she turns to Reggie. "Do I even wanna know how you managed to get the reindeer up there?"

"Probably not," he admits, scuffing the toe of his boot in the ground.

Julie sighs. "Okay, we are going to ask my dad to help you both finish because then at least I know you have adult supervision." She pulls out her phone and sends a quick text, almost instantly getting a reply before facing them again. "Last thing I want is to be trapped in the emergency room over the holidays because one of you fell off the roof."

"Sorry Julie," they chorus. She offers them both a smile, cupping their cheeks as she leans up to kiss them both.

"I'm going back inside to make cookies. Try to stay in one piece until papi gets here okay?"

"Can I stay in and make cookies with you instead?" Reggie asks, breaking out his best puppy dog eyes.

"Oh no, you two started the lights, you two finish them," she states firmly. "But I will save you the beaters to lick if you want."

"I think we've had enough food poisoning for one lifetime, thanks," Luke retorts. "The hot dogs nearly killed us. Hate to see what raw eggs and flour does."

"Well then I'll make you both a cookie to eat before I pack the rest away for the holidays, how about that?" Julie bargained.

"Sounds good boss," Luke replies, pecking her quickly as he sees Ray's truck approaching.

"I'm gonna go help him get the ladder down before he convinces your dad to spot him scale the drain pipe again," Reggie says, giving Julie a quick kiss before running off after Luke.

Julie smiles despite herself and heads back inside the warm house. Even though they might not have a brain cell to rub between them some days, she loves her boys.

But she still glares daggers at Luke when she sees him eyeing the drain pipe and points to where Reggie and her dad are holding the ladder.

And she gets the beaters all to herself-without it doing a darn thing to her. But she's not telling the guys that.

[ninjastormhawkkat]

The Strange Case of Wordgirl and Miss Crimes: Chapter 1

“Look guys, I’m fine. That film didn’t bother me. I already know a lot of facts about mice. My dad is Dr. Two Brains.” Becky waved off her friends concern, acting casual and calm as if she wasn’t bothered by the film nor did she have the same worrying thoughts she always had when her dad first became Dr. Two Brains. Violet and Scoops still looked at her with concern, but did not try to argue with her. Sensing that her friends still did not accept her facade, Becky decide to just head out before they tried to strike up another conversation with her about the film. She wasn’t in the mood to talk about her feelings right now. She had to get herself distracted with important matters. Becky packed up her bag and waved goodbye to her friends. “I’ll talk to you guys again soon.” Becky said as she waved goodbye to her friends and headed out of the classroom with Bob in tow. Scoops and Violet gave Becky half hearted goodbyes as she left, both still worried about her as they glanced at each other and saw how the other’s eyes held sympathetic concerns.

Becky walked briskly down the hallways of her school to the exit. Bob, her pet monkey and Wordgirl’s sidekick, Captain Huggy Face, followed along behind her. Becky did not like lying to her friends like that, especially after she promised them no more secrets after they found out about her secret identity as Wordgirl. She just didn’t want to admit to them that the movie did bother her, just not in the way they thought it did. If Becky was being honest with her self at this moment, she felt it was a good thing that film brought back up the worry and concerns she had about her dad. It served to remind her that she had promised herself all those years ago that she would do her best to free her dad from Squeaky’s control and return him back to normal, or close to normal as he was before the accident. Becky hated that she let herself get distracted so much that she felt she hadn’t put in any real effort into rescuing her dad. Now Becky was not science expert, but she felt she could have used her hero status to acquire more professional help for her father. She had let herself get so used to who he was now, and yes, her dad was not completely different to how she remembered him besides the whole villain lifestyle, but that was the point. Becky had no idea how long her dad will still be her dad. It had been three years since she last saw his old, human face, when she was just 8 years old. Now at 11 years of age, Becky felt it was time for her to stop dawdling around and get to business. Becky stopped in her tracks to collect her thoughts about how to plan her next course of action in her important mission. She then felt a tap on the back of her legs and turned her head down towards Bob who still had concern on his face. "Seriously Becky. Are you going to be okay?" Bob asked in his monkey speech which only Becky ever understood. Becky sighed before looking at her friend with a determined expression. "I'll be fine Bob. That film just reminded me of what's truly important right now. Now come on. Let's fly to Professor Tubing's lab and see if he has made any updates on finding a way to remove Squeaky from dad." Becky felt she had gotten lucky when Professor Robert Tubing, an old friend of her father, had offered his service to help remove the mousebrain from her dad. Despite some slight drawbacks, Professor Tubing had not seem to halt in giving his assistance in helping Wordgirl save Dr. Two Brains. Maybe he had made some progress since the last time they spoke. Bob looked disappointed at her response as he believed she needed to go home and talk to her dad most of all. Unfortunately she was his ride in a sense and Bob did not want to have to take the bus again. Plus Bob could not say no to that hopeful look in Becky's eyes. He knew how much the kid cared about her dad despite him being a villain now. 'Darn my bleeding heart for this kid.' the monkey cursed inside of his head. Bob finally just nodded in agreement with her plan. Becky smiled as she picked up her monkey. "Word Up!" she cried out as she transformed into Wordgirl before taking off towards Professor Tubing's lab with her sidekick in reluctant tow.

@melodythebunny

@drtwobrainsstuff

[doubleddenden]

50 years in the future, I'm a brain in a jar, I have 5 ai weed smoking demon waifu girlfriends, my relatives are visiting me at the long term care facility and fast cash title loan combo building, formerly the old Taco bell before it became a vending machine car

Me: hello family *involuntarily twitching* oh no, ad attack incoming

My great grand niece: it's okay uncle, I've got an ad block dust right here *sprinkles some into my jar like a goldfish*

Me: thank you, K8liynnne, you're a good kid.

Ai girlfriend 1: Kia summer sales event, get a 2064 Kia Sorento for 0% down APR before the summer flame storms melt the tires!

Me: oh darn, she got it instead of me. Got any more left?

Great grand nephew: sorry Uncle, we only had enough for the car ride to and from the moon. If we give you any more, we're going to have to sit through 5 hours of ads in the atmospheric Twitter Musk tollbooth

Me: you're fine, Raid Shadow Legends. How is your sponsorship going? Did they remember to mail your cryptocheck this time?

Great grand nephew: oh uncle, you're so silly. People don't mail things anymore, it comes via Soul Resonating Virtual Reality NFT models.

Great grand Niece: he's right, my partner and I just bought our house with an ugly monkey in a top hat.

Me: well flaeylgisht my skringit. Good for you guys- oh no its anothITS THE MOSSSST WONDERFUL TIIIIME OF THE Y-

AI Girlfriend 2: he'll be okay, it's a Claritin ad. This one is skippable after 10 minutes and a humanity test

Great grand nephew: thanks, Aunt Android 18 Blu.

AI GF 3: we keep telling him to like, comment, and subscribe to the monthly America+ program to skip the ads, but he keeps insisting he'd rather die.

AI GF 4: so silly. Everyone knows humans no longer die. They're kept in these facilities as living crypto mines after republican president Sasuke Vegeta ªx⅜ TrumpMusk sold all non billionaire humans to Amazon after hiring hackers to botch the election results.

Great grand Niece: how did he die again, Aunt 5 Star Artoria Lancer Alter Summer Maid Rider?

AI GF 5: couldn't afford to pay his student loans 20 years ago after they were reinstated by the self governed supreme court justices, after they decided they wanted a sky yacht. They sent the police to arrest him. He wasn't a police+ subscriber, so they shot him instead and claimed he called one of them a "doodoo head," allowing them to invoke "disrespecting an officer of the law."

Great grand niece: oh. Poor guy. Maybe he can save up for a new body. They had a good deal at Walmart Beyond.

Grand great nephew: sister help me I'm having an ad attack WHOPPER WHOPPER WHOPP-

[centerforhci]

Leadership in the Zone – How to Fully Engage Mentally

Being a fully engaged leader takes focus on the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of our lives. As you saw in my last posts, I do well with the physical aspects. However, I’d give myself a B on the mental aspect; I can be easily distracted at times, especially when procrastinating on a project. When this happens, I have to consciously slow myself down to focus on the task at hand.

Mental energy is the energy of laser focus. It’s hallmark quality in humans is the capacity to be fully present. Not just physically present, but cognitively present as well. The Corporate Athlete® course by the Human Performance Institute teaches that full engagement requires complete presence, investing our full and best energy, right here, right now. The good news is that this ability can be acquired.

I’ve invited expert Tom Ward, founder, and principal of NextLevel, to help me explain the importance of mental energy and how to improve it.

Does Multitasking Work?

Have you ever tried carrying on a meaningful conversation with your significant other, child, or best friend while watching TV? Were either of you distracted by the TV? Did either of you become annoyed by the other’s distraction by the TV? In this situation, what are you saying to the other person when you become distracted by the TV? That the TV program is more important than the conversation and/or the person you are conversing with?

One cardinal rule regarding multitasking is: don’t multitask when people, safety, or important matters are at hand. Relationships and outcomes both improve when we focus our attention on one thing at a time. Yet, as we all know, multitasking isn’t always detrimental. For example, folding laundry while watching TV seems just fine. The key is to train ourselves to know when it’s not okay.

How to Become More Focused

What are some effective techniques for cultivating greater presence and focus?

High on the list are meditation, journaling, visualization, and yoga. If you’ve never tried meditating, you might be surprised by its coincident ease and difficulty.

Using Meditation to Become More Focused

Let’s start with meditation. Here is what Tom Ward has to say about using meditation to become more focused:

Try the following. In a quiet room, sit comfortably in a straight-backed chair. Close by, set a kitchen or smartphone timer for three minutes. With your feet on the floor and hands in your lap, start the timer and gently close your eyes. Bring your attention to your breath. Observe your breath as you inhale and exhale. Don’t attempt to manage your breathing; simply observe it. When your attention wanders from concentrating on your breathing (and it will), simply acknowledge that it has wandered and gently return your attention to it once again. When the timer goes off, open your eyes, and answer these questions:

·        What did it feel like to meditate?

·        Was it easy or difficult?

·        How many times did your attention wander from your breath?

·        Was it easy to return your attention to your breath?

I’ve been meditating off and on for many years, and sometimes I find that my concentration just wanders more than normal. And, it’s not always easy for me to return my attention to the ebb and flow of my normal breathing. Darned monkey mind!

As challenging as meditation can be at times, I find it particularly helpful in calming my mind and body. I’m more focused, sleep better and feel more alert when I wake. Another bonus I’ve discovered is that my workouts tend to be better when I’ve meditated earlier in the day.

Using Journaling to Become More Focused

Journaling can also help you stay focused because it helps you release the chatter from your brain. While journaling can mean writing for 20 minutes at a time on a regular basis, that may be too much for busy leaders who are learning this skill. Here are some ideas to clear your mind if journaling is new for you:

·        When you feel your mind getting full, grab paper and pen or pencil and just write down everything on your mind (research indicates writing with a pen/pencil tends to make the thoughts written more “real” by engaging multiple areas of the brain simultaneously). This brain dump then helps clear your mind so you can focus on the task at hand. Once the task is complete, then go back and sort the brain dump into your priority lists for the next week.

·        If words are not your preferred choice of expression, doodle or draw pictures on paper or a tablet instead. This is known as a visual brain dump. If you find yourself enjoying this, then get some markers, sharpies, and other colorful tools to help you clear your brain regularly.

·        If you’re a hands-on person, Tubers and Zots and Legos are fun ways to clear your head while physically engaging your hands. It is also a great way to engage others in the office kitchen or community room. People love to pick these things up and mindlessly play with them as a way to give their brain a break!

·        Are you a musical person? Then use musical apps or tools to clear your mind.

Go ahead and try any and all of these tools at your own pace. The goal is not to become overwhelmed with focus exercises; that will only lead to more distraction, and an even longer to-do list. Instead, find the best tool for clearing your mind, and practice it regularly to build your skills at staying present and focused.

Remember, the key to being fully engaged mentally is learning to manage your mental energy. Doing one thing at a time is a great start. Cultivating a skill to calm the mind on a regular basis will help you engage your full leadership.

Next week, we will discuss managing spiritual energy, which is fed by our physical, emotional, and mental energy sources. Your spiritual energy will give you the force you need to live and lead the life you want.

In the meantime, have you had success with meditation, journaling, or yoga? Is there an activity you can point to that has made a drastic improvement in your ability to remain focused?

Image from Tony Bustos, The Arizona Republic

Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

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[redsoapbox]

Two More Acts Confirmed for Have Yourself a Merry Indie Christmas

Following the news yesterday that bis and Green Seagull will be contributing songs to Have Yourself a Merry Indie Christmas, my fundraising album for Crisis, I can confirm two more names today. 

The first is Jack Ladder and the Dreamlanders. 

The ‘shapeshifting gloom merchant’ Tim Rogers, aka Jack Ladder.

The Guardian reviewed the Sydney combo’s album Hijack! last year and summed up the band in fine style: ‘Since 2005 the towering, baritone-voiced Ladder has released five albums, spanning spindly folk, jittery-60s blues rock, gothic electro-pop, crooning new-wave and chintzy synth tunes. Each expertly nails a sound and atmosphere, before being discarded wholesale for the next. Terrible moves for building a fanbase in a small market. But those who stick with Ladder’s universe find a cult devoted to the clever arrangements, startling sounds, hidden hooks and uneasy dissonance of an archetypal gloom merchant interrogating his trope with dry wit’. 

Huge thanks to the band for contributing “Xmas in Rehab”, which is taken from Hijack!

Here is the man in action with ‘I Can’t Drink the Water’.

https://jackladder.bandcamp.com/

The second confirmed act of the day are Seattle’s The Green Pajamas. 

The Green Pajamas formed in the spring of 1984 when Jeff Kelly and Joe Ross recorded and released their first album, Summer of Lust, pioneering Seattle’s answer to the Los Angeles Paisley Underground scene.

Bucketful of Brains had this to say about the band back in 1987 – ‘The Pajamas somehow manage to sound like they are holding two kaleidoscopes side by side and are using them to see the future of rock ’n’ roll’. While I’m still trying to grasp that thought-provoking concept, there is little doubt that it’s a darned intriguing claim, and there is no doubt at all that “I Wish That It Was Christmas” is an absolute barnstormer of a track.

Summer of Lust was the first of 30 albums the band punched out up until 2018’s Phantom Lake: Northern Gothic 3. “I Wish That It Was Christmas” was originally released in 1984, but the version that will appear on the album is taken from the Green Monkey Xmas compilation Christmas Boogie Woogie released in 2019.

Here’s the band firmly in the groove on “The Way I Feel About You”

https://thegreenpajamas1.bandcamp.com/

Two more tomorrow folks!

[theowritesstuff]

I have so many Adrian Chase thoughts he is on my mind 24/7 like that clapping monkey in Homer Simpson’s brain. As a fellow D&D nerd I do enjoy the thought of him getting so enthusiastic into a campaign. Dude definitely has play miniatures and 7 set die collections💖 but he’s trying to teach you all the classes and rules and you don’t have the heart to tell him you know this already because he looks so darn cute talking about it so you sit and listen intently and you ask him questions bc he just loves going down memory lane so much. I am also 100% convinced he has tried to get Chris to play D&D. Anyways, hope you enjoy your day!

AH! As a fellow DnD nerd I love this!!!!! Yeah, Adrain definitely has lots of sets of dice, he says he needs at least one for every one of his characters. And he definitely has a die jail where he puts d20s that have done him wrong.

But yes, just sitting there quietly, watching him animatedly move his hands around explaining the game to you. He just looks so excited to be sharing a part of himself with you. Of course you play dumb and ask him questions you already know the answers to because he just looks so cute when he’s explaining things.

So in the show I think it’s mentioned that Adrian doesn’t play DnD anymore (or maybe I just read it/hallucinated it) so when you tell him you want to play a game with you, he lights up. He’s so excited to create characters with you, and will most likely attempt to get the other 11th Street Kids to play as well.

If he’s not the DM of the game, he absolutely wants to have a character that will pursue your character. His character does very much resemble him in trying to woo you, causing the others to roll their eyes teasingly.

Thank you for the thoughts! I hope you have a wonderful day as well!

[darthmaulification]

Ok first of all, thank you for answering so quick, i am at awe. And second since Maul gives off both daddy ABD dad energy, what if his s/o already has a kid OR is preggo?

you are very welcome!! 💕 i tend to religiously check my inbox, and if the ask is easy enough to answer for me, i can get stuff out pretty darn fast. which makes the juxtaposition of this one getting out a tad later very funny. 💀

but yes, since maul is both 🥺dad🥺 and 😈daddy😈, he will most certainly hit on a milf, full stop. he's the type of guy who isn't put off by someone already having a kid/s because a) if he's into you enough to date you he can accept a child too and b) he wants to be a dad so badly it's almost dumb (but he keeps that a secret under lock and key).

in fact, he would probably open up and pursue a relationship to someone who has a child faster than he would if you were just single.

so! lets say you already have a kid from a previous marriage/relationship/one night stand whatever. you're a single mom, doing a kick-ass job at raising your youngster whose at that funny age where their too young to be fully sentient but old enough that they have a personality. i'm thinking like... 3 years old, funny toddler age.

you and your kid are at a market, you've got them on your hip, and your kid is just... talking non stop, like they're trying to chew off your ear with half-incoherent babbles about whatever they see. but you've got that Mother Brain, so you're able to just zone out most of it and nod along.

until your kid points at the man at the booth next to yours and says, very loudly like any child would, "Mama, he looks funny!" and it's instant mortification because the man most definitely heard your kid, and is most definitely staring at you. even though you're dying from embarrassment, you have to shush your kid because he's still pointing at the man, still talking shit, and oh Maker he's walking over.

"I suppose the hood is a tad silly, considering the heat." and he's literally the hottest man you've ever met it brings an instant blush to your cheeks. he's a zabrak, crimson skinned, adorned with black tattoos on his face and presumably everywhere else, and when he throws off the hood of his cloak, reveals a ring of horns on his crown.

... of which your kid delightfully says "Sticks on his head, Mama!" and then you're also blushing for a whole new reason and apologizing for your child profusely. but, the man only grins and introduces himself, “Maul, my dear.” and you almost choke when he lifts your hand to kiss your knuckles. but what really surprises you is when maul turns to your kids and says, “And yes, little one, my horns are quite like sticks, aren’t they?”

and it would all just blossom from there, really.

~

now, if you're already pregnant when maul meets you? i think deep deep down that would kinda stroke his Monkey Brain, but he'd be respectful and not try to initiate anything with you at first. maul wouldn't cross that boundary just yet, and would probably stick close to you to build a friendship in which he's hopelessly pining for you.

but he’s still maul, so he’d probably be a bit of a douche and act all cocky because he’s Like That, but don’t be afraid to put him in his place. maul suffers from a mild case of Stereotypical Masculinity, so if you, a pregnant woman, appeal to his chivalry, he’ll back down very very easily. which is quite impressive, considering his character and reputation.

and depending on how far along you are when you meet, you'd maybe get close enough within that timeframe that you ask him to be there when you give birth, when the time comes. and maul would do it. for you.

and, of course, for the baby too.

~

in both scenarios, maul loves your runt despite the fact they don’t share his blood. they’re his as much as he’s theirs.

though maul would appreciate a zabrak baby once you’re up to it. or two. or ten.

[skellebonez]

Could you write 22 “Oh, you’re just grumpy” with Monkie King and a deage MK?

OOOOH coming back to this? Yeah, I am totally up for giving this another go! MK is having a not so great time, nothing warning worthy but I do HC him not being the healthiest kid. Mild spoilers for season 2 episodes 1 and 2.

Oh, you're just grumpy.

"Noooooooo!" MK shouted, stomping his foot on the ground in anger. "I'm not grumpy, I'm mad! You can't let them leave me behind! Take me back! I'm the Monkie Kid! I have to do this myself! I-"

"You are currently physically 4 years old with all the control over your powers of that age," Sun Wukong rebutted with a soft sigh, frowning and wincing at the high pitched angered scream in reaction he received at that. That was... not the best way to go about this... He needed a different tactic.

He knelt down to be at eye level with his now even younger protégé, holding out his hand. When MK stared at it he chanced putting it on his shoulder and continued when MK didn’t shrug it off or start yelling again. “Bud, MK, it’s ok. I know you’re frustrated. You have every right to be! But we just want to make sure you’re safe until we can get you back to normal.”

This was not the kind of trouble the Monkey King expected to happen immediately before... well, put a cork on that for now. But this wasn't the kind of trouble be expected to happen regardless of time frame. How in the world anyone managed to not only curse an object in this way but find a way to slip it on his student was anyone's guess. But the fact of the matter was that MK, the Monkie Kid himself, was now physically 4 years old. Mentally, he was still the same age he was before the curse, personality and memories still completely intact... for the most part, it became clear to them very quickly that being physically a kid again came with more than just a smaller body. It came with the mood swings and heightened emotions of “kid brain” as Mei called it, when MK immediately burst into tears at just the mention of being left behind so Mei and the others could go after the demon. And then he couldn’t figure out why he was crying, whether from frustration or worry or both or why he even started, which lead to more crying out of sheer confusion, which made everyone feel very bad.

They’d managed to calm him down long enough for the Monkey King get him on his cloud and bring him to Flower Fruit Mountain in case the demon attempted to go after him like this, but that was short lived once they actually made landfall.

"But I can do this!" MK continued, pouting and tears of frustration starting to peak at the corners of his eyes once again, albeit calmer frustration. "I-I beat the Spider Queen! I can handle one demon who had to slap a bracelet on me to make me a kid to beat me, even if I'm tiny! I can kick his butt!"

"I know you can, Bud," Wukong said evenly, offering him an understanding smile. "And normally I'd let you go in guns blazing and know you could handle everything no problem now! You've more than proven you can handle stuff even I couldn't. If you were just shrunk I wouldn’t dare think you couldn’t handle this." He reached out a hand, ruffling his hair far more gently that he normally would. But still rough, rough enough to let him know he wasn't going to just treat him like glass now. "But this is a bit different. Remember what I said when Macaque was having you use your full power?” MK scowled for a second before nodding. “Using your powers like this? Could hurt you. And I don’t want to see you get hurt like that. Heck, even I would have trouble controlling my powers and probably get hurt if I was turned into a little kid monkey man, and if this happened to me I would trust you if you told me to stay safe."

"... you would?" MK asked softly, and Wukong nodded. Maybe it was a... bit of a stretch of the truth. Sun Wukong would probably need some convincing too (Great Sage title leading to Great Misjudgement sometimes, the previously mentioned Spider Queen fight a key example), but that's just one more thing he and MK had in common.

"Course I would,” Wukong said, and given said convincing that was the truth. “I trust you, MK, and-AGH!" He may be the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, but nothing prepared him for the barreling rocket that was a 4 year old launching themselves at him to hug him with all the strength of... well, himself!

"I trust you too!" MK yelled right in his ear and oh if he thought his student had a loud yell before. But that only lasted for a second before he pulled back from the hug, body limp and head rested on his shoulder as the energy seemed to sap a bit from him as Wukong stood back up and he held him on his hip instead of setting him down when he saw the bright red rings around his eyes and how tired he seemed already... Tang had mentioned that he knew MK wasn’t exactly the healthiest as a child... "But... I feel bad not doing anything..."

"Then we can do something, that's an easy fix!" Wukong laughed, and his chest warmed as he was reminded of the few children he had helped take care of or play with while on the long journey centuries ago. He was a softie, really. "No training though, I am not going to body slam you when you come up to my knees."

This apparently was the magic joke to make, making MK devolve into a fit of giggles. A testament to how this cursed object affected him, he never would have giggled at that without it. Probably... MK had an odd sense of humor sometimes. But then again, so did he!

"Actually... I think I have just the thing for us to try."

~

All things considered, Wukong probably should have expected something like this. He did tell MK that he probably didn’t have much control over his powers. And that using his powers was a bad idea. And Tang did warn him he wasn’t a healthy child. The three together were a bad combo when his powers activated with MK’s unconscious reactions to certain things...

“How you feeling, Bud?” Wukong whispered softly, rubbing his back as he laid face down on his couch. He’d barely used his powers at all, just activated his true sight to find ingredients when they were cooking without even thinking about it, but that was enough to make the kid’s head feel like it was splitting open (in symptoms that sounded like a migraine, which... yeah, he felt really bad for him, and the jolt of worry and fear that shot through him surprised him less than he felt it should). “Still bad?”

There were a few of Wukong’s monkeys hanging out on the couch, one in particular was curled up next to MK’s head. Perhaps they were keeping him company while he wasn’t feeling well and nodded off in the process.

“I think I’m ok now,” MK answered, sitting back up and leaning into the Monkey King’s side (he seemed to seek out contact a lot more like this, letting Wukong carry him to the house, leaning on his shoulder when he showed him how to prepare the snacks they were making, now this... it made him wonder just how much physical affection he got as a kid). He looked leagues better than he had just 40 minutes ago, thankfully not nearly as exhausted as he had looked before he laid down. “Headache went away... I dunno, a while ago. But I didn’t wanna get up.”

“Completely understandable,” Wukong nodded in approval, glad that he’d gotten some form of rest. He needed it after everything he had been through. “You feel like getting up now, though? I made us some lunch... dinner... not desert food! Just like I promised.”

“Yeah!” MK exclaimed, immediately jumping off the couch and making his way to the kitchen like a rocket. “How about our snacks, how much longer do they have? Do you think we did ok? Do you think the others are gonna like em!?”

“They still have well over an hour of sitting in the fridge,” Wukong laughed, following him and watching him scramble to sit on one of the chairs at the table. “But I think we did a pretty good job of making annin tofu for the first time. They already look pretty darn delicious.” The almond jelly dish wasn’t as hard as he believed it would be, and using agar even he would be able to enjoy it... once he added some peaches on top, of course! “But that’s for later, for now what do you think of your meal?” MK looked up from his bowl, a spoonful of rice and vegetables already in his mouth. Wukong couldn’t help but laugh. “I think I’ll take that as a job well done.”

The two ate their respective lunches, rice and steamed vegetables for MK and rice and fruits for Wukong, talking about what dishes they could try making together in the future. Being a monkey Wukong had a very limited pallet for what he could (and would, given other circumstances) actually eat, so brainstorming workaround for that was a great way to pass the time before moving back to the couch. They played some, shockingly not Sun Wukong related, games that he had stashed away (and he was very offended by MK’s disbelief that he had media not related to himself in his house, totally offended). The game was one of those ones with a motion controller that you had to move around to play, and MK was having a blast with it.

The monkeys also seemed to be enjoying the show quite a lot.

Before the two knew it the sun had begun to set, MK’s grip on his controller starting to weaken as he sat down on the couch and attempted to keep his eyes open. Even with his rest earlier he was exhausted.

“Did anyone... tell you anything yet?” He asked softly, once again leaning into Wukong’s side with a yawn.

“Not yet,” Wukong admitted, looking at MK’s phone for the fourth time in he hour. “Not since they told me they found out where the demon went. But that probably means they’re focused on catching him! They’re gonna get the guy, I have a good feeling about it.”

“If you say so...” MK mumbled out, the controller slipping from his grasp as he closed his eyes.

“UH.. Bud? MK?” Wukong gently nudged his student, smiling softly when he realized that he’d just fallen asleep. “OK, that game clearly did it’s job a little too well.” He made to stand up, stopping short when something tugged on his clothing. MK had an iron grip on him, holding tight to his side and not looking like he was going to be letting go any time soon.

Well... Wukong didn’t have the heart to make him let go or chance waking him up to move him... so instead he took a hair and poofed up a blanket to lay over top of MK as he made himself comfortable on the side of the couch. It didn’t take long, and it took even less time for the monkeys around the house to curl up around and on top of the duo.

It was nice... Wukong didn’t want to admit it, but he was going to miss this. Not just when MK was changed back to his normal age, but when he had to... “go on vacation”.

He felt bad, lying to his student. His kid, now that he realized he couldn’t keep from admitting that to himself. But he trusted MK, genuinely trusted him in this regard, to keep everyone in the city safe while he was gone and he didn’t want the extra stress of knowing just what Wukong was really doing to weigh him down. He knew how much MK worried, seen how much anxiety he had after Macaque and the fight with the Spider Queen, how hard it would be to keep him from following him into places that were too dangerous for him to traverse without training they hadn’t completed yet.

He... really regretted not training him more in the beginning. Regretted it more than most things he had lately. Maybe if he had he could have explained things to him better. Known that if he did sneakily follow him he would at least be in much less danger.

He couldn’t let himself be too close after this. He’d have to go back to normal, aloof, jokey, “ah you’re fine cool beans good luck bud I believe in you!” Monkey King. For MK’s sake.

As he looked down at the sleeping child curled into his side he had to make himself believe it was for MK’s sake.

Why did that feel like it was a lie?

[midnightmoonkiss]

OG mermaid anon here back with some more pirate brain rot. The first time she steps foot on land when they’re docked, just in time for this kingdoms yearly festival, she refuses to leave Deku’s side at first, nervous to be around so many humans. But then she starts to wander off, her curiosity getting the best of her once again. At first, she sticks close by, but after they visit a bar and deku’s had a few drinks, she leaves the bar and gets swept up in a dance. She’s enjoying herself until she ends up towards a fruit booth.

If you remember, fruits are a delicacy for Merfolk, but the last few generations have never gotten a taste from their isolation in deep water. Her eyes are practically bulging out of her head and she hands the booth keeper the small baggy of coins Deku had given her (which is the equivalent of a few hundred dollars because he’s a rich pirate who spoils her), though she doesn’t grasp the concept of money since it’s something merfolk don’t use, at least back in her pod. So she tosses the man the bag and he loads her up with multiple different fruits.

She finds a seat and starts trying each one, not knowing that while they are a delicious treat for merfolk, there’s a reason they are a *treat* seeing as they act equivalently to alcohol for humans. So she’s basically completely wasted and stumbling through the village all day and when night falls, she’s spinning and dancing, having the time of her life, not knowing that Deku had been torn asunder at the fact he lost her HOURS ago. That is until she looks up from her now bare-feet and sees him and the rest of the crew, panting and worried looks. She runs over and basically falls into him, giggling and hanging off of him like a monkey. “Deku! Hi! You’re back,” she pulls away and turns to keep walking, stumbling every few steps.

“Where did you go?” She has to ask with the cutest little expression, as if HE had abandoned HER. She stumbles again and falls flat on her butt, which starts another round of infectious giggling.

On one hand, he’s kinda mad because she can’t just wander off like that! She could get hurt.. or worse... But seeing her drunk out of her mind is a hilarious and adorable sight, so he’s conflicted. “You wandered away from me, remember, Princess?” Princess. A nickname he gave her because apparently if she told him her actual name outside of the water, it could pierce his eardrums because of the frequency merfolk communicate at under water (like a series of humming). Of course she knows about what royalty is, having heard stories of humans and some of their traditions that rubbed off on the merfolk, so they had their own form of royalty. Selfishly, she adores being called Princess, since the pod treated her like less than dirt.. It was a very refreshing change of pace.

+++. Sn OOO THIS TOOK A COOL TURN!

I love how fruit made her drunk 😭 😂

Eee a giggly girl! 😭 that is so gosh darn precious

And.. SUGAR DADDY PIRATE DEKU👀🏴‍☠️YESSIR!! Lets GO!!

Hhhh the fact that the whole crew was worried for her💜💜🥺thats so sweet

Mmm.. well here’s to more fruit being aboard the ship!🍺🥵🍒🍎🍐 Your au is beautiful🥦💜

[repclown]

Gimme your top 5 art pieces ✨ bonus if it comes with a little anecdote/info dump :)

(i am aware this is a ridiculously late response. i’m really sorry. this has been in my drafts forever bc… well you’ll see)

oh wow! thank you so much for the ask! im not knowledgable on art & honestly fall in love with nearly everything i see but here are 5 basic pieces that i remember i like looking at and the incredibly monkey-brain reasons i like looking at them. 💞

1. malabar lady : raja ravi varma

i saw this in my sst textbook actually (i know, gross). the shitty textbook quality made it look like it was glowing and that’s what drew me to it at first. i dont know what it is about it but the painting feels both ethereal and haunting to me. i can almost hear the music and the woman’s face… it’s hard to explain but i feel like this woman and her music are just trapped in here… in a non-ominous sense.

2. the swing : fragonard

i am basic and proud. fragonard did this as a commission. a friend was supposed to do it but didnt want to paint something so ‘frivolous’. mans is kicking himself in the afterlife as we speak. anyway, i want to live in this painting. imagine you’re out dancing in a thunderstorm at night while some wild music plays. i think this painting captures that vibe albeit more cheerfully. it’s also just,,, so darn aesthetic.

3. this entire mirabai issue : amar chitra katha (for those who dont know, ack is an indian comic/graphic novel publishing company that focuses on indian mythology, folklore, history, etc).

listen. i dont have any strong feelings on this issue as a whole but these illustrations? my favourite ack illustrations of all i’ve seen. my well-thought out, highly researched, academic, art critic reason for liking them is as follows: so pretty. also you know how some people had these crushes on krishna as a kid? yeah you can blame mine on this.

4. oberon, titania and puck with fairies dancing : william blake

based on shakespeare’s midsummer night’s dream (a wild, wild ride) aka an early example of fanart. i just think it’s neat ok. when i think of mysterious woodland music and fae dancing i think of this. i really like the colouring and lighting. all in all chefs kiss.

5. idk?

yeah uh this is the reason this has been in my drafts forever. i had no idea what to put for no 5. i cant choose ig? or my brain is blank? so, all i have to offer for this one is an apology. very sorry.

thanks again for the ask! <3

[winterrose42]

Love when i see a thing and know using it would be so much easier. But instead of just buying the very inexpensive thing monkey brain decides it wants to know how it works and deconstructs the whole thing and then decides "could just make that"

So anyway i have pliers, cardboard, glue and paperclips and at some point im gonna make a small darning loom to mend things more easily and neatly.

[jebazzled]

it ain’t your muse! (shut up & write, ft. rihanna)

You nerds are always talking about your muse. My muse this, my muse that, I have no muse, my muse went the way of the dinosaurs, if my muse comes out of its burrow and sees its shadow I won’t be able to write for six weeks.

Shut up about your fucking muse!

It is true that you might go through periods where it is hard to find time and energy to write, or negative experiences in a writing community might leave you with anxiety surrounding writing. But by and large, writers block is something you can overcome! 

Please, for the love of god, let me help you. 

Writing is a muscle, and you’ve got to exercise it if you don’t want it to atrophy. 

This tutorial is a bit of tough love about y’all and y’all’s diddly-darn muses, and some advice for snapping yourself out of it!

So here’s the thing about writing, my loves. You have to actually do it. 

TERRIBLY inconvenient, I know.

I’m not here to tell you how to manage your work-life balance or how to manage your time. If you’re not writing much because you straight up don’t have time to write much, my advice is simple: pare down on your characters, focus on the plots that matter most to you, and spend some mental health juice on reminding yourself that there isn’t an RP Prom Queen, and even if there were, it’s better not to live or die by that bizarro crown. 

But if you’re having trouble writing because of Your Muse... I’m cracking my knuckles. 

We’ve all written with folks before - or been that folk before - who need a very specific set of circumstances if they’re going to write: they need time to Pinterest, need to listen to a specific playlist, need to get in the mindset, need the thread to scratch a very specific itch and need all of it to come together before the moon passes out of a waxing gibbous. As a fellow dev ho, I understand the appeal of writing to suit a mood, of vibing to a playlist, of prioritizing the stuff you’re going fucking feral for, of having the stars align while you do the thing. But if you’re like this when you’re writing for other people - 

well, you’re making things difficult for both you and your writing partners! We can’t control the external constraints on our time, e.g. work and school, and we can’t always control the nonsense our psychology spins to keep us from writing. But some things are within our control, and by god, if there is any control to be had in the year of Mother Sappho 2021, don’t you want it? 

At least some of your writers block is probably dumb as hell. So let’s beat the shit out of that part.

Anyway, if you’re yakking on and on about how your muse demands a bottle of red wine and a scented candle and fairy lights and soft socks and the blood of the servant, willfully given in order to spit out 200 words, or whatever... 

it’s not that fucking deep.

Writing is a muscle. It’s like any other muscle: you need to exercise it. 

If you’re training for a 5k, you don’t sit on your couch listening to “Eye of the Tiger” until race day. You get your ass off the cushion and pound the pavement. You probably start by alternating walks with short bursts of running. You probably don’t work your way up to actually running 5k at a time for a few weeks. And once you’ve run that first 5k, you don’t go sit on your couch to listen to “Eye of the Tiger” until the next race. You keep running to stay in shape for the next race.

Writing is like that. 

What you write does not have to be perfect. 

You can work on the post for six weeks and there will still be things you could change. You know what change your writing partner would have appreciated most? If you’d posted it for them three weeks ago. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. 

Cut yourself the same slack you cut for your writing partners. Do you yearn to keelhaul them if their reply isn’t worth a National Book Award? No, because you’re not an asshole. They’re also not an asshole. Everyone is reasonable here. Write something that responds to what they gave you and that gives them something to work with. Not every single post has to be capital-I Inspired. ✨

What you write does not have to be a vibe ready for the Goop newsletter. 

I was a creative writing major in college, and I was always having to turn stuff in for class that wasn’t exactly what I wanted to work on: a short story set in another country when I just wanted to write a play with puppets, an essay about food when I would rather write one about a weekend drive, etc. 

Sometimes, you write what you write when you write it not because it’s getting you hot and bothered but because you’ve owed a reply for A While and you feel bad about keeping someone waiting. It will still be fun, because you chose to do that thread with your character and someone else’s character for a reason, and that reason stands, even if your monkey brain is yearning to play with that slime that makes fart noises when you put it away. 

(Pro tip, here: don’t do threads you don’t actually have any interest in writing! It is less awkward to tell someone, “I am not interested in my character weed whacking your character’s lawn” than to waste their time with 10 posts of it before telling them, “I am not interested in my character weed whacking your character’s lawn.”) 

The more you write, the easier it is. 

Let’s talk about running again. A couple of years ago, I went on a bit of a kick with the running. I ran at least three times a week. I would bring my running shit with me to work so I could run in the park near my office. I would make running dates with friends. I would reward myself with a bagel from my favorite cafe if I did a run. And you know what? Once I got myself past the hurdle of pulling on my running clothes and lacing up my shoes, I enjoyed myself. When I ran 5k without slowing to a walk, I was proud of myself. When I told myself, “let’s do another loop at the park!” and stopped to take a photo of the sunset, I enjoyed myself. I would not have enjoyed myself if I hadn’t hit the goddamn pavement.

Put your ass in your fucking chair. I don’t care if you don’t have the right scented candle. Write 50 words. Right fucking now. I’ll wait.

Write another 50.

Now write another 100.

How long did that take you? Some days, it might take you 90 minutes to write 200 words. But that’s 200 more words than you would have written in 90 minutes of browsing Pinterest waiting for an angel to come down from heaven and write this post for you. 

All that bullshit you do to Feed Your Muse? It’s stalling, you idiot. 

The more you make yourself write instead of just thinking about writing, the easier it will be to actually fucking write. 

I used to sit and stare at posts for hours and hours and hours before submitting them, so worried about the post being good enough. When I moved to a neighborhood with an aboveground train line, I was able to write on my morning commute, and writing every morning - even if only the 200 words I could crank out on mobile in 30 minutes before work - got me out of my weird writers block crutches and security blankets. It didn’t take as much effort to write, anymore. I wrote over 200,000 words in 2019, and over 300,000 words in 2020, when I had barely any commute at all to use on writing. I didn’t magically have endless hours of free time. I just wasn’t wasting my free time pretending that being on Tumblr counted as writing. 

Tough love: doled out. And now:

TIPS & TRICKS FOR BEATING “””Writers Block”””

Stop acting like Writers Block is real. It’s not that it’s not real, but by telling yourself that you have Writers Block, you’re making it worse for yourself. You’re making excuses for yourself. I used Writers Block to stall writing my Topics in Creative Writing: Folktales portfolio for 3 months, and you know what happened? I still had to turn in the fucking portfolio, because the person I was writing for didn’t fucking care about my fucking Writers Block. And you know who had to sit her ass in a chair and write 30 pages of folktales in a 24 hour period? Me. It’s almost like my Writers Block was just PROCRASTINATION. 

Set a timer. If you’re looking at your list of replies owed and you’re feeling like it might be easier to “do character dev” and “build a playlist” than to write your posts, break the task into smaller pieces. If your server has a sprint bot, use it. If not, set your own timer.  Organize your list of threads with the ones you’ve owed replies on the longest at the top. Set your timer for 20 minutes and see how much you can write for the oldest post you owe. Not done? Set the timer for another 20 minutes. Keep setting that timer until that post is done and you can drop it in the tags channel. Now do the same for the second oldest.  CRANK! THEM! OUT! If you find that it’s depleting your creative energy, that’s not unusual! When I get to this point in my own posting habits, my oldest replies owed are usually for Albus Dumbledore, a character I write specifically because I hate him. It is often easier to knock out all his posts in one chunk rather than shift voice, so this ends up working out nicely. 

Don’t indulge your stupid stalling tactics. Do you typically get sidetracked by Pinterest? Put your phone away and close that tab. Do you get absorbed in lining up the perfect music for writing a post? Write in silence, asshole. Do you need to be in your favorite chair with the right lighting? Go sit on a park bench and write on mobile.  It’s nice to write in idealized environments. I rented a treehouse last summer to write 10k on a novel! I get it! But you absolutely can write in other environments, if you have to. And if you can get yourself to write on a dark skin on your iPad at an airport in the Midwest while waiting for a flight - well, shit, think of how much you’ll be able to write on a laptop when your diva ass demands are properly met!

Don’t take on shit you don’t want to write. I fully admit that these tactics feel a bit like homework/chores/a to-do list for what is of course a fun hobby. You know how they say “love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life?” If you don’t take on plots, characters, and threads that don’t have a lick of interest or excitement for you, this shit won’t feel like a hassle. 

Hope this whips all you little miscreants (myself included) into shape! Now quit your yapping and start writing.